The Fox, the Hound, and the Motorcycle

It began innocently enough: I bought a motorcycle, and I wanted my dog to ride with me.

I didn’t want to pull a trailer, and no one manufactures baskets for large dogs, so I built my own. I tested a few experimental designs (some with questionable safety profiles) before settling on a pyramid-shaped design built from steel struts. It was bolted to the bike, and included a latch that hooked into the dog’s harness to ensure he couldn’t fall out.

The matte-black look was nice, but impossible to see on the road, so I started exploring reflectors and paint. Much as some motorcyclists enjoy working on their bike’s mechanics, I enjoyed modding my bike’s appearance.

“Painting this is fun,” I thought. “If I paint it with chalkboard paint, I can change the design as much as I want!”

But what to draw? I had recently joined Mozilla to work on Firefox OS, a project that sought to provide a web-based alternative to iOS and Android. I held a lot of passion for that project. Plus, its logo looked cool, so I thought I’d start with a small Firefox decal.

I got a little carried away, knowing that the chalk was temporary.

The chalkboard paint didn’t last as long as I’d like, so I went back to paint.

At this point, I was just painting, and hardly riding.

The final design was relatively plain: gunmetal and bronze with LED light strips. By this stage, I had painted everything so sloppily that I was left with little choice but to embrace the cracked steampunk vibe.

I rode it for a while like this, taking the dog on a trip to Los Angeles with my coworkers. Eventually, I sold the bike after deciding that motorcycling was too dangerous, having broken my arm riding a Boosted Board.