With
warm weather approaching, I can hardly wait to get back on the bike
again. Speaking about bikes reminds me of a story I wrote about Tim
Mackinnon. He makes custom cycles out of the most unusual parts. The
original story (below) was published in the Vanguard but a neat sequel
happened later that summer.I had couchsurfers from New Orleans and somehow we got on the topic of graveyards. I raved about the beauty of our Mountain Cemetery, proposed a tour by lantern that night, and we were off.
As we walked along the paths between the headstones we noticed someone was trailing us. We started to get a little spooked until I realized it was Tim. Oh, didn't I mention? He's also a gravedigger, and he lives next to the cemetery. I asked if the surfers could see the bikes in his barn and he said no problem. That night everything just sort of fell into place.
From Nov. 18, 2008 Vanguard
They’re definitely not the
components you’d normally find in a bicycle: grass clippers, bed rails, a
shovel and pick… everything but the kitchen sink.
Tim MacKinnon could
probably incorporate even that if challenged. The Parade Street resident
started customizing bicycles with bizarre items three years ago when he made
one for his son, Darrell, who was 12 at the time. Since then he’s shown them
around the province and won several awards at the Wharf Rat Rally.
He attributes the birth and
popularity of these unusual bikes to California where they’re known as
California Cruisers.
“You can’t have motors on
bikes on the boardwalk so they started customizing chopper bikes and tall bikes
to go up and down the boardwalk,” he said.
He’s built close to half a
dozen bikes to date, including several eight-foot tall bikes, made from one
bike welded on top of another.
“Where the seat used to be,
that’s where the pedals are,” said Mackinnon.
“You get onto the bikes
like you get onto a horse. If you lean the bike right a little bit as you’re
getting up the bike straightens up and off you go,” he said.
The perch allows for a
better view over cars and vice versa.
“When people see me coming,
they actually stop,” laughed MacKinnon.
He has entered his
creations in several parades and plans on having them in the Yarmouth Christmas
parade on Nov. 22.
“I have to locate some
people to ride them. It’s hard to find people who want to ride these things,”
he said.
It took 10 months for him
to build a 12-foot long unit that he calls the Grave Digger, influenced
possibly from his job as a gravedigger for the Yarmouth Mountain Cemetery.
The handlebars are grass
clippers, the seat a shovel mounted on a pick that’s been heated and bent. The
front forks are from a hospital bed rail and springs from a lawn tractor make
the front wheel go up and down.
The bike has a blue glass
skull, strobe light, taillights from a 1950 bus, and a trailer (made from parts
of a real coffin) which features a pop cooler, DVD player, iPod, playstation,
chair, cup holder and table.
“When the town has it’s
annual clean up I go around and pick up bicycles and bring them home and make
something from them,” explains MacKinnon. “If I don’t have it, we’ll make it.”
