I looked, and it does not say only motor bikes...

This is a Giant Boulder. Bought new around 2002. Probably the only new vehicle I will ever own. It was purchased to be a piece of exercise equipment with no intentions of customizing. I've owned a few really poor quality bicycles when I was a kid, that lasted only a couple years. This one has lasted a decade and if it has less than 25,000 miles on it, I would be surprised.

Yes, I am completely aware of the irony of a piece of exercise equipment being named a Giant Boulder.

It was $200 on sale. No fancy shock absorber fork. Immediate replacement parts to make it ridable were the seat (for comfort), pedals (originals bent quick), raised handlebars and extended stem (for that upright posture instead of having the rider's head below his body), and ergonomic handlebar grips so the hands do not go numb after a half hour of riding. I ride paved streets and a paved fitness trail, so switched to kevlar street tires (sounded bulletproof so they might not leak).
I discovered that the original gear set was designed for something more like climbing trees. Burning calories is most efficient when peddling at maximum velocity. So I switched to a road gear set, with much taller low gear and a couple fewer teeth on the high gear.
So it evolved into a strange combination of comfort seat and handlebars, wide street tires, and racing gears. About halfway through the warm season, I can usually scare the heck out of the Lance-Armstrong-wannabes on their multi thousand dollar, carbon fiber, road bikes, by keeping pace with them for ten or fifteen miles on what appears to be a regular mountain bike.

At the end of the last year's season, the seat broke, cables rusted through, brakes rusted solid, and most of the hardware rusted solid. I take good care of it and store it inside, but a good workout involves loosing 5-7 pounds of sweat, all of which goes onto the bike. The frame started looking scary and it was surprising just how much ferrous metal was used in every single piece on the bike.
We have three seasons: ice storm, tornado, and drought. Our ice storm season was 7 1/2 months long, and the biggest insult was that Al Gore did not come over even a single time to chisel ice off our windshields. Tornado season was not much help either, too much rain and hail to work on overhauling the bike.
I finally got the back half of the frame stripped and sand blasted, wasted two months, five or more cans of spray paint and primer, and countless man hours, and I think the paint stuck to me much better than it stuck to the bike frame. Lots and lots of priming, wet sanding, repriming, more wet sanding, painting, cursing about the paint running, more wet sanding, repeat a hundred times.
I had to replace the brakes. The originals were Chinese made and sold only to the bike manufacturer. The Avid brakes work much better than the ten year old ones.
The new Shimano forward derailer is better than the original, but requires two hands to upshift. I may have permanent thumb damage.
New seat post and Respiro seat.
Stainless substituted for any nut and bolt I could find stainless replacements for.
Another set of cables and housings.
The only original parts left are the shifter/brake handles, the rear derailer, the fork, the frame, and the reflectors. I lost my bike name stickers with the rear half repaint.
And the kick stand is already wearing through the paint. I polished it and the crank arms, and all the aluminum already shows sweat spotting after only five rides.

I think I spent more on parts and gas driving around trying to find parts, than it would have cost to buy a new bike or maybe a carbon fiber frame.
It's a little over halfway through drought season, and I'm just started biking again. About ten pounds behind.
Maybe ice storm season will start later this year and I can push the boulder around a few extra months.

looking good mate, there are a few guys here with interest in the non motorised bikes! me i have a few i need to finish off, i have 5 bikes and only one is close to ridable!

your bike looks good and i had to look twice to notice the custom touches!

As MrFeebs said there's a few of us into the human powered two wheeled variants.

I've just finished a 4X style bike for some Cyclocross racing we have starting here.
When I say finished I mean, take an old road bike, cut it into small pieces, rearrange said pieces and weld back together then add some pieces like a 1-1/8 suspension fork, replaceable dropouts modify the riveted chainrings to single ring and paint bright green.

Keep up the exercise as it makes driving a Bellett just that little bit easier.


Cheers
Rob

Thanks for the words of encouragement.

I hadn't really thought of it as customized. More just repair and utilitarianism.

Sounds like Rob is making one of those recumbent bikes. A couple of the Lotus Seven racers are into those. Maybe a little too complicated and dangerous for me.