Twist the throttle...and hold on.

This is a bit of a flashback post.  Hope you enjoy it.

 Many new riders make the mistake of thinking that motorcycle engines are relatively generic, and that the size of the engine dictates everything.  We've all heard it and many of us started the same way. "Yeah, my (insert basically any brand here) cruiser is a 950, I'm sure I can handle your little 600cc sport bike. How the heck do you manage to go so fast on that thing?" Or "You race that little 125?  I had a 125 enduro back in high school.  Why don't you race Harleys?"

 Well, I've been at this a long time now, and I confess that I started with the same erroneous belief.  In my defense, my motorcycle obsession started at the age of 10 and I really had no one to guide me.  To say my first few years were a learning experience based on trial and error is really putting it mildly.

 My first "real" bike was a Honda XR75.  Purchased used for next to nothing back in the mid 1970's, it was only a couple years old but gave real meaning to the words "clapped out."  It had no back brakes (which was a common theme in my first couple bikes) - the pedal and linkage were missing when we got it.  The levers were broken off short, the foot pegs were always falling off, and the tires worn almost to the point of being totally useless.  The tank was dented and the bars were bent, and it looked like it was ready for the scrap heap.  In reality it was my brothers bike, but he was kind enough to share it and over time I adopted it.  Ah, the joy of family!

 I'm mentioning that bike because it started to open my eyes to cc's and power.  There was a little motocross track in the woods a couple miles from my house, and I'd go there as often as I could and flog that little Honda until either it or I had nothing left to give.  It was a cool little track, cut out of an old sand and gravel operation by local kids.  All of the kids I ran onto there had similar bikes to mine; clapped out hand me downs that allowed us to live out our MX dreams.

 Discovering these tracks in the woods, I always felt like an archeologist looking at dinosaur bones.  In most cases there was no one else there, and I'd look at the ruts, berms and braking bumps and wonder how they were created.  No matter how much I flogged my bike, I could not seem to create my own ruts in the corners.  "They must be doing all this when it's muddy" I'd tell myself.  The dirt that was all over the area behind the berms in the corners?  Maybe someone was there shoveling it out for some reason.  There was certainly no way I could do that with my bike.

 So back to the story.  One day a new kid showed up on a shiny new YZ80.  He couldn't ride very well, and I easily kept up with him and passed him anywhere on the track.  His super cool new bike sounded way different than mine (I had yet to discover the difference between a 2 and 4 stroke engine), and yet he couldn't seem to get any power out of it.  We stopped to talk after a few laps, and he turned out to be a bit of a stuck up snob, telling me that my bike was junk and that his buddy who actually raced would come by tomorrow with his YZ80 and show me how slow my bike really was.  I laughed and told him that he only had 5cc's on me, I wasn't the least bit afraid.  Bring it on!

The next day I rode the school bus home looking at the YZ80 ad in whatever MX magazine I happened to be reading and thought to myself "those things look great but are not all they're cracked up to be."  Silly, wasn't I?

After getting home I fueled up the old Honda and made my way to the track.  Sure enough, the jerky kid was there and so was his racer friend.  His YZ80 also looked pretty new, but it was worn from use. He was much nicer than his jerky buddy, and after talking to me for a minute about the track he put on his helmet and kicked over his YZ.  I immediately knew I was in trouble.

That engine sounded like nothing I had ever heard before.  Yeah, it was similar to jerky kid's, but racer kid knew what he was doing.  He warmed that thing up and revved it in a way that jerky kid never did. Brrrrrrrraaaaaaaaaaap!   Brrrrrrrraaaaaaaaaaap!  I was terrified and mesmerized at the same time.

Before I knew what was happening he pointed it down the first straight, revved it and let the clutch out and was gone.....and I mean gone.  It was about 50 yards to the first corner and I don't think his front tire touched at all. He never let off the gas; his shifts indicated only by slight dips in that beautiful music coming out of the tailpipe...BrrrrrrraaaaaaaaaaaaaAhaaaaaaaaaaaaaAhaaaaaaaaaaaaaAhaaaaaaaaaap!

He did a couple laps to get the feel for the track, and then I tucked him behind him and he cleaned my clock.  I did a respectable job keeping up in the tight sections, but on the straights or the sandy corners I was hopelessly lost. That little YZ just walked away from my XR.

 Thankfully, he wasn't a jerk about it and we actually talked a little after.  I tried to bum a ride, but he said his Dad would kill him if someone crashed his bike.  I remember telling him that I could not get over how fast his bike was, and yet it was only 5cc's larger than mine.  He said "yeah, but it's a 2 stroke race engine."  I had no idea what that meant, but of course pretended I did.

Fast forward a year or so and I'm that much closer to a real motocrosser.  The XR is gone, replaced by an equally clapped out Kawasaki KD100.  This bike actually had a back brake, but was lacking everywhere else.  Regardless of its shortcomings, it featured a 100cc 2 stroke engine, which was as good as any race engine as far as I was concerned.  Ah well, I was still very young.

 The KD was an enduro bike, which to me meant it was a motocrosser with a bunch of other stuff that I'd simply remove.  Lights?  Who needs them? Certainly not Bob Hannah.  Gauges?  I don't think so.  An oil tank and pump?  That was actually handy and I had no idea how to take it off - I bet the Hurricane didn't like mixing gas and oil either.  Soon I was out ripping up the track on my wanna be KX, but something was still nagging me.  Yeah, this bike sounded more like a YZ, but still wasn't the same.  As even though it was a little faster than my XR, it didn't handle as well and there was no way it seemed as fast as that YZ was.  Of course, that kid never came back and I had nothing to compare it to.

I soon discovered yet another track a bit further away.  This one was much cooler, featuring a long whoop section and some jumps and serious sand hills.  There was almost never anyone else there, and I dominated the place in my mind.  I'd roll through that whoop section in second or even third gear, my front tire sometimes even leaving the ground! How cool was that?  I could not imagine anyone doing it faster.

One day I had stopped to take a break when I heard a familiar sound in the distance.  Much like racer kid's YZ80, but a little more urgent sounding and just as thrilling.  I had no way of knowing at the time, but it was the sound of someone who really knew how to wring the most out of a 125cc motocrosser. To me it was like a message from God.  It got louder, closer, and louder still.

Then off in the distance at the other end of the whoops I could see clouds of dirt in the air.  And then suddenly a flash of yellow and black and a roar....

WhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaraAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

This new unknown rider went though those whoops faster than I could have gone through the flat part of the track next to them...mostly one one wheel.  He rounded the corner and was gone from sight, but I could hear that engine all the way around the track.  Much like racer kid, he really revved it out.  Unlike racer kid, however, this guy was either on it all the way or off - no in between.  I'd hear BRRaaaaaaaap!  Then silence for a second. Then another BRaaaaaaaaaaaaaap! Silence again.  From the seat of my bike I could see other parts of the track, including a long left hand corner with a nice berm.  I liked to think that I got through that corner pretty fast...until I saw him do it.  He came screaming up to it at a pace I could never match, braked for a split second and laid the bike over and was back on the gas - all the way - entering the actual turn.  Dirt flew off his back tire for what seemed like miles as he flew through that corner like a slot car in a rail.  I was stunned.

I looked down at my trusty KD as he disappeared again around a corner.  I didn't know what bike this mystery rider was on yet, but it certainly seemed better than my ride.  How could that be?  I had 100cc's of 2 stroke power!  Maybe I just needed to wring the snot out of it like this guy was doing.  It didn't even sound like he was shifting...may the secret was to keep the damn thing in first or second gear all the time - that might explain the ridiculous RPM this guy seemed to operate at.  Plus that sound....it was intoxicating.  My bike sounded like a Lawn Boy lawnmower.  His sounded like a thousand angry bees.

After a couple laps he pulled over to talk.  Turns out he was a really nice guy, a couple years older than me and like racer kid, he actually raced.  His ride? A close to new YZ125.  It looked like a space ship next to my KD100...there was no comparison at all.  It looked to have a foot of suspension travel compared to my 4 inches or so.  The knobs on his tires were huge, making my street tires now look exactly like the street tires they were.  There was nothing extra on the bike, it looked like raw horsepower sitting there.  I lusted over that like nothing else I had ever known.

Like nice guys often do, he complimented me on my bike despite the utter lack of comparison to his own.  He watched me do a couple laps, and when I pulled back in shocked me with one simple sentence.

"That looks like fun.  Want to trade bikes for a couple laps?"

I don't remember the details of my reply, but I remember climbing on that YZ and feeling like the king of the world.

"You ever ride a 125?" he asked. "It's probably a little quicker than your bike."

 I was honest. "Never have" I said, "but mine's a 100 so it's gotta be pretty close."

 He smiled a knowing smile and said "Take it easy at first and make sure to hold on."  With that he kicked over my bike and disappeared around the corner, still going fast but now sounding at least a little bit like me.

 From the spot we were on the track a rider had one of two options to take.  One was the corner my new friend just chose, which lead around the back of the track and over a couple smaller jumps.   The other was a long, sandy hill that ended in what I now know to call a tabletop jump.  The hill itself was about 50 feet from top to bottom. The flat part of the tabletop was probably about 30 feet across, and then you had a shorter down side of the jump and a short straight before you entered the really cool left hander I mentioned earlier.

 I say that I now know it was a tabletop jump because back then it was nothing more than a hill to me.  The face was steep. So steep, in fact that my KD needed a running start and would need to be in second gear tapped out to climb it - that sand was a horsepower thief!  Sometimes I'd even have to drop into first gear, and on a few occasions I'd get stuck and have to turn the bike around and roll it down.  The concept of cresting that hill with enough momentum to actually leave the earth - never mind jump 25 or 30 feet - simply was outside of the realm of possibility.

 I kicked over that YZ and felt the entire bike vibrate as I revved it a little.  I now understood what all those motorcycle writers meant when they talked about crisp throttle response.  It was like this engine actually wanted to rev.  Without hesitation I pointed it at the approach to the sand hill,

 I remember thinking that since this bike was only a little bigger than mine cc wise, that I'd take the same approach as I would on my bike and go with second gear tapped out.  The last thing I wanted to do was get stuck on the hill and have my new friend see me, or worse yet dump his bike and never get another ride.  Yep, second gear tapped out was the way to go.

 I pulled the clutch in and clicked it down into first.  I took off the way I did on my bike, slowly letting out the clutch and ramping up the revs.  Funny, I remember thinking, it didn't seem to be much faster yet. While it did sound cool it didn't sound anything like it did when he was riding it.  I guess I need to twist the throttle a little.

 My memory of the next few seconds is sketchy at best...but here's what I recall.

 I had only rolled about 20 feet in first gear, and was barely off idle when I had the "I need to twist the throttle a little" thought and clicked her into second.  Since I still had most of the approach to the hill left, I let the clutch out and twisted the throttle to the stop. The bike, of course, woke up immediately.

 BRRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAP!

Before I had any idea at all of what was happening,  the approach was gone and I was flying up the hill like it wasn't even there.  I crested the hill - now certainly a jump - at speed and launched into the air like I was thrown from a catapult, easily clearing the entire jump and scaring myself to death in the process.  I landed back wheel first on the downside and my sloppy landing sent me jerking backwards, opening the throttle yet again and sending me careening down the straight toward the corner.  I certainly would have blown right over the berm and crashed into the woods, but through the grace of God I managed to pull the clutch in and slow myself down.

After regaining my composure I babied the bike back around to the place I started.  Nice guy pulled in a little bit later, a big smile on his face.  "Your bike is a lot of fun" he said. "You can really ride the heck out of this thing.  What'd you think of mine?"

 I was probably still white as a ghost after my near death experience.  "The power...." I mumbled......"it's..........it's awesome."

 I made my way home that day with a new sense of reality.  CC's, it seemed, did not have a 1 to 1 correlation with horsepower.  I realized right then and there that there was nothing I could do to my little motor that would get it to perform at the level of that YZ.  I also realized that despite reading everything I could on motorcycles, there was no replacement for actual seat time.  You can't read your way into the experience of ridding a real motocross bike....or any other bike for that matter.   At the end of the day, you have to twist that throttle. And hold on :)

The Dreaded Fat Bob Clunk...and suspension updates with Ricor Intimidators

 My one modern bike is a 2009 Harley FXDF Fat Bob.  I'm not your classic "Harley Guy" and never owned one prior to this bike.  I guess I just never saw one that really appealed to me.  While on vacation in VA Beach in 2008 we were stopped at a light and a guy pulled up next to us on a flat black Fat Bob, and I was hooked.  I thought about it, talked about it, procrastinated and probably would have put it off for a while, but my wife went and got me one as a birthday gift.  Some wife, huh?

 It's a great bike, fun to ride and nice to have as part of the stable.  However, I really don't like the front suspension - its way to soft and bouncy for me, and I'm not a big guy at 170 without gear.  When my bike recently developed the dreaded Dyna "clunk," I decided it was time for a few changes.

 If you poke around a bit you'll find that there are many reasons that Dyna's clunk.  You'll also see this described as a rattle, shudder, vibration, and general front end noise.  The Harley forums offer a lot of advice and possible cures.  Some older bikes actually need a stem washer upgrade, but mine isn't one of those.  Other causes can be the top stem nut not torqued correctly, the fall away set incorrectly, loose tank bolts, and too light grade oil in the forks.

I figured I'd kill two birds with one stone and fix my clunking and do a little fork upgrade at the same time.  After doing a little research I ordered a set of 49mm Ricor Intimidators to help with the stock valving, got a couple quarts of Amsoil Suspension therapy 10W shock fluid, and yesterday set to work to get everything sorted out.

 Getting the forks off the bike is basically the same as any other bike. Remove the front wheel and fender, get the brake calipers out of the way and loosen the pinch bolts.  I loosened the top nuts on the forks while they were still in the clamps, as I don't have any clamps floating around to easily do it once they're off the bike.

 My 13 year old son Sean gave me a hand with the forks and the rest of the job.  Having a second set of hands around made it much easier to pop the top caps off once the forks were off the bike - I had him push down on the rag I had covering the nut while I undid them the rest of the way.  Once apart, I showed him the spacers, the springs, and explained how to drain the fork oil, cycling the forks a bunch of times to get as much as we could out.

 The stock Harley oil was not too bad looking- a bit dirty but I expected that (this bike has about 10,000 miles) and a little on the thin side.  We cut the spacers about 1/2 inch each to match the space the intimidators would be taking up in the bottom of the tubes.  Once done we measured out the new fork oil (26.4 ounces per leg) and started the reassembly.  I added about half the oil, cycled the forks a bunch of times to get the air out, then added the intimidators and the rest of the oil.  After measuring each leg to get them correct and the same, we dropped the springs back in and got the top caps back on.  Here again another set of hands is a huge help.  The first one went back together easily, but we struggled a little with the second one.  Sean came up with the idea of having him turn the fork tube while I held the nut down, and that worked like a charm.  Again, we used the triples to hold the forks so I could torque the tops down.  End to end this job took us less than 3 hours, and that was taking our time with a break or two mixed in.

 Once everything was back on the bike I checked the fall away.  The HD service manual describes their procedure, but it's a little too much for me.  I could tell right away it was way loose, so I loosened the top nut and the top pinch bolts, and found a long screwdriver to use to tighten the star nut.

 In the photo below, the silver thing at the top is the chrome fork nut cap.  You can see the edge of the star nut under the triple.  I gave this a couple of light wacks until the steering felt the way I like it, tightened things up again and checked the fall away a couple times until I had it right.

All that being done, I fired up the bike and took it around the town for a bit.  What a difference!  The dreaded clunk is now history, the bike feels tight again, and the front suspension is much improved.  I'll have to get some more miles on it this week before I get too crazy raving about it, but I am much happier with forks now.  I attribute all the noise I was hearing to the fall away adjustment being off; I'm going to keep a closer eye on that in the future.  I'm sure the neck bearings are now well settled and I doubt I'll have to do that again, but the entire procedure took about 10 minutes so it's not a big deal.

Ride smart!

Color Rite Paint on my 1984 VF750F

This is another great example of why I'm glad I don't restore bikes for a living.  I have a love hate relationship with restoration, and I'd like to keep it that way.

 I've had my 1984 Honda 750 Interceptor for about 13 years now if my memory serves.  It was in nice shape when I got it, but on the front of the gas tank (the area in front of the cap) the color coat had peeled off, exposing the metallic silver base.  This was in an area about 4 inches wide and extended from the cap to the front bottom of the tank.  Over the years it slowly got worse, and it started to get on my nerves

I had put off fixing this as one day I plan on doing a total repaint - I prefer the blue and white with the red stripe.  Since I never seem to have the time and I needed a little project, I figured I'd give it a shot.

I decided on using Color Rite motorcycle paint.  My bike is too old to be listed on the web site, and when I emailed Color Rite I got a "you need to call us as that would be a special order" reply.  I poked around a bit and found that my color, Candy Bourgogne Red, was used on many more recent bikes.  I looked up one of those on the site and sure enough, there was the paint I needed; no special order required.

I decided to get rattle cans as it was a small area, it's easier, and I'm not buying real paint until I do the whole bike.  I had to get primer, the base, the color and the clear.  They have a kit that includes adhesion promoter, sandpaper, wax remover and some compound, so I got that.  It wasn't cheap but I figured what the heck.

Here's where I go wrong on these projects.  The paint came with a couple pages of simple instructions.  I read them, but not completely.  After all, I know how to paint.  How different can this be?

I'm not going in to all the details here, but I painted the bad area from primer to clear at least 4 times. I stripped it all the way back to bare metal in between each attempt.  I made two major mistakes that I would not have made if I paid more attention to the instructions.

The first was that I decided to clear the entire red area of the tank when I was done.  This doesn't work as the clear needs to go on over the color while the color is still wet in order to bond properly, but who knew? I had cleared the entire area, put down the can, and was checking my work with a shop light.   I saw an area that I missed and picked up the can to hit that one small spot. Of course, I picked up the primer instead of the clear and sprayed a nice light coat of gray over my beautiful, wet clear coat. What a dope!

I decided to let it dry and sand it out as it was so light.  I still hadn't re read the instructions, so after carefully sanding off all the primer infested clear I roughed up all the rest and hit it with another coat of clear.  Naturally, I did this on a rainy day and my shop is in a drafty barn.  The humidity resulted in some very foggy clear.  What a mess.

While that was drying I read the FAQ on the Color Rite site.  I found out about the bonding issue, and realized I had to start all over again.  As a test I simply stuck a piece of painters tape on the dried foggy clear coat, and sure enough it came right up with the tape.  I stripped my damaged area and sanded the heck out of the other red area that I had cleared.

 Now that I was ready to do it yet again, it rained for a week.  Once it stopped and I had a day to fool with this, I started again.   I also remembered to take some pics. Here's how it went:

First, I stripped the paint yet again in the damaged area.  Here you can see the area is considerably larger than I first described - this is a result of me trying to blend in unsuccessfully with the existing paint.  I finally decided to take the new paint out to where the tank starts to turn in on each side.

 After 2 lights coats of adhesion promoter, I started with a light coat of primer.

20 minutes later, the second coat.

After 30 minutes and a very light sanding with 1500 grit paper, I did a light coat of the metallic base.

Followed 20 minutes later by another.  My previous 3-4 attempts showed me the right combination to get as close to my 29 year old paint as possible.

20 minutes later, a light coat of the Candy Red, followed in 20 minutes with a slightly heavier coat.

Since I can't blend and the line between the new and old paint is annoying, I used 3/16 red pinstripe tape over the line.  The pic below is after a light coat of clear.

And about 20 minutes later, the second wet coat.

And yet another to level it all out.

Not the best picture, but here's the tank back on the bike, after curing for 7 days and sanding and polishing the clear.  The old red paint still has some of the clear on it from my failed attempt at clearing the entire tank, I need to take a couple hours one day soon and sand / buff that out.

All in all, I am very happy with the results I got from a bunch of rattle cans.  If I can match 29 year old paint (in decent condition, but 29 years old none the less), you can match your bike as well.  Lessons learned when using Color Rite rattle cans:

-Read the instructions carefully, more than once if you're a knucklehead like me.

-Don't wait and let the paint dry much between color and clear coats.

-Don't clear something you didn't color coat.

-Don't paint when it's humid (doh!).

-Don't sand the candy before the clear (double doh!).

-And most importantly, take your time.

My next project on this bike will be the Blue / White / Red color scheme, but that's a way down the road.  For now I am back to tearing up the backroads around my home on this classic sport bike, and having the time of my life doing it.  It's my favorite bike....well, at least for today :)

Ride safe. Ride smart. Ride at your own pace. But Ride!

Where it began....

I became both aware of and obsessed with motorcycles at about the age of 10.  I was interested in the kind of things most normal 10 year old boys were into at the time - baseball, football (and basically any sport), fishing, TV, and of course my bicycle.  On my super cool banana seat Schwinn copy, I was as free as a bird and as cool as cool could be.

Things changed one day when my next door neighbor buddy Stu got a mini bike.  Nothing special, just a beat up old green mini bike : no suspension, a friction brake on the back tire and a 3 1/2 horsepower Briggs engine.  It was a cast off from one of the older kids down the block if I remember correctly, but to us it was pure magic.  I can remember Stu showing me how the forks would move in a bit when you hit a bump and us thinking it was front suspension - how cool!, when in reality it was worn neck bearings and a lot of slop.  Again, we didn't care or know any better - this little machine was freedom.

 I immediately started my own campaign to get a mini bike, but it simply was not to be.  I'd like to think that my family was not poor but we certainly were at times, and that wasn't helping matters.  My grandparents would listen to me beg and tell me things like "maybe next year for your birthday," but that day never came.  Regardless, I was undaunted and unstoppable in my mission.

Things really changed one day not long after Stu got that first bike.  Apparently his parents took him to the local Honda dealer and he came back with what was to me the coolest little catalog I had ever seen.  When I say it changed my life, I'm not kidding.  This was probably late in 1973, and this is what it looked like:

When you opened it up, it looked like this:

but most importantly, this...

The 1974 QA50 - a more beautiful thing I had never seen.  Stu was kind enough to grab a couple copies of the little catalog, and mine turned into my constant companion.  All the kids in the neighborhood would sit around and compare features, recite specifications and basically bench race - although none of us had any seat time on anything other than Stu's mini bike.  We all had a model we thought our parents were buying us, and we had nicknames for them. The QA was the "Honda 2," the Z50 was of course the "Honda 3," after the number of gears in the respective transmissions.

To make a long story a little shorter for today, I didn't get my QA50 back in 1973.  I din't get one in '74 or '75 either, and although I didn't know it by '75 I was way too big for one anyway.  I of course own one today, but I bought it around 2001 - still a kid at heart.

This little catalog?  My original copy was lost or discarded back in the mid 70's.  When my good friend Tom introduced me to eBay in the late 1990's, I immediately started a quest to find another copy.  That was quite a task back then, as I consider myself to be pretty good at searching for things and these just never popped up. I searched and searched.

 One day one finally did.  The initial price was about 10 dollars, but I had to have it.  I proxy bid $100, confident that no other mini bike junky would be willing to pay such an astronomical amount for an old piece of Honda history.  No one else bid, and in the final minute of the auction I waited for those last few seconds to tick by, waiting to be reunited with a piece of my childhood.  This was back when you had to refresh your browser every few seconds when you were watching an auction end, and as I clicked with about 3 seconds to go the price changed to $105 and the dreaded "you've been outbid" message appeared.  I was devastated; sniped at the last second by a fellow Honda lover.

Years went by before I found another.  When I finally did, I once again proxy bid some ridiculous number - maybe $250 or so, and was the high bidder at 15 bucks.  I waited out that auction, no seven days ever seeming longer, and in the end got my prize for that starting bid - 15 dollars. Crazy.

 Today I have 7 different Honda's out in the shop, and I love them all.  This little catalog ranks right up there with the bikes, however.  Taking it out tonight to snap a couple of pics brought me right back to Brookfield Ct. in 1973, dreaming of the day I'd have my own little "Honda 2."  I might have to take it out tomorrow, put on an Orange metal flake Bell helmet and go tear up the neighborhood :)

The First Kick.

 I've been talking to myself about doing this for too long, so here I am. Hello Web!  If you've stumbled upon this I am sure you're wondering "just what the heck is Making Motorcycle Sounds", so today's post is a simple introduction.   Simply put, I struggled for a while to come up with a name for the place I'd blog my assorted exploits over many, many years of motorcycle misadventure, and finally had an epiphany of sorts one recent day while bicycle riding with my 9 year old son Danny.  Danny was enjoying himself on his bike and asked me if I liked my bicycle as much when I was a boy.  I told him that while I loved my bike, I was fascinated with anything with an engine, and would ride my bicycle around the yard and up and down the street, making motorcycle sounds and longing for the day that I'd have a motorcycle to ride around on.  As we rode around the school parking lot that day, I realized that I've been braaaaaapping and bwaaaaahhhhhing ever since - on my motorcycles or off - taking a shot at life from the saddle of every type of motorcycle I could lay my hands on.  Time passes, and here we are.

 I am imaging as I go forward with this that it will evolve to contain my ramblings on other topics as well.  I love - or even need - to build and fix things, 2 wheels and an engine or not.  I've been playing the guitar forever and still play when the mood strikes.  I've always got some crazy project that I want to share.  And then there's the motorcycles. Quite a few out there in the shop now; not as many as some guys but certainly more than most.  There are many brands represented, but I'm a Honda guy at heart.

Anyway, time is short here on day one.  More to follow as time allows.  If you ride, be safe and aware out there, and I'll see you on the road someday.