The Radavist

Vintage mountain bikes have a special place in our hearts over here at The Radavist. From vintage klunkers to fillet-brazed beauts, it just seems like bikes from the early years of mountain biking were ahead of their time in a lot of ways. When the pandemic hit, I found myself browsing forums, eBay, and emailing collectors to build up some vintage rides. I was inundated with all the tech that was coming out, yet wasn’t available to consumers, and just felt like revisiting my passion for old bikes would reinvigorate my love of 26″ wheels and friction shifting. This Ritchey is the most recent of three bikes that I built up over the past few years in the pandemic and was by far the biggest undertaking for me. The process included painting some Tom Ritchey fillet Bullmoose bars to match and fixing some shoddy paint on the frame itself.

This bike needed a complete build kit, as I bought it as a frameset, so I spent a lot of time speccing the build while utilizing some of the NOS components I’ve been sitting on for a few years. The end product is something I’m truly proud of and Cari and I had a lot of fun with the photos here, so enjoy!

We’ve all heard the term “Klunker” before, but as a modern misnomer in cycling, it’s been used to refer to coaster-brake actuated cruiser bikes. This, my friends, is a true-to-form klunker, using gears and brakes, but it was built upon a cruiser chassis. For today’s Vintage Bicycles tory, we have Tasshi from Vintage MTB Workshop sharing the story of Steve Cook’s personal Cook Brothers Racing Cruiser, so read on for all the nitty-gritty on what makes this wild bike so unique and how it would shape the future of mountain biking…

A bike’s stance dictates how you’ll ride it. When you see bikes like this, you don’t think of speed and efficiency. Coming off of a lightweight carbon gravel bike review and jumping back onto this Bombtrack Beyond 2 made me think about my headspace while riding a bike. For me, bikes like the Beyond 2, AWOL, Sutra ULTD, and Otso Fenrir instill a feeling of unintentionality when riding. They’re machines for meandering. While they are all touring bikes, designed for front and rear racks, they are so much more. I’ve put in many meandering miles on this bike and am ready to break it down for you, so read on below.

The intersection of cycling with other outdoor activities is where my mind has been for the past few years. Bikefishing, bikerafting, bicycle touring, and the like all bring together cycling with outdoor recreation. A few retail environments come to mind that encourages not only cycling but these adjacent activities. Most prominently in my mid-term memory is Circles in Nagoya Japan, and recently, I found myself at Campfire Cycling in Tucson with camera in hand. While there, I documented a few of the shop employee’s personal bikes, as well as the space itself. Let’s take a look below!

Across the road from a sprawling old corral with a dozen or more cattle pens constructed from creosote-laden boards and discarded railroad ties stood a small stone monument. It commemorated an earthen dam, behind which was a very small but empty reservoir at the foot of a butte called Coyote Peak.

“If it were not for strongmen like Bob Crowder,” the metal plaque read, “with the fortitude and ambition to develop water in these vast desert areas, there would be no game and no livestock today.”

In escaping the concrete canyons of New York City, the idea of new horizons, and the promise of unfamiliar faces drew me into what became a 4,112-mile bicycle tour across the deep south and southwestern United States.

Dulce Ortiz and Wladimir Labraña are the couple behind Atom Cycles, the handmade bicycle building project in Ojo de Agua in the State of México, just outside of México City. What started as a love story between a Mexican woman and a Chilean man isn’t mine to tell, but it resulted in the fusion of the expertise of a graphic designer and a metal construction technician to bring to life fillet brazed bicycle frames, racks, and an expanding range of bicycle accessories.

I hope your winter break was refreshing and that you got some miles in over the Holidaze. We’re back in 2022 with the first of our 2021 year-end recaps, beginning with everyone’s favorite: the Top 10 Beautiful Bicycles of 2021. Like years prior, I compiled this list by traffic, comments, and social media/backlink chatter, also omitting bikes from Open House/Expo style showcases. There are some real gems in here, so let’s get to it!

Is it a gravel bike? A drop bar 29er? Or something else entirely? When it comes to the nomenclature surrounding these modern touring bikes, I often scratch my head, pondering an answer to this question. My usual inclination is to envelop these bikes under the umbrella of “adventure bikes” but then this bike landed in my lap. The Otso Cycles Fenrir is aligned with bikes like the Kona Sutra ULTD and the Moots Baxter but Otso did something different – i.e. better – than its competitors. The Fenrir took it up a notch and has utilized boost spacing wheels, which in my mind, put this in the drop bar 29er category.

I’ve had the Fenrir for a while now, have taken it on an overnighter, and have ridden some of my favorite mixed terrain routes here in Santa Fe with it. On washboarded sandy roads to singletrack, doubletrack, and gravel, the Fenrir is a hell of a bike and one that I really resonated with, so let’s check it out in detail below…

In some form of intergalactic serendipity, this review coincides with the 2021 International Singlespeed Day, so hopefully, this article inspires you to dust off the ol’ Cruiser or SSMTB and get out for a sunset shred with your friends.

I’ve had the Sour Bicycles Pasta Party for longer than I’d like to admit for a review period but with supply chain shortages, I decided to scrap my original plans for the build as a geared hardtail and assembled it with various spare parts and some new fancy BERD wheels which ended up resulting in one very unique rigid singlespeed 29er.

The Pasta Party is a strange bird with a few clever details and a few quirks, so read on below for my review of this unique chassis offering from the German brand Sour Bicycles…

Here in the Quaker City of Philadelphia, we’re blessed with a number of reliable shops in just about every corner of town. Shops for very serious racers, shops for mountain bikers, shops just for anyone in the neighborhood in need of help getting around on two wheels. We’ve got ‘em all and plenty of ‘em. Keystone is one of Philly’s newest shops catering to all kinds of bikes with an emphasis on everything rando, touring, and bikepacking.

The idea of a true-to-form vacation, or holiday, is pretty foreign to me. As someone who’s spent their entire adult life living, breathing, eating, photographing bicycles 24/7, it’s hard to leave work, i.e. a camera, behind. A few years ago, right after Josh posted his Reportage from the Durango to Moab route along the San Juan Huts network, we put a reservation in for the Telluride to Moab route. Then the pandemic hit, delaying the trip indefinitely. We finally agreed upon a week this year and began planning. I hadn’t been on a week-long tour in years and with work seemingly stacking up, I was glad to disconnect with seven other riders touring across the Uncompahgre Plateau from the San Juan to the La Sal mountains. We all began packing, preparing, and the excited chatter resonated through my email inbox daily…