[The rest of this narrative is told exactly as I heard it, from Mr. Sheldonstein's perspective --Jim]
I am by birth a Massachusian, what some would call a “Masshole”. I began working on bikes when I was but a wee lad, when my beard was not nearly so weird as it is today, though it has always been just as bushy. For most of my life, my tastes in bikes were a tad eccentric, but not overly so. I spent a lot of time tinkering with very old English bikes and multiple speed hubs, the sorts of bikes a man might ride while smoking a Meerschaum pipe, and saying “I say!”.
Soon my tastes swung from multiple speed bikes to fixed gear bikes. I tried anything to build the perfect bicycle, to create the ultimate machine that would give the rider the sweetest riding experience. Some of them were works of art. Others were abominations and had to be destroyed in the hot strobe of lightning and driving rain.
The one I am chasing now, the abomination that it was my unlucky lot to create, it is the worst of the worst.
Oh sure, I made some mistakes over the years, like riding flat bar road bikes in public, but this… this monster… I can not even bear to think of it! It must be caught and dismantled!
What? Oh. Well yeah I mean destroyed, of course. Mostly. Look, bike parts aren’t cheap, okay. Some of them will sell pretty well on Ebay. It has a Chris King headset for the love of god – don’t judge me!
Anyway, the night I created the evil contraption, I was supposed to have dinner with my beloved, Sherril. She’d blown me off all weekend saying she wasn’t feeling well, but wanted to meet for dinner on Sunday night. I rode all weekend alone, sorrowful and with poor pedaling technique as I thought she must certainly be intending to break up with me.
Finally the night came and she met me at my home. I couldn’t help myself. As soon as I saw her I said “I get the feeling we’re about to have a serious conversation”. We both got into her car and she sighed heavily.
“I’m just not feeling it,” she said.
My worst fears realized! She’d even remembered to bring the watch I’d left on her dresser. My world crumbled. It felt as though my heart had become a deep roiling black hole, sucking the joy and the color out of my extremities and leaving me with scant will even to stand.
With the clumsy limbs of a marionette whose strings are being pulled by a drunk balanced on top of a steam locomotive, I tumbled out of her car and lurched in the direction of my front door without a shred of joy or a beam of sunlight to warm my face.
If I had known then what I know now, I would have gone out drinking or taken up heroin, or just found a gutter to lie in, anything to keep myself from my spare parts bin and work stand! You see, it was that night that I created the worst of my abominations.
May God have mercy upon me!
Still I’d love to have one of their bags. They have a cool seat belt buckle style feature in their shoulder straps which allows the wearer to shrug the bag on like a coat. Lacking such a buckle, I have to throw the strap of my Timbuk2 bag over my shoulder, which can be annoying when wearing my 
Sheldonstein’s Tale 2
I stumbled into the house, numb hands barely able to operate the key. I was cast aside, hopeless, adrift, and wearing two wristwatches. I took them both off, then went into the bathroom to look at myself in the mirror. I could not bear the sight of my own face.
I paced from the front of my apartment to the back, looking for a place where I fit. Finally I found myself among my bicycles. I picked up my tools, but they felt cold and without any humor. I began to root around in my spare parts bin. I realized I had all the parts to put together a bike, and I might as well busy my hands while all my head wanted to do was hang sorrowfully.
Outside a hot, persistent rain pattered against the windowpanes, and thunder rolled overhead like a great bell down a set of stone steps, echoing the clanging fear of loneliness in my own head.
Strewn about my workshop I had a cyclocross frame, a 650C carbon fork, a set of BMX risers and headset, and other various parts. Sure, they’d technically go together to form something that was vaguely bicycle shaped, but the horror of those disparate parts coming together was enough to turn my stomach. Still, I wrenched on, as if building an ugly bicycle would somehow excuse my own ugliness, my own inability to keep Sherril with me.
The next hour passed in a blur. The cries and the fears in my head became a regular buzz, like the 60-cycle hum of the single fluorescent light overhead. All the while, my hands twisted bolts and tensed cables, following their own designs with no direction from my head or heart. I even remember adding a single triathlete-style water bottle holder behind the seat in comical dildo fashion. I am sure I’ve never purchased such a thing, yet there it was.
Finally, the bike was built. I took a step back and looked at what I had done. It was without a doubt the ugliest thing I had ever seen. Even a dog’s anus would wink in horror at this bicycle, and I vowed to dismantle it immediately.
Yes, dismantled immediately – after just one ride.