The Radavist

Today’s Reportage shines a light on a movement that has been a ray of light in this tumultuous year. The LA Bike Academy is getting the youth of the greater Los Angeles area stoked on bikes, using our favorite two-wheeled transport as a vessel for learning real-life skills. We’re pleased beyond words to share the work of Alonso Tal (photos) and Michael Cedeño (video) today with you and to use this post to announce LABA’s partnership with Easton Cycling for 2021…

Recently, the Navajo Nation reinstated a 57-hour weekend lockdown due to the spikes in COVID in several communities. This put a hold on our first official Dzil Ta’ah Adventures youth bikepacking series outing in Nazlini, which was originally slated for September 26th. Once the lockdown is lifted, which we hope will be soon, we will proceed as planned with the Dine Composite participants. With the postponement of our first trip, we felt like this was an opportunity to leverage the extra time and continue to shape our mentorship program and build more of my team’s dexterity with an outing in John’s Canyon, Utah, at the southwestern base of Cedar Mesa.

Dzil ta’ah Adventures LLC was created to offer sustainable cultural experiences in the backcountry via bikes and bike packing with most of the commercial tour proceeds helping to build a bikepack community on the Navajo Nation. Whether it be creating routes or mentoring native youth.

Our year to launch was spring 2020. The COVID pandemic resulted in all non-essential businesses being shut down including the Navajo Parks and Recreation department. Parks and Rec are the issuing authority for permits.

Traveling by bike is inspiring and stimulating. From the saddle, you have time to think and dream. It’s dynamic. Pushing the pedals pumps blood. You breathe more air. you are enveloped in nature. There is so much to experience and interpret. If you’re riding with friends, you share ideas and maybe you build dreams together– layers of big ideas, feelings, details, reality, time, reflection and how you can really pull it all off. A great idea is very different from execution. You don’t have to be the best or the most organized to do something good. And you don’t have to know every possible outcome from the start. Adventure is stepping into the unknown. It’s scary and exciting and always requires more work than you really want to put in, but you follow through anyway because you have guts and you care.

In the spring of 2017, while riding the Baja Divide, Cait Rodriguez and I hatched the idea for Anchorage GRIT.

Years ago when I first met Trevor, he came to a photography show I was showing at and without much on an introduction related to me a story of how stoked he was to be a counselor at a camp for kids learning to ride mountain bikes. Ever since then I’ve always wanted to check out what he was jabbering about way back when. Bikes, cool. Kids on bikes, even cooler. Kids on bikes learning how to explore on bikes and have water fights, the coolest…

Words by Kyle von Hoetzendorff, photos by Gritchelle Fallesgon, Dan Sharp, Lauren Bell, Dylan VanWeelden

I raced mountain bikes as a teenager. It was great, super fun. And I am here now, in this space, in your mind, in a large part because that experience set in motion a long series of events. You get it. Racing or even riding hasn’t been a constant in my life and back then, even before the allure of anodized parts and the thrilling rush of a fast descent was ambushed and summarily executed by the thrumming belligerence of teenage hormones I knew a lot went into racing. There was the obvious, the training and the expense; from equipment to entry fees, cycling is definitely not frisbee cheap.

On Sunday, May 19th, I attended the National Interscholastic Cycling Association’s California State Championship mountain bike races in Tehachapi, California. I’m no stranger to a bike race but this was my first time seeing the for high school kids-only mountain bike races, a phenomenon I’ve been aware of since the mid-2000s. The weekend was an illuminating moment, where I was reminded of the joy of racing mountain bikes, and where I witnessed hundreds of kids fiercely battling each other during competition and alternately giving themselves in support of their teammates as well as other competitors. Sunday was full of tears, hugs, smiles, frustration, and joy.