Sturgis Quickie!

I've never been to Sturgis nor had I planned on going at any point in the near future. Not that I don't want to go, but more that I'm usually too broke to afford how spendy it is there, let alone taking time off work. I'm honestly not a big fan of big bike rallies, not that there's anything wrong with them, it's just not my cup of tea. I bought my bike to ride it, not to spend days walking around a rally, to me that's an incredible waste of good riding time.

Monday night, Dan, one of my best friends called, which in itself was a little strange. Dan and I rarely ever call each other, we usually just show up at each others house once in a while, sit around, shoot the shit, maybe get a few miles in. Dan has an '02 Sporty 1200 Custom, but with a young family, riding time is scarce. Dan says, "My wife is going to Vegas with her mom, I'm not going, so I have a chance for a road trip. I've got an idea and I can't think of anyone else I'd rather have on the trip." Without thinking, I say, "Sure! I'm in. Where are we going?" He says, "Sturgis." He caught me off guard with that. He must've known it too, he says, "Dude, I'm just as broke as you, but this'll be cheap. We ride up, get an "I rode mine" patch, turn around and head home. $80 in gas and we'll strap a tent to the bikes and sleep wherever, we got 3 days, no missed time at work and a hell of a road trip." I say, "This is about a 1300 mile trip." He says, "Yup, it'll be awesome." All right. I'm in! Next Friday can't get here fast enough!!

P.S.A.

Public Service Announcement. I rarely do anything like a PSA, but today I started a relatively long, extremely painful process. Dental reconstruction. Relativity to 2 wheels? That's where my dental down-swing begins. I think I was about 11 years old, I had been riding a little dirt bike(mid 70's Yamaha GT 80 Enduro)for about 2 years, thought I was pretty hot shit, lol! I went to spend a week with my cousins in Denver Co., they were just a couple years older than me and they rode dirt bikes too. One day my oldest cousin took me to their local motocross track. I was in heaven! Growing up on a farm in Iowa mx tracks were something I only dreamed of! Now this track was still under construction, so my cousin tells me to stay off the inside of the track because it dangerous. Me, being the know-it-all 11 year old I was took off for the inside 1st thing. I don't really remember what bike it was, but it was my cousins little Suzuki dirt bike. I got rolling on what was supposed to be "Off-limits", took a couple small jumps, getting comfortable. I see one that just has my name on it, I set it up, hit it just right, and as I'm landing, my back wheel hits terra firma and my front end goes off the edge of a 6 foot wall into a hole that was being worked on. Endo'd hard, and even though I had a typical old 70's 3/4 lid with a bubble shield, I still ate the cross bar for lunch. The collision between teeth and steel ended up with me snapping my top front 2 teeth and the one to either side, and 2 front bottom teeth. Not clean breaks mind you, I looked like a vampire that just got shit knocked out of it. After many root canals, and other extremely painful procedures, I had 6 permanent caps. No other injuries from the endo, just 6 broken teeth.

That was the beginning of the end. Over the years between horrible dental habits and some other habits that are very damaging to teeth it finally came to a head. It had gotten to a point that I couldn't enjoy eating because of the pain, was missing time at work due to dental infections, and was just generally miserable. Now I can make excuses all day long, some are valid, some are not, it really doesn't matter, it's my own damn fault. The bottom line is that if I had taken the proper care of my teeth I wouldn't be going through this. A couple weeks ago I went in for a thorough dental exam, it didn't end well. Three teeth on the bottom have to be pulled and we may be able to save what's left on the bottom. The top on the other hand, is done. Every tooth has to come out(13 left) and I'll be wearing a full upper denture. I'll say it, I'm a complete f'n idiot, I'm 44 years old and will have full upper dentures. I've made my bed, I'll sleep in it.

It started today, 2 hrs of the most intensive dental cleaning I've ever had. They numbed me pretty good and the hygienist did her thing. Then it was off to the man himself, the dentist. Even though I was numbed, the 20 minutes he spent pulling 4 teeth was agonizing. He took the 4 most infected and I must admit that now, almost 6 hours later, I'm still hurting, but with the infected crap gone I feel better, albeit in pain, lol!

I could go on for a while, I haven't been to a dentist in a very long time and the changes are nothing short of fantastic, but when it comes to pulling, it's still as bad as I remember it. The bottom line is, take care of what you have. I would wish what I'm going through upon no one.

Friday!

It's Friday!!!!! That is all...

Boredom. Beer. and..............................a seat.

It was great to have Jimmy home after he'd been gone the week so we got a reat ride in today. Instead of reposting something, here's a link to his blog from todays ride-

http://roadsideswagger.blogspot.com/2010/07/weekend-thus-far.html

Once we got home and ate, Jimmy was out the door for a nite with his friends. Now it's still early, so what to do? Well, I got beer and a seat. Time to make a seat, lol! I like my Mustang seat alot, it's great for long days in the saddle, but for shorter, solo, runs I'd like something a little thinner, a little lower. With the price of seats, it's gonna be a while before I spend the bucks, so I made my own solo seat.

Started out with the stock seat for my '06 XL1200C-

Stipped the cover and foam off it and went after it with Jimmy's dremmel tool-

Not alot left of the stock pan-

I didn't use anything fancy on this, it's just a short hop seat. I used what I had laying around, some crappy old memory foam, the egg carton looking stuff, it's pretty thin so I used 2 layers.

Now I needed a cover of some sort. I didn't have leather or vinyl to sacrifice and I'm too cheap to go buy some. Why not use the next best thing, one of my old Army fatigue tops! I just cut the back out of it, plenty of material, it's not waterproof, but oh well, ya can't have everything!

After some cutting, stapling, and beer, I got a new solo seat! Nice low profile, hopefully comfy enough for short trips. Not bad for my 1st seat and it was free, lol!

Hopefully tomorrow I'll get a few miles on it and see if it's back to the drawing board or not.

The Chase!

This 4th of July pretty much sucked as far as weather went and to make things worse it was a 4 day weekend. Friday wasn't too bad, hot (mid 90's)and windy, but my wife and I still manged to get in a couple hundred miles on in the afternoon. We had a great ride through some beautiful country just to the west and south of Concordia Ks. Unfortunately, someone had the camera(Jimmy!! lol, just givin' ya shit son!) and I couldn't take any pitures. Saturday the weather went right down the toilet, the clouds rolled in and with heavy rain imminent, we didn't ride. It started raining Saturday night, it rained pretty much solid till late Sunday night and was still overcast and raining when I got up this morning. Later in the day I decided that since I couldn't ride, I'd just go ahead and do the engine and primary oil change. After a quick call to the local indy shop to make sure they were open, I headed over to pick up the oil and filter. Just as I was pulling into town the clouds broke and the sun finally came out, sweet!!! I would get some miles in tonight after all! I hauled ass home, got the oil changed, ate supper and hit the road for a short trip about 7pm. My wife didn't feel like a ride so I went solo. As I was heading east to sun and open skies I looked in my mirror and didn't like what I saw, rain clouds in the west moving this way. To hell with it, I'm ridin', the chase is on!

This is what was coming from the west-

South looks pretty good-


East is gorgeous!

I stopped at the Fancy Creek Bridge at the north end of Tuttle Creek Lake. Yup, it's still coming. I'm amazed at how high the lake level is. In the pic below, in what would be the lower left of the pic, there's usually just a narrow channel, about 25' wide, running under the bridge and snaking back west. Most of what's in the pic is usually just a grassy wetland.

The south is starting to cloud up a bit-


I stopped at the "mile long bridge", the west is starting to clear! The rain is going south!! I probably stood on this bridge taking pics for a bout 5 minutes. No wind, not a single car, no noise what so ever other than Mother Nature, it was beautiful!

Uh-oh, still a little left to the north!


After looping back in a northeasterly direction, the skies were clearing behind me-

The skies to west, towards home, were clearing as well-


Just something I thought was a cool pic by a cemetary near Frankfort, Kansas.

Great finish to the weekend, got a good ride in and the rain didn't catch me.........this time.