Mixed Emotions

I’ve got an appt to pick up the new ride tomorrow and it dawned on me on the way in this morning that today was the last day I’d be riding the Fatboy. Sure seems odd. I mean, I should be excited as all hell about the new bike, but right now I’m more bummed about giving up the Fatboy. (That may all change within the first few miles of riding the new one, though…)

Zig has been tooling around on his EGC for about a week now and hates it. Ok, he loves it. We decided to head out to breakfast this past Sunday and it was cool to check out his new ride in motion. He’d taken the big tour pack off the back and the bike looks better for it; much sharper and sleeker.

Breakfast wound up being in Buzzard’s Bay – a short 40 miles from home. We’d actually planned on heading all the way out to the Cape, but with temps in the 20’s, our tingling toes (on top of our grumbling stomachs) convinced us to pull over a bit sooner.

Hot chocolate and an omelette for me, coffee and eggs for him, and our internal combustion engines were fueled and ready again. As we strolled back out to the bikes, we could almost feel the gazes of the other diners following us, their heads shaking softly in sympathy for the two bikers; pleasant enough guys, sure. But obviously retarded to be out in this weather. (Or something like that.)

So that’s where things stand at the moment. I’m taking the rest of the week off to try and get some riding in. ‘Course, Mother nature doesn’t seem to want to cooperate…

No worries; I'll keep my fingers crossed and we'll see what happens. I'll get some pics up soon...

Ride Hard, Take Chances

Logic? We don't need no stinking Logic!

A thought occurred to me yesterday…Zig and I cancelled our trip to Scotland because it was going to be too expensive. We opted to stick around in the great US of A, instead. It would be cheaper, after all, right? Ahh…but then we decided that our USA trip would require an upgrade to brand new baggers. So in essence, this ‘cheaper’ plan of ours is actually going to cost us about 4 times as much as a trip to Scotland would have. (I’m not sure where the logic in that is, but apparently I’m now qualified for a management position.)

Sure, the argument can be made that while this plan will wind up costing us more, we’ll have more to show for it. A trip to Scotland would have left us with vivid memories of fantastic experiences, some probable jet lag, and a lot of photos. Our current plan will leave us with brand new bikes which we can savor for years to come. And Scotland isn’t going anywhere soon, right?

Regarding the aforementioned new bikes; the call has come in from the dealership; they’re ready to be picked up. Zig is looking to get his either today or tomorrow. Myself, I’m still digging for loose change in the cushions at home, strolling the side streets for empties to redeem, and borrowing from strangers on the street. With any luck, I’ll have things lined up by the end of the week and can bring my new addition home. Pics will follow.

Ride Hard, Take Chances

Pulled the Trigger

Well…we did it. Zig and I went to Ocean State HD last night and looked things over. We sat on the various models, fired them up, compared colors and options…and finally made the decision to go with a couple of ‘08 Electra Glide Classics. Zig went with Vivid Black, I went with Pacific Blue. Ocean State sells at list price, so there wasn’t a lot of haggle room for us, but since we were taking two bikes, we had a bit of leverage (we liked to think so, anyways). They made some concessions for us and everyone was happy. We signed on the dotted line and will get to pick them up in a week or so.

The only down side is that I love the Fatboy and would love to keep it. But since I’m hardly made of money, I’ll need to sell it to get myself back into the black. I need to get my hands on replacement tins & tank to pretty things up a bit. (Anyone out there know anyone with an extra set?) Some good news is that there’s still a year left on the warranty, and it’s transferable, so that should help, too. (Anyone know anyone looking for an ’02 Fatboy?)

It’s been some time coming, but the need for upgrading couldn’t be ignored. With more and more (and longer and longer) trips falling into place (Sturgis!), it just made sense to go with something that had simpler - and more - packing capabilities. And let’s not forget the aspect of having a radio. I’m tired of serenading myself on the roadways. Have you ever heard me sing? No. No, you have not. And there’s a reason for that; I suck!

It’ll be the end of a (mini) era, so to speak. That Fatboy and I have covered a lot of miles and seen a lot of things. It’ll be nice to break in new steed, but I sure won’t forget that Fatboy.

Pics will follow once I pick the new EGC up.

Ride Hard, Take Chances

Rockin' and Rollin' Again

Heavy rains over the weekend, led to salt-free roads yesterday. There’s still a decent amount of sand out there, especially in the corners, but that’s not a deal-breaker for getting rolling again. Now the patches of black ice…those are a different story. Nothing like coming around a corner and seeing a nice smooth sheet of ass-puckerage coming at you.

Shot to the gym for a while yesterday morning so that I could climb a fake set of stairs that never took me anywhere. When I’d had enough of that nonsense, it was a quick shower and then back home to roll the bike out. Fired things up and hit the road. Zig was up in NH, skiing with his kids, so I knew he wasn’t around to enjoy this with me. So I did what any good friend would do; I rode over to his house and parked in front of his front door. Used my phone to snap a pic, and sent it on to him. He wasn’t at all jealous. Heh heh heh. Who needs enemies when you’ve got a friend like me? After that, I just tooled around, reacquainting myself with some of the more scenic roads in the area.

Brought the bike in this morning, too; 25 degrees out - leading to the usual “You’re not ok in the head” type of comments from my coworkers, so all in all; things are getting back to normal.

Zig and I have made the decision to go ahead and pick up new rides this year – have I already mentioned that? I need to find a dealership that has an EG Standard in stock so that I can go and check it out with my own eyes. (It’s hard to see details on the website pictures.) I’ve heard that a lot of the metal on those is just polished aluminum, not chrome. And if that’s the case, I’ll probably upgrade to the Classic. Not that I’m a big fan of chrome, mind you, but who’s kidding who; it looks a helluva lot better than the polished stuff. I believe Zig is going back and forth between a Classic and a Street Glide. Time will tell.

Started kicking around some plans for our annual bike trip that me, Ed, Flex and Zig take each year. None of us have a destination in mind yet, so that leaves things wide open. I mapped some routes out through western Mass, up through VT and into Canada for now, but I don’t know if all the guys have their passports or not, so we may have to keep within the lower 48. Plenty of time still to put something together.

That’s about it for now. Apologies to those that are still snowed in, but hang on; the warmer weather is on its way.

Ride Hard, Take Chances

Minor Ramblings

I put together a rough draft of an itinerary for the trip to Michigan, Sturgis & Olean. Everything is still up in the air at the moment, but as a starting point, it looks like we'll be talking about 5 - 6 thousand miles for the whole thing. Not too shabby at all. Zig and I chatted briefly about it last night and we're going to see if we can get together on Sunday to go through some of the finer details.

We might talk about the possibility of picking up new rides, too. I've known that I need to make the transition to a bagger for a while now and hell; crazier things have happened. What more motivation is needed? Especially considering that a trip as great as this could easily be shitcanned by a couple of breakdowns along the way. We'd have reliability, we'd have better packing abilities, and...we'd have tunes!

Switching gears; I talked to Flex last night about borrowing his compressor and chop saw so that I can get some more work done on the basement. His brother Jimmy is coming through for me on a framing gun, I have to swing by his work on my way home and pick it up (providing it'll accept the nails I'm using). Maybe I can get some work done on the cellar this weekend, too.

That's about it for this week. Weather? We've got snow coming in tonight. Depending on what station you believe, it'll be anywhere from as little as 3" to as much as 8" inches by tomorrow morning. But then Sunday is supposed to be mid-40's, maybe even caressing 50 degrees. Winter is trying its damndest to hold on, but Spring won't be denied. The two seasons will do a dance for a while but Winter has over-stayed it's welcome and will be escorted to the door soon. (But never soon enough.)

Start getting the plans made - our season is approaching.

Ride Hard, Take Chances

Times Change. And so do plans...

Me 'n Zig talked it over last night and, in light of how poorly the US Dollar is doing against the British Pound, we're going to scrap the Scotland plan (at least for this year). That blows goats, but we'd be getting creamed on the exchange rate so we figured it's better to stick around in the US of A and get more for our money. We still have the two weeks vacation time to work with , and that's a lot of time for us to get ourselves into trouble.

We've got an open-invite from our good friends out in Michigan, so we've set our sights there for now. Me and Zig will try to catch up with each other over the weekend and see about laying out an itinerary for the trip. Michigan Paul told me about a camping/canoeing trip they take in August so we'll see if we can model our plans to include that. 'Course, Sturgis is going on right around then, too, so who knows where we'll find ourselves winding up. Besides, that's only about 1,100 miles further...

Naturally, we'd also have to try and work in a stopover at Olean to hang out with those party animals, knock back some cold ones and share some laughs. Everything is up in the air still - which means that currently; everything is possible.

I had a dream about the Rendezvous last night - clear & sunny skies, bikes packed up, miles rolling by....it was a sign. Daylight's a little brighter in the mornings and it's sticking around a little longer in the evenings. There's snow, ice and salt all over the place still, but we've crested the Winter mountain and we're heading down into the valley of Summer once again. Riding Days are coming for us and I'm going to welcome them with open arms.

Ride Hard, Take Chances

Basement Pics

Sorry, no thoughtful and intriguing dialogue today. First day back here and busy as all hell, trying to catch up. Just going to be pics and a few comments...

Me, in the hole...

Fruits of my labor...(stupid rocks!) There was another pile to the left of this one, too.

I think I broke through...if you look closely, you can see a Chinaman waving up at you.

Enough! I surrender!

Plumbing, vent and output lines are in place. Starting the backfill process...

Ejector plumbed into place, concrete base poured (for the bricks), and hole partially backfilled. (Four pipes; the main drain line is the 4" at the top of the pic, dropping down into the ejector. The left pipe is the laundry feed, tying into the 4" just about the dirt. Middle pipe is the vent and the right pipe is the ejector output, which will tie into the street exit.)

Brick walls built up. (The depth allowed us to run all the pipes out to an exterior wall so they'll be completely out of sight and we wouldn't need to build any half-walls to hide them. Additionally, with it being so deep, I shouldn't hear it operate at all.)

Everything backfilled and concreted back up. When that all dried, the manhole cover went on and we had a safe walking area again.

Another shot of the final layout and poured concrete...

Framing! Here's what will be the shower stall. Going to be all tiled, should look good.

More framing. Shower stall is in far background, bathroom area is the square in front of it. Notice the manhole cover in place, too. That will be covered by carpet and will be behind the bar, out of sight. Shouldn't need to access it for at least 20 years (so I'm told) but if I need to, there'll be easy access to it.

Running more framing along the back wall. The bar is going to butt up against the bathroom wall, in the background, and run out parallel to the framing in this pic. (Notice the soffets running along the top of the walls. What fun and time-consuming things those things are!)

That's about where things stand right now. I spent yesterday cutting/installing the spacer pieces of 2*4 that go in between the studs, and also along the bottoms, for the blueboard. I didn't take any pics of the venting in the attic - that's pretty straight forward.

Bet you didn't know that tornados have been known to touch down in Walpole, did you? Yep; very centralized ones, and they're fond of basements.

Sure hope I can get this place cleaned up before the pig roast in May!

Progress updates will be sporadic, but I'll get 'em up here as they happen.

Ciao for now.