“What is this thing?!” This past October at the Oregon Bicycle Builders’ Show, Jonathan Maus of bikeportland.org stopped by the booth and was looking at this crazy bike of mine. I tried to sum it up as succinctly as possible: “It’s a mixte off road touring 29er commuter monster truck thing, with a flask cage.” Something like that. The bike was hanging on a stand at the back of my booth. I’d been riding it for a couple of months without paint, and it had a nice patina of rust going. When Jonathan was done taking in all that information the only question he could think to ask was, “Why?” The only proper answer to that is, “Because I can.”