Ride To Work Day

 Monday is the official "ride your motorcycle or scooter to work" day. The idea is for a mass of two wheeled vehicles to demonstrate the benefits of riding to include less congestion, easier parking better fuel economy and the like. This despite that fact that my Ultra takes up dang near as much parking as todays cars and gets worse mileage. Maintenance costs are higher too.

 Creating this event is fine and dandy but I admit to usually finding out about ride to work day after I've arrived at work and maybe hear about it on the radio. If the weather was nice, I rode. If the weather was crap, my bikes are probably still in the garage.
 I have to wonder what the point of promoting motorcycle riding might be. Oh sure the manufacturers want to sell more bikes and more riders means more awareness. Personally I'm not so sure we want to push riding onto people that wouldn't otherwise take it up on their own. I see enough stupid shit happening out there with the riders we have. Ya some of it is about riding gear or ATGATT (all the gear all the time). I'm guilty too. Lately my riding style could be best described as SOTGSOTT (some of the gear some of the time). Sadly, I'm of the bull headed nature that I need a good spill to get myself to remember how bad it hurts to hit the pavement. The other stupid shit I'm referring to is rider skill. Young riders with no skills yet, old riders with no skills yet, "new" old riders trying to relive their youth and aging riders loosing their coordination. Somewhere in the middle of all that are experienced riders with decent reaction times. Nobody is born with these skills. They are learned and only more practice and muscle memory makes you better. The problem is the practice happens out in the real world of questionable road conditions, wildlife, and text messaging cagers. I swear some people can be looking right at you and not even know you are there.
 If you're in a cage on Monday please be extra cautious of bikes. That doesn't mean that on Tuesday you can knock us over like bowling pins, it just means there may be all different skill level riders out there promoting "scoot to work day" and some may benefit from your defensive driving. From what I've seen on the road lately, some may not know what that means. Common sense is another term many are not familiar with. Yesterday, as a pedestrian, I was almost run over when some broad was looking right and turning left. Seriously, I was looking directly into her left earhole as her bumper approached my shopping cart. Of course when she finally noticed me I got the stink eye for being in the cross walk while she was battling for a parking space.
 So remember, everyone out there is at a different skill level and when we see stupid shit we need to keep the road rage to a low roar. It's ok to think someone is a dumbass, just don't act on it.

Later.

Popping Hostas

 Its always been my point of view that if you feel like shit you might as well go to work and get paid to feel lousy. The other day I was feeling a little weak but hopped on the sporty and headed to work anyway. The bike must not have been feeling well either because halfway there it began spitting and sputtering, I swung a u turn and headed back home for another machine.
 My supply of road worthy bikes is down to one from three. I blame it on dry weekends. The first crap weather weekend will be dedicated to bike maintenance rather than road tripping. I rolled the big Ultra out of the garage and headed to work.
 Wrench on some chainsaws, run to the bathroom, repeat. Not a very glamorous topic for todays blog but we've all been there. By noon I had enough and went home. I can't remember the last time I didn't work because of illness but I suppose it happens about once maybe twice a year. I also can't remember the last time I've rode home from work in such a hurry!
 I decided the best way to rest was to ease back in my lazyboy, turn on some boring television for background noise and drift away. The television was tuned to one of them oldies channels. I hate calling them oldies because they are all shows from my youth. I was half alert and half asleep while those old shows triggered a lot of memories from my youth. One of the biggest memories revisited during this nap was that of popping hostas.

 I know, what the hell? Dreaming about popping hastas? Nothing about riding bicycles, building forts or bb guns. I must have also had a fever. Maybe I just miss the simple days of being a kid. I do remember it was fun running around finding just the right flower to squeeze before someone else found it. POP! Oh that was a good one. The memory is vivid as I'm writing this shortly after waking from the dream. Innocent kids without a care in the world. No knowledge of evil, bills or responsibility. Gotta love it.
 The next day when I staged the pic you see here, things weren't the same. No happy memories. No searching for the next victim to pop. I did think about how these weeds need to be pulled and the walk should be edged. Definitely not the same. The more I think about it the more I think the dream had something to do with missing my mom.

 In motorcycle related news, it's been a few days since the "sick day" and now back on earth the sporty is running again. A while back the key switch took a shit. In a pinch I replaced it with a cheap toggle switch and that switch just took a crap. I put another $5 switch in there hoping I will get another years use out of it. No big deal if it fails because hot wiring it would only take a minute or two. At some point I'm thinking that bike will morph into something a bit different and the power switch setup will change again. Morph into what? I dunno. The point is that I have enough bikes here to change things up every so often without bringing new iron into the garage. The BSA is proof of that. I haven't touched it since the last time I posted about it here.

Later.

The Sickness

 I've always said that if I owned land in the country I'd have more crap than you could shake a stick at. When I was younger and rented a farm house we had a lot of room for storage. We also had a lot of "projects" scattered around. My wife couldn't use the garage because it was full of "stuff". What was all this stuff, you ask? Maybe it was a motorcycle that has been reduced to the status of just motor or maybe it was a snowmobile that quit mobiling a long time ago.
 This reminds me of a Polaris snowmobile that I had bolted a Honda 360 bike engine into. It was a basement project that never saw the light of day.  We (a bunch of single guys and anyone else that needed a place to crash)  had to move out when the owner sold the property and I had nowhere to go with the project. I remember the day we watched the fire department do a practice burn on that house. Anyway, "animal house" is a whole different story for another time.
 The point is that I always have an in progress project laying around that's not been touched for a while. Those projects aren't the problem. I can look at them and touch them and even gather specific parts to follow them through to completion. Time isn't as big a factor as space. If I have the room then it still could become a reality. The BSA is a good example. That project goes back to the early eighties and I pick away at it a little bit at a time.
 The real problem are the projects that don't exist yet. I gather parts for these builds all the time. As a gear head that works as a mechanic I see a lot of cool little pieces that could be part of some bigger piece that could be bolted on some imaginary project. If I don't save them they will end up in a dumpster to be lost forever.

 This mirror is a perfect example. Coworker Al keeps feeding my sickness. He was replacing this broken mirror from one of our plow trucks. There is a motor in there that powers the mirror and he was going to harvest it. Ya, he's got it bad too. That mechanism turned out to be broken but this LED light still worked.

 What the hell am I gonna do with that? I don't know for sure but I do know three things. First, it's too cool to toss out. Second, I'm a sucker for colorful lights and shiny stuff and third it's sitting right there on my desk at home. If I'm lucky I'll find it a few years from now when I need it. If history repeats itself then I'll toss it out next time I'm power cleaning and regret that act a few weeks later when I actually find a use for it.

 The older I get, the more I've been able to somewhat control this sickness. Who am I kidding? I have little control but I have implemented a system that gives me that instant high of collecting shit and the power of keeping myself in check and not finding myself on an episode of "Hoarders".

 I now keep everything! All that cool shit I don't think I can live without gets saved...for a few days anyway. These two pulleys are a good example. They are part of a factory recall and we potentially could have quite a few of them at the shop. None of us can find a good reason to save more than one of them "just because", but I have set two near my toolbox. This is my new staging area for questionable goodies. If I don't come up with a good reason to keep them by Monday morning then they'll go in the recycle dumpster. It won't be easy but I'll force myself to do it.

 With this weeks Powerball jackpot at a record high I wonder what this sickness would be like with unlimited potential for collecting stuff. Maybe it would consume me or just maybe the problem would completely go away.

Workshop Wednesday-Plugs and Carbs

 Earlier this year I was cleaning off my bench at work and noticed there were a lot of used spark plugs and replaced carbs laying on it. There happened to be an ice cream bucket nearby and I started tossing plugs into it. I saw another bucket and started tossing old carbs into it. There is absolutely no good reason for saving old spark plugs. If you want them come get em. The carbs get some pieces salvaged off of them every so often so that's my excuse for hanging on to them. I should note here that Greg works on four strokes on the other side of the shop and has at least one bucket full of carbs he's always digging in.

 I'm not religious about saving this crap. If I remember then I toss the old ones in the bucket. I don't know why.  Many just end up in the trash can on the other side of the bench and as I look at this pic I realize how stupid it is to be saving these. I think I'll empty the bucket tomorrow.

 Here is the bucket of carbs. What makes a carb bad and not rebuildable? Here is my rule of thumb. If a carb won't prime and it's not the fault of the purge bulb, fuel lines or filter, then it gets tossed in the bucket. These carbs have check valves in them that get plugged or damaged. When I say damaged, many times it's from someone using compressed air to "blow out" the passages. Many times they blow out these check valves ruining them and then you have a carb that won't prime or run right. A carb kit doesn't usually come with new check valves so rebuilding is a waste of time. Besides that when you add the cost of a kit and labor, it is cheaper to just replace. In the pic below is a black Murray(MTD) trimmer. It's getting a new $19.99 carb. You just can't rebuild them for less.
 Today the boss walked up to my bench and asked me if I could do something for him when I got caught up.

 I told him I'd do it for him now because I didn't know when I'd get caught up and I was leaving for vacation the third week of august either way. This mess is just the "in progress" pile. Yep.

No Street Glide For Me

 My last few posts were about my desire to buy a Harley Street Glide. I've been to a few dealerships since then and kicked the tires on a few. What I found was that if I want the daymaker led head lamp and fog lamps, intercom/headset/cb, and heated grips, it would cost a bundle to add them. It was pointed out to me that they all come as standard equipment on this:

 It's the Ultra Limited. I've owned touring bikes this size but holy crap thats a lot of bike. It weighs like twice as much as my sporty. And what am I gonna do about that trunk? Well, they make a kit to take that trunk off when you want the Street Glide look.
 But here's the best part. My wife hasn't rode with me since I hit that deer in 2000. She said someone needed to stay alive and raise the kids. Guess what? The last kid is flying the nest real soon. If you want to keep a passenger happy this is the bike that can do it and she has agreed to give it a chance.

 So now what? I'm not a huge fan of the "lowers". They're kinda ugly but necessary as they hide the radiators for the "twin cooled" engine. Then again the other day I rode to work in a heavy fog and had wet pants from the knees down for most of the morning. I still need to take one for a test ride. Who knows, maybe I'll hate it. Ya right.