The Radavist

The Soulcraft Dirtbomb is an incredibly versatile bike and a worthy tool to tackle an event like Grinduro. It’ll eat up dirt roads, singletrack and pavement alike but most importantly, it’s strong enough to withstand the after party. Which at events like last weekend, tend to go on ’til dawn.

Sean from Soulcraft knows a thing or two about handmade bikes. He learned the trade from legends like Bruce Gordon and Salsa Cycles, so it’s fitting to see his framesets carrying on many of these ideologies, just in an updated, modern form.

This bike in particular clears the Bruce Gordon RockNRoad tires, features PAUL Klampers, Chris King and WTB wheels and SRAM’s CX1 group, with a 10-42 cluster.

Like I said, it’ll take on anything you throw at it and still party ’til dawn.

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!

You’re a long way from home, partna’…

Konga Frames has been spending the past few months in the Pacific Northwest, soaking in the Oregonian sunlight and bicycle culture that, at this point, is world-renown and worth the trip.

So who and what is Konga?

Konga’s frames are made individually by hand in Mäntyharju, Finland and his latest work is something completely unexpected (for me anyway.) This bright yellow 29+ SS MTB features a painted to match Salsa fork with ENVE riser bars, Maxxis Chronicle tires, Hope hubs, White Industry ONE cranks and Formula Racing disc brakes. Pretty cush, right?

Even though Konga wasn’t officially displaying at the show, I couldn’t pass this beauty up…

Porcelain Rocket’s Moots Fatty with Hunter Fork
Words and photos by Morgan Taylor

Our recent trip through the Rockies to visit Porcelain Rocket’s shop was months in the making. The plan was to start with the shop visit in Calgary and then backtrack for a ride with Kevin Tweed in Banff the following day. I was excited to experience first hand the majestic Canadian Rockies, and to ride with Kevin on his home turf – but we were skunked.

In the days approaching our visit, massive wildfires burning south of the border combined with stagnant weather patterns to send a blanket of smoke over much of southern BC and Alberta. I had imagined shooting Scott’s Moots with a breathtaking Banff backdrop that I knew Kevin could lead us to, but that idea was out the window. Fortunately, Scott’s Moots holds its own. The haze lifted just enough to let an orange sun bring out the depth in the titanium, and we made some magic.

While we took a look at my own touring bike yesterday, I will say this with confidence: had I ridden the Elephant Bikes National Forest Explorer prior to ordering my Woodville two years ago, I would have drastically changed my views on 650b, disc brakes and trail.

The National Forest Explorer is a low-trail, 650b bike with disc brakes and a decent, not copious amount of tire clearance. These NFE’s are made by Glen Copus in Spokane, WA and pack quite the wallop of versatility in a beautiful, forest service green package. They’re made from lightweight steel for just the amount of liveliness.

All-City’s Junk Yard Dog, or JYD for short, is a do-all, hobo trail cuttin’, curb jibbin, bar or delivery bike, built with burliness in mind. I’ve seen various permutations of this bike floating around in my travels. Some people build it up as a delivery bike with a porteur rack, others a drop-bar monster cross like in Kyle’s case.

Kyle’s had this frameset for a while now and the potential build always centered around the Salsa Woodchipper 2 bar. Those bars, paired with White Industries, Paul Mini Motos and Bruce Gordon Rock n Road tires results in one mean, yet fun around town bike.

On my last day in Los Angeles, I went on a ride with Kyle (who modeled the new All-City Big Gulp Kit) as we left from our favorite pre-ride spot, Intelli Coffee on Sunset and made our way through bum trails and city overlooks.

Check out photos of the quick jaunt as well as the JYD bike-check in the Gallery!

Paul Sadoff has been getting a lot of love here on the Radavist as of late and surprisingly, a lot of the recent the bikes featured have been steel. These days, I feel like Paul is doing more aluminum frames, so when I catch sight of a steel road bike like Mat‘s 2010 Rock Lobster with Dura Ace and Chris King, in a bright blue I have to shoot photos of it.

Mat went with the pewter head badge upgrade, orange nipples, orange Salsa skewers and used his trusted Concor saddle for the finishing touches on what otherwise is a relatively straight forward build.

Steel road bikes will always have a place in this world and bikes like this are perfect examples of aesthetic balance and function.

Six months ago, I hung up my modern mountain bike and began riding a fat bike with thumb shifters and cable brakes as my only bike. Accustomed to the niceties of lightweight wheels, four piston brakes, and an 11-speed drivetrain, I’ll admit I didn’t have a lot of faith in this experiment. I had a feeling I would be itching to get back on my other bike long before the snow melted.

You see, not especially long ago, I held some fairly strong opinions about fat bikes. I worked in mountain bike media, had access to all the newest technology, and was convinced that fat bikes were so far outside the realm of acceptable mountain bikes that I chose to write them off. To me, it seemed that fat bikes were being marketed as mountain bikes but were really just inflated touring bikes. That is, until I had the chance to spend six months on the Surly Ice Cream Truck with a RockShox 100-millimeter travel Bluto fork.

Golden Saddle Rides: Sam Potts Modern Classic Road
Photos and words by Kyle Kelley

There seems to be small resurgence in frame building here in Los Angeles. GSC has been working with a few builders first hand and I’d guess there are even more working with other shops around the city. It’d be interesting to see how many people are actually building bikes in and around Los Angeles at the moment.

Yamaguchi’s framebuilding school has turned out some incredible talent over the years. While many enroll with hopes of becoming the next hot thing, some go to just learn the art. Chris Chou, a guy who probably has the most bikes featured on the Radavist, ever, went to Yamaguchi a few years ago to build a light tourer.

Like all Yamaguchi school frames, this bike was made from True Temper tubing and brazed by Chris over the course of a few weeks. When he was finished, he sent it off to Fresh Frame for paint.

Because Chris had never built a bicycle before, the original stem developed a stress riser, so Chris had his then housemate Ian at Icarus make him a stem. From there, the Nitto bars and Campagnolo 10 speed group add a considerable amount of class to what many would consider a utilitarian bicycle. PAUL e’rything, a Crane Bell, Mellow Johnny’s stem cap, my old Pentabike bar end and there’s a lil #JahBlessed going on with the Salsa Rasta Skewers and Ride Jah Bike button.

SON’s Edelux system and a Supernova E3 rear, lights the way and an Ostrich saddle bag holds the daily commuting needs. Cole rode this bike during the Yonder Journal (dis)Enchanted Rock Brovet and slashed a tire pretty badly on a river crossing, so Chris threw a Conti on, leaving the tires mis-matched, which I would add to the character of this bike.

I really love photographing bicycles like this.

Weather Be Damned
Words and photos by Morgan Taylor

I’ve had my eye on the Indian Arm route for years, but never put the pieces together to make it happen. Looking at the elevation profile it seemed simple: 37 kilometres from one coastal fjord to another, over an 800 metre pass. Existing literature indicated the gravel road surface should be rideable save for a handful of washed out bridges. When Lyle Vallie suggested we attempt the route on a few days notice, I committed without hesitation…

A few months back, I expressed an interest in attending Frostbike to Jeff from All-City. Typically, it’s not really a huge media event, meant more for shop owners and brand reps. Wheels turned and viola, I found myself in freezing cold Minneapolis. While I had a few preconceptions about what I’d see, I was wildly impressed.

Frostbike is much smaller than I expected. It’s a QBP-specific tradeshow, only open to Q brands both in-house and distributed. In house brands include: Surly, Salsa, All-City, Whisky, Foundry, 45NRTH, Civia and others. Around 100 vendors total showed off products new and old.

Notable sights: iSSi, Q’s new in-house pedal brand – All-City‘s Macho Disk – Surly‘s new dropout designs – $250 fatbike tires by 45NRTH – the fatbike course outside QBP was a blast – the food was awesome – free beer! – Angry Catfish making coffee – Seeing friends, meeting and talking to readers!

Preface: it’s winter in the midwest and a lot of the new products were MTB and fatbike-related.

I don’t know what else to say. I had fun at Frostbike and hope to return next year. See some of the radness in the Gallery!