Frankenbike: a tale of horrors

It was a dark and stormy night...

Well, it wasn't exactly dark (since it was almost summer solstice), nor particularly stormy (although I think it drizzled a bit). But, that's not the point. The point is that it was a night that gave birth to a new horror, a horror so terrible, so difficult to comprehend, that it could only be given the name...FRANKENBIKE. (it sounds even better if you can say it with a melodramatic german accent.)

This is a tale that starts with a young innocent, a bike that was born in an REI store, and found love and comfort with a new family, a young couple who loved to bike and refused to pollute the environment by driving to work. The young woman in the couple (we'll call her J; am I being transparent here?), loved her bike and covered it with good progressive bumper stickers (such as "Make Beer, Not Bombs" (this is Utah after all), and "Close the SOA".)

Sadly, J wasn't always the brightest woman in the world, and one evening she left her bike locked up outside work overnight, while she took a 'company car' down to Provo to do a media interview related to a recent project. As she was locking her bike up that morning, she thought to herself, 'perhaps I should put my bike in my office...nah, it'll be fine.' and left the poor innocent bike there to spend a sad, lonely, cold night outside, with nothing for companionship except the security cameras (which didn't do their job very well. I think you see where this is going.)

Well, the young woman drove up the next morning, dropped off the car and walked over the bike rack. Her brain didn't quite register what she was seeing until she was standing immediately over it. Her bike lay on the ground next to the rack; it was missing various pieces, such as the back tire, the rear derailleur, the seat, the seat post, the handlebars, the stem, the headset, the fork, the shifters and the brakes. The only things remaining were the frame, the front tire, and the cranks and peddles.

It was a sad moment for J. Her poor innocent bike had been stripped, its soul removed with a few handy tools and now only a husk remained. But J was not to be deterred. She had gone to medical school; she had read Frankenstein! Thus was born a plan, a plan to resurrect her bike; but no, it could never be made exactly the same as before (at least not without spending about $800 on parts). But friends of J's stepped up to help with her new plan. Two people offered to donate old bikes and collections of parts (aka organs) to help with this daring project.

And so Frankenbike was born!!

Here are a few pictures of the Frankenbike as she currently exists.

























Several delicate operations lie in front of her.
A head transplant (the front fork, headset, handlebars etc.)
A new nervous system (shifters and breaks)
A leg transplant (the rear tire)
And the most difficult and delicate of operations, a partial heart/lung transplant (the rear derailleur only, since the front derailleur, cranks and peddles are still there)

I look forward to sharing the tale of Frankenbike's resurrection with you. I think it will be a fascinating tale of the triumph of modern science over the premature death of a brave and innocent creature.