The Radavist

Hardtails. Antiquated examples of mountain bike technology to some but to others, they’re liberated and simplified machines. Each year, I plan on riding a full suspension in Downieville, yet I always end up bringing my hardtail for one reason or another so this year, I took a look at just some of the bikes that were rolling around this Gold Rush town.

[WARNING – please read with enunciations of the Queen’s English spoken with a harsh American accent leached with dry monotone and finished with a slight southern drawl.]

[NOTE – All persons are mixed and mashed conglomerations of friends masked by pseudonyms as to respect their identities.]

[FICTION –It actually may be close enough to nonfiction. Every tale is drenched with truth, maybe not all the truths belong to me, I might not even be the eyes telling this tale.]

With another eight to nine-hour drive ahead of me, this time solo because the polluting toots of my automobile fill me with joy—just kidding, hell, felt like an asshole—I had to figure out a way to fuck with my perception of time in order to maintain some level of sanity. Although being a fellow cyclist, y’all get that the bar is set real low when it comes to sanity. So, to risk sounding like a surface-wannabe-cultured-erudite, I tried hooking myself onto classical music with this grandiose nisus of increasing my attention span. Hear me out: not only would being able to melt into a forty-five-minute score enable me to complete long intervals with ease but enduring an entire classical score would help me get through the long drives to get to the long and arduous races those said and absolutely supposed intervals would prepare one for. Leave it all on the trail and go baroque.

One year and a week ago, a vehicle’s faulty catalytic converter ignited roadside vegetation igniting a blaze that would consume 96,901 acres of Sierra and Sequoia National Forest, eventually closing Yosemite for the first time in the National Park’s history. This was the first “big” fire of the indomitable 2018 fire season that torched the Western U.S. and serving as an unwelcome backdrop to this 12-minute major motion picture.

Words by Tenzin Namdol, photos by Ronnie Romance

I was looking at everyone’s legs. The group of 13 included professional and semi professional racers, life-long athletes focused specifically on their relationship to the bicycle. There aren’t six packs; there’s, like, eight to ten pacs. Some even have muscular faces! How is that even possible to accomplish? Seeing my own soft animal body as lesser than their impressive builds. The grass kept getting greener and greener on the other side of my eyeballs and I felt myself getting smaller and smaller. Where in my body is this discomfort living? I had three days and the grand views around beautiful Big Sur to find the site of where this discomfort lived in my body. Aside from physical discomfort from physical exertion, I came up empty. Instead, I found an interstice where feelings of awe grew and that became my saving grace.

Introduction: We pinged Erin Lamb to write about her experience at this year’s Lost & Found with John’s experience told through the gallery captions. We’re trying new models for event Reportage, so please let us know what you think in the comments! Enjoy!

I lost my wallet a couple of weeks ago, and I’m not searching to find Jesus. I’m pretty sure the wallet fell out of my purse in a parking lot when I pulled some shit out to throw into the back seat. And, the Jesus thing, just not interested. If you’re looking for a feel-good story about stumbling upon the light, then maybe this isn’t for you. This is more of a coming-of-age gravel riding tale dispatched straight from a middle of the pack 65-miler on the Sierra Buttes’ Lost & Found.

BTCHN’ Bikes, the latest chapter in Chico Framebuilding
Photos and words by California Travis

The small college town of Chico, California has been home to a few very notable framebuilders over the years. Jeff Lindsay starting out building road bikes is 1972, and was one of the first pioneers to create mountain bikes under the name Mountain Goat in 1981. Bob Seals (inventor of the Klean Kanteen and Cool Tool amongst other things) took modern geometry and quality materials, combined them with classic curvy steel cruiser aesthetics and founded Retrotec Bicycles in 1992. Mitch Pryor of MAP Bicycles took custom randonneuring frames to the next level of meticulous perfection in Chico and then Paradise.

Wow. Just wow. I don’t think I’ve ever felt this great – emotionally, not physically – after coming back from a tradeshow. It’s been three years since the last time I went to the Sea Otter Classic in Monterey, California. In years past, it felt like a flat-brimmed, Monster Energy, bro fest and honestly, it was kind of overwhelming. Don’t get me wrong, that is a broad stereotype and isn’t fair, but I’m not the only one who had that perception. This year, however, the ‘Otter felt more diverse, more inclusive, albeit with a few hiccups – like the racing announcer, and that Canadian company with the ‘booth babes’ wearing bikinis to sell their cheap sunglasses, but overall, I was impressed at how much Sea Otter has improved.

We’ll go into this more in-depth later, with an article by contributor Erin Lamb coming shortly, so right now let’s dive into the tradeshow itself!

The world of gravel racing is still very foreign to me. At least the competitive side of things, yet I find myself getting roped into these races, namely the ones where they boast features like timed sections. These enduro-inspired gravel races, like Grinduro, adopt this format in hopes that people will hang out and make the event more casual, rather than an all-out battle for who crosses the finish line. In events like Grinduro, this works perfectly, keeping the pace party-level and the conversations lively. This party vibe isn’t easy to cultivate. You’ve got to convince people it isn’t worth charging ahead, stringing the group out.

So maybe that’s why I felt compelled to try out the Eroica California’s Nova race. It boasted timed segments, chiller riding vibes, and I have ridden in the area, twice before, as well as the Eroica California’s course, back when it began and ended in Paso Robles. With this year’s event starting in the sleepy town of Cambria, it surely would be one to remember. Oh, and it was.

Riding Through What Remains
Words and Photos by California Travis

It’s been one month since that morning but it feels like so much longer, and the ruins look like they’ve been rusting in the elements for years. On November 8th around 7:30am I started a group text about a Thanksgiving Day ride and by 8am it had turned into people sharing photos of a smoke plume southeast of Chico that looked rather ominous. I took my own photos on my ride to work at PAUL Comp, because with half the sky and the rising sun being blocked by thick black smoke, the effect was very dramatic. Living in Norcal, we’ve gotten pretty used to fires, so didn’t think too much of it beyond how cold and dark it was with the sun blocked out most of the morning. When our accountant showed up to work from Paradise looking frazzled saying there was an evacuation order, things started getting very intense very fast. It hadn’t rained at all since spring and the area was so dry we had to use a cement drill to put stakes in the ground for our cyclocross race the week before. With high winds, the fire was spreading extremely fast. I texted my mother and stepdad who lived in Paradise to check on them. They had headed down the hill to Chico for work and were halfway down the hill when they got the evacuation order, so by then, it was too late to turn around and grab any valuables or photo albums.

It’s no secret that California is home to some exceptional bike riding. It doesn’t matter if you’re a roadie, a gravel grinder, or a mountain bike park rat, there’s something for everyone in the Golden State. My romping grounds of choice happen to be a quick, three-hour drive from my home in Los Angeles. After catching up on work Thursday morning, I left my home and headed north on the 395 to Lone Pine, California where I’d spend the next two days riding my newly retrofit Firefly. Kyle and I rode these roads last year and I spent the whole summer planning a return.

Another super clean flat bar all-road, or “hybrid” bike on display at Grinduro was this steel Caletti Scrambler, painted in a beautiful silver, adorned with the California Grizzly geometric graphic, topped off with purple anodized bits. Bikes like this really make sense for an event like Grinduro, where the washboarded roads can provide a challenging grip for drop bars, which are prone to slipping. It might be a matter of preference, but flat bar ‘cross and all-road bikes really look mean!

If you’d like to know more about the Caletti Scrambler, check out our review from last year!

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Follow Caletti Cycles on Instagram and Grinduro on Instagram.