The Radavist

We’re not usually ones to do a sale or even a Black Friday sale, but this year, we wanted to thank everyone who signed up (and who will sign up this weekend) for our Group Ride subscription plan with a special 40% discount code for Radavist merch. This sale begins today and will end Monday at midnight MST.

If you signed up for our Group Ride, you should have received an email from our Newsletter account with the discount code attached. Check your spam folder! If you didn’t receive an email, drop a line at our Group Ride inbox with your subscription confirmation.

Thanks from everyone here at The Radavist!

On the heels of his Bike Hack about carrying a pair of prism reading glasses while bikepacking, Travis Engel now suggests bringing your books from the tent to the trail. His short treatise on the merits of audiobooks on all-day rides might inspire you to revisit a classic, or seek out the source material behind your favorite movie to find out if the book is actually any better.

Just like the rows of bagged candy at your grocery store, or the fountains of pumpkin spice latte at your coffee shop, you can’t escape Halloween once October hits. Not even here at The Radavist. Travis Engel has jumped on the spooky-season bandwagon with a list of scary movies (and one scary short film) that will strike a nerve for anyone who likes riding to the middle of nowhere…

One helpful tip for getting a good night’s sleep while bike touring is to mimic your home sleeping experience as closely as possible. Cotton pillowcases or fleece sleeping bag liners can ease your mind by tricking your body. But you should apply that logic to your entire pre-sleep ritual. Have some dessert, brush your teeth, and once you’re all tucked in, do some light reading. Travis Engel is here with a bike hack that may make that last part a little easier to do in the wild.

With the recent announcement of the return of The Radavist to John and Cari, we debuted our Group Ride Subscription Plan. Readers of The Radavist can support our efforts, browse the largest collection of Beautiful Bicycles on the ‘net, and immerse themselves in our in-depth Reportage for $6.66 a month or $69.69 a year in a paywall-free environment.

Read on for the full breakdown.

You may have noticed some changes on The Radavist over the past few weeks. Well, it’s because we’ve parted ways with TPC. Read on for TPC’s official press release announcement on the split and what this means for the future of The Radavist with a letter from John Watson below…

Before you even hit the parking lot to test ride a suspension bike, most shops will walk you through a careful sag and damping adjustment. But few of them will tell you that there is a whole other dimension of control inside your fork or shock’s air spring. By inserting or removing volume spacers, you can make your suspension more or less resistant to bottom-out. In turn, that may allow you to run more or less preload. This deceptively simple adjustment has gotten a reputation for being only for racers, or nerds, or nerdy racers. But Travis Engel believes everyone can benefit from volume tuning. So, he has this quick explainer on what it can do for you, and how you can try it for yourself.

After Nic Morales ditched indexed shifters for a friction system, he hasn’t looked back. Below, Nic breaks down the differences between index and friction and explains why he’s excited about bucking mainstream shifting trends towards a life of friction...

Five years ago, I penned a post about abstaining from alcohol for six months. Then, eighteen months later, I followed up with a two-year anniversary piece that outlined my perspective on putting down the bottle… for good.

It’s now been six years since I had any alcohol. In that time, I’ve witnessed more discussions about cycling’s alcohol problem, so I wanted to write again about this subject where I’ll offer guidance on transitioning out of alcohol dependency, non-alcoholic drinks I’ve found to be helpful, and resources you can use to help on this journey…

A few shops have sent this into our editorial team today and we felt like the cat’s out of the bag after months of whispers. This news is sad, as The Radavist has featured so many of All-City‘s products over the years via custom builds and product launches. We’ve long been a fan of the company and as always, it’s a big bummer to see a steel-focused company shutter its doors.

The brand will no longer develop products after 2024 and will be retired in a few years. Check out the full email that QBP, All-City’s parent company, just sent to its dealer network below, edited for public visibility…

Like many towns along the Rocky Mountain corridor, Santa Fe has easy access to endless singletrack that spans many mountainous ecotones. You can pedal from town at 7000′ all the way above tree line to where our bike-legal trails top out at 12,500′, on almost exclusively singletrack.

This dense network of trails is stewarded by our local organization, the Santa Fe Fat Tire Society, and over the years, they’ve been putting in work adding new, legal trails, keeping the current trails running smoothly, cutting deadfall, fixing blown corners, and adding signage in a hope to bridge the various trail users in this community…

No, we haven’t devolved into publishing clickbait articles. And no, we’re not saying a hip pack can be made into a reasonable replacement for a handlebar bag. But Travis Engel has a very clever, very temporary way to get the weight off his back for long boring climbs, and then easily put it back on for quick fun descents. The trick is kinda just for the uphill, it’s a little ugly, and it won’t work on every pack or every bike. But what do you want from us? That’s why they call it a hack.

Our very own Hailey Moore finished the North-South Colorado 2023 race in 9th overall and first place women. She rolled into the 608th mile finish at 1 AM this morning after averaging 160 miles a day. Way to go, Hailey! Rest up and nurse that knee!

With all the talk of Cavendish a few feet from breaking the outright TDF stage win record, then failing, and then crashing out, artist Richard Pool found inspiration in the G.O.A.T. and drew this up. It seems the outright stage win record, will now never be broken. Read on below for an op-ed on why Eddy Merckx will always be the king.

Hope Cyclery, run by our good friends Jarrod and David, in Johnstown, PA, recently had their shop broken into. Everyone knows it’s not easy being an independent bike shop these days, yet Hope Cyclery has been building community and increasing cycling awareness in an area that is struggling.

Hope Cyclery has brought cycling tourism to local businesses through the Higher Ground event and increased awareness of outdoor recreation potential in this post-steel industry setting.

Today, they were broken into and lost inventory while leading a group ride. Already on a shoestring budget, this might break them. We know money is tight right now, but if you’ve been wanting a new, custom build, Hope has a deposit web page set up to take deposits. Or you can browse their in-stock inventory. If you’re curious about what kind of builds Hope offers and what Jarrod has done for The Radavist over the years, check out our Related Archives below.

Let’s give them some love on their Instagram too!

Welcome to the second installment of The Dust-Up. This will be a semi-regular platform for Radavist editors and contributors to make bold, sometimes controversial claims about cycling. A way to challenge long-held assumptions that deserve a second look. Sometimes they will be global issues with important far-reaching consequences; other times, they will shed light on little nerdy corners of our world that don’t get enough attention. This week, John looks at a divisive topic through a historical lens to lay it all out in a column called: “Bike Touring is Not Bikepacking No Matter the Bags Used or Terrain Traversed.”

Read our latest edition of The Dust Up below…

Brian Blomerth’s graphic novel Bicycle Day tells the story of the first LSD trip: a psychedelic ride made in 1943 by Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann as he sampled the first-ever LSD. Each year, on April 19th, the world celebrates Bicycle Day as an homage to Hofmann’s chemical mixture that forever changed the world of psychedelics.

If you’d like to see an in-depth look at Blomerth’s book, check out this article at The Guardian.

BRB, we’re going on a ride…