The Radavist

Man, one of these days I’m gonna make it out to the Chris King Gourmet Century. The guys just posted photos from the recent Sonoma County event on the Chris King blog. Head over to see what the Buzz is about.

Photos by Matthew Miller

As a small frame building operation, you often enlist the aid of your friends, in similar sized, adjacent creative companies. Whether it’s a web developer, or in this case, a photographer, knowing the right people can really help get your work out there.

Case in point is Matteo and Aaron Stinner‘s relationship. Matteo shoots all of Stinner’s bikes, with the most recent being his own road. Built with Chris King, SRAM Red and a Thomson cockpit, Aaron and Matteo took the time to concoct the best mixture for paint.

This grey color powder has pearl and flake built in, resulting in a powder that looks like wet paint Something that is not easily captured in photos… yet Matteo did.

See more below!

This machine was a piece of cake for Santa Barbara’s Aaron Stinner. Or rather, the customer was a piece of cake. As a returning client, he knew exactly what he wanted. Something simple, clean and efficient. The only stipulation was it had to have Dura Ace on it and a set of Luxe Wheelworks.

Aaron contacted Justin and they both got to pick out the wheels, leaving the rest of the frame for Aaron to design. The customer even let him pick the color scheme and and all the components.

It just happened to be Stinner’s 100th bike as well and the last bike to be built in his garage. Not a bad way to bid adieu to his hold shop, huh? See more below!

Chris King’s Gourmet Centuries are a delicious combination of gourmet food and a well supported group ride. Each event draws notable chefs to create high quality meals that to compliment a long day of riding. This year Chris King has extended their Gourmet Century offerings outside of Portland and they still have a few tickets available for the Sonoma Gourmet Century this October. Feast your eyes on the video recap to get a taste of what you are in for, tickets available here, at Chris King

Photo by Keith Teket

Finishing lugs isn’t easy, yet people like Chris Bishop make it look so. Check out more photos of Seth’s road bike at the Bishop Flickr!

Cielo is really striving to make better bicycles, not only in craft, but in their use:

“The Sportif is a refined combination of our Sportif Classic and Sportif Racer. With the introduction of our Road Racer we felt that there was too much of an overlap between the Road Racer and Sportif Racer. This overlap gave us the opportunity to redesign our Sportif models to create a bike that combines the best aspects of our Sportif Classic and Sportif Racer into one bike that personifies the Sportif ideal.”

See more of the Sportif at Cielo.

In 1976 Chris King manufactured the first Chris King headset. It was built to medical grade tolerances and set the standard for what a quality bicycle component should be. Since that time bicycles have changed significantly, from 6-speed road bikes and 45-pound fully ridged mountain bikes to sub 10-pound road bikes and 35-pound dowhnill bikes, the design of today’s modern bicycles has kept pace with the development and style of riders. As riders we want our bikes to perform with out hassle so we can get the most out of our riding experience and it was with an eye on the changes in capabilities and material of todays most advanced bicycles that we developed GripLock™ the next generation of our legendary headsets.

GripLock™ has been in use on Chris King’s headsets for quite sometime and has been featured on our InSet family of headsets since their introduction. Also all 1-1/8″ NoThreadSets have been equipped with GripLock™ since 2010. Our press introduction comes about after we were awarded a patent for this advanced system prior to receiving the patent we wanted to keep our messaging about GripLock™ light now that we have patent security we are thrilled to share this feature with the world.

Chris King’s GripLock™ headset retention device uses an isolated wedge system to separate headset bearing adjustment from steerer tube location thus eliminating loose headsets on long travel mountain bikes while simultaneously removing any chance of headset inflicted fatigue on the lightweight carbon steerer tubes found on modern road forks.

GripLock comes stock on all InSets and 1-1/8″ NoThreadSets. GripLock upgrades are available for 1-1/8″ NoThreadSets currently with out a GripLock bearing cap.”

Learn more at Chris King

Is is bad that I see this and I immediately want to replace a component group from a current bike of mine? For the first time (ever?) Chris King is offering Sour Apple anodized components. Yes, that’s NoThreadSets, InSets, ISOs, R45s, BMX, Wheels, Bottom Brackets, Coffee Tampers and Accessories.

If you’re interested, place orders between September 1st, 2014 and May 1st, 2015.
Shipping begins October 1st, 2014.

See more at Chris King.

Things are picking back up here after a week off and what better way to start off the week with another insane bike from Firefly? Their motto “every bike is a show bike” really resonates with this one. See more at the Firefly Flickr!