The Radavist

We’ve been working on this refresh for over nine months with two talented designers, Seth and Julian, as well as an equally talented developer, Ian. Together, we’ve fixed many issues with the platform’s backend, updated it to a new infrastructure, and paved the way for multiple website improvements.

While this initial launch might not seem like a big change, allow me to walk you through it.

Photo: Kyle Klain

Our Radar column has shifted back to the left column. This is how the website was pre-2016 refresh. Now, we’ll be slow-dripping products and videos on the left throughout the day. Radar = news blips.

The middle column is our endemic content. This is content we produce ourselves. All Reportage galleries; Shop Visits, Beautiful Bicycles, Events, and Reviews will be in the middle column. The center feed will also contain Radar reviews or reviews that don’t include a gallery.

On the far right is our ad columns; these ads, along with your Group Ride subscription, merch sales, sponsored content (when noted), and affiliate links (we’re working on a page to explain how we use all of these – thanks for your patience!) keep this website and its staff funded. Thanks for your support!

As with every refresh, there will be formatting issues or bugs that pop up from time to time. We have a checklist that’s running but if you spot anything awry, please note it here in the comments!

Happy New Year!

There have been a lot of discussions surrounding how to behave socially during the Covid 19 pandemic, yet a lot of the basic precautions are being ignored, and certain actions are affecting smaller communities across the globe. While we all should be self-quarantining, socially isolating, and staying at home over the foreseeable future, more importantly, we need to acknowledge that this pandemic is not a vacation.

There’s a lot going on in the world right now with the Covid-19 pandemic, which has upended many people’s lives. Unfortunately, this falls right in the middle of our relocation to Santa Fe, New Mexico. Yet, I can’t complain because people are dying from this virus. Our minor inconvenience is nothing compared to that.

It’s obvious that California has been a great host state for our operations over the past five years but I’ve been feeling the draw to move out of the Golden State for some time now, for various reasons, both related to the content of this website and my own personal sanity.

Our move to Santa Fe mostly stems from the fact that recently I’ve found myself gravitating toward smaller-towns, rather than big cities. Cari, my partner, who plays a huge role in the admin side of this site, has family ties to New Mexico. We both wanted to live somewhere at a higher elevation, with easier access to the activities we love and a greatly reduced population. Our road trip through Santa Fe last summer, plus various trips over the years solidified our decision.

Los Angeles’ riding is unparalleled when compared to other major US-cities and hopefully, we’ve shown that over the years. You can’t get much better than the Santa Monica, Verdugo, and San Gabriel mountains, our three major ranges in the area. There are hundreds of miles of easily-accessible dirt roads, singletrack, and doubletrack in the area and it’s been a great community to be a part of.

That said, I personally just get inundated with the constant hustle. Over the years, it’s just gotten to me. Everyone is always moving at 110% and both Cari and I are looking for a calmer environment to live in. What I’m personally looking forward to is documenting the cyclists in Santa Fe, working with the local organizations, and being in the Four Corners. I’ll miss the Sierra, the Mojave, and everything in between, but I look forward to all the Southwest has to offer.

We’re moving as soon as we can, which will probably happen in the next week or so. During this process, we’ll be closing down webshop shipping but continuing the site’s day-to-day content schedule. Please, during this crazy time, be safe out there!

If you’re in the Santa Fe area, be sure to holler, I look forward to riding bikes with you all.

You might get tired of us thanking you for your time, thoughts, support, and comments each and every year but get used to it! We had a great year and from all of us here at the Radavist, we wish you a Happy Holidays! You might have noticed that we didn’t pull together a “Top 10 Products” post because we don’t want to promote consumerism during this time of year.

We spend so much time scouring the internet for cycling products, reviewing products, and talking about products that we feel like for a few weeks, we should focus on our communities, our families, our friends, and those in need. If you’re able to, enjoy some time on your bike, and if you can’t ride over the holidays, check out our Rides category to inspire. Daniel’s got a great post up today that you should check out!

Most importantly, enjoy this time with your loved ones and we’ll see you periodically through the New Year, when we’ll post our Year-In-Review!

We’ve been working hard to keep on top of shipping your webshop orders all month but today’s shipment batch is the last that can still make it to you in time for Christmas, although there are no guarantees! Thanks for being patient over the past few weeks, it’s been a busy time for our webshop! We’ll be shipping our final pre-Christmas orders at 12 noon PST today! All orders placed after 12 noon PST will not be shipped until next week!

Some of you may have noticed that our galleries are now updated with arrow navigation. In the past few weeks, we’ve been tweaking various UX details, including centering the masthead and swapping out the red color for a twilight gold but most of the work has been going on behind the scenes.

Up next we’ve got thumbnails for the galleries, linkable image numbers, author credit footers, and other tidbits. Now, with the larger galleries, we’re still working out the bugs as the images tend to bunch up a bit. We’ll tackle all the bugs as they pop up, so feel free to point them out in this post.

Thanks again for your patience! This has been an arduous process for Grant Blakeman to undertake. :-)

You might have caught wind of this already, but this morning, I switched over from the @JohnProlly handle to @theRadavist. If you were previously following @JohnProlly on Instagram and Twitter, it’s already switched to @theRadavist. If you want to follow my personal accounts on Instagram and Twitter, do so at @JohnProlly.

My reasoning was I would be able to showcase more of the contributor’s work, allow “take-overs” during events and most importantly, grow the community surrounding the site. There are a lot of big projects in the works this year and I can’t wait to share them with you, not just through my lens, but through other’s as well.

Happy New Year.