I finally have my GARAGE!!!

Yes, today I will finally get my garage. It's not that I didn't have one before, it's just that it has been filled with someone elses stuff since we got here, long story that I don't feel like telling right now. Her crew is supposed to show up today at 1:00 and move all her stuff out. Then since this is a long weekend I will still have two whole days to start cleaning and sorting out all my stuff and finally get my chopper into the garage so that I can fix it!!!

Immigration: Scary Stats

Immigration: Scary Stats

If this doesn't open your eyes... nothing will!

From the L.A. Times

1. 40% of all workers in L.A. County ( L.A. County has 10.2 million

people) are working for cash and not paying taxes. This was because they are

predominantly illegal immigrants, working without a green card.

2. 95% of warrants for murder in Los Angeles are for illegal aliens.

3. 75% of people on the most wanted list in Los Angeles are illegal

aliens.

4. Over 2/3 of all births in Los Angeles County are to illegal alien

Mexicans on Medi-Cal, whose births were paid for by taxpayers.

5. Nearly 25% of all inmates in California detention centers

are Mexican nationals here illegally.

6. Over 300,000 illegal aliens in Los Angeles County are living in

garages.

7. The FBI reports half of all gang members in Los Angeles

are most likely illegal aliens from south of the border.

8. Nearly 60% of all occupants of HUD properties are illegal.

9. 21 radio stations in L.A. are Spanish speaking.

10. In L.A. County 5.1 million people speak English.

3.9 million speak Spanish.

(There are 10.2 million people in L.A. County).

(All the above from the Los Angeles Times)

Less than 2% of illegal aliens are picking our crops,

but 29% are on welfare.

Over 70% of the United States' annual population growth

(and over 90% of California , Florida , and New York )

results from immigration.

The cost of immigration to the American taxpayer in 1997 was,

(after subtracting taxes immigrants pay), a NET $70 BILLION/

year, [Professor Donald Huddle, Rice University ]. The lifetime

fiscal impact (taxes paid minus services used) for the average

adult Mexican immigrant is a NEGATIVE number.

29% of inmates in federal prisons are illegal aliens.

If they can come to this country to raise Hell and demonstrate by

the thousands, WHY can't they take charge over the corruption

in their own country?

We are a bunch of fools for letting this continue.

THE U.S. VS MEXICO

On February 15, 1998, the U.S. and Mexican soccer teams met at the Los

Angeles Coliseum. The crowd was overwhelmingly pro-Mexican even though most

lived in this country. They booed during the National Anthem and U.S. flags

were held upside down. As the match progressed, supporters of the U.S. team were

insulted, pelted with projectiles, punched and spat upon. Beer and trash were

thrown at the U.S. players before and after the match. The coach of the U.S.

team, Steve Sampson said, "This was the most painful experience I have ever had in

this profession."

Did you know that immigrants from Mexico and other non-European

countries can come to this country and get preferences in jobs, education, and

government contracts. It's called affirmative action or racial privilege. The

Emperor of Japan or the President of Mexico could migrate here and immediately be

eligible for special rights unavailable for Americans of European descent.

Corporate America has signed on to the idea that minorities and third

world immigrants should get special, privileged status. Some examples are

Exxon, Texaco, Merrill Lynch, Boeing, Paine Weber, Starbucks and many more.

DID YOU KNOW?

Did you know ... that Mexico regularly intercedes on the side

of the defense in criminal cases involving Mexican nationals?

Did you know ... that Mexico has NEVER extradited a Mexican

national accused of murder in the U.S. in spite of agreements to do so?

According to the L.A. Times, Orange County , California is home to 275

gangs with 17,000 members, 98% of which are Mexican and Asian.

How's your county doing?

According to a New York Times article dated May 19, 1994, 20 years

after the great influx of legal immigrants from Southeast Asia, 30% are

still on welfare compared to 8% of households nationwide. A Wall Street Journal

editorial dated December 5, 1994 quotes law enforcement officials as

stating that Asian mobsters are the "greatest criminal challenge the

country faces." Not bad for a group that is still under 5% of the population.

Is education important to you? Here are the words of a teacher who

spent over 20 years in the Los Angeles School system. "Imagine teachers in

classes containing 30-40 students of widely varying attention spans and

motivation, many of whom aren't fluent in English. Educators seek learning

materials likely to reach the majority of students and that means fewer words and

math problems and more pictures and multicultural references."

WHEN I WAS YOUNG

I remember hearing about the immigrants that came through Ellis Island

They wanted to learn English. They wanted to breathe free. They wanted

to become Americans. Now, far too many immigrants come here with

demands. They demand to be taught in their own language. They demand

special privileges ... affirmative action. They demand ethnic studies that

glorify their culture.

NOW ...

WHY CAN'T WE SEND THEM HOME

HOW CAN YOU HELP?

YES WE CAN, the sheriff od Mecklenburg County NC requested training from ICE (immigration) and since May IN HIS JURISDICTION ALONE over 900 illegals, convicted criminals and regular run of the mill (wets mohows, creek jumpers, brown travelers ect ect) have been scheduled for deportment or have been deported. Seems someone in our or your community has dropped the ball if they are not also doing the same w/these slugs. Seems AL, NC, CA, FL and AZ have all received training from ICE, and there are only 14 depts and 6 states that have requested this training. WHERE are the community leaders on this matter?????
So hey if/when U fwd this to another please ask, "WHAT IS OUR COMMUNITY DOING REFERENCE THIS MATTER?"!!!
Did U vote? Do U pay taxes? If yes then it seems U have a right to ask the elected local/state/federal officials, "WHAT THE HELL R U DOING? Do U only puff up and act like U care when votes are needed or DO U REALLY CARE? How much has the local population of illegals costs OUR community and maybe UR PAY should reflect Ur action or lack of."
No backseat/couch quarter backing/bitching if U cannot do something about the problem, we have enough bullshit from those who make a living off our inactivity.
So you are either a supporter or a opponent of the current status quo!!! PICK

The long weekend is almost over

Well, it's Sunday, Thanksgiving weekend is almost over. Haven't done a whole lot this weekend, spent T-day itself just relaxing on the coutch and in front of the computer. Spent Friday and Saturday messing with the chopper, finally got it out from under the tarp in the backyard where she's been hiding since we got to Tulsa. Gotta say that I love those old Hondas, she's been sitting for about three months now and I know the battery was half dead when I covered her up. I put the key in her, turn on the gas, closed the choke and two kicks and she was running. :) Mind you not purring like she should, but she made a couple of laps around the block ok. I rolled her back up to my garage and decided that maybe the timing was off a bit. After getting the timing light hooked up I noticed that I wasn't getting a pulse from the #1 wire, so I checked the rest and they were good. I pulled the wire and checked it with my meter and got a reading of 10K ohms, yep a bad wire, just for the fun of it I decided to check the rest, I avg. 5k ohms on the rest, ok, one really bad and the rest not far behind. I did a little research and decide the problem was that I had used graphite core wires. So, after a trip to the local O'Reily's Auto Parts, I had a set on order for Saturday morning. The next morning I did my running around gathering a few tidbit parts and my new wires. After putting on a new set of wires, I took her for another spin around the block, well, she's running a lot better now, but still got a few bugs to work out.

All for now - Asta

Yes, it's been awhile

Ya, I know it's been quite a while since I last posted. Not much has changed in my world and I spent most of my time today working on my new blog site, it's for all those joke you get via e-mail. Check it out while I go move a truckload of mulch. LOL

http://woogaus-jotd.blogspot.com/

Time flies ...

Just happened to look and see when the last post was, didn't realize it was that long ago. It's been real busy for me lately, I finally finished mocking up my bike last monday. Everything is done except for the seat, so it all got ripped apart for the finish work. I'm going to be bringing the frame home tommorow so I can work on it at the house some, Sweets gets a bit lonely when I spend half the night at the shop. But the clean up work I have to do on the frame I can do at home, so I'll work on that here. Laz, our painter is going to bring some fine line tape to the shop tommorow so I can get my tank ready for paint, I think I'll do the painting here as well since I'm only going to rattle can it for now.

'Night everybody, it's time for beddy bye. Asta

It's Monday - yippie?

The start of a new work week, and the start of a new project at the shop for me. Hmm, I haven't been talking much about what has been going on at the shop lately, quick update.

1. Hired a new guy, fresh outta MMI two weeks ago. He's doing great, him and the boss get along great and he actually knows enough to be past the danger point. Best thing he knows is when to ask for help or advice on how things are done in the real world as opposed to the classroom world.

2. Hiring the new guy has let me get back to build projects, namely Victor's chopper, since he was complaing the most. LOL. It's a sky high monster, I can barely see over the fuel tank and I'm 6'1". We finished the mock up and most everything a couple a months back, but without a third guy at the shop, it's been a pain to work on it, since hiring the new guy, I've been able to devote the last week and a half to getting it finshed and on the road. It's about 90% done, but I had to stop because I ran outta parts, gotta love backorders.

3. The Smoke Out is this weekend, so we all have been spending a lot of time helping guys get thier bikes ready for that, mostly little things that they can't take care of themselves. Most of the guys that go to the Smoke Out tend to work on thier own rides and usually only come to us if it's beyond thier abilities.

4. Started a new project this morning, an OLD shovelhead FLH, it's not excatlly the kind of job I like to do, but I'll do my best on it. The owner was rebuilding it himself, kinda of a long term project for him, unfortunally he passed on before he could finish it and his family asked us to finish it for him. I imaging that once it's finished, they will probally want to sell it. Personnaly, I think that if that's the case, they should just sell it as is. Basicly though, all I'm doing is getting it running, doing what's needed to be able to show it does run. I figure if there are no major setbacks, I'll have it finished by friday and hopefully the rest of Victor's parts will be in and I can finish his next week.

Ok, that should bring everyone up to date on the shop work. As for the personal rides, I'm planning on finishing the oil tank/battery box for mine on thursday night, hopefully have it mounted as well, I'd like to be able to spend this weekend tying up a lot of the little loose ends so that I can spend next week wiring the bike. I've decided to get the bike running as a rat chopper for now, I'm still not 100% sure I'm gonna like the sucide clutch / jocky shift setup, plus I need to see how the Amen suspention will need to be tweaked for the best ride, so it's just gonna be a rattle can paint job for now, I figure by this fall I should have all the bugs worked out and then I'll finish it up completely. That will let me get to work on Sweety's trike project sooner, gotta keep her happy, so I'll be happy.

Well, that's all for now. Asta

it's been awhile

Yep, it's been awhile since I've been here. Life is like that. It's mostly been the usual crazed pace of life that's been keeping me occupied lately. A big project that's been going on is research, Sweets has decided that she would like a trike. So I've been researching them, looking at different kits, convertions, and of course the costs. Let me tell ya, there not cheap, no matter how you do it. The photo above is the one I like the best so far, it's made by a local outfit www.eztrikekits.com . We drove over there last wensenday to check them out and we both got to take the one in the picture for a test ride. You can't tell it by the photo, but this one has been raked out to 40 deg and was set up as a drag bike, not excatlly a streetable setup. But it did ride nice for the most part, it had a bit of a shake in the front end taking off, I'm figuring is due to a improperly balanced front tire, but other than that I liked it. Of course like most, it's not cheap, but at about half the cost of most, it's an option we're discussing a lot.

Well, I'll try to get back later, time to get ready for work now. Catch ya all on the flip side, asta.

I wanna be the product tester !!!!

The SP9004 Spudgun

Only in America can a guy make a living making and selling potato launchers! Just amazing, here's the link to his site.

http://www.spudtech.com/default.asp

Lazy Sunday

Well, it's a lazy sunday around here. Not that I just sat around all day doing nothing, I did go to the shop and work on the chopper I'm building for a few hours. I manage to get a start on the rear brake setup, that's been fun, the Amen Saviour frame I'm using was designed around drum brakes and I'm trying to rig a hydraulic system on it. I also worked on the oil tank and electric box as well. I managed to get the box made and got a good start on the tank, I figure about one more night should take care of that. As for the rest of the day, well...... I found a fun website.

http://www.veoh.com/


You can watch the previews if you like, but it doesn't cost anything to sign up, you do have to download a viewer program to watch them, but there is a lot of content there and not just porn either!

But just for you preverts out there ----

Fun with garage doors

Well, keep the first part short, my Dad and me had a discussion about the garage, his thoughts were to tear it down and build a new one, after explaining that the current garage was grandfathered under the current building codes and that the only thing wrong with the old one was the doors, we went out today and bought new doors. Let me tell you, garage doors ain't cheap! But, we came across a deal at Home Depot, they had a two sets of matching doors the right size that had been returned minus about half the hardware needed to install them, so we did some talking and ended up getting the whole mess for $250 bucks, the doors were originally $300 bucks apiece. These are some nice doors too, two inch thick steel clad insulated doors. :)) Well, after getting them home and inventorying what was there,I had everything new for one door except for a couple of brackets. Not a problem, considering that the east door never gets opened, I've got a work table and one of my toolboxes up against it now and the door is locked down so that it won't raise. I spent today taking down the west door and installing the new one, had to do a little engineering with the brackets at the top to get it all to work. Had real fun doing that since the instructions didn't mention which way they had referenced left and right, turns out that it is looking at the door from the inside. With a little help from a Hilti hammer drill that I borrowed from my nephew I was able to get the door up and almost working, remember that left/right thing I mentioned. I've got to switch the two bottom roller brackets around, right now the door will only go up about two thirds the way up and gets stuck. Oh well, that's tommorow nights job fixing that, by the time I got that far I was beat, so I just called it a night. The other door gets to wait until wensenday.

That's about it for tonight, I'm beat and I think I'm going to call it a night early. Asta.

It's finally over, at least as far as I'm concerened.

Sweets and me have been having a series of discussions about work, my job in particular. She wants me to quit and work some where else, doesn't matter where, or if I actually like the job, just not at the bike shop. It's not that she doesn't want me to work at a bike shop, just not the one that I currently work at. There are several reasons behind this.

1. She doesn't like my boss - on this one, well a lot of people don't like him, he's one of those types, you either like him or not, period.

2. The pay isn't the greatist - I've been checking around, the pay isn't too hot anywhere. But at least I'm getting a raise at the end of the month.

3. No benifits - Been checking around on that one too, not too many places have benifits that are worth even mentioning, most places you have to pay for your insurance anyway. I worked for Motion Industries for six years, big outfit, google it's parent company sometime - Geninue Parts, I was coughing up 80 bucks a paycheck for insurance - $2080.00 a year and I wasn't even paying the full amount, when I started the company was called BerryBearing and the insurance was paid by the company, all the Berry employes got a bump in pay to cover the cost of insurance at the time of transition, but it was a one shot deal, after that if the cost went up, we had to pay for it.

4. No overtime pay - This issue is fixed, the boss and me had a talk today, starting at the end of the month, I'm no longer on a salary pay schedule, it's going to be hourly and I'll get overtime pay if I'm needed to work some extra hours, not that I expect extra hours, I very rarely have any now.

Anyhow, to sum things up, the boss and me had a nice chat today and straightened out a few points and straightened out a few issues and I've decided to stay put and stop looking at other jobs. Of course the fun part has yet to happen, telling Sweets this. LOL

Oh well, asta for now.

I like what he said

This is an e-mail I got, like most "chain letter" e-mails I don't know if it actually came from him, but whoever wrote it, I think they got it right and I agree with what is said. I have NO problem with people wanting to live in America, just do it the legal way. Sign on the line, become a legal American like the rest of us.

Mexican Standoff

I don't know how everybody else feels about it, but to me I think Hispanic people in this country, legally or illegally, made a huge public relations mistake with their recent demonstrations.

I don't blame anybody in the world for wanting to come to the United States of America, as it is a truly wonderful place. But when the first thing you do when you set foot on American soil is illegal it is flat out wrong and I don't care how many lala land left heads come out of the woodwork and start trying to give me sensitivity lessons.

I don't need sensitivity lessons; in fact I don't have anything against Mexicans! I just have something against criminals and anybody who comes into this country illegally is a criminal and if you don't believe it try coming into America from a foreign country without a passport and see how far you get.

What disturbs me about the demonstrations is that it's tantamount to saying, "I am going to come into your country even if it means breaking your laws and there's nothing you can do about it."

It's an "in your face" action and speaking just for me I don't like it one little bit and if there were a half dozen pairs of gonads in Washington bigger than English peas it wouldn't be happening. Where are you, you bunch of lily livered, pantywaist, forked tongued, sorry excuses for defenders of The Constitution? Have you been drinking the water out of the Potomac again?

And even if you pass a bill on immigration it will probably be so pork laden and watered down that it won't mean anything anyway. Besides, what good is any other law going to do when you won't enforce the ones on the books now?

And what ever happened to the polls guys? I thought you folks were the quintessential finger wetters. Well you sure ain't paying any attention to the polls this time because somewhere around eighty percent of Americans want something done about this mess, and mess it is and getting bigger everyday.

This is no longer a problem; it is a dilemma and headed for being a tragedy. Do you honestly think that what happened in France with the Muslims can't happen here when the businesses who hire these people finally run out of jobs and a few million disillusioned Hispanics take to the streets?

If you, Mr. President, Congressmen and Senators, knuckle under on this and refuse to do something meaningful it means that you care nothing for the kind of country your children and grandchildren will inherit.

But I guess that doesn't matter as long as you get re-elected. Shame on you.

One of the big problems in America today is that if you have the nerve to say anything derogatory about any group of people (except Christians) you are going to be screamed at by the media and called a racist, a bigot and anything else they can think of to call you.

Well I've been pounded by the media before and I'm still rockin' and rollin' and when it comes to speaking the truth I fear not. And the truth is that the gutless, gonad-less, milksop politicians are just about to sell out the United States of America because they don't have the intestinal fortitude to stand up to the face reality.

And reality is that we would never allow any other group of people to have 12 million illegals in this country and turn around and say, "Oh it's ok, ya'll can stay here if you'll just allow us to slap your wrist."

And I know that some of you who read this column are saying "Well what's wrong with that?" I'll tell you what's wrong with it. These people could be from Mars as far as we know. We don't know who they are, where they are or what they're up to and the way the Congress is going we're not going to.

Does this make sense? Labor force you say? We already subsidize corporate agriculture as it is, must we subsidize their labor as well?

If these people were from Haiti or if they were from Somalia or Afghanistan would we be so fast to turn a blind eye to them? I think not.

All the media shows us are pictures of hard working Hispanics who have crossed the border just to try to better their life. They don't show you pictures of the Feds rounding up members of MS 13, the violent gang who came across the same way the decent folks did. They don't tell you about the living conditions of the Mexican illegals some fat cat hired to pick his crop.

I want to make two predictions. No. 1: This situation is going to grow and fester until it erupts in violence on our streets while the wimps in Washington drag their toes in the dirt and try to figure how many tons of political hay they can make to the acre.

No 2: Somebody is going to cross that border with some kind of weapon of mass destruction and set it off in a major American city after which there will be a backlash such as this country has never experienced and the Capitol building in Washington will probably tilt as Congressmen and Senators rush to the other side of the issue.

I don't know about you but I would love to see just one major politician stand up and say, "I don't care who I make mad and I don't care how many votes I lose, this is a desperate situation and I'm going to lead the fight to get it straightened out."

I don't blame anybody for wanting to come to America, but if you don't respect our immigration laws why should you respect any others.

And by the way, this is America and our flag has stars and stripes. Please get that other one out of my face.

Pray for our troops

What do you think?

God Bless America Charlie Daniels; April 10, 2006
http://www.charliedaniels.com/

Time flies ...

Another week gone, not much to tell about this week.
Monday & Tuesday - life as usual, not much happened at the shop we're doing a lot of spring maintance right now, getting everybody ready for the riding season.
Wednesday - went out and got a truck load of mulch for the flower beds, got all the soaker hoses laid out and hooked up, started working on fixing up the cook shed.
Thursday & Friday - pretty much same as Monday & Tuesday
Today - Finished up most of the work on a bagger I started yesterday and due to the cold wet rain outside, decided to hibernate the rest of the day after work.
Tommorow - big fun, Monday is the annual mass trash pick-up day, you can pile as much as you want to on the curb and the garbage company wont charge you extra, so that meant I'll be carting all the garbage and junk I've been piling up behind the garage out to the curb tommorow, rain or shine.

Boring isn't it?

Deck the Halls (or at least the back porch)

Been kinda one of those weeks so far, had monday off due to Easter, actually what happened was that the boss got talked into something by the wife and kids so he called me monday morning and told me not to come in. It was fine by me, did some running around and worked in the garage a bit. As for tuesday, well, I bolted a couple a more of those shiny go fast chrome bits on the fatboy, rewired the driving lights, can't remember what else I did, I guess that shows how exciting that day was, LOL. Oh, I did haul a load of my bike parts home and started sorting out the stuff, one truck load down, about two or three more to go. Today on the other hand, while not as exciting as building a cool chopper was a busy day. When we built the addition onto the house a few years ago, my bro built a small landing at the back door that had three short funky steps going down to the deck. Everybody complained about them because they were kinda short and stumpy, not to easy to walk up and down, plus the landing outside the door was kinda small. Trying to get in the back door with the groceries while three big dogs are trying to get out/in/see/sniff everything was a bit of a feat. So today out came the building tools and after a trip to Lowe's to get building supplies I re-did the landing. I extended it all the way to the cook shed, about four feet, and built a new set of stairs going down the front part. Didn't completely finish it today, I still have a set of stairs to put in on the backside and then do the hand rails and such, but it's looking a lot better and everyone's happy with what I got finished today. You can now walk up a nice set of stairs to a landing that's big enough for everyone including the dogs to get on and move about. Once I get the rest finished, I've got to buy some Thompson's water sealer and hose everything down so that it doesn't go to hell.

Well that's about it for now, Asta.

Good Friday ?

Well, it was a pretty good friday for me, I'm not really the religious type so I didn't even realize it was Good Friday untill Jeannie at the shop mentioned it. I finished working on a custom softtail this morning, it had a rats' nest wiring job under the seat, I had talked to the owner late last summer when he had bought it and told him then that he might have some problems with it. The bike is in really nice shape otherwise and he did get a good deal on it. He managed to make it through the end of last season without too many problems, but he brought it to the shop earlier this year for us to fix a couple a bugs. One of them was the tail/brake light, it was acting funky. We had the shop kid start on it yesterday, thinking it was just a loose wire, but after a bit of fooling around with it, the boss put him on something else and had me take over. After I got it on my lift, the sparks started flying literally, I managed to get the battery unhooked before it exploded. The way the battery was sitting in the bike it was able to tip forward, the positive cable didn't have any protection on it and it welded itself to the oil tank, not a good thing. LOL After that little incident the decision was made just to rewire the rear end of the bike. After a little wiring tracing and marking I ended up cutting out a bunch of wire, about a dozen scotch-locks and three of the four load equalizers I found, leaving just one mounted up under the dash. This morning I finished up re-routing and cleaning things up, it all looks good and actually works, and now I've got three spare load equalizers in my toolbox to boot. LOL

The job I started this afternoon is a pretty straight-forward one, changing out stock parts with shiny go-fast chrome ones on the front end of a fatboy. Of course I won't be able to finish it this weekend, I'm still waiting on the new rims to come in, but I'll get done what I can.

Started working on Sweety's V-Star tonight, I bought a set of hard bags for Old Blu' but I decided that they didn't look right after getting them and they've sat on a shelf for a while. I got to looking at them the other day and decided that they were the right size for her V-Star. So tonight I started working on the mounting brackets, I managed to get things figured out so that I only have to make four tabs and two support bars to get the racks mounted. Now all I have to do is fix the couple minor problems with the bags and repaint them to match her bike, do a little rewiring, rework the license plate mount since I'm removing the stock turn signals, etc., etc., etc., just another simple job. LOL

Well, that's about it for tonight, time to hit the shower and then crash for the night. Asta!

The Sunday To-Do List

Well, it's sunday. It was yard work day today nothing exciting or funny. Trimming and pruning trees, working on the flower beds, and general clean-up. Checked out the lawn mower as well, Dad ran over a big rock last year and broke it, I pushed it out of the shed today and cleaned it up enough so that I could see what got broke, went online to check out the parts, it's going to be about 90.00 in parts to fix it, but it's worth it. It's only a year old, so I can justify the cost. Not much else happened, just have to wait until tommorow to see if anything good happens.

Somedays

Somedays are best forgotten, I've had a couple this week. Tuesday was so-so until amost the end of the day, I was installing a new clutch cable on a bike that I had put new bars and controls on to dress it up. I don't know excatly how many of these I've put on since starting at the shop, lets just say so many that I don't even think about how it's done anymore, I just do it out of habit. So anyway, I've gotten the cable run and snugged into the trap door, next I bolt the trap door back on the trans and tourqe it to 100in/lbs, next I pick up my wrench to give the cable it's final snug, as usual, then snap, the cable end breaks off. Yippie!?! The previous post explains thursday, so I wont go into that all over. Today, I finished wiping down the bagger and moved it and the trailer up to the third floor until the customer comes for it. Then I started reassembling a bike that I did some fab work on about a month ago. Part of the work I did previously on the bike was removing the tail/brake lights that were on it, the plan was to install a tail/brake light on the side mount, It ended up being a bit more of a project than it really should have been, the light that we wanted to use wasn't designed for the side mount that was on the bike, so instead of getting a new side mount the decision was made to make an adapter plate to mount the light to it, not really a hard job, just takes a bit of time to lay it out so that it loks good and then make it. That didn't take a real long time, but I need to rework the light itself some so that it would work. As it was, the light mounted with two 1/4-20 flathead bolts from the backside, well that wouldn't work with the adapter I had made so I subsitituted a couple of smaller bolts that would work just fine, except now I had to use nuts on the inside of the light housing. After getting everything mocked up, I realized that the nuts would contact the electronic board that the leds were mounted on, so I had to clearance things so I wouldn't have a short. Easy enough, I made up a quickie jig to hold the light housing in the drill press and chucked up an end mill in the drill to cut down the mounting spots inside the housing. The first one worked great, I eased the end mill into the housing and it easily cut the mounting spot down cleanly, then I shut the drill press off and repositioned the light housing so that I could do the same on the other end. I was just about finished when I noticed that I was off just a bit and it was leaving a bit of an edge on one side, what I should have done was finish the cut and then take my dremel and use a burr bit to clean the little bit out, but that wasn't what I did. I released the lock on the press table and nudged it a bit to the one side, BIG MISTAKE, the end mill caught the edge of the housing and yanked it to the left, chewing half the side out of the housing before I could slap the off switch. And there we have it, a sixty dollar tail light ruined. I was so pissed off at myself that I just cleaned up my tools and work area, showed the ruined housing to the boss, then told him I was done for the day and went home. The weather outside reflected my mood on the ride home, a cold dreary dampness, defently not an enjoyable end to the day. I just rode home dodging the cell phone chattering nitwits in their cars, parked the bike and went inside and made myself a pot of coffee and turned on the boob tube and vegged out. Hopefully tommorow will be a better day, I've got an appointment with the accountant to go over last years taxes. Yippie.

Ten Minute Job

Gotta luv those ten minute jobs, had one today that lasted five hours. LOL Wiring up a trailer plug on a bagger, sounds easy doesn't it, especally since I had already worked on the bike and had pre-wired a pigtail down to where the plug was going to be. The only reason I didn't finish it when I was working on it the first time was that I didn't know how the customers trailer was wired. Normally on cars and trucks there is a set pattern as to how a light plug is wired, but knowing bikers the way I do, I didn't take it for granted that they had followed any set pattern. Since I wasn't sure about the wiring and the customer couldn't tell me either, I asked him to bring the trailer to the shop so that I could verify the wiring pattern. He dropped the trailer off late tuesday, so it was on my board to do today. It took me about five minutes to decipher the pattern. The pattern was fairly normal, the only goofy-ness was the wire colors on the trailer itself, they didn't run along standard color patterns, but it didn't really matter as long as the plug was ok. The fun came with the bike, I decided to test things before doing the final hard wiring, so I hooked the wires together and put a bit of black tape around each one to keep things from shorting. Then I grabbed my test light to check things out, running lights were fine, brake lights were fine, turn signals - a dead short, or at least that was my first guess. It defently acted just like a dead short, I could pull the main plug going to the rear of the bike and the turn signals would work ok, so I started with the easy stuff, I pulled all the light bulbs from the rear and started trying to isolate where the short was, couldn't find it, then I pulled the bags off and dropped the shocks so that I could get to the underside of the fender, no problems there. By now I've killed about two hours tracing wires, finally yelled at the boss to come over and put his two cents in, he fiddled for about twenty minutes before giving up and telling me that it's got to be in the wiring job I did putting in the pigtail and he wants me to cut it all out and then start over. After lunch we messed with it some more and finally decided it wasn't the wiring job it had to be the turn signal module. On older baggers this module is in the fairing - somewhere. Usually it's just behind the headlight, so all you should have to do is pull the headlight assembly out, needless to say it wasn't where it was supposed to be. Like I said, it's an older bike and has been worked on before. I ended up having to pull the front part of the fairing off, about twenty misc. bolts later I had it off and was digging through the wiring nightmare looking for the module, finally found it zip-tied to the back side of the fork leg, and of course it was the older style unit, spent about twenty minutes digging through the cabinets before I found another one, I've got a whole box of the new style on the shelf, we've pulled a lot of them rebuilding bikes. That turned out to be the problem, the module was failing, it had enough strength to work the bike's turn-signals, but it couldn't hack the additional ones on the trailer. Got to spent the rest of the afternoon rewiring all the wiring I cut out, then putting the bike back together. But it's all done now and ready for the road. You know this is the second time that turn signals have really messed with me, the first time was on my '76 750ss, I spend two weeks tracing a dead short in it, the sucker would blow the main fuse as soon as I turned on the key, that ended up being the turn signal flasher, turns out that the expensive honda flasher needs to be grounded, but the cheap replacement one doesn't, as soon as I pulled the ground wire off, everything was fine. Oh well, another lesson learned.

Hmmm, it's Friday night

It's friday night, raining like cats & dogs with winds like you wouldn't believe. The rain hadn't started when I got off from work, so I was able to ride the bike home instead of calling Sweety for a ride. But the wind was terrible, it keep pushing me around durning the ride home. Plus I think I've fouled a plug in Old Blu', she just wasn't sounding right or running right on the ride home. Tommorow's going to be a busy day, after work I have some business to attend to then get back home and get to work cleaning/straightening in the garage again. My goal is to have it straightened out by next weekend. I made a pretty good dent in it a couple a weekends ago, but haven't been able to get back to it until this weekend, but I made the announcement tonight that I'm going to work in the garage this weekend. Some times I have to do this just so that I don't get other Sweety-do's. LOL Oh well, not much else to say tonight. Have a good weekend all and keep it fun.

TV commercial

Why can't we have TV commercials like this?
http://www.zipperfish.net/video/may2005/bouncing.php

http://www.zipperfish.net/mediabase/popup.php?Active=Zvideo&&ID=696

http://www.zipperfish.net/video/july2005/likebrunette.php

Sloooow Day at the shop

Not a whole lot happened today, I started mocking up a new rear fender on a '03 Deuce, I got it bolted on but that was about it, we wanted to get that much done so that we could have the customer check it out since he wasn't sure about the fender, he was happy though when he stopped in to check it out. Now I just have to wait on the rest of the parts to come in so that I can finish the full mock up.

My other big project today was putting new risers and a new starter in a Dyna WG that we put a 240 wide tire kit on a couple of years ago. The risers turned out to be a no-go, after I got them install it looked like there wasn't going to be enough clearance between the bars and the tank, turned out there wasn't, so I reinstalled the original risers back on it. The starter was pretty much the usual HD bs of installing a starter, the only technical problem I ran across was the starter shaft bolt, the 240 kit that we had previously installed included an offset kit for the primary drive that spaced it out from the motor and trans approx an inch and a quarter. After digging a bit through the parts bins, I realized that I didn't have one long enough, I ended up making one out of 3/16" dia rod by threading the ends and then welding a nut to one end. The new starter shaft bolt ended up being about 8 inches long, I'm just glad that it doesn't have to support a great deal.

Well, that's about it for today, catch ya' all later.

Sunday Evening

Well, it turned out to be a somewhat busy day, built some short fences around Sweety's rose bushes in the backyard to keep the dogs from peeing on them, and replaced the gate that goes into the backyard. Sweety did make up for the lack of our normal sunday morning routine, she fired up the grill and cooked me a couple of beautifully delicious steaks just the way I like, and then suggested that we ride the bike over to visit with a friend of hers. The bike ride doesnt' sound like much unless you know Sweety, she loves to ride but she's a warm weather type, she doesn't usually even suggest going out on the bike if it's even a bit nippy. It was a short ride, her friend just lives about 5 minutes from here, on the way back we swung by the nephew's house since I saw his garage door up, we waved as we went by since she wanted to go home. I ended up dropping her and the V-Star at the house and riding Old Blu' back over to his house to visit for a bit. The V-Star is more comfortable when riding two-up, but I prefer to ride Old Blu' when I riding alone, it's a '75 Honda CB750 Four that's about 90% original and what's custom on it was done back in the 70's. Well, not much else happened today. Just going to relax a bit, play with F.R.E.D. then hit the sack.

Sunday Morning

Ok, sunday morning is supposed to work this way -
- Wake up smelling a fresh pot of coffee
- After a bit, the smells of breakfast wafting up the stairs
- After stuffing myself, retiring to the computer room to read e-mail, etc.
- Farting around enjoying the rest of the day

This morning -
- I had to nuke my coffee
- A bowl of cold cereal
- My wife asking for a big hammer, so she can rip apart the deck
- So much for farting around and enjoying a nice day.

Oh Well, it was good while it lasted. LOL

Gotta love changes

Well, another fun day at the shop. When I got there this morning all set to finish up the lenses on the Victory, I noticed someone had been doing some doodling on the bike, when I asked the boss about it, turns out him and the painter had decided to do the lenses differently. Yep, two days of cutting, grinding and fitting down the drain. Oh well, life goes on. LOL I just wish that they had thought of it before I did the other lenses, it only took me about ten minutes to make the new lenses, they're still discussing (arguing) about who's going to recut the sheetmetal. I'll let them figure it out, not that it really matters, I'll end up doing the work anyway.

Not much else happened today, I did a summer check up on one bike and got back to work on a bagger that I started on last week.

Maybe tommorow will be more interesting.

Four days in one. LOL

I've been kinda tired the last couple a days when I've gotten home, so I haven't really haven't felt like getting online, but here goes, so get comfy. Started working on a Victory on monday, actually started on it about two months ago, but the guy wanted to go to Daytona, so I put his original sheetmetal back on the bike so he could make the run. I got back to it finally, it's just a sheetmetal job on it, replace the front and rear fenders, reworked the sissy bar mounting, and installing flush mounted leds in the fender and bags. The front fender I did two months ago when I first started working on it, He wants an Indian Chief fender on it, defently wasn't a quickie job either. It took four days to mount that fender, now while that may sound crazy, you have to realize one thing - an Indian Chief fender is designed for a 18 inch rim with a standard profile tire, a Victory runs a 17 inch rim with a low profile tire, this makes for about a 4 inch difference in radius. So it was more of a job than normal. First I had to carefully cut out the fender skirts, so that they could be reworked later, then I cut about twenty slices down each side of the fender so that I could collapse the overall radius down to an acceptiable level. Once each of the slices was tacked, I started on the skirts. After examing the right side skirt, I decided to just pitch it and recut a new one because of the cutout it had for the Indian style brakes. Next up was more fitting and tacking until they fit correctly, then finally doing cutouts for the Victory brakes. It took one whole day just to do all the finish welding and grinding but it defentaly made the front end look a lot better. While he had the bike in Daytona, we had Eric make up a frenched license plate box and mount that in his new rear fender. Jump to this last monday and now I get to work on the rear end. I got started on monday reassembling the bike back together with the pieces we had mocked up so far and I layed out the new lighting. The design for the led's is based on a "V" shaped chevron, he had originally picked out a set from Hi Tech, but after looking at the specs on them, decided that they were too small for the look he wanted, so I layed out a larger chevron pattern on paper and transfered it to the lens material, fender and both bags. a few hours of work with various power tools and files and I had four lenses made and four big holes cut in bodywork. That pretty much sums up monday and tuesday. Wednesday, being my day off, and a beautiful day to boot, I spent the morning working on my truck (oil change and monthly cleaning) and Mom's truck (distributor problems). The afternoon was spent cleaning the garage, still have about three or four more days work there, picture having a 30 x 40 ft garage 90% full and having somewhat trained chimps shoving all that into a two and half car garage, need I go further? Anyway, back at it today at the shop. The day started out with a break, and not a good one, to mold the lens into shape you have to heat them, I use an old electric roasting pan, the same type as your see at the church socials usually full of beans or sliced beef. Well, I pulled the first lens out a bit too soon and when I pressed it into the cutout, it decided to snap in half, after cussing about it for a minute, I tossed it aside and put the next one in the oven, didn't have any problems with the other three lenses, spent a few minutes cutting out a new lens and gluing it up, it'll be ready in the morning to fit. I finished up the day working on the sissy bar, he didn't like the way the stock attached, it bolts in between the saddle bags and the fender. He wanted to be able to remove it easier, since his wife doesn't always ride with him, so I took an underseat HD version and sliced it up and reworked it to fit. He stopped by this afternoon to check out where things stood, and was pretty happy with progress so far, he's going to bring his wife by either tommorow or saturday to see how she likes the new sissy bar before I finish it up completely and send it out for powder-coating. That about sums up today, I'll finish up fitting the last lens tommorow and roll it off my rack until him and the wife show up. Hopefully they show tommorow, so I can finish the sissy bar on saturday. I get to spend the rest of tommorow doing odd jobs, got a couple a bikes that need new tires and checkups for the season. Well, that's enough for tonight, LOL, time for a head run.

It's Sunday

Ya now what really sucks, 6:30 am, that's what time I woke up this morning, and I didn't even go to bed early either. It ended up being a pretty full day, Sweets and I did a little shopping at Lowes, we bought a small stack of lumber and a truck load of dirt. Needless to say, I spent the day beginning the spring gardening. I built raised flower beds around two of the trees in the front yard, 3 ft by 4 ft by 1.5 ft tall. Then I took down the last of the Christmas lights, ya I know, it's freaking March, but it was the first day that I've worked outside that the ground was solid enough to put a ladder up. I spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing from the work, then spent about two hours working on killing the virus on her computer. It was one of those adware viruses, ended up having to research it on the net to find out how to kill it, since Norton Internet Security 2006 couldn't get the job done. The virus is from a company that sell spyware removal software, namely Spy Falcon. Now isn't that a kicker, an anti-spyware company infecting a computer with a virus. Thing of it is, most of the leading software packages can't kill it, they can identify it, but not kill it. You have to do it the old fashoned way, manually. Looks like it time for all you high-techie people to bone up on the old MS-DOS commands from my day. ROFLMAO!!!

March Equinox

Tommorow is the beginning of the March Equinox

Approximately March 20-21)

This day begins fall in the Southern Hemisphere and spring in the Northern Hemisphere. There are twelve hours of daylight and twelve hours of darkness at all points on the earth’s surface on the two equinoxes. Sunrise is at 6 a.m. and sunset is at 6 p.m. local (solar) time for most points on the earth’s surface.

North Pole: The sun is on the horizon at the North Pole on the March Equinox. The sun rises at the North Pole at noon to the horizon on the March Equinox and the North Pole remains light until the September Equinox.

Arctic Circle: Experiences 12 hours of daylight and 12 hours of darkness. The sun is 66.5 off zenith and low in the sky at 23.5 degrees above the horizon.

Tropic of Cancer: Experiences 12 hours of daylight and 12 hours of darkness. The sun is 23.5 degrees off of the zenith.

Equator: The sun is directly overhead the equator at noon on the equinox. On both equinoxes, the sun is directly over the equator at noon.

Tropic of Capricorn: Experiences 12 hours of daylight and 12 hours of darkness. The sun is 23.5 degrees off of the zenith.

Antarctic Circle: Experiences 12 hours of daylight and 12 hours of darkness.

South Pole: The sun sets at the South Pole at noon after the Pole having been light for the past six months (since the September Equinox). The day begins on the horizon in the morning and by the end of the day, the sun has set.

Was a quiet day at the shop

Not much to tell other than that, I've been working on a softail that a guy got a good deal on, he bought it with the thought of doing a little work to it and then selling it for a profit, quite honestly, if he makes any profit on it, it won't be much. He did get it for a song, and in my opinion he got a good project bike for the price, but I don't think he'll make the kind of profit he thinks he will, I say that he'll probally break even, including my bill, or maybe five or six hundred more, but that's about it. His dad brought the bike into us and is the one keeping tabs on it for him, he stopped in today and we chatted about it while I was putting the primary back together (it had a couple of bad seals) I basicly gave him the lowdown on the bike's condition, and my opinion about what his son should do with the bike. That and showing/helping Eric put the seat and brake part together for Tony's bike that I made on tues. not much else happened. Oh well, asta for tonight.

Giving 100%

What Makes Life 100%?
Ever wonder about those people who say they are giving more than 100%?
We have all been to those meetings where someone wants over 100%.
How about achieving 103%? Here's a little math that might prove helpful.
What makes life 100%?
If
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z is represented
as:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26.
Then,

H A R D W O R K
8 1 18 4 23 15 18 11 = 98%

K N O W L E D G E
11 14 15 23 12 5 4 7 5 = 96%

But,

A T T I T U D E
1 20 20 9 20 21 4 5 = 100%

And,

B U L L S H I T
2 21 12 12 19 8 9 20 = 103%

So, it stands to reason that hardwork and knowledge will get you close, attitude will get you there, but bullshit will put you over the top.
And look how far .........

A S S K I S S I N G
1 19 19 11 9 19 19 9 14 7 = 118%

will take you.

Blankness

It's wed. my day off, it's been a forgettable day, we all have them now and again. Nothing interesting happened, didn't do anything exciting, unless you can somehow count hooking up a washer and drier exciting. The most enjoyment I had today was tickling Sweety in the kitchen this afternoon and threating to drop a piece of ice down her shirt. I've been parusing through the blogs and community boards for about the last half hour and yawning, boy has it been a fun day.

Another day, another fight

Day 2 of the virus fight, I've been reading up on the nasty little bugger. Hopefully I can kill the bastard tonight, we'll see.


In other news....

Saturday was a freaking busy day, it was nice out, good riding weather. That meant that everybody stopped by, of course I was busy as all get out, I had a seat pan to make. Luckly I had prepped the bike on friday night so I was able to start laying glass as soon as I hit the door saturday, I didn't even stop when all the guys started walking in, I just waved and kept on laying glass. Between Laz working his magic with bondo on one side of the shop and me over in the other corner working with fiberglass, we had the whole shop stinking to high heaven. LOL About two hours later, I finally finished and took a break. After taking a few minutes to air out and get my nose cleaned out (yes, I do wear a respriator mask) I went back in and started rearranging the showroom, the shovelhead FL that we had out front had sold, so I had to get it out, that was fun wiggling a bike with 38" beach bars out through two doors 36" wide. Of course the battery was dead since it had sat there for about six months, had to push the heavy ass mother around to the back door of the shop. At least I got to ride the other bike that replaced it in the showroom around to the front. The guy that bought the shovelhead wanted a few changes made, nothing major, he wanted a old school tractor seat with springs, and also needed the brake pedal relocated. I started making up some mounts for it saturday, I finished mocking them up today, the old style seat looks good on this bike, the bike has that old style look. The new owner came by this afternoon so I was able to have him try it out, he was happy, so I get to finish it up tommorow along with reworking the brake pedal. Other than that not much else going on, you can tell from my previous post how I spent my sunday and how I'm spending tonight.

NVCTRL.EXE The virus that's impossible to kill

NVCTRL.EXE That's the name of the virus on Sweety's computer. It's more a pain in the ass than anything, and most likely you have it and don't even realize that you do. Ever click on a webpage link on your desktop and all of a sudden it redirects you to a different site, usually one either selling anti-spyware/virus software or porn. Good chance that you've got it then. You don't even need a fancy virus scanner program to see if you have it either, just click on the your start button, then click on run. When the dialog box comes up, type "regedit" and press enter. A new window will pop up. Then click on "edit" at the top, then click on "find", type "nvctrl.exe" in the box and press enter. If you have it it will pop up highlited right there on your screen. Of course that's the easy part, getting rid of it is a bit more diffucult, there are whole webpages just about this one virus, google it sometime. Ah well, time to get ready for work, more on this later.

It's Thursday and back to work

Well, not a whole lot went on today. It rained some this morning and is still raining as I type, yadda-yadda-yadda, on to the good stuff - Gearhead Porn LOL

Well, finished putting Nature Boy's kicker together today, all the pieces I made up on Tuesday were nice and dry from the rattle can paint job I gave them. Got them all bolted in place first thing this morning then started finishing up the rest, I decided that since it was an old 4-spd kicker it just had to be bolted up the old fashioned way, fat stainless steel acorn nuts! Bossman had bought a bunch of stainless button head cap screws originally, he gets a woody over the damn things, everything he puts together gets 'em. I can't stand them anymore, LOL. But button heads just didn't look right to me, come on, it's an old fashoned 4-spd kicker, it screams "Acorn nuts!". I made short work of a piece of 5/16th threaded rod with my handy cutoff wheel and made up studs for the case, along with my handy-dandy home-made stud install tool, I had it all set to go in a matter of minutes. Of course it took a bit longer to get the damn thing on, holes never line up perfectly when your dealing with different manfacturer's parts, hell, sometimes even with the same manufacturer they don't line up just right. Next tool out of the toolbox, the offical Harley Davidson fine adjustment tool, (for those of you not familar with it, it's a 3 lb dead blow hammer). After a couple of minutes "discussion", it decided to go into place and I was able to tighten ever thing down and fill the tranny back up with fluid. Then came the easy stuff, putting the fuel tank back on and cleaning up a few bits and pieces here and there. After finishing up there, I moved onto the next project in line, mocking up the new rear fender and struts on a Fat Boy that's getting a 200 rear tire. I was in the groove buy then and it only took me about 20 minutes to get the fender and struts fitted and mounted in place. Then spent about 30 minutes cutting and fitting a set of filler pieces for the side skirts since they just weren't the right shape.

Well, that's about all for tonight, tommorrow will be welding the struts and filler pieces to the fender and making sure nothing warped to badly, then it's on to the stinky job, making a new seat pan for it.

I just love the smell of fiberglass in the morning.

Gotta have a kicker !

Things have been going pretty good this week sofar, i finished most of the work on the dyna I'm currently working on, I mounted a 4-spd kicker via a adapto plate to a 5-spd dyna trans. That was the easy part, the fun began with engineering a clutch cable setup for it, I started with a stock clutch arm and atttempted to make it work by cutting a bit off the end to clear the start button mounted on the starter and then took the torch to it to bend it, so that it would clear the top of the 5-spd. After looking at that a bit, the general concensous was that it looked like doggy do-do. LOL So, I ended up cutting the end off where it bolts to the clutch rod, throwing the rest away and making a new one out of 1/2" steel rod, now it looks good. Next up came figuring out the cable mounting, that actually worked out pretty nice with a simple clean bracket made from some angle stock that was in the bits & pieces pile. It all turned out pretty cool looking, even with the clutch cable running along the right side of the engine instead of the left. "The Nature Boy" as we call him, wants to do a jockey shift next winter, so all I have to do now is to convince him to do a X-Treme suidice clutch setup since the clutch cable is neatly running down the right side now, other wise I'll be figuring out how to get it looped over to the left side for a regular jockey setup. That was the hard stuff, the easy work was swapping out a new set of rims and tires and powder-coating his handlebars. Well, it's off to update the shop's website now.

Another day, another reason to say f@#k it

Ya now it's been one of those weekends. It all started Saturday morning, Jazz our rotty had a thing on one of her paws and Sweety decided to take her to the vet to have it checked out, she's not a pup anymore so I didn't mind. She got back from the vet just as I was leaving for work and as she pulled in, I could see the coolant steaming from under the hood, I just shook my head and told her I'd check it out when I got home and to ask Dad to give her a ride to work. As I walked into work there's the little green sporty that I spent two days making a custom set of pipes for back on the rack, apparently the boss decided that he didn't like the set of pipes that I had made and he was making a new set. I thought "Screw it!" In my opinion his weren't as good looking as mine. His were all bent and twisty and didn't look that nice, while mine were clean, simple and followed the lines and style of the bike. Some of the guys were there and I ended up working on another bike that day. When I got home and checked the truck out, it turned out that the water pump had gone to hell. Luckly the local parts store I deal with had one on the shelf. Fifty buck plus a ten dollar core charge later, I was the proud owner of a reman Dodge water pump. I decided to wait until today to put it on since I had to clean out a spot in the basement for the new washer and dryer that I picked up this morning, managed to get five more boxes of garbage packed up and ready for the dumpster. Well, not much else happened this weekend, ended up changing the water pump in my nephew's garage since it snowed today, got about 4-5 inches, and to thing it was a beautiful day yesterday, about 45 deg and nice and sunny. I knew I should have took the bike out for a ride, LOL.

And then they complain

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Just what I need

I think we could all use some of these, somethimes. LOL

Something I found

I can't remember where I found this, but I like it so much, I've decided to put it here.



I'm putting it permantly at the bottom, so it's always here. LOL

The middle of the week

Well, it's the middle of the week, for most people that doesn't mean a whole lot, but for me it's my day off. When you work for a bike shop, you usually don't work 9 to 5 monday to friday, most bike shops are open tuesday to saturday, our's is open mon, tues, thurs, fri, and sat. So this means I get wed. off. It does mess with life a bit, since I don't have off two consective days in a row, but it's how we're set up so I live with it.

Anyhow, it was a balmy 45 deg outside today with only a mild breeze, so I did what any crazy motorcycle rider does, I got a bike out and rode it around today doing my errands. Yep, everybody thought I was nuts, got a few stares from people in cars most likely wondering what kind of nutcase would ride in this weather. LOL I don't care, it was a nice day and in my leathers I was warm as could be.

Oh well, not much else happened today, just another normal wed.

Another day in the life of a motorcycle builder

It was one of those fun days at the shop, I got to the shop a little before opening (my normal time). I already knew what my project list was for the day - make the spacers for Tony's handlebars. Little background on Tony's bike, I reworked his factory fat-bob set, adding a filler panel down the center and fitting a custom mini speedo, relocated the key switch and coils to a custom made mount on the left side of the engine where the horn is normally, made a curved backpack carrier for the rear fender, and a few other odds and ends. Well, in relocating the key switch, I changed it to a universal type setup, it basicly works like the one in your car now. Since his bike didn't have turn-signals to begin with, this left only the hi/lo beam switch on the bars. So, we decided to relocate it and toss the control housings all together, this ment making a set of billet alum. spacers to fill the gaps left to make it all look good. Normally on a bike with 1" diameter bars I make a spacer that tapers straight from the hand control left to the bar. On this bike it has a set of fat Carlini T-Bars, so this means they have a taper on the ends where the bar drops down to 1" in diameter, Tony happened to show up at the shop just as I finished cutting and boring the slugs for the filler pieces and I described how I usually make the spacers, after looking at the bars for a bit, we decided that instead of the usual straight taper, I'd cut the slugs to match the diameter of the brake and clutch housing and do a slight round-off taper on the ends. So far, I've got about two hours in cutting and boring the basic slug, add another two hours to cut the clutch side slug down to size on the lathe and taper the end, throw in a half hour for lunch and you can see how my day has gone so far. After getting that one ruffed out, the boss and me stood back and took a look at how things looked, we both said it looked like crap. A little over four hours work down the drain, I ended up making the filler pieces out of 1-1/8" OD tubing that took me about ten minutes to make and look a hell of a lot better. Oh well, that's life in a custom bike shop. Well, at least one good thing came out of it all, I've got two slugs already bored for the next job and I'm now two days ahead of schedule since I don't have to make alum. spacers. Gotta luv it, ROFLMAO !

The Day the World Changed (at least for me)

Feb. 18, 2006

This day will live in my mind forever.

This is the day I got married.

People talk about the nervious jitters, butterflys in the stomach and various other things. I myself was stone cold solid about it all, not a jitter or anything, until about 30 seconds before the actual ceremony started. LOL, I get to laugh now, because I've done it, I've experenced the moment. It's not something that you can really talk about or share with someone unless you've done it yourself. I've been a groomsman in my cousin's wedding and I've helped plan, arrange and work the weddings of my two neices and a nephew, along with a few friends, but until it's you standing there in the spotlight, the feeling can't be realized. Two things got me through it, my military training about standing watch kicked in, in other words I did a very slight roll of my shoulders and I unlocked and relaxed my knees, the other and I feel most important thing was looking into Sweety's eyes, seeing the love and commentment there.

Well, it's the day after, most of the out of state friends left early this morning, trying to get back home before the weather get really bad, the last two will be flying out this afternoon. We're all just sitting around the house just unwinding, it felt like a drain plug had been pulled out of me this morning, it was just a top down feeling that came over me as I was sitting there drinking my morning coffee. I knew at that moment, despite the bills and other bs that was waiting for me come monday morning, that all was now right in the world.

One day to go

It's friday morning, tommorow is the big day. I'm getting married.

Not much else to say at the moment, it's too fricken early to think. LOL

In the Beginning

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