Hi, my name is Frank Wadelton. Folks know me as "frank the welder" in the bike industry. Back in the early days of MTB's I worked at Yeti cycles. I will skip the story (though I will tell the winner of this auction) of how this bike came to be as we are limited on space. I built a lot of the tooling that was used to make the Ultimate frame and this frame is one of the first small batch used to "prove" the production tooling.
When we moved from Cali to Durango, we still had a lot of connections in SoCal. Our best friends, Cindy and Steve were still there and we were quite close. We traveled back and forth quite a bit and spent many weekends at their home in Tustin. I kept this bike at their house. Steve and his brothers and friends played a pretty intense level of driveway basketball and when they played, I rode. I rode all the amazing canyons in the area on this machine. I also welded for Bullseye and made these cranks. At that time, I worked a lot with other builders and we swapped parts. Shimano provided the shifting pieces for my bikes and I helped with the SPD pedals and two finger levers (I made the very first set of shimano two-finger levers). I am sure they had "prototype" stickers on the back of the cages at one time as most of the stuff I got did. Campagnolo supplied the rims. It turns out they were the best of the time but under appreciated. I don't know if you remember Bob the wheel builder from Jed St Henri but he built these wheels. You can tell by the purple nipple. He was one of the best and tragically passed shortly after completing these wheels. I worked with ONZA on bar ends (Chris H built the first set ever!) and developed the "drop" style clamp so they hooked my up also. The bike also has an ATAC stem that I did with answer.  I think they provided the bars as well. We had a bus-load of dealers from Japan visit the shop. Many of them "tagged" the bike with their stickers and I think some remain. Please look at the images closely.  Steve and Cindy took great care of the bike over the years. If you attended Interbike back in the Anaheim days, you may remember me handling out bagles and cream cheese before the floor opened. Steve provided those. Any, I could always drop in and have a couch to crash on, a bike to ride and a warm meal and smiling faces. What else matters?
So, a lot of years go by and Steve loses his long time job. 'gets another, same deal. This guy is a hard worker but times are tough. They are hanging tough then Cindy gets cancer and requires surgery.  Things continue to go south when the bank sells their house (after more than 20 years of payments). More surgery.  I don't know what to say.  I am selling this historic bike along with personal Yeti photos and a copy of a video filmed on our road trip to Durango from Agoura (totally not professional). The money is going to my friends to help them along. The bike is located in Tustin and is at a bike shop. They are "vintage hip" and will carefully package it. It can also be crated if desired. It's up to you. Shipping is not included and since this is a charity, please don't expect them to pay to have it packaged. Payment can be made by international wire transfer or Paypal. Only the items listed for sale are included in the auction. Not any items in the background.  I listed the item as "local pick up" though, as I mentioned. You will be charged in a separate transaction for the shipping service you request. You can contact me directly regarding information on the bike. It's been a lot of years and things get mixed up but I will do my best. Please do your best also.  Thank you very much. Frank (the welder) Wadelton.