Trek Drift

custom

chopper

It started, like most projects, on the aspirations of unrealized childhood dreams. Those late summer nights in the garage, being 10 years old, knowing what I wanted to do but with absolutely no clue of what I was doing.

 My sad heavy steel one-speed banana seat department-store Iverson needed speeds.

My mom's 3-speed folding bike was collecting cobwebs in the corner since the day she bought it. 

It looked easy enough, I thought. 

Of course everything went horribly wrong.

---

So several years ago I discovered Trek made an aluminum kid's cruiser.

The gauntlet was thrown down. 

It took literally several years to find parts for it.  Alloy fork with a disc brake. (Trials bike sites) Alloy riser handlebars. (Recumbent sites.) Leather banana seat. (custom made from a highly-regarded shoe repair place in Manhattan.)  A titanium bottom bracket wide enough in the years before those 'fat-tire' bikes got popular. (I still had to grind down Campy cranks to clear the frame.)

I could still go farther with it. But I did what I wanted to do and it's time to start another one.

Until then it's a proud showpiece.

Red Lounge