The Radavist

For those looking for something to listen to on a ride or while you work, be sure to check out the Inside ENVE podcast. This episode features yours truly as we talk about bikes, 4×4 touring, and other random bits of banter. Enjoy!

We’ve been working on some site improvements during the pandemic and have rolled out the first major update to the UX of the Radavist. While Disqus has a “related content” feature built-in, Grant worked on a more intelligent version, giving you six related articles. Now when we post about Black Cat’s new gravel bike, you can find our Shop Visit to their workshop below in the Related Articles. Same with our Grinduro post today. Wanna see some coverage from past events? Check out the Related Articles.

We’re still ticking off items on our list and when we implement design improvements, we’ll make an announcement here. Thank you for your patience! :-)

Before we packed up and moved out of Los Angeles, Light and Motion came out to check out our “operations” and go on a sunset ride with me on my then-new-to-me Starling Murmur. I’m rarely in front of the camera but if you’ve ever wondered how this website came to be and what our office looked like in LA, then check out this video!

Thanks to Josh for doing such a kick-ass job with this video!

Due to the pandemic, our “spring” launch might have to be a summer launch. We’ve had these two products for a few months now, waiting on new shirts, jerseys, and socks but it looks like it will be a few months until the rest of these items will be made so, in the interim, we just posted these to the shop. The first is a 22″ x 22″ bandana, featuring the Eternal Jackal logo, designed by our friends at LAND. It’s printed on grown in the USA organic cotton using eco-friendly orange discharge ink. That means you won’t actually be able to feel the ink. Once washed this bandana will be soft to the touch. These are made in the USA and printed by Industry Print Shop in Austin, Texas.

Next up is our Alpenglow bottles, inspired by the optical phenomenon that appears as a horizontal reddish glow near the horizon opposite to the Sun when it has just set beyond the horizon.

Both are in the webshop today and remember, we only ship on Wednesdays!

We’ve officially relocated to Santa Fe, after living in Los Angeles for five years, so as you might imagine, it took a while to unload and unpack. Our new office fell through due to Covid 19, so for the time being, we’re operating out of our home, trying to cram it all into our house. Right now, it’s just Cari and I holding everything down, but we finally got the webshop product unloaded and organized so we opened its virtual doors late last night.

If you have emailed us in the past 20 days, or somehow purchased something before we closed it up, we’re sorry about the delay in response. As you might imagine, our hands were full, having to expedite our relocation three weeks earlier than anticipated. We’re packing orders and answering emails ASAP. There is also a bit of bad news, our Spring apparel launch is delayed, with shirts, socks, jerseys, and other products sitting in Covid 19 limbo. We’re not sure when we’ll be able to add new stock. We do however have two products we’ll add to the shop this week, so stay tuned.

To help us sell through stock, there’s an extension sale on all apparel. Use code “ClearOut” at checkout to get 65% off all apparel. This sale will help us keep our contributors getting paid for their contributions during these trying times. If you don’t have money, no worries! Your presence here on the site and in the comments section keeps the stoke alive.

As always, we cannot thank you enough for all of your support over the years. Thank you!

– John and Cari

There’s a lot going on in the world right now with the Covid-19 pandemic, which has upended many people’s lives. Unfortunately, this falls right in the middle of our relocation to Santa Fe, New Mexico. Yet, I can’t complain because people are dying from this virus. Our minor inconvenience is nothing compared to that.

It’s obvious that California has been a great host state for our operations over the past five years but I’ve been feeling the draw to move out of the Golden State for some time now, for various reasons, both related to the content of this website and my own personal sanity.

Our move to Santa Fe mostly stems from the fact that recently I’ve found myself gravitating toward smaller-towns, rather than big cities. Cari, my partner, who plays a huge role in the admin side of this site, has family ties to New Mexico. We both wanted to live somewhere at a higher elevation, with easier access to the activities we love and a greatly reduced population. Our road trip through Santa Fe last summer, plus various trips over the years solidified our decision.

Los Angeles’ riding is unparalleled when compared to other major US-cities and hopefully, we’ve shown that over the years. You can’t get much better than the Santa Monica, Verdugo, and San Gabriel mountains, our three major ranges in the area. There are hundreds of miles of easily-accessible dirt roads, singletrack, and doubletrack in the area and it’s been a great community to be a part of.

That said, I personally just get inundated with the constant hustle. Over the years, it’s just gotten to me. Everyone is always moving at 110% and both Cari and I are looking for a calmer environment to live in. What I’m personally looking forward to is documenting the cyclists in Santa Fe, working with the local organizations, and being in the Four Corners. I’ll miss the Sierra, the Mojave, and everything in between, but I look forward to all the Southwest has to offer.

We’re moving as soon as we can, which will probably happen in the next week or so. During this process, we’ll be closing down webshop shipping but continuing the site’s day-to-day content schedule. Please, during this crazy time, be safe out there!

If you’re in the Santa Fe area, be sure to holler, I look forward to riding bikes with you all.

To make way for our new spring apparel, we’re holding a sale on all shirts, socks, and jerseys. Use the code “SpringCleaning” at checkout for 30% off your apparel order at the Radavist Web Shop! Thanks as always for your support! *Note* All sale items are final. No returns, please!

We cover a lot of gravel races here at the Radavist and while most of them are in the Western United States, we’ll be returning to the Mid South this year for an in-depth look at Stillwater, District Bicycles, the new race, and a look at the racer’s bikes. As you can imagine, it’s a lot of work to cover races and it costs a lot of money out of our pocket to fly out, document, edit, and post these events. While as a whole, we’re less interested in roadie 2.0 races like the DK and more interested in races with a unique format, which is why we’ve covered Grinduro so much in the past. It’s a really fun environment to be working your ass off in.

So I wanted to ask, what races would you like seen covered here on the site? We’ve already got SSAZ, the Mid South, Grinduro, and a few others on the calendar, but I’m interested in hearing your thoughts. If you could, leave them in the comments, with a link to the race’s website, that would be helpful.

We want to spend our time covering the things you want to see, so these posts are VERY helpful!

xo

We’re inspired by what we see on our rides in Southern California and the Southwest in general! One of the joys of riding in the summer is catching glimpses of a local species of horned lizard, the Blainville’s Horned Lizard – Phrynosoma blainvillii. They’ll be laying all over the trails around 3,000′ in elevation all summer long soaking up the sun’s rays. These little critters inspired our new pins, a long sleeve tee, and bottles. Then for good measure, we re-stocked our Radavist Jackal long sleeve t-shirts. Both shirts are printed with eco-friendly discharge ink this time. After a wash or two, you won’t even feel anything on the printed logos, resulting in the softest feeling shirt you’ll own.

All four of these are in stock now at our webshop:
–Jackal Long Sleeve T-Shirt Classic Script with Discharge Print
–Horned Lizard Long Sleeve T-Shirt Classic Script with Discharge Print
–Horned Lizard Radavist Pin
–Horned Lizard Shred Lightly Bottles

As we roll into the New Year and since we’re always trying to make this website a better place, so all y’all enjoy browsing its galleries, we wanted to ask you, the readers, what you’d like to see more of? I feel like every year, we ask this and this year, we tried to follow through on many of your concerns.

So please take a minute to chime in the comments with what you’d like to see more of? Be it Shop Visits with builders or bike shops, more affordable bike reviews, more daily riders bikes, rides, landscapes, reviews… anything. Please don’t feel coy, let us know so we can continue to make this site better!

After the New Year, we’ll be looking at the year in review posts and I can already tell it’s going to be the best yet!

This is the twelfth layout of the Radavist 2019 Calendar, entitled “Mojave Mob” shot with a Canon 5D and a 70-200 lens in Death Valley National Park, California.

“Our trip through Death Valley National Park was one of my favorite stories of the year and with it, came many memorable moments, but this one image really resonated with me, even after editing, culling, and selecting hundreds from over a thousand photos. Enjoy…”

For a high-res JPG, suitable for print and desktop wallpaper*, right click and save link as – The Radavist 2019 Calendar – December. Please, this photo is for personal use only!
(*set background to white and center for optimal coverage)

The mobile background this month is a layered blue hour ombré fade, complete with the lilies of the desert, the joshua tree. Click here to download December’s Mobile Wallpaper.

We’ve just stocked our first drop this Fall over in the webshop, including three wool sock Jackal designs, a Yucca wool sock, a Woolie sock, Nalgene bottles, a new Shred Lightly patch, Dynaplug Racers in olive drab and desert tan. We’re really stoked on this entire drop, which was designed by Cari Carmean.

We had a stock hiccup but everything is in stock now!

Head on over to the Radavist webshop to order!

After our first run flew off the shelves, we placed another order of the tan and black Shred Lightly pocket tees. We also added an order of our classic Radavist iconography on a made in the USA Bayside heather olive t-shirt. This order was printed in Austin, Texas by Industry Print Shop. For this run, we switched up the orange ink for New Mexico gold on the tan shirts. Head to the webshop to order.

Sizing in Inches:
Chest S: 18 M: 20 L: 22 XL: 24 XXL:26

Please note, the small in this shirt is SMALL. It’s exactly 18″ from pit to pit. Please measure your shirt and confirm sizing!

Our goal with the webshop is to always have staple products in stock and everyone loves the Olive Drab bottles, so when they sold out last month, we got a lot of requests for a restock alert. Well, here ya go. They’re back in stock.

We’ve been working on a late summer, early fall launch since what feels like a year or so and have finally pushed the button to get these into production. We’ve got three color combinations, in both road and this active jersey, perfect for gravel, MTB, running, backpacking, or other outdoor activities. With an active SPF built into the fabric, the long sleeves protect your arms from the sun’s harmful UV rays, while keeping you cool by wicking the sweat off your body. I’ve been wearing this jersey all summer, to test out how well it performs in the 100º Southern California heat. The material itself doesn’t get as stinky as fast like other fabrics I’ve been testing and the fit is more relaxed, with a longer drop back and extended sleeve cuffs.

ENDO Customs is currently making these in downtown Los Angeles and they should be for sale in the next few weeks. There are three color options, based on the tonality and colors of the desert (pictured), the forest, and plains. Stay tuned for more information here in the next few weeks and check out more teasers below.

It’s been a long time in the making and after much consideration, we’re adopting a new slogan for this website. In an attempt to describe the kind of riding we enjoy and cover here on the Radavist, we’ll be using “Shred Lightly™” on our products and insignia. Don’t worry, the Radavist Jackal and other LAND branding aren’t going anywhere. ;-)  With this new slogan, we wanted to launch a product pack, inspired by the southwest iconography, lore, and symbolism, featuring the Greater Road Runner (Geococcyx californianus) and the Spanish Bayonet Yucca bloom (Hesperoyucca whipplei).

Many thanks to Steve Bretson, Cari Carmean, and Bobby Dixon for their typography work on these products. The Golden Sunrise bottles, Black Nocturnal bottles, Reminder stem caps, black pocket t-shirts, and tan pocket t-shirts are all made in the USA, and in-stock now at the Radavist Web Shop. We’ve got more products on the way this summer and fall. For now, check out some more product photos below!

Some of you may have noticed that our galleries are now updated with arrow navigation. In the past few weeks, we’ve been tweaking various UX details, including centering the masthead and swapping out the red color for a twilight gold but most of the work has been going on behind the scenes.

Up next we’ve got thumbnails for the galleries, linkable image numbers, author credit footers, and other tidbits. Now, with the larger galleries, we’re still working out the bugs as the images tend to bunch up a bit. We’ll tackle all the bugs as they pop up, so feel free to point them out in this post.

Thanks again for your patience! This has been an arduous process for Grant Blakeman to undertake. :-)