The Radavist

Many moons ago I was looking for a place to park my car as a shuttle vehicle in Salida before the beginning of  the second DFL the Divide trip  when a friend suggested, “See if you can park at Oveja Negra.”  A few Instagram messages later and I had secured a parking spot behind their shop in downtown Salida, CO. When we returned at the end of the trip – unkempt and raucous – we were nonetheless treated to showers and a tour by the incomparable Lane. Her tour was full of ghost stories and other fun histories of their historic building. Coming back so many years later to similar open arms is truly a lovely thing.

With the snow melting and the season ripe for desert ramblings, Kyle Klain took his 2016 NAHBS-built Sklar fat bike and converted it to 29+. After spending all winter with fat-bike 26+ tires, this Sklar has undergone quite the transformation. This weekend while celebrating my 40th birthday in southeastern Utah, I documented Kyle’s stunning build in the morning sun. Check it out in detail below…

A bike can be a liberating tool for a youngster. I got the first bike that I could travel distances on when I was 14. Granted it was a beach cruiser but hey, we lived at the beach. I’d carry my skateboard and even a surfboard to spots after school and on the weekends. It was a vessel of adolescent liberation.

For Jonah, a local of Santa Fe, and an employee at Mellow Velo, the bicycle has helped develop his independence as well as a vehicle to meander around his homeland. His family is one of the deeply embedded heritage households and have been in the area for hundreds of years. Just north of Santa Fe is the town of Chimayo where his family has been weaving for generations under the brand Ortega.

We’ve featured Cari’s Elephant National Forest Explorer before, back in 2016, and yet every time it pops up in our social media here at the Radavist, people request an updated feature…

Tomorrow, we’ll be sharing our Reportage from our tour of the CDT in Northern New Mexico but today I wanted to give Bailey a showcase on his Moné and how he packs for a three-day trip…

The poet Basil Bunting, while poring over an antiquated German-Italian dictionary, found the German verb dichten (to write poetry) translated as condensare (to condense/shorten). This became one of the guiding principles of Modernist poetry;  which would state; “Great literature is simply language charged with meaning to the utmost degree.” In my early 20s, I fancied myself a student of Modernist writing and, unsurprisingly, many of its ideologies found a place in my daily life. This concept in particular is one that has remained important to me and thus, my approach to touring/bike packing. If one can distill their gear down to items that have the utmost meaning or necessity, while doing away with any superfluities, the result is a light and nimble bike, allowing the rider maximum enjoyment of the terrain to be traversed without compromising their safety and comfort along the way.

Over the past couple of months, we’ve looked at a few bike shops with very unique business models. From opening their stock up as a rental fleet, to stocking only Rivendell and Bob Dylan, and roadside attractions, looking to recycle as much as possible, we’ve run quite the gammut of business models this summer here on the Radavist. Another shop that I recently documented was Santa Fe’s Broken Spoke and they’re doing something unique in the modern internet sales versus the Local Bike Shop climate…