Triple Triangle, Crazy Paint, and a Racing Heritage

I bought my first Team Avalanche in the early 90's. I had been looking for a new mountain bike and finally decided that a '92 fully DX-equipped Avalanche with white paint and black holstein-spots was the bike for me. Unfortunately the shop near me didn't have what the bike I wanted in stock, so I started calling other dealers in the DC Metro area to see who had one. A shop on the "other side of the river" didn't have an Avalanche, but they did have '91 Team Avalanche in stock for not much more money. I checked it out and then bought it. Unfortunately in the spring of '93 a bike thief decided that he needed the bike more than I did, and helped himself to my bike. I was bummed.

Ten years later I found a bike exactly like my old one (minus the dent in the top tube from a crash), and I bought it. In the 10 years that had passed, I'd either grown a bit, my tastes had changed, or the first bike had never really fit, because the new bike felt too small. I reluctantly sold it, as I wasn't going to ride. Finally, a few months back, another Team Avalanche, this time in my size, appeared on eBay. The pics were small and crappy, so I got it for a steal. Once it arrived, and opened the box, I began to regret my purchase - the bike was really rough. Few of the components were original, and the bike was caked in grease and grim. It took most of a bottle of Simple Green, a lot of elbow grease, and scrounging parts to complete the build.

For a production bike, the Team Avalanche had a lot of really cool features: the rear brake cable is internally routed thru the top tube GT's Flip-Flop stem had a removable face plate, and coan be run either angled up or down the fork has horizontal dropouts for adjustable rake/trail the top tube is ovalized vertically at the head-tube and horizontally at the seat tube the seat tube is externally butted at the BB it's built from full Tange Prestige tubing