Hippie

But we all love him.

It's a very sheet metal Christmas Charlie Brown!

When I was a wee lad my Dad made a kid-sized box for me to put his tools in and lose all over the yard so he could hit them with the lawn mower. This worked like a charm. My Father, among other things, is a weldor so he made mine from steel and welded it together. I still have and use it. I figured my boy needed a similar vessel so I constructed one from aluminum. The ends were hammered using standard stretching techniques on the top radius and the angled radii were just hammered over a hammer-form. The rest was bent using a brake. The ends of the box were riveted in place using regular hammered rivet construction. Old timey aircraft (or hot rod, if you prefer) construction. You may notice a weld or two, The Old Man welded a couple spots for me due to the nature of my design- first attempt, you see. The picture below shows the pieces before riveting and polishing. I did only minimal polishing as the boy is not yet two and I'm sure he'll be hard on it. The black marks are soot from annealing, hammering on metal causes the material to work harden. After hammering for awhile you need to anneal the metal to soften it up so it does not fatigue and crack. This is especially important with aluminum. The handle was covered with cloth handlebar tape. There it is, the boy's new box. Cool huh?
I hope you all have a real nice Christmas and I'm sure Santa will be super generous! I'm hoping for a new V-Strom under the tree, I won't hold my breath. Rock on.

It'll make you feel better

My wife was telling me all about the Spike Feresten show that I missed while at the fourth annual BiggLbs Christmas party last night. The party was cool, the band rocked this year and even the drummer sounded good. Too bad Mrs. Surly couldn't make it. Anywhoo, I cruised on over to YouTube and found the Spike Feresten clip in question. (Just do a search, you'll find it - they're all good). I new YouTube had some cool stuff but I wasn't a real convert until I saw this. Like most bloggers I don't have an original thought today just re-hashing some other funny internet stuff.
Really, funny other stuff.

This is cool

Bicycle trials in Prague. 15 min video of some Czech dudes with amazing balance and skill.

Life is good

I haven't had time to write anything motorcycle related. With winter (and the Holidays) having set in around here other things have taken priority. Mrs. Surly made it abundantly clear that blogging has nothing to do with parenting or any other husbandly duties. Rather than have her put a Croc in my ass I need to get some things done around ol' Surlyville. By that, I don't mean any actual reptile-rectal insertion but get kicked with an overpriced foam shoe in my lazy ass. She's a good woman and that's just why I married her. Moving on, I was fortunate enough to have a four day weekend over Thanksgiving and the weather was killer so I got another wall of the garage sided. Now the view through the Robitussin and window crayons is a bit nicer.
Two down, two to go. I got a heater that does a real good job of keeping the building warm too, so I can get out there and work in this cold somewhat comfortably. I'm making a cool little X-mas gift for my boy, I'll post that when it's done. We went to the company Christmas shin-dig last night and had a grand old time. Big ass filet, ice sculpture, fancy desserts with the edible company logo in chocolate, and free booze. You'll notice the lovely Mrs. Surly (far left) and the lovely Mrs. Wilson modeling the dessert. This morning I'm greatful that I don't have a hangover, chalk another one up for not drinking. I broke down and bought myself another digital camera. I went with a relaltively cheap model because it will only be used for my blog shots and the odd ebay sales and most importantly I have about twenty film cameras and bringing another camera home is tough to justify. I have been trying to get back to my photography lately. I souped about a dozen rolls of film that were accumulating and I'm working on getting my view camera outfit a bit more workable. My thoughts have been a bit more contemplative lately, as well. I've been reading some philosophy which helps the A.D.D. out quite a bit, believe it or not. Using the view camera goes along with this as the entire process demands that you slow down. No snapping away and hope for the best. I'd like to post some pics here other than the odd snap you normally see. Perhaps over at my flickr page too, but for now, no time etc....
Things are good around here, just busy. Still Life with Cranston Ritchie is not going away, stay tuned.