The Radavist

Brian Vernor has been asking me to come to Santa Cruz for over a year now, so when we rolled through his home town for the #ATOC, we hit him up. Initially we just wanted to grab a beer and a burger but then he muttered a word that piqued our interests: RIDE. How can you pass up a ride? Even with just an hour left of sunlight, Brian took Simon, Jeremy and me on a kick-ass ride in Santa Cruz. A lil bit of climbing, a lil bit of gravel and a lotta fun. Followed by a drink and a burger, naturally.

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If there’s one thing I’ve learned to cope with over the years, it’s the inevitable hungover road ride. You’re up drinking the night before and chances are, you’ve only had a few hours sleep. What I wasn’t expecting however, during our recent stay in Bakersfield during the ATOC, was to roll out of bed without coffee or breakfast, only to be hammering in a 20+ mph paceline for 10 miles. We stayed with Gareth Feldstein, a local racer, who promised an early morning ride through the oil fields and hills.

The temperature in Bakersfield, much like Austin, requires you to get out on the road bright and early to beat the upper 90’s. We did just that. At 5:30am we rolled out and reeled in 60 miles, around 3,800′ of elevation with an 18mph average. Oh and I ran over a squirrel…

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I really, honestly have very little recollection of this roll. Rather than deleting a bunch of photos, I’m putting them all up. Sorry Crihs. With everyone in town for RideNStyle, Chas decided to have a party at the Messenger Mansion. As expected, a ton of people showed up for the band and the booze but stayed for the shenanigans. This included drawing all over poor Jerome and throwing water balloons as we downed a bottle of Bookers.

As the night got out of hand, Chas relocated the party to Dolores where a highschool prom had apparently ended. The rest of the night was spent convincing girls in sequined dresses to fly down a metal slide on a skateboard. Yeah, blurry night.

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Excuse the lack of updates today, I’m slowly recovering from a week of madness in SF. These few stragglers were left on a roll of Neopan 400 during the Colorado Bend State Park ride we went on last month. Black and white really captures the looming skies and textures of the ride. I’m digging these!

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Sometimes, you just need to go off and take those roads you ride past everyday, or jump over the fence that says “No Trespassing”. These shots were all compiled during a few days I spent out wandering the hills and forests on my road bike.

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Jon, Ross and I have been planning a weekend getaway to Colorado Bend State Park for some time now. Texas has a lot of rich, lush campsites, all within riding distance of Austin. Bend, TX was an obvious choice, due to the distance and route it would require us to do in a day. I knew it would be about 120 miles each way and depending on our route, between 5,000′ and 8,000′ in climbing. In the end, we opted out of the extra 3,000′ of climbing, which was a smart move.

We left first thing Friday morning, around 6am and headed out through the neighborhoods to Bee Caves, where we split off on 71. From there, we hit 281 and finally, CR 580, all the way into Bend. While some of the roads were peaceful country roads, a lot of the day was spent on highway shoulders. I brought my Woodville, Ross was on his Sachs and Jon, his Icarus. Since I was the only one who had a touring bike, I carried the food, my supplies, tent and Jon’s tarps, which he planned on making a shelter out of.

The guys carefully selected their goods and we set off. I shot 4 rolls of color film (Portra 800 and 400), as well as a waterproof, disposable camera. The following image gallery is from the entire weekend of camping, swimming and the rides to and from the park. The ride out came in at 117 miles and 4,500′, the ride back was 116 and 4,100′.

This gallery is massive, with over 100 photos and each have a brief description, so don’t forget to read the captions.

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At this point, I had traveled from Australia, to NAHBS, to NYC and had maybe slept in my bed in Austin two nights in three weeks. So what did I do? I went on a bender, starting with Benders, the best bar in SF. Then the rest of three days I was in town just got melted into half of a Recent Roll.

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