The Radavist

Greetings and good tidings from Nutmeg Country, or welcome to the world of love, kindness, friendship, and joy. Maybe you’ve felt it all year long, or maybe you’ve been yearning to finally make the pilgrimage to the largest gathering of wool and steel on the East Coast. Either way, Jarrod Bunk has no doubt that stories of the soft times had in Nutmeg Country have reached your ears. The allure has been written about many times in this corner of the internet. The annual Nutmeg Nor’easter masquerades as the best alt-cycling weekend but Jarrod’s here to tell you that what you’ll find when you arrive is the biggest group hug you could ever hope for. This is a cycling festival that’s more about the people and the riding is just the reason to gather. Read on for Jarrod’s recap of the 2023 edition of the Nutmeg Nor’Easter.

We interrupt our ongoing MADE coverage with an important announcement!

When carbon bicycle frames were first introduced, the evil carbon fiber bike industry did all it could to bad-mouth aluminum bikes. It took decades, but we’re seeing an abrupt re-emergence of aluminum frames, particularly from smaller cottage industry brands like Beach Club and Ron’s Bikes.

Growing up in the 1990s, it was common for publications like Mountain Bike Action to do “shootouts” between two aluminum bikes. So, we at The Radavist thought it’d be fun to pit two of our favorite companies against each other in a democratic voting process. Check out our ALUMIWARS Shootout Special featuring sneak peeks at the forthcoming Beach Club Al Dente aluminum gravel bike and the Ron’s Bikes AluMAX grav grav daddy bike…

This is a long story. It is a story of Blue Lug‘s influence on me, an interview with the co-founder, and hopefully it will lend some inspiration to American bike shops.

The photos you are seeing are of Blue Lug employee bikes that I shot one after another as we visited each location. We thought it would be cool to document the personal bikes of the build artists whose handiwork you see each day on the Blue Lug Instagram softcore porn for bike nerds.

We will begin with the story of my 650b leather and canvas activation as a lead in…

We’d like to think we’re pretty alright at photographing bikes over here at The Radavist. The steeds we choose to document reflect our audience’s preferences and capture distinct trends in bicycle design. Yet, each year as we reflect on all the builds that have rolled through this cyber showroom, we’re always surprised to see what the Top Ten list reveals. This year, we’ve got a good mix of bikes, outfitted with flat and droopy bars, running rubber across the size spectrum, and made of steel, aluminum and yes, even carbon. Let’s get to it!

The first time I caught sight of Ronnie at this past weekend’s Nutmeg Nor’easter, he was handing out welcome gifts as a crowd of riders waited for the ferry’s return on the west banks of the Connecticut River. “Get your poop bag, everyone gets a poop bag,” he exclaimed—like the bygone vendors who’d hawk peanuts at old baseball games—doling out little green compostable doggie bags between hugs and hearty salutations. I later learned 250+ riders had shown for the two-day rootsy New England bikecamping event; a far cry more than the group of five dozen that made up the inaugural Nor’easter six years hence. For me, this would be my first time in Nutmeg country!

What will soon be seven summers ago, Crust Bikes CEO Matt pedaled his prototype Evasion to the end of Long Island to catch a ferry across the Sound to where the fishing boat I was working on docked each evening. I readied the lines as the boat backed into the harbor.  Looking up, I could see a backlit figure of a cyclist above the docks in the parking lot— late summer setting sun illuminating orange and golds through course, untamed hair.  Chest hair.  We had been expecting each other…

I grew up working at a Specialized shop, and learned how to mountain bike by watching Ned Overend’s Performance Mountain Biking technique VHS. While I always appreciated the refreshing ideas of small makers, I thought it advantageous for larger brands to be able to invest more in their materials and construction. This was a time when top-end bikes were made of metal, and made domestically.

Metal Matrix (M2) composite is a prime example of this. The big S sourced a 6061 alloy infused with an aluminum oxide ceramic particulate by Alcan. Say that again, backwards now. Alcan called it Duralcan, and I am proud to display their logo on my top tube—that cool typeface!

Sometime back in late February the event calendar for Team Brooks Cool Breeze looked like any stadium tour you’d expect for such a glamorous gaggle of athletes.  Grav’l, touring, MTB, hang gliding, street luging…. you name it, we were gonna do it.  Times were fast, relaxing, and exciting, but little did we know that even lifestyle celebrity “athletes” would have little fun in the months to come.