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He remembered being dazzled by a bright pink bike he saw leaning against the Outing Club's exterior wall. “I thought, 'That is a crazy bike. Who has this pink bike?'”

He carried on with his task of putting gear away. Then a shadow of doubt came to him. “I came back out and looked at it again, and said, 'Whoa, that is my bike!' Since then I have had a pink bike.” (A pink bike plus some, as it has been customized even more in the meantime.)

Sam Bonauto ’25, the self-confessed culprit with the pink spray paint, spoke up. “Caleb had no choice but to retaliate with bike modifications of his own.”

Ever since, the two friends, who are both physics majors, have gone back and forth to try to one-up each other on who can disfigure whose bike better and more cleverly. 

The bicycles are rideable, but barely. On one bike, nicknamed the “long bike,” you have to do a three-point turn if you want the twenty-five-foot contraption on wheels to make it around a corner. But the bikes are eye-catching, colorful, and ingenious.

“Cars have stopped on the road—they're driving down Harpswell road, and they've fulled stopped and go, 'What the heck?',” Bonauto said.

After the initial pink bike shock, McDaniels rotated one of the pedals on Bonauto's bike ninety degrees, “so when you pedaled, you had a little dolphin-leap situation.”

That "situation" didn't last long though (it was very hard to go anywhere). The front wheel was soon replaced with a tiny wheel from a kid's bike called “Sparkles.” McDaniels found the jaunty little ride with a 'free' sign in the neighborhood one day and snatched it up. Bonauto noted that all of the materials they use in their competition have been discarded, and the bikes involved are “at the end of their lives.”

Another bike has had a handlebar replaced with a canoe paddle. One three-wheeled contraption blew a high-pitched air horn every time the front wheel turned. Bonauto had to ride around with noise-cancelling headphones and constantly apologize for the ear-splitting honk wherever he went.

So far, at least, the pièce de résistance really is the long bike. McDaniels found a twenty-foot piece of piping that he bolted between the back and front wheels of Bonauto's bike, so that the front wheel arrives well before the rider at any destination. 

“I am very much down,” Bonauto admitted. “It is a masterpiece! Cars have stopped on the road when they see it. They’re driving down Harpswell Road and they fully stop and go, 'What the heck?!' But it is hard to explain.”

He has an idea or two to exact revenge. “I have plans, but I can’t reveal them.”