MONGOOSE BIKE DECALS – MONGOOSE BIKE

Here’s the bike Todd gave me to bring to Hawaii. (It’s a single speed that originally had a gear cluster on the rear wheel — another of his mix-n-match creations. I later replaced that wheel with a proper single-speed one.) It’s had quite a life in the 4 years (as of this writing) I’ve been riding it. The frame is chrome with no decals or markings whatsoever. (It’s perfect! I always wanted a bike like this…) Todd says it’s one of the first mountain frames put out by Mongoose.

The bike has gone through some changes since this photo was taken. One of the dropouts on the fork cracked so I had it replaced with a black Tange, which also necessitated a stem change. (Too bad, because I really dug that beefy Y-split stem.)

It wasn’t long after this that the bike was stolen from the parking garage of our apartment building. Bastards. I couldn’t even report the theft to the police because I’d never registered the bike with the city, which is required in Honolulu.

This most unfortunate event prompted me to buy the Giant OCR-3 (any excuse to buy a new set of wheels, right?). As I was coming back from a ride a month or so later I spotted the bike with a group of three homeless guys sitting alongside the road. I swung around and stopped to ask them where they got the bike, etc., trying not to seem overly suspicious but it must have been evident. One guy gave me some story about how he’d bought it six months previously, etc., etc., at which point I told him that it was mine, and that it had in fact been ripped off only recently. The guy kind of got up in my face and asked if I wanted it back, but I wasn’t about to get into it outnumbered three-to-one.

I went home feeling rather puny and helpless. But what was I going to do? I would have flagged down a cop but where are they when you need them? Well, several months later we were driving by Daiei with Jeff and Satoko (having just finished shooting wedding pictures) when I spy the bike at the corner laundromat. Holy shit! Jeff stopped the van and jumped out to back me up. A different guy had it this time, giving me an altogether new story about getting it at the flea market. When I flat out told him that it was mine and was taking it back, he was reluctant to cooperate, to say the least. Jeff went over to the pay phone and threatened to have the police come to verify his story, at which point his mood softened somewhat.

He agreed to let me have the bike but wanted to keep the front wheel, which he’d installed himself. I let him have it because it was a different wheel than I’d had. Fair enough. Somebody along the way had also trashed the leather saddle (again, "bastards!") and replaced it with a wide-ass tractor seat. They also widened the bore of the presta hole in the rear rim so it would accept a Schrader valve, making a real mess of it. That pissed me off more than anything, since I’d paid nearly $200 for that wheel not long before it was stolen. In the end, however, I was just happy to get it back. (I did feel like wiping it down everywhere with alcohol, though, to remove the grime and bad karma…)

I replaced the front wheel with a nice one I got off of eBay, and it wasn’t long before the seat went, too.

"sponsor" strip decal, to be printed on bike. Just some of the stuff I use