The Creation of the Captain Cosmos Cruiser

 

 

The blue bike in the rough



 

 

In recent years, the Captain Cosmos Cruiser has been one of my favorite projects. Something with a lot of meat to it that I could really dig into, and showcase all my skill's.

 

It started with an idea to promoted, and support an event in downtown Winchester, Kentucky. The event was a days long bicycle race through out central Kentucky called "the Tour of the Red River Gorge." It was promoted as being similar to the "Tour De France." As I recall this would have been July of 2009.



 

 

 

 

The Captain Cosmos Cruiser in the window
of Captain Cosmos Collectibles
 



The group putting on the event went to great lengths

to involve each community along the race route: Closing down street's, getting Police escorts, finding volunteers. A fair number of Cyclists were involved, seem's to me the number was something 800 participants. As part of the Downtown Business Association, I attended the meeting between the promoters and representatives of the City of Winchester, and the downtown businesses. To simply say that this was planned to be a major event would be a disservice. Each of the 800 contestants was expected to have at least 4 people with them as family, or support crew's. So we were already talking about 2500 to 4000 people coming into the city before we even mentioned spectators. Everyone seemed to agree that doubling that number seemed reasonable enough. The projected influx of downtown business was well worth accommodating. To say the least, expectations were high.

 

One of the Lexington Horses



More Lexington Horses on display



Beyond that,

the downtown businesses wanted to show their support of the event in the hopes of grabbing that all important Tourist Dollar. Near by Lexington, Kentucky had recently done their life sized, fiberglass painted horses to draw attention to their downtown with great success. As a public art project the idea has worked quite well in cities across the country. That seemed like a good place to start. But this was tiny little Winchester, they couldn't possibly afford a quantity of fiberglass anything. Luckily the subject was bicycles, and those were easy enough to obtain for anyone. Decision made, each downtown business would find a bicycle and decorated it to welcome "the Tour of the Red River Gorge."

 

The blue bike in the begining

I was pretty excited about the project. I had all kinds of ideas cycling through my head. I really wanted to start with a child's tri-cycle, but it was surprisingly hard to find one in the time we had. If I couldn't go tri-cycle, then I wanted to go as vintage as possible to fit the theme of Captain Cosmos Collectibles. After all there was no reason to pass up a perfectly good advertising opportunity. I happened to have some rather beat up bikes on hand, but none had the sexy vintage curves I was hoping to find. The standard 10 speed design was just too stiff to fit the theme I wanted to go with. As luck would have it, I found the almost perfect blue bike at a garage sale just before I really had to start on the project.

I'm actually rather glad it was "almost" perfect, because the limitations really made me think outside the box, and come up with a much stronger design. The beat up blue bike was a well made 1950's, girls bike. Solid frame, whitewalled balloon tires, smooth curves, just the kind of elements I wanted to play with.

First things first, I completely disassembled the bike. Took it down to the carwash, and got it as clean as I possibly could. The sanded every square inch of it, and took it back to the carwash for another round of cleaning. Next came a nice smooth layer of primer. It was now blank pallet for what ever I could come up with.



Some of the Ray Gun's that inspired me



 

I poured though books and web sites looking for any vintage Science Fiction images I could. I was looking for colors, designs and styles that would lend themselves well to the project. The main issue I had to solve was where exactly could I paint. I wanted some kind of surface beyond the piping of the bike. Some thing to covey an image, and not simply a graphic. Something that would really reflect that 1950's era I was looking for. Sketches followed. Some perhaps a bit too ambitious.

 

 

 

 

 



Close up of the center panel



 Once the basic idea was drawn out, it was time to customize the bike. I had to start with measurements, LOT'S of measurements. I needed to ad the main panel which would change this from a girl's bike to a boy's, and in the process give me that critical surface area to paint on. I considered metal, and plastic, but wood was the best option here. Getting that curve perfect was a must, any gap and the illusion would have been lost. But disguising how the panel was attached, that was the hard part. I think I'll keep that secret for now.

 

The front fender was next. Plastic proved to be the material of choice here. Thin, sturdy, and easily cut. The wings of the ship were made of high density pressboard. The plastic was bolted to the fender.



Since I couldn't disguise the bolts, I made them part of the design which added a nice riveted retro look in the process.



Detail of the front fender rocket ship





The panel mimic's the view from
the ships windows



At this point I still wasn't sure what to put on that center panel. But I had cut windows out of the space ship fender, and bolted panting's of the cockpit inside them. The similar shapes of the window's and the panel gave me an idea. I added fake bolts to the corners of the panels to mimic the real bolt's on the windows then painted the view of each window.

 

Left side of the Captain Cosmos Cruiser

The remainder of the bike was spray painted bright yellow in several light coats. The lightening lots where masked off with tape, and the rest was finished off in red. Everything was assembled and given a final coat of high gloss clear coat. The results speak for themselves.

 

However, the expected fanfare was somewhat of a disappointment. The event this bike was so carefully crafted for was a total bust. The dozens of bikes intended to be on display ended up as a total of 4. One was an un-altered bike that simply hung in a window. Another had a quick spray of silver, and a bouquet of flowers and ribbons in the basket. The final one, put out by the local art guild no less, was just an unpainted kids bike with a selection of art supplies in the basket.

 

. . . and the right side

If support was disappointing, participation was even worse. The bicyclists were due downtown around noon. I waited in my shop expectant of the doves of race fans. The streets were empty of even regular traffic since they where blocked off. Almost no one had shown up to the even. I watched from my counter for the first contestant to pass by my shop. When that happened I went to the door to watch the race. By the time I got to the door the entire race had passed by. I couldn't have seen more than 20 bikes total. In under a minute the racers had traveled the entire length of downtown Winchester, and disappeared into the countryside. Minutes later the streets were open again, and the even planned for months, with high expectations was over in under 20 minutes with out so much as a flag waving fan.

 

 

The bike in the window
 

But at least I got one sweet bike out of it.

 

 

Detail of the logo