Happy Halloween!

Man, I'm freakin' wired

The garagemobile is all wired. Conduit bent, wires pulled, switched outlets, the whole nine yards. You can walk in and flip a switch for the lights to come on. The garage door opener has power to it, I have a light over the entry door, I can plug in my Battery Tender and the Makita charger. Freakin sweet. I still need to do quite a few outdoor things to the ol building but I'm at the mercy of Mother nature and Father time on that one. That means I can start working on the motorcycles again. I was running everything in the garage with extension cords.
This is the "gut pile" of extension cords I had. Now I have all the same things as before, and then some, plugged in without any extension cords and it's clearly much safer.
I took the cover off the Ducati Falcon 50 this morning to take advantage of the lovely light and snapped a couple artsy-fartsies. Speaking of photography, I do a bit of photography as a hobby or at least I did before my son was born. I was checking out my usual web-haunts and Maurice, the Flyin Dutchman had a link to Scott Pommier's site. Scott is a photographer who shoots mostly for skateboarding mags but has some very cool motorcycling pictures as well. I urge you to check out his work. Don't miss the skateboarding stuff, while the content may not be your cup of mead the quality of the photographs is top notch. The photo below was stolen from his site, click on it to go to his galleries.
This picture, while probably designed to isnpire the purchase of $850.00 boots, makes me want to find a 350 Honda or something equivalent and build a ultra-cheap rat cafe racer. I'm gonna go get the local auto finder........

How I learned to love the brown

I was very tempted to use "back in black" as the title of the post but I thought a little obscure Dr. Strangelove reference would be better. Like I've said before, nothing like alienating people to build readership. I've never been a fan of the working vacation due to the problem of not getting a third of what you planned done. This week has been no exception but I knew the job was dangerous when I took it. I got cable, phone, and POWER, all in the garagemobile this week. The lighting for the above picture was provided by lights plugged into an outlet. There were no extention cords running through the wall to the house for this. I am far from done but great strides have been made. You can see behind the Honda a new window and a breaker box with breakers in it....that work. Woo fricken Hoo. I actually watched two or three episodes of Hawaii Five-O this week in the garagemobile without having to adjust the damn rabbit ears. A man of Steve McGarrett's prestige would not stand for that. That guy's a badass, but I digress. Point is, cable + power = TV in the garagemobile. Purists would argue the garage is no place for a television but I'll tell em what McGarrett says "I don't answer to anyone but the governor". Yeah, I'm losin' it man, I need to go back to work. On to the black.................
I got my bodywork for the Honda finally. It's black and looks good. Of course there is alot to do to get it all done and as I expected the nice paint magnifies the rest of the flaws. Let's not dwell on the negative. The garage is now a more comfortable place to work and I can get going on the bike projects. That's the coolest thing of my week.

These pics are just for reference or perhaps inspiration.

Hunert Car Pileup

We made it to the show today and it was boss. The weather was glorious and the show was all that I thought it should have been. There were hundreds of cars in the show and not one that wasn't worth notice. From super well engineered-neato stuff to rusty rattle traps. Shiny paint, huge bass-boat flake, flat black, no-paint- all the cool traditional rod treatments were present. There were some cool scoots there too, including an H-D Sprint not unlike mine and a Nimbus. When was the last time you saw a Nimbus? No, I'd never heard of one either. The guy rode it in! I had some more pics but a computer glitch vanished a few including a K-model pre-Sportster with a dirt track style to it. Bummer. I got many more pics with the film camera, all in black and white. Perhaps I'll get the film souped and scan some negs. Don't hold your breath. This was for sure, THE COOLEST THING OF THE WEEK. So there's your coolest for the second week of Oct., 2006. Pics below. Rock on.

Hunnert Car Pileup pics

Ahhhh....

At 4:30 today I started my vacation. A whole week of doing whatever I feel like. I'm going to try to get a few projects done around the house and perhaps do something motorcycley. I'm going to the Hunnert Car Pileup tomorrow with the Chief so hopefully I'll have some cool rat rod pics for ya'll. It snowed here on Wed. so we're going to freeze our asses but I saw a guy on a KLX650 on the way home from work today and my neigbor rode his V-Rod to work too. 30 degrees and still riding, gotta love that. Stay tuned.

New feature?

I was reading the new Cycle World, as I'm wont to do, and I had an epiphany. After I cleaned that up, I decided to debut a new feature here at Still Life. The coolest thing of the week. Not a ton of fanfare and hoopla but perhaps it will get me to the 'puter and actually blog. As a show of good faith, I will not only give you one now I will try to double up if I fall behind. You may guess the coolness will be primarily motorcycles but since I (as time allows) write for Themotorcyclegroup.com also this site is not limited to bikes. That means I'm saving the best bikey bits for over there. Without further ado, the coolest thing of the week for the first week of Oct. 2006.
The Bimota Tesi 2D. The Bimota name has been around a while taking existing companies powerplants and doing thier best to improve on the sporting motorcycle. They dont get much more exotic than this. The Tesi has been the most forward thinking, technologically, of all the Bimotas. The new Tesi 2D is no exception. I won't be shopping for one anytime soon as the $40,000 price tag is (sadly) just outside what I have to spend. Also, check out the Vyrus Variant a brother to the Bimota. **I also made an update to the post below.**

Therapy

The weather here in the "Region" (that's what the locals call NW Indiana) has turned to the perfect riding weather. When it's not raining, of course. Fall is my absolute favorite season. I've got the itch to ride even more now than ever. I took my buddies DR350 for a test ride yesterday and that was quite therapeutic. Not a "hey, I might buy this" test ride but a "hey, I just replaced the clutch in the bike and I have to fix the exhaust on my truck so why don't you take it for a test ride" test ride. The clutch works just fine. On a related note, I put out some feelers for a spare tank for my Honda so perhaps I can just get her on the road regardless of paint. Whatever. The Single Overhead Cam website has started a "bike of the month" contest and the winners are stellar. The 750 above is the July(?) winner. I dig the pipes. They are modified stockers. He whacked the ends off, welded in some aftermarket baffles and made some stainless heat shields. Very nice.
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Update - I called the home of my friend who has my paintwork to ask him to bring it back to me at our next jam (he's in my band). I was getting tired of waiting and Gymi was taunting me ;) Perhaps it was a stroke of luck but I talked to his significant other who was equally fed up with the lack of progress on the paint. Perhaps she put on her best harpy voice or perhaps he realized that he is my friend and is being a pain in the ass. Whatever the impetus was, I was told I will have my shit back, delivered to my house, next weekend. "That's a promise" exact quote. We'll see.