The Tumbleweed Story

Daniel is a career bike mechanic who dabbled in road cycling and track racing before meeting a touring cyclist on a modified mountain bike who was just finishing his ride around the world, and being gifted his German to Spanish dictionary. Thus began a newfound obsession with bike touring that led him to eventually work at Rivendell Bicycle Works in 2005, building, speccing, and shipping bikes, answering phones, and doing as many overnight campouts as possible in the Marin Headlands and open spaces around Mount Diablo. He left to ride the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route in 2008 on a prototype Rivendell Bombadil, and his life has never been the same. 

He continued working in bike shops after leaving Rivendell, scraping together enough money every couple of years for mountain bike tours in the Indian Himalayas, the Carretera Austral in Chile/Argentina, six weeks riding through Inner Mongolia, the Peru Divide and Cordillera Blanca, and many shorter trips in between. 

Daniel started Tumbleweed at the end of 2014 with an obsessive passion and no money, working three jobs to scrape together enough cash to have a couple of prototypes made and eventually a production run of Prospectors more than two years later, all while operating out of his garage in Oakland in a house shared with four roommates. He even briefly moved the “shop” into his parents’ garage before finally settling in Boise in 2018, where Tumbleweed has continued to grow while maintaining a laser focus on making the best touring bikes in the world.  

Margot didn't know that bikes would become such a significant part of her life, but then she met Daniel Molloy, and her life was never the same. Margot's second date with Daniel was a tandem ride in the Berkeley Hills, where his encouragement, enthusiasm, and thoughtfully packed snacks won over her skepticism about enjoying riding uphill. Two months later, the first batch of Prospectors arrived. 

Over the last decade, Margot and Daniel have navigated the growth of Tumbleweed from a side hustle run out of a garage to the established brand and business it is today. Margot complements Daniel's laser focus on product development by bringing systems, pragmatism, and a passion for helping teams and people work well together. She also learned to love time in the saddle along the way!

Today, Margot supports Tumbleweed part-time in addition to working at Blueshift, a consulting firm working at the intersection of water and climate in the Intermountain West, and her favorite role of all—mom to Lucy.

Walt was our first hire at Tumbleweed, who, today, manages the wheel department and takes photos. Walt grew up riding his dad’s Schwinn Premis in the San Francisco Bay Area; touring, bike camping, and velodrome racing came later in Colorado and San Diego. 

He has built up his Prospector in every configuration but still dreams of enough snow to ski to work. In the shop, he likes to start the day with caffeine overload while tuning into UC Berkeley’s KALX radio station. 

“Walt’s a vegan, but he’s still a super-approachable guy!” — Daniel Molloy

Dan got into biking as a respite from the subway and taxi traffic during a decade in Seoul teaching English. After getting into fixed-gear city riding and touring along the many waterways in Korea and camping next to 7-11s, he decided to make a passion into a job and returned to the US to begin tuning and selling bikes full-time in San Mateo before moving to Boise. 

You can find him riding in the foothills on his be-fendered Stargazer and enjoying the shoreline of the Boise River with Olive, the honorary shop dog. He enjoys Guinness in August, and his comfort films include “Requiem for a Dream,” “Hereditary,” and “The Triplets of Belleville.”