The whole thing looked nice and straight and like it would all fit - which was insane because I still didn't have more than half the parts, I had no idea about major areas, I had just thrown caution (and any kind of planning into the wind) and started knocking out a bike. The qualifications for any and all elements - I had to like them. Period. The stance of this frame is large and aggressive - completely unlike the hardtail that had occupied this workspace a few hours before. We had done an emotional 180 degree turn as the actual plan began to boil. It was the ghost of an idea, then the wisp of an idea, then the hint of idea and then before you knew it - it was a REAL idea with substance, purpose and planning - all rolled in to one! Fast forward a couple of weeks and you can see we've stayed true to the idea. What idea? You bellow? Simple - I was going to take the fat tire "heaviness" of the wide tire bikes and join it together with the styling and soul that was the skinny chopper of the late 60's / early 70's. Crazy ? You bet, I was, in fact, going to attempt to build a bike that made a fat ass look cool and skinny. It was going to be a metal illusion with so many visual clues to the 60's & early 70's that the fact that it REALLY was a fat tire bike would be totally forgotten and lost on the viewer Yeah, that's some fat ass staring at you - but look at what's beginning to emerge from around the sides of the bike! Could that be a set of 50's style bullet taillights lost in the abundance that is the back fender? Could that be a silver snake's head poking off a jockey stick sent at absurd angles winging out of the transmission? That sissy bar - it's classic, but in a fat meets thin kinda way  - besides, I hear that he's not going to actually use that one, that is just a rough template to be given to a metalworker who actually knows what's going on and isn't blinded by insane, rambling philosophies and merely wants to know if the width of the metal will hold the bend through years of bungee cords and sleeping bags and hot, sweaty female backs.

The Snake Bike... Those days were gone for ever. I had to let them go. I had to own up to something called degenerative disk disease which basically causes the gaps between your spine to slowly get less and less until the wiring that runs alongside of this human fat-bob gets endlessly pinched in a shower of pain sparks that you leave behind you, scattering down the night road out of the open station wagon window as your wife tries to drive you to the hospital and keep your head in the barf bucket at the same time. The substance coming out of you has an inhuman smell and is the result of a bad mixture of pain killers and premature withdrawal from some VERY evil medication used to keep you out of what you're actually feeling. It's brown and thick and has the consistency of mucus and once you smell it, you'll never be able to forget the smell that all at once stands for pain, blood, fear and some basic part of your immortality that just rotted and died. This points to the irrefutable fact that you too, will now do the same thing. You will, YOU will (not some vague, nameless "other" person) will actually produce some horrible smelling brown stomach bile that is a cross between pee, shit and mucus and will roll over and just fucking die. Not this week, or next week or even a number of weeks that you can count - but certainly a finite number of weeks. Not like before - when that thought could be pushed away with a puff of sweet hillside weed or crystalline powder produced from some friends baggy jean pocket. Even as I write this I smell the smell of that bucket bile and know that I have truly smelled the horrible reek of death. It is the worst of all smells - especially when it's coming from inside you. MORE>