Campandgoslow’s New Trout Tape: Plus a Mini Shop Visit and Casey’s Gravel Scorcher – John Watson | The Radavist | A group of individuals who share a love of cycling and the outdoors.

What happens when a logo flip sticker becomes a sorta serious part-time hustle alongside a full-time hustle of slingin’ pots from the edge of the Great Basin Desert? You get Campandgoslow, a brand for which our readership needs no introduction. When Cari and John were meandering back to Santa Fe from the MADE Bike Show, they dropped into the Campandgoslow HQ. While there, John got a sneak peek at the new Campandgoslow Trout Bar Tape, released today, and some of Casey’s personal bikes. Check out this inside look into your favorite bar tape brand below…

Photo by Spencer Harding from his 2019 Shop Visit with Campandgoslow

Slow Growth: Campandgoslow

Co-founded by Casey Clark and our other homie Jarrod Bunk, Campandgoslow began as a simple Campagnolo logo flip, available as a die-cut vinyl transfer decal. Originally an enterprise split between he and Jarrod, Casey took over operations a few years ago. Campandgoslow has grown into a bigger entity than Casey ever imagined.

As with all passion projects that come from the heart, Campandgoslow quickly grew from stuffin’ stickers into envelopes once a week to a full-time job. The brand quickly grew into something with a cult-like following. Product drops resulted in a slew of orders, with Casey packing, shipping, and dropping off packages to his local post office… by bicycle, of course.

It soon grew into what has to be the largest small bar tape company ever, or at least the most prolific. The Campandgoslow Western and Eastern Diamondback Rattlesnake bar tapes use the diamond pattern found on the backs of two of our native US Crotalus species, atrox and adamanteus.

Campandgoslow’s Western Diamondback tape (left) and Eastern Diamondback tape (right)

Slingin’ stickers and rattlesnake-themed bar tape ain’t what keeps the lights running at CGSHQ, though. Nor does it keep Casey’s fire of life stoked on its own. For that, you’ll need a couple cords of firewood and a lot of patience. Casey’s passion is with pottery and he’s got quite the setup.

Great Basin Pottery

Once a passionate bike shop wrench in Reno, Casey Clark fell headfirst in love with pottery, eventually leading him to Great Basin Pottery, a truly unique locale…

Paul Herman had been a full-time potter for a decade before he bought the property that would become Great Basin Pottery in 1982. Over the next eight years, Paul set to work and built a small cabin, including a workshop with a modest propane kiln.

In the late 1990s, potter Joe Winter moved five miles from Paul Herman, and the two of them began scheming to build a kiln together. With some research and a lucky lead on fire brick, they started building the Anagama-style kiln in 1999. Construction was completed in the spring of 2000, and since then, the kiln has been fired every spring and fall.

Casey met Paul and Joe in 2004, while still a student. After attending college in 2008, completing a ceramics residency program, and firing kilns around the West, Casey returned to Reno to fire alongside his friends and mentors Paul and Joe and learned to wood fire under their guidance. With Paul’s passing in 2019, Casey took stewardship of Great Basin Pottery.

If you want a deeper dive into Great Basin Pottery, check out Spencer’s Shop Visit from 2018!

Casey and his partner Sarah give Great Basin Pottery a vibe. The two of them are the stewards of the land and the brand. When he’s not slingin’ pots, glazing, or firing, he’s thinking of the next big thing for Campandgoslow…

Campandgoslow Trout Bar Tape

A few years ago, I hit up Casey and told him something I’m sure he had thought about before: “Dude, you need to do a trout tape before someone else does!” Casey lamented something along the lines of, “Yeah, man, I know, but getting the pattern right is hard. I’ve been thinking about doing this for a while, but nothing has inspired me yet. It’ll happen.”

Then one day, Sarah was in a grocery store, and she spotted a tin of canned fish. The vintage pattern on the can looked interesting, and Sarah snapped a photo of it. Later that night, she showed Casey, and it all just clicked. Casey modified the pattern to make it his own and added some color inspired by Brown Trout to the tape, and voila! The Campandgoslow Trout Tape was born. The colors were selected to play nice with your favorite leather saddle as well as previously-released Campandgoslow Rattler bags and accessories.

Trout Tape Specs:

$44.00 USD
Campandgoslow.com
3300 mm length per roll (enough for 62 cm wide bars)
1.5 mm foam padding
No plugs, “finishing tape” or other junk included
Comes packaged in a high-quality mesh drawstring bag
Tape manufactured in Taiwan, bag cut and sewn in Seattle

Scorcher

The thing I love about Casey is his ability to stay stoked on bikes through all the industry’s pitfalls. Take his Scorcher for instance. Inspired by the original fixed gears of the 1950s, a Scorcher is a drop bar, fat tire, fixed gear bike meant to be ridden on gravel roads. They were huge in the UK and called “Path Racers” back in the late 1890s and throughout the early 1900s. These bikes were ridden on cobbles and dirt roads en route to the velodrome, where they were then raced and ridden home. Oftentimes, these bikes had a single brake caliper, and a toe strap was used to pull on it.

The term “scorcher” was used by Ibis Cycles to describe the brand’s fixed gear path racer they launched in 1993.

I reached out to Casey to deliver the 411 on this super sweet fixed gear:

“Matt Raker (the guy who built this frame) and I were shop mates back in the early aughts, and we worked for a guy who was a former mechanic for the U.S. Olympic Track team. That’s how we were introduced to fixed gears and where I cobbled together my first conversion out of parts bin cast-offs. Old steel frame, suicide lock ring, the whole bit. ‘Fixie’ wasn’t a thing yet, at least around here, and our boss called these fixed-gear road bikes ‘winter trainers’ to differentiate them from proper track bikes. He was always talking up the benefits of riding them in the off-season to stay in shape when the days and rides got shorter. I still use the term.”

“20 years later, Matt and I are still tight – bikes are so fucking cool that way) – and he designed this frame for me loosely around the geo of my Black Mountain Cycles Monstercross. To make room for the big tires, we used the 130 mm Surly rear hub with a 47.5 mm chain line, and it’s easy to line everything up with square taper cranks.”

Casey and I joked about his gearing in a recent text message thread where he admitted to originally gearing the bike at 47:17 but acknowledged that he preferred the spinnier gearing of 45:19. I don’t blame ya, bud! Spin it to win it!