Search Term – Change
With what is the most unique profile in the drop bar universe, the Evil Bikes Chamois Hagar really shook y’all when we posted it during our Grinduro 2019 coverage. Well, this bike is now in stock at Evil and we’re all impressed at the brand’s bold move. There’s a lot to unfold here, so read on below.
After a helluva a time getting through all the Tsunami craziness at Grinduro Japan this past fall me and the Salsa crew finally got back to Tokyo. The rest of the posse had to take off around 4 am the next day, leaving me with about half a day in Tokyo to myself! Bené and Patrick had invited me to swing by Blue Lug for a pop up they were having to showcase there oh so éspecial new Ultradynamico Tyres. Having seen the amazing custom builds coming out of the shop for years I was excited to see what the shop was about.
The Sierra Buttes Trail Stewardship knows how to throw races. There’s a reason we cover each and every one, year after year! The proof is in the puddin’. Every year, 1000+ racers show up for Lost & Found, even more for the Downieville Classic and with Grinduro leaving Quincy, the SBTS decided to up the ante and continue throwing a weekend event of racing and partying, dubbed Mountains to Meadows. The location is too good to not pick up where Grinduro left off. Mark your calendars for September 24-27, 2020 and read on below.
Sept 29th post-Grinduro California: As Nam and I packed up our secret van, preparing for the 2,500 mile cross country long haul to Ellijay GA, we couldn’t help but wonder what the hell we were doing. We had 4.5 days to make it in time for the 3rd annual Bikepacking Summit; an event we’ve been meaning to attend since it’s inception. Earlier in the summer Lael Wilcox and I had talked about presenting together, and we had to make it back east to visit family at some point anyway, so might as well just go for it in one shot. At least that was the thought process when planning months ago. We aren’t the types to be in a rush…time to hit the road.
Nevada City is located in the western Sierra foothills in California. If you were to drive from San Francisco to the sleepy little mountain bike destination town of Downieville, chances are you’d roll right through Nevada City. It’s this gateway location that prompted Jay Barre to open a new bike shop, named You Bet.
Santa Cruz has no shortage of bike shops. This sleepy little beach town might be known for its surfing and pesky vampires, but the road and mountain riding is exceptional. With a myriad of dirt and paved roads snaking their way through coastal redwoods, and dusty, steep mountain bike trails, any cyclist can spend days upon days exploring the terrain. Spokesman Bicycles is one of the powerhouse shops in Santa Cruz and just recently opened up what they’re calling Outpost on the West Side of town, right next to their friends Sawyer and Co, a surfing lifestyle shop.
With the long weekend approaching here in the United States, many coastal Californians will head inland and upland to seek the cooler temperatures found along the Tahoe basin, via US Highway 395. This zone has always been curious to me when traveling to or from various races or other events. Having ridden plenty of singletrack in the area, I’m always down to try something new, especially when it has a bit of story behind it. Last year, after our Highway 50 MTB trip and before Grinduro, I linked up with my friend Brooke and her friend Kate to ride the Sierra Canyon Trail, just outside of Genoa, Nevada.
A few towns over from Downieville, California, where John works at Yuba Expeditions during the summer months, is Quincy, California where Cameron Falconer‘s workshop is. John and Cam knew each other back when they both lived in the Bay Area and since relocating to what is called the “Lost Sierra,” John really wanted a road bike that could handle the area’s veritable Sierra chunk.
“Where would you take your Leatherman FREE?”
Leatherman’s tools – particularly the Wave – have been staples for us on our travels. From bikepacking or touring, camping, fishing or 4×4 expeditions, we won’t go anywhere without our Leatherman. So when Leatherman added a new product to their lineup, the FREE, we had to try it out. Guess what? We liked it so much that we want to give a few away to the readers of this website. Check out the details below.
First Impressions: Meet the New Quincy – Juliana’s Answer to the Popular Stigmata.
Words by Amy Jurries, riding photos by Ian Collins, and bike photos by John Watson
Quincy, California sits at the northern end of the Sierra Nevada mountain range. It’s in the heart of California’s Gold Country where in the mid-1800s, miners from all over the world came for their chance at striking it rich. It’s in part thanks to the Gold Rush that within spitting distance of town, you have access to hundreds of miles of mountainous dirt roads.
While the town itself is small, with not much more than a movie theater and a few places to shop, each year around September the population swells with the crazy two-wheeled set for Grinduro weekend. Juliana’s new drop bar bike, the Quincy, is 100-percent made to rule on this terrain. Before Sea Otter, I was invited down to hang out with the Juliana/Santa Cruz team and test out the Quincy. With a 40+ mile ride in the mountains around Big Basin Redwoods State Park, we rode hard on everything from tarmac connectors and loose chalky gravel to branches, mud, and gopher-hole-checkered grassy downhills.
The world of gravel racing is still very foreign to me. At least the competitive side of things, yet I find myself getting roped into these races, namely the ones where they boast features like timed sections. These enduro-inspired gravel races, like Grinduro, adopt this format in hopes that people will hang out and make the event more casual, rather than an all-out battle for who crosses the finish line. In events like Grinduro, this works perfectly, keeping the pace party-level and the conversations lively. This party vibe isn’t easy to cultivate. You’ve got to convince people it isn’t worth charging ahead, stringing the group out.
So maybe that’s why I felt compelled to try out the Eroica California’s Nova race. It boasted timed segments, chiller riding vibes, and I have ridden in the area, twice before, as well as the Eroica California’s course, back when it began and ended in Paso Robles. With this year’s event starting in the sleepy town of Cambria, it surely would be one to remember. Oh, and it was.
Dropping In: Medicare for All, Adventuring, and You
Words by Kyle von Hoetzendorff
If you’re alive then at some point you’ve had a health issue; hangnails to broken bones, common colds to genetic disorders. Being alive means being at the mercy of injury and sickness, precarity is part of the human experience. The degree to which each one of us has to address health in a very large part comes down to luck; genetic, location, etc. It would be one thing we choose to live in a padded room with platinum-level HEPA filters and a well-curated mix of cultural sensory input to prevent the self-inflicted harm that would surely stalk anyone forced to live in a padded cell their entire life. But then that’s the point, most of us don’t want to live in hypo-precarity.
We’ve had a busy year at the Radavist and it wasn’t until I combed through each month individually that I could finally realize all the hard work everyone put in over here for the past twelve months. While much of the site is focused on gear in the form of products and bike portraits, my favorite pieces are always photojournals from rides, tours, and trips. There’s something wonderful about peering through the lens of a cyclist and hitching a ride along with them while they pedal along their route.
Compiled in this gallery is a photographic sample from 12 months of content, in somewhat chronological order. It’s trippy to flip through the gallery and see all the unique perspectives. In many cases, a photo is worth a thousand words!
There’s also a list below of the top posts from the site this year, running the gamut from riding in the desert to the WTF Bikexplorers Summit, exploring Crete, mixing snakes and divas in Puerto Rico and much more. They’re in chronological order, so if you haven’t read these articles, you really should!
SNews reports that the Thule Group has acquired Tepui, our go-to rooftop tent setup. We love the brand and many of its employees are cyclists, who spend their weekends supporting such events as Grinduro and Lost and Found. We’re stoked for Tepui and we’re hoping that the brand doesn’t dissolve entirely into the Thule brand. Hopefully what this does mean is better distribution and more product availability. We’d love some new colors, too!
Big Pedal at the Trans Cascadia 2018
Words by Jeremy Dunn, photos from Chris Hornbecker, Daniel Sharp, Dylan VanWeelden, Joshua Lawton as noted.
Trans Cascadia starts off just how one might think. Like, any other bike race really. An unloading and loading up of vans. A makeshift parking lot or an empty field filled with characters and their bicycles. There is the usual building of bikes and swapping of tires all while eating gas station egg sandwiches and drinking the dregs of coffee on the go. From an uninitiated perspective everything seems to be going as planned, it is a controlled chaos sure, but everyone is working towards the same goal. Making it to camp. “That’s going to mean we’re going to need everyone to take their one bag and load up into the vans lined up alongside the road.” Alex Gardner is simultaneously pointing out vans for people to get into and handing out donuts from a stack of blue and yellow Heavenly Donuts boxes.
“These are the legit donuts in Portland, just FYI” Nick Gibson says to someone over his shoulder before grabbing two maple bars and helping someone load their bike into the back of a rental van. Nick and Alex are two thirds of the crew behind all this and they will be involved in nearly ever single thing that happens over the course of the weekend. From donut logistics to running point on a tricky medic situation on the mountain. Tommy rounds out the trio, but we’ll meet him, and his mom Becky a bit later.
Our good friends at the Sierra Buttes Trail Stewardship organize events like Lost & Found, Downieville, and Grinduro, where they create quality outdoor experiences. Here’s a video our friend James Adamson made showcasing their talents.
At Grinduro, Chico-based Paul Component Engineering displayed their new flat mount Klampers. Expect more details to come, but I had to share these with y’all seeing as how many have expressed an interest in seeing Klampers updating to this popular disc brake interface. EDIT: Check them out now at Paul!
If you look for information on Blue Collar Bikes on the internet, ya won’t find much. Robert Ives likes it that way. He builds bikes, enough to pay his mortgage, and lives a fine life in Sacramento, where he’s been building Blue Collars since 1998. Robert came from Ventana before branching out on his own, where he builds steel bikes, made to take a beating, with the flashiest thing on them being that fancy head badge. I look forward to the Sierra Buttes Trail Stewardship events because I know someone will have a Blue Collar.
This trip, it was Darren, a good friend of Robert and Paul from Paul Components. Darren began building this frame in Robert’s shop one day and left it incomplete. As he got busy with life, little did he know, Robert was slowly completing this frame. At last year’s Grinduro, Robert handed it over to Darren, who’s been riding it ever since.
After we took on the Classic Downhill shuttle, I grabbed this bike, a Nigel XL, to shoot it behind the Downieville Hardware store. Ya don’t get more Blue Collar than that! If you’d like to read more about Robert Ives’ career and life for that matter, head to Dirt Rag, for a damn interesting read! Check out Blue Collar on Facebook too.
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Follow Blue Collar on Instagram and follow Darren on Instagram.
