NAHBS isn’t just about the builders. It’s also about makers. People who produce bags, hubs, headsets, saddles and other components or accessories. For Vlad Cycles and Andrew the Maker, this year’s event became the perfect venue to display ATM’s newest bags, including a zipper closure porteur rack bag, saddle bag and his Many Things sacks, all on Andrew’s own dirt touring bike.

Because it’s NAHBS, Andrew reached out to Carson Leh to make bartape and a custom saddle to top off this loud, but beautiful rig.

Each year at NAHBS, I like looking for innovative design solutions and this year, the bike that really resonated with me was this Steve Potts Silk Ti soft tail mountain bike. It’s got S&S couplers and a rear rack for touring. These days, you see nothing but bikepacking rigs for MTB tourers at NAHBS and on the internet, so seeing a ride like this is almost out of place. Then you look closer. Yes, the chainstays are made from a piece of laser-cut titanium, but check out the rack! Steve engineered a leaf-spring stabilizer on this rack, so when you hit a rough patch, the 1.75″ travel rear “shock” absorbs the terrain and this rack, due to its design, remains free of any jostling that might jettison your panniers onto the road or trail.

It’s hard to even begin to display how it works, but when you sit on the bike and compress the shock, the rack, with or without weight, keeps its normal height. Kooky? You bet. Smart? Uh huh. After all, this is NAHBS…

These days, the options for a touring bike are plentiful, especially when tapping into the framebuilding community. Yet, many of these US-made frames will set you back thousands of dollars. For people who can’t quite drop over $2,000 on a frame, Crust Bikes offers up the Dreamer. With clearances for 2.2″ 27.5″ tires with fenders, tons of braze-ons for extra bottles, a steel fork and lightweight tubing, these Dreamer frames are made right here in Los Angeles and come in at $1,450, painted. This is not a heavy duty touring bike, it’s a lighter, zippier version of the Crust Evasion.

Having watched Darren, the builder of these frames, shred the shit out of this bike, I’m sold. Sign me up. If you’d like a Dreamer, head to Crust Bikes for more information. They’re expecting these framesets any day now.

Watch Blackburn’s history of bikepacking, “Comes with Baggage” today, tomorrow and forever for free.

Raymond wanted a bike. One that wasn’t available from any of the touring brands. He wanted a 29+ tourer with rack mounts and provisions for extra water carrying capacity. Sure, there were the Salsa and Surly offerings but they weren’t quite what he wanted. That prompted Raymond to contact Rich at Moustache Cycles, his local builder in Flagstaff, Arizona to build his dream tourer.

Moustache Cycles is located at the base of Mt. Elden in Flagstaff and is capable of designing and fabricating some truly unique bicycles. What Rich built Raymond is a very interesting rig. Complete with a custom bullmoose bar, a truss-supported rack and a plate chainstay yoke. For bags, he contacted local maker Rogue Panda. Raymond and this bike are heading to Australia today to tour with the boys from Crust Bikes and as you can tell, he’s stoked!

You boys be safe down there. Watch out for the drop bears and hoop snakes.

The Japanese Odyssey is a self-supported race across Japan, totaling 2,400 kilometers. This race takes you from the hustle and bustle of Tokyo, through the mountains, onto the island of Shikoku, before ending in Osaka.

Robin from Blackburn always brings the best bikes to Ranger Camp. Over the years, I’ve showcased his steeds, most notably the Santa Cruz Highball drop bar tourer. This year, since our route is mostly restricted to roads, rather than singletrack, Robin brought his Caletti touring bike, loaded with Blackburn bags. Although, calling this a touring bike undersells it entirely. As anyone with a tourer will tell you, these bikes become commuters and occasional trail shredders. Robin’s is no different. He commutes on it, sometimes taking dirt roads and bum trails home. This week, his Caletti will serve as his Ranger Camp bike and a city bike as he and I explore the streets of Bilbao after the Ranger festivities are over.

Some of my favorite details include the segmented fork with a sensible amount of braze-ons, the simple paint, and Robin’s clever hacks like that bell mount. There’s one other ingenious hack that I won’t even point out. Perhaps you’ll notice it…

Today we’re all building bikes, preparing for our 7am roll-out from Madrid, en route to our campground high in the Sierra de Guadarrama mountains…

This teaser has me hooked for the full-length video.

Team Space Horse and the Luxury Horsepower Route through the Sierra Nevada!
Photos and words by Kyle Kelley

In the Spring of 2016 Jeff from All-City asked me if I’d like to do a party ride in the Lake Tahoe area before Saddle Drive! As you probably already know, anytime the word party and ride are in the same sentence, I say yes. Jeff then asked me if my better half would also like to come along, and of course, I just said yes to that too! In reality, I probably should have asked about the route and the terrain, but I didn’t. Liz and I would be riding 600 miles on the northern portion of the Divide just before, so I figured this would be a walk in the park. Boyyy…was I wrong.

A little advice for anyone that blindly goes on bike trips with friends, never let someone from a relatively flat area of this country plan a bike tour through the mountains of California! The day before heading up north to meet the All-City crew and everyone who would eventually become Team Space Horse, I called Jeff to try and get some more info on the route, he just said it was mostly paved and there wasn’t too much climbing. This was the first time Jeff Frane had ever lied to me! Did he mean to, no? Did he know any better, no.

It’s crazy, after watching the All-City video and viewing these photos again, it actually looks like we had fun! But at no moment while we were riding our bikes did I ever think I was having a good time. How crazy is that? Or is that just it? As cyclist or cyclotourist, are we doing this because we think it’s going to be a walk in the park or are we doing this because we wanna push ourselves further and further? We setup camp with a cult, bushwhacked through dense foliage to discover a bridge that should’ve been there wasn’t, forged two rivers because of previous bridge and one more that had gone missing just a quarter mile down the road, got lost, then lost one individual who actually followed directions and went the right way, and climbed some of the steepest and loosest terrain I’ve ever experienced. But at the end of each day, while either soaking in a hot spring packed like a sardine can or around a campfire illuminating our exhausted faces, we were all smiling and we knew we’d have so many stories to tell our friends when we would eventually make it back home and that’s when I realized why we do this.

P.S. I actually bet Jeff $100 dollars that he couldn’t go back and complete this route unloaded in one day. He said he could, but never tried and I don’t blame him!

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Follow Kyle on Instagram and All City on Instagram.

North South takes a unique approach to touring the Faroe Islands in their latest video.

Cyclo-tourists and geology buffs alike will enjoy this video, showcasing a rider’s journey from Gibraltar to German.

Bailey lives and rides in Chicago, where he’s one of the owners and operators at Comrade Cycles. He and Kyle from GSC are buddies. They met a few years back at QBP’s Frostbike tradeshow. At some point, Kyle left an open invite for him to visit Golden Saddle, so Bailey rolled out to Los Angeles to soak in the sun, ride some mountains and officially break in his new Pachyderm Bikes dirty 650b tourer with his girlfriend Allison. The two of them took on some of the rides in the area, during one of our gnarliest heat waves of the year and even braved our psychedelic camping trip up in Chilao one night. I swear, the spider chicken had eight legs.

This bike was inspired by randonneuring bikes, yet Bailey wanted something he could fit a chunky tire on, namely something like the WTB Byway. For this trip, since they’d be sticking to mostly sealed and dirt roads, he went with the 48mm Compass Switchback Hill. Other details include White Industries cranks to an XTR derailleur and Shimano cassette, a Shutter Precision hub powering a Luxos light, with a USB recharging node, powering his Garmin.

For me, the paint is what really sets this bike off, aside from its owner, obvs. The painter masked mountains wrapping the seat tube and top tube, giving it a subtle contrast before finishing the head tube in a bright orange. Brown and orange bikes remind me of A&W root beer and mountain sunsets, with at least one of which I know for certain Bailey and Allison enjoyed on their recent trip. My only complaint was not being able to shoot the bike at sunset!

I’ll admit it, I’ve had similar thoughts while touring in areas with Grizzlies. Glad to see this one worked itself out thanks to some witnesses.

If you’ve been holding out for a new touring or randoneurring frame, now’s your chance to pre-order a Crust Evasion. For $975, with two color choices and multiple wheel size and tire combinations, the Evasion is the veritable Swiss Army Knife of tourers. For full specifications and other essential info, head to Crust Bikes.

There’s a lot of morbid names for roads this week on the site, but this is too good to not share. In this video, four friends tour down a 650-mile stretch of road along the coast of Vietnam.

Nate from Monkey Wrench Cycles’ Hunter Commando Tourer
Photos by Kyle Kelley, words by John Watson

Nate and the entire Monkey Wrench Cycles gang have done a lot for US framebuilders over the years, as evident in their in-house museum where you can find vintage Moots MTBs, alongside Steve Potts’ creations, while a modern Hunter Cycles might be hanging out as well. The thing I can appreciate about what I’ve seen coming from MWC is all their bikes have the same modus operandi: fat tires, practicality and a stance that commands trail time. I mean, honestly, a vintage MTB is still an ideal touring bike and in a lot of ways, the bikes the MWC team are always building up are just “modern” vintage MTBs. Take for instance this Hunter Cycles from 2013 NAHBS in Denver.

Rick reached out to Nate and asked him if he wanted to do a bike. Nate’s always loved Rick’s personal tourer from 2012 NAHBS, so they went down that route. He wanted some vintage components on it, making it a reliable bike, ideal for light duty touring, as well as a general shred sled for mucking about on the local roads and trails. Nate also really loved the vintage Ritchey Commando paint jobs, so he and Rick reached out to Stefani of D&D to do the paint job, identical to the 1985/1986 Commandos. Owning a bike shop like MWC has its perks and one of which was a NOS Chris King brown group just waiting to be put on a bike, along with a grip of NOS Shimano parts.

The result is a bike, that no matter what your favorite form of cycling is, will cause you to vibe hard over it. Amiright?

Thanks to Nate and the MWC gang for opening their doors to Kyle while he was in town. Now I’ve gotta make the trek over there!

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Follow Kyle on Instagram and Monkey Wrench on Instagram.

… and we’ll be back on Tuesday. Enjoy the long weekend!

… and there are a whole ton of photos to sort through and share this week, so stay tuned. I hope everyone (in the USA anyway) had a great Labor Day weekend! While we compile everything for a Gallery later today, check out our Instagram for some sneak peeks.

It’s been a hot, hot summer here in Los Angeles and after two weeks of over 90º weather, we had to get out of town. Let’s be honest, though, that’s what everyone in this county of 10 million people was thinking too! So where would we go? As I was contemplating this very question, I bumped into my friend Nathan, who told me he had an amazing touring route from San Francisco out to Point Reyes National Seashore planned for the long weekend. I immediately asked if there was room for Cari and me to come along… I owed her a better touring experience after getting us lost in the Sequoias!

The thing about bicycle touring is you’ll come across these nuggets of locales and want to permanently relocate there. You’ll spend all the free time you have exploring them, but leave feeling like there’s more to it. Hell, you leave knowing there’s more to it. Point Reyes is one of those places. I’ve camped there and ridden through before, but still felt like I was only scratching the surface, like a raccoon who barely gets to the bottom of some unsuspecting cyclist’s pannier. I wanted more.

Luckily, Nathan had done a fair amount of reconnaissance and I had been there enough to cover everything on the surface, leaving the good, harder to access areas on our agenda. But first, we had to get there and we had to prepare for this trip. Our initial plan of skipping town to avoid the weather quickly melted like a fallen ice cream scoop. The Bay Area was under an extreme heat advisory, with parts of it hitting triple digits.

Were we bringing the heat up from Los Angeles? The locals sure seemed to think so!

At least this change of events made packing even easier. We’d leave the rain fly, sleeping bags, flannels and warm clothes at home, opting for lightweight bedding and apparel, ultimately leaving more room for things like booze, food and yes, a cast iron skillet. The group assembled at an AirBnB in the Mission and discussed the next morning. After coffee, our friend Tyler rode with us through GGP to the Golden Gate bridge. From there, we were on Nathan’s watch as we pedaled up Mt. Tam before dropping down to Stinson Beach for oysters, tacos and bloody mary’s.

The thing about touring the California Coast along HWY 1 is you always forget how much elevation there is and the stretch from Stinson to Olema must have killed me before when I rolled through seven years ago because I don’t remember it being so hilly! We all stuck together, fought through the blow-dryer warm wind, aggressive, impatient drivers and made it to Olema for a restock on snacks before rolling into Glen Camp, a bike-in and hike-in spot in the coastal hills.

With our bikes loaded down, we navigated the fire roads before making it to camp just in time for a hazy sunset to blanket the meadow. We all passed out early, all packed up and ready to roll to the beach at Wildcat Camp before daybreak. The only thing on our agenda was to spend the day at the beach to wait out the heat. Luckily, our impulse buy of two sun umbrellas provided enough shade – and photographic entertainment – for the day. Once the sun had turned in for the night, it was time to haul our heavy asses up the 2.5 miles to camp, up roads exceeding 20% in grade.

That was nothing compared to the following morning’s haul out. I think the entire group was shelled by the time we rolled into Pt. Reyes Station for a breakfast pastry and a quick stop by Black Mountain Bicycles, the local shop in town. There’s more on that tomorrow…

You can’t go to the Tomales Bay area without eating oysters and we knew just the place. 50 oysters for $70 and you had to shuck them yourself. This weeds out a lot of the crowds normally, but this was Labor Day weekend after all. The road to the oyster market was filled with impatient, honking drivers, as we did our best to stick together for safety. It was already blisteringly hot out and the pizza slice I had eaten early was already gone in my stomach. I was hungry. 50 oysters hungry? You bet!

Sated for the moment, it was time for our second camp site of the trip: Samuel P Taylor. A place I’d been before, where I first encountered the “Crackoon mob” as they attempted to raid my empty panniers and mollest my tent the whole evening. Something had to give, however, as the shear crowd of the weekend must have overwhelmed them. Not a racoon was in sight and the only visitors we received that evening were our friends Dylan and Mallory, who brought beer and fire wood, along with smiling faces and a warm welcome.

It was our last day. The temperature had broken and we opted for an easy roll-out. Taking bike trails to Fairfax, led us to meet up with none other than Jacquie Phelan, a friend of Kyla’s and all around bad-ass of a woman – there’s more on that encounter coming this week. Jacquie took us into her and Charlie’s home, made us smoothies before taking the group to the Marin Bicycle Museum. At this point, Cari and I wanted to eat something and get on the road back home. We missed our pup Max and the idea of rolling into town at 1am wasn’t sitting with us so well.

Our route was calm, before the storm that greeted us in Salsalito. With winds and rain headed our way, we put our heads down and hammered back up and over the bridge, to our car and a 7-hour drive home. We’d beat the heat, mostly and found our new niche in one of the Bay Area’s best areas for bicycle touring. Along the way we’d gotten to know our friends even better and made some new ones.

If you have photos from your Labor Day weekend, be sure to share a few in the comments. Thanks to Nathan, Nils, Kyla for the hangs and everyone else who we bumped into along the way!

Here’s a rough approximation of our route, omitting detours and wrong turns.

Jim Merz is a man of many tales. In his time as a cyclist, a frame builder and frame designer, Jim’s been around more than just the block. Over at Bike Jerks, he shared a photo gallery from his 1964 tour from Portland to Denver, which I highly recommend checking out. Head over to Bike Jerks for the full scoop!