Practice up on welding Lucas! You wont regret it, a great skill to have!
Now why did I get back into bikes?
Well, kind of always had bikes, usually hand-me-downs from other family members as we didn't have a lot of money, the year or two I rode my sisters old girls bike to school were interesting, after that I would ride myself to the local dump and find bits and pieces to put together my own bikes, usually little 12inch "pit" bikes, did that for a bit, found a bmx, got my dad to build me some long forks to make a chopper, built some saddle bags out of wood...
Come the first year of high school I rode an old lugged 27inch racing bike, (good for out-running the bullies on their bmx's.) Picked up more bmx frames from the dump, started swapping bits with others until I had a pretty flash Diamondback bmx for the school run, by then I had also grown to over 6 feet tall so bullies were not so much of an issue. Soon the freestyle bmx's were getting big so I talked my dad into cutting the top of the seat stays off my old racer and fitting them to the bent out seat stays of the Diamondback, turning it into a freestyle... :mrgreen: Used to ride that old bike 20km (12miles) to work when I got my metalworking apprenticeship.
Eventually got a car and stopped riding so much. Fast forward 10 years or so and I'm fully qualified, won some big awards and earning good money running my own business, but I get a bad illness which is still with me today, cant work anymore... Need something to do to stop me going crazy, fixed up a car, sold it, moved interstate to somewhere we (married by this point) could actually afford to live and now I have taken back to bikes, build when I can, think about how to build when my health wont let me... Still like cars, but they are a huge undertaking compared to bike building... :roll:
Sorry for the long post!
Luke.