The Radavist

Remember this one? From NAHBS? It was one of my favorites in the show. Everything about it just looked right. First impressions are everything you see and these days, with the whole bigger is better mentality about tire clearances, it was nice to see something embrace a modest tire so elegantly.

Mosaic‘s GS1 disc all-road bike is a custom steel or titanium frameset, offered by the Colorado-based frame builders.

Let me reiterate that: this is not a production model with stock sizing. It’s made with 100% custom geometry. A custom geometry ensures this bike will fit you like a tailored suit.

The GS1 is a road bike with disc brakes and room for around a 38mm tire. It has a road bottom-bracket drop (72.5mm) and a slightly slacker head tube than your average road frame (72.5º). Side note: I like how those two numbers match up so perfectly. The 420mm stays and 1033.5mm wheelbase can be best interpreted as smooth sailin’ down your favorite road, be it dirt or sealed.

Kit builds aren’t Rick Hunter’s thing. You won’t find derailleur hangers ordered from a catalog in drawers, or your every day, run of the mill 44mm head tube waiting en queue for assemblage. Not at Hunter Cycles.

Rick Hunter is one of those builders that makes what I like to call utilitarian art. Utilitarian because each of his bikes are made to tackle one or many jobs efficiently and with a dash of fun. Or the other way around. Art because each bike is unique. Or rather, each run of production frames are unique. Be it a WoodRat, a Cyclo-Cross disc bike or a road frame. Rick will design, fabricate and finish his own cable stops, derailleur hangers and head tubes. There are a lotta hours put into each bike. More recently he’s been working on some feats of engineering and reverse practicality however with his completely insane Bushmaster bikes…

Grinduro was a weekend-long event, filled with music, food, booze and a killer ride (or race, depending on how you party) but one of my favorite features was the expo, which featured a series of California-based frame builders, all designing what would be the ultimate “Grinduro bike.”

The first one to be featured here on this site is a unique Retrotec “all-road” which was built using signature Inglis details like a double, curved top tube, a seat tube cluster gusset, a hotrod-inspired paint job and extra sexy thru-axle dropouts.

It’s easy to swoon over a bike with such curves, but once you look at the build kit, the practicality really shines through. By using SRAM’s massive 10-42 cluster cassette and the CX-1 long cage rear derailleur, this bike can tackle anything, including China Grade’s intimidating average grade.

For the client, a Whisky thru-axle fork and wheels topped off the build… Which he then took right off the display shelf and rode the next day. If only I had gotten a post-race portrait.

When Joe Parkin approached Giro’s Dain Zaffke about a new race format a few years back, the initial reaction the two had was more than a chuckle, rather than any degree of seriousness but the seed had been planted…

Why not make a new race format? Part gravel grind and part enduro. Grinduro. You get the best of both worlds, competition and socializing on bicycles. A few segments would be timed: a fire road climb, a fire road descent, a road time trail and a singletrack descent. The event would prove to bring about a rather interesting dialog: what is the most diverse bicycle in your stable?

Colby has one of the best jobs in the cycling industry. He works for ENVE, where he’s the liaison for frame builders. Basically, if you’re a builder, he sets up your account and ensures that you’ve got everything you need to get your latest project or show bike rolling.

When it was time for a disc cyclocross bike, Colby reached out to Aaron Stinner in Santa Barbara for an OD green and orange race-paint-inspired shred sled that would pack a fat tire and blast the surrounding dirt roads of Ogden, Utah with ease.

Naturally, this bike was Colby’s go-to for Grinduro…

Last weekend, I made the short flight up to Portland, Oregon to attend the Bike and Beer festival at HopWorks Urban Brewery. While there, I was greeted with that I found to be a really pleasant and easy to digest show. There was just about anything a bike nerd could hope for: around 20-30 vendors, food, cheap beer, entertainment and lovely weather. Part of the draw for me to attend this show was to see builders who might not go to NAHBS and might not be right inside the Portland Metro area. We’ve already seen many of the bikes on display, so lets check out the show itself in a quick gallery…

Don’t worry, there’s more to come!

I’m here in Portland, Oregon attending the Bike and Beer festival at HopWorks Urban Brewery. While I’ll be documenting many of the frames, I’ll also be capturing the general vibes. For now, let’s just check out some bikes!

Mark Dinucci is the man. He’s been building frames for over 40 years, has been the go-to consultant for numerous other builders and still to this day epitomizes the craft of bicycle frame building. For this year’s Bike and Beer Festival he displayed a classic road frame, fit for a Dura Ace 25th anniversary group and elegant Joe Bell paint. While the bike wasn’t a complete, I still wanted to get a few photos of this masterpiece. Oh and some portraits of Mark himself…

I’m here in Portland, Oregon attending the Bike and Beer festival at HopWorks Urban Brewery. While I’ll be documenting many of the frames, I’ll also be capturing the general vibes. For now, let’s just check out some bikes!

Some would argue that one’s best work is done for their partner. In this case, Chris Igleheart‘s latest bike may not be his best in your eyes, but if you pay attention to the detailing, you can see his heart not only went into this creation, it poured over it.

Fran’s bike has everything considered.

A SON Hub, Edelux lamp, beautiful hand-shaped chain guard, Alfine internal hub, nice cushy tires, excellent fit, stem-mounted bell, beautiful stem, segmented fork crown and many other details make it unique. My favorite details are the heart brazed into the top tube split and the fender’s unique coating with a 3M paint, which if I had a flash I would have tried to document more clearly.

Look, Igleheart’s legacy extends well beyond this bike for his wife. He’s built frames for some of the most renown builders, but you see something else in this bike. You see a special love…

I’m here in Portland, Oregon attending the Bike and Beer festival at HopWorks Urban Brewery. While I’ll be documenting many of the frames, I’ll also be capturing the general vibes. For now, let’s just check out some bikes!

For the past five and a half years, AJ Lu of Muirandessi Cycles has been working on frames, one by one. After attending UBI framebuilding school, then getting his certification, AJ spent his free time researching the art and history of building a bicycle by hand.

When it comes to new framebuilders, it’s tough to make a leap out into the world and grow your brand or clientele. In the brief time I spoke with AJ, I didn’t get the sense that he was eager to be the next big thing, he just wants to perfect his art and build bicycle frames for people with a purpose.

This Muirandessi Cycles has an interesting story. It was built to be the owner, Lucas’ daily work bike at his company Cascadian Courier Collective. Earlier this summer, Lucas and his buddy Alexander decided to make the trip from Eugene, Oregon to Portland. A tour that most people would plan to undertake with panniers and a touring bike, yet they decided to make it a bit interesting and ate 99 Doughnuts along the way…

Recently it was powdercoated with a metallic flake clear and as the morning sunlight caught each individual flake, the bike illuminated itself in the most flamboyant way. Personally? I freaking love it!

Greggy’s Cherubim Racer Road with Campagnolo EPS
Photos by Kyle Kelley, words by Greggy San Pablo

When Kyle reached out to Greggy for the back-story on how this gorgeous Cherubim Racer Road came to be, he answered in such a manner that was just too good to chop up or paraphrase, so here it is, albeit slightly edited down for content.

So… Why a Cherubim and what inspired this bike?

“Well, the choice took a forever for many reasons, but I’ll condense it for you…The Cinelli Laser and several NJS frames are my favorite frames to gawk at. If a Cinelli Laser and a 3Rensho had a baby, that was the style of frame I wanted built. I started looking for frame builders in 2012 and came across Shin-Ichi Konno’s builds on the NAHBS 2013 webpage. The Cherubim racer prototype at the 2013 NAHBS was almost exactly what I imagined. Through emails I communicated with Keigo at Cherubim to have one built. I sent my measurements, the geometries of the bicycles I ride most and find most comfortable before being confirmed for a build in December 2013. Hopefully, on my birthday.

The frame was designed to have a sloping top tube with an integrated stem but my frame size would be too small for an integrated stem. I elected for the traditional top tube without the integrated stem and to have the frame built specifically for the Version 2 Campagnolo EPS group. The most difficult decision was choosing a paint scheme. After three months of being indecisive I decided to have them chose it for me. Then a few weeks later I came across this iridescent purple and blue Bridgestone. I sent the pictures to Keigo and I was told Bridgestone possesses that color, so the frame was sent to their facility for paint.

I got the frame December 2014 and finished the build May 2015. The final product looks more like the child of a Cinelli Laser and Bridgestone Anchor, which isn’t a bad thing, right??”

Greggy, that is definitely not a bad thing!

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It happens every year. Frame builders get the request for a new ‘cross bike and while it’s not necessarily a bad thing, there’s always that one caveat: “can I have it in time for this year’s season?”

Last year around this time, the Mudfoot team was clamoring for their new bikes and one of the rider’s wife, Crystal, really wanted to get one as well. After some thought and a brief conversation with Megan from Moth Attack she decided to support not only a female builder, but an ex-LA frame builder. Megan re-located to Colorado a few weeks back, but her and Crystal stayed in touch.

The docket was easy: discs, 44mm head tube, an english bottom bracket and red paint! Megan delivered on all fronts and Crystal built up her new bike with Shimano Ultegra, Chris King, an ENVE CX fork and Easton parts.

Personally, I’d like to think this is the kind of ‘cross bike most people would want to order currently and It’s one of my favorites I’ve seen this year. There’s something about its size, simplicity and I love the various logo hits on the bike. Great job, Megan and Crystal, ENJOY!

“I don’t have a studio, I have a workshop. I’m not an artist, I’m a fabricator…”

We were talking about the mystique surrounding custom frames and the public’s perception, or in many cases the perpetuation of preciousness associated with “bespoke” frames. Cameron Falconer isn’t an artist, he makes straight forward, utilitarian machines meant to shred. Sure, they’re tailored to fit and Cam’s years of racing and riding influence a lot of their nuances (water bottle cage placement for example) but these are bicycles, not art…

Like many framebuilders, Rafi Ajl began his love for the bicycle at a young age but it wasn’t until after graduating from Harvard’s Graduate School of Design that he began pursuing his love for building bicycle frames. Ajl’s background is fine art and as such, his bicycles began functional art. Something you would not only love to look at, but would love to ride and would be able to do so for the rest of your life.

Perhaps it was Rafi’s passion for art, design and the bicycle that drew Geoff from Box Dog Bikes, a local, owner run co-op bicycle shop in the Mission of SF to Raphael Cycles’ work. Or maybe it was the proximity. Rafi Ajl is no longer making frames, but when he was, Raphael Cycles was literally blocks away from Box Dog Bikes.

Geoff wanted a classic touring bike with external routing, fender, rack mounts and a 1″ threaded headset. A seasoned tourer, randonnée, cyclocross racer, shredder of vintage mountain bikes and all-around capable cyclist, Geoff knew exactly what he wanted and has been thoroughly enjoying this bike. As evident by the years of use.

A SON hub powers the S3 lighting and a well-positioned and broken in Brooks saddle cushions and inviting a ride, so much that I pedaled this bike for an hour or so before finding the perfect spot to photograph it.

Free Coffee at Heritage General Store
Words and photos by Kyle Kelley

Earlier this year when I was visiting Louisville for NAHBS I met Mike Salvatore, the owner of Heritage in Chicago. I had heard of his operation through the special edition collaborations he’s done with builders like Stinner and Humble, but honestly didn’t know much else about the business. Mike filled me in a little bit on his past, what he is working towards and invited me to stop by for a visit before my flight out of Chicago.