The Radavist

Shawn‘s lucky. He got out of the Northeast and landed in Los Angeles just in time to avoid all that pesky snow in NYC. A while back, the shop where he works, King Kog and Golden Saddle Cyclery here in LA worked out a swap of sorts. Shawn would come and work at GSC for a week this winter and later in the summer, one of the GSC employees would go work in Brooklyn at King Kog. Due to current events however, it seems like Shawn got real lucky with the weather and ultimately, the better deal!

While his home city is under snow, he’s been out riding in sunny SoCal on his titanium Serotta Concours ‘cross bike. While it’s a bit dated in terms of braking technology, this one broke plenty of technological advancements in its time. Serotta made lots of titanium bikes over the years and the Concourse was just one of them.

Shawn’s built it up with a mix of Force 10-speed shifters, a soon to the market AARN CX 1x chainring, an inverted King headset and Paul Motolite brakes on a Wound Up fork with some older Zipp 101 wheels and a Thomson cockpit. This bike has just the right amount of beausage and in an age where ‘cross bikes have almost entirely gone to disc brakes, it’s great seeing a timeless frameset like this getting some miles. Especially in the warm and sunny SoCal winter. Enjoy the weather while you can, Shawn!

The city of 10,000,000 people have mountains that reach over 10,000′ that begin about 10 miles from town. In these mountains, when the temperature and pressure drop, sometimes we get snow. Usually just a light dusting, but enough to make the caps look white in the distance as you pedal or drive up Highway 2.

As previous experiences have proven, this snow is sometimes ridable, sticking mostly to the plants and rock outcroppings, while leaving the trails tacky and the corners smooth.

That was our thoughts on Saturday evening as Kyle and I planned a Sunday morning venture into the Angeles National Forest: ridable trails.

Titanium makes for a great off-road material. The tubing diameters are oftentimes larger than steel resulting in a ride quality that’s unprecedented. For Santa Barbara’s Stinner Frameworks, titanium was the next logical material to learn how to tig weld. Their shop now offers titanium road, touring, road and mountain bikes, with Matt’s being one of the recent beasts to be born.

Keeping the Tunnel 29’r frame raw, it’s offset by the razzle-painted Rock Shox Pike fork, Jones wheels, SRAM 1x drivetrain, internally-routed Reverb dropper and a Thomson cockpit.

Matt grew up riding MTBs in Topanga and Calabasas as a kid but hadn’t touched one in over 14 years. This bike will be the catalyst to get him back on the trails in Santa Barbara and hopefully he’ll be shredding with us when he comes home to Los Angeles over the holidays.

For those of you unfamiliar with Matt’s work, he’s the photographer for Stinner Frameworks and goes by the handle @HazardousTaste on Instagram. I highly suggest you give him a follow!

Colin, like many of us, uses his ‘cross bike for racing only a fraction of the total time he spends riding it. When he grew tired of riding and racing production bikes that never quite fit him or his preferred style of shredding, he decided to go custom and began looking into Stinner Frameworks.

Since moving to Montana from Austin, TX, he’s been spending a lot of time exploring the many mountain roads neighboring Bozeman. He wanted a ‘cross bike with a slightly altered geometry that would still be able to hold its own at races, yet be fun and zippy on fireroads or singletrack. While a standard ‘cross bike might fit the bill, Colin’s been riding for so long that he’d developed a few particularities. First, he wanted to race the bike as a singlespeed but didn’t want to go with a slider dropout. He also wanted thru-axles. The simple fix for this is an eccentric bottom bracket which would give him the right chain tension, easily. Then once the race season was over, he could put a 1x group on the bike and take off into the woods. He raced it for a season as a singlespeed and then upgraded to a new group.

The problem is, while switching a group over from an older bike, his rear brake line was too short and no one in town, nor the neighboring towns, nor the damn mail order companies had the damn part in stock. Keep in mind, this switch-out was happening the day before he was leaving Montana for a bikepacking trip down the Pacific Coast. Way to wait ’til the last minute dude! So now, he has a brake line that even as a photographer, was painful to photograph, much less ride behind or next to. I kept thinking the damn thing was going to rip off the caliper and spray me with hydro fluid, yet it’s still in place.

While it’s not an ideal photo, or an ideal brake line setup, the bike made it down the coast to Los Angeles just fine, where we’ve been riding local dirt. Yesterday, I shot some photos of it in the early morning light. Don’t worry, the part is en route to Colin shortly, after a lengthy delay from the Holidays…

Looking past the brake lining, we see Industry Nine hubs laced to an eBay Chinese carbon rim, with a Hope cassette expander, TRP’s thru-axle disc ‘cross fork, SRAM X9 derailleur, ENVE parts throughout, WTB Nano 40mm tires and that sweet, sweet Stinner steel. My favorite detail? The paint! I absolutely love what Stinner is doing in-house and it almost distracts even me from the brake line.

Almost…

Back in 2009, over 250 square miles of the Angeles National Forest was torched by the Station Fire. Since then the Forest Service, with the help of CORBA (Concerned Off Road Bicyclists Association) and other organizations like MWBA (Mount Wilson Bicycling Association) have begun the slow and steady process of re-opening over a dozen trails in the area. One of those unfortunate closures is the Ken Burton Trail.

Nils, aka #PartyNils has been getting a lot of social media love these days and it’s easy to see why. When he’s not bringing a camp stove to LA River Camp Coffee, he’s racing ‘cross on his cargo bike or this Chumba Ursa 29+ rigid mountain bike.

The Ursa 29+ frames are a killer deal for anyone looking for a 29+ bikepacking rig or even a rigid MTB and Nils has his set up with all the creature comforts you’d expect from a guy who lives life on the bike with a smile.

A bent Brooks saddle with just the right amount of sag, solid platform pedals, comfy grips with a little extra twine on the side and a shellac’d chainstay to muffle any slap that might occur. If you see Nils partying away on this thing, give him a shout!