Escape From the Prison Planet

[DRIVEN]

I hear you on the gravel road thing. It was all asphalt for me yesterday except for a couple viewpoint turnouts. This porker isn't made for gravel and I'm not gonna try to force it. I've got other bikes for that type of riding.

I can't imagine being on a bike year-round. That's pretty hard core.

[wayno]

I rode motorcycles mostly year round from 1974 thru 1986, my life changed in 1987 as I became homeless(my choice) so I had more money to pursue hanggliding as I camped out in the LZ(landing zone) 3 days a week anyway, I sold all the motorcycles and flew hanggliders year round for the next 3 years living in my car, then in December of 1989 I rented a room in a house and the rest is history, I now own that house, I quit hanggliding around 2002/2003, I still have my hanggliders as one is older and no one wants it, and the ridged wing is so modified I would have been afraid that someone might kill themselves trying to fly and land it, and now it is old also.
I flew haggliders from 1979 thru 2002, not as steady the first 5/6 years, but after 1985 I lived to fly hanggliders for the next 15 years, I have thousands of hours of airtime, I normally would log 10 hours of airtime or more each weekend, one time I flew 7 hours and 7 minutes in one flight, my longest time spent in the air is over 8 hours making a 100 mile out and return.
My first bike was a brand new KH400 that was totaled when I was hit from behind one night(it had very few miles on it, less than a month off the showroom floor), it was replaced within a week with another one and I had that one for several years.

[DRIVEN]

I had to look up a KH400. A two-stroke of that size must have been a lot of fun.

[wayno]

It is the only vehicle I ever bought new in my life, I did build what I call a "Hardly" from the ground up with a Santee Industries frame, I called it that because it was a Honda 750 engine, front wheel, and rear brake hub with a 16 inch rim laced onto it, everything else was Harley or aftermarket.
It was basically a chopper, it was not a Harley nor was it a Honda, so it was my Hardly, it was titled/licensed as a home built.
The Kawasaki KH400 was sort of fast off the line, but it ran out of real power around 60mph, it would go faster but it would not do a 100mph, it was terrible on dirt, way too heavy.
I had a lot of close to dying close calls on bikes, some from me driving it like I stole it, but the serious close calls I was doing under 40mph on all of them, and the other driver was or would have been at fault, I believe I told some stories about a couple of the close calls on this site.
I rode for a long time and then I just quit riding for no particular reason, I just moved on like when I quit hanggliding, I have not been on/rode a motorcycle in over 20 years, I was indestructible for a long time.

[DRIVEN]

I hear that. Interests change and we move on to something else.

[DRIVEN]

Woohoo! I wasted another weekend and got almost nothing done! One of my wife's friends flew into town Friday so I was tour guiding Friday and Saturday. My project list really suffered.
Last time I rode the Indian it ran fine until the last stop sign. When I pulled away it fell flat on it's face and didn't really want to run much past 1/3 throttle. So this morning I rode over to my dad's shop and pulled the carb off and cleaned it. Found plenty of trash in the bottom of the bowl but big fat nugget plugging the main jet was the culprit. Honestly, I thought it ran pretty good but apparently it really needed the carb cleaned. Runs better than ever now at idle, cruise and WOT. Glad I broke it down.
Didn't even think to snap a pic of the filthy carb opened up, best you get is a bike down by the river.



When I was done I took the Vibe over and yanked the headlights for a quick polish job. 800, 1500, 3000, compound, polish. Should be a bit brighter at night without all the diffusion. If nothing else, it looks way better.



Then when I got home I did some tractor work. No pics because...who cares?

[wayno]

Was it a gold nugget. lol

[Laecaon]

Get some paint protection film, and cover the lights for UV protection. Or a 2k Clear should do the trick.

[Taterhead]

I used to do the headlight thing for extra $$ until everybody and their brother started doing it. Made a pretty good chunk of change overall.

[DRIVEN]

Drove to a job in the dark this morning. Huge improvement.

[510freak]

The lights came out good.

The Indian is so cool

[flatcat19]

Drove to a job in the dark this morning. Huge improvement.

LED headlight bulbs will greatly improve those backwood night drives.

[DRIVEN]

They sure did when I put them in my TWs.

[DRIVEN]

Well, work schedule is pretty spastic right now so home projects get in where they fit in (yeah, Too Short reference). Today I hit a gun show in the morning. Then went over and snagged a load of stuff from my dad's shop. Gun stuff.

Fall set in quick here. It's getting cold at night and they'll be shutting down the irrigation water soon. Most of the feed corn has been harvested and cows are taking care of the stubble.
Odd coincidence that the Russian Thistle turns the same color of deep red (purple) that is on my house. Russian Thistle is just the civilized name for tumbleweed.


I did some catch up clean up down where the old house was. I lost another couple Willow trees. I diced up the half that came down and used the BroHauler as a skidder to get the big branches to the burn pile.


There was a big branch from another huge Willow that I took care of too.

Did some site prep work for the RV pad where the old house used to be.



Pretty good produce showing down there this year. My Asian pears were just barely bigger than golf balls but tasted perfect! And there was a ton of them.

My two Serviceberry trees are loaded.



Even managed to get in a little ride on the indian before it got dark. More to come tomorrow.

[DRIVEN]

Spent part of the morning doing tractor work. Most of that was fixing the auger so that I could punch a new hole in the ground for my mailbox. Then we shuttled it over to my dad's shop so it can spend the winter inside a warm, dry shop.
The only reason there is now space for the tractor is because we hauled the '35 over to my house and tucked it in the garage.





Pretty surprised at how much I've been able to stuff in there. Currently has 5 cars, 4 motorcycles, 1 BroHauler, and a bunch of boxes of things waiting to be unpacked and moved in.

[DRIVEN]

A little blast from the past...
My brother sent me this pic of the lowrider he built about 25 years ago. I'm responsible for the Gene Winfield inspired fade paint. I remember the green was one of those short cans of Testor's model paint.

[Taterhead]

That son of a bitch is cool as hell. I remember wanting one real bad when I was a kid.

[510freak]

Drive past a guy's place today, he had a crap ton of old school banana seat bikes,said to the wife, I need one of them someday.

[wayno]

That is what I had when I was a kid until I upgraded to a 10 speed, mine was a 3 speed on the grip, before that I had single speeds where you pushed backwards on the pedals to stop the bike.

[DRIVEN]

Hectic couple days off between gigs. Finally got the title mess straightened out on TW #2 so I hauled it down to Murphy for the VIN inspection and transfer.


On my way down there I stopped off and snapped a couple pics of the fog/steam on the Snake. There wasn't a single car in the lot at the boat ramp.




Went over to my dad's shop and moved some more things around. He was cleaning up his El Camino a little. Says he's got new wheels and tires on the way. Not sure what I think about that. The old Appliances and white walls are all my grandpa ever ran on it so seeing anything else will be really odd to me.



And when I was all done working I managed to get out and function test my A1 build and the other 2 recent acquisition.

Sold my bird gun last week so it was easy to justify the accounting for the Bersa and the Savage.



And now I'm working in Texas for 10 days.