The Radavist

While kicking around his shop one afternoon, I shot two of his recent builds, this one and Sarah Swallow’s Pinion gearbox dirt tourer. Expect that next week!

It doesn’t matter what you’re designing, the best products come from direct experience, and take more than one iteration to get right. This persistence is part of the process for Hubert from Madrean. He wants to design and develop a few production frames, to be made in house at his shop in Tucson. The first is this rigid mountain touring bike. Complete with internal routing for a dynamo hub, 1x clearance, front and rear bag support racks and if you ask nicely, maybe even a set of those bars, although that’s probably unlikely. Bars are a real pain to make!

Hubert coated the bike with a blackened steel treatment and some rattle can at a few key areas. He likes the Fabio’s Chest bags by Ultra Romance and Swift Industries and had a custom Rogue Panda bag made for the front triangle.

Bikes like this have such a presence in space. They command your attention and are full of details. I hope you enjoy viewing this as much as I did shooting it! Regarding price, availability and other details essential to purchasing, hold tight. We’ll post updates here as events warrant.

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Mattia from Legor Cicli Made this Beautiful Paganotti Classic Road
Photos and words by Kyle Kelley

I know you all of heard of Legor Cicli before, but I’m guessing you all haven’t heard of Paganotti. Well, Paganotti is the embodiment of all the Italian masters who taught Mattia Paganotti how to build. Gino Lissignoli, Pietro Serena, Tiziano Zullo, and Dario Pegoretti all played a very special role in the fabrication of this bike. Very few frame builders can say they’ve studied with a master, much less multiple masters. Even fewer can say they’re a direct link to their master’s style and craft, but this is something Mattia says with confidence. If you have ever rode one of Mattia’s bike you know he’s telling the truth.

We shoot a lot of bikes here on the Radavist. A lot. From my estimates, including tradeshows, and events like the Chris King Open House, or the Moots’ Employee Bikes, and even the Speedvagen Build Off, we shot 220 or so bikes in 2018. That’s a lot of bikes. A lot of details. A lot of component selection, build styles, and uses. From road, to mountain, and everything in between, noting the permutations that exist in this ever-so-special era in the cycling industry, I really feel like we’ve shown you just about everything you could see this year.

Out of those 220 bikes, I looked at the data in the form of traffic metrics, social chatter, and comments to pick the Top 10 Beautiful Bicycles of 2018. While many bikes had a lot of comments, some had higher traffic or social media shares. Compiling all the numbers, a very compelling list was formed. Not included in this lot are bike reviews, of which Morgan’s review of the Midnight Special and Kyle’s review of his Chubby Cosmic Stallion took the highest metrics from all others on this list. I guess they’re in a league of their own!

At any rate, check out the complete Top 10 Beautiful Bicycles of 2018, in no particular order, below!

Rodeo Labs Spork 2.0 Builder Series: Alchemy Custom All-Road
Photos by Me Fitzgerald words by Stephen Fitzgerald

When you work for a custom builder like Alchemy it must be quite a thing to stare at a blank sheet of paper and decide what sort of bike you want to create for yourself. I guess that’s why Drew went custom-custom with this bike. This Alchemy gravel bike most closely resembles the company’s ‘Chiron’ model, but there is nothing stock about it. Geometry, tubing, cable management, and even paint design were all worked over and personalized.

Rodeo Labs Spork 2.0 Builder Series: Pachyderm Singlespeed
Words by Stephen Fitzgerald and photos by Daniel Schaumann

The original Rodeo Labs Spork 1.0 was a fork that we started developing for our bikes in 2014. At the time nobody was making a fork that mixed carbon, clearance, flat mounts, rack mounts, and through axles in the way that we wanted. Not knowing any better we just decided to create it for ourselves.

The Road to Delcie’s Cup Cake
Words and Photos by Spencer Harding

This past summer I was lucky enough to meet to some truly amazing people in Minneapolis.  I noticed a common thread connecting these wonderful humans. It all culminated in getting to ride with Delcie on her über custom Cup Cake…

Peacock Groove

Erik Noren is a bit of mythical beast in the world of framebuilding. His bikes are outlandish, sparkly, and painstakingly detailed. With his newer venture, Cake Bikes, he seeks to build proportionally-sized, high-performance bikes for shorter riders. Cake partnered with Minneapolis Wheel masters HED cycling to offer fat-bikes built around a 24 x 4” platform and has since moved into building cross and gravel/adventure bikes built around a 650b platform, and some yet smaller wheeled bikes which we will get to at the end.  While the bikes’ geometries are focused on smaller humans regardless of gender, the cake race and adventure team is compromised entirely of women/trans/femme/non-binary riders.

Plante Cycles is a small framebuilding operation in Rancho Cucamonga. Stephen Plante builds each frame in his home garage, at the base of the San Gabriel mountains, where he tests out the designs for each model. At the Cub House’s Bike Show and Swap this year, Stephen brought two bikes, one of which I’ve been meaning to shoot photos of.

Inside / Out at Horse Cycles

Photos by Ian Matteson, words by Kevin McClelland from ENVE

The Idea for this bike and trip transpired from a casual conversation at NAHBS in Hartford.  I approached Thomas from Horse Cycles at his stunning booth filled with some of my favorite bikes at the the show and we began talking about the yet to be released ENVE Gravel Fork and Gravel Bar. Thomas quickly started to show me photos of his freshly built cabin in Upstate New York surrounded by a beautiful landscape littered with some amazing gravel roads. That was the moment I knew I wanted to get out to New York for some riding with him and I knew I wanted it to be on a Horse Frame.

Philly Bike Expo 2018: Coast Cycles Randonneur
Photos and words by Jarrod Bunk

Brooklyn’s Johnny Coast knows a thing or two about traditional randonneuring frames, as evident in this year’s Philly Bike Expo bike. Thin lugs, light tubing, custom stem, and all the appropriate accouterment. Built from Tange lightweight tubing, Johnny designed this bike to be light and responsive, offering a lively feel.

Coast Cycles offers bikes like this, as well as touring bikes, city bikes, mixte, road bikes, and even track bikes.

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2018 Philly Bike Expo: Chapman Cycles Bi-laminate Light Road Bike
Photos and words by Jarrod Bunk

The marriage of working with metal and crafting bicycles has kept Brian Chapman on their quest to create the best integrated-bicycle that they can. I feel like Brian’s love for their craft really shines through with this light, bi-laminate road bike.  Clever details such as the Velogical rim dynamo and the integration of the Campagnolo downtube shifter to apply or remove it from the rim really stood out to me.  

With the construction of the frame, fork, rack, and stem all in-house Chapman can create a bicycle with details that carry over throughout the entire build, such as the quill-stem that flows into the headtube.  A build of mostly Campagnolo Athena with Grand Bois Chouette center pull brakes to clear the 32c tires and fenders ensures that this bike can roll in all weather. The culmination of materials, labor, and talent are apparent, and they really pop under natural light.

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2018 Philly Bike Expo: Engin Cycles All Road Rocket
Photos and words by Jarrod Bunk

Drew over at Engin is a bit of a problem solver, he also happens to be a machinist as well as a frame builder creating solutions such as a 5bolt CNC Spider allows for easy access to ring swaps that the stock configuration didn’t allow, a CNC two-piece yoke that is welded together to add clearance for both 700x47c tires and a 34/50 double crank, even though this bike is built as a 1x.  

The left shifter is converted to actuate the dropper post, something that Engin thinks is going to be the next big thing to bridge the gap between an all-road bike and the MTB.  With a build of Whisky Parts Co No9 rims and fork, White Industries hubs, and a full SRAM Force 1x kit, this bike surely blurs the lines of a fast road bike that still rips off road.

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