Sprocket

When asked to help replace a sprocket, the trombone has to go somewhere...  The hoist seemed like a good place.  I am not a big fan of Alto Clef.  Well, maybe I like it OK for violas,  I just don't like reading trombone parts in it.  That's because I need to spend many hours practicing, and if I got good at it, I'd like it fine, I suppose.  But the sprocket worked out well.  I love when Himself lets me use tools. That doesn't happen very often.  Especially right now when a cute 350 Honda from the 80's is resisting all his efforts to make it run smoothly.  I got to help him, but had to use my hand to hold first a bolt, then a nut.  Success.  Himself has his own repair business now.

This weekend was the club picnic, and lots of bikes showed up.  There were so many people there, not everyone got a chance to talk to everyone, though there was a constant flow and no end of topics -- each bike being its own topic, and everyone wanting to know everything.  They let me sign up new members and take money.  This Triumph Bobber was so artfully done I couldn't help but like it.

July 4

We went to Monmouth for the 4th of July so we could catch Ben Rice and his Ben Rice Band with Paul Biondi on "horns".  That's Ben Rice with the green sunglasses and his brother Tommy climbing the bass.  They entertain!  Ben writes most of his songs, and they're GOOD!  To hear some of this music, here's the web site: http://www.benricelive.com/  

What am I Doing?

Just for the heck of it, right now I'm playing in 4 musical groups.  There is a serious problem for the groups counting on the local Parks and Recreation department for practice space funding, because everyone, nation, state, county, city, everyone is having a hard time making ends meet, so we'll all have to come up with our own funding.  The Symphony isn't dependent on Parks and Rec, so so far so good there, and the quintet is small and practices in members houses.  But the big band and the community band are too large not to need a space.  The big band just came under the wing of the community band so donations can be tax deductible, but one of us had to be on the Band Board of Directors, so I'm it.  I try not to disrupt the meetings too much.  That is harder than it sounds.

Himself has retired from fixing county vehicles and equipment, and started a motorcycle repair business, and to help with that, I'm taking a class at the local community college in Quick Books.  I'm am quite the slowest thinking person there.  Good thing I'm not competitive.  One of Himself's friends recommended the class, and he is taking it, too, so when I see him outside of school we can talk about it and discuss problems.  Great class, and great teacher.  I enjoy helping in the shop and picking up parts, too.  All I have to do is sign, and they have everything ready for me.  Fun!

Just last weekend his old motorcycle club had a ride and show, and I got to help put exhibitor ribbons on all the bikes and take pictures.  Himself was so busy talking to people he didn't get to see all the motorcycles there.  I didn't get to see all the interesting bikes in the parking lot, but I saw everything that was entered.  The Norton above was a recent customer, and though he didn't win a trophy, he got a ribbon at the show, and he went on the ride.  Below is the town where we stopped.  

Spring Snow

Moonlight Shadows

Last night the moon was full and round, and casting shadows from the newly pruned apple trees to the driveway where the BSAs are parked in the photo. The shadows looked very deformed. No one here is a champion arborist. Our new gravel is pale and may have helped the shadows show up. I don't know how to take pictures of moons or moonshadows.

Concert Sunday, and big write up in paper. Beautiful ballerinas will dance at the end to Ballet Egyptian.

Contrast

The little tucked up doggy is ours, or at least lives here because her mommy, my MIL, is in a nursing home and can't get out of bed on her own. It's raining this morning, so little Heidi was put off by the drizzle, and refused to potty. Her poor little legs aren't tall enough to keep her out of the puddles.
The lovely fearless girl reflected in the Allegheny River in the other photo lives with Himself's brother across the country. This photo was taken by our niece.

Lots of Motorcycles

The poor fellow is getting bored from having a broken leg, so to amuse himself, he buys motorcycles. I think we're up to 17. Just Tuesday we drove off to Stayton where he bought a CB900 with a dual speed differential, which you can read about here, http://www.motorcyclespecs.co.za/model/honda/honda_cb900c%2082.htm -I don't know how to be fancy about it. He bid on a scooter for me, but so far they're not impressed with the offer. He is hoping to be back at work before the month is out. I don't think there's room for more bikes. Maybe he'll go buy a barn next.

His mother is 90, and thanks to her ear doctor, she can hear again. He put tubes in her ears, but because he also had a motorcycle land on him after putting him in a ditch, she had to wait 6 weeks while he healed. He had so many more things broken than Himself, but is 30 years younger and heals faster. He and his assistant are quite excellent, and knew how I could help and how to communicate that to me. Just me holding her head and petting her made a huge difference, or so she said later. It was harrowing for her because she had to stay quite still and with a guy poking things in your ears, that's a hard thing to do. I was very proud of her.

Ducati Update

There are so many pictures I wanted to put here, but didn't have the time it takes with dial-up, so now with this fast internet, I can maybe make up for lost time a little bit. Above is the very beautiful Ducati 750 GT all reassembled. The owner took the tank, fenders and side covers to be painted. Aren't they lovely? Now I'll show you the engine.

As you can see, all the bits got back together. This was such a fun and exciting project! Too bad I didn't write this at the time, because Himself explained it all to me then, and now I've forgotten so much, but not the feeling of excitement through every step. You can see why, right?

What's Up?

This was new to the bike garage in November. I am lobbying for no new paint because it has a decal that wouldn't be replaced, but the front fender is missing a bit, and there's now a new front fender, and Himself is insistent that the complete front fender, which is not attached yet, needs to be painted. The colors seem to match now, but I'm sure if it was painted, then nothing would match, so the whole bike would need paint. The original owner was a fireman. Look at this.



In March we went to a show in Idaho with a couple little 50 scooters like ours only more pristine and a nice-ish 250 Sears Puch. I don't know if there's a connection, but now we have one of those, which he found on E-Bay that turned out to be surprisingly nice. We had to wait and wait for that bike to come, because it was half the continent away, bad weather, had to find a shipper, and kept missing connections to get things going.



The 250 is like the first bike Himself bought when he was a teenager. Except his had two solo seats and was only called an Allstate. I have heard the story from three sources of how he tried to do a wheelie with it, and his friend Tom tried to cover for him by telling his mom they were playing basketball. Mom was not fooled. I think there was road rash. He refers to these bikes as Allstates. Maybe I should tell you now why Himself has had so much time to entertain himself with cute little motorcycles.



On Wednesday morning in Febuary, very early in the day, himself headed off to work, as he had many times before, through a light dusting of snow. About half an hour later, he came back very slowly. He was on the 250 Ninja. He'd fallen and broken his fibula, as we found out later. He's decided it was the wrong bike. His leg is healing very slowly, and the doctor keeps saying that's normal, but he's been off work, except for a week and a half when he tried to go back in May. He's been planing to retire at the end of October. We've been seeing more movies and eating out with him slowed up like this. We're going to Midnight in Paris this afternoon.

The Rake

Recently my brothers and I sold Dad's house, including this rake. We used to ride on it, mostly because it worked better with a weight on it, and originally, Dad drove the tractor and Big Brother pulled a rope to lift the tines to dump the cut hay in long lines, which we would then rake into stacks with pitch forks.

After a few years BB was old enough to drive the tractor, and LB and I sat on the rake, but weren't as clever with the tine-lifting, so an extension was put on the rope, so it was still BB who had control of the tines. When all the hay was in rows, we pitched it into piles, then into a wagon which the tractor towed to the hay stack just outside the corral. Then we pitched the hay onto the stack, which we would feed to Trigger, our handsome horse. Most all the work was done by Big Brother, but Little Brother and I did just enough to have fun and get our pictures taken. BB had hay fever and so was red of face and eye and not photogenic. This was Not Fair, obviously.

Only my Big Brother could ride the horse, aside from Dad, because BB was smarter and more stubborn than Trigger. I rode the neighbor's horse, Colonel, which was well mannered and smaller, when he was out of town. We never put the hay in the barn, because that would have messed up our basketball court. Besides, there wasn't that much rain, and Dad and BB put a tarp over the hay for when it did. Colonel and Trigger were fast friends, and looked very handsome together, being the same color pintos, both with brown circle-spots high-lighting their tails. I like to think my brother and I looked swell riding our pretty horses down the country lane just for fun and to exercise the horses.

For Avus

The following is written by Himself regarding photo's in last post:
The cylinder head you're viewing is from the front cylinder--(#2)-- of a early example of Fabio Taglioni's fabulous 750 Ducati bevel drive V-twin. It is the first one I've dug into and am quite impressed with the castings, quality control and mainly the beautiful mechanical design. Wonderfully made silent bevel gears are everywhere. The desmodromic update came soon after, and honestly, I'm glad I'm not dealing with that complicated "improvement"! I probably don't have to tell you this engine was the precursor to all the Ducati twins built since!

Next on the agenda--2 Goldstar 500's--One a very rare racer--I couldn't afford even the insurance!!!

By the way, I'm guilty of reading over the shoulder of Vita and really enjoy your tales and beautiful images.

Nice "talking" to you,
Himself--or--HH

Like Humpty Dumpty

These photos are clues for Himself when he is ready to put all the bits back together again.

April Showers Bring Slugs

This morning Himself took Heidi out for her first "exercise" of the day a little before 5:30 a.m., and good thing, too, because it soon started pouring buckets. He took off for work on his 13th (not all of which run) motorcycle, a relatively modern Suzuki. Maybe from the 80s? Oh, dear. Anyway, it was wet when he left, and here I am having finished my two cups of coffee, still waiting for pages to load, and the clothes drier to quit. Why does itunes keep popping up? It's a mystery to me.

I felt guilty setting new plants out yesterday, because I'm sure the slugs probably ate them last night, and if not, they'll probably finish them off this morning. I believe I need to buy a new little blue star creeper, because I see no sign of it now. If only these showers would spread themselves out to cool off some of the hot summer nights, then probably the slugs and the flowers would fair better.

This little bird is sitting on her nest in the parking lot of the repair yard where Himself works. He took us by to see them. The enterprising employees set some traffic cones around the eggs to protect them from being crushed by huge and heavy construction equipment.

Katana Folly

Why? When some person, who knows how many owners ago, decided it would be just the thing to buy a bunch of "high performance" parts to soup up their Suzuki Katana, which already works perfectly, and goes faster than any amateur human ought to ride, what were they thinking? I believe it has been unridable ever since.

My brothers used to talk crazy about souping up engines of motorcycles, but it was all hypothetical, so I know a little about how that sort of thinking works, but it was just talk. An amusement to entertain themselves, which is where they are superior beings to whoever followed through on crazy talk by ruining this poor defenseless Suzuki Katana.

While Himself was off on one of yesterday's test rides, I got a call to bring the trailer and pick him up. Thank goodness he was all right. The throttle had stuck wide open when he was accelerating (just like a Toyota) and all he would say to me was that it went REALLY fast. He used the kill switch to stop the engine, and was able to just pull over to the side of the road. He thought maybe he would quit bad-mouthing kill switches.

Poor Himself! He tried so hard to make the thing work, fixing all sorts of mistakes and spending all his free time for the last month and a half to help out some kid who'd gotten stuck with someone else's mistakes, not to mention helping the once nice motorcycle, and he really had hopes. But no. The poor helpless defenseless motorcycle is still good for nothing except maybe drag racing.

Hello Everyone

Just wanted to say hi, and don't know if I can get this to work well enough to visit everyone. Everything takes forever to load, then the connection gets cut off, so it takes an extra forever to reconnect. Oh! Gotta go! Love ya!

Ducati and Ducati

Himself now has two friends with Ducatis (is that the plural form of Ducati?) who let him work on them. He's very excited about getting this one running again. I'm excited because the new tail light came from Cyprus, except it was mailed from Greece, and had lovely stamps on the package, which I got to keep to send to a stamp collecting cousin. More parts are on the way from all over. Doubt if I get more stamps, though.

The other Ducati in the background you've seen before, and is a genuine basket case, which I'd like to put out in the garden and build an arbor for, like the neighbor's statue under an arbor. What do you think?

We now have dial up internet service, so I hope it will let me post this. I'd better not go on too long, in fact, I just got cut off because someone tried to call in on the phone line, but hung up after two rings?

September

Saturday was a Game Day for OSU Football, and cars and motor homes were parked in every available spot all up and down the nearby streets, fields and lots, but we kept hearing jets flying over. Finally decided it was football fans flying in, so I asked Himself to take a photo when he went by the airport to test drive his Suitcase Honda. Earlier, when we passed by one of the fields full of motor homes, we saw a helicopter parked off to the side. My theory is it was used to taxi fans from the airport to the tailgate party.

Second photo is tank and handlebars of the BSA, almost like red patent leather shoes. He added a little clock to the steering damper and a club decal to the tank.

Last Ride of Summer

Himself declared this Lane County Tour to be the last this summer. He came home with these photos and couldn't say enough about what a great ride it was. Can you spot the U S Post Office in the top photo? I love finding these out of the way, off the beaten path post offices, and always fear they will close as cold blooded accountants implement cost cutting measures.

Notes About Outdoor Weddings

1) Make sure there's a level spot for the drums.
2) The band needs water, so remember to bring some.
3) Bring flashlights for packing up after dark.
4) It gets cold after dark, so bring a shawl.
5)

Music Man

Professor Harold Hill and Marion the Librarian have headed off into the sunset. It was fun playing in the orchestra pit with my friend directing, and other friends playing. Now we're looking forward to the community orchestra's next concert. Rehearsals start Sept 13. The last one didn't use any trombones, and only 1 trumpet, which was played by a guy who also played trombone in the pit of Music Man on the nights I had other things to do, and who generally plays French horn. They had a pianist who was the choirmaster for Music Man playing a Mozart piano concerto. A lovely concert, but no trombones.

I added a link. it's to the Vintagent blog, and very worth looking at. See it down there at the bottom?

Himself bought another motorcycle. It's a 100 cc little full size Honda called a Suitcase Honda. It is not a Motocompo. It is pretty cute. Pilots like them because they fit in their little airplanes. The Goldwing is still broken, but he has acquired some of the neccessary parts, I think.