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One year and a week ago, a vehicle’s faulty catalytic converter ignited roadside vegetation igniting a blaze that would consume 96,901 acres of Sierra and Sequoia National Forest, eventually closing Yosemite for the first time in the National Park’s history. This was the first “big” fire of the indomitable 2018 fire season that torched the Western U.S. and serving as an unwelcome backdrop to this 12-minute major motion picture.
Words by Jack Watney, photos by Adam Gasson
And now here they are! The most daredevil group of daffy frame builders to ever whirl their wheels in the WACKY RACES. Competing for the title of Grinduro’s wackiest frame builder. The bikes are approaching the starting line.
First, is the TBA GXC driven by Tom Sturdy. Next is paratrooper Will Barcode on the TBA Splat Grav. Flying through the air is the Rad Roamer piloted by Ted James. Maneuvering for position is Andy Carr on the Spoon Customs Fat Tracker and right on his tail is Pi Manson on his Caledonian Carrier.
Sneaking along last is the unmistakable Petor of Dear Susan Bicycles riding his award-winning ‘Mike Rotch’…
“Grav, Grav. And double Grav!”
After the success of the Jones Plus SWB, or short wheel base, completes last year, Jones announced the launching of the LWB, or long wheel base, complete this morning. Whereas the Jones Plus SWB is a smaller bike overall, with 27.5×2.8-3.25″ tires, the Jones Plus LWB is a larger bike, designed to fit 29×2.8-3.25″ tires. The Jones Plus LWB is boxed and ready to ride for $2050 in either a knobby or a road slick tire option. Check out more details below, or head to Jones to read up!
If you’ve been looking for a rigid carbon MTB fork with provisions for touring cargo cages, then be sure to check out the Bearclaw Bicycle Co Ramhorn fork. With a pairing of triple bosses, 15mm x 100mm thru-axle, post or flat mount compatibility, clearance for 29 x 2.4 – 2.6″ or 27.5 x 2.8 – 3.0″ and looks to boot, the Ramhorn can make your MTB a little more touring-friendly. Head to Bearclaw Bicycle Co for more information!
We shoot a lot of bikes here on the Radavist. A lot. From my estimates, including tradeshows, and events like the Chris King Open House, or the Moots’ Employee Bikes, and even the Speedvagen Build Off, we shot 220 or so bikes in 2018. That’s a lot of bikes. A lot of details. A lot of component selection, build styles, and uses. From road, to mountain, and everything in between, noting the permutations that exist in this ever-so-special era in the cycling industry, I really feel like we’ve shown you just about everything you could see this year.
Out of those 220 bikes, I looked at the data in the form of traffic metrics, social chatter, and comments to pick the Top 10 Beautiful Bicycles of 2018. While many bikes had a lot of comments, some had higher traffic or social media shares. Compiling all the numbers, a very compelling list was formed. Not included in this lot are bike reviews, of which Morgan’s review of the Midnight Special and Kyle’s review of his Chubby Cosmic Stallion took the highest metrics from all others on this list. I guess they’re in a league of their own!
At any rate, check out the complete Top 10 Beautiful Bicycles of 2018, in no particular order, below!
Tumbleweed’s Prospector touring bikes are built around the Rohloff hub platform. These do-it-all tourers are at home in the backcountry, on washboarded roads, or ripping and flowy singletrack. Their geometry is tuned to take on fully-loaded tours, while still being equally as fun un-loaded. Just announced today, the new Prospector frames are now available for presale. There are a limited number of frames available in each size and color and they are due to arrive February 2019.
Select Desert Sandglow or Midnight Blue colors, choose a fork option and whether to add a Rohloff module. The module includes the Rohloff SPEEDHUB, shifter, cables and a 180mm brake rotor (save $500 off retail). Head to Tumbleweed for more information!
2018 Philly Bike Expo: Winter Bicycles S&S 27.5 Dirt Tourer
Photos and words by Jarrod Bunk
Versatility, that would be a word that would sum up this bike fairly well. It’s a Cerakote-coated S&S dirt rando touring machine from Winter Bicycles out of Nittany Pennsylvania. RuthWorks teamed up on the bags to complete a package that is totally integrated so that the Ultralight Randonneur bag is free of a decaleur. Along with beautiful handmade racks to distribute an even load this bike even has bolt-in frame bag compatibility along with three pack bosses on the fork legs to let this dirt rando bike switch between traditional bags as well as a more of a bikepacking setup. With 27.5 x 2.6″ clearance, this bike can tackle the road less traveled. Full internal dynamo wiring with quick disconnects, as well a Sinewave Cycles beacon make for a very clean setup that allows for plenty of off-grid touring.
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Follow Jarrod on Instagram, and Winter Bicycles on Instagram
For the past few years, Chris King has opened their doors to the public as part of an entire weekend of events dubbed the Chris King Open House. This event’s intent is to be coordinated with a product launch of their new colors for the year, as well as to showcase what makes their operations tick, and to display a selection of custom bikes, built by some of their best builder customers.
the two new colors for this year: matte turqoise and matte mango.
This year, they sent out an open invite to 30 of their best builder accounts, offering up discounted pricing to them to build a bike for the show, passing on the discount to their customers. Out of those 30 builders, 17 showed up, and they were displayed alongside a Pegoretti bike, which we looked at on Friday. These bikes lined the halls of the Chris King factory, where visitors could look at their features in great detail, chat with the builders about their process, and if they were so inclined, purchase their dream bike.
I was invited up to the Open House to document these bikes for the builders and for Chris King, as well as offering up an ultimate dream bike gallery for you, the readers of this website. Please enjoy! Which bike do you like the best and why? Oh and if you’re interested in one of the bikes showcased here, be sure to reach out to the builders, who are linked in the bike descriptions below.
Photo by Cass Gilbert
This is big news! Back in 2017, Tumbleweed Bicycle Co made a trip to Peru. During that Journey, Daniel from Tumbleweed and Cas Gilbert really fell in love with the RatKing Frames T Rack. The hook was set and now Tumbleweed just announced they were taking over production and sales of the RatKing T Rack. Check out the full press-release below, which tells you how you can win one of these racks!
At the Chris King Swarm event in Bend, the brand compiled a short list of builders who would display various kinds of bikes, built up with components fabricated in their Portland facilities. We’ll start off the showcase with this beautiful Doppo All Road.
Nagoya, Japan’s Sim Works has been making moves to open a base in the USA. Located in Portland – actually in the Chris King factory – Rie Sawada has been working on increasing the stock and inventory for this brand that sells products exclusively made in Japan by Nitto, Panaracer, and Honjo, the powerhouses of Japanese component manufacturing. When it came to bikes, however, Sim Works has been sampling builders to make their Doppo model. Initially, we saw a Made in Japan Doppo touring bike a few years back, so I was surprised to see a Doppo at the event this weekend. Especially one made from aluminum and in the USA!
Oscar from Simple Bicycle Co has been building frames for over a decade and in that time, he’s moonlighted as a behind the scenes fabricator for many brands featured on this site. His talents lie in anything metallic, ranging from titanium to aluminum, and dirt jumpers to all-roads. When Cielo closed their doors last year – where he built full-time for the brand – Oscar pursued more of his own projects, including two bikes we’ll be looking at in detail here at the site.
The resulting bike features clearance for a massive tire, while maintaining a road q-factor and chain line, allowing for the rider to choose a 700c or 650b wheel. For the Swarm, Sim Works built this bike to spec with many of their own parts, resulting in a largely made in Japan kit, on a MUSA frame.
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Follow Chris King on Instagram, follow Sim Works USA on Insgram, follow Simple Bicycle Co on Instagram, and follow Crow’s Feet Commons on Instagram.
For many, a New Year means time for reflection, and time for prospectives. For cyclists, this often includes planning out a build for a planned ride or perhaps updating your favorite bike with new gear. Perhaps that’s the motivation for many of you to visit this site. For us at the Radavist, we look at all the data from the past year’s content and begin to understand more what you, the readers, love to see here on the site.
Every bicycle on this list should come as no surprise. It was one of the most difficult selections in the history of this site, as almost all of these Beautiful Bicycles delivered similar metrics. We pulled these from the archives based on traffic, social media chatter and commentary. They’re displayed in no particular order. Omitted are bicycle reviews and completely bone stock production models – like the Jim Merz Sequoia and All-City Cosmic Stallion.
Thrown in, making it a baker’s dozen, is our top 2017 NAHBS pick as well. Without further adieu, here’ the Lucky 13 Beautiful Bicycles of 2017!
Perhaps you remember when my Geekhouse touring bike was stolen from my house in Silver Lake? Well, that happened, for those of you who missed that note. It sucked. I wept and I was very, very pissed off. Especially since we had video of the dude and the cops weren’t being any help. Granted, this is Los Angeles and real crimes happen every day. Then, a few people sent me a link to the app Offer Up where a seller had my bike. I went to the police station, showed them the app – which they had never seen before – and told them I wanted to go down there with a few people and get it back. They laughed. Rightfully so, but they were also assuming I had no “street sense” or something, I forget what they said exactly.
The thing that sucked though was when this popped up, I was getting ready for a flight to London, so I had little to no time to do this. I just wrote it off, not wanting to endanger myself or my friends over a bike. Then a miracle of stupidity happened. Kyle met Geoff McFetridge and Nicholas Haig-Arack for a ride on a Saturday, when the thief rode passed on my bike, prompting Kyle to chase him down, knock him off the bike and steal it back. All while the thief was yelling “I just bought this bike for $500.” A lie. The video footage we had as an identical, 100%, match to the dude riding my stolen bicycle.
A victory! But with a lot of luck. Unfortunately, the bike had a few dents in the TT, parts were missing and other things were wrong with it, so I called up Marty at Geekhouse, who said he’d be stoked to repair the frame and make a few key changes to it, which I believe he’s in the process of doing right now. Stories like this are so few and far between when it comes to bike theft and with the latest surge happening across the US, I thought I’d share some positivity to the mix… Thank you, Kyle, Geoff and Nick for being such rad dudes!
Raymond wanted a bike. One that wasn’t available from any of the touring brands. He wanted a 29+ tourer with rack mounts and provisions for extra water carrying capacity. Sure, there were the Salsa and Surly offerings but they weren’t quite what he wanted. That prompted Raymond to contact Rich at Moustache Cycles, his local builder in Flagstaff, Arizona to build his dream tourer.
Moustache Cycles is located at the base of Mt. Elden in Flagstaff and is capable of designing and fabricating some truly unique bicycles. What Rich built Raymond is a very interesting rig. Complete with a custom bullmoose bar, a truss-supported rack and a plate chainstay yoke. For bags, he contacted local maker Rogue Panda. Raymond and this bike are heading to Australia today to tour with the boys from Crust Bikes and as you can tell, he’s stoked!
You boys be safe down there. Watch out for the drop bears and hoop snakes.
We’ve seen this frame offering from Sim Works before, during the insane bicycle tour we got to partake in while in Japan with our friends from Circles. For NAHBS this year, Sim Works brought their Doppo touring bike, set up with 650b wheels, fenders, drop bars and their new Volummy tires. This bike looks great, painted in a matte olive drab, with custom Sim Works anodized green Paul components Klampers and skewers.
Arigatou gozaimasu, Sim Works!
Touring the Rocky Mountain Front
Photos and words by Locke Hassett
“Mel’s Diner, 9ish?” is the text I received from Cameron. The night before, he left in a frazzled state to go to the Rocky Mountain Front, and I followed the next morning. This vast expanse of abrupt cliffs where the Rockies meet the Great Plains spans much of North America, so I was glad that he specified a diner as a meeting place. We fueled up on strong coffee, plenty of biscuits and gravy, bought a map, two slingshots, whiskey, lemonade and a few cookies from the Augusta general store. A fine establishment that acts as the local liquor store, gun shop, grocery, outfitter and purveyor of homemade baked goods.
Daniel is the head designer and brains behind Tumbleweed Bicycle Company. Yet he didn’t get to this point on his own. Through working with Cameron Falconer and Anna Schwinn, Daniel was able to successfully jettison Tumbleweed onto the internet and into the real world.
“The ROMANCEÜR is a swashbuckling tender heart of a fantasy warrior, who not only seduces its rider, but acts as a psychedelic aphrodisiac on the psyche. Together you become thee Romanceür, a sacred, lustful partnership rendering all riding surfaces swooned out and speechless, pining for an intimate evening including a tray of rosé Jell-O shots.” – Ultra Romance from his Crust Bikes Diary
Recently, Los Angeles was invaded by some of cycling’s biggest celebrities and no, not Wiggo, Sagan, Vos, or Bryceland. The cyclists that found themselves hanging out at Golden Saddle Cyclery are from a different walk, er, roll of life all-together. These nomadic raconteurs favor dirt to pavement and fully-loaded bikes to ultralight carbon. Not to mention, they’re always on the hunt for the latest cycling expedition, which brings me to Los Angeles…
Call it what you will, but 2016 was an interesting year and I’m not just talking politics! There were a lot of incredible bicycles featured here on the site, many with even more interesting stories and some were even affected by the events of 2016. We’ll get into that a bit later. Grading these beautiful machines is anything but easy and usually requires a few days of data compiling, including but not limited to social media chatter, visits, comments and time spent on that particular page. Since all bikes can be beautiful, this list includes both custom and production bicycles. Some of these will be a no-brainer, others even surprised me. Without further adieu, here are the Radavist’s Top 10 and Then Some Beautiful Bicycles of 2016, in no particular order.
