No specific pic for me, either. I was on a bunch of automotive forums in the '00s. During that time I started feeling nostalgic for the bikes of my youth. Started looking around at what was still around from the old days, that eventually led to BMXMuseum...where I mostly looked at classifieds and occasionally lurked. Focus shifted back to car forums with BMXMuseum only occasionally getting in on the forum rotation. Picked up some old bmx stuff on eBay, put together a couple bikes. Didn't take long to realize that I was no longer sized for a BMX bike (I had stopped riding when I started driving...~13yo
). So, my foray back into bikes dead ended...shoved the kids stuff in a corner and tried to forget about it.
Somebody linked to another pretty cool forum from my normal car haunts. The VolksRods forums. I have a love/hate thing going for old VWs, I've only owned one and it was a painful experience... regardless, for many years I would go through periods of craving a VW which would progress, eventually, to checking some out and going on some test drives...which would remind me why I hate old VWs and kill the cravings for another 3-5years. This VolksRods site was a trip...they were doing crazy stuff to bugs that I never would have thought of...so I added that forum to my rotation. I'm getting to the point...really...it happened organically...it took a while
.
Here is where serendipity comes into play. A VolksRod (VolksTruck? VolksPU?) was posted that had a mini flatbed on the back. On the flatbed was a matching custom bike...and a reply to that post had a link. A link to...wait for it...RatRodBikes! Was it love at first sight? Nope...but it was interesting (I love traditional hot rods...but, in general, was repulsed by the 'Rat Rod' movement and that influenced my views on some of the RRB builds I was seeing). I started harvesting photos from the first build offs for screensavers...and would occasionally lurk the forums. But, that isn't where serendipity plays its final hand.
My car hobbies were taking a hit. My Mustang's motor was showing its age, and abuse...so, I pulled out of racing. Kids were in High School with all the costs associated with that...so, no rebuild or other project could be started. I was itching for something to work on. Over a short amount of time, I started abandoning my auto forums...too depressing. I started thinking of bikes again as it would be a cheaper hobby to keep me busy...so I started delving deeper into BMXMuseum (still in lurker mode). That's when I stumbled across something fantastic! There was a such thing as BMX bikes in wheel sizes bigger than 20"! Revelation! Yes, somehow I made it deep into my 30s without knowing that BMX cruisers existed...then I saw the prices of a vintage BMX cruiser, and they seemed completely out of reason (if only I would have known they were about to sky rocket in the years following). I started looking into the history of these strange large wheeled beasts...and ran across the Lagunas, and S&S, and Cooks, etc. Whoa...those are cool, but the prices are still dumb. It struck me though, these '3-bar BMX cruisers' look very similar to a lot of those bikes on that other bike site... RatRodBikes? So, within a couple months I came out of lurker mode and joined the museum and RRB (~2009?). I picked up a dilapidated Monark from a friend's store and replaced, for the time being, my car (truck and motorcycle, as well) obsession with a bike obsession...that, it turns out, is not really cheaper than the previous obsessions
.
Initially, I looked at every bike and thought, 'how would that work as a BMX?'. Gradually, I started liking old bikes in their original gear as well, and stopped imagining all bikes with knobbies and bmx bars.
