The Radavist

You might get tired of us thanking you for your time, thoughts, support, and comments each and every year but get used to it! We had a great year and from all of us here at the Radavist, we wish you a Happy Holidays! You might have noticed that we didn’t pull together a “Top 10 Products” post because we don’t want to promote consumerism during this time of year.

We spend so much time scouring the internet for cycling products, reviewing products, and talking about products that we feel like for a few weeks, we should focus on our communities, our families, our friends, and those in need. If you’re able to, enjoy some time on your bike, and if you can’t ride over the holidays, check out our Rides category to inspire. Daniel’s got a great post up today that you should check out!

Most importantly, enjoy this time with your loved ones and we’ll see you periodically through the New Year, when we’ll post our Year-In-Review!

As we roll into the New Year and since we’re always trying to make this website a better place, so all y’all enjoy browsing its galleries, we wanted to ask you, the readers, what you’d like to see more of? I feel like every year, we ask this and this year, we tried to follow through on many of your concerns.

So please take a minute to chime in the comments with what you’d like to see more of? Be it Shop Visits with builders or bike shops, more affordable bike reviews, more daily riders bikes, rides, landscapes, reviews… anything. Please don’t feel coy, let us know so we can continue to make this site better!

After the New Year, we’ll be looking at the year in review posts and I can already tell it’s going to be the best yet!

We’ve been working hard to keep on top of shipping your webshop orders all month but today’s shipment batch is the last that can still make it to you in time for Christmas, although there are no guarantees! Thanks for being patient over the past few weeks, it’s been a busy time for our webshop! We’ll be shipping our final pre-Christmas orders at 12 noon PST today! All orders placed after 12 noon PST will not be shipped until next week!

When Grant Blakeman took over the arduous task of updating the Radavist, the only cycling site that posts a high-res gallery each and every day, we both knew it would be an undertaking that would take a long time. While most of the updates in recent months have been admin/backend, we finally rolled out a massive one, which will help the UI/UX roll more smoothly.

I’ll cut to the chase. Thumbnails! When it comes to big 100+ image galleries, having all the time in the world to scroll is nice but let’s be honest, most of you are at work when you browse the site, so being able to look through the gallery in thumbnail form lets you get to the meat of the post. This new feature lets you scroll through a mini version of the gallery with ease and jump right in. Or skip back through a few photos once you’re in the gallery. Take note the small grid in the upper left-hand corner of the screen. This applies to both the mobile and desktop experiences.

Lastly, we’ve added a “Click to View Gallery” hover on the mobile and desktop version of the site. This is a sure-fire way to show you that there’s more to the post than just the in-line images. We thought the “Reportage” category hierarchy was enough but your feedback directed us to more direct labeling of the galleries.

There’s also one that snuck in a week or two ago. If you’re on a desktop or mobile and would like to see an in-line image fullscreen, simply click on the image now to have it pop in.

We’ve had a great year at the site and we’d like to thank each and every one of you for visiting, commenting, and making this feel like a family. Next week we’ll be looking at our year-in-review posts, so stay tuned and thanks for your patience!

Our friends at Education First Pro Cycling, aka that cool team in pink, sent over a whole grip of images shot by Jordan Haggard from their team camp in Arkansas this past weekend. We were supposed to head out to experience this first hand but had prior engagements. So, without further adieu, check it all out below!

Where did you ride? With whom? Did you get caught in some snow? We’d like to open up the comment section to any photos you took of your long weekend rides and we’ll pick some winners to send some care packages to. You’ve got all week to do so! We’ll look at the number of “up votes” each post gets to decide on some winners.

The WTF Bikexplorers have expanded their mission for the forthcoming 2020 calendar year. Within the list of new programs are a new Gravel Team and a fresh podcast, dubbed Within & Without. Check out the details below.

Photo by Brian Vernor

Caché, one of the Golden Saddle Cyclery homies, is a Guatemala native, who grew up in Los Angeles. In this Bike Mag online article, he goes over his past, present, and future of riding and painting. I highly recommend this piece as it points to the importance of accessibility of bikes for inner-city kids! As to why he paints chickens…

“I’d read a book by Carlos Castaneda called ‘The Teachings of Don Juan,’ and he talks about ‘energy vampires’ that feed off our human energy and awareness, saying we’re like chickens being reared for the consumption of others,” Caché explains. “When I first decided to paint the chickens, it was more of an observation of the human condition. We are in our own coops, controlled by worry and fear.”

Check out this article at Bike Mag!

Yesterday I had the pleasure of accepting an invitation put out by the Mojave Desert Land Trust to partake in a 45-minute long flight from Palm Springs, across the Sand to Snow National Monument, across the Morongo Canyon Preserve, through Joshua Tree National Park, and back across the Little San Bernardino Mountains into Palm Springs on a Ecoflight single-engine Cessna 210…

Got an adventure up your sleeve? Or a creative way to do projects? Or perhaps you just really love Kona. If you’ve ever wanted to be a Kona Ambassador, now is your chance. The brand has just posted their call for entries to be a 2020 Kona ambassador. Head to the Kona Blog to see how you can enter…

I can’t come close to Sean’s words here, so apologies for the copy + paste. He’s running a silent auction on his 2019 NAHBS bike to raise money for his friend Phoenix:

“Heart-to-heart coming at ya. I have a friend who needs some help. His name is Phoenix. He is seven years old. He has cancer. And though I will continue to do what I can to help Phoenix, his Mom, Dad and three siblings; it will never feel like enough. Ever. So I will start this late Tuesday evening by offering my personal Mtn Cruiser, number 1/10, to anyone willing to do the right thing. One of you can take this machine home, built originally for the North American Hand-built Bicycle Show. Because I would rather have Phoenix than a million bicycles. And I am otherwise unable to help him financially. I will post images of this bike through next week, with info on its build and geometry. With a story on the why and how and what’s. And if you want to help an amazing seven year old with the fight of his life, and take this one-of-a-kind bicycle home as a bonus, please, message me with questions and/or your bid – as I’m selling the OG Mtn Coaster ‘Silent Auction’ style. Highest bidder gets the bike, some good karma and a big thank you from me. Every penny you bid goes to Phoenix. We all do hard things, and endure hardship. But at seven? This is so heavy. And feels so unfair. If you feel the urge to help otherwise, please click the go fund me link in our profile. Thank you for reading. Stay human.”

“I’m accepting silent auctions style bids. Send your bid to me via email OR DM here on IG (I DO NOT check Facebook!). Every dollar goes straight to Pheonix’s Cancer Fund (see my previous post on 9/25)- If you win, you will simply send funds direct to his Go Fund Me page (link in bio). I will cover shipping costs and the bike will be sent directly to you, the winning bidder.”

You can email Sean or DM Oddity Cycles to place a bid. All funds will be sent to Phoenix’s Go Fund Me.

As Ronnie and I were shoving a banana down his Yingfa swimsuit, we joked that we couldn’t wait to see what Gravel Tryhard would think of our shoot. Man, did she deliver!

QBP is back at it with another year of their Bike Mechanic Scholarships:

“The QBP Bike Mechanic Scholarship is dedicated to increasing gender diversity within the bike industry. Funded by QBP and brand partners, scholarship recipients attend the United Bicycle Institute’s 2-week Professional Repair and Shop Operation class in Oregon or Barnett Bicycle Institute’s Professional Bicycle Service Course in Colorado.

Equipped with the expertise and connections gained from this class, scholarship recipients can affect even greater change in their communities, making bikekind a more inclusive place for us all. Through hands-on learning, component-by-component study, and formal lecture, scholarship recipients come away with the skills to advance their careers in the bike industry, gain advanced mechanical knowledge, and deepen their bike industry network.

Thanks to the success of past years and the generous support of our sponsors, this year we’re excited to send 32 bike mechanics on this adventure.”

See more and apply today at QBP!

It’s that time of year again! We’re in Quincy once again for Grinduro as autumn settles over the Lost Sierra. While the forecast doesn’t look so great for tomorrow, with rain and cold temperatures, today has been bright and sunny.

Stay tuned for our coverage, which will include Team Brooks’ effort at the event.

Our goal with the webshop is to always have staple products in stock and everyone loves the Olive Drab bottles, so when they sold out last month, we got a lot of requests for a restock alert. Well, here ya go. They’re back in stock.

It feels like just a few months ago I was sitting at my keyboard, on the fence about opening up to a very vulnerable subject and sharing the hardest struggle of my adult life. Yet, here we are, two full years later and I’ve got updates to what was and still is the most difficult thing I’ve ever done.

As cyclists, we’re used to overcoming struggles. Be it training for a race, making it up a steep climb, or clearing a rock garden, and to be honest, I don’t know if I would have been able to quit drinking if it weren’t for cycling. Yet, the very thing that taught me perseverance is also heavily laden with alcohol. It’s a double-edged sword, but one I’m fairly comfortable opening up to you about.