USB Pale Horse

Ever since Skunk started working at Merlin in '96, he dreamt of making a chopper out of titanium. Shortly after he learned to weld the dream came true.

The rear triangle of the ship was from an early Merlin mountain bike frame with a grease-guard bottom bracket. The front triangle was made from discarded Merlin XLM with a head tube that had been partailly welded without argon on the inside and therefore not acceptable to sell. Skunk flipped the front triangle upside down, which raked out the head tube angle significantly. A titanium monotube fork sleeved over a steel inner tube completed the look. The fork used to be adjustable, but galvanic corrosion has take that feature away - probably for the best, we don't want to stress out that one monotube anyway. Plus the ship has a titanium handlebar to match. He named it Pale Horse - the first of the four choppers of the Apocalypse.

When Skunk finished this ship, he was the happiest pilot in the multiverse. All the pilot wait rest on that little mountain bike saddle, it's prone to wheelies.It's twitchy as can be, and doesn't want to fly straight but rather flip flop all over the place. To Skunk, it felt like a real fighter plane, fast and nimble. Skunk didn't care about any of that one bit. He would park it on top of his dresser in front of his bed, so he could wake up in the middle of the night, gaze at it, whispering "it's real"... then fall back into dreams.