Rose City MC

Members of the Rose City MC were, no doubt, optimistic at the start of the days hillclimbing event. The bike was in tune, the weather was good, they even had a few extra minutes to dedicate to decorating the safety gear.

I am guessing pride was not the only thing hurt that day...

Splaturday

Two unrelated stories are behind this posts lead:

The kid decapitated by the BatMan ride in Marrietta, GA.

The super-model jumping to here death in Manhattan, NY.



Though, I suppose there are lots of splats in this weeks news.

Democracy definitely went splat, under Mr. Mugabe.

The "white stuff" went splat into the little test ovens on the Martian lander.

The economy continues a long term splat, based on reactionary trading based on speculative newspaper articles. I continue to be amazed at the seeming lack of actual forethought or intelligence within NYSE. The article that the Wall Street Journal printed on GM sent traders scurrying like roaches trying to avoid the big boot splat. Yet if you actually read the article you notice that is largely speculative. I thought we all already new that GM was floundering like a row boat with a bowling ball sized hole in the bottom? What changed, following the articles publication?

I could go on with that for a while.
Eh.


I hear that Old Navy is selling flip-flops for a dollar a pair right now. That should be good for the economy. Combine dollar flip-flops with some combo-plate special at Applebee's and well timed stimulus checks - economic shit will be right back on track in no time.

I also notice that there are people here putting stickers on their cars - the stickers are pictures of flip-flops. You know, like white vinyl graphical outlines of flip-flops.

I suppose the stickers are an attempt to demonstrate that the owner/driver of the vehicle is comfortable, even proud of, his/her casual foot-loose lifestyle. Perhaps an marker to help the owner/driver identify other members of the flip-floppy tribe.

Alternately, the stickers allow flip-flop haters like myself to focus, target, my rage at idiotic lovers of the flip-flop. I have actually contemplated which hammer would be best for smashing out windows with flip-flop stickers. I have imagined the scratches and cuts inflicted on the atrocious, nearly bare flip-flopper feet on broken glass. Just the idea of it makes me smile...


Mmm, that was a bit divergent, wasn't it.


Anyway, back to Splaturday, how about the poisonous tomatoes that continue to have folks going splat in their bathrooms? I am beginning to think the source is Bin Laden, based on the time it is taking to find anything out...

Obey the Moderator

Optimus Rhyme, from Seattle



Never underestimate how seriously people take their pages on MySpace.
It is bizarre to me, but then I don't spend much time on MySpace.
I do not have a professional MySpace page.
I have this goofy blog.
I rarely take myself seriously.
I am a dork.

MoonEyes

Just look at that induction set-up.
Good lookin' blower, fer sure.

70's cont'd

Yeah, this is as good as it gets on the 70's car show vibe. It might get better, but I don't know what I am talking about, so for conversations sake go along with it.

Big stupid wheels and tires, the blower, chrome all over everything, wacky paint with a goofy name painted on the side, shaggy interior, a gimmick to pull it all together in a theme.

Plus there is a chic in a bikini.


All of the car shows magazine things I remember from my childhood had all of these things. I loved them, the magazine things. They lasted all year, until I could get the next car show magazine thing, with more crazy cars and more chics in bikinis.

What more does a boy facing puberty need?
I ask you?

I later learned that one of the chics in the bikinis, one who posed with most all of the really cool cars, was also a bit of a porn star.
That is another story, altogether...

Trikes

Uhm, well, yeah. I do kinda have a thing for trikes.
I also have a soft spot for 70's show car stuff.
So, I do kinda appreciate it's over the over-the-topness.

Building a Car with Cardboard

How about those little devil horn things, heh?
I am back on the windshield thing, making parts out of cardboard.
Most of the fabricated bits on the car start out as little bits of cut up beer cases. I usually make two or three cardboard versions, to see what sorta looks right. Then there are usually two or three real metal versions to get close to what I see in my head.
The windshield bit here has had more than two or three cardboard versions. This here version is by far the most simple, and I think I like that about it. Obviously, there is more to it than those cardbaord bits but the part I see in my head doesn't show up in pictures.

Summer

Dodge in the Garage

Vans used to be cool, before Americans started playing soccer.

Hey Dave

An old pal checked in here the other day, always nice to hear from random voices of the past.

He mentioned having a Honda 750, which got me thinking about the 900SuperSport I had while in Seattle.
I really liked that bike - and I left a dual seat on it.
Sure it was top heavy, had a flexy frame and all that.
It just needed some love.
I found it with the factory rearsets and race header already installed, swapped the bars for some with a lower rise and stuck a GoldWing fork on it for the adjustability and thicker legs. I trimmed all of the non-essential gimcrack off.
Oh, and I eventually hit all the tin with some black paint.

That was a fun bike.
It made me feel like a slow Freddie Spencer.
Getting that thing through corners fast was like wrestling an angry pig. Knees, elbows and ass had to be shook in just the right sequence to get from one corner to the next.

It dropped a valve on a commute home one day and broke my heart.
So, I sold it to a restorer guy...

Pike's Peak

When I was a wee bit of Scott there was a family road trip "out west." There was stop at Mount Rushmore, I think I got some cowboy boots, saw some buffalo and a visit to Pike's Peak.



I don't recall much of the visit to Pike's Peak, honestly.



I am pretty sure it wasn't anything like this though...

Instructions!?!

Dammit, somebody coulda told me.

HST pic, from his HA period

I Woke Up Today

Port O'Brian, out of O-Town

Bait and Switch

So I made it down to the Blackhawk Museum, for the Roth show. It seemed like a bait and switch, a bit. There were drawings and the surf buggy thing was there. There was also the ugly Bandit II car, I don't really count that one as a Roth car.

Anyway, the rest of the stuff at the museum made up for the lack of Fink quantity.

We, KVC and I tooled down there with Bill Selby. If you don't know who Bill is, well you probably would recognize his work but that is another story. Bill had a story to go along with our outting, but that one is extra-top-secret so you are not getting it from me.

KVC said she uploaded some pics to her photo host.
Click on KVC, over there in the links...

Hey buddy...

...yer tire looks a little low on air...

One of those mornings

One of those mornings in a good way.

These days the sun is actually up when I get to work.
So I can actually see that I am here in San Fransisco.

The golf cart sized street sweeper was making a pass down the sidewalk, mitigating the pee smell.

I could see the nifty torpedo trolley rattling up Market.

There was dramatic lighting splashed across the TransAmerica building, or whatever they call the pyramid looking building these days.

Tinkering

This linkage provides endless obsessive tinkering opportunity.
This is the sort of thing that is the very reason I am not done and driving this project.
There are kits out there, in catalogs, which I could just order. They have most all of this sorted out.
That kinda seems like cheating to me, though.
So, here is version 3.5 of the Rube Goldberg progressive carburetor and transmission kick down mousetrap linkage.
Everything seems to move in the right directions and some adjustment is built in
There is no fancy math/geometry work or detailed design drawings going on in this process, though maybe there should be. I just try to make it so it seems right.

Not your average day...

Not your average day, on the ramp here at Buchannon Field.
The Collings Foundation (or something like that) is a group that has these old warbirds.

They f'n fly them.
Aircraft, machines that won the war.
Machines which were the top of technology, in their time.
Machines that taught America the finest arts of combining technology and purpose.

The things that stoke the fires, here in the garage, were learned by farm boys on machines just like these.

No, wait, they were learned on these very machines.
What I saw was the real deal.
It was not some approximation or reinterpretation, what I saw. These machines carried life to the fight, they dealt death, they did their job and are still here to tell the tale.

The B25 is shockingly small, for the weapon that threw the first punch at Japan after Pearl Harbor. You could probably fit the whole thing in a semi trailer, if you took it apart and packed carefully.

And the B17, well, it has that bueatiful brutality that I am so fond of. Bristling with guns to shoo away German bad guys.

Both had am essence of purpose with style, remarkably truck-like. No frills or fancy gee-gaws found here. All business. No AC, no heat beyond what may soak through from engines spinning props bigger than me, not many seat cushions to be found as the 'chute to save your life hung by your ass and you could sit on that.

There was a P51 that was offering rides, too. Hearing those twelve cylinders purr on the tarmac, then roar as they pulled polished aluminum into the sky is awesome.
Not awesome in it's typically applied usage, but awesome in that you cannot help but stare and listen and soak in what you are experiencing awesome.

Keep 'em flying!