The Radavist

While our favorite stories are always ride and event coverage, people love flocking to The Radavist for our opinion on products. We view ourselves as the bike industry’s press corps, offering nuanced takes on hot items each year, while pushing back ever so slightly on the long arm of the industry’s marketing. This year, we cracked a lot of hard nuts but walked away with some compelling products—some of which deserve extra recognition—all while deciphering the world of bikes we know and love, and penning opinion pieces that garnered lots of eyes throughout the past twelve months.

Let’s check out The Radavist Product Awards and our Top 10 Articles of 2023 below!

Falconer Cycles is now making titanium frames and last weekend, he unveiled a stunning titanium hardtail touring bike to John…

For creatives – be it sculptors or painters – expanding into other mediums is often fulfilling and cathartic. Learning new methodologies and processes keeps makers engaged with their work. Lots of bicycle fabricators start out TIG welding steel frames and, later, expand into working with titanium. This offers new horizons for not only the brand but also for loyal followers to access a superior material.

Cameron Falconer is the latest builder to be documented here expanding into titanium from steel. While in Southern Arizona last weekend, John caught up with Cam who showcased a titanium hardtail touring bike with a custom titanium rack. This was “John’s modern bike shoot of the year” as he put it excitedly and you can see why below…

On their fourth trip to Kyrgyzstan, Belén Castello and Tristan Bogaard return for Tristan to ride the 2023 Silk Road Mountain Race. But with a few days on their hands before the start, they decide to blaze a new 250-mile route that circumnavigates the Ala-Too, from the capital of Bishkek. With hopeful hearts and full panniers, they start their ride by setting out over Kegeti Pass (12,401′). After surmounting the pass, tragedy strikes as Tristan falls ill. Things aren’t always sunsets and tailwinds on bike tours, so come take a journey through accepting defeat in the beautiful mountains and valleys of Kyrgyzstan.

The playful, go-anywhere-themed Element + Pelago Silvo collaboration hits Richard Pool hard with a heavy dose of teenage skateboarding nostalgia. Read on for his review (and accompanying playlist!) for this bullmoose-equipped and gravel-ready commuter, built around an eccentric bottom bracket for the singlespeed conversion this bike is asking for…

Based in Seattle, Washington, Swift Industries is a bike bag company known for blending classic randonneuring aesthetics with modern functionality. Co-founded in 2008 by Martina Brimmer and Jason Goodman, the brand has grown from a basement DIY passion project to a mainstay in the bike luggage space. In celebration of their 15-year anniversary, Hailey Moore writes about Swift’s journey over the years from its founders’ punk roots, to landing shelf space in REI.

Announced at this year’s Moab Outerbike, the Esker Cycles Hayduke LVS –available as a frame ($2,950) or a complete ($4,950)–is a hardtail mountain bike with 600-millimeter chainstays and touring accouterments aplenty. Esker even developed a specialty rack for this bike, dubbed the Molle Rackwald ($300.) Needless to say, it’s a unique offering from the brand.

John was able to ride one for a bit, including on an overnighter with the Esker Cycles team and Sincere Cycles in Santa Fe, so read on for an in-depth look at this rare and funky bike!

Forever tinkering with his bikes, John recently wrapped up a complete restoration of the 1983 Ritchey Everest that we looked at last year. Remember? The gray one? The bike appeared to have been subjected to a sloppy respray at some point in the early 2000s, and John wanted to restore the bike to its formal glory. 

He pinged Rick at D&D, the guy who has painted more Ritchey frames than perhaps anyone, to respray the Everest in Imron Bright Gold paint with the uber-rare Palo Alto Ritchey decals to finish the look. The Everest also had a “touring package” added when Tom built the frame in 1983. Since John acquired it, the Everest has always felt a bit naked without the proper racks…

We know John’s posted a lot of vintage projects over the past few years, but this might be the best yet! Let’s check it out below…

The 2023 Bespoked Handmade Bicycle Show just wrapped after three action-packed days of talks, parties, and drooling over heaps of amazing craftsmanship on display. Josh was on the ground at the Dresden, Germany airport where this year’s event took place, and, below, shares his second gallery of bikes and a couple of interesting components. Let’s get right into it!

I’m in Germany for the 2023 Bespoked Handmade Bicycle Show, which is taking place this weekend, October 13-15 in Dresden. Prior to traveling to Dresden, I was in Berlin with Flo and Tine of Fern/Allygn Bicycles and Gramm Tourpacking where we had an action-packed day visiting various makers around their workshop in the east side of the city. One of our visits was to meet Dan Pleikies of Wheeldan Custom Bicycles. Dan isn’t able to make it to Bespoked, BUT I was able to pull aside a client’s stunning randonneur bike he had on hand to document. Let’s check it out below!

For McKenzie Barney, cycling the world was never about chasing a record, or even adhering to all of the Guinness Book of Records parameters to qualify for an “official” time. But after an introduction to bike touring in Vietnam and learning about the 18,000-mile goal post for a “Cycle the World” completion, she was intrigued. For the next few years she planned, scrimped and saved between trips while pursuing her own Cycling the World project. Earlier this year, she completed the project after having ridden 18,000 miles, in 28 countries, and on five continents. Read on for Part 1 of her journey download, where she writes about moving from thru hiking to bike touring, gaining solo experience in Europe, and then putting it to the test on a ride from Cairo to Cape Town with her partner James. Plus, don’t miss the trailer to her upcoming self-documented, self-edited film!

After finishing the route up from Bulgan, I arrived in the largest city I’d come across in the entire trip outside of Ulaanbaatar. Yet, with a shade under 30,000 inhabitants, it’s not exactly a metropolis. Still, after so many days out in the middle of nowhere, it was nice to have a hot shower and a couple of restaurants to choose from. A serious upgrade from settling for boiling instant noodles in a hotel’s electric kettle in some of the smaller villages.

I intended to come here to visit the military guard post, which is responsible for issuing permits to reach the Altai Tavan-Bogd region at the border with China. In the past, one was allowed to simply use their satellite tracker as a means to be allowed entry or higher a guide on a horse right at the park entrance to obtain a permit, but since Covid, they changed the rules up and tourists could no longer go to the region without a local jeep tour guide straight from the city of Ölgii.

Being tailed by a jeep for a week in the countryside isn’t exactly my idea of a great time, so I started looking for alternatives to fill that gap in my route. A quick glance over some satellite maps showed a small cluster of snowy peaks that were only about 50km away as the crow flies, and there was a little white-checkered line crossing them on the map, so this seemed like a nice plan B, no chaperon required.

Spencer takes us on a trip to Colorado to visit Winter Park’s local bag maker, San Util Design. Started as a one-man project, but ever on the up and up, the makers recently opened a new shop on the mountain town’s main drag and hired a few part-time employees. Boasting a range of products from hip packs all the way up to custom frame bags, San Util has some great handmade gear available. Let’s check it out below! 

Over the years, I’ve had the ability and privilege of throwing my leg over a number of fat tire, drop bar touring bikes. From the almighty Tumbleweed Stargazer to the readily available Kona Sutra ULTD, these robust bikes with an off-road and load-bearing geometry make for great interstitial, genre-bending machines for all sorts of riding.

Yet before brands like Salsa were even making high clearance, drop bar, 29er, disc brake, production touring bikes, a brand called Singular Cycles in the UK shifted the paradigm with its Swift in 2007 and, later in 2008, Gryphon models. These frames featured high stack numbers, fit big tires, and most importantly, had rack/fender/cargo bosses aplenty.

This year, Singular debuted its custom Gryphon Titanium, and once again, I’m questioning which bike to crown “best in class.” Check out my full-length review below…