I grew up in the 90's and my cycling heroes of the time from the pages of VeloNews and Cycling Weekly were the likes of LeMond, Frishknecht, Cipollini and of course John Tomac. As he was mixing road racing with 7-Eleven / Motorola alongside crushing the Grundig World Cup (and racing DH!), Tomac's drop bar Yeti was one of THE iconic bikes of the 90's, complete with Tioga disc drive rear wheel. Tomac was definitely onto something given the current trend towards gravel bikes with wide 650B tires which are starting to look a lot like a mid 90's MTB.
So I was stoked when I saw Mike DeSalvo's NAHBS Tomac-ular Spectacular earlier in the year and it was a shoe-in for a spot in our 12 Bling Build Of Xmas.
Anyway, back to the sublime welds on the DeSalvo...you might have seen a few DeSalvos on our blog this past year, for good reason. Mike is a neighbor of ours in Ashland, Oregon and we love to support local builders, but he also turns out some on the most beautifully crafted, understated bikes around. I think without doubt, most people we all ride with round here, including everyone on the AVT staff have a DeSalvo on their "one day wish list".
A regular winner at NAHBS, Mike took a different approach to the show this year building just one bike, and turning it over to his fans to come up with the inspiration for that bike. The lucky winner came up with the idea for a Tomac inspired, drop bar MTB complete with blue goodness from Paul and White Industries. FOX gravel fork and drop bar actuated dropper post.
From this:
To this!
Photo Credits:
