The Radavist

2018 Handmade Bicycle Show Australia
Photos by Andy White, words by John Watson

We’re wrapping up our coverage of the Handmade Bicycle Show Australia with this last grouping of builders, and don’t worry, we’ve got Kumo coming up as well! Let’s continue with today’s gallery, beginning with…

I’ve never owned a bike that receives as much attention from non-cyclists as a Retrotec. With comments ranging from “can I fit big tires like that on my cruiser?” to “how’d you put disc brakes on that cruiser?” Once I follow up with an explanation, they quickly lose interest, yet are still entranced with the bike itself. That connection is not too far from the reality of the Retrotec brand, however. Back in 1992, a builder named Bob Seals wanted to race his old cantilever cruiser frame. This frame, the Retrotec number one, still hangs in Curtis’ shop to this day.

Bob’s intent was to make modern-day cruisers, designed to be ridden and raced. The look of Bob’s builds really resonated with Curtis and in 1993, he moved to Chico, CA to work for Retrotec. In 1995, Bob had exhausted his framebuilding efforts, prompting Curtis to take over, relocating the business to San Francisco. This presented a problem for Curtis, who quickly realized that cruiser bikes weren’t really a thing – yet – and work was slow. Curtis chugged along in San Francisco, building frames part-time and experimenting with new Retrotec designs, while sharing a shop with the Sycip brothers.

In 1998 Retrotec moved to Napa, California and everything changed.

Nick has a few loves in his life. Sure, family comes first. Then probably his very successful business, Harvest Moon Cafe, a farm-to-table restaurant in Sonoma, with a specialty in meat. The two things that Nick relies on for entertainment, certainly piqued my interest when I first met him in Japan during the Chris King Gourmet Century. He’s been a mountain biker since the 90’s, taking on the trails surrounding Santa Fe, and racing bikes. Since moving to Sonoma, he’s been friends with neighboring builders Curtis Inglis and Jeremy Sycip.

Flashing back a few weeks, when our troop of mountain bikers had our plans of riding Moab’s trails thwarted by the annual Easter Jeep Safari.

While I was in Green River, a few Moab locals had fled the city to escape what they described as endless “bro and jeep” parties, traffic, and in general, a complete implosion of all the local digs. Bummed out, I quickly sussed out our options, before deciding on Klondike Bluffs.

Before we jump into the world of Retrotec Bikes and Curtis Inglis, let’s look at one of Curtis’ personal rigs; this 29+ rigid mountain bike, what I like to call the “Trail Cruiser.” Now, calling this a cruiser has nothing to do with the speed at which Curtis rides trails while on this rig and has everything to do with the history of Retrotec; a company that began modifying actual cruisers into off-road machines.

While we tend to see a lot of experimentation with MTB geometry, specifically hardtails here on The Radavist, I feel like the good ol’ all-road and ‘cross bike geometries, for the most part, stay mostly the same. Sure, head tubes might steepen or slacken a half or so degree, and bottom bracket height can vary, along with seat tube angle, but for the most part, these bikes all look similar in profile. Is it a by-product of design perfection or longevity? Who knows but the bottom line is; I rarely see a road bike geometry that piques my interest and begs the question; I wonder how THAT rides.

Then Adam Sklar sent me an email, asking if I had any desire to review one of his “team” MX all road bikes. I glanced at the geometry, saw the top tube length and thought it was going to be too long for me, especially for how I’d use it. Adam informed me of this bike’s design philosophy, which is part ‘cross geo and part modern MTB. Paradoxically, in short, Adam lengthened the bike’s top tube, slackened the head tube and lowered the bottom bracket. The bike is designed to run a shorter stem, a 70mm, versus a 110mm and with a longer head tube, puts the riding position a bit more upright.

Inyo County. Home to the lowest and highest point in the contiguous United States. Home to Death Valley, the White Mountains and parts of the Eastern Sierra. When I think about Inyo County, I think of a certain sense of exploration, of all-day, or week-long excursions into the unknown. I think of the very thing that motivates myself and many others to drop everything, pack up the truck, and just go.

This sense of exploration has fueled so much of the content of this website over the years and when I look at just last year’s best stories, most came from Inyo County. From our Triple Header out of Lone Pine to the Prospector’s Pack Mule bikepacking trip, and countless other stories from the region, this beautiful place has inspired me, and others, hopefully, to take full advantage of our beautiful public lands.

All this goes without saying, but there is an obvious underlying message in much of this content; be smart, be safe, and be kind, to the animals, the land, and other humans.

Fruita, it’s the mountain bike mecca you’ve most certainly heard about before and it was the meet-up location for our group after our road trip to Green River. We had people coming in from Minneapolis, Philadelphia, Bozeman, Northern California, and Southern California so Fruita seemed like a good starting point.

Then some bad news hit. While I was in Green River, I met some people who had fled their home base of Moab due to the Easter Jeep Safari. Oh yeah, it was Easter Sunday! Each year, supposedly 100,000 Jeeps register for the event, overrunning the small town and its trails. With this news, I immediately realized camping at Kane Creek was most likely not going to be able to happen, especially over the weekend. All this was in the back of my mind as I drove from Green River to Fruita on that Sunday morning.

Tristan Rawlence’s Loaded Santa Cruz Highball for the 2018 Tour Aotearoa Brevet
Photos and Audio captured by Sven Martin, intro by John Watson

The preparation for ultra-endurance bikepacking events is of mind, body, and bicycle. The latter of which there is no shortage of interest in, both in terms of this website’s audience and my own curiosity. I’ve seen a lot of various gear setups over the years, from Trans America winners taking on 1000 mile road rides, Baja Divide rigs, Stagecoach hardtails, Tour Divide and everything in between. There’s something magical about a fully loaded bike, especially when the owner has put so much thought into every detail, specifically, gear selection.

Photographer and all-around badass Sven Martin caught up with Tristan Rawlence, prior to his departure for the 2018 Tour Aotearoa Brevet, a 3000km brevet which traverses from Cape Reinga at the Northern tip, to the Bluff at the Southern tip in New Zealand. Not only did Sven bring a camera to document Tristan’s setup, but some great audio equipment, which makes for an extremely interactive experience and quite frankly, something entirely new and exciting for the Radavist.

The team from Stinner Frameworks brought one of their most outrageous paint jobs to this year’s NAHBS. I always find it ironic that disruptive patterning attracts so much attention, but that’s what happens when you cover a single speed mountain frame entirely with Splittermuster 31-inspired graphics. It was an all-hands-on-deck situation leading up to NAHBS at Stinner, with the paint job alone taking four days to complete. Each layer of patterning took 5 hours to just peel and apply the mask. I’m not usually one for fancy paint jobs on a mountain bike, but this bike is complete insanity. Then, to up the ante, the same pattern was used in the custom Yanco bags.

Let’s not get too caught up on the finish, however. Even though this bike is shown with a rigid fork, it can be converted to a hardtail configuration with the Cane Creek Angleset headset, which adjusts the head tube angle between .5º and 1.5º, enough to allow the use of an appropriate travel fork. For now, however, the Whisky fork and cockpit, Whisky rims, Chris King hubs, along with the Thomson dropper makes this a lightweight and completely capable single track assault vehicle.

When you’ve got a good thing going, why change it? For Saja, he loved his Breadwinner Holeshot singlespeed ‘cross bike so much that when it came to buying a hardtail mountain bike, he looked to the Portland-based framebuilders yet again. Breadwinner has two mountain models, the Goodwater and the Bad Otis, with the latter being a more trail-ready and rowdy big brother to the slimmer, while still shreddy, cross country-oriented Goodwater. The difference between the two mountain models come down to head angles and fork travel. The Goodwater touts a 140mm fork and a 67.5º head angle, which delivers a more than capable bike, suitable for our mountains here in Los Angeles.

Our thoughts go out to everyone in California who have lost their homes, their businesses and their local trails to these ravenous fires. The boys down in Goleta, a small town outside of Santa Barbara, at Stinner Frameworks were lucky. Real lucky. I don’t think anyone needs to remind them of that. With the Thomas fire reigning in heat, as California’s second largest fire on record, the shop at Stinner was busy preparing their own fire. This Romero frameset was hand-delivered to the Cub House last Friday so that Eric would be able to spend his Holiday break riding the mountains of Los Angeles.

As part of Stinner’s “The Collection,” this magenta and cyan coat was done in-house at Stinner, at no additional charge. These “stock” paint options usually offer a bright, colorful option, paired with a more subdued variant. This year’s other option is a matte desert tan and grey paint job, similar to the livery on the Stinner Hardtail I reviewed earlier this year.

Eric’s choice in build kit on this stock-sizing Romero features a Deda F-64 DB fork, which offered me something different to document, in what is usually a sea of ENVE forks. He also chose a KMC chain to match the paint, along with a combination of silver and gunmetal components like Onyx Hubs and a Chris King Headset, with a Paul stem. My favorite, perhaps unintended matching bit is the SRAM Force protective film on the rear derailleur. I couldn’t bring myself to pulling that off, though.

It was inevitable. Some might even call it destiny. All-City Cycles needs no introduction here on this website, and neither does the benefit of riding a steel hardtail mountain bike in an era of plastic full squish bikes. In fact, I’d argue that All-City’s latest offering, the Electric Queen, will not only please the readers of this site but could be the bike they’ve been looking for. Well, warriors, your search for a shreddable steel hardtail ends here.

In Los Angeles, millions of people vacate the city in a yearly migration, creating compelling imagery, representing the trouble with car culture. While we prefer to move about the city by bicycle, we too can’t help but flee its confines by automobile. Yet, in doing so, our attempts are always to get as far away from modern civilization as possible, or at least that’s what I tell myself everytime we load the Land Cruiser up and head out of town.

Sure, I’d rather embark on a bicycle tour during a holiday but when our friend Aimee invited us to the Oak Flat Fire Lookout in the Sequoia National Forest for a Turkey Day celebratory dinner, we couldn’t resist. So, there we were the day before Thanksgiving, escaping LA for the solitude found in its neighboring National Parks and National Forests. Luckily, we were long gone by the time the freeways turned into light shows…