ISSUE 419 • GARAGE BUILD • 21It was here, in the
unlikeliest of spaces, where
Zak’s bike acquired any-
thing but a dull name: The
Purple Moose.
“It used to have a huge
6-1/2-gallon purple tank,”
Zak explains. “That, com-
bined with the apes, made it look big and obnoxious, like a
dumb moose.”
But, as you can clearly see, there’s nothing purple about
this bike. The very absence of this particular color explains
why it’s now known simply as “The Moose.” It also reveals
how much Zak’s mentality evolved throughout the build.
The Moose soon began changing not because Zak
kept crashing it—or because parts would break or fall off
(though that was a major contributing factor)—but be-
cause Zak caught the bug. You know, that bug. The one
that always gets us when we’re our most vulnerable. The
opportunistic little bastard. “I’ve been removing everything
that doesn’t make the bike move forward,” Zak says. “That’s
the fun part.”
Now the bike changes seemingly every season. “I’m not
really married to any one thing about the bike besides the
motor,” he reveals.
It was during this transition when Zak realized he
needed an actual garage, especially since he planned to do“It felt like the right thing to do as it was my only vehicle
at the time,” Zak remembers. That’s more he could say about
what was in his toolbox (read: it was empty). When asked
about what tools he used, Zak said, “You’re gonna have to
ask my buddies Bernie and Ray and my dad. I stole every-
thing I could from those guys. I had nothing at the time.”
Much like a person recovering from a major accident,
Zak’s busted Ironhead spent a good deal of time in bed. Well,
in a spare bedroom—minus the bed. “We’d already moved the
bed out of my buddy Chris’ bedroom, so I just kind of sneakily
rolled my bike in there. Like a gentleman,” Zak adds. Aside
from sparks “singeing a couple of posters,” building there was
a positive experience. “We actually have a lot of funny pictures
of me shooting sparks all over the room and piles of parts ev-
erywhere,” he says. “It was rad being able to wake up and just
start wrenching and drinking beer with my bud.”