The Radavist

The Adventure Cycling Association Bikecentennial Salsa Marrakesh Touring Bike – Kyle Kelley
Photos by Kyle Kelley, words by John Watson

When June and Greg Siple teamed up with Dan and Lys Burden to found the Adventure Cycling Association, I doubt they anticipated their impact on the bicycle touring world. Now, 40 years later and the ACA helps cyclists from all over the world navigate the trails, roads and dirt tracks all over North America with their route maps and magazine.

The ACA exists solely to grow the spirit of cycle tourism and a large portion of its funding comes from memberships and the sales of their maps, along with donations. Some of those come in the form of projects like this: the ACA Bikecentennial Edition Salsa Marrakesh. Between now and December 31st, 2016, each cyclist that you refer to ACA will land you a chance to win this bike.

While in Montana at the Bikecentennial celebration, Kyle got access to one to photograph it in an attempt to stoke the fire for the ACA and bicycle tourism! Head over to ACA’s Share the Joy website to find out more information and to enter for your chance to win this bike.

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Editor’s note: Jarrod recently attended Saddle Drive, Quality Bicycle Product’s outdoor showcase for their forthcoming products. This included components, accessories and complete bicycles from brands like Salsa, Surly and All City. Jarrod spent two days there, photographing new components on day one and on day two, complete bikes. Here’s that gallery.

The New Bike Models from Saddle Drive
Words and photos by Jarrod Bunk

Northstar at Tahoe is the perfect venue to showcase product, for day two I set aside most of my day between seminars to shoot some of the new bikes from Salsa, Surly and All City, Including the new BigBlock, Warbird Carbon/Alloy and Woodsmoke 27.5+. If I could I would’ve stayed the rest of the week just to be able to swing a leg over all of the other bikes. Check out the gallery for some of my favorites.

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Four Seasons with the Salsa Blackborow
Photos and words by Jarrod Bunk

It started over a 2 years ago, when I was riding my current fatbike – a Surly Moonlander – for much more than just winter riding. It was slowly becoming my everything bike, and eventually that Moonlander replaced my carbon Cannondale Scalpel. Looking back, that piqued my interest in a more aggressive geometry bike, that could handle some sort of suspension fork.

There were a handful of manufacturers with tapered head tubes to allow for a Rock Shox Bluto or other fork. Simply put my next bike had to have the ability to run suspension, fat 5” tires, and through axles. Of the handful of bikes out at the time this wasn’t possible. Along comes a Blackborow. It has checked all of my boxes, and even some that I didn’t know I needed checking. THAT FOREST SERVICE GREEN, I had to have it. Things fell into place and a few months after waiting my dinglespeed build showed up. I have a tendency to build my bikes custom, so I stripped the bike down and rebuilt it with some stuff that I prefer to use. Industry 9 Hubs, dropper post, RaceFace NEXT SL cranks and the cockpit from Chromag.

Salsa Cycles’ Grateful Deadwood
Photos by Kyle Kelley and words by John Watson

Leave it to Kyle to bring some hippy shit into the mix for Salsa’s newest drop bar mountain bike, the Deadwood. Sorry, the “Grateful Deadwood.” Personally, I would have gone with some sort of fellen tree or Nature is Metal reference.

Kyle recently went to Saddle Drive, QBP’s open house demo in Ogden, Utah for his bike shop Golden Saddle Cyclery after having spent a great deal of time this year on the Niner Ros9+. Needless to say, Kyle came into Saddledrive with a pretty open mind about the 3″ tire platform. Over the years, he’s also sold a number of Fargos to customers who were planning on tackling the TDR either in the near or far future. How could you make the Fargo better? Throw some bigger tires on it, right?

There’s nothing like taking a brand-new bike and throwing it into the proverbial fire.

Bikes like this are not meant to be babied, nurtured, wiped down with a microfiber cloth, and sprayed with chemicals to make them look shiny. They’re meant to be abused, smashed, shredded, and put to the test straight out of the gate. Especially bikes specifically designed for arguably one of the most intense endurance races in the Continental United States.

The Salsa Cutthroat is what I would call a first for the company, in the sense that it’s a bike designed for a specific event: the Tour Divide Race.

Stories. We all have to have stories to coincide with photos right? Nowadays, someone has to get lost, or their life threatened, or lose a battle to nature’s mood swings. Catastrophe, calamity and someone’s a casualty of what everyone seems to be dubbing “adventure.”

Truth is, a bike ride is hardly ever an “adventure.” Much less a bike launch. I don’t like that word: “adventure.” It tends to envelop so much of our day-to-day lives, especially those of us who spend a great deal of time outdoors. Was it an adventure? No, it was a hike. Or we went swimming. Or we got lost for an hour. “Adventure.” It’s been watered down, branded, packaged and delivered to us in a freeze-dried, waterproof pouch. We share our curated lives exposed through meticulously VSCO’d / Photoshopped vignettes on Instagram.

While this may seem cynical, I can assure you it’s far from that. It’s more of an explanation, or a primer if you will and here comes to the top coat: while the word adventure’s definition is subjective, the spirit of conquest is the thing that ties all facets of that word together. For some people, conquest lies in what others might deem an obtainable task. For others, it’s something so far-fetched that it’s more of an impossibility than a probability… Whatever it is, “adventure” means different things to different people, but we should all be more creative in how we define it. According to my opinion anyway.

Without getting too far ahead of myself here, I have to admit the giddiness flowing through my veins at the moment. I’m in Banff, Alberta at the start of the Tour Divide Race, arguably one of the most intense self-supported off-road races. I’m here with Salsa Cycles, and while we’re not doing the entire TDR, we are riding a three-day section of the race. Why? Because Salsa has supported racers and riders in the TDR for years and all the time and energy put into supporting athletes who train for to events like this has culminated in a bike that’s just being launched.

At this point, if you’re even reading this still and haven’t sprung right into clicking through the gallery images, I need to point out that Salsa champions the drop-bar off-road touring and racing bike. They love the hand positions, the unique stance and the options for drivetrains. That said, over the years, they’ve perfected what is arguably their best “all-road”, dirt-tourer: the Cutthroat.