My Valentine's Day bike lived in a closet in Sunland, California, a little valley town located forty-five miles from Hermosa Beach. It sat in that closet, stuck in a cardboard box, until Kyle found it on Craigslist one day.
Kyle & I woke up very early one Saturday morning and made the drive out to Sunland. We entered the large gated property to find: a litter of puppies, a swarming beehive, rows upon rows of cages containing expensive looking birds, a 2 month-old baby llama eating garbage in the kitchen, (two turtle doves, and a partridge in a pear tree). The baby llama wandered up to us, wondering if we were food, and chomped on our t-shirts. Chomp chomp!
I didn't get to take a picture of the baby llama, but here (on the left) is my roomate Paige's encounter with a fully-grown llama at Manchu Pichu (careful they spit !)After meeting the mini zoo, we were lead to the hallway closet, where we found what we'd come for... a little Kona Stinky Dee-Lux mountain bike frame. Kyle said it would be a great bike for me, so I trusted that judgement.
I thought it looked like a piece of gray metal with ugly stickers & a nice looking fat black spring for rear suspension. I had ridden enough of Kyle's nice bikes to know that rear suspension would be fun.
On the car ride home, I decided that I wanted my new bike to be pink. I learned that we would have to strip the paint and then either paint it ourselves or get something called a powder coat.
Here's the bike:
And here's the original head tube badge:
I decided two things:
1) This was the most thoughtful gift I'd ever received!
2) Building a mountain bike would be much more fun than watching the Teutuls build choppers!
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