The Radavist

As a parent of a child who has taken up cycling, the last thing on your mind should be buying a custom bicycle for them. That is, unless the bike can literally grow as they do.

Nao at Tomii Cycles felt challenged by this very issue. Rather than fillet braze a new frame every year as his son Fugo grows, he developed a bicycle frame that could adapt to the rapid growth of a young boy.

This frame utilizes Paragon slider dropouts and disc brakes, two crucial components to the equation. In doing so, this frame can accept 20″, 24″ and 26″ wheels. All Nao has to do is relace the hubs as Fugo grows. From there, a longer stem and an extended seat post will take care of other fit concerns.

At this weekend’s cross races, I caught up with Fugo after his race and asked him if I could shoot photos of his beloved race bike. When I asked him what his favorite part about his bike was, he replied “the gears” – a fact that Nao brought to my attention later – “he just figured out how to use the grip shifters.”

Ride on, Fugo, ride on!

Super Bowl Weekend. It’s an excuse for people to drink, eat and yell at the television while a bunch of men in spandex chase a ball around a field. Personally, it’s not my thing and luckily, not my friends’ thing either. So rather than spend the weekend indoors, myself, some friends and Beat the Clock Cycling decided to take advantage of the vacant Texas parks and plan a ride.

Well, I planned the ride. 100 miles, over half of it was dirt. I did one of the roads on the last Yonder Journal Brovet and I wanted to explore the area even more. We’d leave from Inks Lake and take a series of back-country, private roads and kick in Willow City’s popular loop before heading back to camp. Water? Food? None. We had to pack it all in. Most rode cross bikes or light tourers, with bags for food. There was maybe one stop along the way.

Because I had to drop Lauren off at the airport that Friday morning, I drove with two others. The rest either drove out that night after work or rode the 75 miles from Austin, fully loaded.

Since we wanted to convey only the chillest of riding paces and as a protest to the Super Bowl, most of us left the lycra at home. Giro was kind enough to supply some New Road apparel, shoes and helmets. I brought the bourbon. Spencer brought a dull hatchet and we were all stoked.

Did I mention cliff jumps in January? Yeah… Check out more photos in the Gallery, all shot with my Mamiya 7ii and Portra 400 / Kodak TMAX 400. Many thanks to Giro for supplying equipment for this ride!

Since posting our first look back in April, John’s been putting in miles on the Kona Ouroborus Supreme and finally wrapped his head around not only how to classify this bike but also what its best use case is. Is this the next stage in the evolution of gravel bikes?

Today, we’re continuing our MADE Bike Show Australia coverage with a selection of stunning machines, ranging from road to mountain and everything in between. Read on for selects from Palmer, Prova, Simpatico, Skingrowsback, Squid, Stinner, Stridsland, Wondercross, and Woods…

As cyclists, we love bikes that can do more than one thing. A Swiss Army knife rather than a scalpel, if you will. So when a bike like the Hudski Doggler passes through my possession, I want to find its limits and then push through them. I’ve spent a few months riding the Doggler around Santa Fe, in and around our beloved Santa Fe National Forest, and I’m ready to spill the beans on what makes this bike so appropriate for gravel and mountain riding…

While we love our share of vintage mountain bike builds, dressed with period-correct components, and embrace the patina that has been rubbed in over the decades, there’s something to the resto-mod style of vintage builds. Baskets, racks, modern bars, and the like all add to a bike’s longevity and encourage its use. Plus, a vintage mountain bike just oozes cool and generally is cheaper to build up from a parts bin than buying something brand new. On my last trip to Los Angeles, I was hanging out at The Cub House, avoiding the rain, when Simon, their mechanic, showed me a customer’s bike that rolled in for some TLC, and I had to document it…

While we’re huge fans of restored, period-correct, catalog spec vintage mountain bikes over here at The Radavist, there’s something special about basket bikes made from 1980s and 1990s mountain bikes. Hell, it’s not that long ago that we saw Bailey send it on his Rocky Mountain or any of the countless basket bikes we’ve featured over the past fifteen years we’ve been publishing. I’ll always drool over a minty Potts, or my build projects like my Ritchey Tam or Mountain Goat, but there’s something immortal, heroic, and even godlike when it comes to a shreddy basket bike built upon a classic chassis. These bikes continuously live on…

When Alex came to town with his Bridgestone MB-1, we went on a ride here in town, and then, the following day, I photographed his bike. Let’s check it out in detail below!

This entry from our Vintage Bicycles series is my personal favorite bike I’ve shot thus far. It’s not often you find such a clean and pristine example of a 1980s Potts Signature, complete with WTB dirt drops, a LD stem, and a full WTB/Suntour Grease Guard kit. Today we’re stoked to feature this gem with words by the Vintage MTB Workshop‘s Tasshi Dennis so read on below for more!

We already looked at Moots’ new adventure platform, the Routt ESC a while back, in a photo review and as a Beautiful Builds video, but having never seen the Neo-Retro build spec in person, I had to take the build Moots brought to Mid South outside of District Bicycles for some photos. This build kit looks amazing, with mostly silver parts, a bead-blasted ti Moots stem/seatpost, and yeah, that’s a barcon shifter. Let’s check it out below.

The Baxter was a blip in a long line of adventure bikes to grace Moots’ 40 years of building frames in the Rockies. Personally, I really liked the Baxter. It held its own in the Steamboat Ramble Ride and tackled our “Disconnected” project in the Inyo Mountains with SRAM but the Baxter had some quirks that needed to be addressed. With the Routt ESC, Moots did just that, abandoning the Baxter model altogether.

In an era where adventure, gravel, touring, and bikepacking bikes are seeing lots of permutation, there’s no time for nostalgia. Brands need to address their bike’s quirks and redesign as needed. That’s where the Routt ESC comes in. It’s like the Baxter and the Routt gravel line had a lovechild, which resulted in a completely new paradigm within the Moots catalog. Let’s check out this new Routt ESC bike in more detail below!