The Radavist

The first ride on a custom bike is one of the best feelings in the world. At least to cyclists. Every pedal stroke, every turn, you form the beginnings of a new relationship with a machine that will hopefully one day take you to your dream landscape or roadscape.

For Sean from Team Dream Team, his Stinner hardtail has been in a shop since Sea Otter, getting everything dialed in for riding. When your dream bike is the poster child for a company like Mavic, sometimes it comes down to the wire and “the functioning build” is actually more of a “photoshoot-ready build.”

Anyway I’m in LA, stressed from being on the road, shooting photos and trying to maintain sanity but on Monday, I cracked. I needed to ride. I too have a new MTB and I wanted to shake it down some mountains and splash some sand across its powdercoat. Sean and I dipped out on responsibility, in a fuck-work kind of way and pedaled our way up to Brown, to hit one of my favorite descents in the area, El Prieto.

It happened to be at sunset and guess what? It’s LA, the weather was perfect. The dirt was dry, the poison oak was parched but on-trail adjustments were made resulting in a perfect shred sled sess…

For the 2015 Sea Otter Classic this year, Mavic wanted to showcase a few influential designers as a platform to display their newly-branded and redesigned Crossmax SL Pro wheels. They contacted Sean Talkington of Team Dream Team who led them to Aaron Stinner of Stinner Frameworks and Jordan Low Custom Paint.

For Sean, he wanted a do-it-all 29’r hardtail, setup for minimal bike packing and everyday trail riding. For Chad, his 27.5″ hardtail is a straight-forward XC race machine. Once Aaron Stinner knew the silhouette, Sean began designing the frames. The resulting designs were inspired by 90’s era fluoro paint jobs, using Mavic’s signature yellow color as a starting point.

These two bikes were unveiled tonight at a Mavic event in Monterey, California on the first day of Sea Otter. Swing by their booth at #559 to see these beauts in person.

Say, for argument’s sake, that you’re the owner of Henry James Bicycles, the main supplier of True Temper tubing, various lugs and tools. You know just about every framebuilder in the USA and have seen their work in great detail. So when it comes to select a builder to construct your dream bike, who do you call?

For Hank from Henry James, he looked to Santa Barbara’s Stinner Frameworks. When he found out about the beloved Mudfoot cyclocross bikes, he wanted in, but not being on the team, Aaron and painter Jordan Low designed Hank his own paint job.

Arguably my favorite from Low, this bike has pizzaz. With matte and glossy notes, a pearl top coat and yes, stripes with fades, Hank’s bike is a show stopper. SRAM Red 22, Chris King, ENVE and cyclocross tires with minimal tread will take on the fire roads, trails and tracks surrounding Henry James’ facilities in SoCal.

In fact, this bike looks so damn good, I might have to visit them to see it in the wild… If you’re at NAHBS, swing by the Henry James booth at #636 to see it in person.

Each year, NAHBS presents challenges. Both to frame builders and believe it or not, me. As “media” it’s my job to document these bikes and deliver delicious galleries to you, the readers. Now, don’t interpret that in a negative light, because truthfully, it’s my favorite time of year.

Over the past few years, there have been plenty of spaces to photograph bikes, especially outside. This year however, mother nature dropped a blanket of ice and snow on NAHBS’ host city of Louisville, Kentucky. Which presented me with a problem…

Backtracking a bit… For the past few weeks, I’ve been checking out Google street view and photos of the convention center only to realize, I’d spend a lot of time photographing bikes indoors. Luckily, I’ve come prepared and while I don’t think everything is completely dialed in just yet, I’m a lot more confident with my setup.

Tonight, the kind people at Henry James allowed me to experiment some on their two beautiful Stinner Frameworks Disc Cross Bikes. The first one being Ryan from Henry James’ wife’s bike. Jenny’s an avid mountain biker and this will be her first “drop bar” bike. To give her confidence, Ryan decided to go with disc brakes and SRAM’s CX-1 group, the closest thing to her MTB kit. From there, Boyd‘s disc cross rims and Chris King’s components topped off this bike with ease.

As for the paint, there’s only one man who paints bikes like that: Jordan Low. His paint design and execution really brought Aaron from Stinner Frameworks’ craftsmanship… and those colors!

To quote Tom Petty, “the waiting is the hardest part” and waiting for a custom frame isn’t easy by any means. Plenty of frame builders are so busy that their queue is up to over a year out. For Santa Barbara’s Stinner Frameworks, things have been slammed. New clients and a warm winter has kicked his queue into overdrive. Although, that’s not the only reason Aaron is busy. His bikes ain’t bad either!

David placed an order for a straight forward road bike 9 months ago and just picked it up. Since then, Aaron has hired extra help and reduced wait considerably.

I met David today and talked to him about his new bike a bit. Consensus: nothing but stoke! With Stinner’s Select Tubing, the bike will perform out in the hills surrounding the Pedalers Fork in Calabasas, where these photos were taken. David’s component choice round out the crazy sparkle olive paint: Force 22 and ENVE rims, matched with Thomson bits and Ritchey bars.

Ride safe, David!

You know the saying “good things come to those who wait?”, well, the original saying, which was shortened for public consumption was written by a cyclocross racer in Belgium back in the 1850’s. His text, which was later transcribed on his tombstone said “good things come to those who wait all ‘cross season…”

Here we are, at the end of the 2014 season, with all but two races left for the year, States and Nationals. Most of us are at our peak fitness, or maybe we’re already packing on the winter weight, but for whatever reason, suddenly I feel a lot stronger. Those parts that have been waiting for months suddenly have a home and my bike rack in the house, with that empty hook, finally has a mate. This is the peaceful twin, to the black metal steed, my Geekhouse Mudville.

When this project was first announced, I was honored to have Luis and Geoff from Mudfoot think of me to be involved. I can’t help but think Aaron Stinner may have had something to do with it as well. After a few email correspondences, Aaron agreed to ditch the “production geo” and go full custom. He asked which geometry I preferred and to be honest, I was completely satisfied with my Geekhouse, so we stuck to that for the most part, save for a half a º steeper head tube.

Geoff McFetridge is a longtime legend in my book. Growing up skateboarding in the 90’s, there were a handful of artists that always had their finger on the pulse. Everywhere you looked, he was doing illustrations, or projects with brands like Nike – those Vandals were my favorite. About 6 years ago, Geoff, along with some like-minded friends started a team in Los Angeles called Mudfoot.

Years later and the team has grown, racing and riding the roads, courses, tracks and paths of LA and beyond. The team, it turns out, is a highly successful brand as well, planning rides in Los Angeles and selling out instantly of any good or product they list on their site. All of which is designed by Geoff.

Last year, the team looked to Santa Barbara’s Stinner Frameworks to design and fabricate a run of team bikes. They were a smash hit and looked exceptionally good bunnyhopping barriers, or taking beer handups. So when this year’s season drew near, Geoff worked with Aaron once again on designing a new frame.

Even though these frames were completed towards the end of the race season, we all know a cross bike is just at home in a race as it is on dirt and trails. I’ve got a few more races here in Austin, as well as Nationals, all of which I’ll be breaking this beaut in. Once it’s built, I’ll give a full parts break down and a proper photoshoot.

Before it got built up however, I took a few minutes to photograph it in my office. See more in the Gallery!

Golden Saddle Rides: Haunted Hollows Stinner Off-Roadie
Photos and words by Kyle Kelley

I guess this bike would be a little more Halloweeny if it was black and orange, but what the HELL, it’s not!

Stinner Frameworks provided the skeleton, and we installed the costume.

Matt, the owner of this bike knew exactly what he wanted. A no nonsense road bike that could take large enough tires to really get dirty. The Velo Orange Grand Cru brakes are what made his decision to go standard caliber, over a cantilever or Mini-Moto style brake. Besides the Chris King bits, the bike is outfitted with a full Ultegra kit. The ENVE bar and seatpost are keeping Matt comfy on long dirty rides. Be it road or dirt the bike is always outfitted with some skin walls, duh.

I love seeing frame builders gain notoriety through supporting grassroots cycling teams. Not to say that Aaron Stinner wouldn’t be as popular today without building the Mudfoot racing cyclocross frames, but it certainly helped.

During my visit to Santa Barbara during the ATOC, Jeremy Dunn and I spent the afternoon with Aaron, riding bikes, photographing bikes and making a mess at his house.

Aaron is lucky enough to have a decent sized workspace set up in his garage and he’s even luckier to have a great ride just seconds from his front door. As his queue stacks up, Aaron continues to crank out road, cross and MTB frames for customers, who happen to be mostly from California. Many of which are looking to race on a steel frame, made in their home state, rather than buy overseas production.

Stinner Frameworks is still new in the grand scheme of things, but if Aaron continues at the current momentum, he could vary well be the next big thing…