The Radavist

Before NAHBS coverage engulfed this site, our Moab crew was looking for another ride to undertake before uprooting and driving to Salt Lake City for the convention show. Porcupine was closed, due to snow and as a consequence, mud. Other trails like Portal might be too rowdy for our group and we’d already explored a lot of the other trails in the area. That’s when Josh, a local, and part owner of the Robber’s Roost condo we rented, recommended we do his favorite shuttle ride in the area: Navajo Nascar.

The NAHBS 2017 Awards
Photos by Brad Quartuccio

Each year, a panel of judges pick out the creme of the crop from the many builders showcasing at NAHBS to hand out a series of prestigious awards. This year, I thought I’d pull our NAHBS documentation to a close with a superb gallery, compiled by Brad Quartuccio. Enjoy!

NAHBS isn’t just about the builders. It’s also about makers. People who produce bags, hubs, headsets, saddles and other components or accessories. For Vlad Cycles and Andrew the Maker, this year’s event became the perfect venue to display ATM’s newest bags, including a zipper closure porteur rack bag, saddle bag and his Many Things sacks, all on Andrew’s own dirt touring bike.

Because it’s NAHBS, Andrew reached out to Carson Leh to make bartape and a custom saddle to top off this loud, but beautiful rig.

NAHBS isn’t just about $10k road bikes with wireless shifting and every year, there are still a good number of classic, rim-brake road bikes lining the convention center halls. This year, Mike DeSalvo brought one of my personal favorites. A Builder’s Special in gold and turquoise, built with Shimano Ultegra. These completes go for $4,300 as pictured, or $3,650 sans Chris King components.

It’s hard to beat that pricing, especially from a guy like Mike, who knows how to lay down some beautiful weld beads. If you’d like a Builder’s Special, holler at DeSalvo!

Some of the finest bourbons in the world are unobtainable, so it would make sense that Chris King‘s newest limited edition color was so small batch that only a select few builders were able to put it on their bikes at this year’s NAHBS. This was not their intention, however. It seems the brown anodizing was nearly impossible to get consistent, so making headsets, hubs and other bits to match wasn’t gonna happen. Big frowny face. There are two other colors which King has launched at NAHBS this year, which I’ll get to in a bit. Up first is this fire red Cielo dirt drop MTB. Now, this is their standard frame, which can be run as a rigid or a hardtail, with dirt drops, set up for touring with bikepacking bags. These frames no longer use slider dropouts and switched to front and rear thru-axles.

I dunno about you, but I wish that bourbon brown would happen because it’s so damn smooth!

Each year when NAHBS rolls around, many builders use the opportunity to build themselves a new bike. This year was Curtis Inglis‘ time for a new hardtail. Over the years, Curtis has experimented with the Funduro model, altering the bottom bracket drop and angles ever-so-slightly to dial in what he feels like is the ultimate hardtail geometry. As a pretty tall dude, he decided to give the 29+ platform a spin, resulting in a bike with a large stance and aggressive geometry.

Over the past few days, Curtis has been riding this show bike and not exactly babying it. He’s got one of those new White Industries headsets on the bike, along with White hubs, cranks and a Paul stem, PIKE fork, XTR rear mech, with a Thomson dropper.

I’m in Moab, Utah with a handful of framebuilders and will be previewing their NAHBS offerings leading up to the event…

Fans of the Rebel Alliance would know that paint scheme without even reading the title. Ted Lincoln is an artist, one that paints scenes from the Star Wars Universe using mother of pearl in what he calls “Mother of Pearl Art.” Ted has been officially endorsed by George Lucas and has gained quite the traction amongst the Star Wars fans. Traction like a 27.5+ tire on sandstone! It just so happened that before Ted was big, Jeremy Sycip knew him in San Francisco, so for this year’s NAHBS, he asked Ted to paint his own personal hardtail for the show. What you’re seeing here is Ted’s first ever mother of pearl bicycle art.

Even as a photographer who loves challenges, this bike was particularly hard to document without my studio light setup allowing me to make the details pop out, but then again shooting bikes in Moab > shooting bikes in a convention center…

It doesn’t matter where you go in the American West, you’ll always hear the sayings “if you don’t like the weather, wait ten minutes” and “you’ll have four seasons in one ride here!” In Moab that definitely holds true this time of year.

NAHBS is around the corner and a few weeks ago, a text thread circulated from a handful of builders asking if we’d be interested in riding mountain bikes in Moab before the three days of tradeshow engulfed our lives. Of course, I was into that idea, as it never takes too much convincing to ride awesome trails. Rough plans were made and on Sunday morning, we began our journey out to Moab.

After battling 65mph winds on the highway, we were a bit tired from the drive and the following morning, we needed to gather some local reconnaissance on the local trail conditions. I rode Captain Ahab three years ago with SRAM and really wanted to ride it again, but this time on a hardtail. Porcupine was also on our agenda, although a trip to Poison Spider made us change our agenda. The snow and rain had caused a bit of mud to form on that iconic trail, making it off-limits. Coming to Moab and not being able to ride Porcupine is a bummer, but there are plenty of dry trails to ride.

Ahab is named after the rock formation in the background, which looks like a whale.

We grabbed breakfast, kitted up, found a parking spot and took off to ride. Ahab is a blast and the climb up HyMasa is plenty scenic. As per the introduction to this story, we encountered 30mph gusts, snow, hail, sleet and baking hot sunshine, all within the 9-mile loop.

With a good amount of time to kill and our adjacency to some amazing geologic formations, we ended the day soaking in the sunset driving through Arches National Park…

I shoot a lot of road bikes and these days, it’s very rare you see one without a 44mm or tapered head tube. Whereas most people that want a steel frame with oversized tubes, Jaybe from Team Too Late wanted something more classic, something that would dance with him as he climbs and descend like a race bike from the 90’s. He spent a lot of time browsing NAHBS galleries, looking at various framebuilders and was attracted to the work of David Kirk, the Bozeman, Montana builder known for his impeccable fillet and lugged frames.

Jaybe didn’t want your typical, straight-tubed frame however. He requested curvy stays and the result is one of the most beautiful road frames I’ve ever photographed. Built with Chris King’s 40th-anniversary olive drab hubs and Campy Record 11, Jaybe’s David Kirk is sure to perform and look damn good while riding in the hills and mountains of Los Angeles.

David from Kirk Frameworks will be at the 2017 NAHBS in Salt Lake City, Utah and personally, I can’t wait to see what he brings with him.

To call Martin from Second Spin Cycles a “collector” doesn’t do his operation justice. When I think of bicycle collectors, I picture hoarders stacking NOS parts for the sake of their own enjoyment, often shutting off their acquisitions from the real world, while only allowing members of various online forums the sneak peek inside, via photos. Maybe that’s an exaggeration but personally, I feel a great amount of indifference to people who hoard bicycles and components. Unless they’re riding them…

This time of year, the idea of leaving the bike at home and swapping mountains for man-made monuments was very appealing, especially coming off a trip to Tasmania and showing my mom around Death Valley for three days. I’d become inundated with nature and London was going to be the perfect destination this time of year.

A Look at the Bikes from the Chris King 40th Open House
Photos by Billy Sinkford, words by John Watson

Portland was a buzz in December. With the SSCXWC bringing hordes of cycling fanatics to the area, Chris King decided to throw an open house in celebration of their 40th anniversary. After a few months of calling out to select framebuilders, the team at Chris King displayed a wide variety of bicycles all built with select King 40th components. Then, to round-off the display, a few “vintage” bicycles made their way on display, including the matching bike to Chris King’s own classic Cielo. Since I can’t be everywhere at once, many thanks to Billy for taking a few photos of these bikes.

If you’re bummed that you missed out on the 40th collection, they’ve still got some of the Chris King wheels for sale. I bought a set of the Hed Belgiums for my Speedvagen!

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