The Radavist

This week’s Readers’ Rides comes from Ben and features his beautiful Bantam Randonneurring machine. Check it out below with a full build spec and with words by Ben!

It’s not often you get photos like James’ in the Readers’ Rides email box. It’s not the bike shots I’m talking about either, check out that rider portrait! So good. Let’s let James describe his Temple prototype in his own words for this week’s Readers’ Rides…

For this week’s Readers’ Rides, we’re featuring Steven’s own, self-built Slug gravel bike. This one is very detail-oriented so we’ll let Steven do the talking…

Here’s my bike, my only bike. After working in the Cycling industry for several years, I realized that I had far too many bikes, and I’ve subsequently sold off all but this one. The story of Slug is pretty random, and I’m not necessarily the one to tell it. I will tell you about the bike, however.

This bike is a real stunner and one that I was hoping to document before I left Los Angles for Santa Fe but never got around to it. It was one of those “I’ll document it the next time it’s in the shop” moments. Carson‘s Funk La Ruta+ is a real gem of a bike and the dude puts in work on it, maintaining trails for the Mount Wilson Bicycling Association. Let’s check it out with Carson’s own words describing this idiosyncratic steed…

While we’ve been working chronologically on these Readers’ Rides submissions, when I saw Samuel’s email, titled “What about shaved faces and skinny slicks?” I had to peek inside. What I found was a truly unique Readers’ Rides submission, so we bumped it to the front of the queue with words and photos by Samuel. Enjoy!

Matt bought this classic Fisher MTB frame for $50 with the hopes of having a good ’round towner. Like all bikes, it’s going through various iterations over the years, with what you’re seeing now being the most current and arguably the best. I guess it depends how the parts bin and jewelry box are lookin’ ya know? 

This week’s Readers’ Rides features Marko‘s Karussell, a frame builder from Slovenia, gravel bike with photos by David Krevs from Karussell and words by Marko, himself. Enjoy!

So this is my only drop bar bike at the moment and I wanted it to be as versatile as possible so that I can use it for road rides, gravel grinding, bikepacking, and even an occasional cyclocross race. I have two sets of wheels for it – 650b with wider tires for bikepacking and harsh terrain, and 700c for everything else.

This week’s Readers’ Rides is one wild rig! Timothy‘s Diamondback is a great example of how vintage bikes can keep rolling for decades and can be quite fun to build out, much less ride!

If you need a rugged machine look no further then the Diamondback bicycle family from the ’90s. Overall great construction, pretty strong and made from USA True Temper tubes. This example was customized by Jeffson Bikes around 2004 and has an adjustable BB and disc tab welded on. The paint is my own doing after I could not stop looking at a Cooks Bros cruiser with a sunset fade. I did this with spray cans, and the homie made me some custom stickers that represent my bad back I had while building this bike.

For this week’s Readers’ Rides, we take a look at Grant from Richmond’s Endpoint Coffee Grinder. These frames are handmade in Washington state by Elephant Bikes at the behest of Ride Endpoint. This was one of several prototype frames and includes a wild paint job. Check it out in detail below.

First of all, we’d like to thank all of you who have submitted Readers Rides builds to be shared over here. The response has been incredible, with hundreds already in our email box. I’m not sure how often we’ll be posting them but I figured we’d start it off this week with Tom’s Singular Peregrine fat tire randonneur…

Since we’re mostly stuck indoors these days, what better time to re-launch our Reader’s Rides series? Longtime readers will remember this feature, which we first launched in 2010. Read on below to see the conditions and how to get your bike up on these pages.

A few years back, we would post the bikes from the readers of this site, in a feature dubbed Readers’ Rides. Well, we’ve been getting a bunch of inquiries over the years as to if or when we’re bringing these posts back and the answer is yes! They will be cut and dry, down and dirty, cell phone style photos. As you can imagine, this will open the torrent of submissions, so hold tight until I can set up a new email address for this next week.

After yesterday’s OysterBar post, the designer of the bar shared his Moots and a little back story. I thought it was a perfect seque into relaunching this fun feature…

Photos by Fredrik Posse

It’s not everyday that PiNP does a Reader’s Rides post. In fact, it’s been months! When I received this email from Fredrik however, I had to share. The world of the fat tire road bike has expanded rapidly with the growing popularity of ‘gravel grinder’ rides. While I’ll say that cross bikes are the best all-rounders, some people want to tune their ride with a slightly different characteristics.

That’s what Fredrik achieved with his his new ride. Check out more below!

Photos by Ainis Permins

The last Cinelli I featured in a Reader’s Rides post was all about low-visibility. As a striking contrast, Ainis Permins‘ Vigorelli is about as as far from low-vis as you can get. This one’s bright but pretty damn sharp! See more below.

It’s not often I get a Reader’s Rides email with a bike like this attached. Jerry’s new Moots Vamoots CR is drop dead gorgeous but it’s very easy to take shit photos of a great bike. The colors, tones and composition of these photos are top notch. Jerry ordered the frame from Montano Velo and went with Campagnolo Record for the group. Stunning!

See more below.

As previously-stated, everyone’s ready to get their ‘cross on this season. It’s pretty common for me to receive a large number of cross bikes in lieu of track bikes come this time of the year but what’s uncommon is a gem like this. Hollis lives in Barcelona and races for IF’s Grassroots team. Here’s his laced out IF Ti Planet Cross.

Check out more below!

Since I don’t really do any kind of bike-check posts, the only label I could think that would be appropriate for this is Reader’s Rides. Plus it mixes it up from the normal track bike we see in that tag. Kareem’s been in the FGFS scene for as long as just about anyone. His recent relocation from Atlanta to Seattle, landed him in the middle of a great group of people, including Jake Ricker. Check out more photos of Kareem’s Leader Pharoah below, all courtesy of Jake and his Contax!