The Radavist

Going slow during rides sometimes has its benefits. You’ll find new lines on a trail, or discover a new lookout point on a climb. Yesterday, during the heat of the day, Cari and I went to ride in the Verdugo mountains, my go-to ride spot in Los Angeles. Now, I’ve spent many hours climbing these steep beasts since moving to LA and in that time, have witnessed a broad selection of wildlife ranging from gray foxes, bobcats, rattle snakes, king snakes, red tailed hawks and even a weasel scurrying through the brush. Most of these animals I came upon while descending and spooked them on the trail but I rarely see anything other than the occasional gopher snake while climbing.

… well, technically they rode from SF to LA in four days, but they came straight to Golden Saddle to hang out, recover and have a few beers. I wish I could have photographed all their bikes, but sometimes smiling faces and peace signs make for a better photo! Follow the dudes with their hashtag.

Oh my god, this is so good! But remember, support your local bike shop when you can!

… we began ours a little early!

We all love bombing hills on bikes and having ridden up this one (and down) before, I can attest at how gnarly this is.

Someone needs to recreate this ASAP!

… like these cyclists did with an Ostrich!

Can Mark take on a Rubik’s Cube, solving the puzzle completely in under 2 minutes? Watch and find out.

Apparently, this is a thing.

This one’s filled with tons of randomness, yet there are some real gems to be had!

River City Bicycles’ bike collection isn’t all tricked out classics. This entry documents the unridable bike, which coincidentally is one of my favorites!

Who knew Peter Sagan would have such a festive spirit around the holidays?

Oh man! This one’s so good.

This website is a resource for a lot of great cycling products. In fact, more of the collective time spent on the site than I’m willing to admit is spent scouring the internet or the products email inbox for unique, high-quality and when possible, made in the USA goods. Over the past few weeks, I’ve gotten bombarded with “Black Friday,” “Cyber Monday,” and other sales. To the point where I decided not to do a traditional cycling-related holiday shopping guide. Instead, I’ll simply point out a few non-cycling related products that have caught my eye over the past few months.

I don’t want to encourage consumerism anymore than I feel like this site already does, but I do want to showcase a few products that a few of the contributors to the site, including myself have been more than happy with owning. Hell, some of these things are on my own wish list! Most are made in the USA but a few are not. Again this isn’t a cyclist’s holiday guide as much as it is a list of a few unique products that people you know might be interested in. There are only ten items, ranging from $3 to $500, so don’t expect too much of a surprise!

My buddy Erik @hellhommus was in town this weekend for the Team Dream and Ringtail Cub House opening party. He’d been to Los Angeles before, but never rode in the Angeles National Forest, so while the group ride went up on road, we took a dirt detour. Dirtour?

It’s so dusty and dry here this fall, yet the wind has been remarkably still in the mountains. Still enough that Erik’s dusty trails just seemed to float there above the fireroad like some remnant of a smoke bomb.

I hope you guys got out and rode a lot this weekend, I know my legs are beat!

This is pretty good!