A FIXIE BIKE

A ghost will greet you when you ride into Las Vegas. Surely, a whole desert full of souls haunts this improbable place, but this is a benevolent spirit nurtured by a man called Mondo who believes that friendship never dies. Each bike that comes out of his Sin City shop is a shrine to the best friend he ever had, a founding father of chopper culture and a brother to all bikers: Denver Mullins. It is a proud legacy for Armando “Mondo” Porras, the proprietor of Denver’s Choppers, to carry a torch for his late mentor. The hard-core hallmark of every one of Mondo’s choppers is solid steel forks flanking a pair of coiled chrome springs and rockers that suspend the front axle. Mondo, using his own hands and with Denver Mullins’ inspiration, makes every weld in these “springers” himself today. He was building and riding bikes when there was no speed limit across the California-Nevada border and no helmet laws anywhere. If you had your knees to the breeze, you had brothers to watch your back. A five-gallon tank and a buck fifty would take you two hundred miles. “We’re still building bikes that look just like the bikes we built years ago,” Mondo says, speaking as though Mullins were by his side. That means a narrow, eighteen-inch back wheel, a mechanical brake, upswept pipes, and a hand-molded stretched frame. “That’s what separates us from everybody else,” he says. “It’s the fact that we aren’t actually young guys trying to copy what was done in the old days; we are the old guys doing what we did best in the old days.

We rented cruiser bikes and took two trips around Stanley Park - the second time we were searching for the trails that connect inland but couldn't find any way onto them. I loved this bike, no back pain, no craned neck. I'm definitely getting a bike where I can sit upright (I don't intend any serious riding), but maybe with a few gears.

We were pleasantly surprised to find that the trails leaving Stanley park work seamlessly into trails that hug either side of the city waterfront. We could just keep going and going. We went as far as some gelato, and lovely open air restaurant seating. Vancouver really has it's stuff together.

We were also impressed by the beach at the West End - they had giant logs set out and people tended to set up near them, leaving clear paths for people to walk through. It was an example of things being orderly and considerate and made the city feel so much friendlier than I am used to.