Monday, June 30, 2008

1991 Redline 220



I thought I would document the bike that I had since I was a teenager. I got the Redline back in 1991 or 92 (The bike is over 15 years old). I paid about $330 for it back then at Fraser Cycles.

The bike has changed slightly over the years, I wish I could have documented the changes closer. At one point I had it covered with stickers and little toys. I had a little Maggie Simpson on the brake lines which someone stole. There are numerous scratches on the bike but not anything significant. I can't say that about myself, when I was 13-14 years old I wiped out on that bike really bad on the trails at Stanley Park. It was the only time I had a concussion and I ended up spending the night at the Children's Hospital. Aside from the huge scar on my knee everything else healed up pretty well.

In case you want to see how it looks like with all the original parts here it is at the BMX museum.

I thought I'd take some pics of my bike and walk you through some of the small changes that it went through.



Odi grips these are the most comfortable grips that I've used. The bar ends were stuffed with nickles so that it would protect the grips from the inside. I nice little cheap old school upgrade.




One of the first scratches that I got on the bike was lifting it from the Sea Wall. I ended up covering up the scratch with this neon splat sticker that I cut up. The other side had one of the Chip and Pepper bull dogs cut out. I pealed that off now though.




This Moe sticker was also cut out. I added the Thor sticker even though it had nothing to do with my bike, I like liked how it matched the color of my bike. Another notable sticker was this Buckwheat sticker that I had on my plastic bike seat. I'm not sure if I still have the old seat kicking round somewhere.



I had a love hate relationship with this crank. I liked that it was so clean, but back in the day CD cranks were the shit and I would remember drooling over them. Yes a CD crank was a crank that looked like a CD, trust me they were cool back then. I also had a nice huge pink splat sticker on this crank. I removed it a couple years ago. Now I kinda wished I left it on. I removed a bunch of sticker from this bike because I didn't want it to look so cartoony since I still ride it. But now I wished I had preserved how my bike looked like from back then.



Here's the story of this cushy bike seat. I had the stock Redline seat on for the longest time. I gotta say that it's one of the most uncomfortable seats ever. I managed to change it to one of those short new school style BMX seats 5 years ago. But last year while Derrick and I were biking home drunk, this guy stopped us and gave me this fat seat that is on it now. That thing is comfortable.



The brakes were the first upgrade that I made to the bike. I forgot where I got them from but I was damn stoked when I got them on the Redline. See the knobs on the levers, it's suppose to lock in for the times when I'm doing "tricks". I gotta say that I never got good at doing any for of tricks, and I don't really care anymore.

I gotta talk about the bars, I didn't take a good pic of them but I'd like to talk about them anyways. When I first got this bike, I was obsessed with upgrading the handlebars. The bars that I always wanted were the Peregrine Q bars. Man I would stare at the ad on the back of BMX Plus for hours dreaming of owning them. I upgraded the stock bars to a pair that I got for free from Norm I think. They were cracked, I managed to get them welded in Metal Working class and painted them black with blue splatter. I had that for the longest time until I bought these Redline BMX bars from Nick. I think I paid $40 for them.

The funny story about these bars is that Nick had to scam a whole mess of people just so he could buy them. He would beg, borrow and steal money just to mail away the money to get these.



The neck, I also was obsessed with upgrading the neck on this bike. If you looked at the neck you can still see glue marks from me gluing some kind of weird toy on to it. I remember I would look at BMX Plus and I would calculate how much parts would be. I was super into picking out different combinations to upgrade my bike. Man lots of good memories. I'm thinking of retiring this bike soon so that I could preserve it. Fifteen years of memories it's probably the best 300 bucks I spent. I'll leave you with this last shot that only Norm will get:





Love,

Vince

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