The Laboratory of C.H.U.N.K. 666

dclxvi update

2008-10-29T00:06:00.000-07:00

Photo by Jon Huey

Mutant Bike Proving Grounds

The most important skill for the mutant biker in the streets of today's world is the ability to do things that nobody else understands and you yourself may understand very little.

...read more...

A Tall Bike Construction Primer

2008-09-16T00:06:00.000-07:00

With the recent exponential multiplication of tall bikes across the country and even around the world, a primer on their construction hardly seems necessary. Still, for the sake of those just starting we provide here the basic steps and notes for the construction of the classic "one bike on top of another" design. By no means that this design is canonical, for there are many approaches by which one may make a bike tall. But purists and the aesthetically inclined may find the classic design more deserving of elaboration.

1. Two bike frames of near-identical length are required. If both head tubes are aligned the bottom bracket of the top bike should rest dead center atop the seat tube of the bottom bike. In a pinch, give or take half an inch.

2.. Remove the seat, seatpost and handlebars from the bottom bike. Remove the handlebars, crankset, and wheels from the top bike.

3. Cut the seat and chain stays (the "rear triangle") off the top bike.

4. Find a piece of steel pipe that will sleeve into the steer tube of the bottom bike's fork. This is usually about half an inch in diameter. It should also be long enough to sleeve an inch or more into the top bike's steer tube.

5. Some steer tubes have an open bottom, so that you could sleeve a pipe through the top and right on through and out the bottom. Find one of these forks or use a grinder open up the bottom of a fork. Either way, this is going to be top fork of your steer-tube extension. Cut the fork blades off the top fork. Put the fork back on the top bike.

6. With the lower bike standing on its kickstand or leaning against a chair, drop your half-inch steel pipe into the bottom steer tube. Then take the top bike and sleeve the top steer tube onto the steel pipe. This should be a relatively snug fit and you should be able to simply rest the top bike's bottom bracket on the top of the lower bike's seat tube, and the whole thing should stand on its own without your support. Make sure you've cleaned and greased all your bearings in the steer tube set because once its welded you can't take them apart again!

7. Examine the point where the top bottom bracket is contacting the lower bike's seat tube. Is there a lot of contact there? You might want to file or grind the seat tube to get more metal-to-metal contact.

8. You are ready to jig! Take two wood boards and place one on each side of your tallbike.

Use old inner tubes, rope, whatever, to lash the boards together snugly, sandwiching the bikes between them. This will align the two frames with eachother.

Eyeball and doublecheck to be sure, but honestly, the best test is to just try turning the front wheel with your hand. If the bikes are lined up sufficiently, the steer-tube of the top fork will turn in a smooth fashion when you move the wheel.

9. Time to weld. Put tack welds at the contact point between the top bottom bracket and lower bike's seat tube. Then tack welds at the bottom and top contact points of steer-tube extension. Let cool. Remove the jig. Complete welds.

10. Add a gusset between the top and bottom bikes in front of the top bottom bracket. Maybe even a second running parallel behind the steer tube. This is too reduce flex stress on the bottom bracket/seat tube welds.

11. Put the crankset back on. Add chain. You can run a chain directly to the back wheel, as shown in Figure 4

Or you can make a triangular chaindrive by looping the chain around a still intact lower bottom bracket, as shown in Figure 5.

The Mother of All Bikes

2008-09-09T00:06:00.000-07:00

The idea of a Mother of All Bikes was hatched around the same time the beginning of the Iraq Invasion. Apparently, in Gulf War I, Saddam said the War would be the "Mother of All Battles." Then, before Gulf War II, the U.S. developed the "Mother of All Bombs" which was tested off the western coast of Florida.

Battles? Bombs? Why the hell not a Bike?

MOAB is sort of like the Jawa sandcrawler in Star Wars. It takes up the width an entire street, and takes like over 30 people to ride it, including stokers, a pilot, co-pilot, navigators, lookouts, wait staff, bartenders, cooks, janitors, engineers, errand boys, outriders, welders, machinists, and shiftless drunks. There's a welding station inside, and bikes can ride in and out of the back if it while its moving. People sleep in hammocks tucked in the various hollows inside the vast nest-like super-structure built of scrap frame parts. Defense is not an issue because it can run over anything, and if bandits or highwaymen try to scale the sides they get lockjaw from all the rusty sharp metal edges. MOAB has these scoop things on the bottom-forward, so the MOAB rolls and teeters around collecting ever more bikes and scrap metal, and is basically a tiny moving tenement (complete with laundry lines), built out of garbage, in a constant state of breaking and being built and rebuilt.

dclxvi updates

2008-09-08T22:58:00.000-07:00

photo by megulon-5.

Aquachopper Expeditions.

Our first amphibious ride. We rode to Ross Island, camped overnight, and returned to civilization the next day.

Read more...

St. Ratricks Day

We visited the Chicago Rat Patrol in 2005 for St. Ratrick's Day, which is their holiday. They get together, crash parades, ride in alleys as usual, and undergo "Rattification", which may involve settling grudges, recognizing distinguished conduct, and boasting.

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2002 Chunkathlon

In August of 2002 we held a Chunkathlon. It was the most organized thing we'd ever done.

read More...

Sex Advice from Bike Jousters

Bike jousters are very do-it-yourself, any tips for how I can creatively do it for myself?

Doing it for yourself isn't just about making a chair instead of buying one - it's about being the kind of person that would think to do that in the first place. And that can be applied to your sex life; you need to be comfortable with yourself and with the idea that you're going to do things perhaps differently than most people or just to make you happy.

Read more...

Mt. Tabor Timetrials

2008-09-02T00:06:00.000-07:00

From the 2006 Labor Day weekend festivities. For the record, out of two runs per racer, Thud & Hang tied for best time(s) with runs of 37 seconds. But the Bear got a 38 and a 39 by jumping off the designated route and plunging steeply through flora and fauna, giving him the COMBINED best time (Hang and Thud's other runs were both 40+ seconds).

Building the Dog of War

2008-08-30T00:27:00.000-07:00

Spidey welding mulitple stays into the big pipe axle.

Burning a hole through the axle-pipe to serve as a grease-port?

An attached wheel.

Aqua-Propulsion Laboratories*

2008-08-26T00:06:00.001-07:00

The CHUNK 666 Aquacycle expedition to the Pleasure Lagoon quickly approaching, Megulon-5 figured he'd take his aquacycle for a test-float.

His aquacycle? The infamous PlatformThing (re-christened the Hesperus) with a squirrel-fan welded to the front between the two front wheels. The belt-drive for this was integrated with the chain-drive. A couple of empty plastic barrels were then secured to the bike for floatation.

We rode to the eastbank, under the Hawthorne Bridge.

We had to ease the bike down the steep grade to the bank with a crew of four people. Then we edged the bike into the polluted, Superfund waters.

It floats. Megulon began pedalling, and the bike... sorta bobbed around and floated upriver as the wind pushed it. Later analysis would deduce that the fan was too deep in the water (about two-thirds submerged when it should have been half). Still, it was pretty cool to see a bike float around.

Pedro dove into the river and helped Megulon5 get the bike ashore. We chit-chatted with some passerbys, and started to leave. But Megulon5 got a little full of himself and rode down a small grade at a funny angle, and, well...

Normally a taco'd wheel doesn't bother us. But, as you can see, in this case the wheel is almost entirely enclosed by the plastic barrels, and is further complicated by the weight of the bike. Megulon5 had to leave the bike where it laid for the night and come back the next day with a new wheel. At least, for once, you could leave a bike unlocked overnight and not worry about anything.

^* This is an old post which didn't make the migration from the old blog, but now with better, flickr-hosted pics.

Luigi

2008-08-23T00:01:00.000-07:00

Luigi was formed from a tiny, curvy yellow Schwinn kids' frame as a core, an extra rear triangle, a big seatpost extension, and a set of exercise bike handlebars.

It's wheels were relatively tiny, maybe 20"ers. The gear ratio was SA-WEET--fast cadence but just enough to keep high speed on the flats. Spidey could pretty easily ride it up the steepest of hills, and the fall-away bars allowed for ejection off the front when necessary. It had very quick handling turned on a tenpence. Seemingly never broke.

Wish we still had it.

Problem Solving

2008-08-22T00:01:00.000-07:00

Question.

Deliberation.

Resolution (w/ emphasis!!).

Public Werks & Morning Wood

2008-08-20T00:06:00.000-07:00

New(ish) rides by Big B.

Public Werks.

Monotube fork extension is discarded sign-post. No welds - all bolts. Lot of shimmy shimmy.

The Morning Wood aka Norwegian Wood.

Wooden beam monotube, christened sophmorically in the Big B. Style.

Slot at the top for original fork to rest on, big ol' bolt to keep it aligned.

Bottom is more suspect, perhaps. Hole is bored out which another fork is inserted into, then cross-bolted.

AAAGHGHGHHH!!!!

2008-08-15T20:17:00.000-07:00

Thud is using virgin stainless, doing stress element calculations, and contracting with a laser cutter!

We may have lost him!

Somebody get him on the burnt paint fume inhaler! STAT!!!

And it's on a Paramount?

NOOOOOOOOOO!!!!

Brasserie

2008-04-29T11:08:00.000-07:00

Now that the breeding program is at full tilt, we will need to find ways to quench the superhuman thirst that second generation Chunklings are sure to develop. Thud is thus cultivating a bond with Dee and Clair's Brew Club So Pathetic so as to avert any potential crisis when the new brood comes of age.

Dee and Clair have been brewing for a while, but if they were to be able to satiate CHVNK livers, the five gallon partial-mash method just wasn't gonna cut it and they needed a full grain tower. Within days of the initial consultation (where he was promised as much wee-heavy as he could drink as payment) Thud found a commercial grade, free-standing, two burner propane stove in a dumpster a block from the Krackhouse. Score! A few frames from the tree 'o shame, a bed frame, a handful of coat hangers and we're hot to trot.

Since the construction was necessarily to be done on-site, the tanks were brought over from the Foxtrot station by…well…er, don't try this at home kids.

One always forgets how much "staring at it" time, mitering time, paint sanding time and all the rest goes into something with this many bits and pieces. And how well some people can procrastinate. Well, a year later it's finally done, but damn is it a beaut! It's still awaiting some of the other necessary hardware for the whole system to go on line, but we should get the first kegs by summer.

chvnkland

2008-02-22T10:19:00.000-08:00

Click to enlarge

Thud made this map of ye olde stompinge groundes for the Teams of Portland exhibit at the North American Handmade Bicycle Show. It hits the major highlights of CHUNK's historical connection to the streets of our fair city.

(Megulon-5 put the map in his photostream for everyone's perusal)

NW Piano Mover

2008-02-01T11:41:00.000-08:00

Northwestern Piano Mover by Terri Saul, from a photo on the CHUNK mothersite.

New Year

2008-01-03T11:08:00.000-08:00

C.H.U.N.K. somehow got comped an unlimited supply of tix to the Y2K+8 Wu Tang NYE throwdown. There was alota poo-pooing of the Wu before hand, many minutes of chunks looking bored with the idea.

Then there was the matter of herding the chunks that expressed what little enthusiasm they could to said show - much thumb-up-assery on the side of road arguing.

we made it just in time

hung out till they dropped the balloons

and then split just as the popos were setting up their post-show riot cordon.

Anyhoodle, rolled back to the lago for the real fun.

Happy new years!

touching cloth, a winter wonderland

2007-12-19T08:54:00.000-08:00

Day at the Races

2007-11-29T13:47:00.000-08:00

CHUNK 666's very own Big Bear has been moonlighting on the Team Beer cyclocross squad for over a year now, always, 'course, on a muhfuggin CHUNK bike. He has built several cross-choppers in this time, the weekly races exerting an almost tidal pull on his creative faculties, like the urge to migrate in whales, ~~or the super strength bestowed on oneself by PCP~~.

B. built the cross bike and aerodynamic helmet featured above from absolute scratch less than 24 hours before his race - it was oh so many small pieces at 3:00 pm on Saturday and the next thing you knew Big B. was riding to a house party later that night. It purportedly possessed the quietest, straightest drive chain ever to roll off the CHUNK 666 factory floor, in spite of its seat and chain stays which approached a mind-blowing 3 feet long.

And then the Bear RACED it. And then he raced it AGAIN! He was hauling! It was INSANE. Totally and utterly insane. But then again, Big Bear can ride anything, so he rides everything.

The Gates

2007-11-21T10:07:00.000-08:00

It was bitter cold though she still danced without her cane on the sidewalk outside the bodega. Somehow we inspire others to act out. It’s contagious.

She was dancing to our boom box while some guys were inside buying beers. Her foot didn’t look so good, wrapped in dirty gauze. She didn’t look too good in general, maybe drunk already. We were getting there and we must have been dirty too, the way playing with chopped bikes always gets dirty. We’d stopped a cross street, in the hundreds, on the west side. Wherever we go, its a parade and a party. Some of us danced with her, then we left her, and her dirty wrapped up foot.

Earlier, the day had led us up Manhatten upon choppers, a swing bike, some talls and the double tandem. We were going to see The Gates, the orange nylon and steel structures that were placed on the walkways all around Central Park by Christo and Jean-Claude. The thick fabric hangs off the top crossbar, from on high to about head height. We rode up to have a look of our own, to ride through them, what gates are made for.

We became part of the show there - cameras turned onto us. Photographed ten thousand times, until we tired, oh, and kept riding to the top of the park.

We rode through the rougher places that ramble on in ways that seem close to natural, as the land of Manhattan allows. In truth, each and every part of the park was planted and combed. The Park was once woods (before it was city), then low farmland (when the city sprouted around docks in the bay), and then a ramshackle of squatter villages, Irish and black (as the downtown city swelled and boiled). The city then became too big for its britches, and the squatters were kicked out and the workers came in with stones and trees and birds and ponds.

We rode on, and out of the park.

It was a biting cold clear day. February is the ass of winter. It is neither the entry into the season, nor the exit. It’s just Dark. Extremities were numb. Too much costuming and not enough practical gear while riding a bike is never a good way to keep warm as it seems only the legs are worked, making for a sweaty chest and butt crack, frigid neck and hands. The feet are on their own. We stopped for those cold drinks and the dancing lady, despite all the amputations you could just dance to a rock ‘n roll station.

We pushed on over to the Hudson River where the temperature dropped again with the wind off the open water. The chuck wagon - a double tandem bike - was unveiled in all its glory - the way way back housed a barbecue grill, which was loaded with scrap wood. Behind the grill was a milk crate full of lighter fluid, hot dogs, buns, ketchup and mustard.

What the fuck? The obvious task was completed; wood doused with fluid, lit, then hosed with more making small bridges of fire. The scrap wood caught, air vents opened, AC/DC was found on the boom box and we rode down along the river, towards the bay. The bike was a controlled burn. Joggers and walkers and babies turned their necks to try and wrap their heads around a long bike with a small camp fire on the back, convoying with tall bikes and choppers and metal. Quite a sight along the Hudson River, Jersey gushed in appreciation and jealousy. The sun set and the fire flared up, stoked by the air pulled into the moving bike.

We rode on down to the finish line of a fixie race on a boat. We parked the bikes in the dark and crowded around the fire to warm our hands like transients around a burning barrel. Others joined us. The night ended later, with the fire still burning and smoking through the city.

Sailchop Expedition

2007-11-08T11:18:00.000-08:00

The landscape was incredible. Mindblowing.

CHUNK 666 camping is just as lovely as always - whiskey toddies, bacon-fried eggs, chili beans and soup. A bit chill in the middle-nights, but soon warmed in the hot springs before breakfast. Whiskey in the morning coffee.

Downhill on Steens mountain, skidding through the ruts carving long and sweeping esses into the gravel.

Big B. and Ninja did fearsome knottitude 'pon the Willamaconda, flying laughing over the barren flats, with only the weak strainings of the vessel's factory welds holding them back.

The Willamaconda, having twice conquered the land-water medium, worked really well. The predictable oaths of "next year will be superb" were made, as a better concept of what is needed is known.

Photo sets by Krakles, Thud, and Rino.

Humble Origins

2007-09-28T18:43:00.000-07:00

As we await the return of our expeditionary forces from the very precipice of chunkulation experimentation in the arid highlands, we pause to reflect on our early baby steps.

Yea, the 1st CHUNK sailchop:
a bedsheet + a tree branch + a windy road in the middle of nowhere...

antlered beast

2007-09-24T13:28:00.000-07:00

CHUNK in NY has a low profile, and we had many dropouts strewn about the shop. Crotchey decided to mark the triple-tall BMX tallbike that he made for Snowman.

If the people see it locked on the street, they see the Gary Fisher conglomerate stem antlers/handlebars, and they can identify who's responsible.

Again, cut only with the sawzall and held in place with a wrench by Shanay while he tacked them down.

In short, did it this way to add some color, and hadn't done it before.

Weighs less than a Varsity.

2007-09-18T11:05:00.000-07:00

Having decided to leave the tallbikes we took to MPLS behind, Thud thought, "wait, why build a crappy bike to leave there when I could just build a better bike to keep here?"

After staring at the brass kicking around in the shop and the Campy wheelset not getting much use in his basement, and, uh, the Raceface chainrings, the Avid braves, the Brooks saddle and a XT derailleur? It had to be done eventually.

Figs. 1 & 2
It probably weighs less than a Varsity (not that that's saying much) and he's since done a 72 delivery day as a messenger and taken 2nd place in an alleycat on it.

Fig. 3
Thud's all about the rebuildable headset too. Normally, once you weld that steering column in place, the bottom headset is in for good. You can kinda see in Fig. 4 how the thing in Fig. 3 sleeves over the shaft he's welding into the bottom fork in Figs. 1 and 2.

Fig. 4

A bolt in that beeotch and voila, full service. Oh, and it's all fillet brazed too.

It's still a work in progress, but eventually it will have front and rear racks, as well as rails amidships for the mini fridges. Now, if only Thud can get Big B to perfect that Jacuzzi trailer he keeps talking about, he'll really be touring in style.

The Country Squire

2007-09-13T08:36:00.000-07:00

Ahh- The Country Squire! Like a balmy bay breeze betwixt the buttocks, The Squire carries it's rider in the upright and noble posture of his forebears from an earlier, more genteel era. No squatting or scraping for this gentleman, no sir! Head held high, back erect, our aristocratic rider elegantly "steers from the rear" via his chariot's patented "rack-and-spur" linkage.

With cargo space aplenty fore and aft, this dignified patrician is fully equipped for the civilized recreations befitting his station, be it a hunting safari in the darkest jungles of L'Afrique, playing Buzkashi with the Pashas of Persia, or conveying his refined Lady Jane to an evening at the Opera.

The Squire is fully disassembable - no welds here! - so as to facilitate our rakish rider's globetrotting lifestyle: easily stored in a steamer trunk aboard a pleasure cruise, airship, or zeppelin, the Squire may also be grafted onto any available velocipede, should it be necessary to "lighten one's load."

Ahhh- The Country Squire! The comfort of the future, with the style of the past!

ECMC Trophy

2007-09-11T17:55:00.000-07:00

Crotchy volunteered to make a trophy for BillDozer's East Coast Messenger Chumpionships "fiasco"/weekend/race/polo tournament, and to spend a little time w/ the sawzall and the tanks.

When BillDozer is seen at polo in NY, he often holds court and relates that, though we're improving, we're not ready to play in Portland. His formative years in the Rose City created unfadeable memories of bicycle polo at it's absolute best. His horrific injury and subsequent retirement only serve to grow those memories. We hope one day to play in Portland, and perhaps to win a match or two. Until then, we will strive to enhance BillDozer's East Coast productions.

As BillDozer IS metal, the skull was an easy choice for a theme. "To the winners go the spoils", he's uttered, although this classy line didn't quite find its way to the tip of the dremel.

The initial projection: a skull from which you drink, was largely executed. Though the container (i believe part of an industrial coffee creamer cooler) was purchased from a sketchy Bowery restaurant supplier, the rest of the found metal largely dictated proportions and texture for the trophy. Bill seemed pleased with the result, and the "handcrafted" piece looked particularly raw and CHVNKy next to the other fine wares donated as prizes.

chvnkolo!

2007-09-01T11:35:00.000-07:00

dclxvi update

2007-06-12T07:29:00.000-07:00

Megulon-5 has related our 2004 trip to Minneapolis to meet & ride with the Black Label Bicycle Club.

sailchop

2007-06-09T15:14:00.000-07:00

CHUNKPoloBike Build Day

2007-03-27T09:21:00.000-07:00

We grew weary of favorite chunkbikes getting fucked up playing chunkpolo. The solution was obvious: a build-day focused only on chunkpolo bikes. Build-days also being beneficial to the soul.

The day was productive by our standards. 4 chunkpolo ponybikes were punched out in succession. Common design features were simplistic BMX-extendo-type forks combined w/ junky frames, parts from the Pile, & smaller (less-tacoable) rear wheels.

It was a primal CHUNK 666 experience - drinking beer, cutting metal and welding bikes, fucking frames up w/ sledgehammers: all in crowded, cluttered quarters, resulting in simple not-built-to-really-last CHOPPERS. The kind of chopper that's fun to tear around on but would kill your ass and knees if you rode across town.

Four bikes later (plus 2 new ones built a day or 2 before) we hit the field for about a game & a half, mostly in heavy rain, at which point the beer & welding & rain & approaching night caught up w/ everyone, & called it a day.

Para-Chunkular Constructions.

2007-02-10T10:34:00.000-08:00

There are quite a few worthy cycle manufacturers out there that are not directly affiliated with Chunk. We are quite willing to provide space for images sent our way.

Tuky from Buenoes Aires writes:

Hi! Silken please excuse my English , this mail it´s for send a picture of
my first "Mutant Bike" , i read the tecnichal information of BMX EXTENDO
from Chunk 666 .
I want to congratulate to chunk by the Web and its work
Thanx for your inspiration

Tuky

http://ubbiar.fotolog.com/la_bacha/

2003 Brooklyn Chunkathalon Black & Whites

2007-01-22T07:06:00.000-08:00

I found a set of b&w pics taken on a crappy disposable camera back at the 2003 Brooklyn Chunkathalon. They're exclusively of the Derby Royale, except of one of Megulon, Ninj, & some other folks fussing with the baby rescue "carriage." Love that hazy Manhatten skyline.

Megulon's write-up here.

CHUNK 666 Ice Pond Polo.

2007-01-16T10:36:00.000-08:00

Both of the Great CHUNK Lakes (Siracusa & Seal Penis Bone) flooded and froze over last week. Perfect for that clumsy pairing of futility: bicycle polo on choppers! Let the headlong and impulsive embrace of mother earth commence!

Firebikes!

2006-12-23T10:37:00.000-08:00

I'm in love.

2006-12-11T11:32:00.000-08:00

It's no secret that Hot Pocket is the champion. Although from above, shit doesn't look straight.

CHUNK 666 Polo

2006-12-04T10:40:00.000-08:00

Chunk-o-lo!!! All day, til sunset. Dinner, & even more nighttime chunkolo. 3-on-3, first to 3 points. Tried 4-on-4 but 8 choppers on the lot at once proved crowded. Rules are few since riding a chopper one-handed for prolonged time is handicap enough. 10 mallets summarily culled to 6, w/ parts of the 4 broken ones duct-taped together chunk-style into 2 semi-functional mallets. Bike damage limited to 1 taco'd front wheel, easily bent back. Rampant chopper crotch next morning.

Water hazard.

Pile-up at center field.

Retrieving the ball from the water hazard proved difficult.

Welcome, Goodbye.

2006-11-25T11:30:00.000-08:00

Chunk Baby MK1 has entered this world! Ready to scavenge the burned earth for usable mountain bike frames. It's being called "Ocean Sheridan Hart Timmons." OSHT.

Not much to be said about the pre-Halloween event, Bike Kill. It was pre enough that nobody 'cept CHVNK dressed up, at all! 3 days. 3 days. We were collectively bummed out on the whole thing, wondering if attendance was in fact necessary.

Papaya.

2006-11-12T10:40:00.000-08:00

CHUNK 666 New York (New York) tours some hot dog stands of NYC.

Follow the bouncing weenie!! Fun!?!

CHUNK 666 Zombie Massacre Cult!!

2006-10-30T10:41:00.000-08:00

No eyes!

Disgusting.

dclxvi update

2006-10-15T10:42:00.000-07:00

Megulon-five continues to add new content at dclxvi.org, submitting an Organ Donor Invitational omnibus for your reading pleasure.

dclxvi updates

2006-09-28T10:43:00.001-07:00

Megulon-5 has provided further illuminations regarding the streets and kobold mines of Brooklyn, NY.

Photo by Megulon-5

Aquachop 2006

2006-09-28T10:43:00.000-07:00

In the summer of 2004 CHUNK 666 crossed the Willamette River to Ross Island & back on a small squadron of amphibeous choppers. Last summer we were too busy saving kittens from the glue factory or something to make to a second attempt. But this summer the CHUNK aquacycles again wobbled down to the river & gingerly lowered themselves into the warm soothing currents of the Willamette.

Thud re-equipped & up-graded the Swampthing's amphibious attachments. Namely, adding a winch constructed out of pile-acquired cranks and bottom-brackets which allowed him to lower his barrel "X-Wings" from thier upright, terra firma-riding position down into thier aquatic aquacycle postion. Swampthing is the only chopper to make the Willamette crossing twice.

pics by megulon
Krak, as is typical of his methodology, simply secured four barrels to the almighty Family Truxter and called it good (it then subsequently outperformed everything else in the fleet).

Pic by megulon.
Ah, the comic relief/runt of the flotilla: the good garbage skow S.S. Walter S. Mondale. Starting at the last minute, I constructed this simplistic aquacycle the day before using a kid's bike and a lot of scrap wood laying around my basement. The vessel's name kinda redeemed it, tho.

Pics by megulon
Big B. liberated the side-by-side double-bike thing from his back yard and birthed with bamboo & wood & steel the bipedaliferous leviathan Willamaconda. Crewed in a Huck Finn-style by himself and 99.

pics by megulon

Willamaconda possessed the largest pedal paddle wheel to navigate the river to date. The wheel could be adjusted vertically in the water for optimum performance.

pic by megulon

Megulon-5 fabricated the Ross Island Explorer, a tall-hydrocycle!

The Ross Island Explorer's chain drive fulfills a dual function. It drives a wheel to get to the river, and one to get you around the river.

pics by Megulon.
Thoroughly victualed, the flotilla wobbled its way towards the river.

pics by Lance
Then, into the drink…

pics by Lance
The Willamette flows north, although the main channel of the Willamette is on the other side of Ross Island. The wind was blowing strongly from the north, and aquachoppers don't so much sit in the water as on top of it. What I'm getting at is lighter craft, like Swampthing and the Walter S. Mondale, were simply pushed south by the wind. In the case of the aqua-tallbike Ross Island Explorer, Megulon-5's own body functioned as a sail of sorts, & he was propelled all the way south to adjacent Hard Tack Island. Heavy craft like the Willamaconda and Truxster, however, bee-lined across.

pics by Lance
For the return trip the lighter craft banded together, figuring on portaging to the northern tip of the island, lashing the 3 vessels together, & "party barging" our way back - letting the wind do the work for us.

Pic by Thud.

The view from the north end of Ross Island is mildly disorienting. You're below the city.

Pic by Thud.

Thud tried to pull Megulon-5 and myself with the Swampthing, but at some point he was taking a break and one of us said "let's set up a sail." Tarps were quickly unraveled. Megulon simply stood on his barrels and leaned against the frame of the Ross Island Explorer, holding his tarp roughly around him. Thud zip-tied the corner of another tarp to his backrest and I zipped the other corner to my homemade paddle and held it up like a spar.

Pic by Thud.

The remainder of the voyage back to the shore was short and pleasant. S

Pic by Thud.

Pic by Thud.

Pic by Thud.

WIDEBAND CHUNKATHALON

2006-09-04T10:44:00.000-07:00

We flipped the chunkcathalon into a two-day rolling commingling of CHUNK-style events & festivities.

Saturday was an off-road time trial, a big ride w/ 40-something choppers & tallbikes to BBQ, portages over some bridges, around Ladd's, and then to a Rink.

Sunday was the derby & baby rescue ride. Here are some photos from Sunday.

The Baby rescue concourse.

Terry may or may not have broken BOTH of his feet in the baby rescue. He also earned the chunkathalon merit badge for 'Repair Angel' for actions on Saturday.

Steph somehow managed to heed the call to spontaneously embrace mother earth Saturday on the offroad time trials (chin) AND on Sunday during the baby rescue (elbow). But she kept laughing so we gave her the merit badge for spirit.

Also of note but not pictured: Big B. got a merit badge for Navigator and also had the best time in the trials (thud & hang tied for second). Ian got the Sportsmanship badge for pulling Truxster when its chain broke with his belt. Metal Nate from Jesus Horse got the Baby Rescue patch for winning the baby resuce tourney & Darren got the Dumbest Bike patch.

Parachunkular Constructions: Girder Chopper

2006-08-31T10:46:00.000-07:00

One rainy weekend morn we were prepping to roll. This fellow, Brooks, who happened to forage in the same sector, rolled up & introduced himself. He was astride a girder chopper meticulously MIG-welded entirely from small pieces of steel rod.

The patience & time required to weld all those little pieces of rod together (he reported he was currently unemployed - and bored) were swiftly acknowledged.

The bike's lack of a seat tube elicited school-girlish giggles & blushes - no "safety diamond" here! On closer inspection & introspection, he had brilliantly replaced two big triangles with dozens of tiny ones!

We Meet the Mayor!!

2006-07-15T08:23:00.000-07:00

Dominance of southeast Portland officially ceded to CHUNK 666.

FLAMING BIKES OF DEATH!

2006-07-11T08:23:00.000-07:00

Click to Watch the Movie!!

Han's Bicycle Adventure.

2006-06-27T08:25:00.000-07:00

Heavens! Smoking the whole time, nonetheless!! This & more of Herr Pommerhanz's fine work found here.

The Landscape to Conquer.

2006-06-16T08:25:00.000-07:00

Decidedly unspectacular & borderline infantile, something's still intoxicatingly hypnotic in riding a chopper on a BMX course.

Water Hazard / Teeter-toter / Debris Field

2006-05-31T08:26:00.000-07:00

CHUNK 666 manned a checkpoint thingy for the WESTSIDE INVITE so we flexed our carpentry skills & built a two-point-turn wooden catwalk across the intimidating & beloved LAGO SIRACUSA.

The messengers came & some were like "whateva" but others were like "are you fucking kidding me" and then would fall in the water and be like "you guys are assholes" and "you guys should have to do it!"

A random messenger can't keep it together.
Well these accusations may be true but when the messengers weren't around we drank their beer and rode on our catwalk and stuff all the time!! Fun!

Big B. took a try on Public Werks, but lost it between first & 2nd jogs but did not actually take dip in soothing & HEALING WATERS of the lago. We are all familiar with the Walk of Shame but B's recent & bizarre fetish for everything and anything quick release got better of him and the front wheel popped out, forcing B. to make the Shallow Wade of Shame!!

Shallow Wade of Shame.
Then he tried again. And rocked it !! Well, except he sorta rode off the bridge at the very end… but it was the public werkx, so what do you expect !?

Lots of CHUNKs tried the teeter-totter. What a great toy! Everyone should have one!!

see-saw action in action.

these two pictures are by megulon-5.

Giant Rollerblades in CHUD Alley.

2006-05-25T08:28:00.000-07:00

Patrolling CHUD alley late at nite & there were these opera-sized roller skates down there !!

They were made out of bikes so naturally of course we tried to ride them. I climbed in one but the wheel was bent so I just crawled around in it & made some dirty Mother Goose jokes to thud, but megulon-5 got in the other skate and it had flats but he rode it anyways!

Then he fell over because you can't see very good out the little viewport in those skates and they're kinda hard to get out of if they fall over. Still we got him out w/o jaws of life or even monkey wrench of moral rectitude!

Later one of the vestigal fire-pods on choppy exploded when it spontaneously evolved into a dead-man's switch!!

Catacombs.

2006-05-20T08:30:00.000-07:00

If you're riding out to secret catacombs and the entrance to the catacombs smells like burnty bad stuff, then you get down on your stomach & you crawl into that catacomb!!

Down we go!!

Seriously, though. This catacomb was dark and flavored with mild yet rich swamp-ass stench! CHUNK 666 is no stranger to foreign particles in lungs!! Look what we weld with: COAT HANGERS!! For first 10 minutes with adrenaline of discovery we paid no attention to ever-present putrid air. Room after room after room evidence of a panicky hasty retreat before our eyes: abandoned documentation & more steel desks than in our wildest dreams!!

Mr. E. Pants is not feeling good.

Nothing I mean NOTHING prepared us for the catacomb's GRAND BALLROOM!! One can only imagine elaborate / decadent / cultured NUCLEAR WINTER FORMALS which were once held here.

Particulates are bad . There are lots of particulates. We are having fun.

CHUNK666 collective imaginations ran away with phantasies of sipping GROUND ZERO COSMOPOLITANS and enjoying societal gossip beneath the RAW AWESOMENESS of the Grand Ballroom's huge FRESCO!! Check it! Click it!! Make it bigger!!!

Man oh man I think some guy who used to copy LedZeppelin and Slayer cover-art in my highschool art class painted this thing.

Some of megulon-5's photography… gaze in wonder upon all those steel desks!

Check out the old lockers! THEY STINK!!

Around now adrenaline & raw enthusiasm waned. Reason and sanity regained, CHUNK 666 employed the science of camera flashes & torches to take note of sheer amount of bad things surrounding us in the catacombs. Undoubtedly, like the previous troglodyte inhabitants, we beat a hasty (but not too panicky) path back to worldy pleasures of the surface.

Halon Abort!

-silken, w/photoassist by megulon-V.
www.dclxvi.org

Face of Kloven Hoof Spotted in Fire!

2006-05-20T08:29:00.000-07:00

I looked out window and saw smoke & glow of FOUR ALARM FIRE right down in heart and Soul of CHUD Alley!!

I dashed out the door and LEPT onto into my choppers saddle and landed squarely on my right testicle!! AHH SUNUVABITCH!!! Wincing I rendevouzed w/ megulon-V and booked down to Water Ave and headed north to the fire. Hey!! The heavy sweaty odor of the Catacombs!! OUTSIDE!!! Riding past the old paper mill and FLASH! all the street-lites went out. I was trying to take picture of fire while riding one-hand & when power transformer blew I almost pummeled left teste too!! Close Call!

Smells like catacombs...

Ditched the choppers and crossed UP tracks. Watched the fire & smoke & firemen. Saw a telephone pole collapse under its own weight as lower extremities burned out underneath it.

We watched another pole burning in three separate places and saw the wires shake as it shifted weight from the flames and were waiting with great patience for it to fall but then the firemen extinguished it! Great sadness…

C'mon, telephone poles! Burn down!!

Getting late and boring, I headed back while megulon decided to circle round for other angles. On way back Water Ave. swaddled in cloud of smoke & wondered: SHOULD GAS MASKS BE STANDARD CHUNK 666 GEAR??

Water Ave swaddled in smoke.

Now, LOOK at the this plume of smoke, seen from the south! DO you recognize it? How can it be unmistakable?? ?

Look familiar? Like face of lost friend?

Clearly, it is hoary visage of Kloven Hoof himself!! trying to reenter this plan of existenz!!

Its like seeing double!!!

OPEN THE PORTAL and SEND HIM THROUGH!

OPEN THE POOOORRRTAAAAALLLLL & SEND HIM THROUGH !!

Almighty Klovenhoof, you are invincible!
Almighty Klovenhoof, you are invincible!
Almighty Klo-Ven-Hooooooooooof!
You are in-vince-i-buhhh-huhhhh-huhhh-ble!
Almighty Klo-Ven-Hooooooooooof!
You are in-vince-i-buhhh-huhhhh-huhhh-ble!
Almighty Klovenhoof, you are invincible!
Almighty Klovenhoof, you are invincible!
Almighty Klo-Ven-Hooooooooooof!
You are in-vince-i-buhhh-huhhhh-huhhh-ble!
Almighty Klo-Ven-Hooooooooooof!
You are in-vince-i-buhhh-huhhhh-huhhh-ble!
Almighty Klovenhoof, you are invincible!
Almighty Klovenhoof, you are invincible!
Almighty Klo-Ven-Hooooooooooof!
You are in-vince-i-buhhh-huhhhh-huhhh-ble!
Almighty Klo-Ven-Hooooooooooof!
You are in-vince-i-buhhh-huhhhh-huhhh-ble!
Almighty Klovenhoof, you are invincible!
Almighty Klovenhoof, you are invincible!
Almighty Klo-Ven-Hooooooooooof!
You are in-vince-i-buhhh-huhhhh-huhhh-ble!
Almighty Klo-Ven-Hooooooooooof!
You are in-vince-i-buhhh-huhhhh-huhhh-ble!
Almighty Klovenhoof, you are invincible!
Almighty Klovenhoof, you are invincible!
Almighty Klo-Ven-Hooooooooooof!
You are in-vince-i-buhhh-huhhhh-huhhh-ble!
Almighty Klo-Ven-Hooooooooooof!
You are in-vince-i-buhhh-huhhhh-huhhh-ble!

Almighty Klovenhoof, you are invincible !
Almighty Klovenhoof, you are invincible !

Almighty Klo-Ven-Hooooooooooof!

You are in-VINCE-i-buhhh-huhhhh-huhhh-ble!

ALMIGHTY KLO-VEN-HOOOOOOOOOOOF !

YOU ARE IN-VINCE-I-BUHHH-HUHHH-HUHH-BLE !!!

-lyrical recollection assist by megulon-5 & spidey.

Piratetown.

2006-05-11T08:32:00.000-07:00

DO YOU DREAM of fresh groundwater, spiked w/ antimony, BERYLLIUM, chromium, lead, arsenic, copper, and nickel !?

DO YOU HUNGER for earthy dirt tossed in a blend of chlorinated solvents, Lead, copper, nickel, chromium & ARSENIC concentrations ???

All above photos by j.Krak.
CHUNK 666 suggests evening spent at only & one PIRATE-TOWNE!!

Pollutions & contaminates for everyone and anyone!!*

all above pics by HIVE.
Come for scenery and peace and quiet, stay for blood poisoning!!

-pics by J.KRAK & HIVE.
http://www.dclxvi.org

*since 1900!!!

Spark Low

2006-05-09T22:50:00.000-07:00

Spark Low by Terri Saul. Like Mask of the Pacific Northwest, from a photo on the CHUNK 666 website.

Mask of the Pacific NW

2006-05-05T22:50:00.000-07:00

Mask of the Pacific Northwest by Terri Saul, from a photo on the CHUNK 666 website.

CHUNK 666 IRON CHEF!

2006-05-04T22:52:00.000-07:00

IRON CHEF!!

CHUNK666 STYLE!!!!

MANY SECRET INGREDIENTS!!!!!!

Thud challenged professional fancypants local bicycle (the normal and boring kind) framemakers to BRING IT and build mutant bikes according to CHUNK steez. i.e., using the rusty, peed-on pile of scrap bikes out back & gaus-welding with coat-hangers. CHUNK also supplied super-secret hard-earned pile of SECRET INGREDIENTS like band-saw blade, ninja shuriken, railroad nuts&bolts and grilled onions.

Mega-poser Ira Ryan built self-styled "mini-cargo bike" using old folding bike which Megulon5 rocked back in the day in NYC and got called "whitey" on.

WHAT'S he LOOKING AT!!? Obviously, he's a TOTAL FRAUD!!

Of course, the CHUNK 666 steez takes time to master, so there were some "problems"...

Rino laughs so hard at Ira's misfortune!! Everyone laughs!!

On closer inspection its revealed that cargo-bike indirect steering mechanism is merely tack-welded!! And he calls himself "fancypants professional"!!?

Parents, tell yr children: DON'T WELD LIKE THIS!!!

Suspect that Ira only pretending to build "chunk-style" mutantfun bike. Crappy welds suggest he planned all along to take his mail-order poser chunk bike home and finish the job with fancypants equipment!!

disembodied head of TIN-MAN is UNIMPRESSED!!

Hinterlands

2006-02-11T22:53:00.000-08:00

Outlying reaches of deep southeast Portland are cross-hatched with unimproved sidestreets and curious non-asphalt paths and byways. Some got the idea to do some off-road racing, CHUNK 666-style! Fun!

The first course was three blocks of unimproved roadway.

We did heats of three then a big final heat of everyone.

Three flat tires later we moved on to a slalom-style offroad course about 100+ yards long, all downhill.

Note Thud's unique on-the-fly dismount style at the very bottom of the course.

St. Louis has a hack!

2006-02-10T22:55:00.000-08:00

St. Louis's own bloody fingers (Cole = pilot, Lee = monkey) gettin rad on our side hack.

Sent in by a reader!

CHUNK 666 in Oregon City

2006-02-04T22:57:00.000-08:00

Bored with the local scene, CHUNK 666 sojourned south to Oregon City. We possed up and did our best to travel prepared.

Our baggage and victuals consisted of:

Six PB & J sandwiches.

One (!) pint whiskey.

2 thermos' coffee.

1 thermos hot toddy mix (also good and lukewarm and virgin as we found on the way home, dang it).

One giant Daily Grind brownie (courtesy Thud).

2 mini bananas.

trail mix.

2 cases beer, and a six of talls (when will they invent tall cases?).

Woefully under-prepared, no? Sobriety proved difficult, yet we pushed onwards.

As CHVNK rides will do, we moved at a leisurely pace, stopping frequently to gawk, hydrate, snack, and, of course, to make on-the-fly repairs, once early on when the Family Truxter had some cargo rack issues on the Springwater Corridor.

Photo courtesy of Stan!

Photo courtesy of Stan!

More seriously, the swingbike's sissybar's began to buckle roughly half the way to Oregon City. We bivouacked in a park somewhere in Milwaukie, and scavenged around for scrap metal, which we found by the nearby railroad tracks.

The scavenged metal bars even had holes that fit snugly over the rear axle! Some duct tape to give them some tension, and a rolled up poncho for some seat padding the swingbike was good to go.

The subsequent leg of the ride gets away from the riverside and becomes a long haul on a dull suburban street. However, as we began our final approach to Oregon City, we were rewarded when we came around a corner and ran smack into this!!

Yeah!! A goddamn castle!

We sniffed around, found someone's campsite, admired the graffiti ("bitch tits"), Guesses were made as to its age, although we had no idea it was old as it turned out to be [to StumptownConfidential's excellent research I will only add that on public records the Castle was purchased, possibly by Clackamas County, in 1999, and removed from the tax rolls].

Photo courtesy of Stan!

Then Lance found a note on the ground…

From there it was a quick jaunt into Oregon City itself. We rode down Main Street 'til we hit the paper mill, then sidled over into a nearby parking lot to get a good look at the Falls.

Apparently we were still on mill property, because the requisite security guard via golf cart told us to leave. We obliged and went and rode the Municipal Elevator. A succinct sampling of Oregon City bars and restaurants followed. The results:

The Wheel: A- (no draft beer)

Super Torta: A+

The 505: A- (darth vader dart machines a bit distracting)

The bar that asked us to leave our bags in the corner by the door: see me after class.

The long ride home began. After climbing a very long hill, we popped back to the halfway point park where we had repaired the swingbike, and consumed the last of our supplies.

Back in Portland proper, a brief porch session was quickly followed by heading up the hill to the pub for tater tots and onion rings.

-liberator, silken.

A CHUNK 666 New Year's Eve.

2005-12-31T23:00:00.000-08:00

P.S. My lungs don't hurt so much now.

Ice CHUNKin'

2005-12-18T23:02:00.000-08:00

There was an ice storm today for all of 12 hours or so. But, it was icy, make no doubt. Megulon-5 and I could not but help ride our sidehacks around, which, it turns out, are perfection for dealing with slick roads: more control than a car or a regular bicycle.

After a bite to eat we rolled over to Lake Siracusa, which had frozen over, and took turns alternating between riding up to the ice at a good speed and trying to put your hack into a 180-360 spin, and sweeping snow off the ice.

Photographication by Megulon-Five.

Photographication by Megulon-Five.

Eventually Big B. came and joined the fun. Handicapper has three wheels, sorta. Right?

Photographication by Megulon-Five.

Photographication by Megulon-Five.

Finally, the flask I had was empty, no one could hit me with a snowball. Conclusion: it was time to go. On the way home freezing rain started to fall and there was not a single car on the roads. I felt like Han on his Taun-taun on Hoth, it was awesome! Ice was actually freezing on the bike while I was riding.

Photographication by Megulon-Five.

Poker Run.

2005-12-03T23:05:00.000-08:00

A Poker Run consisting of CHUNK 666, a few friends, and some guests, went down Saturday night. The ante-up was $5 per person, and the game was five-card stud.

There was some variant version of redneck soccer early on.

Glue won the $100 pot with a straight flush. The lucky bastard.

I think the next best hand was a pair of sixes.

The bar lady chastised Jason for drinking on the curb. While she was doing so I was able to discreetly camouflage my beer behind a convenient parking meter.

Remember suddenly feeling at some point that the people 'round the table were outnumbered by pitchers of beer (a terrifying sensation, for a moment, at least).

Yesteryear Bikes of CHUNK 666.

2005-11-11T23:06:00.000-08:00

Inebriated Hanseatic mutant bicyclengineers by spring, and summer, the return to the Sump lends itself nicely to time for reflection and illumination. Left to one's own devices, devoid the luxury of ample dry, daylight hours, for hacking one's next bicyclical (and biblical) dreadnaught, CHUNK 666 slip dreamlike into the silky smooth vestments of shaman-warrior-poet of the creeping Apockyclipse. Retiring from the workshop and lab, to DiVinci's Watering Hole to sophistrate upon all manner of heretic and incites, the aforementioned Apockyclipse, and, of course, the great Project at hand, winter times is the times for reflections of times past.

The Dysfunctional Phenomena of Continuous Prolongating Deleterious Mutation dictates your mutant bicycle stands little to no chance of replacing the Known Quantity Bicycle (or "safety diamond") by means of natural selection anytime soon. The life of a Mutant Bicycle tends be short and awkward, painful, usually with violent and spasmodical demisery. Pendent opera interrupta, indeed, Mrs. Beasley.

Obvious extrapolation of the Mutant Bicycle Theorem of evidences three generalities in which a CHUNK 666 or similarly modified bicycle may fulfill their atavistic destiny.

1.
Stand and Deliver!

Where goes civilization, there will find highwaymen. Truly, the lowest of the low, and perhaps, the saddest of sad Fates to befall and beplunge our labors. A sad day, always, when a CHUNK bike is delivered unto the hands of these lawless brigands. A joyous reprieve, when one is recovered.

2.
The Folly of Man.

Catastrophe! Cataclysm! Welds are cracked! Steel crimped and bended! Hubris, broked! Worthy of repair, nevermore! No jury-rigging, here! Summarily trashed, bashed, and thrashed. To be relegated to the Pile, perhaps, in rust we trust.

3.
The Slow Demise… To Rise Again??

This twisted wretch that once was a bicycle, whole or in pieces, but nonetheless deemed "un-ridable" by the tribe, is laid to rest in the Pile, or perhaps under the Tree of Shame. Perhaps to be reincarnate. Not built to last but built to burn: the style of the CHUNK 666. Recycled for spare steel? Rust for years in the elements? Integer vitae scelerisque purus?

Mutant bicyclenginers and deconstructionists at large: record with photographication the fruits of your labors. Steeds come and go, as so many wicked hangovers. Succumbing to nauseous nostalgia, herein follows the surviving photographical historiography (in my possession, at the least) of choppers and other bikes I or others have built in the past. As you can see, they are not the best photographicals. Know this: Once these steeds patrolled the streets, and were the very Stewards of the Sump itself.

Yellow Bastard.
circa 1999 - circa 2000.

A short life, this one. A BMX-Extendo chopper, accomplished much, in various stages, venturing as far as the first Bikesummer in San Francisco in 1999, the WTO Summit in Seattle, and one of those fortunate enough to escape the police dragnet on New Years Eve, 1999. It was catastrophically and categorically annihilated at a Chunkathalon in March of 2000.

Millenium Falcon.
circa 2000 - circa 2001.

To date, my sole experimentation with reverse tricycles.

To the best of my recollection, I'm not quite sure what my original intent was when I began construction on this. A cargo/rickshaw type trike may have been the idea, but I ended up with what essentially became the only bike I've ever built specifically for Flaming Bikes of Death. The spacing of the two "nacelles" allowed an inordinate amount of ordnance on the front, minus the flaming inferno cascading directly into my admittedly beautiful face.

Loaned out, left out overnight, and subsequently lost in the winter of 2001.

That Bike Built at the '99 Bikesummer Workshop.
1999.

Thrown together out of boredom, mostly, at the Bikesummer Chopper-Building Workshop in 1999. Although this picture makes it look somewhat slick and fast, was actually a bitch to ride (raked wayyy the hell out, observe the trail on that there fork) and was terrible to ride more than a block. Fun novelty item, though.

Parted out back in Portland a few months later.

The Rusty Nail.
circa 199_?_ - circa 2001.

Rusty Nail was the workhorse of the CHUNK 666 fleet in the mid to late '90s, and was the only chopper to ride in every major engagement in the years 1997-1999. The Nail (as her many, many lovers called her) was a solid, rugged, un-exciting chopper that performed its job faithfully. It was stable and forgiving to ride, with fairly responsive controls.

Being fairly maneuverable, Rusty Nail was occasionally pressed into service as a incendiary bike of death ordnance delivery device. And keg interceptor. It played this role well on many occasions, including an now legendary (possibly scientifically impossible) engagement wherein Krak covered his body (and most of the Nail) in Vaseline (or some type of heat retardant) and then COVERED the bike in newspapers (including the spokes) and fireworks, doused the works in lighter fluid, and set the whole thing alight. He and the Nail then proceeded to ride circle lazily on a major street whilst a crowd of 20-25 people sat on the ledge in front of a nearby house cheering and languidly taking pulls off 40 ouncers.

There is not a single mission in the late 90s in which the Nail did not play a part, and the above photo is from none other than the night of the December 31, 1999 arrests, on which I piloted the Nail myself, bearing a special Virgin Mary, Full of Fire.

Befell the same fate as the Falcon. They perished together.

Piglet.
circa 1999/2000.

This little chopper probably went on one ride from the Lab to the closet watering hole on a bitterly cold and windy night the winter 1999-2000. I think other CHUNKs began parting it out within a week. What a piece of shit.

Steve.
circa 2001 - current?

Rino constructed this bike arounds the summer of 2001, before CHUNK 666's expedition to Vancouver, B.C., Canada that same year. Since then it put on tons of miles and was refurbished or repaired numerous times by Rino or Liberator, who loved Steve as a child comes to love an deformed, three-legged, one-eyed puppy whom yet remains capable of running ten miles without tiring or losing its fighting spirit. At the 2004 Downhill Race in Seattle, Big B. (unknowingly) took Steve for its final spin. Whilst on a beer run with Steve from our gratis hotel on Capitol Hill, Big B. exited the convenience store to find Steve had vanished. Stolen.

What a crappy fate. Lost in Seattle.

CHUNK 666 vs. Brian Herbert

2005-11-05T23:08:00.000-08:00

Lo!! The Sumpification of this cow-town of a outpost of the hinterlands CHUNK 666 calls home momentarily intermissioned to make chunking around a not-nonpleasant experience. A handful of us loafed around The House of Lords (… And Ladies), and polished off the remainder of a bottle of cheap Thai whiskey, wherefor, properly lubricated, we rode.

The primary destination was a house party of a neighbor of a friend of Big B.'s. But firstly a detour was to a location perhaps best left unspecified. Thereon, this gaggle of CHVNK helped themselves summarily and generously to delicious pumpkin pie, negligently left to cool on an open window sill.

From thence we went to said social kegger near-abouts.

After a good hour or so sipping some sort of colonial beverage claiming to be from India, and discussing, in various and sundry manners, Life in a Provincial Township, and CHUNK 666's niche in such hinterlands as this, and the interaction of the two, and namely the continuation of certain archaic, dated, near-feudal social customs relating to being a Genteelman (or Genteelwoman), Namely, the identification of certain negative traits (blood feud, inebriation, vendetta), as well as positive ones (blood feud, inebriation, vendetta).

Eventually Denk grew restless and bellicose of this line of conversation, and posited the pack hit the road. Namely, that we roll downtown and gatecrash Orycon 27.

Plate I. Orycon27 program, obtained by our agents.

Orycon, for the uninitiated, is Oregon's largest science fiction (and gaming) convention (although I am informed attendance has been on the decline as of late due to chronic infighting). They essentially rent out an entire hotel for the weekend, sell and buy goods and stuffs, play games (rolepalying, board & card), speakers, etc., and so on and so on.

Oh yeah. Brian Herbert and his little hack writer friend were special guests this year.

Arriving downtown, we grilled an exiting participant for information. We had missed the costume ball, but apparently there was an on-going "dance hall." We secured the squadron and easily slipped through a door as some hotel employees were leaving. Down an escalator and a hallway and into the darkened dance party.

Wow! Let me tell you, Sci-Fi Convention people know HOW TO PARTY! Big B. got so excited during one the numerous impromptu occurances of circle dances that he busted out some breakdancing moves in the center of it. This was promptly followed by two ladies strutting their stuff with some celtic dance moves.

We hung out for about an hour before we began to feel we should split. We were tempted to locate ourselves to one the numerous "private parties" being held in individual hotel rooms, where, we assumed, more than a few Conventioneers were, probably, in all likelyhood, getting absolutely shithammered. But this seemed a difficult proposition to fulfill as it would require us to scope the halls floor by floor, calling attention to the fact we lacked the necessary badges identifiying us as having paid our registration fee(s).

Best then, to leave. We took the obligatory photographic evidence to record our presence (of Denk & Big B.on the dance floor), and bolted.

The squadron made the quick flit to the apex of the Hawthorne Bridge and drank the lone remaining beer from Big B.'s kit. As the Sumping began once again, we headed our separate ways.

Zombie Holocaust

2005-10-29T23:10:00.000-07:00

The origins of CHUNK 666's intense, almost gravitational attraction to zombies are somewhat of a mystery, but it is a deep, longstanding love affair. Clearly, zombies tend to play the part of Harbingers of the Apockyclipse, or of lords and masters of the post-apockycliptik world. If the former, zombies may be part of the Grand Design (whatever that may be) of which C.H.U.N.K. 666 is part, and thus our allies. If the latter, then they shall be our sworn mortal enemies (since CHUNK 666 shall dominate the wastelands of tomorrow). Perhaps it is a shared affinity for feeding off of society which draws them to each other..

Flyer artwork by Billdozer.

As in years previous, Billdozer organized this year's ZOMBIE HOLOCAUST. a Bicycle Tour of Terror. Since Billdozer will shortly be withdrawing from our fair, sodden township, methinks a recap of his Halloween trilogy (really, quite admirable) is appropriate at this juncture.

It began with OCCULTONOMY- The Seven Sacred Rites in 2003.

Occult: to make clear what is hidden, or to make hidden what is clear through use of symbol and lexicon

Occultonomy: the practice of using magick and ritual to achieve a state of personal autonomy; The discovery of the illuminated world to exercise power over all who dwell within
Through use of recitation, divination, and ritualistic theatrics, the actor opens the doors into the illumined sphere.

On the eve of the Dead, upon the toll of Ten, shall begin a contest. The Seven Sacred Rites will be a contest like rarely one has ever seen. Participants will be asked to perform Seven rituals, kept secret from the prying eyes of the unilluminated. Upon the completion of each test, the participant will learn one of the seven sacred words. Recite all seven sacred words in the correct order, and your eyes will be opened.

The Tests of the Initiates:
1) The unblinking eye
2) The mouth of Fire
3) Recovery of the Cornerstone
4) The Rebuilding of the Temple
5) Ordeal of Knowledge
6) Ordeal of Nature
7) Ordeal of War

The victor of this race will not only be the first to complete all seven rites, but the first to complete them in the correct order. Haste and rashness will not aid you here. A sharp mind and a keen ear will be your salvation.

On Hallow'Een Ten O'clock NE Williams and Tillamook Portland OR. To Be followed by a celebration for the New Initiates.^*

Some may remember Halloween of 2003 as "that godawful cold one." If rememory serves me right, CHUNK 666 administered the Ordeal of War at Zebrastation, thankfully huddled around a roaring bonfire. I was in a crude zombie get-up, but lack of makeup made me resemble more businessman-mauled-by-bear than zombie.

Occultonomy was followed by THE BLACK ARTS, which saw the emphasis shift to the walking dead among us. A good dozen outriders took to the night,

racing along lonely, dark paths, through graveyards and mausoleums, chased at every turn by the living dead, but turning out okay. This was probably the bloodiest alleycat in PDX history, with five gallons of blood poured on the victor. Animal parts and splatter were par for the course.^**

CHUNK 666 zombies in various states of decomposition laid in ambush at the local Mausoleum, eating brains and generally shambling and stumbling.

Which brings us to the present, the ZOMBIE HOLOCAUST, as the CHUNK 666 zombies are once again set loose, this time into the confines of a local cemetery.

What kind of zombie are these? Billdozer's Primer on the subject may be of assistance...

If my understanding of the "rules" are correct, at each stop the racers had to avoid being "bitten" by the patrolling zombies. If they were "bitten," they had to remain at that stop until the race was over. We were stationed at the final stop before the finishing point, and out of a reported 50 riders, we only saw about 30, a high attrition rate!!!

^* Dozer, Bill. The Seven Sacred Rites, from the P.U.M.A. website.
^** Dozer, Bill. The Black Arts, from the P.U.M.A. website (scroll down).

October Rink.

2005-10-15T23:13:00.000-07:00

Being as the last Rink was found by all to be a universally excellent soiree, as well as a pernicious demonstration of moxie and derring-do, it was determined that there should be another such Rink on Saturday. This Rink would also celebrate those of CHUNK 666 and its ilk that were born in the month of October, a surprisingly large and influential faction of CHUNK, known as the "Rocktoberists."

Saturday night finds the weather on the surreal side: misting rain, occasionally intensifying to a light, light drizzle. Wind and cold, thankfully, are absent. The lack of wind, or even much of a breeze, amplifies the effects of the fog machine.

A barrel fire serves as the axis point of the rink. Due to the general dampness of the evening, people would alternate between rink-riding and warming up and drying off around the fire.

The recent return of the rainy season meant the shores of Lago Siracusa had expanded back out their pre-summer levels. Deeper, too. Soundings found it a full eight to ten inches near the center. Numerous rinkers tear through the depths on various CHUNK bikes. Some are caught off guard by the Lago's depth. One plucky fellow piloted (unknowningly) his vessel directly over the all-organic "plug" that creates the lake. The front wheel slipped sideways and out under him, generating a spectacular splashdown! As a band was playing over in the shop, only Big. B., Root Dog, and myself witnessed the mighty fall. Big B. gave him a beer, and the rider spent the rest of the evening trying to dry off by the fire.

In distant days past, the nigh entirety of the CHUNK 666 fleet could be found in a single stable. In modern times, the herd is now distributed according to available yard-space and personal collections. The tendency being, "if you build a bike then, you must to provide housing for it, for it is of your own blood." Keeping this observation in mind, the CHUNK fleet tends to appear small, although evidence at the Rinks is to the contrary. For on these occasions, where the vast majority of the fleet converges in one location, for one evening, the bikes of CHUNK 666 are legion.

The Hack II provided my transport that night. Following the previous Rink, Big B. related to me how impressed he was with the "solid" nature of Hacky. This was due to his observing numerous persons riding it, almost always with a passenger. I confess this escaped my attentions before, but at this Rink I saw what he was on about. And it seemed a bit dodgy to me, I admit. Must four persons ride the Deuce at the same time?

Rino debuted Bumpty, his re-engineered Humpty, previously a long-term tenant of the chronic-pile. A great, great ride for the Rink. Not so sure I'd want to ride it any distance, though, even as far as the beer store.

As will happen at Rinks, a bit of a spontaneous, racous, rolling duel betwixt Big B. and myself precipitated. He was riding Cameltoe, and I was rockin' Denk's chopper. Round and round we wove, an intricate game of seeing just how close we could actually bring those front wheels right up next to each other, yet without actually touching, much like a game of 'chicken,' but side by side, and not head to head. Add to this an outstretched arm, snagging at clothing or forearms.

Competition is fierce and merciless amongst CHUNK 666 at the Rink.

The match was decided on the tighter western turn, where I was trying to route Big B. into the Lago once again (given Cameltoe's size, this mattered little). We got caught in a mutual death grip, Big B. taloned to the shoulder of my jacket. I, in turn, latched to a handful of pant leg. And then and there Big B. lost it, and plowed into a female pedestrian bystander, categorically clothes-lining her! He immediately began to drop profuse and sincere apologies, to the point where she insisted that he stop, or he would be the sorry one! Dear me! I, on the other hand, circled the two of them, prodding Big B. to "get back on your bike! I'm not finished with you yet!"

Looking forward to the Zombie Holocaust.

Upon discovering I was upon the final bottle of the half-rack purchased on the way to the Rink, I decided it would be my last of the evening. By the time I had downed the last drop the clock was crawling up on 1:30 a.m., so I provided my neighbor Monica with a ride home in Hacky, rather than letting her walk home unescorted.

It has been reported the Rink carried on strongly for a few more hours, fueled by the fire and ample remaining stores of beer. Of particular note was Big B. riding Swampthing around with Denk balanced on the back. Big B. lost control at a corner (the theme of the evening, it would seem, I might add), and careened into a blackberry bush. This blackberry bush that had been poisoned, causing the dead branches and thorns to be especially hard and inflexible, tearing the bloody hell out of his arms. Then Big B. slipped on the stairs of his basement, and broke his fall with his elbows.

The next day Big B. and I cleaned up the pile in the backyard. We drank leftover beers. I found a pair of pliers flattened into the dirt (for lack of evidence to the contrary, I blame it on Ninja). Also found: someone's piss bottle, estimated to be at least one year old. Really now, that's gross.

Sidehack II

2005-09-21T14:54:00.000-07:00

When not conscripted into the necessary if unsavory task of logistical support, the Hack has moonlighted on numerous occasions as a shuttle for the walking wounded of C.H.U.N.K. 666, transporting its gimpy passengers to the local public house to convalesce and feel sorry for themselves, including myself at several junctures, for which I am grateful.

The Hack, c. 1998 – present.

The Hack is constituted of two near-identically sized frames, with a multi-colored panoply of bicycle tubes and stays bridging them. Since the Hack is essentially a single-track bicycle with an outrigger wheel, its steering is asymmetrical. It can turn on a six pence to the left (turning towards the sidecar), with the single-track bicycle rotating around the outrigger wheel, which, depending on the severity of the orbit, can remain completely at rest. Right turns (away from the sidecar) are decidedly unnatural at any reasonable cadence, as the single-track bicycle feels like its dragging the outrigger wheel through the turn (or at least this is what it feels like to me). If there is no passenger or cargo in the sidecar, one may alleviate the dragging sensation by popping the outrigger wheel up into the air, and "flying the chair."

Tricycles have it rough in the modern sprawl of asphalt. Paved roads are, after all, graded to better drain rainwater, motor oil, spilled beverages, and urine. On a bicycle one does not notice this (the grade, that is), since a bicycle may be balanced upright on an angled surface with as much ease as on a perfectly level one. Tricycles do not require balancing, of course. They stand on their own. A tricycle on a high-crowned road will lean with the road, and instinct is to lean as if balancing a bicycle, which puts torque on the wheels and frame. Keg Trike's frame has a slight twist to the front of the frame from riders leaning to the left to unnecessarily "correct" its balance, and requires its front fork and wheel to be exchanged for less hoopty ones on frequent occasion.

Which brings us to the error of the Hack: the sidecar shouldn't be on the left side. When riding on a road with a significant crown to it, the sidecar should really be on your right to prop you up. But since the sidecar on the Hack is on the left, unless you are going at a very controlled and slow speed, or gravitate to the center of the road as much as possible, the Hack's steering will exhibit a hard pull to the right into the curb. Examine the photo above: the Hack is up near the center of the road, where the grade is less severe. The chopper riding escort with the Hack, however, is hugging the curb where the grade is most significant with no impediment to speed or ease of riding.

When CHUNK 666 visited the Rat Patrol in Chicago, I spent a day riding their sidecar tricycle around. Being used to riding with the sidecar on the left, I was duly impressed with how much more pleasant the Rathack was with the car on the right (made more enjoyable by Chicago's incomprehensible flatness), and I decided to construct a second CHUNK Hack with the car on the right side.

Back in Portland and a short time later, CHUNK 666 was invited to root through a collection of bike frames, wheels, and parts. Included in this haul was a Columbia 3-speed with 24-inch wheels. Recalling Johnny Payphone's deduction that smaller wheels can carry more weight; this bike seemed as good as any to hack.

There was exactly one tricky weld, which was the first. I stripped the Columbia down to the frame, and searched the pile for another frame sized for 24" wheels. The only one I could find was the remnants of the Spirit of '76, a tall bike I built back in about 2000 along the lines of the Organ Donor, but with 20-inch wheels (it was so-named because one of the donor bikes that went into it bore that name on its chain-guard). That bike had a healthy career, but the extended steer tube broke, for the fourth time, I believe, at the 2002 Chunkathalon, and I didn't care to fix it again, and had been resting and rusting in the chronic pile ever since.

I put the Columbia and the Spirit in a make-shift jig to align their dropouts parallel to each other, and so the frames where roughly equally level to the ground (employing liberal "eye bology," naturally). Once the first spanning piece of rectangular steel tubing was in place, the remaining welding was very easy. Better yet, once the remains of the Spirit entered the equation, I was inspired to do my best to employ as many orphaned pieces of steel from old, broken-down CHUNK bikes as possible.

The sidecar of the Hack II is thusly comprised of the aforementioned Spirit of '76, gazelle forks of the second iteration of Biscuit, the original steel tubes from the forks of Denk's chopper, and the neigh-ancient gazelle forks of the Stars and Stripes Forever (another bike christened for the inscription on its chain guard).

Construction was prolonged over a month and half period, as other CHUNK 666 obligations preoccupied me (idle hands and all that), but I managed to finish the last welds and install the floor boards, made entirely out of junky pallet wood, about three weeks before the Chunkathalon. I took the finished product to the Friday Night Rink, at which many people took turns riding their friends around in the sidecar. Considering the Hack II now thoroughly rated for cargo duty, I used it to run numerous errands for the Chunkathalon, after which I swore off riding it for about a week and enjoyed the simpler joys of riding old fashioned two-wheeled creations instead.

The Hack II is 95% welded with coat hangers.

Chunkathalon Essays

2005-09-10T14:57:00.000-07:00

Late one Friday night Thud left me a message mumbling something about an essay contest for the upcoming Chunkathalon. Intrigued, I called him back and we ended up drinking Lucky on my porch 'til 4 in the morning. And so the Essay Contest was added to this year's Chunkathalon. We enlisted the assistance of Meagan from Magpie to handle the topic(s), seeing as she had included essay questions in numerous alley cats in the past and was perceived by many as being pretty good at it, and since if CHUNK 666 came up with the topics, then we'd know what the topic was days before anyone else. And that would be cheating.

Meagan came up with three topics (of which each team had to write one essay regarding one topic), with bonus points for a limerick. The topics were as follows:

1. Coca Cola approaches your chopper club with an opportunity to be in a commercial promoting their product. Explain your decision to accept or decline their offer, and the issues you confronted in making this decision.

2. Compare and contrast altruistic and profit-minded motivations for chopper sales and distribution, touching specifically on the social and ethical ramifications thereof.

3. Describe in detail your vision of the future of our fair Nation’s bicycle communities, were they to be denied the comic relief and spiritual sustenance afforded them by bike clubs such as yours.

Limericks:
This is not a requirement of said competition but would amuse us greatly. As would be expected the theme could be bikes and choppers or your bike club.

Moments before the winners were announced, I checked in on where the Judges had recessed to tally the scores (and grade the essays). Scorekeeper James was at work at the calculator, and the essays were laying in a crumpled stack on a table. I snatched them up, since I didn't want them lost to the ages, then realized I had nowhere to put them. Fortunately, at that moment Liberator came limping out of the rest rooms. I declared it her sacred trust to history itself to keep the essays in her bag until I could get them later. She not only took them into her safekeeping, but saved me a ton of time and transcribed them! So buy Liberator a drink the next time you see her!

I scanned some of the essays and affixed them with their respective transcribed contents, just to give you an idea of what these things came out looking like. The essays are in no particular order.

CHUNKATHALON ESSAYS.

THE ARISTOCRATES
In exquisite campes style

So so some CrakoCola A&R mofo says to da aristocrates: “money money whore whore” “I make you kids famous” “put you up on the blue glow” “choppa’s & coke man it’s a new hot synergy” “we make it together kids” & we da aristocrats talk amongst “yeah yeah like skulhead face, play the slave pit to the ultimate potential” well well we drop the ibogaine supply into world wide- (new handwriting) So people know to avoid that shit before too long, and bike riding gains popularity. Why? Because people are off the shit that keeps them inside, and they’re so thankful to our team, and chopper builders they want to get in on that rad action. Cars stop running because there is no gas and no coke, and bikes rule the roads… but the chopper is KING! (new handwriting) But so is Coke. Wreathed in their crown of red and silver, cola, cola, cola, confused synapses bloated w/ caffeine. I remembered that the dollar sign is where it’s at and cash rules everything. Cream. (new handwriting) In fact I prefer dirty money! Food tastes better when it’s bought with the blood of innocent children, beer gets you drunker, and drugs get you more fadeder. That’s why we now build all our bikes with coca-cola brand aluminum.

BABES OF THE WORLD

If the nations of Canada and the United States were denied us and our comic relief & spiritual sustenance, many bad things would happen. There would be a lack of community and camaraderie and everyone would become zombies that were controlled by corporations. The corporations would make lists and rules about who could ride bikes. We would all end up bowing down to the man because our free spirits had been drained. We want to be free to ride our machines without being hassled by the man.

TEAM MANTASTIC

Take the #*%@!! Money. Osama bin Laden took the money. What did he do? Shackled the Pentagon!! For at least 125 years, people interested in the tearing down of gov./corporations have had a common need: greenbacks!! (or Pesos if you’re in Mexico). The most logical and sometimes easiest method to get these shiny Euros is to steal them. 2nd easiest is to agree to take the dinero from the government/corporation graciously. The shitheads (name hidden for the safety of the club) took the money in exchange for riding a bunch of crappy, I mean cool, home made bikes in front of some kids pretending to be modern day Jack Karowacks (name misspelled to protect the innocent).

The potential for insurgent mayhem waged via the free Rupee’s is limitless. Bike chapters could secretly install “taste testers” in the Coca-Cola R & D group. “I want that smooth cola flavor with a cat piss aftertaste.” “I loved eating charcoal as a kid, what if we put it in the can and call it Coca-Coala!” “How about New Coke!” Another good idea is to just let kids drink as much as they want and allow adult onset diabetes to become a first rate national health epidemic.

Is it honest to say you will use the money for an anti Coke cause? The shitheads in san fran were recently seen pulling out of the metro metal recycling facility in an empty ford F-750 stretch limo pickup truck. They were blaring “My mind’s on my money and my money’s on mind…..” On second thought, all money corrupts don’t take the money.

TEAM FRIDGE / UNDERDWELLERS

For the untold millions in Nigeria, who would otherwise suffer their lives without knowledge of the ways of bike chopping, and for the untold millions of dollars that the Coca-Cola company would pay us to further their mission of thirst-quenching, we would have no option but accept the offer and ride in cola-flavored glee trough the world spreading a message of imperfection and glee. Numerous benefits would abound for the M&M flavored people of the African Nation. Were the world conquered by fork wielding longbikes, from Africa down, neither the military nor cultural powers of earth would have either the willingness or the capabilities to overthrow the unintended world domination (dominion) which the corporation of Coca-Cola and its hollow threat of counterculturedom (a word filled with the image of the phallus) (via the offer of inter-dimensional stardom to we (THE TEAM Fridge-Underdweller) would bring! Thus we would accept the folly filled offer of Coca-Cola and demolish all that is.

TEAM BONUS LEVEL

The Coca Cola people had made their offer. $1000 for being filmed a bit, and we might end up in an ad. We’d just have to do as they said, sign off our culture and ride our bikes for them.

Mr. Frazzle spit on the ground and scoffed. “Why don’t you see us on store bought so-called choppers? Or drinking your sugar fizz death? We won’t give you money to ruin more people’s lives with exploitation and murder. Begone scum of the earth!” And then Ralph grabbed a pedal wrench, and thought ‘Van Gogh burnt his brushes to stay warm; I’m not compromising to these bitches. I’ll sell this wrench for lunch.’

Limerick:

There once was a club in the Bay
Coke offered them money for pay
They made a shit ad
It made us all sad
Coz selling out’s never okay

WYLD STALLIONZ (CHUNK 666)

2013. Babies eating babies. Chewing through spandex and melanoma. Internal combustion has proven itself [a fable]? but the country of Shimano has risen to the foamy cream of the cushion. Their firm grip on the pocketbooks and lipstick traces on the faces of [Aghasta]? has both exemplified the power and hinted at the Achilles heels of the moving and commuting bodies. Chopper clubs such as CHUNK can not be stopped, like rats, cockroaches, raccoons etc. they will always adapt and return to rewild the city – so the question is somewhat moot. Obviously attempts to stifle and repress the clubs are a bad idea, would be unpopular and would result in a backlash. Thus, ironically, strengthening the freak bike movement.

Limerick:

I was at the CHUNK 666 battle
When Karl laid his tongue on my saddle
My girl said that’s sweet
His mouth on your seat\
But I’d rather eat spongiform cattle

Some say Chunkathalon’s great
But I sit on my ass and just wait
I’m getting’ frenetic
Here waxin’ poetic
I shoulda kept ridin’ my skate

There once was a beautiful skunk
Who wanted to join up with CHUNK
So I gave it some feed
We smoked out some weed
And I filled it up with my spunk

There once were some bikes in a trunk
When dusted and rode they went “CHUNK!”
To make the sound louder
We welded ‘em prouder
And that’s how 666 it got thunk

Well-hung with star-studded medallions
Bust your ears with our chainrings a-growlin’
Hide all your ladies
We ride chopped since the 80’s
Bitch we ride like fuckin’ wild stallions

There once were some assholes in cars
Who only knew how to fight wars
They battled with choppers
Got thrown in a hopper
And we launched them like turds from our arse

TEAM LAST MINUTE WONDERS

The first time we saw a corporate logo encrusted chopper all 4 of us experienced feelings of joy and disgust. Whoa! Chopper! … Followed quickly by wait – that’s corporate.

Mike’s Hard Lemonade has perhaps profited the most from the current chopper craze. With advertising and giveaways, Mike’s has jumped onto the chopper bandwagon & is steering the handlebars. Every gas station up and down the coast sells “Chopper” shirts (OCC is albeit motor choppers but the same idea). Bike choppers are cool, nifty, edgy and becoming a status symbol. But where does the name chopper come from? You chop the forks, weld them together and you have a d bike. DIY is key with choppers.

So is it any better to just make choppers at home and give them to friends? Maybe. It’s hard to say – giving away or selling DIY choppers still means that the people getting the choppers are not participating in the manufacture of them. As with punk/grunge music and thrift store clothes, DIY is imminently commodifiable. If someone wants a chopper, motorized or not, it should be with some participation of the rider to receive the bike. DIY is too precious and too easily corruptible.

Limerick:

There once was a student at Lyons
Who decided to bugger the swans
The faithful hall porter
Said, “Pray take my Daughter,
The swans are reserved for the Dons!”

TEAM DEAD BABY 13

Future bike communities were they to be denied the creative mayhem of our respective bike clubs would still be drawn to the fringes of bike culture. When an element of an eco-system is removed, it inevitably is replaced by something else (unless you lose the base element).

In an effort to be different or show love for individuals.

Limerick?:

We want to be free
Free to do what we want to do
Free to ride our machines
Without being hassled by the man
And we want to get loaded

TEAM NO BIKES (CHUNK 666)

This era is no different from any other. There are always jerks in charge, and then others. Eventually some other jerks are in charge and then sometimes what are referred to as ‘the people’ or ‘the masses’ or ‘the seething hordes’ rise up and have a great big freakout. Lots of people get hurt and maybe the jerk in charge gets a little annoyed or a lot nervous or has a chuckle or gets their balls chopped off, only to have new, bristlier, tougher sets grow in, but most importantly, a lot of people figure out what really matters. FUN!! After the mo’ money mo’ problems, whatever gets them through the night is all that the masses have to hold onto, and it is a little bit of love and a whole lotta fun and the revolution will be the best party ever and the only one that anyone remembers and it will be lit by cash-fueled fires and the thirst of the hordes will be slaked by vats of coca cola and some will denounce it and the judges will be the most attractive judges I have ever seen and I will dance on the graves of the naysayers with both my legs broken and I will be laughing…

TEAM LEFT BEHIND

We all can afford it
Especially the stupid
It ruins our kidneys
And delays the onset of pubid.
Scourge of our neighborhoods
A blight on our kids
Chunksters who snort it
Soon on the skids
After the deluge
There will be no coke
The poor will be dead
And the rich will be broke

Limerick:

Coke is akin to a cold sore
They wanna make us their Ad Whore
“It’s better than crack”
And even more wack
Than the wackest Chunkathalon hard core

TEAM LOW DEXTERITY (Margaret Charles)

Thank you for approaching as with this mutually advantageous offer to promote your product. Wunyby both of our pudilns share a mutual desire to obtain money at the expense of others. Chopper altow lit cocola sturds bor slif aderse and achiebdyed addiction together we can (whoa, handwriting change) awaken consumersto the new order: lubricated by coke and powered by people. Here are our demands:

- the delivery of all unused cocaine from your warehouses to us (address below)
- life time supply of lube. It’s the “real thing”
- we should name it the “Coca Cola All Purpose Chopper Lube”
- Black cans with skulls adorning the sides

In conclusion, we thank you for your letter. We shall remove our chopper bikes from your meeting rooms in the morning. Your secretaries will be released come sunrise.

-Team Low Dexterity

TEAM LUCKY (CHVNK 666)

Take the job. Be polite, concerned, and enthusiastically interested. Compliment some corporate khakis. Expand on your conversion from Pepsi to Coke. Come the day of the job, start drinking heavily and early. Gather together those members of your fleet which most threaten to implode and which have the least emotional value. Bring all your available ordinance, Saturn Missiles, Roman candles, TNT, Smell Bad.

Upon arrival, insult the nearest ad-exec thusly, "Nice pants, shit-sack.” Attempt to urinate on aforementioned khakis. Continue with genitalia exposed. Now it's time to get raw. Poop on the product. Really. Lay the "thick cable." Pull out the six-pack of Tab from 1980, which you've saved for this occasion. Pound Tab, mount up, shoot down all corporate goons in sight. Ride directly and with intention into their expensive equipment. Get injured. Say, "You better know a good lawyer, bitch." Split.

Limerick:

There once was a CHUNK named Spidey,
Who always liked things to be tidy.
He said with a gasp
While wiping his ass,
I really need new "tighty whities"

COKE IS IT!
by THE KRUNKATHELETES (zoobomb)

Dear Coca Cola,

First off we are honored that of all the activities you could expose to the masses, you are interested in our organization. We are awed by the legacy you represent. You basically invented soda, to the extent that the “industry” is referred to as the coke system. Besides being an industry leader you also make a Mighty Tasty Beverage.

I figure you are trying to follow up your successful promotion featuring Black Label (MN) tall bike jousters. Unfortunately, that club did not support the use of its resources in your campaign. The member who participated was stripped of his colors.

Our club, the Krunkatheletes, would like to meet with you to discuss our terms. Yes, we will be in your commercial. We feel it would be irresponsible to the youth of America not to. In a sea of Materialism that is Modern America, we appreciate your platform. If seeing sexy people do sexy stuff makes you want to do sexy stuff, then seeing cool people do cool stuff should inspire thusly.

Some of our peers might scoff at dealing with a Multinational Corporation; that is their right. We, however, don’t believe in the moral crux of big is bad. For example your business plan spreads wealth back to foreign markets through your independent bottling network. So more money made in country x stays in country x because the bottler is owned by a citizen of country x. Proper. You also rank in the top ten of all Fortune 500 companies in charitable donations. Thanks. In conclusion, because of you superior product, progressive business model and unprecedented opportunity to reach the Mall Rat generation, as well as your commitment to bettering the communities you do commerce in, we ACCEPT YOUR OFFER!

Sincerely,

the KRUNKATHELETES

TEAM COCK & BALLS (Dead Baby B.C.)

Look guys, no brainer. Between Hard Times (Minneapolis) & CHUNK 666, choppers have become popular counter culture. There are a lot of large bike manufacturers/producers jumping on the bandwagon but really- it don’t mean shit. The mainstream annexation of the bicycle chopper culture can become as blown out as it can and it won’t mean shit… except that the real people will have more and different bikes to chop up and weld back together - point is – the respect, the credibility, the base value of the bike chopping fools’ whole thing is about chopping that shit up and fix it right – for you. Cause only you know what kind of bike you want to ride. Any dork can go buy a chopper at the store and go front their ass around on it, but they have no idea what the real deal is. Maybe though, for some – it would be the first step to awareness and understanding of what the core is up to. Yeah, the fringe element is the dept. store chopper bicycle – it will come and go. The core however, won’t be tainted.

Limerick:

On my bike I was riding toward home
When I espied a young lass all alone
“Come with this Dead Baby”
The lass declared “maybe”
As she pondered the girth of the bone

At times I ride bikes that are tall
Others, the bikes are quite small
But my bike that does swing
And is covered in bling
Is the best fuckin’ bike of ‘em all

Ah, the folks of CHUNK triple six
Some are perceived as big dicks
But what they don’t know
About the Chunkathalon show
How much ass their event kicks.

CHUNK 666 NYC

In the last five years we have noticed a discernable increase in the attention given to the bike community. Our present government personifies aspects of our culture that our community finds completely “fucking” reprehensible. An international bully-superpower fed by the oil industry bent on corporate domination, oblivious to the socially democratic foundations this country was founded on. In turn, we’ve seen police crack down on critical mass rides, and an association between the radical left and bicyclists. The only answer is to use this association to our advantage. And to do that cleverly implies a strategic approach to corporate sponsorship.

Whether a bike club such as ours, CHUNK 666 NYC, would accept any relationship with a corporation such as Coca-Cola, the answer is a resounding, unequivocal, and middle-finger-punctuated “NO.” That has a lot to do with Coca-Cola’s global position, which is not of issue here. However our club has accepted to take part in a documentary funded, in part, by Puma. We agreed to participate as long as we were not asked to promote the brand in any way – they gave us shoes that they wanted us to wear during our rides – and we agreed to wear them on the condition that we could duct tape over their logo.

It is our opinion that bike culture, especially the miraculous and beautiful nature of the mutant bike building that we’re a part of -- should be sung from the rooftops. Accepting relationships with third parties, be they corporations, sponsors, benefactors, etc. is weighted against our interest in promoting a healthy, non-consumerist-based lifestyle where humor, frivolity, and youth-oriented entertainment take the day. And or course this comes down to control of the medium. In our case we were allowed to dictate how our club, our small part of larger bike culture, was represented. With this type of relationship in place, involvement with outside parties can only prove to advance our cause beyond the borders of the neighborhoods we patrol.

Limerick:

There once was a young man from Kansas
Who got a hard on when he dances
So he duct-taped his cock
‘Cause he knew he would shock
But now he has no hair on his manthing

THE DIALECTIC OF FUN
or
THAT SWEET SEXY NOD ONE CYCLIST GIVES ANOTHER WHEN THEY LIKE THEIR STYLE!
A CHUNK 666 essay,
by Megulon 5, Agent 99, Thud, and Silken.
aka
Team IT TASTES LIKE CANDY (CHUNK 666)

In questioning the future of any bicycle community (neighborhood, national or global) it is impossible to posit a community separate from a component atmosphere of “fun”, “partying”, and “radicality”, (Which will henceforth be referred to as the Wide Band Chunkulation Field, or WBCF). Any bike community stripped of the WBCF will first wither, then, as it chokes toward death, thrust forth a blossom of the purest Wide Band Chunkulation Field that will bolster that community anew and create again the elegant synthesis of earnest biking and unencumbered hilarity and fraternity, know to us as the WBCF. What follows is a chronological exploration - based on evidence drawn from four experts in the field - of exactly how this separation and recombination can, have, and always will function.

Without the guidance and inspiration of mutant bike clubs, the communities of the world (and nations) will first face a cultural impoverishment. They will devolve into boring utilitarian movements and groups of commuters passing each other on the bridge.

Luckily this depressing state will soon be rectified with a re-blossoming of the mutant bike movements nation- and world-wide. The freak bike impetus can not be suppressed. We can see this today, all across the nation. Witness clubs in the following extremely boring cities and countries: Rat Patrol (Chicago), MC3 (Canada), Black Label (New York), SCUL (Boston), etc.

Finally, once the mutant bike groundwork has been established, our guardians from the future will re-initiate contact, whether we are aware of this guidance or not, the bridge of the WBCF will again be built, and it is this bridge which will carry us through the imminent apocalypse.

In short, there is no culture without mutant bike culture.

Photographifying the Chunkathalon.

2005-09-09T14:57:00.000-07:00

Here are some links to photography (and some text) of the 2005 Chunkathalon, in no particular order.

J. Maus's gallery.

B. Kaplin's gallery.

Margaret Charles goes to Portland, gets 20 stitches.

News4Neighbors has an article consisting of parts one (with an amusing comment) and two.

D. Haskell's gallery.
He also put together a funny little thing he likes to call "Anatomy of a Chunkathalon photo" (Dan once wrote me and said something along the lines of "you guys are a bad influence on me, and not in a bad way").

There were some really professional-looking pictures here, but it hasn't working consistently.

K. Graham's gallery.

K. Russell's got a few in her gallery, including one of Thud being hit from behind simultaneously by two Dead Baby tallbikes and one of Dead Baby Terry being dragged by Dead Baby Ian.

Dingo of Pepto Dizmal discusses "putting out fires." And speaking of fires...

Marko of champeen CHUNK NYC has a gallery.

Official Results, 2005 Chunkathalon

2005-09-06T14:58:00.000-07:00

The Teams:

Chunk NYC:
5. Spider-Man
15. Crochet
36. Tito McRico
23. Knife Fight
(alternate: Marko)

Krunkathaletes (Zoobomb):
16. D. Mike
100th. Zach
40. Juice
13. Cody

Chunk Team Lucky (CHUNK 666):
49. Caroteen
-. Ninja
-. Big B.
3007. Lt. Q

It Tastes Like Candy (CHUNK 666):
00. Silken
2. Thud
666. Megalator
99. Ninety-Nine

Low Dexterity (Margaret Charles):
3°. Jim
0.3. Jack
68. Donald
7. Mark

Team Cock and Balls (Dead Baby Bikes):
p. Quigley
206. Woody
33333. Soren
.15. Ian

Last Minute Wonders (unaffiliated):
88. Collin
007. Darcy
797. Victor
000. Kitty

Mantastic (unaffiliated)
4. Mavis Davis
420. Fruity Diggy Dog
17. J. Rust
33Ð. Adam

Wyld Stallyns (CHUNK 666):
42. Ranger Rick
1. Iron Lord
12. Sandstorm
3.141. Comeback Kid

Team Blue and Orange (Margaret Charles):
3333. Gravtron
69. Sailor
333. Mr. Wright
3. Mark

Left Behind (unaffiliated):
99. Fred Nemo
>8<. Andy 9. Zach 44. Rev. Phil Team Fridge/Underdweller (unaffiliated):
8.75. Turbo-Badass
40 Million. Target
1.61. Auk Nik
.03. Midnight Rider
51. Sgt. Roadburn
(alternate: Will)

Dead Baby 13 (Dead Baby Bikes):
1268. Bill
86. Peter
64. Donato
55. Terry

Bonus Level (unaffiliated):
28. Andrea
117th. Drew
><. Geoff $20. Proton Aristocrates (unaffiliated):
1.61. Auk Nik
infinity. Laine
1984. Tony Biscuits
E. Catfish

Babes of the World (international all-stars):
32. Liz (Margaret Charles)
34. Stephanie (Seattle)
8. DB Steph (Dead Baby Bikes)
313. Carly (Dead Baby Bikes)

Team No Bikes (CHUNK 666):
X. Shanaynay
47. Rick
11. Rudy
777. Kathy

The 40oz. Lap

1st: Chunk NYC.
2nd: Last Minute Wonders.
3rd: Chunk Team Lucky.
4th: Dead Baby 13.
5th: MC3: Team B&O.

The Baby Rescue

Bonus Level defeats Left Behind, due to disqualification.
Team Cock and Balls defeats the Aristocrates.
MC3: Team BO defeats Chunk Team Lucky.
Wyld Stallyns defeats Low Dexterity.
Chunkathaletes defeats Babes of the World.
Mantastic versus Team Fridge/Underdweller. Tie.
Chunk NYC defeats Dead Babies.
Team No Bikes defeats Last Minute Wonders.
It Tastes Like Candy defeats Last Minute Wonders.

The Ghost Ride

Team Cock and Balls defeats Dead Babies;
Aristocrats defeats Bonus Level;
Crunkathaletes defeats Last Minute Wonders;
Babes of the World defeats Mantastic;
Chunk NYC defeats Team Fridge/Underdwellers;
Chunk Team Lucky defeats Wyld Stallyns;
Low Dexterity defeats Last Minute Wonders;
MC3: Team BO defeats Team No Bikes;
Left Behind defeats It Tastes Like Candy.

The Derby Royale

Round the First:

1, Collin, Last Minute Wonders;
2, Caroteen, Chunk Team Lucky;
3, Mark, Low Dexterity;
4, Mr. Wright, MC3:Team BO;
5, Ranger Rick, Wyld Stallyns.

Round the Second:

1, Zach, Crunkathaletes.

Round the Third:

1, Fred Nemo, Left Behind;
2, Crochet, Chunk NYC;
3, Mark, Low Dexterity;
4, Dead Babies.

Style Adjustments

Ninja -1 (stealing)
Ninety-Nine -1 (snitching)
Quigley +1 (flair, elan)

The Beer Run Time Trials

1, It Tastes Like Candy Bitch;
2, Crunkathaletes;
3, Mantastic;
4, Chunk Team Lucky;
5, Chunk NYC.

The Essay Contest

Krunkathaletes 15
Team Cock and Balls 15
Team Fridge/Underdweller 15
Chunk Team Lucky 14
It Tastes Like Candy 14
Mantastic 14
Chunk NYC 14
Bonus Level 13
Aristocrats 12
Low Dexterity 12
Wyld Stallyns 11
Last Minute Wonders 11
Dead Babies 11
Left Behind 11
Babes of the World 8

TEAM TOTALS:

Chunk NYC 344
Crunkathaletes 339
Chunk Team Lucky 307
It Tastes Like Candy 295
Low Dexterity 288
Team Cock and Balls 285
Last Minute Wonders 277
Mantastic 257
Wyld Stallyns 257
MC3: Team B.O. 252
Left Behind 251
Team Fridge/Underdweller 240
Dead Babies 240
Bonus Level 223
Aristocrats 222
Babes of the World 218
Team No Bikes 210

Attendance Estimate: 750 +

Scorekeeper's Notes:

As can be expected with an event of this nature, careful scrutiny of the results will reveal a number of statistical and judgmental aberrations due to various factors, not the least of which include: a) loss of recorded information, b) human/observational error, c) rampant disregard of rules, regulations and authority by participants and their minions/fans; d) use and/or abuse of intoxicants, e) menacing of judges and scorekeepers by event participants and/or disgruntled fans, f) the constant and dangerous stream of projectiles, mineral and vegetable, traveling at various trajectories and velocities during the proceedings, g) hazardous seating conditions at and around the judges' scaffolding, nearly resulting in a deadly fall by one judge, h) the wanton display of certain male glandular protuberances by certain members of the event staff, i) courtesy beverages served at higher-than-ideal temperatures, j) the unceasing stream of obscenities directed at and returned by the judging and scorekeeping crew, k) that rat bastard that hit me square in the Stetson with a slab of festering pumpkin, l) that other rat bastard that hurled some ghastly beer-like swill at the judges and splashed my leg, even after I screamed repeatedly not to, m) repeated bawdy references to the male and female genitalia, adolescent innuendoes and ribaldry, fouls smells and foul sights. Etc. I digress.

A brief glance of the results transcribed from the (hopefully) beer-stained records for the "beer run" provides an example of the difficulties encountered:

Silken, ITLC 2:42
Spider-Man, Chunk NYC, 2:17
Sandstorm, Wyld Stallyns, 2:31
Ian, Team Cock and Balls, 2:21
Peter, Dead Babies, 3:57
Lt. Q, Chunk Team Lucky, 2:11
100th, Krunkathaletes, 1:31 (illegal bike?)
1.61, MC3: Team BO, 2:35
797, Last Minute Wonders, 2:37
666, ITLC, 2:22
2, ITLC, 2:09
33 1/3, Mantastic, 1:57
99. ITLC, 2:11

Only one team, the "It Tastes Like Candy" squad from Portland, was ambitious (or coherent) enough to field the four contestants necessary to score points. One contestant may have used a ringer bike. One did not complete his run and found himself in a local infirmary, connected to a morphine drip and sporting new nylon stitching on his thorax.

In another event, one participant ignited a smoke device and filled the air in the competition zone with thick, billowing clouds of orange fog. As a result, no meaningful result could be ascertained and judges were forced to decode a winner from the crowds shaking fists and gnashing teeth.
The irregularities are too numerous to mention. But I humbly offer these results as an earnest, if flawed attempt to document and record what has become perhaps the region's most feared gathering of malcontents, miscreants and degenerates, that annual Hobbesian spasm so dreaded by the townsfolk. The Chunkathalon is dead! Long live Chunkathalon!

-J.K.Y.

Friday Nite Rink

2005-09-02T15:01:00.000-07:00

When bona fide Chunkathalon planning began about a month ago, Big B. got a hair up his ass to put together a Rink. Diligent readers may recall that we threw a Rink of Fire back in January, but this isn't what he had in mind. He wanted the classic Rink: a parking lot you can ride around in circles in, a disco ball and fog machine in the center, a D.J. set-up off to the side, a keg of beer, and every available CHUNK 666 bike we can get running.

So Friday night, two days before the Chunkathalon, we had ourselves a little Rink. The tunes were thumping and people who had never ridden CHUNK bikes were trying out every which one they could get their hands on. Then CHUNK NYC got in from the airport, and kicked off a derby-esque affair, with three or four of the riders using uprooted weeds as switches to playfully whack at their opponents.

Of course, a constable on patrol eventually showed up (around 1:00 a.m.). He said he hadn't received any complaints, but instead had just been driving by, and figured he should check out what was going on. He just asked us to turn the music down a bit, but said something along the lines of "hey, there's nothing wrong with you guys having a good time."

The only real downer was the parking lot lights were bright enough to make the disco ball ineffective.

Oh, and Liberator crashed and got road rash on her leg from the knee down. Rock on, Liberator!!!

2 Dum 2 Die in PDX

2005-08-06T15:03:00.000-07:00

I.
In Which Cyclecide and CHUNK 666 Return to Portland.

After a few hours of post-intoxication slumber following the evening's festivities in Seattle, CHUNK 666 and Cyclecide loaded the last of the rides and bikes on the bus and headed back to Portland. In the preceding month I had wrangled a location for the Bike Rodeo at ACME, a new(ish) bar in the hinterlands of southeast industrial, at the corner of 8th and Main.

ACME's parking lot wraps completely around its not street facing sides, but about two months before had walled off the western portion with steel siding, creating a giant patio area. This patio was desirable for the Cyclecide show but also made what had previously been a reasonably sized parking lot quite cramped. The cyclofuge barely fit in the back, with a little tiny corridor for people to walk by, with the legs of the people in the chairs whooshing by a few feet from their heads. I was a little stupefied at how people would continue to stand around in this dangerous area.

The two-person ferris wheel was just big enough to slide into the far southwestern corner.

II.
Wherein Los Banos Delight the Denizens of Portland.

The shortage of open space meant that for the show Cyclecide had to shut down the 'fuge and perform behind it, with the crowd on the other side and ride their bikes and do their skits around the 'fuge. Additionally, with four Cycleciders in the band, this left only three available to do the Rodeo Clown stuff. In front of a healthy crowd of 200 or so, packed to one side of ACME's back patio, the show began with Big B. singing the national anthem whilst riding the "aversion therapy bike."

Thereafter followed the Parade of Bikes sequence. Thud was eating his dinner but was couldn't resist, and joined the fray astride Sproing, all the whilst never setting down his burger.

Then the bridge fell out of Jarico's guitar. This resulted in a rather uncomfortable period of ad-libbing while the entire Los Banos band tried to fix it. Hastily they recovered, and went on with the Pinata-bike sequence. The volunteer did a nice job almost whacking fellow audience members.

III.
In Which Moses Scales the Very Summit of High Comedy.

A longtime favorite part of the show of mine is the Jumping-Over-Five-Cars-on-Fire stunt. After the cars have been jumped, Moses runs up to the small, lighter-fluid fire with a pressurized water fire extinguisher to put it out. Now, in the show in San Francisco during Pedal Monster he would move to put out the fire, hamming it up ("I got it, I got it. Everything is under control" etc.), then look up and spray the crowd down with water.

For reasons I'd rather not go into, Moses was uncomfortable involving the crowd in such gags (for the same reason, the "cream pie" element of the show was skipped as well). C. Collision and myself were standing such that he had his back to us when it came time for this part. Collision had only seen the show once before, last night in Seattle, so I sort of elbowed him and said "this part is great," anticipating the spray-down of the crowd.

Par for course, he set the extinguisher tank on the ground, leaned over it, and instead of suddenly standing upright and spraying the crowd, he pointed the nozzle straight up and shot himself in the face with the extinguisher and staggered backwards, as if to keel over. THAT was funny.

Except for later, when we were talking to him later after the show, we found out this variation was accidental. His eye was tearing up really bad, even swelling a bit, for about 20 minutes afterwards, and he was worried he'd have to go the hospital. I told him I thought he was mimicking a gag John Cleese had done in Fawlty Towers. He seemed to recollect said episode and then had to admit, "yeah, that was pretty funny."

IV.
Wherein Big Daddy Succumbs to Road Rage.

Cyclecide spent the night on the bus in the ACME parking lot, so the next morning we rode over there and took them to a breakfast joint. They went absolutely ape shit when they saw the headline on the front page of the Oregonian sports section: "Beavers need to fill holes at three positions."

Afterwards, when the seven or so of us were riding back to ACME to pack up the rides, these two cyclists ended riding with us. They were all like "whoa, cool bikes" and "isn't this neat?" Paul, Ranessa, and Big Daddy had spent the morning putting the Grasshopper in a box truck so it could travel with the Tour de Fat from there on out, and met us for breakfast via Paul's pick-up truck. So, as we're riding down Division with these two other cyclists in tow, Paul's truck passes us with Big Daddy leaning out the window yelling "FUCKING bikers! It's not critical mass today you FUCKING bikers!" to which Moses responded by sort of fake banging on the back of the truck.

Of course, I don't think the two cyclists realized what was going on, and they were especially momentarily freaked when we got to the light at 20th, where Paul actually blocked both lanes of Division with his truck diagonally, and Big Daddy THREW open the door and moved towards Moses or Laird, doing his best to look intimidating (not hard, as he's called Big Daddy for reason, but as Collision put it later, if Big Daddy got really mad, the worse he could probably do is kill a six pack). I didn't see it, but apparently the two cyclists were a good half block back at a dead stop looking very concerned, confused, and worried if someone was going to get beat up all at the same time.

V.
One Last Trick.

Having returned to ACME, and having packed up all the rides and all the props and all the bikes, its was basically time to go. Jarico says "hey, you want to see our new trick? Its called the human bike ramp."

As mentioned, ACME had fairly recently installed a wall of steel siding to create their gigantic patio. Jarico walked over to a corner and picked up a leftover scrap of said steel siding. He laid down on the ground spread-eagled, pulled the steel siding up onto his back, with it touching the ground between his spread legs, and yelled at Paul to "jump" a bike of the Jarico ramp.

Paul selected my sidecar bike, backed up and ran over Jarico such the front and back wheel went right over Jarico's poor skull!

[Photo by Laird.]

The Sidecar Bike touched down safely after making a good racket of the steel siding bouncing and bending on the pavement, and then Jarico LEPT to his feet!

"I'm okay!" he proclaimed, to a round of applause.

VI.
Farewell, Cyclecide.

Precious memories...

[Photo by Laird.]

Race Day IX

2005-08-05T15:03:00.000-07:00

Ever since we went to San Francisco for Pedal Monster in July, there had been a lot of back and forth about Cyclecide journeying to the Pacific Northwest. A small contingent of Cycleciders, along with their 2-person ferris wheel and "dizzy toy" went to the Dead Baby Bike Club's eighth annual Downhill Race and Messenger Challenge in Seattle last year. This year they went back in force with two more rides and twice as many clowns.

On Wednesday they arrived in Portland in their new bus, a de-commissioned '70s Oakland City Bus. We then proceeded to drink beer 'til 2:00 in the morning. The original idea was that on Friday morning they, along with a handful of CHUNK 666 raiders, would head up to Seattle together, set up the rides, do the race, do the party, break down the rides early Saturday morning, drive back to Portland, and do a show in Portland. But since the bus averaged about 35 mph from San Francisco to Portland, Cyclecide instead left around 2:00 p.m. on Thursday, so CHUNK had to drive to Seattle in Stan's little car with two choppers on a bike rack on the back. Talk about a clown car whenever we stopped at a rest area. At least Cyclecide was able to drive the majority of the CHUNK bikes up there in the bus, and a few CHUNKs rode back in the bus.

Once in Seattle, we headed straight to end-point of the Race and location for the big party afterwards (a big warehouse underneath a freeway near Harbor Island) around 1:00 p.m., and helped Cyclecide set up their rides, namely the really labor intensive Cyclofuge.

After a brief emergency where I had to bring C.Collision to his senses, we wrangled a ride out of some Seattle people to ferry the bikes up to the top of the hill. At the starting line I got my pre-registered shirt (#600), signed their stupid waiver (I mean, it was funny to read, but waivers are pretty useless as far as absolving liability is concerned. Maybe if they were notarized. Dead Baby needs a notary public), the water bottle that equated free beer for the rest of the night (by the way, Dead Babies, you sealed the deal when I found out you had Olympia on tap), and went into my standing-around-waiting-for-this-thing-to-start mode.

Observation: the first downhill I went to was in 2002 (the sixth race, for those keeping track). Five of us went up, but only brought 3 choppers (Thud brought Sproing, Big B. brought Handcicapper, and I brought the first iteration of Biscuit, with the mono-tube fork). But Thud also brought his road bike and rode that in the race. I distinctly remember Big B. and me at the starting point, looking around and anxiously noting a lack of other mutant bikes in the crowd. It was primarily a messenger downhill race back then (which is what it was when it started), with a bunch of other pleasure riders on various cruisers and tandem and what not (this race ended up earning Big B. the nickname the human speed bump" amongst the Dead Babies). This year however, I was impressed by the roughly a 50/50 split between mutant bikes and "regular" bikes.

The race finally started, and I began my anxious descent down the west Seattle hills on my tallbike. Why "anxious," you inquire? Well, in case you have forgotten, gentle reader, I am a severe head trauma survivor, having been catapulted by my tall bike onto the sidewalk in Minneapolis. As such, ever since my attitudes about riding tallbikes have been infused with a certain judicious degree of trepidation.

As the race bombed down Admiral Way, a rider about 100 feet in front of me on the steepest portion of the course lost his cowboy hat, then started breaking, then came to a dead stop in the middle of the road. When someone 100 feet in front of you slows and stops, but you're coasting down a hill 15-20 mph, this translates into that person being 100 feet in front of you one second, and two seconds later they're a large obstacle RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU. I pulled a nice curve around him, but just as I did that C.Collision effin' FLEW by me doing the same thing on my right.

Having survived that and now in the home stretch, I was riding through a small intersection and espied a small, roughly 1 inch square block of metal on the ground in front of my front tire. I rode over it and did that sickening thing where it actually shoots out away from your wheel, which means that you managed to run over its corner, which meant… I flatted out.

Now, if I was riding a chopper I would probably just have finished the race on a rim, but a flat on the front wheel of a tallbike results in a severe case of the wobbles.. So hoof it back to the finish line it was. And as I walked I contemplated my horrible luck at these downhills. In 2002, Big B. turned an unplanned wheelie by the handicapper into a belly slide down 10 feet of the road. He also threw his chain, and I was the only one who waited up for him. The entire race passed us and we weren't sure how to get to the finish line so we ended up tying for dead effin' last (an appropriately CHUNK thing to do, I s'pose). In 2004 Choppy's stem bolt stripped out while I was putting it back together before we even left the swank hotel Cyclecide hooked us up with. I rode to the race finish line on the back of Rino's chopper trike and didn't race at all, had too much to drink, and on the walk back up Capitol Hill kicked newspaper boxes over. And now this. What do I have to do to actually ride from point A to point B in Seattle?

Well, the powers that be showed a little compassion for my plight, because Dead Baby Terry rolled up next to me on his Keg trike while I was walking, and filledth my water bottle with beer, which eased my pain.

Once back, it was the usual. Drink. Eat. Ride the rides. Namely the two-person ferris wheel.

And the cyclo-fuge.

Cyclecider Paul the Plumber had built a new ride on commission for New Belgium, originally called "Ride to the Moon" but renamed "the Grasshopper" after it received its coat of dark green paint. The Grasshopper consists of a long beam on axis, but centered on said axis at about the 3/4ths mark of the beam.

One rider sits in a seat at the end of the longer portion of the beam and pedals, which makes the beam go round and round. Whenever the rider feels like it they can throttle a lever which controls a tank of compressed air, causing the seat to rise up in the air. I’d guess the arm raised about 35 or 40 degrees in the air. The sensation created by this quite pleasant.

Eventually I got bored and ended up playing carny for about 3 hours, running the cyclofuge. Another weird thing about the downhill is that its this big bike party, then the bike people tend to thin out a bit, and all these Seattle suburbanite club kids start to trickle in. Not enough to take over or anything, but I was working the 'fuge and this one guy had just ridden it and was like "man, don't ride this thing if you're on E" and then I gave him my hand to pull him out the seat and he was covered in cold sweat. Yuck. Wipe that ride down with a sani-wipe.

While minding the 'fuge, the tallbike jousting started up. The dead babies were doing the "winner stays in" format. At some point I looked over and saw Thud readying for a pass. When I glanced over again he was readying for another. And another. And then Rino walked up and said "Thud's the jousting champion." For a trophy he received several beauteous PVC burns on his torso.

With the kegs kicking (an impressive feat, seeing as there were over 20 of them) Cyclecide closed the evening with a totally drunk-ass punk-rock show at 1:30 a.m. Shortly after that the arduous task of breaking the rides down so we could return to Portland the next day began.

A particularly precious memory is the familiarity developing between CHUNK 666, the Dead Babies, and Cyclecide. Many Dead Babies followed up a hello with promises to be in Portland on September 4th for the Chunkathalon, and there was a certain drunken l'esprit de corps as all three groups pushed the Grasshopper up onto its trailer at 3:00 in the morning.

Mutant Bikes in the late '70s.

2005-07-17T15:04:00.000-07:00

Whilst in Chicago we briefly conversed with Mr. Payphone about old codgers shouting at you as ride by on your chopper, "hey, I built bikes like that when I was a kid." Basically, the current "freakbike" or "mutantbike" (I prefer the mutantbike typology, personally) phenomena (or "movement," if you prefer), which kicked off circa 1991, is not the first of its type. The previous proto-mutant-bike phenomena started, roughly, in the late '70s, during that big bike boom you read about here and there, and faded away in the early '80s.

This proto-phenomena is largely lost to history because, well, not only was there no infobahn for these early pioneers to share what they were doing, but there wasn't even such DIY modes of information exchange such as zines to pollinate the concept of building freakbikes with the country at large.

An exception, though, is the figures from The Bike Builder's Bible (1980) by Jack Wiley.

Wiley's classification of the different varities of mutant-bike are amusing. He is, after all, coming up with descriptions for bikes that don't look like your standard "diamond safety."

For example, the "choppers" (as us 21st century types might refer to them) keep getting referred to as "bikes for reclined sitting." Tallbikes are called "double deckers." Your standard Schwinn-esque little girls bike (referred to variously these days as minis or pixies) get called "high risers," which acknowledges the ape-hanger handlebars and upright sitting position, I suppose.

Jack's really into the decorated wheels, huh?

Jack Wiley on the subject of double deckers:

"Double-deckers, also called high-bikes and upside-down bikes, are fun novelty cycles. Bicyles up to 20-feet tall have been ridden. Only regular double-deckers, approximately twice the height of a regular bicycle, will be covered here. With simple additional modifications, taller bicycles can be constructed.
While double-deckers are frequently ridden on streets with automobile traffic, this is unsafe and in many areas illegal. This is strictly a novelty cycle and should be considered as such.
These cycles are not manufactured, but conversion of regular bicycles is fairly simple. I recommend that only old, inexpensive bicycles be used."

Wow. An original swingbike. "Made by the Swing Bike Co., 412 West 10th N. Logan, UT 84321, and distributed by a network of dealers across the country." Maybe not anymore, me thinks.

Jack Wiley lays down what its all about:

"I feel the possibilities that pedal cycles offer for building, inventing and creating are extremely imporant. While specific projects are detailed in this book, considerable effort is spent in trying to get the readers to go on to originals, as they are sometimes called. In many areas the amateur innovator stands little chance, but not so in the pedal cycle field. You can really let your imagination go and have the possibility of actually building and trying out your ideas. This somthing that would likely be impossible, for, say, the subject of space travel."

"Girls riding highrisers," with the KICKSTANDS DOWN, nonetheless!

Pedal Monster

2005-07-04T15:06:00.000-07:00

Emissaries from CHUNK 666 and DeadBaby Bikes gathered in San Francisco over the Fourth of July weekend for PEDAL MONSTER, a four-day hootenanny of "altered mutantbike mayhem" hosted by Cyclecide. The majority of the weekend consisted of hanging out with people who had either never met, or had maybe once or twice before.

The first day in San Francisco, Terry had his tall bike stolen after trying to sell tallbike rides for 50cents so he could make BART fare.

Artist's rendition

We drank the iciest-coldest beer to be found in the Bay Area! Cyclecide had one of those soda dispensing machines (installed after a certain roomie wouldn't ever chip in for beer money). Everyone would start drinking around noon and bullshit and laugh knowingly at the piles of parts and broken projects laying around the lot.

The DeadBabies & CHUNK 666 went on a survival ride around San Francisco. Not surprisingly, many beers were killed in the process, and the pale, untanned-skinned northerners arched eyebrows at the amount of rubbish in the streets (unlike pristine Portland and adequately sanitary Seattle).

Movies were exhibited at the 'pound, bikes were tried out, and everyone rode the Cyclecide pedal-powered carnival ride contraptions.

The ferris wheels.

The cyclofuge.
In the Cyclecide lot on the day of the big show, the "DeadBaby Bar" opened for business. In the interest of raising some extra gas money for the drive back to Seattle, the Babies sold vodka-Red Bulls for $2.00 a cup.

Not to be out-done I decided to sell CHUNK 666 patches for $10.00 a piece.

After about three hours, I had been haggled down to selling one patch for one dollar. The DeadBabies had drank about half of their vodka, and earned the 28 cents in pocket change I had on me.

On the fourth of july, CHUNK unleashed Flaming Bikes of Death upon an unsuspecting San Francisco.

Artist's rendition
Ian also had all his tools stolen out of his truck - welcome to Bayview.

Land of the Dead

2005-06-24T12:37:00.000-07:00

A movie about a post-apocalyptic world overrun with zombies? CHUNK 666 is so there.

Of course, the downside of a zombie ride is that inevitably you all end up in the bathroom looking in the mirror putting on make-up on a Friday night. Gay space pirates indeed!

Afterwords, some of us "retired" to the Basement for a couple of brews. Megulon-5 started to look a little green after a few...

The real problem, though, is that blood is sticky.

Some Hypotheses

2005-06-20T12:48:00.000-07:00

1.
If you want to cause mischief, don't do it on a night 90% of the police department is on duty.

2.
If you want to cause mischief and 90% of the police dept. is on duty, at least don't do so a few blocks from a police garage.

3.
Hot metal is hot.

4.
Chain grease drys out your skin.

5.
If the police ask you what you're doing out at 1:00 a.m., tell him you're heading home because your bad knee is acting up.

6.
That rubbing noise is not a good sign.

7.
The maximum number of spokes that can break before a wheel collapses under the weight of the bike is somewhere between 2 and 6. Or when the fishmobile trys to hump your back wheel.

8.
Jumping choppers off of ramps has been and never will be a good idea.

9.
Steel wool, aflame, can burn skin.

10.
The ashy residue of fireworks exploding 3 feet in front of your face has the ability to somehow slip behind your safety goggles and leave a little burn mark.

11.
An acetylene torch is a handy lighter when its time for a smoke.

12.
A chopper can be riden for several miles without handlebars.

13.
Rugged. Mature. Responsible. These are the words that have nothing to do with CHUNK 666.

14.
For better or for worse, it will always break, and you'll always build another.

15.
Put a pickle on it.

16.
Steel is real.

The right bent

2005-06-06T12:58:00.000-07:00

Think like we’re trying to equip an army of cyclists of every size and shape to cross the salt flats, and that there are hordes of mutant trogs along the way that will kill a quarter of the people and fuck up an unknown number of bikes, so maybe we’ll have more bikes than people, maybe less. So, we want variety and redundancy.
Steel is real.

-the Megulon5.

North American Cycle Courier Championships

2005-05-28T12:59:00.000-07:00

For the last four years running the local bicycle messenger organization, P.U.M.A., has hosted a three-day alley-cat/race/competition over Memorial Day weekend: the West Side Invite. I'd like to think CHUNK 666 have a pretty healthy relationship with the local courier population, so we'd make it a point to show up in some capacity, or to work a checkpoint. This year, however, Memorial Day weekend was host to the 2005 North American Cycle Courier Championships.

Many months ago Thud, who was helping with some of the organizing, asked me if I'd help put together an obstacle course/gauntlet type thing. After one or two meetings with guantlet co-organizer Tommer (who did a lot of the conceptual work of the course as a whole), I completely forgot about the gauntlet since I got caught up organizing the second Organ Donor Invite. What I'm trying to say is I didn't get around to actually building CHUNK's contribution to the NACCC obstacle course until the weekend before.

Tom originally had the idea to build these "spring-loaded pedestrian" contraptions that would pop up as the contestant rider and then you could whack it with your u-lock. A neat idea, but the execution was a wee bit complex, but this idea evolved into one of building a quintain.

I know, you're saying "what the hell is a quintain?" Well, the word is derived from the Latin quintana, meaning a street between the fifth and sixth maniples (a Roman legion subdivision, containing 60 or 120 men) of a camp, where training exercises took place. Its basically an arm on a pivot with a target on one end and (traditionally) a sandbag on the other. When you charged and hit the target the sandbag swings around hits you on the back. Apparently, if you hit it true and fast, you will outrun the sandbag. I have a hard time visualizing this.

We built the lower frame the Sunday before the NACCC. We figured a tennis ball or two on the end of some laundry line would be a good substitute for a sandbag. We got the base finished and attached the cheap-ass lazy susan I got as the pivot, and this all having taken about 3 hours (we were exclusively using scrap wood so there was a lot of rummaging and deciding which weathered, cracked, chipped piece of wood we were going to go to the trouble of pulling all the rusted, bent, stripped nails from), we sort of rushed things and tried using some PVC pipe as the arm rather than another 2" by 4".

However, by virtue of being round and hollow, attaching a target sturdy enough to take a decent wollop proved pretty much impossible. The next day after work I rode the Sidehack over to Zebra station and moved the quintain to my back yard where I could tinker with it. I replaced the PVC with a wooden arm, and built a real solid target. I also replaced the tennis ball(s) with a kickball enmeshed in some surplus-store camouflage netting, which made it look a bit more menacing.

On Saturday morning I got up and loaded the quintain, a stout 4-foot joust lance, a ton of safety cones, two 6" by 6" wooden beams (for bunny hopping over), and a cooler on the sidehack for the ride over the river to the course.

It was quite the sight parked in front of my porch while I made breakfast. People would walk by and rather than the usual "cool bike" comment I would get more of a "well… there's quite a contraption." I told them it was a time machine.

We got to the site (very cool) and set up the cones and all the other stuff for the obstacle course. I duct taped some floatation device foam stuff to the non-target side of the arm so people wouldn't freak too much about getting hit on the back of the head by a piece of wood.

The quintain did all right, and people loved the course. But since I had spent the week worrying and figuring out how to build a better target, the pivot point was quickly revealed to be the true weak point on the quintain. After letting people "practice" and "try out" on the quintain during the hour or two while we set up the rest of the course and did some dry runs, the very first officially timed running of the course resulted in the arm being yanked partially off the lazy susan, pulling itself off two screws. We duct taped that back on. A lot of the screws in the base worked themselves loose as the day continued, but the q-train held up admirably enough.

Drunk and tired, we loaded back up and went and milled around at the start/finish line for a bit. Then we rode back across the river. Sadly, a mere twenty feet from my front stoop the target snagged a tree branch and ended up tearing the lazy susan in half.

But fear not, gentle reader. The CHUNK 666 quintain can be easily fixed. We're definitely gonna go back to the tennis balls though. That kickball just proved to heavy to pick up the velocity to give a rider a good whack on the back.

Organ Donor Invite II

2005-04-30T13:02:00.000-07:00

This time around, we decided fairly early that Organ Donor Invite II very deliberately would not be the sort of (for lack of a better description) public spectacle that a Chunkathalon is. For starters, the location (a public park) is not ideal for a Chunkathalon-style high impact event. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, it did not make sense in an economy-of-effort way to invest too much stress and organization into the Organ Donor Invite, leaving some or all of us kind of burnt out early in the summer. In other words, save the big production energy for the Chunkathalon. Lastly, personally I wanted the Organ Donor Invite to feel a little more "ice cream social," or "friendly badminton tournament," and less "drunken mayhem," if that makes any sense.

Some may remember that the first Organ Donor Invite had a ton of rules regarding what kind of tall bike was acceptable and a page of specifics for determining the winner of a joust. We basically threw all that out the window this year. Bike requirements were simplified to having a standard one-bike-on-top-of-another tallbike design, or, failing that, at least having an unmodified adult bicycle on the bottom (how the seat and handlebars were extended were up to the creators imagination). Also, no tall choppers, short stacks, or Chalo-talls (the mightiest tallbike EVER forged).

We also dumped the "continuation" rule, which last year resulted in one jouster chasing the other one around in circles. I had figured we'd just have each jouster set back up and start over if a given pass didn't result in a dismount, but Thud started getting people to just "circle 'round" at each end of the arena until they were facing each other again and then give it another pass. This on-the-fly innovation lent the proceedings a gentlemanly duel flavor, as by the later matches the opponents would actually signal a new pass to each other on their own.

Creating a more benevolent atmosphere was made all the easier due to my absolutely catastrophic hangover from the pubcrawl the night before. Nothing can make an event more mellow and relaxed and casual than having the guy on the megaphone unable to eat solids until 5:30 in the afternoon.

Before we started the joust proper, we introduced our newest event, the Circle of Friendship. This was one of those events that started out as one idea, a sort of "don't let go" team event involving two tallbikes (this type of event, cooperative rather than competitive, is something we've been wanting to add to CHUNK 666 events for awhile, but dang, they're hard to come up with). That idea didn't really work, but it spawned the idea for the Circle of Friendship.

You draw a circle on the ground, that, if it were the circumference of a sphere, is 666 cubic centimeters.¹ Three contestants ride their tallbikes around the outside of it. One enters the circle and begins riding around inside of it, staying inside the line. Then the second enters, and when the third enters, the timer is started. The circle's size is essentially just big enough for three tallbikes to ride in a fairly tight circle, but just small enough to require communication between the teammates in order for all three to remain inside. The timer is stopped when one of the teammates "faults," either by crossing the circle's boundary or falling over inside the circle.

photo by skateoregon.com

After one minute in the circle, the team goes to one-handed riding. After two minutes Fred Nemo stands in the middle of the circle.

Circle of Friendship Results:

1st: Dead Baby Bike Club "Group A" (Mess-Carly-Colin) 2:33
2nd: CHUNK 666 "Group A" (Megulon 5-Thud-Eliza) 1:33
3rd: Zoobomb "Group A" (Zack-SolidGold-Genghis Klown) 1:07
4th: CHUNK 666 "Group B" (Krak-Big B.-Sandy) 0:41
5th: Dead Baby Bike Club"Group B" (Ian-Peter-Terry) 0:36
6th: Dead Baby Bike Club "Group C" (Ian-Kevin-Peter) 0:11
7th: Zoobomb "Group B" (Sam-Phil-Chops) 0:09

Then it was on to the joust. I apologize now for a lack of photos of everyone. My goal was to try to capture the moment of impact, but I mostly got he instant after, or worse, ended up with a picture of one tallbiker looking behind them to see if they'd won. The following are pretty much the best of what I have. Some other Organ Donor Invite II pictures can be seen at www.skateoregon.com. Also look here, here, and here at www.zoobomb.org.

We had to do some sub-rounds to get our bracket to a nice 16 contestants. Here you see Dead Baby Ian preparing for one such round.

The megaphone I had was loud but turned out only to be audible if it was pointing in your general direct, so Thud started using hand signals and just yelling a lot to get the jousts started (I was in no condition for yelling).

On to the First Round proper. Thud defeats Dead Baby Peter.

More first round action. Megulon-5 defeats Dead Baby Kevin. Note Megulon is not wearing any protective gear on his torso (and he bruises easy). He would pay dearly for this in later rounds.

Second round, Megulon-5 vs. Dead Baby Terry.

Megulon-5 defeats Dead Baby Terry.

Things started getting brutal in the Quarterfinals. Dead Baby Ian really wanted a shot at defending champ Messman, but had to go through Thud to get to him. Unfortunately, Thud likewise wanted his shot at the defending champ.

Dead Baby Ian vs. Thud, maybe the 6th pass? They were both connecting on each pass. Ian appears to be getting pounded in the bladder here.

The 8th pass in the Thud and Ian slug-a-thon.

Thud vs. Ian, 9th pass,

Thud won to advance and face Messman in the final four. I 'm pleased to announce that fellow CHUNK 666ers Megulon-5 and Krak also advanced to the final four. Three out of four semi-finalists ain't bad, and its definitely better than last year's showing. Anyways, everyone knew this Thud and Messman match was gonna be epic. Thud readies himself.

Messman and Thud, second pass. Even though Thud took a five minute break before even commencing this semifinal match, he did, afterall, go about 10 passes with Ian, so he started wincing and grimacing a lot. Not to say he wasn't giving Messman some of the same.

Messman vs. Thud, third pass.

Fifth pass. Thud's walloping Messman, but fatigue's starting to set in for the contender.

The duelers took a second to circle around and set back up before continuing. As you can see, Messman is the defending champ you love to hate. Look at how casual he is. I just hate him so much! (Kidding, Mess. Thanks for cleaning my sunglasses.)

Thud readies himself for more pain. Compare his body language in this picture to the one of him before the first pass with Messman.

In fact, after another pass or two, Thud rode down to the end of the concourse and just got off his bike and sat down, rubbing his chest and abdomen a lot. Megulon-5, Big B. and official CHUNK medic Sara Stout all came over and asked him how he was doing. Then Big B. (seen here wearing an empty beer box as a boot) gave him some beer.

Then it was back to the grind. Eight pass (or so). This is my favorite photo from o.d.i. II.

Ninth or tenth pass. That lance appears to be resting momentarily on Messman's front wheel and Thud's rear wheel.

Thud actually ended up having to take another little breather. The CHUNKs were pulling for Thud, yelling encouragements like "c'mon, he's getting tired!" which was bit of the straw dog since we all know Thud was way more fatigued. Thud did loose after something ridiculous like 15 passes. Totally insane, but classic stuff, especially given the prior round's 10 or so passes with Ian.

Krak had defeated Megulon in the semifinals, and so it was Messman vs. Krak for the final. The final round is best out of three matches.

Krak made it interesting, especially as all those baby dolls lashed to his tallbike give it an additional 30-40 pounds of weight, making its movement resemble a shambling mastodon.

But, to the disappointment of all, Messman repeated as Champion of the Organ Donor Invite. Which means next year is Organ Donor Invite III: The Bout to Knock Messman Out.

Much thanks and graditudes,

James Yu for keeping track of the results,

Sara Stout for bringing her First Aid Trike, and

"Bracketmaster" Bill for another great bracket.

And also thanks to everyone who came out and didn't leave a huge mess behind.

Organ Donor Invite II Tall-Bike Jousting Tournament.

Results by Round

Note: Due to an odd number of contestants (i.e., not a factor of 4), the bracket required two subrounds to arrive at the nearest factor of 4, in this case, 16.

Subround 1.

Ian (Dead Baby Bike Club,Seattle) defeats Ken O. (Dead Babies)

Subround 2.

Ian (Dead Babies) defeats Genghis Klown (Clowns)

Terry (Dead Babies) defeats Sandy (CHUNK 666)

First Round.

Messman (Seattle) defeats Donald (Margaret Charles Chopper Collective)

Colin (Seattle) defeats Phil (Zoobombers)

Thud (CHUNK 666) defeats Peter (Dead Babies)

Ian, DBBC defeats Sam (Zoobombers)

Megulon-5 (CHUNK 666) defeats Kevin (Dead Babies)

Terry (Dead Babies) defeats Solid Gold (Zoobombers) DQ

Note: Solid Gold was disqualified and the win awarded to Terry due to Solid Gold accruing three fouls for hits aimed at the head. Thankfully, none of the hits connected, and Solid Gold bowed out gracefully in a manner befitting a gentleman.

Krak (CHUNK 666) defeats DX #27 (Dead Babies)

Zach (Zoobombers) defeats Sarah (Portland)

Quarterfinals:

Messman (Seattle) defeats Colin (Seattle)

Thud (CHUNK 666) defeats Ian (Dead Babies)

Megulon-5 (CHUNK 666) defeats Terry (Dead Babies)

Krak (CHUNK 666) defeats Zach (Zoobombers)

Semifinals:

Messman (Seattle) defeats Thud (CHUNK 666)

Krak (CHUNK 666) defeats Megulon-5 (CHUNK 666)

Championship Round:

Note: Best of Three Matches.

Mess (Seattle) defeats Krak (CHUNK 666) in two matches.

¹Total bullshit.

Tallbike Pubcrawl

2005-04-29T13:09:00.000-07:00

The second Organ Donor Invite kicked off Friday with a pubcrawl, starting at the Know at NE Alberta and 20th. Got there late, in accordance with CHUNK 666 bylaws. Turnout bigger than last year. Dead Baby Bike Club and Zoobomb accounted for. Hey, Big B.'s back from being abroad since January!

Time to roll. Chatted with Dead Baby Ian. Thought I was hosting several Babies on my floor for the weekend, was expecting them around 6:00 at my front door. Oh, they parked and unloaded somewhere else in NE, then headed straight for Mary's Club, of course. Crawl heads to Billy Ray's.

Beer. Talk. Repeat. Roll across quadrants to the Basement Pub. Margorie eats pavement on SE 12th Avenue. Everyone stops. She managed to break her fall, but she's still gonna have a black eye come tomorrow. The funny thing? She's riding a normal ol' mountain bike. Basement Pub. Indecision about what to do next. Group splits in two because Zoobombers "don't want to go any further south," which is understandable, I guess.

Pick up beer, head south to Megulon-5's house. Fire out back. This is my favorite part of the evening. Conscript Ian to help me carry the huge, dead Christmas tree on the side of my house that's been getting in my way since, well, after Christmas, over to Megulon's. Drag it up next to the fire then sorta roll it on top of the flames. WHOOSH! Thank goodness I thought to snap a picture, and by the time I did the flames were easily half as high as they were at first.

Note the person (who is that?) standing behind the fire to the left: this gives you an idea of the scale, and more importantly, the heat of that fire (everyone backed up really fast).

CHUNK Bike Anatomy: the Organ Donor

2005-04-28T13:10:00.000-07:00

We lost count of the total number of bikes we've constructed a long time ago. As previously mentioned on several occasions, all CHUNK 666 bikes usually befall one of three deaths: they break, they get stolen, or they retire to the chronic pile. Through several twists of fate, the mighty Organ Donor, constructed way back when in the winter of '92/'93, lives on. Organ Donor is so old that it also shares the distinction of being one of the first three CHUNK bikes EVER built (although it is the only one to see the dawn of the 21st century).

Part of its longevity may be that it lay forgotten under a pile of bikes at the Lab for several years, sparing it the vicissitudes of rusting away in the rain, as well as the trials of inexperienced riders. Another factor may be that its not entirely pleasant to ride. The bike frame-turned-upside-down-with-crankset-reversed tallbike design has largely been discarded by most clubs since this relaxes the headtube angle, actually giving the tallbike more rake. This makes steering mildly unpleasant, especially seeing as that steertube extension flexes, lending to the sensation that one is about to be cast down between the steer- and seat-tube extensions, into the "cage of death," if you will.

Furthermore, the upside-down feature means that the "drop-outs" actually face straight up, so not only is the rider wary of the flexy nature of the steer tube and raked-out fork, but somewhat aware that the rear wheel could, theoretically, come loose and pop right out of the dropouts, unceremoniously dumping the rider backwards into the pavement.

The origin of the name "Organ Donor" is itself of fine pedigree. According the writings of Megulon-5,

There was once, by way of illustration, a lovely twelve-speed bicycle ridden by the author and known as B. 25, due to the fact that the sole identifying insignia on its frame was the number 25 stamped in the metal. This bicycle, after ramming no fewer than three cars, suffered a death all too violent for an unchoppified bicycle. After the parts of 25 lived anew upon the frame of its predecessor, B. Ralph Waldo 5, 25's bent frame was hung in the tombs bearing the inscription "Organ Donor". A year later some of its tubes were used to form the body of, you guessed it, the Organ Donor, and it was when this inscription was again noticed that that proud creation received its name.

For the reasons mentioned above, the Organ Donor doesn't really get out much these days. Last year, Thud rode it in the tallbike pubcrawl.

And before that, the last major operation the Organ Donor was involved in was the 2002 Chunkathalon when Spidey rode it (to victory) in a joust.

2005-04-16T13:13:00.000-07:00

Megulon-5's tallbike had been out of commission since the last Chunkathalon, when someone tried to ride it when there was a padlock through the chainring. We had to go to the Lab and Megulon found this a good enough excuse to load his busted tallbike (also requiring simple stem extension repairs) onto the sidehack and ride it up to the lab. It took a while to figure out how exactly to load the tallbike onto the 'hack.

And we were off. Megulon had to restrain himself from the temptation to side swipe cars, other bikes, and people with the tallbike.

Repairs were made, we rode to the Clinton Street Theater to watch Filmed by Bike III. We saw the Rat Patrol short film from several years ago.

Do we need more beer?

2005-04-02T13:16:00.000-08:00

CHUNK 666 argues sending off a pair of riders to get more beer prior to arriving at a party.

"Do we need more beer?!?"

"We've got a twelver, and Krak's got three left, so that's like, 2 beers for everyone.…"

"Then, we're gonna need more beer."

TV Smasher

2005-03-21T13:34:00.000-08:00

Johnny Payphone forwarded these great pictures of the TV smasher from when I was in Chicago last Saturday. This is from the television we smashed in the lot of the fire station. Johnny’s cranking the winch to “load” the smasher. You can see the fine work the two us did converting the smasher into a mobile trailer. I’m holding my hand at the level that the smasher should never be cranked beyond (which roughly extends the garage door springs to twice their length, or about 45 degrees from parallel to the ground). You crank it past that point and fire it, the smasher will actually do a sort of crazy somersault backwards onto the triggerman, like something out of a Wiley E. Coyote blooper. You can see the trigger line trailing off to the right.

[Photo by...?]

All set?

Then its time to trigger this son of a bitch!

[Photo by...?]

Great pic. You can see the spike hitting the “sweet spot,” where it punctures through the top of the television and then blasts through the screen… from the inside!

CHUNK 666 Meets the Rat Patrol

2005-03-21T13:18:00.000-08:00

We went to Chicago to visit the Rat Patrol. Assuming that certain central tenets of bike club life were immutable, I figured we’d be spending five days drinking beer at bars and in apartments, riding bikes, and swapping war stories. I was pleasantly surprised to instead receive a grand tour of Chicago from a mutant-bicyclengineer's point of view.

CHUNK 666 doesn’t just galavant off to strange (flat)lands to visit other clubs at the drop of an adjustable. Idle hands whilst your host is at the inevitable day job make the devil's dull times. To play the odds of creative mischief, we chose to attend week of the Rat Patrol’s annual festivity, “St. Ratrick’s Day." Unfortunately, the CHVNK, along with other outta-townas (the Rat Patrol's New Orleans chapter, and Springfield, Illinois’ Klunker League Now) missed the big city-planned parade as well as the semi-legit fringe parade which the RP attended.

Rat Patrol, however, was kind enough to schedule several events to entertain their guests, and Johnny Payphone was clever enough to take us around town and show us Things of Interest and, conveniently, get some free labor while he was at it. Not that we minded.

Working Bikes:

The mission of Working Bikes is to ship cargo containers, full of bicycles, to the developing world, primarily Africa. Then a lone American is sent abroad to receive said container and instruct the locals in bicycle repair. The last several such bicycle ambassadors have been RatPatrollers.

Working Bikes buys bikes from metal scrappers at the recycling yard for a few bucks each, and fix 'em up. Most of these bikes reside at their warehouse above a car-battery replacement shop, awaiting the next container. Some of the bikes are sold down the street at their bicycle repairshop/storefront. The warehouse consists of multitudinous mountains of old bikes the likes a Portlander has before never before laid eyes upon.

Hundreds of Chicago Schwinns: Varisty, Collegiate, Racer, Suburban, Stingray, you name it. All selling for $40 a pop. I felt embarrassed to be from Portland, where many of these same bikes could easily be selling for $75 or more.

If I may digress, its plainly evident Portland simply lacks, and has always lacked the population (and the Schwinn factory) to generate this sort of surplus of used bikes, and also lacks the 100 years or so of heavy bicycle-usage that Chicago has. On the flipside of the coin, however, the demand for bikes in Portland is most likely proportionately greater than Chicago's. Also, Chicagoans simply throw away just about everything, which means metal scrappers can recover all these bikes, making it possible for Working Bikes to buy them in the first place. All this trash also makes the existence of the Rat Patrol possible in the first place.

Bubbly Dynamics:

Bubbly Dynamics is in the area of the old Chicago stockyards, once the world’s largest. It’s a three story, 100+ year old meat packing plant, or something along those lines. It went abandoned decades ago, and was previously squatted by two guys who acquired the title and used it as a parts graveyard for motorcycles, until one of them, who had outstanding warrants, shot some guy on the property. Enter John Edel, a honest-to-goodness real life evil scientist/mad genius. When we toured Bubbly Dynamics, it was full of things like Civil War era drill presses, pennyfarthing wheels, and old steam locomotive parts.

The basement of Bubbly plays host to a Rat Patrol building station.

The Rats’ space was a bit sparse because everything had to be moved so Edel could move some equipment around (or something like that, the reason wasn’t really important). Much like the CHUNK 666 Lab, there was an equilivent of the chronic pile, or Tree of Shame, as we like to call it now. Several dozen wooden milk crates were stacked against one wall as makeshift cubbies where Rats could store parts they had placed dibs on.

Bubbly Dynamics’ name is derived from nearby Bubbly Creek, which once was so choked of animal debris from the nearby stockyards that chickens could walk atop of it.

From there we caravanned to the Lamprey house/compound to fetch a Klunker League Now bike. We also snagged Johnny’s faux pennyfarthing: the PickUpStyx.

Actually, to say it’s a faux pennyfarthing is misleading. The bike shares many of the mechanical features of a real pennyfarthing, especially in the way in which it steers. Megulon-5 gave it a shot and actually rode it down the alley before flying over the handlebars. Then Johnny jumped on it and rode it like a pro (it reminded me of the way Thud can jump on Sproing and ride it all over town, because that’s what Johnny proceeded to do for the rest of the day).

From there we rode downtown and checked at Union Station to see if our bikes had arrived on Amtrak from Portland yet. After being told to check back in an hour we grabbed some cold ones and went down to the river and watched construction workers dig the foundation for the new Trump tower.

Rat Ride:

The central activity of Rat Patrol (if you exclude building bikes) is riding through Chicago’s multiplicity of alleys, dumpster diving for food and anything else they may find. I am told the ride we went on was atypical in the speed with which it dissolved from a good 15 riders to ourselves and our immediate housing hosts. The ride meets at the intersection of Belmont and Damen, and I met a few of the Chicago Scallywags.

The Scallywags, if you don’t know, are a Christian bike club (tallbikes, mostly). The few I met seemed nice enough, but I’m not going to try to presume that I grasp their gist. What I will say is that they don’t drink alcohol or smoke cigarettes. This not only interesting to me, but reassuring, given the typical bike club’s prelidiction for vices. You mean hacking and riding choppers and tallbikes doesn’t have to go hand-in-hand with inebriation?!

The first stop of the ride was one of those non-profits that gives food to the needy, like the Oregon Food Bank. A bit odd, an organization pledged to feeding the hungry would be throwing food out. In the foreground of this picture, you can see a RatPatroller bungee-cording two frozen chickens to the rear cargo rack of her bike.

In the background you can see the ridiculousness of another Rat chugging a bottle of cheap maple syrup (all I could think while watching was, “tastes like diabetes”). After a massive pillaging of a dumpster full of fruit behind a chain grocery store, the ride quickly disintegrated.

Pinky:

Pinky is the flagship of the Human Television Network. It’s a tadpole tallbike of zeppelin proportions.

A very large television can rest in that forward cargo space. The steering is managed by a bike chain rack-and-pinion system.

Trash Castle:

Defiant in the middle of an abandoned lot, across the street from a primary school, and surrounded by garbage and broken bottles and dog poop, there stands the majestic Trash Castle!!

Once, the dragon outside seems to have been hooked up to a gas line so as to breath fire.

The Trash Castle is just one of those things that sorta defies anything beyond straight-forward description. What else can be said about it? It just sits there quietly, speaking for itself. What's it saying? Beats me.

Build Day:

Watching another club build bikes is always interesting. Its funny to observe the similar sloppiness and ad hoc nature of CHUNK's building "style" in other clubs. I was concerned with the lack of proper eye protection when using grinders and saw'zalls. Tsk tsk, RatPatrol.

Like just about every other club out there (except for CHVNK) Rat Patrol uses a MIG welder. I don't blame them. The start up cost to buy one and its portability make it a very logical choice. CHUNK's always used oxy-acetylene, and at this point our experience with it would make switching a bit counter-productive.

It was a fairly tame build day. Johnny and Ben Sauce (from RatPatrol New Orleans) were working on their "death derby" pixie bikes.

Two other folks were building tallbikes. At the end of the day the death pixies were done, and one tallbike was welded, but had wheel issues and would have to wait till proper functional parts were obtained. The second tallbike was completed but the steer tube extension's weld broke while the rider was testing it out in the alley. This allowed me to make a snarky remark about using a MIG welder.

Ride to Finkl:

After the build we rode to Finkl. Finkl melts down used steel into new steel ingots. This is includes bicycles. Working Bikes and (sometimes) the Rats buy their bicycles from the scrappers who sell the bikes and other steel things to Finkl by the ton. Finkl seems very pro-public image, and provides open cargo doors so that passersby can watch them melting down the steel. It was like a vision of the robot holocaust.

Death Pixie Derby

The "death derby" was concocted by Rat Patrol New Orleans' Neema. Himself, RPNO's Sauce, and Johnny participated. The goal was to make your opponent's bike physically unridable. The bike was to consist of a "pixie" bike, to which no modifications had been made to the basic frame. You could, however, weld protective shielding around it, add rams, spikes, and such. Personal armor was encouraged, and each rider could be armed with a stick to jab into spokes and whatnot.

The arena consisted of a circular fountain at Wicker Park. They would really crash into each other. On one of the first of these collisions Sauce took a straight jab from Neema's wooden broomstick to the face, slipping by his helmet and giving him a nasty gash about an inch from his eye. This was purely unintentional, but it was so foreseeable that I think you get an idea why only three people participated.

Johnny won, which didn't surprise me. His pixie bike still had its chain guard, and he had welded forks parallel to the ground around his wheels. He simply pinned his opponents bikes to the ground and stomped until the wheel tacoed. My personal favorite part was Johnny's heavy huffing and puffing as the contest dragged on.

The T.V. Smasher:

The aforementioned John Edel of Bubby Dynamics had built a TV Smasher. It was currently spending its second winter behind his house. Johnny and I went over there to put some wheels on it so we could tow it around like a trailer behind a tricycle the next day during the big St. Ratrick's Day blow-out.

We had to bring the MIG welder over, so while Johnny rode the future tow-trike, I got to ride the RatPatrol's excellent sidehack.

I rode it for most of the rest of the day and evening, and would have gladly hauled crap all over Chicago on it if given the option.

The TV Smasher is a sort of reverse catapult.

The arm, which is a two-by-four piece of lumber strengthened on each side by bars of aluminum, is anchored to the top of the support beams by garage-door springs, which, somewhat suspiciously, were anchored in turn by measly hoseclamps to the arm and frame.

A winch is used to tension the springs out, and raise the two-foot long, octagonal metal steel spike.

< a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/chunk666pdx/7177270/in/photostream/">

The television is placed below the spike and the trigger is pulled from about 16 feet away using some sort of a nautical quick-release clamp.

It took us a try or two but we found that the "sweet spot" on the televisions was at the very top of the tv and forward. Since the spike is actually traveling in an arc, the spike would go through the top and then very satisfyingly come out through the screen from behind. I had the pleasure of pulling the chord twice on this thing and it was one of the best feelings of my life. I really tried to get a picture of this bad boy in action but the moment of destruction was almost instantaneous. I figured I could use the movie function on my camera but then Johnny pulled the trigger while I was fiddling with the settings and not only didn't get a picture but missed the smashing of one of the three televisions we were hauling around.

Speaking of which, for reasons beyond me, when we rode by a fire station, the firemen invited us to destroy a TV in their parking lot. We gladly obliged, and when we were done we went into the parking lot next to that and had two foot-down derbies. I passed since I'm still cautious from twisting my knee back in January, but Megulon-5 jumped in and won the first bout, including two impressive dismounting of other riders where everyone was sure he would go down with them, but somehow rode through the crash. He sat out the second bout so he could drink cheap beer.

Space Mural:

Matt the Rat, one of the illustrious founders of Rat Patrol, astride astride Abigail the Chicken led the ride after the TV Smashing was complete (i.e., we had run out of TVs) to a little gem of a find in an alley painted on a garage door. Matt simply called it the Space Mural.

After this we all returned to the Handlebar, a neighborhood restaurant and bar. This was our last night in town and things at least degenerated into drinking and shooting the breeze. I think my favorite line from the night was Johnny explaining to some newbie that "if you want to be in Rat Patrol, then you can't be in Rat Patrol." Pause. "But if you don't want to be in Rat Patrol, then you're in." We admired some of the art on the walls.

Then it was time to go. I had an early flight the next morning. Once we got back to the Rats' apartment, however, I still managed to stay up until 2:00 drinking and carrying on, despite having to get up around 6:30.

Re-rebuilding Biscuit.

2005-02-16T13:35:00.000-08:00

Realizing the bizcuit was not only languishing in basement but also chancing to never ride forth again = emergency reiteration!!

Due to high center of gravity and the proximity of its pedals to the seat wreck unholy hell on (already beat-up) knees^*. Clearly, drastic pre-emptive surgery required. Biscuit rushed to the Lab, rear seat stays amputated, and rear triangle from donor bike from the pile lashed to remaining front half with a wooden welding jig.

With jig keeping frames in place, welding a cinch. Fork, wheels, etc. reassembled. New Biscuit arrived!! Cigars passed around and lit and smoked with much back-patting and attaboys!

Still needs idler, in shape of tiniest one-piece crank for placement in empty forward bottom bracket.

^*An old CHUNK666 adage says: "Every Chunkathalon ages you five years." This is especially true of knees.

CHUNK Bike Anatomy: Cameltoe

2005-02-08T13:37:00.000-08:00

Big B. built the Mantis in New York City when CHUNK 666 visited Bikesummer 2003 to throw a Chunkathalon and generally fuck up shit whilst wearing a big floppy hat.

Mantis lasted the duration of the visit, but that elongated top-tube wasn't long for this world. After the NYC Chunkathalon, Big B. had to use a handy brick as a sort of makeshift gusset to keep the entire frame from folding in half. It is presumed the Mantis, left in the care of CHUNK NYC, has returned to the pile from which it came.

Last spring he built a bike primarily from the busted remnants of Baby's frame. As spiffy and unique of a bike as that was, Big B. remains perhaps the most idealistic of the CHUNKs these days, and he left it unlocked at a party. It was, of course, stolen. No pictures of that bike are known to exist. Taking a cue from NYC, he set around constructing a second-generation Mantis.

Cameltoe is a great example of the Big B. Style (and Big B. has plenty of style) of building. Like previous bikes such as Bendy, it involves what are perhaps best described as “customized” parts that are essentially jury rigged to begin with. For example, Bendy's headset, although unique and clever, seemed to require almost monthly maintenance due to its complexity.

A central and admirable facet of the Big B. Style is that he can make good use of a bike in the Pile that everyone has repeatedly passed over. The light blue beach cruiser bike that makes up the bulk of the frame is a great example of this. It had been passed over dozens and dozens of times because the down tube above the top tube had broken off at some point, so there was nothing to tighten a seat tube with. CHUNK is definitely capable of fixing such a problem, but no one bothered to. Big B. just flipped the frame upside down and went from there.

At first Big B. had some small apehanger style handlebars on Cameltoe, but these he eventually replaced with a set he custom-made himself. He took a length of solid, rust covered steel bar and cold-bent it in a vice (with the help of Pedro) and slid that into a stem set.

Around the same time he did this he figured out that rather than fix the brake cable to the frame with zip-ties or hose clamps or what have you, he could run the cable through the entirety of the frame and out under the seat to the brake itself.

An early weak point of the Cameltoe was the new bottom bracket. When bottom brackets are positioned under an existing frame like they are on Cameltoe, they need adequate gussets or the stress from pedaling will eventually crack the welds and the whole set will fall off. After this happened once (or twice) he got it under control.

The real weak point of Cameltoe, however, is the fork. Big B. built a very long set of BMX-extendo forks using rectangular tubing. Granted, this tubing is considerably lighter than the circular (and thicker) stuff we usually use, but getting a solid sleeve-weld connecting the tubing to the forks is difficult.

As with the Handicapper, which uses the same rectangular tubing, when the welds start to crack and the fork begins to sag, he just turns the fork 180 degrees, letting gravity bend the fork back to something resembling its original straightness. At the least, this gets him back home where he can re-do the welds later. With the Cameltoe, what he might really need is a gusset between the forks, because if one fork bends too much the wheel can pop out of the dropouts. This is what happened in Seattle on the way back to the hotel after the Dead Baby Downhill.

2005-02-05T13:42:00.000-08:00

Was at the Lab today working on a bike. Hack-sawed through a frame I pulled from the pile and found this little guy inside.

Rink of Fire!

2005-01-08T13:45:00.000-08:00

Big B. and Thud were out of town for the Historical (Re)Re-Enactment on the Eve of the New Year.

Big B.’s going to New Zealand in a few days.

We had plenty of ordnance left over from the prior weekend.

Given these simple truths, some of us figured we’d get a barrel fire going, down a couple cold ones, experiment with some new Ordnance Delivery Devices, and light off a few Flaming Bikes of Death at our leisure down at Chunk Station Zebra.

Krack was really hell-bent on trying out this new delivery device: wooden wings coming off the back of the bike, with three “pods” suspended under each wing.

I gave the tomato planter lizard tail a second go, but this time added a stabilizer mast thingy coming off behind the back of the seat, with some bailing wire connected from the end of this mast to the end of the tail. Then, for kicks, I threw a sail, or dorsal fin, if you will, between said bailing wire and the main body of the tail.

We took our sweet time loading up, since there was no deadline (like midnight) to meet, or any overt fear of a police crackdown since there were only 15 or so of us around in the first place.

The Megulon-5 showed up with four Christmas trees (!) fastened to the front and back of Portlandia. These he stuffed with some newspapers in between the branches since they were pretty far from dried out enough yet to go up in a good blaze.

It was around this time that Krack started getting really antsy about the weather, since the Event Horizon’s wings prevented him from simply backing into the garage like the rest of us. So he decided it was time to blow stuff up.

Everyone huddled back around the barrel fire, and I waited for Megulon to finished newspaperering his Christmas trees, and for Big B. to put his little shindig together: a very large wok and a very small BBQ grill towed behind a beat-up old cruiser by two 10-foot-long lengths of chain.

Then, when it was time and everyone had downed a few more beers, me and Big B. lit off simutaneously.

I like this next one because you can see the newspapers I put in the front wheel between the spokes.

Then it was time for Megulon’s Christmas Special. Will Megulon teach the CHUNKs the true meaning of Christmas, or just burn the villagers’ Christmas trees?

This one I like because you can get a sense of the scale of the fire those Christmas trees are making. Its illuminating the entire parking lot, and sending cinders a good 20 feet or so in the air. That’s a lot of heat. In fact…

It got so hot Megulon had to bail off the bike. We tossed the remains into the barrel fire.

All of this, it was only 11:30 or so. We drank all the beers, went on a beer run, drank some more. Some folks expressed the desire “to do this more often.”

Historical (Re)Re-enactment

2005-01-01T13:49:00.000-08:00

December 31, 1999:
A plan is hatched to sanctify the advent of Y2K with purifiying sulfuric fire.

However, back in then we were a little less, uh, savvy, for lack of a better word, about the fine Art of the Fucking Up of Shit and Getting Away with It. So, in retrospect, when several CHUNK 666 squadrons were riding aimlessly around in S.E. Industrial, several of them literally bristling with fireworks, it should really come as no surprise that the cops dropped a dragnet on us and 11 of us ended up in a paddy wagon for the rest of the night while waiting to be processed.

The real disappointment of the Y2K Sancification Ride was the vast majority of fireworks (as in hundreds of dollars worth) were confiscated before we could set them off. A few folks slipped through the dragnet and were able to get some burning action in after midnight, but if I were to give our effort a grade, I’d give it a big fat “incomplete.”

December 31, 2004:
Here we are again. Its five years later, and New Years Eve falls on a Friday once again. Action deemed not only necessary, but veryily preordained. Inquiries start as early as late October as to a location for a spectacular pyrotechnics display, including spectators. Location found and selected, then that party was cancelled. Second location deduced. This one smack dab middle in the big cobbled heart of S.E. Industrial. Megulon-5 and I casually discussed location and tactical considerations evening of December 30th, then departed on scouting ride to get better feel for visibility from side streets (in case of passing cruisers and whatnot). Thrilled that said party located in an old warehouse, and party-thrower, to Whom we are Grateful, permits use the loading garage for pre-Burn prep and attachment of ordnance to choppers’ hard points. This is deemed highly desirable as ordnance attachment need not take place on street in plain view.

Several CHUNKs expressed concern about regarding close proximity of 12/31/04 target zone to the dragnet area of the 12/31/99 botched ride. Scouting party acknowledged this intelligent observation, and countered “but that’s the point!” Doubters change minds, and the location was approved.

The Ride:
As the ride began to rendevous at a party in the home quadrant, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that Dirty McD from the CHUNK 666 New York City branch (seen here at the BlackLabelNYC Bike Kill in his Captain America outfit) was in Portland! The total ride strength was only about 10 or 12, but a lot of other folks met us at our planned Ground Zero coming from other parties.

We go there without a hitch, but ran a little late and only had a half hour to load up the bikes. I was the first finished, mainly because I was experimenting with a new Ordnance Delivery Device: a tomato planter wrapped in chicken wire.

On the ride over the weight of the newspapers and fireworks and half-case of beer I was carrying on the rear rack caused Chopumulator’s front fork to visibly wobble slightly when I turned the handlebars. Since Choppy has a history of stripping stem bolts, I was hence a little paranoid about packing too much newspaper into this “fox tail.” I also packed the front baskets considerably lightly to lessen any possibility of a stem bolt failure during the burn (which would have sucked on universal proportions).

Krack, however, with the mighty Event Horizon, complete with “heat shields,” has never, ever hesitated to load the Event with as much newspapers or fireworks as possible.

Megulon-5 loaded up the Portlandia, which is also heat shield enabled, with some very tightly packed ordnance, and I wanted to take a picture, but there were too many people loitering in the loading dock for me to get a clear picture. And I was beginning to get that really high-strung feeling I get before lighting myself on fire.

We wheeled the bikes out around 5-10 minutes before midnight, quickly discussed some tactical considerations so we wouldn’t run into each other or anything, and lined up to be lit up by handy road flares. I think we came about as close as possible to actually setting off the Flaming Bikes at 12:00 a.m., perhaps with a 2 minute before or after margin of error.

This next one is funny in way because it looks great but is actually from the very end of the re-enactment. Right behind Krack you can see me and Megulon (we're both wearing big ear protector thingys, y'know, these things) in the process of awkardly flipping our choppers upside down to dump the smoldering remains on the street.

Hazel's pics of the evening...

Best burn in a while. It was a nice wide street with easy amounts of room to wheel around for another pass. Krack, Megulon-5, and myself all had long-lasting burns. We made a crapload of noise, and the smell of gunpowder and smoldering remains of fireworks and newspapers lingered long after my adrenalin levels had dropped back down to normal again…

CHUNK Bike Anatomy: Chopumulator

2004-12-10T13:50:00.000-08:00

I'm not going to repeat the sad, sad tale of the great Chopagator, still AWOL for five years running (because a certain someone didn't bother to lock it up at a party one night).

[The one, the original Chopagator]

I think I speak for everyone when I say that part of me still hopes its simply rusting away under some bushes in some backyard, or collecting cobwebs in a garage, not seeing any ride time because its got a flat, or the thief just isn't really interested in riding bikes, despite having gone to the trouble of stealing one. There was a rumor the folks down in the CHUD village had caught a glimpse of it, but investigation yielded no results.

Chopagator's original architect, Megulon-5, missed her so much he built a variation/replication in late '99, Plopulator, the Son of Chopagator.

[Plopulator, Son of Chopagator]

Plopulator was substantially longer than Chopagator, by my reckoning, hence the development of a significant chronic and potentially terminal head-and-steer tube ailment. After one re-build, Megulon-5 ditched the chopagator-fork design, instead bring Ploppy into its current configuration, wherein a chopped mini-motorbike fork is used instead.

I had always had the jones to built a replicant of Chopagator. I actually started this project in late '99, maybe 2000. I got as far as getting that bottom extension of steel tubing welded onto the rear triangle, and set it aside for later. When I next returned to the Lab, someone had welded some handble bars onto the dropouts of the rear triangle(?) and then welded this entire apparatus onto the steertube(!) of a mastadon-esque creation somewhat resembling a tall chopper. This is back when we had many aspiring CHUNKs-in-training around, whom knew very little of bicycle mechanics. I remember wandering into the Lab one afternoon, a bottle of Blitz in hand, and four guys had an entire bicycle grasped in the table-mounted vice by the forks. I was looking for a part or something and sorta watched out of the corner of my eye. They were using wrenches and whatnot to loosen the headset. Which was weird because you didn't need the bike in a vice to do that.
"Wha'cha guys doing?" I asked.

"Trying to get the fork off this frame," they replied.

"Probably help if you took the handlebars off first."

And so on. So I tabled the Chopagator replication project. For, like, five years.

Which brings us to the present. Or, at least, last summer. I'm not sure what spurred me on to actually build a chopper. In the past we tended to keep the entire fleet in one main location, but those days have given way to everyone providing housing for their bike (or bikes, as the case may be) individually. I already had two bikes in an already way-to-small studio apartment. Why did I need a third, heavy, eight-foot-wheelbase chopagator-style bike in there as well?
Whatever the reason, sometime last summer I actually began consstruction of my entry into the Chopagator canon.

Building long choppers resembles building tallbikes, since the trick is getting the new frame to possess a resemblance to straightness. I used a series of jigs (two pieces of wood sandwiched around the frame parts, held tightly in place with zip ties or discarded inner tubes) to keep the frame reasonable straight. The other tricky part was getting the head tube to have an angle that didn’t result into much rake, but at the same time didn’t result in a short fork (gotta have a reasonably long fork, I mean, c’mon).

In the end it all came out surprisingly well, and it only took me four separate weekends to do it! Five if you count the day I fine-tuned *ahem* the shifter and hand brake.

Anyway. Yeah, so here she is… Chopumulator, the Emulator of Chopagator.

Looks nice, if you ask me. I’m very proud of the fact that, like my tallbike, she’s built out of two Chicago Schwinns. Take that, Schwinn collectors! Seriously though, Chicago Schwinns are best bikes for building choppers, tallbikes, etc. That American steel is just so tough and easy to work with, not like that cheap Taiwanese stuff everything’s made out of today.

I had originally planned to put gussets at all the corners of the frame, as well as in the fork, but decided against it based on my experience with my beloved Biscuit. Biscuit is a gazelle-style chopper. However, rather than the traditional “cresent-moon” shape, I did my darnedest to get the front dropouts to line up with the headtube. I did this reasonable success, but the real surprise benefit was (a) the overall lightness of the bike, compared to when you build a mono- or BMX-style chopper, using heavy steel tubing, and (b) the fork ended up having some B-O-U-N-C-E to it. This seemed a little suspect at first, but considering the following: Biscuit is three-years old, going on four, and has competed in three Chunkathalons, including being my bike when I won it all in 2003. Based on this evidence, I felt that gussets were a bad idea, since gussets would make the bike too rigid, and hence more prone to breakage. Chopumulator was finished in early July, and now its December. Choppy’s survived a July 4th ride and burn, a trip to Seattle, and second place at the 2004 Chunkathalon. And there are no cracks in the welds.

The only thing I’m disappointed with is that the mountain bike fork I used for the upper part of the fork must have been tweaked to begin with. The fork pulls to the left on its own slightly. This is no biggie, but is slightly annoying on extended rides. Maybe sometime I’ll jump on the fork a couple times and try to straighten it out.

Disgustingly Cute

2004-12-03T13:44:00.000-08:00

This is a picture of Jason's daughter on his tallbike (being held up by her grandfather). Its pretty darn cute, and keeps with the snuggly warm ethic that CHUNK bikes and kids are like peas in a pod.

Unpublished Illustrations

2004-11-27T13:53:00.000-08:00

Whilst browsing the stacks of the CHVNK666 library the other day, I happened upon a series of illustrations of archival interest. Appearing to be proposed illustrations for an unpublished manuscript, they were loose in a large envelope, addressed to one of our illustrious and mysterious founders, Dr. Phinea Burnout.

“Figure 1: Chopper” appears fairly straightforward. The chopper appears to be of standard design: some sort of “safety” bicycle with a mono-tube fork extension. Of somewhat more interest are the glowing orbs on the ends of small rods attached the rider's skull. I surmise this is some sort of progenitor of the Flaming Bikes of Deth of today.

The design of the tall bike in “Figure 2: Tallbike” (the rider of which, I might add, is sporting a curious, yet stylin', hat) is also familiar. Although, a short gazelle fork on a tall bike seems a little suspicious, if you ask me. Why a rider who had wings would choose to ride a bike in the first place is also questionable.

The design in “Figure 3: Tandem” appears practical, but my experience with chopper-tandems has been less than inspiring. Extended forks, especially mono-tubes, can rarely sustain the weight of two people for very long. That said, the rider playing the part of pilot appears clearly intoxicated. The second rider is either also intoxicated, terrified, ecstatic, or all of the above.

The Black Arts

2004-10-29T13:54:00.000-07:00

Billdozer organized an alley-cat last Halloween weekend called Occultonomy: The Seven Sacred Rites, which CHUNK 666 helped adminster. This year The Black Arts had contestants racing from haunted location to haunted location via dark, lonely paths, through graveyards and mausoleums, dogged at every turn by the living dead.

The CHUNK 666 Zombi Cadre was to man the Sellwood Mausoleum. We set up at an odd park-like installation overlooking Oak's Bottom, with racers having to edge their way down a steep slope to get the clue to the next checkpoint.

Photo by Hazel.

Photo by Hazel.

Photo by Hazel.

Photo by Hazel.

Photo by Hazel.

The end-point party was on the other side of town, so we ended up hitting up the Yukon for pints and deep-fried brains. I dropped my cellie in the urinal.

Second Photo Shoot

2004-10-17T18:31:00.000-07:00

The week after the BIKE Magazine photo junket, we were informed that they wanted to do a second shoot with a better camera, or something. Fewer peeps showed up this time (for good reason, it was terribly chilly that day). These photos are by Hazel.

Chicken on a Bike

2004-10-16T18:33:00.000-07:00

The chronic pile at the Lab is zealously defended (or not) by a vicious & cruel (but perhaps instead talkative and friendly) sentry, Henrietta the Chicken. In payment and appreciation, we occasionally takes her out for a spin...

Photo Shoot

2004-10-10T18:35:00.000-07:00

Not long after the last Chunkathalon we were approached about an article about CHUNK 666 and Seattle's Dead Baby Bike Club for BIKE magazine. We were hesitant at first, but then we saw the pictures they had already taken of the Dead Babies, and we were in.

We rode to a location under the east end of the Hawthorne Bridge, and got to take part in a full-fledged photo shoot, with the lights and the mulitiple cameras and everything. Like super-models! We sat around, waiting for the photographer to get his lighting right, or something. Unlike models, we were not provided rails upon rails of coke. Thankfully, plentiful half-racks of Pabst were provided.

Thud & Sproing.

Krak and the Event-Horizon.

Big B. and Cameltoe...

Megulon-5 and Plopulator.

Plopulator's "mag-wheel."

Agent Ninety-Nine and International Velvet.

Hang & his Swing Chopper.

Denk and the Handicapper.

Snake Plissken.

silken and choppy.

After the shoot they wanted to get some "action" shots so we adjourned to the neighboring vacant lot under the I-5. We were just riding around but there were these really fun puddles and a derby of sorts broke out.

2004 Chunkathalon Results

2004-09-11T18:39:00.000-07:00

Third Portland Chunkathalon Results:
Southeast Portland

List of Competitors [number, name, affliation]:
00. Silken (CHUNK666)
1. Quigleys (Dead Baby Bike Club)
1.61. Nico (unaffliated)
3.1416. Brandy (Zoobomb)
4.2. Chris F. (Dead Baby Bike Club, I think)
5. Scooba Dooba (CHUNK666)
007. Noelle (Zoobomb, I think)
12. Seafoam (CHUNK666)
13. Remington Rockwell (CHUNK666)
15. Ian (Dead Baby Bike Club)
16. Dirty Mike (Zoobomb)
27. Dookie (Dead Baby Bike Club)
31. Renstrom (Dead Baby Bike Club)
33. Krak (CHUNK666)
36. Kenny B. Safe (unaffliated?)
44. Julia (unaffliated)
47. Dingo (Peptol-Dizmal Bike Cirkus)
49. Caroteen (CHUNK666)
66. Saruman (unaffliated, Jove's dad)
69. Thomas (Zoobomb)
71. Terry (Dead Baby Bike Club)
77. Jove (unaffliated)
86. Thud (CHUNK666)
88. Will (unaffliated)
99. Ninety-nine (CHUNK666)
100th. 100th Monkey (Zoobomb)
101. Eliza (Zoobomb)
222. Bobby (no freakin' idea)
333. Soren (Dead Baby Bike Club)
401. Drift (unaffliated)
666. Megulon-5 (CHUNK666)
777. Kathy (CHUNK666)
802. Zach (Zoobomb)

Beer Run Time Trial -
1. Megulon-5 2:07
2. Remington Rockwell 2:26
3. Silken 2:36
4. Kathy 2:44;
5. Thud 2:52;
T6. Ninety-nine 2:55;
T6. Caroteen 2:55;
T8. Seafoam 3:25;
T8. Kenny B. Safe 3:25;
10. Krak 3:31;
11. Zach 3:47;
12. Nico 3:48;
13. Drift 4:05;
14. Vi 5:00;
15. Dirty Mike 5:03;
16. 100th Monkey 5:05;
17. Ian 8:31.

40 Lap Race –
1. Thud
2. Silken
3. Megulon-5
4. Dirty Mike
5. Kenny B. Safe
6. Ian
7. Seafoam
8. Brandy
9. Krak
10. Ninety-nine

Ghost Ride –
Megulon-5 defeats Silken;
Kenny B. Safe defeats Dirty Mike;
Julia defeats Brandy;
ScoobaDooba defeats Quigleys;
Caroteen defeats Noelle, DQ;
Ian defeats Dookie;
Remington Rockwell defeats Seafoam;
Thud defeats Renstrom;
Krak versus Terry, even;
Jove defeats Will;
Ninety-nine versus Eliza, even;
100th Monkey versus Nico, even;
Zach defeats Thomas;
Saruman defeats Soren.

The Derby:
Round 1: Ian.
Round 2: Ninety-nine.
Round 3: Megulon-5.
Finals: Ninety-nine.

Baby Rescue.
Brandy defeats Julia;
Scooba Dooba defeats Jove;
Caroteen defeats Dirty Mike;
Kenny B. Safe defeats Weak;
Thud defeats 100th Monkey;
Kathy defeats Nico;
Silken defeats Quigleys;
Drift defeats Remington Rockwell;
Krak defeats Zach;
Soren defeats Thomas;
Ninety-nine versus Seafoam, even;
Chris F. defeats Drift;
Saruman defeats Terry;
Ian defeats Will;
Megulon-5 versus Renstrom, even.

Final Standings.
1. Megulon-5: 30.5;
2. Silken 22;
3. Ninety-nine 20.5;
4. Ian 20;
5. Kenny B. Safe 18.5;
6. Thud 16;
7. Caroteen 14.5;
8. Remington Rockwell 14;
9. Kathy 12;
10. Krak 10.5;
T11. Will 10;
T11. Scooba Dooba 10;
T11. Saruman 10;
14. Seafoam 9;
15. Brandy 8;
16. Dirty Mike 7;
T17. Drift 5;
T17. Julia 5;
T17. Jove 5;
T17. Zach 5;
T17. Chris F. 5;
T17. Soren 5;
T23. 100th Monkey 2.5;
T23. Nico 2.5;
T23. Eliza 2.5;
T23. Renstrom 2.5;
T23. Terry 2.5.
DFL: Noelle, Dookie, Quigleys, Thomas, Dingo, Bobby.

AquaChopper Expedition

2004-08-21T18:40:00.000-07:00

The objective: ride a chunk-creation of some sort from Chunk Station Zebra to the eastern banks of the Willamette River. Ride your creation off the pebble beach and into the pollution-warmed waters and somehow power your floating aquacyle across the river to Ross Island for an overnight camping trip.

Four Aquacycles were constructed. You've already seen Megulon's, which was test-floated a few days beforehand.

Big B. modified an existing chopper, the Little Big Man, which had been languishing in the chronic pile. Using his carpentry skills learned during his missionary years, he built wooden wings behind the seatpost, and then attached empty plastic barrels under these for floatation.

Two smaller barrels were strapped to the monotube fork for forward bouyancy.

Thud took a similar approach, although he used his yeoman's chopper, the SwampThing, which has a longer frame. Maybe for this reason his wooden "wings" were in an "x-wing fighter" configuration, with thin rope holding the wings in a more verticle position during road riding to keep prevent side-to-side sway.

You already heard about Megulon-5's squirrelfan propulsion. Everyone packed paddles (or make-shift paddles) as back-ups, but Big B. and Thud both attempted "universal" propulsion systems (although, if I remember correctly, Thud came up with this idea).

Pieces of a thick material, plastic signboard, I thinks, were cut to size (Thud had originally envisioned plastic spoons) and attached between the spokes of the rear wheel, creating a makeshift paddlewheel.

Denk & Sha-Nay-Nay, as far as I could tell, just went for straight up paddle power. Thier aquacycle? Well, I mean, take a look at this thing. No. Take a long... hard... look...

This aquacyle is two mountain bikes, with two ten-feet or so pieces of PVC pipe lashed to each bike cross-wise with blown out bike inner tubes and pieces of laundry line. There is no system to keep the two bike frames aligned parellel with eachother, nor is there any sort of delta-trike-esque double steering system. Denk & Sha-Nay-Nay, to the amazement of all, actually rode this thing all the way to the river just sorta not making sudden movements and communicating with eachother, I guess.

The flotilla hit the road, swaying side to side like, well, nothing like ships at sea.

Having reached the point where you access the pebble beach, a substantial crew of porters had to be put together to heft Megulon-5's aquacycle over the gate that prevented autos from accessing the bridge.

Big B. was the first to hit the water.

That wheel-paddle system didn't do much good, so he went all primal, as Big B. is prone to do, and just started wailing at the water with his makeshift paddle.

As you can see in this photo, Big B. had decided the best position from which to paddle was in a standing position, since he couldn't complete a full stroke without striking the barrells behind him.

Coming up fast behind Big B. is Thud, who, you can see, is not paddling. That's right, Thud's wheel-paddle worked!

Megulon-5 re-experienced many of the problems he had during his first trial a few days earlier. Denk & Sha-Nay-Nay's aquacycle just sagged, to the point where the bicycles were up to thier seats in water, so D & S-N-N had to either swim and push the bike or get a pull from the folks who brought canoes or rubber rafts.

The reason I don't have any more pics is because it began to POUR rain, the first real heavy rain of the late summer/early fall. To thier credit, everyone actually spent the evening out on the island, albeit under overturned canoes or inside plastic bags. Everyone came back at 7 or 8 a.m. the next morning because it was still raining. Grosser yet, the heavy rain triggered a sewage emergency overflow into the river. At least the water was bath temperature...

Ewhhhhhh.....

Aquacycle Test Ride / Float

2004-08-17T18:41:00.000-07:00

With the CHUNK 666 Aquacycle expedition to the Pleasure Lagoon quickly approaching, Megulon-5 figured he'd take his aquacycle for a test-float. Mgln5's aquacycle was the infamous PlatformThing (re-christened the Hesperus) with a squirrel-fan welded to the front between the two front wheels. The belt-drive for this was integrated with the chain-drive. Then he secured a couple of empty plastic barrels to the bike for floatation. We rode to eastbank of the Willamette, under the Hawthorne Bridge, and the aquacycle appeared in good working order.

We had to ease the bike down the steep grade to the bank with a crew of four people. Then we edged the bike into the polluted, Superfund waters.

Huzzah! The thing floated! Mgln5 started pedalling, and the bike... sorta bobbed around and floated upriver as the wind pushed it. Later analysis would deduce that the fan was too deep in the water (about two-thirds submerged when it should have been half). Still, it was pretty cool to see a bike float around.

Pedro dove into the river and helped Mgln5 get the bike ashore. We chit-chatted with some passerbys, and started to leave. But Mgln5 got a little full of himself and rode down a small grade at a funny angle, and, well...

Normally a taco'd wheel doesn't bother us. But, as you can see, in this case the wheel is almost entirely enclosed by the plastic barrels, and is further complicated by the weight of the bike. Mgln5 had to leave the bike where it laid for the night and come back the next day with a new wheel. At least, for once, you could leave a bike unlocked overnight and not worry about anything.

DeadBaby Downhill VIII

2004-08-06T18:42:00.000-07:00

We attended the sixth Dead BabyBike Club Downhill race/party two years ago.

There was a big push to go again this year, so we loaded up the GrayGhost, and actually suceeded in getting out of Portland and on the road before noon. We were especially excited because Cyclecide from San Francisco were a day ahead of us and were bringing a couple of their human powered carnival rides with them. We were also excited because the managed to swing us a hotel room, for free, at a swanky hotel.

So we met them at the hotel. Some of us went to grab a bite to eat, but I wasn't hungry and hung out with Cyclecide in the bowling alley next door and drank about 4 pints of beer before even putting my chopper back together. That probably has something to do with why my stem bolt promptly stripped out. I didn't have a replacement and was feeling pretty bummed, but opted to lock the bike up and ride on the back of Rino's Choppertrike. The thing is, it was POURING rain, and it was rush-hour traffic, so riding down Capitol Hill was pretty harrowing. NOTHING could stop your bike once it was going. Still, we (somehow) got the bottom and ended up under the retractable roof the Mariners' stadium.

Anyway, the downhill happened, I got pretty smashed. Big B. got pretty smashed. Big B. was just repeating "dude, its fuck UP shit, not fuck shit up!" at some point during jousting. The Wideband Chunkulation Field must have fluctuating because despite throwing empty whiskey bottles around there weren't any fights. At least that's how I remember it.

Big surprise but we basically walked all the way back to the hotel because it uphill. The downer was Big B. rode Liberator's chopper Steve to the convenience store and when he came out it had been stolen. At least there was a hot tub in the hotel room (can't believe I didn't get a photo of that! Oh, wait, I can believe that).