The Predator Among Us

I finally caught pneumonia finished Older Boy’s birthday bike. He got it Friday before school and he and I both were quite pleased with it.
But as I was freezing my ass off finishing it in the garage on Thursday night I actually looked at it and saw what the model name is: the Recoil.
Now what were the good folks who designed this bike FOR 7 AND 8 YEAR OLDS thinking when they decided on that name? Maybe motion or movement? OK, not so bad. Resiliency? Carom, richochet? Those last two are perfectly appropriate considering the skill and self-preservation levels of the rider. Here are my favorites: cringe, flinch, funk, quail, wince, shrink, squinch. The Diamond Back Flinch or Wince. What kid wouldn’t want one?

So I took a look around the garage and found that model names fall into some general categories:
- There are the unabashed, arrogant, superiority complex bikes, like the Paragon, Paramount and yes, even the Superior that Schwinn made for a while.
- There is a nice selection of bikes named after places, preferably exotic: Poprad (starting point of the Tatra Electric Railway in Northern Slovakia [HUH?]), Tassajara, Zurich, Moab and Malibu.
- And the aforementioned vaguely phallic and creepy Recoil, Predator (another fine Schwinn offering), Blast Off (wait a minute, how did I end up with two of these?), Speed Blaster and I think I’ll include in this category the Bushbike. All of these except the last one are bikes for little boys. The last is for bigger boys.
- Residing in the There’ll-always-be-an-England category are the Sprite and the Twenty. If that was an Amurican bike it would be the 20. The Sprite started out as a 3-speed and was called the Sprite 3, which makes sense. I’ve got the 5-speed version called the Sprite 5 (and, hmmm, I seem to have two of them) and then came the Sprite 10 which I’m sure you can figure out. But when the Sprite 27 arrived it certainly did not have 27 speeds. Way to keep things consistent!
- Weather! The Mistral and Twister, and Schwinn used to make a Typhoon but I don’t have one.
- Those earnest Japanese gave us the Express and, in addition to the aforementioned Malibu (sub-titled Star Struck), the bikes-for-girls category includes the Amethyst, Shimmer, Tiara and, of course, Barbie.
- Last are the names that don’t mean anything, at least in the context of bikes: Outlook, Double Track, Pro Cruiser, Suburban (oh man I’ve got two of these too! If bikes are going to reproduce in my garage I wish it would be the better bikes. Mate the Poprad and the Zurich and call it, maybe Vienna?) and my personal favorite name of all, the Rad Cat.