The Radavist

I’ve learned something over the years. Balance. Work hard, relax hard. Shoot photos of bikes, shoot photos of nature. Ride a lot, hike a lot. When your hobby, passion and love is also your job, establishing this balance is of the utmost importance. So when NAHBS rolls around each year, I try to have an exit strategy…

This time of year, as warm days are fading, timing is crucial for road trips. As Interbike approached, Mission Workshop / Acre had discussed doing a bit of a photo story with Golden Saddle Cyclery, myself and Sean from Team Dream, who would bring his 1970 VW bus along. We’d shoot instant film from the Impossible Project and document the journey.

Like all trips, things don’t adhere to any schedule, or plan, or route. We knew what we wanted to do and ensured we’d get in at least one ride – more on that later. Since the van was going into the Mission / Acre booth, we had to be in town this morning. After a few hiccups, we made it and most importantly, so did the van with all our stuff!

I’ll have photos from us shredding in the Sequoias shortly, but for now, let’s look at some end of summer car camping photos. Road tripping with three of your friends is the best.

Ok. Seriously. Now it’s a vacation. Nothing against hanging in cities but it’s damn stressful trying to get around and see all your best buddies. Well, a different kind of stress, especially when compared to driving with the windows down and music blasting down some rad gravel road with no one in sight. That’s stressful.

Lauren and I spent the day on a route I planned out to take us from Portland to the 101, without getting on any major highways. It ruled. Then, a wreck happened on the 101 and we had to take a 50 mile detour. That didn’t rule. Getting to eat at the Local Ocean in Newport, Oregon made up for it though.

I didn’t shoot a lot of digital today, because I’m shooting medium format, but I did get a little trigger happy at a nice little beach spot before we called it a night.

Check out some in the Gallery!

Let’s see, where were we? Oh yeah. We left off with the Blackburn Rangers at the top of Granite Mountain – 7,000′ – in the Prescott National Forest. Camp was set up, we consumed calories, sat around a propane campfire and after we killed all the liquor, we settled in for the evening. The weather report called for a 60% chance of rain and temps in the low 40’s. All was well, right? Wrong…

We had a busy day ahead of us. One filled with supplying the Whiskey Off Road racers with bacon and high fives. The plan was to descend to around 4,000′ at a site right before the last climb of the day and before a stretch of technical 1-track. From there, we’d blast music and shove bacon down the gullet of any hungry racer. My job for the day was to document all the fun…

Check out the full day’s Reportage from the Whiskey Off Road race with Blackburn in the Gallery!

It’s that time of month again. I’ve got all kinds of Randomness left over from a Recent Roll. Actually, a few Recent Rolls. There’s some LA, Pasadena, Austin, Moab and Fruita photos in here, all noted in the photo’s captions. Got a favorite? Point it out. Open up some commentary…

Tools of the trade:
Mamiya 7ii / 80mm
Portra 400 / Ilford HP5

Road Cycling in the Valley of Death
Words and photos by Ryan Wilson

Death Valley National Park is one of those places that frequently gets overlooked as a destination for cyclists.  Probably because it’s too miserably hot to do just about anything there for a good portion of the year.  There’s also no cell service at times for 40 miles in any direction, and some of the best roads in the area are some of the most isolated in the country.  That sounded right up my alley, so I planned my first visit in November 2012, when I was looking for some new mountains to ride while the Sierras were snowed in.

Some of the best experiences I’ve had on “bike trips” haven’t been related to cycling at all. Case in point: in the early talks of the Frostbike agenda, Jeff from All-City recommended that we drive 4 hours north of Minneapolis to the southern shore of Lake Superior.

In this frozen land, there were caves, which during the summer months, held many great alcoves and vistas out over the lake, but in the winter, when it’s cold enough, they became in chrysalis. This isn’t an annual occurrence either. This year was the first year in a decade that the water has been cold enough to freeze.

Everything is frozen, even the water that typically seeps through the sandstone cliffs, causing cascades of icicles, many of which are big enough to deliver a fatal blow if they were to fall. Behind these curtains, lie numerous caves, most of which are covered in a solid 3″ of ice on all surfaces. It’s really something else.

Tuesday morning, Jeff, Kyle and I ventured out into the madness and at some point I expected to see 7′ tall albino penguins or at least a shoggoth. But alas, the Old Ones are long gone.

See more in the Gallery!

When Erik and I met at Eurobike last year, we talked about doing a ride to celebrate the Specialized AWOL release. Originally, we talked about Oregon, then LA, but after some research, we realized there were plenty of roads, tracks and trails literally in SF’s backyard.

With the help of Jared from Riv Bike, Erik began to think about a three day route from SF to the Diablo Range, Morgan Territory, Henry Coe and finally, into Morgan Hill where we’d share our story and watch the premier of the Transcontinental film. It seemed like an achievable goal. We’d pack for camping, which included cold nights and mornings and most importantly, we’d take our time.

Rather than actually planning our route, we decided to take trail maps and meander a bit off the beaten path. Digital maps don’t have all the trails marked and some of the current maps of the Diablo range revealed a path none of us had taken. We were set.

Unfortunately, as it tends to go, unexpected elements came into the equation and our plans changed. At first, I was pretty upset about it, seeing as how I was planning on pulling a few stories out of our ride, but after reviewing my photos, I decided it made for a good story…

Part of what the Specialized AWOL project represents is an escape, a desire to get out of your normal ride routine and try something new. Taking a chance if you will. While we didn’t complete our ride, we had fun and saw some incredible displays of color as Mother Nature impressed us all.

Seriously, the sunrise the second day rivals all in my past experiences…

Read on in the Gallery!

There’s more to come, including my review of the AWOL Transcontinental Limited Edition and a Beautiful Bicycle post on Erik’s own bike.