USB Catastrophe

Born on Saint Valentine's Day, Y2K.

There comes a time when the needs of the life support outweighs the needs of the ship. Or something like that.

After many mission on USB Annihilation, Skunk was ready to build what he considered to be the first flagship of the SCUL fleet. The criteria was that it had an integrated sonic disruption field the likes of which had yet to be heard, to handle well, and to be an intimidating force in derby.

As an evolution to Radiobag, Skunk used car stereo with a cassette deck from the junkyard. The speaker enclosures started out in tupperware containers, but shattered not too long and were replaced with stainless steel cooking pots. The radio and the warp core to power it fit into a steel box made from two old fuseboxes. This unit can completely separate for derby, thanks to some upside down dropouts and some hooks for over the handlebars.

The fork is of a novel design Skunk calls a quarafork: it has two additional smaller blades that are welded directly to the handlebars. This makes removing the stem a little tricky but since the blades are so long, they can be bent out of the way enough to spin the stem out of the way. Catastrophe has a steel Chris King headset with one inch deep cups, which is the only thing that can survive the punishment of this massive ship.

As time progressed, so did Catastrophe's accessories and war core array: Two large halogen lights near the top, two smaller halogen lights near the bottom, a car cigarette lighter - the only way to light a sparkler while in flight as far as Skunk could tell, even a water mister for the daymissions. People nicknamed that part the 'skunk spray', and would fly behind Catastrophe to benefit from the cool mist. At it's peak Catastrophe weighed 140 pounds.

Skunk put over 14,000 light years on this ship, mostly in daily commute. Over the years many failures happened: The front axle broke twice, the front dropouts sheared off during a downhill part of a snowy commute, the head tube has sheared off, and it had electrical fires so often that Rotwang gave Skunk a tiny fire-extinguisher for his birthday.

Sometime around 2001 it won best custom at the Lars Anderson transportation museum, billed as 'the world's meanest bicycle. It once rode a multi-day tour from Boston to Bangor.

Eventually the halogens made way from LEDs, the cassettes made way for an early clunky MP3pO with an upgraded laptop hard drive and firmware boot. The Alignment got worse over time and the seventy year old hull made of primitive steel became more and more prone to misalignment. Skunk gave the ship multiple warning to try and get it to behave, but over time, the love the two of them shared began to fade away. Skunk began to build a new flagship, but that's another story.

USB Catastrophe limps on, but the legacy is only stories to all but highly seasoned pilots. The Radiobox is a mere shell, the hull is in a state of repair, and the spirit lurks in the deeper corners of the hallowed fort, waiting for a resurrection that may never come.