I've been having fun on this forum since I joined earlier today, so I'm going to post my Rat Lowrider as well. To start, I have to share the story of when I got it, when I was around 7 or 8. (I originally posted this in another forum):
When I was a kid and got my first bike, I was so overjoyed at the idea of having a bicycle, that I had no clue that parents had pulled a switcheroo to save money and given me a girl's frame spray-painted blue. I proudly rode it up and down my grandparents neighborhood, while all the other redneck kids laughed at me. Finally one of them explained that my bike was a girl frame, and I didn't believe him. To prove his point he pulled out a pocket knife and scraped away a little bit of blue paint from the fork to reveal a pink gloss finish underneath. I was crushed. My bike then sat for a little while, I refused to touch it. My parents didn't understand or care. Then one of the older kids from the neighborhood offered to fix my bike for me, and he took it, and swapped out my girl frame with an older boy's frame, one of the little stingray styled frames. It was spray painted silver and looked sweet, my first cruiser! I didn't know the difference as a kid, but my bike was already ratted out! I loved the bike after that, and rode it all the time, which started my lifelong love of bicycling.
So I since have dug out the bike from the depths of my grandparents garage where it sat since I had grown out of it, and into a cheap BMX style around age 11-12. Of course I had to see if it still worked:
The tires still hold air! I had planned on maybe trying to chop it or something, but then realized it was still fun to ride just as it was... with a couple of modifications:
The banana seat came from a Raleigh Rodeo that my buddy was fixing up, and the fenders from some other bike he had sitting around, so instant Lowrider! The day after I "upgraded" I brought the bike down to NYC and rode it around Brooklyn to Bike Kill wearing a Viking costume. Good times. I think I am just going to leave it like this for the rest of my life, or until I ride it into the ground. Those are still the same tires I rode on almost 20 years ago. Nice and smooth for cruising now.
The other lowrider is a cheap bratz bike gotten off CL for my GF so she could go cruise with me... But guess which Lowrider she prefers? And guess who ends up riding the sparkly purple one? :lol:
When I was a kid and got my first bike, I was so overjoyed at the idea of having a bicycle, that I had no clue that parents had pulled a switcheroo to save money and given me a girl's frame spray-painted blue. I proudly rode it up and down my grandparents neighborhood, while all the other redneck kids laughed at me. Finally one of them explained that my bike was a girl frame, and I didn't believe him. To prove his point he pulled out a pocket knife and scraped away a little bit of blue paint from the fork to reveal a pink gloss finish underneath. I was crushed. My bike then sat for a little while, I refused to touch it. My parents didn't understand or care. Then one of the older kids from the neighborhood offered to fix my bike for me, and he took it, and swapped out my girl frame with an older boy's frame, one of the little stingray styled frames. It was spray painted silver and looked sweet, my first cruiser! I didn't know the difference as a kid, but my bike was already ratted out! I loved the bike after that, and rode it all the time, which started my lifelong love of bicycling.
So I since have dug out the bike from the depths of my grandparents garage where it sat since I had grown out of it, and into a cheap BMX style around age 11-12. Of course I had to see if it still worked:
The tires still hold air! I had planned on maybe trying to chop it or something, but then realized it was still fun to ride just as it was... with a couple of modifications:
The banana seat came from a Raleigh Rodeo that my buddy was fixing up, and the fenders from some other bike he had sitting around, so instant Lowrider! The day after I "upgraded" I brought the bike down to NYC and rode it around Brooklyn to Bike Kill wearing a Viking costume. Good times. I think I am just going to leave it like this for the rest of my life, or until I ride it into the ground. Those are still the same tires I rode on almost 20 years ago. Nice and smooth for cruising now.
The other lowrider is a cheap bratz bike gotten off CL for my GF so she could go cruise with me... But guess which Lowrider she prefers? And guess who ends up riding the sparkly purple one? :lol:
