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It Takes Two: John’s 1985 Steve Potts Signature

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It Takes Two: John’s 1985 Steve Potts Signature

Marin County was a bustling time for the early mountain bike scene from the late 70s and well into the 80s. Names like Tom Ritchey/Gary Fisher/Charlie Kelly at the MountainBikes store, and Joe Breeze, Charlie Cunningham, and Steve Potts psychically and physically shaping the future of the then-fledgling sport with their fire-road ripping designs, torches and tig welders.

We’ve reported on Cunningham and Potts’ involvement in Wilderness Trail Bikes (known widely as WTB) over the past few years along with Mark Slate. In 1983, Cunningham, Potts, and Mark Slate founded WTB, and the trio began developing components in Marin, leaning on both builder’s fondness for innovation and exquisitely unique craft. While Steve loved to shape tubes with brass fillets, focusing on the form regardless of weight, Charlie would tig aluminum and shave grams anywhere he could. The two made for a dynamic duo of constructeurs.

By the time 1985 rolled around, mountain bikes were a legitimate tour de force within the bike industry. Even though they gravitated towards completely different frame materials and processes, Cunningham and Potts were credited with crafting some of the most iconic bikes of the era and still found the time to collaborate and share ideas.

As with many of the influential characters and pivotal moments in the early days of the almighty mountain bike, collaboration was key, and sometimes, it took two talented individuals to make a single bike…

1990 Klein Attitude Team USA

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1990 Klein Attitude Team USA

The mountain bikes of the late 1980s were not prepared for what the 1990s would bring to the American framebuilding scene, which was on the precipice of the aluminum revolution. Aluminum bikes were lighter and featured oversized tubing diameters, making a buff canvas for some wild paint jobs. This 1990 Klein Attitude is perhaps one of the most iconic bikes, donning the “Team USA” or “Dolomite” colors; green, white, and magenta—all sprayed on Klein’s thicc “Aluminum Power Tubing.”

While I was in Los Angeles, camping out at The Cub House, Sean got this bike all polished up for a quick shoot, so let’s check it out below!

Vintage Bicycles: 1987 Steve Potts Signature

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Vintage Bicycles: 1987 Steve Potts Signature

This entry from our Vintage Bicycles series is my personal favorite bike I’ve shot thus far. It’s not often you find such a clean and pristine example of a 1980s Potts Signature, complete with WTB dirt drops, a LD stem, and a full WTB/Suntour Grease Guard kit. Today we’re stoked to feature this gem with words by the Vintage MTB Workshop‘s Tasshi Dennis so read on below for more!

Vintage Bicycles: 1982 Ritchey Tamalpais Mountain Bike

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Vintage Bicycles: 1982 Ritchey Tamalpais Mountain Bike

Vintage mountain bikes have a special place in our hearts over here at The Radavist. From vintage klunkers to fillet-brazed beauts, it just seems like bikes from the early years of mountain biking were ahead of their time in a lot of ways. When the pandemic hit, I found myself browsing forums, eBay, and emailing collectors to build up some vintage rides. I was inundated with all the tech that was coming out, yet wasn’t available to consumers, and just felt like revisiting my passion for old bikes would reinvigorate my love of 26″ wheels and friction shifting. This Ritchey is the most recent of three bikes that I built up over the past few years in the pandemic and was by far the biggest undertaking for me. The process included painting some Tom Ritchey fillet Bullmoose bars to match and fixing some shoddy paint on the frame itself.

This bike needed a complete build kit, as I bought it as a frameset, so I spent a lot of time speccing the build while utilizing some of the NOS components I’ve been sitting on for a few years. The end product is something I’m truly proud of and Cari and I had a lot of fun with the photos here, so enjoy!

Shimano Showcases Ten Custom Bikes With Stunning Silver GRX Limited

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Shimano Showcases Ten Custom Bikes With Stunning Silver GRX Limited

At this year’s Unbound, Shimano will be unveiling its new GRX Limited group, which offers silver components for drop bar and flat bar GRX kits. It’s been a while since a big brand offered up a brand new, high-end group in silver, so as you might have guessed, we’re stoked to share this news with you.

To commemorate this special moment, Shimano pinged ten framebuilders to showcase this new kit, so let’s look at each of the builders’ creations below…

Marley Reviews Her Velo Orange Piolet

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Marley Reviews Her Velo Orange Piolet

When the call came from Shimano that All Bodies on Bikes was greenlit, the hunt was on for a bike. I needed something that could run the sweet components they were providing us with, and that was ideally suited for bikepacking. Sure, I had my trusty Surly Straggler, but I wondered if there was something else that could do the job better. …

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MAIDEN RACE: Mark Beaumont’s tale of GBDURO

An extraordinary race with a bizarre twist in the final stage gives GBDURO victory to the Around-the-World record holder in his first-ever race…

Despite a career of world-firsts in endurance cycling expeditions, Mark Beaumont, the current round-the-world record holder, had never competed in anything other than what amounts to very extreme solo time trials. This summer though, for the first time in his career, he entered a race. And not just any race, arguably the toughest endurance race in the UK, GBDURO. The drama was captured in a new Shimano video called MAIDEN RACE. Watch it above…