be prepared

Labor Day weekend.

Coming soon, a loving tribute to my motorcycle in pictures. Big changes for motorcycle!

Have a good weekend!

one more time I guess

Hurricane Katrina happened 3 years ago.

Banksy in New Orleans

Skeleton Krewe’s Flickr page

Fleetwood Mac’s Blue Letter

From their self titled album Fleetwood Mac:

It was a blue letter she wrote to me
Its silver words she told
Wanna be on the road to paradise
I wanna lover who dont get old

Do I read a message in your eyes
You wanna love to stay another night
Hey hey when your day goes down
I wont be waitin’ around for you

For every voice you’ve ever heard
There’s a thousand without a word
Redbird, dont say you told me so,
Just give me one more song to go

Do I read a message in your eyes
You wanna love to stay another night
Hey hey when your day goes down
I wont be waitin’ around for you.

I ain’t waitin’!
I ain’t waitin’!
… 

Clocking in at just 2:41, Fleetwood Mac’s “Blue Letter” is just one of the 11 perfect songs from Fleetwood Mac’s self-titled masterpiece. The song starts with its catchy hook and immediately Lindsey starts in with the story – a girl who is too young to be with someone so old. Stevie Nicks’ background vocals add the harmony that exists in so many essential albums from the 70’s.

I love this album. It feels like a summer I will never have, with a girl that doesn’t exist, in a time that has passed by 20 years.

Honda twin 2 into 1 pipes

Image Credit Jerry’s Cycles

This is it!

It has been confirmed from a website that if I have holes in one of my mufflers on a scrambler, it will make my idle go screwy. This, along with old carbs is why I have been fighting my idle more and more as my poor scrambler pipes deteriorate.

The solution: CB350 2 into 1 Mac exhausts. This will fit on my bike no problem, and will give me full access to my left-side carb and air filter, so I can replace my carbs and rejet them without having to pull those damn scrambler pipes all the time.

I called the a bunch of places and everywhere is sold out of these pipes. I called Mac exhausts directly, and they got my number and will call me back when they have found the pipes for my bike. After that, it will be a call to Sudco to get the approximate jetting for my Mikuni carbs, then it will be a weekend of fiddling.

I’ll hold onto my scrambler pipes and get them repaired, someday. They are tough to find, especially ones that aren’t eaten away with rust.

Update!

I just got a call back from Mac Performance, and they found my pipes for me. So, in the interest of anyone who happens to get here by Google, here is the information I hunted down:

Replacement Mac Performance 2 into 1 pipes for 70’s Honda Twins (CB and CL) is Part #001-0103. These are visible at the Mac catalog (PDF link). They will run you 240 bucks, but that is a lot cheaper than a good set of NOS scrambler pipes.

Can I borrow 240 dollars?

find a fine citizen

Randomness:

I had a dream last night that I found a stack of records. On the top was Dennis Wilson, followed by Roxy Music and then a bunch of other records that looked familiar. In my dream, I realized that these were MY records. But I don’t own any Dennis Wilson on vinyl.

My Dad kindly let me borrow his copy of Shadow Divers, and I started reading it 2 days ago and haven’t been able to put it down. I’m about 30 pages from finishing it and I can’t wait to do more research and reading on the story. I even stopped reading another book because the premise of Shadow Divers felt like a good adventure – something I enjoy over anything else. Especially if it is true.

Even more exciting news than reading a great book is hearing that it is being adapted into a film by a great director. One of my favorite movies of all time (top 3) is Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World directed by Peter Weir. (As of this posting, this movie is available to watch online for free here). He is attached to the 2009 release of the film adaptation of Shadow Divers.

Being back at work is absolutely intolerable.

king sized electric institute

Stories come later. Isabelle has a pretty good post explaining most of what happened, along with THE MOST AMAZING PHOTO OF ALL TIME!

all of us sing about it

Ber bye! I might update from the road on my Apple Classic iTelephone II SE. But most likely I’ll be relaxing. Because that’s what I do. I relax. Take it easy. Make sure things are awesome. Breathe in. Eat a lot, sleep a lot, brush them like crazy.

goof around

I had the best haircut yesterday experience yesterday. Very fun. Very awesome!

Here’s a tip: only do things that are awesome! If you are in the middle of something (like a movie, or a restaurant, or a speeding ticket) and it isn’t awesome… JUST LEAVE! Life’s too short to suffer through NOT AWESOME.

I bought the Boogie Nights super edition. It is easy to forget that Paul Thomas Anderson has only made a few movies, and they are all good! Punch Drunk Love might be my least favorite, with Boogie Nights sitting firmly (ha!) on top.

Last night I also finished a book called “Chasing Che: A Motorcycle Journey In Search of the Guevara Legend.” This was good as well, although I found myself a lot more interested in the trials and tribulations of riding a motorcycle around South America than I did the history of the revolution. Excuse me, I mean the Revolución! I enjoy non-fiction much more than fiction, and I’m planning on picking up some Hunter S. Thompson for the mini-vacation.

This reminds me, I’m also going on another little vacation in October – To Austin Texas! I’m going to see the Boston Spaceships. It will be… awesome. See? We’ve come full circle.

Oh yeah – and this is my favorite blog ever. It is a giant collection of things that are awesome. Every single post.

Oregon: Get Ready

I’ll be in Oregon on Thursday until Monday. Technically, it is for “the reunion” but I’m most excited to see my family and relax on the porch swing at my parent’s house – clean air and quiet nights.

As the reunion goes, it will be interesting? I don’t know. I’m excited to see some friends I haven’t seen in a while, and I have a morbid curiosity about a few others. But honestly, it is a pretty low “priority” for the trip. In fact, I wouldn’t mind missing it all together.

I drank the seven seas

Then I swam in one of them. I woke up and it was sandy in my bed… I asked if she wanted a cab home. Pun king! I ate peanut butter and jelly on jewish rye bread at 4 am. I proved that life still rules!

I Know There’s An Answer

You know that Beach Boys song “I Know There’s An Answer” from Pet Sounds, right? And that rerelease they did years ago with both the mono and stereo version on the same single CD? And the alternate version of the song called “Hang On To Your Ego” that just changes the chorus?

Yeah – well, that song is my life right now. I got home from work today and did my monthly apartment cleaning, but I stopped after the bathroom because it was 8:30 and I realized “Hey – I worked 8 hours today and I came home and started cleaning the bathroom that I cleaned last month. Fuck this. I’m not the maid.” 

It is a very nice night, so I went in my garage with an iced tea after my nightly walk and cleaned everyone of my tools with a little WD-40. There is a guy I follow on Flickr that works on Vespas, and he also picks up old tools on ebay, etc. It seems like he is constantly picking up good Snap-On tools on ebay. I could use a few tools. 

I pulled everything down off my walls this evening. It is very bare.

Karate Kid: Holy crap

I missed a lot of stuff in The Karate Kid. They released it on Hulu this week, and while watching it I realized that I’ve never seen the theatrical cut of this movie. The only version I had was taped off of television, even thought we paused the recording during commercials so it was sorta seamless. But wow they but a lot of stuff – even small lines such as “this school sucks.” I didn’t know that Daniel was trying out for the soccer team during the fight at school, I thought it was just PE. This was addressed in the next cut scene with him and Elisabeth Shue in the lunchroom.

Oh…. Elisabeth Shue. Lordy.

2000 RPM Conundrum

Last night I decided to try and track down (again) my idle problem. My Honda has had the hardest time idling lately, to my constant annoyance. Last week I took apart both carbs and cleaned them, checked each jet and made sure I didn’t any blockages. (I must remember to pick up some canned air, as I had to blow through each jet and carb cleaner and gasoline don’t taste good). Put it all back together, synced both carbs, adjusted the idle mixture and kicked it over – and I was still having problems. Now my right piston was backfiring, and it took me a few kicks to get it going. However, I did track down and stop a leak in my bowl on the right carb (made a little custom gasket which seems to be holding fine).

Garr! So last night, while she was still warm, I emptied the oil for a routine oil change. While the bike was drained, I decided to readjust my valve tappets and check my alternator. I was very diligent on my valves, turning each cylinder to TDC and adjusting each intake to .05mm and each exhaust to .10mm. After this was done, pulled each plug and checked them, regapped one and threw the other away to replace with a fresh one. I filled the bike with my current choice of oil (10W-40 Castrol Syntec Blend), checked my plug connections and made sure everything was good. At this point the bike was completely cold. I got on and kicked and it started on the first kick. More importantly, it was idling strong at a relatively low 1000 rpm. I was very happy.

This morning was the ultimate test, however. Once again, she started up on the first kick and was idling low at around 1k. This was fine though, because my idle problem has been occuring after it warms up. After a long stretch (Vista Del Mar, along the beach) I’ll come to a stop and the bike will no longer be idling at 1000 or 1200ROM, but at 3000RPM or more. I usually have to snap the throttle once or twice to bring it down, but it will only settle to 2000RPM. This is absolutely maddening because no matter how much I fiddle with idle mixture or the idle screws, it always settles at 2000RPM.

So this morning after Vista Del Mar, I came to a stop, and sure enough it was racing at 3000RPM. I snapped the throttle and it wouldn’t come down. So I reached down and gave the slide on my left carb a little rev, and it brought her down. So once again, I’ve isolated it down to the carbs, but it is definitely my left carb. Strange, too, because the needle and jets all looked fine, and it isn’t physically sticking anywhere I can see. The good news is that every stop after than the idle came down just fine (even a little too low at one point). I can deal with tapping the slide at stops every once in a while until I throw the Mikunis in.

Finally, in addition to the Mikunis, I’m planning on ditching those scrambler pipes I get so many comments on. They are beginning to look like swiss cheese and I’m a little tired of pulling them everytime I need to access the left side carb/air filter. I have a lineup on some CB350 headers, and I’m planning on trying to find some old 550 mufflers to throw on the headers and make some small pipes that go under the bike. The headers will be easy, the mufflers not as easy. Projects, projects, projects.

Thanks for listening!

messing with new themes…

So if you hate this one – do tell and I’ll take it into consideration. I wanted something more cheerful because I’m such a cheery guy, you know? So if there is something about it you like/dislike – comment it up. Otherwise… no other changes. Posts will be a mix of whatever falls out of my head.

Tools: Monkey Wrenches

Everyone is familiar with the term “monkey wrench,” mostly because they get blamed for being thrown in “the works” and screwing up everything. Also, David Grohl don’t wanna be your monkey wrench.

But who owns a monkey wrench? Surprisingly, not many people anymore. A traditional monkey wrench looks like this:

Source: Wikipedia

It is named a monkey wrench after the inventor, Charles Moncky.

The wrench that commonly gets labeled as a “monkey wrench” is the common pipe wrench:

Source: Castleman & Sons Plumbing

The reason most people don’t own monkey wrenches anymore is because we all use the crescent wrench now:

I would like to find an old monkey wrench. Then throw it in the works.