Back in Love with the DeSalvo Cross Bike, all over again

It is amazing how changing that one thing on your bike, in my case putting on a Zac Daab Speciali All Ivory Arione, can completely change the look of your machine, making you fall in love all over again. (Thanks Zac! Also for the matching white Hup kit!)

In all of its years (since fall of 2003) the DeSalvo has never looked this good, and has totally come through during a pinch time when I lost my main machine.

I am not sure exactly how I chose the DeSalvo. I remember sitting in the Krieger computer lab at Johns Hopkins during the summer of 2003, pretending to do serious graduate level research in materials science, but instead looking at DeSalvo's homepage and frantically writing him an email about getting a custom frame built.

Working with Mike was such a pleasure. I knew that things would work out right away. I was, as usual, a bit of a pain in the ass and asked him to do all kinds of new things like using a cursive decal, custom head tube logo, and other such things. The frame is a TIG welded steel frame using columbus Zona and Thron tubing. The downtube is a Mega Tube or something with a very fancy name. I totally dig the straight blade 1 inch fork!

For a steel frameset it is actually very light, the whole bike weighs in around 19 pounds.

Dura Ace lever. It is only 8 years old, and has been switched around on 12 different bikes.
Still works perfectly to this day.

Scratches on the Desalvo...

I was thinking about getting it resprayed, but decided not to. I love this paintjob.