The Radavist

Hubert d’Autremont from Madrean Fabrication is building bikes that he wants to ride. From a chubby road bike, to a bikepacking rig, and even a bird as strange as this. The Tucson Special is a single speed or fixed gear with 50mm of tire clearance and more relaxed geometry, tuned for hitting cutty singletrack around town and jumping curbs. Put a rack and basket on it, flat bars or drops, clipless or platforms. The beauty of the platform is its inherent versatility.

This particular model is built with PAUL hubs, a front Klamper, White Industries Cranks, Bruce Gordon Rock ‘n’ Road tires, an Eriksen seatpost, custom painted stem, titanium townie bars, and a Brooks saddle. With paint done in-house, Hubert is working on dialing in the production process for his bikes and moving towards a production sizing operation. While there is no launch date for a Madrean, he’s getting there.

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I was amazed at the number of 333 Fab bikes rolling at this year’s Super Stoke Weekend. One of which was this limited edition, Kyler Martz-designed, Now You’re Finished-painted, AirLandSea all-road/light tourer, piloted by Gideon Tsang from Austin. Morgan Taylor reviewed one for the site last year. Max from 333 Fab designed these bikes as a “Cascadian Rambler,” meant to take on all day or multi-day dirt road rides throughout the Pacific Northwest and beyond.

These bikes are made in a limited production run, with various sizing to ensure the rider can get their custom fit dialed in. You can choose from one of seven sizes, with the ability to fit riders ranging from 5’ – 6’5”. The sizing doesn’t stop at the geometry alone, Each individual size has its own specific tubeset with engineered tube diameters to ensure a proper ride quality. How they build up the frames is up to them! I particularly took to Gideon’s build spec, as it’d be close to how I’d build one of these up myself.

Let’s rewind a bit, back to the Steamboat Ramble Ride, where I rode this very frame, fully loaded from Steamboat Springs to Fort Collins along with a whole crew of people from all over the country. The whole time I was on the ride, I kept thinking about how much I love drop bar 29ers for tours like that. It’s the best of both worlds – drops for different riding positions and MTB gearing for slogging a loaded bike up mountain passes. In the back of my mind, I began playing out how I could use a bike like this for some of my more ambitious rides in the Death Valley or Inyo Mountains area. Then SRAM contacted me about working on a project with their new AXS components. Initially, their thoughts were to build a custom bike around the interchangeability of the eTap AXS road with the new Eagle AXS system and do a project with this new bike. The subject matter was entirely up to me. Meanwhile, my mind was still on the Moots Baxter and how it would be perfect for this loop I had scouted a year or so ago…

I love bourbon but over a year and a half ago, I quit drinking, so my love for the brown Kentucky whiskey has been put on hold. Last year when I drove up to Portland to shoot the bikes of the Chris King Open House, the team there hooked me up with a set of their ultra limited Bourbon hubs and headset as a thank you for shooting 19 bikes for them. When this color was teased at NAHBS, almost three years ago, my head imploded. No matter what I could do, however, Chris King said that Bourbon wouldn’t be a color in their catalog. Something about not being able to get the color consistent. Bummer! They did however, have a small batch aging in their archives. When I was gifted the Bourbon parts, I had to make a bike worthy of such a kit.

Dispatches from the Veld: On the Road to the Pontchâteau World Cup
Words by Andrew Juiliano  and photos by Ethan Glading

It was just after midday in Western France when Max dragged two bike bags off the train in Pontchâteau. The 31-year old Californian had reached the end of his four-hour journey from Paris. For the past month, he’d paused his career as an upright bass player to race cyclocross across Europe. The tour had taken him to World Cups in Belgium and as far as the burgeoning Swiss EKZ scene. In two days, he’d be on the start line for the penultimate stop of the UCI World Cup circuit, right there in the small Bretton city.

Caletti Ultra Light Rando Roadie
Photos and words by Chris Corona

Lately, I have been doing longer mixed distances with a camera, sandwich and a couple of extra layers of clothing. I have a couple bikes that are great for cross riding but nothing that really fits the bill for 80-120 mile (mostly road with some dirt) rides that I’ve grown accustomed to. In late July, I approached John Caletti with a concept to create a bike that is on the ultralight touring side of road bikes.

Last week, we took a look inside the shop of Madrean Fabrication and Hubert’s own dirt tourer. Now we get an up close and personal look at Sarah’s Pinion gearbox, S&S coupler dirt tourer.

Both Sarah’s and Hubert’s Madrean have very similar details in terms of construction and stance. They’re both designed to be a multi-day bikepacking machine, where the only limit in terms of trip time is the rider’s schedule. For Sarah, she spends a lot of her year bikepacking or touring all over the world, so having a stout and reliable bike is of the utmost importance, hence the Pinion Gearbox.

While kicking around his shop one afternoon, I shot two of his recent builds, this one and Sarah Swallow’s Pinion gearbox dirt tourer. Expect that next week!

It doesn’t matter what you’re designing, the best products come from direct experience, and take more than one iteration to get right. This persistence is part of the process for Hubert from Madrean. He wants to design and develop a few production frames, to be made in house at his shop in Tucson. The first is this rigid mountain touring bike. Complete with internal routing for a dynamo hub, 1x clearance, front and rear bag support racks and if you ask nicely, maybe even a set of those bars, although that’s probably unlikely. Bars are a real pain to make!

Hubert coated the bike with a blackened steel treatment and some rattle can at a few key areas. He likes the Fabio’s Chest bags by Ultra Romance and Swift Industries and had a custom Rogue Panda bag made for the front triangle.

Bikes like this have such a presence in space. They command your attention and are full of details. I hope you enjoy viewing this as much as I did shooting it! Regarding price, availability and other details essential to purchasing, hold tight. We’ll post updates here as events warrant.

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Mattia from Legor Cicli Made this Beautiful Paganotti Classic Road
Photos and words by Kyle Kelley

I know you all of heard of Legor Cicli before, but I’m guessing you all haven’t heard of Paganotti. Well, Paganotti is the embodiment of all the Italian masters who taught Mattia Paganotti how to build. Gino Lissignoli, Pietro Serena, Tiziano Zullo, and Dario Pegoretti all played a very special role in the fabrication of this bike. Very few frame builders can say they’ve studied with a master, much less multiple masters. Even fewer can say they’re a direct link to their master’s style and craft, but this is something Mattia says with confidence. If you have ever rode one of Mattia’s bike you know he’s telling the truth.

We shoot a lot of bikes here on the Radavist. A lot. From my estimates, including tradeshows, and events like the Chris King Open House, or the Moots’ Employee Bikes, and even the Speedvagen Build Off, we shot 220 or so bikes in 2018. That’s a lot of bikes. A lot of details. A lot of component selection, build styles, and uses. From road, to mountain, and everything in between, noting the permutations that exist in this ever-so-special era in the cycling industry, I really feel like we’ve shown you just about everything you could see this year.

Out of those 220 bikes, I looked at the data in the form of traffic metrics, social chatter, and comments to pick the Top 10 Beautiful Bicycles of 2018. While many bikes had a lot of comments, some had higher traffic or social media shares. Compiling all the numbers, a very compelling list was formed. Not included in this lot are bike reviews, of which Morgan’s review of the Midnight Special and Kyle’s review of his Chubby Cosmic Stallion took the highest metrics from all others on this list. I guess they’re in a league of their own!

At any rate, check out the complete Top 10 Beautiful Bicycles of 2018, in no particular order, below!