The Radavist

While we understand the competitive nature of bikepacking races and fastest-known time attempts and records, we still love the chiller pace of bicycle touring and a different kind of FKT. Kody and company clearly set the record for the Funnest Known Time on the White Rim!

Check out a few stills from this video below.

All Bodies on Bikes, a film by Shimano just dropped this morning:

Kailey Kornhauser and Marley Blonsky are bike riders on a mission – a mission to change the perception of who rides bikes. All Bodies on Bikes, a Shimano Originals film, follows Kailey and Marley on a two-day bikepacking trip along the Corvallis to Coast Trail, a 65-mile route through the gorgeous Oregon Coast Range. The pair, who both self-identify as fat, bond over their love of bicycle adventure and their shared desire to build a more welcoming and diverse cycling community.

“Nobody was talking about size inclusion or what it’s like to be a fat person who rides bikes,” Marley explains. “We realized we could contribute to this and we could make a difference. We want people to feel empowered that they can ride a bike wherever they want to go.”

Enjoy!

This is the second of a two-part series on how human-caused climate change is affecting the cycling experience, why we as cyclists should care about those impacts, and what we can do as individuals and as a community to combat those impacts. Part I of this series connected cyclists to a few examples of the realities of climate change, and Part II here outlines what changes we as cyclists and the cycling community can make to improve the future of our pursuit in a changing climate. If you only have 5 minutes, jump to the end of this article to read the action items toolbox to quickly learn more about what you can do to make a difference…

This video documents a couple on a road tour through southwest Colorado and southern Utah in 1982. That’s prior to the internet, mobile phones, and GoPro.  All images within were captured on Kodachrome slide film and were just recently scanned and uploaded to YouTube. Videos like this have all the bicycle touring vibes!

‘Explore your Boundaries‘ was inspired by encouraging people to see familiar and local areas in unfamiliar ways, showing how great adventures can happen from your own front door. Filmed on a newly created gravel bike route, which follows the local authority boundary of the City of Edinburgh, and additional locations close to the Scottish Capital during January and February 2021, the short documentary from Markus Stitz and Mark Beaumont highlights the beauty and challenges of exploring places on two wheels in snow and ice.

Bombtrack’s rider Gaëlle takes on touring in the winter for the latest video in their series:

“In February 2020, I spent a month cycling accross frozen lake Baikal. The cold, the ice and the snow drew me there. I can’t explain precisely why I enjoy being in these landscapes so much but I feel comfortable in these wintery places – despite the cold, the harshness and the solitude. I love the silence, the muffled sounds, the light, the seeming steadiness that I find very soothing.”

Our friends at Blackburn pulled together an excellent video with Erick Cedeño, aka Bicycle Nomad, along with Brian Vernor.

“I’m not from here. I’m not from there. I’m from everywhere. And I belong there.” – Erick Cedeño

Blackburn ambassador Bicycle Nomad, aka Erick Cedeño, is a nomad in the truest sense of the word. Long a traveler, Erick chose the bicycle to satiate his curiosity about the world around him. The bicycle continues to be his medium to inspire others to push themselves and make their world a little smaller.

What a great video of a great human.

This film dives into Stratton Matteson‘s personal journey of shifting away from fossil fuel-powered transportation and opting for a pedal-powered pursuit of his passion for split-boarding. It’s a story of adventure and a call to action: How can we shift our lives *now* to preserve a livable planet for ourselves and future generations? Through biking to board he finds a way to continue doing what he loves while feeling integral in his actions.

Tailfin‘s unique rear rack setup looks more like a Tubus Tara system for your rear triangle than a traditional touring rack. Their carbon option has been quite popular and they just announced some crucial updates to their aluminum arch design, as well as a universal thru-axle, and much more. Read their full press-release below on this entire product drop.

Aren’t familiar with the Rough Stuff Fellowship? Well, here’s a good introduction. After a successful Vol. 1 book, featuring impressive feats of bicycle touring photos and stories, the RSF has launched a Vol. 2 on Kickstarter…

Rapha presents an Icelandic excursion:

“I’ve ridden many thousands of miles on my bike all these years and I can’t say I regret anything… There were rough times but also good times. You just know it’s a challenge that you’ve got to overcome.”

We all have roads that lodge in our mind, routes we want to take. One such route is across the Sprengisandur, an uninhabited highland plateau crowned by an 826-metre pass in the central ranges of Iceland.

Plenty have tried to cross, and plenty have failed. In 2015, Rapha sent filmmaker George Marshall and framebuilder Tom Donhou to attempt the crossing. But after days of high winds, the pair were forced to stop. Four years later, George returned to lead another group across the 170 miles between the end of the tarmac near Reykjavik and the northern stronghold town of Akureyri. But they were far from being the first to make the crossing.

Over 60 years before, Ron Bartle joined Dick Phillips, Bernard Heath and their guide Raymond Bottomley for the first-ever unsupported ride across the Sprengisandur. They spent ten days in the wilderness, crossing rivers in inflatable dinghies and pushing their bikes for miles over boulder fields until they finally reached the first farmstead in the north.

Now in his mid-eighties and still an avid cyclist, Ron has recounted the story of his unexpected Icelandic adventure. And at a time when many of us cannot ride the roads lodged in our minds, he reminds us that they’ll still be there this year and the next.

We embedded this feature in today’s Reportage but are posting it in our Radar as well…

Cyclist Erik Mathy rides from San Francisco to Tucson along the historic Butterfield Overland Trail. Lugging his large-format camera, handmade ‘dollar bill’ lenses, and shooting on X-Ray film, Erik documents his interactions with a variety of people — from artists and activists to the border patrol — as he explores the subject of migration against the landscape of a politically divided American southwest.