Oh, joy.  This will let me post a photo.  This is one of my favorites, taken by the happy elf in the corner.  It's the trombone section of the Community Band at our holiday concert in December.  Getting to play with people is the most fun I get, and three of these, plus an unpictured tuba also play in our trombone quartet.  Yes, that's five people, but we play quartet music, and the tuba player plays her bass trombone.

It's been raining all year (2023) but because there was such a drought, rain is welcome.  

I just ordered a Classic Motorcycles calendar, which is a month late, but if late is better than never, it's about time.  When I go to lunch with my friends, more and more we discuss how we're all falling apart.  We talk about what books are worth reading, but also how readable the font size is.  We all like the Large Print Editions.  

Now that you know everything, I'll go away again.

Spring Bulbs Bloom

 I'd post a photo of spring bulbs blooming with ducks sleeping, but there's been a change and it's over my head.  Ukraine war is on the news, so I guess I'll go watch what's going on.

More Action on Home Front

                                                  

I dug this old poster from the 60s out of the closet.  I asked the daughter if she wanted it, but she politely said nothing.  I don't think she even knows who all the bands are.  When I was a kid my dad drove us down to San Francisco every spring break to visit his mom who had a cafe there named Lucky Strick's.  There is no reference to it in the poster.


As usual I don't really know what I'm talking about, but I was very sad when my knee replacement surgery scheduled for last Thursday was cancelled.  But wait!  It's rescheduled for Oct 18, and I get another month to practice doing all those exercises that come with new knees.  Soon I must be off to the gym.

This summer our daughter bought a house.  Hooray!  So we were off seeing their house on a stormy windy day, and when we came home, this is what we found at our house.  Poor tree was half dead and black inside, and is all gone now.  We planted that tree, and chose it for it's shape and size, which was perfect for shading the deck on hot sunny summer days.  I have noticed as I age that hot sunny days are really pretty nice, and maybe it's OK not to have shade for the deck.

Sunny Weather

 Nice warm sunny bench at the Rose Garden.  No pork pie and tea, though.  The plumber is here and is installing a toilet and faucets.  That's it from here!

One Thing and Another

 Here's what our front yard looks like right now, except that trailer is a lot fuller.  The young carpenter who's been doing most of the work is waiting for the inspector, who didn't show up, so he's gone off to another job and will check back.  The carpenter is a very impressive worker, and reminds me of HH when he was fixing other people's vehicles, all go go go, and a good job, too.  Here's another photo:

That's our bathroom, with no working parts, except a light.  The door is now in that trailer in the front yard.  We have to make do with the laundry room.  At least we have electricity and water.  A lot of friends and relatives, not to mention strangers in our state have been weeks without electricity.  Most of them have generators so they can get water to their animals, because most of them have animals, which is why they live in outlying areas slow to have their power restored after storms knock down trees and knock out power, and they need power to bring water up from the wells.  We are really lucky to have the luxury of water and light.  

This bathroom destruction is in aid of my continuing deterioration, but I am planning to eventually get a new fake knee, and do better with it than my mother-in-law did.  I'm thinking maybe a year from now would be a good time, but meanwhile, my friends have advised me there are preparatory exercises I can do.  

On another track, here's HH displaying his new sash, a HD wheel rim he carried back from his supplier's on a very cold day back in January.  He popped in to show it off.  It took him a while to lace the spokes,  and he he'd to redo it, until it was right.  Then what did he do?  He fixed some oil leak.  Had to take the transmission apart to replace a seal.  Now everything is perfect and he's never experienced such perfection.  Every time he rides his 1942 45-inch Harley, he exclaims about how perfect and never better it is.

What In the World?

 Just hanging around minding our own business, because we're supposed to stay home and keep our germs, if we have any, to ourselves.  We don't seem to have any germs, but I got a shot of cortisone in my knee last week, and they gave me drugs that I don't like, and some I do.  Meanwhile, outside, the wind picked up and smoke from fires burning all over Oregon blew in.

This is odd.  The angle or something makes our yard look huge, but it's not.  

Last month, we had a nice drive in the funny little Minx.

What beautiful blue skies we had this summer.

We stopped at the Country Store for refreshing beverages.

                                              The two cars below are my favorites in the group.

We wore masks and stayed away from each other, and had an almost normal visit.  

Nothing Happening Here

I'm way too slow to catch the humming birds that visit.  I feel lucky just to get a glimpse of them!

The blue bird has a friend and they seem to enjoy sitting on the fence while hunting for bugs.  They trade turns swooping down to the lawn below.  Another bird who likes this corner spot is the scrub jay, which is also a beautiful blue.  Is it a coincidence?

 This female Mallard duck enjoyed our yard as long as we had water in the ditch, but on this day, she accidentally landed on the wrong side of the fence, and quacked and quacked, and the male came to the outside of the fence, and they followed each other on their own side until Hero Husband decided to herd her out through the gate, which was 75 feet away (25 feet one way, and 50 feet another.)  Runway too short for duck take-off.  She did not enjoy the herding, but was very glad to get out of the back yard, and mister duck was also de-stressed.

 The hawks and falcons were happy to visit and hunt while the field across the street was mowed.  Now the grass is 6 feet high and the only hunters are cats, and we haven't seen hawks in the trees.

 This robin was an active bather who shares the bath with other birds.  Watching them splash and fidget and throw water is about the most fun we get when we aren't reading.  Oh, well, that's an exaggeration.  HH still has 8 old motorcycles needing their exercise.  I think the B-31 BSA just got home.

Hanging Out

 The sky is blue.  The temperature warm.  The bikes need some exercise.  These are four of the five lucky bikes that got to go out today.

 Campus is pretty well deserted.  A passing policeman waved.  The neighbor stopped by the end of the driveway to say he got his lawnmower running.

 We popped over to the daughter's house to return a shopping bag.  Just left it hanging on the doorknob.  No visiting.

Planted the flowers.  Left two baskets in the garage because there weren't enough flowers to go around.  The front basket was large, and used more than its fair share.  Well.  I wonder what we'll do now.

Honda CB250 Dream Comes Back to Life

The neighbors all know that HH likes old motorcycles, so when one was moving away, he looked at the rusty old thing he was intending to get around to someday, and decided that instead of hauling it with him to his new home east of the mountains,  he'd see if he could get HH to re-home it.  Such a worthy project it turned out to be!  HH would say, "It keeps me off the streets."

Here it is.  Not looking like much, but potential was there.  I think he must have started polishing a little, just to see what his chances were.

What a sad little mite.  But many, many hours of polishing and spoke shining up, and chain cleaning and everything else cleaning, and painting, and what a busy boy he was.  He'd come in and tell me just what he'd done that day, and I was generally on my way somewhere, so didn't properly record his progress, which was steadily coming along.  The wiring was particularly tricky.

That certainly took a while.  Steady work all spring and most of summer, I'm thinking, but memory is pretty protean.  He was very excited because He had the tires laying around already with nothing to go with them until this.  Serendipity!  Next the engine.

Isn't that a little sweetie-pie?  There was all sorts of attachment things, each coming with it's own unique problem and solution.  Alas, I can't remember them all.

Now he says when he gets older and frailer, this will be the last bike he sells, because it is perfection. Light, smooth, fast, economical.  There's a lot to recommend it.  Sorry I took so long to show it off.

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Hillman Breaks Down, Gets Fixed

Here I was, happily finishing up the shopping after lunch with friends when the phone in my pocket rings.  It's HH, he's wondering if I can stop by the parking lot he's broken down in on my way home.

 I discovered he wanted me to tow him home.  Since the car'd been giving him trouble, he was prepared with a big heavy-duty tow rope.  The rope was so big and strong, and very very long, that it came undone twice on the way home.  I don't understand why it is so long.

He ordered parts to rebuild the carburetor, and declared a diaphragm in the carburetor had been installed upside down, though it still seemed to work, but he turned it over.  The new parts didn't fix the stall problem, so he rebuilt the distributor with parts he already had.  Here's the lighting system he set up using his handy dandy cymbal stand.  Now it works and we've been running all our errands all week in it for testing purposes.

                                                                         A cymbal stand is a very useful and versatile tool for a mechanic. The rest of his drum kit is out of the closet now, since I got rid of my mom's pump organ.

Autumn in Oregon

Photo of Minx is from an early October drive through the wildlife sanctuary.  Still haven't identified the hawk we saw there.

 Later in the month we picked up the Laverda from the museum where it spent the summer on display.  It's nice to have it back home.  

 The leaves turn brilliant to ensure that we miss them when they go.  Need raking every day!  Soon the tree will be bald.  We planted this to replace a short-lived Pacific pine, and it shot up, as you see.

 We heard the Cannonball Run this year would be from Portland to Portland, and would stop in The Dalles on Sept 22, so we made our biggest trip this year (overnight) to go see the motorcycles.  They were all built pre-1929, but for this trip, they had battery-packs powering LED lights.  See the belt drive?  See the plunger?  We had a lovely time.

 The man with this Fiat 600 saw our Hillman in the driveway and stopped by to chat, and said he'd come back with his Fiat, and he did.  The doors open front to back.  What a little cutie!

Window Seal Success

With the successful installation of the window seal, we started driving the Minx farther afield.  There was a car show in Brooks at the Vintage Car and Motorcycle Museum where the Laverda is for the summer,  so we took the minx there.  I was delighted to see this 1946 Hillman Minx with the suicide 

doors.

You can just see the bottom of a Studebaker sign on the wall above many lovely old cars, and the blue hood-like thing over the top of the Minx hood is on a Leyland tractor.  Who knew?  Not me.

I heard a nice putt-putt sound as this 1914 Buick Touring Car drove up and parked a Corvette and a Cougar away from our 1960 Minx.  (See the Minx below with it's hood up just past the little red Corvette?  Yes, the red bits are what you can see of a 1958 Corvette convertible.)

This Corvair Corsa would have my Corvair brother drooling, but he didn't come down to Brooks, so didn't see it.  That blue flash in back is HH's Laverda.  (I get a thrill just seeing it.)

HH covets this 1940 Triumph Speed Twin, which spent the war years (WWII) and some years after leaning up against a tree out in the weather.

Here's the Best in Show bike from the LaMay Museum.  

And here are a couple more bikes from the Northwest Vintage Car and Motorcycle Museum display.

After the show weekend, we went to Nashville in the Hillman, where it met an Irishman who was thrilled to see it, and his son-in-law, also delighted, who went home to get  his wife's '57 Chevy.  

The original colors were a two-tone cream above and pink below.  Very popular at the time.

Test Drives

This is the Sunbeam after it's test drive.  Everything is working fine, except the old carburetor, but he can deal with it.  I see that other vehicles have shift quadrants, but not like this one.

The day before the shift quadrant was installed in the Sunbeam S7, he put a star hub, which also came in a box in the mail, in the Harley 45.  Luckily, the sun was out both days and both bikes got a test drive.

Last week there was also a day of sun, so all these got trips to the gas station for a top up.

Here's the other side of the Sunbeam after it's successful test ride.  Test drive.  Well, the bike didn't drive itself!

And here's another sun/shade shot of the 45 flathead.  I sure like the way it looks without bags, even if it does have the mounting brackets mucking up the line of the rear fender.