A quick one while he's away

Random thing found on a blog. "Yes, I'm working, now f**k off please."

Car Hole? I think not....and garage progress

The ubiquitous Moe Syzlak once condemned Homer Simpson for using the word garage. Moe found term "car hole" a bit more to his blue-collar liking. During the planning of my garage, I have been trying to figure out how I can get a car to fit in there with all the tools, parts, and most importantly, motorcycles. I currently own three and two can be started and driven without much trouble. The other is a just basket away from a basket case. Barn fresh we like to call 'em. This puts me at a 2:3 ratio. Pretty good for a Mengel. The only one with a better ratio is my cousin and he only has one bike. He's just not trying. Anyhow, people keep saying to me how nice it will be to have a place to park the car in the winter. I just smile and say "Yeah, ...the car". I like the term car-hole but it won't exactly be a place for a car, unless it's hailing. As far as names go, I'll stick to garagemobile for now.
There are myriad projects spining around in my head for what I can do in the garage. Mostly I am resisting temtation to rip apart my 550 Honda. I have the urge to turn it into a cafe racer. My bike is very close to completely original, and it runs pretty good so I should just leave it alone. Of course it's ugly and needs a few things, but....no, just leave it alone.
The cool green bike here is also a 550 Honda built by a guy named Danger. Seriously. Check out the CB750cafe link over there for more of those and the story of that one. There are plenty of bikes around to turn into cafe racers. Actually, I would love to pick up a CB350 four and build a little cafe racer. Let me know if you have one for sale that runs with a title. ;)
I made some substantiall progress on the garage in the last few days. The walls are, more or less, square and I will have a new over head door installed by the end of the week. Lots of new lumber, pretty concrete, I cut myself with a razor knife, jabbed a staple into my finger, and ran a splinter under my thumbnail. Good times.

Portland Oregon

Lately things seem to keep pointing to Portland, Oregon for me. I've never been to Portland but I think maybe something is calling me there. Seems strange I know, but I found something today that seemed to seal the deal. Let me start at the beginning, I'm always looking for the job that's right for me. The job that when I get up in the morning I can't wait to get to. Something interesting to me, not just a place to go that generates cash so I can pay the mortgage. I could go on about this but the point here is Portland. Awhile back I was reading about Kenny Dreer and his revival of the Norton marque. "Hmmm", I thought, "That would be an interesting job, I wonder where old Kenny's shop is located?" Gladstone, Oregon it turns out. Gladstone, it would seem, is about 10 miles from downtown Portland. Moving on, I like to read. Even more than reading I enjoy the procurement of books. I was looking online for a book of bedtime stories for my lovely wife to replace her childhood copy that is a bit the worse for wear. I ran across Powell's books. Big old bookstore in Portland, Oregon. I signed up for thier email list and I quite like the content. I bought a few books. Powell's and I get along swimmingly. Hmmm, Portland connection number two. So, I get the new CycleWorld a few months ago and there on the cover is the C1. The C1 is a very innovative american made racing motorcycle that, thank god, has nothing to do with Harley Davidson. "Hmmm," I thought, "That would be an interesting job, I wonder where they are builidng that thing?" Yep, you guessed it. Portland, Oregon. I love bicycles. Especially hand made, lugged steel bicycles. I found this guy on the web named Sacha White (Sacha is a man's name) who builds these just gorgeous frames. His company is Vanilla Bicycles. I check out the site once in a while to see what's new and drool at Sacha's work. Boy if I could afford to buy a handmade bicycle I'd swing by Sacha's place and.....say where is Vanilla Bicycles located, anyway? Portland, Oregon. O.k., o.k., I give up, so I look into the city of Portland, Oregon. Check out the official city website, look at travel sites etc.... Looks like a nice enough place. Rains alot. Now, I'm a big Simpsons fan, I dont get crazy about it but I watch the show religiously. The shows creator is Matt Groening. Today I was looking at the Portland Tribune site and I see a little icon at the bottom of the page drawn in Matt's unique style and it says Matt Groening's Portland. It seems Mr. Groening's home town is.......wait for it.........wait for it...........Portland, Oregon. Alright, this is all just coincidence but Portland does seem like it's calling me, does it not? Oh and they have a hockey team called the WinterHawks. Complete clone of the Chicago Blackhawks but they are in the Western Hockey League. Another reason to go visit. So, I'm not pulling up stakes or anything but if I take a vacation to Portland at least I know there are plenty of things there that interest me.

A picture of nectar

The whole reason to own a garage is to have a place to work on, gawk at, and talk about motorcycles. I've been doing lot's of garage stuff but it occurred to me that I have no motorcycle photos. So I figured the best one to start with is one of the prettiest. The 1958 (ish) Ducati 200 Elite. Enjoy.

Just a quick note

To both of you who look at this site, you can now simply go to surlycamera.com and it will come right here to the ol bloggity blog. The blog address did not change so don't freak out-it's just that my domain name forwards to here because there is nothing there. It keeps getting easier and easier to be a nerd.

Positively Positive

O.K. no more of those crappy bitch posts. Well, for now, anyway. If you want negativity cruise on over to one of the relatives blogs. Here, or here. As you can see I changed the look of the old blog here. Looks better, no? I'll keep a postin on the H.M.S. garagemobile until she's done. I replaced the header above the garage door on Sat. The old one had seen better days. I went to Menard's to get a new door that was on sale but they were out of stock. I got a rain check which was apropos because when I got home it rained all freakin day. No biggie, I got to work inside because I have a garage now! The front of the building is kind of out of square so I have to pull it back into shape like I did with the side. I didnt want to do that with the sixty year old crappy lumber that was there. I can put in the new door with piece of mind that it (the door and the wall) won't come crashing down on me. That would be bad. Oh, I bought a book on turning a plain old car hole into the ultimate garage. It's called, oddly enough, The Ultimate Garage Handbook. It goes along nicely with the other book I have; How To Set Up Your Motorcycle Workshop. The Ultimate Garage fills in the gaps that the Motorcycle Workshop book left out and is definitely aimed at car guys. If anyone is reading this and has more airfilters than dress clothes, check out the books. You will find something of use in there. I finished off the last of the birthday cake from the weekend so I'm gonna go bust ass now. That sounded rude. What I meant is go outside and work hard on the garage project.

I can't keep quiet any longer

There is alot of talk about blogs lately. Mostly about people who use their blog to express thier political beliefs. My blog wont be like that. It's none of your fucking buisness what I believe. Left wing, right wing......I'll take a big ass plate of both, covered in Frank's. Dont get me wrong, if someone wants to say they are this or that or compain about the Pres. or Extoll the virtues of the Pres., well that's fine, really. This is a free country so rock on. There is too much division in this country and it stems from everyone wanting to be this or that. They are all fucking sheep. A bunch of lemmings who are driving us all off the cliff. Think for yourselves, morons. When the Pres. does something you dont like, it's o.k to not like it. You can type it into your blog. It doesnt make you a Democrat. If you own a gun, it doesn't make you a Republican. Screaming "I'm a hard core (democrat/republican)!" makes you a sheep. I'm going to leave this topic right here. If you see a link to something on here and it's political take it or leave it. Make up your own mind.

For some reason, after I loaded the picture of Slayer helping me out in the garage, I couldn't add anymore pictures. Try as I might, it just wouldn't work. So here are the pics of the chain pulling the garage back into shape. Read the last post for all the poop. Rock on.

Parallelograge

My last post was written the day we moved the garagemobile. I was exhausted when I wrote that so the post wasn't exactly witty or entertaining. Well no guarantees with this one but I'll do my best. I just came in from fixing the out of square problem. The front of the garage was leaning out quite a bit. The short version is I pulled it back square with a comalong and a chain.
The long version consists of multiple tries, broken boards, bent screws, lots of sweat and Slayer.
Now, it's not like Kerry King and Jeff Hanneman came by with some advice on used garage repair but I was listening to the extremely cheesy Slayer Live: Decade of Agression. Not a bad album but.....I digress. I fabbed up some things to attach the chain hooks to the building with earlier this week. I started by bolting these to the sill plate on one side and the top plate on the other. Slap the chain on em, comalong in the middle, start pulling. I just about pulled the front wall in. The side wall's still crooked. O.K. try again. At this point I decide to switch from crappy classic rock on the radio to the Slayer. I move the chain closer to the corners and put a board on the outside to keep from pulling the wall down. Sounds easy, but took a lot of work pulling the siding boards down, cutting a slot in the board, putting the board up......Slap the chain on em, comalong in the middle, start pulling. I rip the bolts out of the pulling thingy that's bolted to the sill plate. O.K. I need a board on the outside on BOTH ends. Grab another board, lay it out, drill, saw, pull some more siding, screw the board in, slap the chain on em, comalong in the middle, start pulling. Again. This time it works. I pull a little, let it sit, pull a little, let it sit, lather rinse repeat. By this time I'm wringing with sweat tired and I think I have some fiberglass in my eye. Oh, and sick of Slayer. HA! but the garage is pretty damn square now. Almost as good as a Danley. I screwed some fresh corner braces in and took the tension off the chain.

Wow. We did it.

The garage is on it's foundation. We got up bright and shiny early I met the NIPSCO guy who dropped the power line for us. We jacked her up and pushed it up on the slab, piece of cake. Lining up the bolts and setting it down, well that took about 4 hours. It was lots of work but I had lots of help, Thanks again guys! There is still a ton of work to do, after all the garage is 60 years old. The garage has a little lean that I have to fix, it's dirty, there's a bunch of bracing I have to remove, I have to put the doors back on and make them open and shut, and I still have to pour a concrete apron and back fill some more. Oh yeah, it could use a new roof too.
I have a garage! Yay.
On the other side of the fence, Bill got the walls up and it looks superb. He's gonna have one nice car hole. Sounds dirty.

Music Music Music

I love music. I have many interests, (too fucking many, ask my wife) but music is up there in the top 5. I play, or used to play, the drums. I always have the radio on in the car. I used to listen to music at work but I'm not allowed anymore because people in machine shops are fucking babies, but that's another rant altogether. So in my shotgun approach to life, I bounce around from hobby to hobby and back again. I'll be really into photography (hence the name of this blog), and then the new CycleWorld shows up in the mail and I'm all tweaked on motorcycles again. Well this past weekend was Lollapalooza. I've been to Lallapalooza in the past but I missed it this year out of sloth/poverty. That brings me to the latest hobby hop. I'm working on the garage, preparing for the final move and I hear a report from Lollapalooza on the old walkman and Richard Milne starts talking about the Pixies and Dinosaur Jr. THE PIXIES AND DINOSAUR JR.! O.K., now I'm pissed. I knew there were going to be 60 ish bands there but I heard names like Liz Phair, Weezer, etc.... who gives a rats ass. Dinosaur Jr. is one of my all time faves. They were actually disbanded and J. Mascis had a new deal with a new name blah,blah,blah...Well apparently the original lineup is playing some dates and might start recording. Man, I feel left out. I checked out the full lineup and there were some cool bands playing I would have loved to see. Oh, well I would have baked my brain out there anyway. After all it was a for sure 102 degrees. On a lighter note, someone hooked me up with a kickass Sansui 7070 reciever for the house so I can put Pop's old 5050 in the garagemobile. If you know what these are you will think this is cool, if you dont, forget it. Nerdy stereo shit. I'll put up some music links when I get a chance. In summation, I am ready to rock and roll children. And rock and I shall.

The Nerd Bird and terminology update

Our man Wade supplied us with some bitchin aerial photographs from the Nerd Bird. The Nerd Bird is Wade's powered parachute. We've got a before and an after. The before picture is from Februaryish. Also, I looked up the sole/sill plate difference as I'm sure everyone was real worried about it. Yeah, all two of you who read this. So, a sill plate is the board that contacts the sill or foundation of the building and the rest of the structure sits on top of it. The sole plate is the bottom board of the wall that sits on the floor. For a garage like mine or Bill's, the terms are pretty much interchangeable. For a house, you would have the sill plate with the floor joists sitting on top of it, and then the sole plate sitting on top of the joists.
Whatever, I know no one gives a crap.

Picture of a monkey

Chimpanzee with a Glock. Need I say more?

Dirt is not dirt cheap, or why I hate mulberry trees.

Garage update. The point of this blog was not for the garage but it's such an interesting project, for me at least, that its become the garage chronicles. That's okay because it is pretty much all I think about at present. So, now for the boring stuff.
The concrete is dry enough to work around/on, so I started backfilling. I put a drain tile around the slab and ordered 12 tons of good ol' Indiana limestone. The tile (a plastic tube) is to keep water away from the foundation. Water bad for structure. GRRRRRRR. Sorry lapsed into frankenstein. Anyway, the tile needs to be surrounded by gravel so I put 12 tons of gravel around the slab. I shoveled quite a bit and Amy was a huge help also. Malcolm sat on the slab and watched. He's not lazy He's an infant. I needed stone to bring the driveway level up to the front of the slab and the initial pile I ordered wasn't enough, so I ordered another 5 ton. This stuff is $14.00 a ton. That adds up fast when you need all that stone. Of course I need to cover all the stone around the slab with dirt. Pulverized black dirt is also $14.00 a ton. Dirt cheap my ass. It's looking good though.
Oh, yeah the mulberry. I don't actually hate mulberry trees, just this particular one. I have one in the front yard that's pretty cool. The mulberry tree in question is growing up through the fence along the driveway and is hanging over the driveway. In the past, this was a place for birds to hang out, eat mulberrys and then poop them all over the cars parked nearby. I know they do it on purpose-sadistic bastards. Ok, I digress. The mulberry tree is hanging over the driveway enough that it will be in the way of the garage rolling up onto the slab. I didn't kill the tree or anything I just cut the branches that blocked the safe egress of the garagemobile. I'm not into indiscriminate tree killing. I dont hug em' either, don't get any ideas.
There is not really much left to do before moving the garagemobile (I like that term, garagmobile). I'm going to add a sole/sill plate. I dont really know if the term is sole plate or sill plate. I'll look it up. I'm going to add pressure treated boards to the bottom of the garage. That is one 2x6 all the way around for a little support/bug deterrent/piece of mind.... Tonight I bought the lumber. New bundles of treated lumber are always super wet, so I stacked em' on the slab to dry. I'm not sure when to move the garage, the concrete guy said a month. I'ts been a week. The truth lies somewhere in between. More to come....

We've got mud

With the vacation over it's time to start working at the garage a little more frequently. Last night the concrete came and we poured the slab. Thanks Justin. I was a little nervous about the concrete as I ordered just enough. Luckily we were ok and the floor looks great. Justin worked his ass off finishing. It rained on the slab last night late, but I dont think it will hurt it and anyway will keep it cool and not cure too fast. We need an inspection and then I can start backfilling. All the pics of the garage on this blog, so far, have been taken by the lovely and talented Mrs. Monroe, by the way. Thanks Amy.

Garage progress

I've been on "vacation" all week and we got a ton of work done on the mobile garage. Last Sat. we tag teamed the forms (don't forget Bill's building a garage too, remember Bill?) and made huge progress. By Wed. We were ready for pre-pour inspections. On Thursday the inspector came by and was ready to red tag us both. Luckily, Bill and I married the coolest chicks on the block and they set him straight. Green tags all around-rockin' good news. Last evening we pulled a post from my fence so the 70,000# concrete truck (it's not a cement truck, cement is an ingredient) could drive around my back yard and further fuck up the lawn. This would be in addition to the 5 dump trucks that shoe-horned themselves through that 10' wide gate. The post (remember the post?) had 3' of concrete and a good 2' more of post below that. That baby was in there. Thanks to Bill and the big ol' jack. Soooooo..... bright and early this mornin a construction crew and a big red concrete truck showed up and we commenced a shovelin'.
All went well and the floor looks lovely.Thanks for the samiches Amy. It's got this cool fiberglass mesh to strengthen the concrete and it sticks out of the floor. Fuzzy. We're gonna pour mine on Monday. I cant wait to get this garage set down on the new floor. I'll get the pics up soon.

The garage has a new home

The garage move went well on Sat. At 8:00 A.M. we started working and by 10:15,in true hillbilly fashion, the garage was in the driveway sitting on blocks. That thing never made a peep when we were jacking it. No creaking or groaning. We just jacked it up and pushed, yes pushed, it out into the street and backed it down the driveway. No one was injured and the only little problem was a piece of siding and part of a downspout came off. After we set her down Bill grabbed the basketball and shot a few hoops but I made the first bucket. I'm taking that as a good sign. There is still a ton of work to do, including puring a concrete foundation and floor and moving the garage into position again. On Sun. I pulled out the fence that was in the way of the final move. Miles to go before we sleep.
Thanks to all the people who showed up and helped, and loaned us equipment and gave us advice.

Those pictures of it in the street are pretty trippy eh? Oh, and by the way, it was a hundred damn degrees while we were doing this.

Surly

Soldier, brother, son, friend

SPC Nick Idalski was killed in Iraq early this week.
Tonight he came home to Crown Point.
Rest in Peace Nick.

Garage almost ready to roll.....literally

After several days of frantic thrashing on the garage we got it just about ready to roll. Someone was kind enough to loan us a trailer but it was sort of, well....... incomplete. It's basically a frame with no deck to speak of. My father and I built a frame from some old house trailer beams. He's got a broken collar bone and still helps out! So last night I installed half of the trailer deck, the other half will be there tonight. Bill and I, (Bill's the neighbor with the garage) installed 2x12 beams running across the span of the garage for the trailer to sit on, as well as, cross bracing. After seeing all that lumber in there I feel a little better, it looks pretty stout! We've got a pile of jacks and some other assorted doo-dad's, a big pile of lumber, a tractor on the way to actually pull the thing. Tonight is Friday and there still is alot to do. The big move is Saturday morning. Man I hope this works. It's gonna sit in my driveway until I get a foundation built for it. That wont be as interesting but I'll still post the progress. I hope tonight I can add pics to these posts.
Rock on.

Doing some crazy shit

I'm a garage guy. As a kid I grew up in the garage. I have a garage tan. When I bought my first house (the only one I have bought so far) it had no garage. What was I thinking? Well, thanks to my buddy Bill, I'm now going to have a garage. The cheap hard way. You see, Bill is building a new garage, or car hole for you less sophisticated types. He offered to help me move his old garage over to my house. That's one hell of a garage sale, brother! I'm scared to death about moving this thing, but I think it will work. I'm also happier than a puppy with two peters about ending the 6 year cycle without a garage. I plan on taking lots of pics of the big move, so I'll post some here if my crappy digicam holds out.
Fuck yeah, people-fuck yeah.

Oh Yeah, I changed the links- added a few cool ones.