The Radavist

Today we’re pleased to feature Warsaw, Poland-based framebuilders True Love Cycles and their Heart Breaker 29er drop-bar adventure bike. Read on below as Jan from True Love Cycles gives us all the details in both words and some lovely desert photos!

It has been a little over a year since we relocated Chumba Bikes to our new, bigger, and brighter shop space in South Austin. We have yet to host an open house here due to COVID and trying to keep our staff as safe as possible. I approached Vince about doing a 35mm photography project to share our new shop space along with the hands that have moved Chumba forward. To showcase our new shop I shot a month’s worth of photos and compiled this gallery. I’m excited to give you a peep into our world at Chumba!

We already looked at Moots’ new adventure platform, the Routt ESC a while back, in a photo review and as a Beautiful Builds video, but having never seen the Neo-Retro build spec in person, I had to take the build Moots brought to Mid South outside of District Bicycles for some photos. This build kit looks amazing, with mostly silver parts, a bead-blasted ti Moots stem/seatpost, and yeah, that’s a barcon shifter. Let’s check it out below.

When bike events promote inclusivity and welcome all sorts of riders, not just racers, wonderful things happen. If it seems like I’m still glowing from this weekend’s Mid South, well, it’s the truth. Those few days completely recharged over two years of dreary times and meeting Keith re-centered my own struggles by putting them in perspective. In a serendipitous way – ok, I was stalking him – I happened to catch him rolling into the expo area at Mid South on his Scissortail Cycles cargo bike. There’s so much going on with this one so let’s get to it…

Longtime readers of this site are likely very familiar with Megan Dean and her frame building operation Moth Attack. Her builds span the typology gamut – track, ‘cross, road, mountain, etc. – and she’s been doing it for quite some time now. Check out John’s visit to her space in LA back in 2012! Over the years she’s sponsored a cyclocross team, taught frame building, and has assumed ownership of Handlebar Mustache apparel company with her partner Wade. After moving around the western US, Megan and Wade recently settled in Tuscon, AZ. While I was in town for some riding earlier this year, I caught up with Megan in her home studio while she brazed and formed tubes for the gravel/adventure frame she’s building for Wade. Continue reading for an interview with Megan and a detailed look at two bikes in her personal collection: a 90s Klein Attitude commuter and Team Moth Attack CX…

Today we’re pleased to showcase a build from our friend Martin at Second Spin Cycles. Martin works on restoring old mountain, road, and yes, track bikes for his clients by speccing the period-correct components and more.

Slug Bicycles is based in the Bay Area and designs custom titanium frames that are built overseas in China, while also building upon, and growing, their community through supporting organizations including Outride nationally and locally with Trips for Kids Marin. Today we’re featuring Alex‘s custom 29er that he rode last year in Santa Fe. John met up with Alex to shoot this custom Gasser mountain bike and we’re stoked to share it in its bead-blasted glory! Read on below for some words by Alex, along with the full build kit breakdown…

Not Chaotic, But Like Jazz

“We are all building on what Dario left us.”

On August 23rd, 2018 Italian framebuilder, artist, music aficionado, cancer survivor, and living legend Dario Pegoretti unexpectedly passed away. At only 62 years old he had made an indelible mark on the cycling industry. After building uncredited high-end custom frames for names such as Induran, Cipollini and Pantani he started his own company, Pegoretti Cicli. Both a traditionalist and iconoclast Dario never wavered from his love of steel while also constantly playing with innovations in technique, frame design, and painting. In all of these, he was a renowned master.

Waaseyaa: it is bright, is light (as in the day), is radiant; it is sunny

It’s been a hard couple of years. Compounded self-doubt, emotional and physical abuse and income insecurity had me clinging to any bit of life I had within myself. I hadn’t really comprehended how I had gotten in that position in the first place. I remember years ago talking to someone who confided in me that she was in an abusive relationship. I’d been stone-cold in clarity when I told her to leave the fucker. She revealed that it was more complicated than that and, at that moment, I pitied her. Years later, I found myself in the same predicament; I was ashamed both for the lack of strength I had to leave my boyfriend and for my inability to listen to her. I’ve spent the last two years feeling like a swollen shell of myself.

In this episode of “Where Are They Now?” we catch up with the road bike Hubert D’Autremont fabricated for himself to see what it has been up to over the past several years since its last appearance on The Radavist. We even returned to the same photoshoot location.

The Baxter was a blip in a long line of adventure bikes to grace Moots’ 40 years of building frames in the Rockies. Personally, I really liked the Baxter. It held its own in the Steamboat Ramble Ride and tackled our “Disconnected” project in the Inyo Mountains with SRAM but the Baxter had some quirks that needed to be addressed. With the Routt ESC, Moots did just that, abandoning the Baxter model altogether.

In an era where adventure, gravel, touring, and bikepacking bikes are seeing lots of permutation, there’s no time for nostalgia. Brands need to address their bike’s quirks and redesign as needed. That’s where the Routt ESC comes in. It’s like the Baxter and the Routt gravel line had a lovechild, which resulted in a completely new paradigm within the Moots catalog. Let’s check out this new Routt ESC bike in more detail below!