The Radavist

This year at Grinduro, eight frame builders presented bikes in partnership with Maxxis, Sram/Zipp, Columbus, and Hope Tech. The theme? What is your ideal Grinduro bike? This outstanding Olivetti drop bar MTB took advantage of AXS road and mountain compatibility.

I arrived with a crew from Salsa Cycles a few days before Grinduro Japan was set to go down.  With the impending storm putting a slight damper on the length and rideability of the course for the weekend, I started to look for some alternative riding in the immediate area around the mountain.  While the mountain offered plenty of dirt roads, they remained forested-in which didn’t do the Japanese landscape justice.  On the map, I noticed that the coast wasn’t too far away and would be a big ole descent for most of the way.  Once we secured some fellow folks to shuttle us back from the beach in our rental cars, I got to work cobbling together a GPS track for us to follow.  I connected the small bits of off-pavement and tried to string them together with bike paths as well as a visit to a city park that had a castle, duh. Lets go to the beach!

Cervelo‘s flagship gravel bike, the Áspero, just got a new build kit option with smaller wheels and higher volume tires. I got to check out this limited edition build kit while I was in Portland and I must say, the details on it are impressive. Read on for a more in-depth look.

ISEN was born from UK custom framebuilders Hartley Cycles and Talbot Frameworks, aiming to bring stock sizing (47cm – 61cm), precision steel bikes, built and painted in house. They offer up a choice of 5 magnificent paint jobs, also known as their #SikCandyFadez and in general make damn appealing bikes with an aesthetic unlike anything else I’ve seen from the UK framebuilder scene.

This year at Grinduro, eight frame builders presented bikes in partnership with Maxxis, Sram/Zipp, Columbus, and Hope Tech. The theme? What is your ideal Grinduro bike? This outstanding Sycip gravel bike brought classic Sycip details to a modern platform.

This year at Grinduro, eight frame builders presented bikes in partnership with Maxxis, Sram/Zipp, Columbus, and Hope Tech. The theme? What is your ideal Grinduro bike? We’re continuing today with Steve Rex’s gravel bike.

This year at Grinduro, eight frame builders presented bikes in partnership with Maxxis, Sram/Zipp, Columbus, and Hope Tech. The theme? What is your ideal Grinduro bike? In the first post, we’ll look at BTCHN Bikes’ gravel bike.

When you think of the mountain bike brand Evil, chances are you think of the three pillars of modern mountain bike design, long, slack, and low. So when the brand began developing a gravel bike, they tapped into that design DNA. I got an in-person look at this new bike at Grinduro so read on for the details.

18 lbs? 17 lbs? 16 lbs? What is weight anyway? Weight doesn’t matter but it doesn’t hurt either. Especially when your golden locks and bronze tan lines float effortlessly across white gravel roads, coating the roadside flora in a light layer of sedimentary seasoning. Dust, baby. It’s good for you. Yes, Ronnie Romance knows how to build a bike from a fine assortment of vintage components, exotic, supple rubber, and a bit of suntan oil. Case in point, his Crust Bikes Lightning Bolt is lighter than a soft whisper.

Santa Cruz has no shortage of bike shops. This sleepy little beach town might be known for its surfing and pesky vampires, but the road and mountain riding is exceptional. With a myriad of dirt and paved roads snaking their way through coastal redwoods, and dusty, steep mountain bike trails, any cyclist can spend days upon days exploring the terrain. Spokesman Bicycles is one of the powerhouse shops in Santa Cruz and just recently opened up what they’re calling Outpost on the West Side of town, right next to their friends Sawyer and Co, a surfing lifestyle shop.

The Old Growth Classic took place this past weekend – 500 riders took to a grueling 55-mile course through coastal redwoods and old-growth groves. At the end of the day over 8,000′ of elevation gain would be throbbing through the legs of every person that crossed the start and finish lines. I had planned on bringing my Sklar with me to ride and photograph the course, but Ibis reached out and asked if I’d like to ride their Hakka MX with Shimano’s GRX drivetrain and a new ENVE spec build. Here’s what I thought about the build kit on this bike, specifically GRX…

I absolutely loved the aluminum Cannondale Topstone for what it was: a nicely spec’d, well-riding, off-the-shelf all-road bike that has Cannondale’s DNA with build options ranging from $1,050 to $2,100. It was a great bike at a solid price that didn’t skimp on the build kit or frame design. So when Cannondale launched the Carbon Topstone, with new passive suspension design, I was interested in seeing how the bike would ride. To come out with such an evolved design from the original Topstone, it had to be worth it, right? Well… it’s complicated.