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Photos by Eric Baumann
For a frame builder, being able to create something unique for one of your friends has got to be one of the best experiences of the job. Ben wanted a cross-ready, dirt road eating machine with provisions for a rear rack. Highlights include the seat tube cluster, custom stem and a battleship grey paint job. Royal H really killed it on this one! See more at the Royal H Flickr.
Yes, it’s good. Why wouldn’t it be good. In fact, the coverage from CX Nats over at Manual for Speed is great. I love the interview with Walton and Evan.
What are you waiting for? Check it out at Manual for Speed.
Japan!
This has got to be one of the sickest Hunter cross bikes I’ve seen. Big, fat, tapered head tube, elegantly-sleeved seat tube cluster, slender seat stays, deep chain stays and that incredible paint. I even kinda like the disc brakes on this one!
Head over to Blue Lug’s Flickr to see more. Seriously, I’m so into this!
Another weekend, another CX Hairs presentation:
“For episode 2.15, SVENNESS makes a stop at the Belgian National Cyclocross Championships, which took place at the Gaverbeek Hippodrome in Waregem, West Flanders, Belgium. The race takes place on a flat track with several flyovers and drainage ditches. It is a bit muddy and there is one long stretch of sand that plays an important role in this race.
We focus on the sand, the planks, the attrition of an already small field and the solidification of a legend. For the Belgian elite race, only racers who have full-time contracts are allowed to compete. That means the field is only 14 deep. The elites without contracts race a minute after the full-time pros start their race.”
Photos by Meg McMahon
I’ve been looking all over for nice, bright, sharp photos from CX Nats and Meg’s have been the best so far. Head over to her Flickr for a nice selection.
Yikes! The Richard Sachs ‘cross team had but one bike that remained unridden throughout the season. A back up if you will. Now, that bike is up for sale, via Velocipede Salon. I doubt it’ll be cheap but I’d kill for a House Industries Richard Sachs bike!
Head to Velocipede for details.
Edit: turns out, this one sold already…
Ok, so this means that cross is over right? Which means #CrossisComing…
Shops like Golden Saddle Cyclery do a fair amount of balleur customer builds. Just look back at my Top 10 Beautiful Bicycles of 2013. Most of them were custom machines, built at GSC. Now, the team at Golden Saddle have started ordering Cielo bikes, made by hand in Portland at the Chris King facilities. Starting with Sean’s Cielo Cross Racer!
If you live in Los Angeles and would like to get on a new Cielo, swing through the shop and have a chat (or a beer) with the guys!
I have no idea what these photos have to do with cyclocross but I love it! Manual for Speed gets weird with NYC Velo, Castelli and Evan Murphy. I love the selfie photo!
Head over to Manual for Speed for more!
My friends in Los Angeles have pretty exceptional talents and taste. Speaking of the latter, Mr. Sean Talkington took advantage of Cielo’s industry pricing at Interbike and put down a deposit on one of their snazzy Cross Racer models. Sean’s new to cross bikes but he couldn’t pass up the deal! After a few months of waiting, his bike showed up and the capable hands at Golden Saddle Cyclery built it up for him.
Sean also works at Golden Saddle part time and is hoping that more customers will look to Cielo for an option when it comes to a MTB, road, touring or cross bike. Since he promotes made in the USA products through Team Dream, he felt like it was time to support US frame builders like Cielo.
Back to this build: You can have a completely dialed bike, but even underneath all that Chris King and SRAM components, bad photos will never do a good bike justice. Luckily for Sean, he’s good friends with Jesse Carmody, an exceptional photographer. Man, Sean really is living the Team Dream Team Dream.
As the sun was setting, these two went out into the woods and the result is in the Gallery!
I have no idea what I just watched. It seems to be a viral marketing campaign for some kind of weird 29’r cyclocross hybrid bike with stoppy silver pie plates and colored moving parts. Whatever it is, I like the part with beer.
At last weekend’s TXCX State Champs, John’s Seven Mudhoney cross immediately caught my eye as we were lining up for the 3’s. At first, I didn’t notice the wicked green flame-kissed front end, because the rear half of the bike had some sort of weird box-lined chevrons. Mudhoneys are usually pretty standard-issue. At least the ones I’ve seen, but this one’s got enough personality for all of them!
See more in the Gallery!
This is the first layout of the 2014 PiNP Calendar, entitled “Good Morning Los Angeles”. The camera and location are noted on the bottom left of the document.
As a new year unfolds, we’ll begin with one of the most requested images of 2013. When I posted this photo of Kyle on his Stinner, people immediately emailed, requesting this be the January photo for the new PiNP Calendar. Even though it’s a few days late (sorry!), here ya go!
Right Click and Save Link As – 2014 PiNP Calendar: January
Things are finally starting to pick back up over here at PiNP. This weekend was the TXCX State Champs and in between shooting the races, I took a few quick photos of Spencer’s bitchin’ purple All City Nature Boy. People say I take a lot of photos of these bikes and it’s true. Why? Because they’re very common and yet, everyone adds their own sense of style to their builds.
Spencer’s has some limited edition PAUL purple touring cantis, a gold Chris King, Mash bar tape and even a Flag Hatchet sticker. I wanted to get some action shots of Spencer thrashing this thing in the 3’s, but missed out! Which explains the short-ish Gallery. At any rate, it’s a clean build (literally – no mud this weekend). See more in the Gallery!
Yes, I think cross season is almost done. Almost. Here’s the latest from the CX Hairs SVENNESS series!
As I sat down to scroll through all of the Beautiful Bicycles I photographed this year, I quickly realized how diverse PiNP has become. Previous year’s lists never had a MTB, much less two and even though the site has begun to embrace dirt riding more and more, there are still three track bikes in the rankings. Most of these bicycles were made in the USA by small frame builders, but two overseas-manufactured bikes made the cut.
This year for the Top 10 list, I looked at site metrics, social media ‘chatter’ and my own favorites (which were remarkably in-line). All of these bikes got at least 100 Facebook likes and over 20,000 visits within the first week of posting. The latter two requisites were necessary to bring it down to ten bikes, from the dozens of my personal favorites. Also, I omitted my own bikes from this list.
I like to think of PiNP as a showcase for Beautiful Bicycles and how they get put to use. See the full Prolly is Not Probably’s Top 10 Beautiful Bicycles of 2013, in no particular order, in the Gallery!
The Mudfoot Cyclocross Racing Team began years back as artist Geoff McFetridge found himself racing cross (solo) in Los Angeles. He started winning races and eventually thought it’d be rad to form a team that wasn’t really like other teams in the area.
People take racing very seriously and Mudfoot was about having fun while still kicking ass. Soon Mudfoot grew to a small group of like-minded individuals in the Los Angeles area. Some raced, some didn’t but they all enjoyed cycling. Go to a cross race in SoCal and see for yourself just how ridiculous these dudes act. I know this seems sort of cheesy to read, hell, it sounds cheesy to type but it’s mostly the truth.
Mudfoot has grown to be one of the most coveted “brands” and each year, the team kits get radder and radder. I can’t tell you how many times these guys get hit up to sell shirts, stickers, kits, whatever. People go nuts over it! This year however, Geoff and the Mudfoot elite did something a little different. They teamed up with Santa Barbara’s Stinner Frameworks to design a small fleet of team bikes.
With Geoff’s hand-drawn graphics, paint by Kelli Samuelson of Ritte Cycles and a list of American-made components (PAUL, Chris King) as well as Vittoria, Giro and ENVE, they’re by far the nicest team bikes I’ve ever seen. In fact, I’d go ahead and say that this is my favorite bike of 2013. Kyle‘s bike in particular has some great details.
Details include: Mini Moto front brake, Touring canti rear, Salsa mis-matched skewers and a blue and orange Chris King bottom bracket. While we didn’t get the sunrise light we wanted that morning, the photos came out pretty rad!
I can’t think of a better way to end a year of Beautiful Bicycles… See more in the Gallery!
