10/10/14

  I had a temporary need a while back to carry some little odds and ends on a sort of  daily basis. While roaming around the Farm / Ranch supply I found these. As I looked at them it prompted a buddy to blurt out at the top of his lungs... "YES FRIENDS, FOR 15 DOLLARS AND CHANGE YOU TOO CAN JOIN THE BAGGER NATION."

Which prompted me to say, "can you loan me twenty, I'm a little short?"  You see how it all worked out.

  catch ya on the road
 

10/9/14

  Gun running through the hills of Northwest Arkansas....

 

catch ya on the road

11/2/2014   PROJECT UPDATE

 Before I retired I picked up an 85 Yamaha 750 Virago from one of the guys I worked with. He had bought it out from under me around fifteen years ago from another coworker. Over the years I had given him a bunch of good natured teasing about it because I never saw him ride it nor did he ever talk about it. I just figured he wrecked it and let it go at that. He would say it was still around and that he "needed" to get it going.
 One day out of the wild blue he showed and said that if I wanted the bike to come get it. He'd just give it to me to get it out of his way. A buddy offered his trailer and we went to see if it was worth hauling off. Once we got there I was shocked to see that it was in REALLY GREAT shape. From what I could get out of him it had sat most of the time he had it with the carburetors off, He had taken them off to rebuild them and couldn't get them to go back on. Over the years he had hinted how hard they were to get on but never really came out and said anything.
   

     We loaded the old bike and headed to the house where we dumped it off at the Cline Motor works R & D   shop and promptly got busy doing other things.
    A few days ago I was at the shop poking around and looked it over. I had managed to get the carbs back on and was wondering about if it would even fire. I rigged up a gas feed from a milk bottle to feed it and put a battery on it, hit the starter and it fired! Fired up and ran after 13-15 years sitting in an open air shed with the carburetors off. I was impressed. It didn't sound rough it sounded pretty good, smooth except for the hollow pipes the original owner had cobbled up. I was impressed.

There wasn't to much left to do other than the clean up. Seems that sitting for so long a lot of grass and leaves had piled up on the exhaust pipes. They burned off and it looked like for a little bit that I was burning the shop down. Smoke was everywhere. (lol.... had the neighbors looking and wondering. )
  The only other problem that I found was a couple of small holes in the gas tank. A dab of JB Weld and we're almost in business. Got lots of clean up to do and an inspection of the wiring harness to make sure. Should all be "Peaches & Cream" in a couple of weeks.

catch ya on the road

9/24--27/2014


 The annual Bikes, Blues and BBQ Motorcycle rally was this week. I spent the week seeing it from all sides since it is in my back yard, so to speak and I finally had the time off to go and spend some time.
 The bikes began building up on Wednesday on the main drag, Dickson Street, around the local bars and night clubs. Not too much through the day as the town doesn't really gear up till the end of the week. From all that I heard the local campgrounds and motels were filled by the first day.
  It was really hard to gauge the amount of people that were showing up this year, there wasn't a lot of bike traffic on area roads compared to previous years.   This years rally was spread over a large area to relieve congestion and I"m sure the attendance numbers that are reported will be bigger than years past.
  I had the new "boss" wandering around with me after she was done with work each day.

That was a lot of fun. This was the first rally she has been to and says she had a blast.
 (maybe I can talk her in to going again?)

  The rally sponsors a beer garden with live music and it stayed packed to standing room only after the sun went down.

The vendors were out in force and you could find barbeque just about everywhere. Some of it was actually pretty good.
 As the week progressed the bikes piled in and it took on the air of an actual bike rally.

This years rally was a lot of fun and it had a little something for everyone that showed up. (even us old guys.)

         

  Some of the sights were easy on the eyes  while others, not so much... lol.

Better than all that, the best part of Bikes, Blues & BBQ is the area roads. Lots of twisty mountain roads with some really great scenery, all in a real laid back part of the world.

 Looking forward to next year.

  catch ya on the road