The Radavist

NAHBS is back in Sacramento this year and having only walked around the hall during setup yesterday, I can already tell the convention center is jam-packed with builders and brands from all over the US, yet it’s hard to deny the strong California presence. While Stinner Frameworks is not showing this year, Team Dream and Mavic Cycling are.

Photos by John Watson, words by Sean Talkington of Team Dream Team

Almost exactly a year ago, I flew out to Connecticut to take a tour of Cannondale’s headquarters, grab quick lunch with Lebron James, and discuss the possibility of doing a collaborative bike for Team Dream. To say I’m a cycling fanboy is a massive understatement. This is the kind of idea I have pined over for years.

Chuck from Velo Retro’s Vitus Kas Team Bike Built with Mavic
Words and photos by Sean Talkington, with fact-checking by Chuck of Velo Retro

This Vitus Kas Team bike belongs to Chuck Schmidt from Velo Retro. I first met Chuck when we opened the doors to the original Cub House a few years back and am pretty sure we have seen him every day since. He is a graphic designer/lettering artist by trade and quickly became a shop legend when we discovered that Chuck created the coolest Eddy Merckx logo ever. The guy is also responsible for the lettering on some of the most iconic album covers and posters spanning across multiple generations of the world’s best stuff. Take your pick: Star Wars summer release poster, re-design of Hot Wheels logo, re-design of Road & Track logo, Parliament/Funkadelic, John Denver, Donna Summer, Sports Illustrated 25th Anni cover, fonts for ABC and CBS… It’s wild!

On top of his talents with a pencil, Chuck also happens to have quite a wild collection of bicycles that he slowly trickles into the shop for all of us to drool over. He likes to dangle the fancy bike carrots to keep us chomping at the bit (and it works). The most recent to roll through is this Kas Team bike from the late 80’s. The bike was produced in France by Vitus. Kas was a Spanish-based professional cycling team which was active from 1958 until 1979 and again for three years 1986-8 and they have been sponsoring pro teams since the late 1950’s.

This is something that I never thought I’d be able to say. How about you, anyone reading this been to Mavic‘s world headquarters in Annecy, France? If you have, you know the energy, you know the history, and you know just how much yellow can be crammed into one building. If you haven’t, I did my best to photographically document the place, like you too were getting the same tour I did! When you roll up in a replica Mavic Peugeot 504 Service Course vehicle, they roll out the yellow carpet for you, and they even feed you!

We all have our favorite cyclists or teams from the 80’s and 90’s. For Sean of Team Dream Team, it was the early 90’s and Greg Lemond, specifically that slick Calfee-built Team Z bike. The red to yellow to blue tri-fade has long been a favorite of Sean’s and that became the precedent for this new Stinner Frameworks road bike.

Sean’s already got a race-fit road bike, but he wanted one with a bit more head tube, partially for a less aggressive fit, but also for longevity. He wants to be riding this bike for a long, long time, even after his flexibility has been reduced due to age. Mid-life crisis bike? Maybe, but I commend Sean looking at the long-term lifespan of this bike. It literally is all he could ever want in a road bike and more.

The bike was spec’d with Campagnolo Super Record 11, a NOS Flite saddle, with ENVE parts and Mavic Ksyrium R-SYS SLR wheels and built by the capable hands at Golden Saddle Cyclery. If you’re going to NAHBS, look for it there, and expect a photoshoot of this bike and the original Team Z Calfee in the near future.

I would like you to close your eyes for a brief moment and imagine yourself sitting at home on a beautiful Summer evening and… oh wait, you can’t really read this with your eyes closed now can you. Let’s try this again. So, now that I have already wasted this much of your time, maybe just imagine (with your eyes open this time) that you get a call from someone asking if you would like to visit the Tour de France and ride your bike for a few weeks with “American Cyclocross Legend Tim Johnson” (he prefers to be called that to just plain old “Tim”.) Now imagine that while chasing the TdF you will also be traveling through the French countryside in a fully restored vintage Mavic Service Course Vehicle from 1974. Now please imagine that you have never been to the Tour de France but you have dreamed about it for years and now someone is offering you a Willy Wonka sized golden ticket in the form of an all expense paid trip. Mavic asked us to fly into France around the 8th Stage and create some videos for social media purposes. The goal was to ride with Go Pro Cameras and capture the energy of the tour to make 4-5 videos in a little over a week. That meant we would need a real life video editor, so I made a call to my buddy Ace Carretero and the trifecta was complete!