And so it begins

 Hello everyone,

The title says it’s time for wood cutting! It’s a lot of work for me, being almost 70, but it’s still my favorite time of year. Cool and crisp, not cold and snowy. The leaves are falling and changing colors. Plus, the work heats my house all winter, without paying the price for LP gas.

Here is the start,

Three large trees down, two were dead, one was dangerous for walking by. I’ve tried over the years to take the damaged ones if I could. 

The wife and I are leaving on vacation for a week or two, so my middle son is in charge of processing the wood that’s down. It’s mostly cut into chunks already but needs to be split, collected and stacked. We added a new spot to store wood awhile back, which hopefully makes it easier to keep the home fires burning. When we get back we’ll have more wood to cut, I’m guessing about 5 more or so good size trees

Well, I think that’s all for now.

Talk to you soon,

TVI

It’s been awhile

 Hello everyone,

Yep, it’s been awhile, but I have been busy. Still getting the yard cleaned up and ready for fall. Ordered new chains and bars for the saws, that’s about the next project on the list, cutting wood.

Since I sold my pickup, I haven’t had a way of hauling too much around so I had an old homemade trailer sitting out in back of the barn and the wife and I decided it was time to resurrect it. The whole bottom was rotted out of it from sitting outside all of this time and the mice had eaten most of the wiring up. The hitch on it was very worn out, I have been using it on the back of the 4 wheeler to move wood and wood chips around so it moved but not road worthy.

So, found a wiring harness that I had in my picking pile, I also had an almost new hitch for a 2” ball ( the old one was 1 7/8”), but it was for a three inch tube and the one on the trailer was 2 1/2” tube. So, I met up with my brother and Sho Teacher Bob for breakfast and asked him if he had any scrap 1/4” plate laying around and he did. He cut me up a couple of pieces and I stopped by and picked them up and, Bob’s your Uncle, spaced it out perfectly.

I’m no where near the welder that Shop Teacher Bob is but, I can make it stick together pretty well. Anyway, got all that taken care of, and had to install a wiring kit in Diego for the trailer lights.

My oldest son had a full sheet of 3/4” chipboard leftover from a project and said I could have it for the bottom of the trailer. Not exactly the perfect bottom but good enough for me to use for a few years at least, as long as I park it in the barn.

So I drove up to his house this morning and stuffed that sheet in the bottom and then loaded up a bunch of junk he wanted to be rid of.

I also had the job of installing a new garage door opener for him, which I didn’t mind at all ( I got a carnitas lunch out of it, so, all cool!). I was only there about 5 minutes and he dropped a trailer hitch on my big toe! Wasn’t really his fault, it just happened. I don’t think it’s broken but, it’s pretty bruised and pretty sore.

I did stay and put the door opener all together and programmed it so it’s all working.,

So, it looks like clean the shop and help the middle son fix the gas leak on his van tomorrow and then probably start cutting wood.

Well, I think that’s all for now.

Talk to you soon,

TVI 

Just mostly cleaning

 Hello everyone,

I’ve just been busy cleaning up things. We’ve been sorting through our “stuff” and pitching out a lot of crap. The wife has sold some stuff on the internet.

I have a small motorcycle camper that I decided to sell. I put it up and cleaned it all out and took a bunch of pics of. I found a Facebook site that is all about these campers and I asked if I could sell it on the site. They said yes but, I never even got it posted and a guy is coming from Kansas City tomorrow to buy the thing!! He asked me in the comments about it and in about 15 minutes he called me and set up coming and getting it. Crazy!

I’ve been pricing out getting some of the parts for the bike powder coated. Still not sure about that and now I’m going to have to find someone else to spoke up the wheels because the guy I had lined up is retiring. I’ll have to start that search again. We’ve got a couple of more trips planned and then it’ll be time to start cutting wood. After that project is done, I should be able to concentrate pretty fully on the bike.

Well, I think that’s all for now.

Talk to you soon,

TVI

Been a little busy

 Hello everyone,

Unfortunately not working on the bike too much but, lots of other mundane jobs.

They changed all the power poles out on the road I live on and the wife asked them to leave a few for us. We ended up cutting them down and put them behind the woodshed for some more storage closer to the boiler.

Also used a couple close to the shop for dry wood for the wood burner in the shop. I used a lot of wood last year in the shop and intend to use more this year when I’m working on the bike.

When I first bought this property, I built a shed kit for storing a lawn mower and four wheelers so we didn’t have to haul them down here every time we came down. It’s in fairly rough shape, but my wife has decided she wants a she shed, well sort of. Anyway, we spent a few days cleaning it out and cutting down the brush and trees around it and inspecting the damage. It’s going to need a roof and some of the siding replaced. We’ll get to that in the coming weeks.

We’ve gone to a few concerts, saw Santana a couple of weeks ago, saw a local band called the Together Band that does mostly 60’s and 70’s soul music and they were very good. This coming week is a 60’s revival, The Turtles, and a few more. We’re going to spend a few days over by where this concert is going to be. They have a huge flea market and a grocery store that sells large quantities of goods, so we’re going to hit both before we come home.

We went to see our youngest son this past weekend, actually we were gone about five days. We stopped at a place called Land Between the Lakes in Kentucky for a couple of days on our way down. It was very nice.

Got to camp right on the water!

This week is catch up for being gone five days and I have to check out a couple of things on the van. I developed a problem with the charging system for the lithium batteries. I think it’s just a loose connection, so I’ll get to that this afternoon. I also have to look at the wife’s ebike, for some reason the headlight is stuck on and won’t turn off.

Well, I think that’s all for now.

Talk to you soon,

TVI

Little things going on

 Hello everyone,

We had to mow, weed whack, weed, spray, you know, all the bs stuff around the house.

Managed to go ahead and take the wheels apart myself, I wasn’t going to use any of the spokes from the wheels, and I spoke with the guy who’s going to lace the wheels and he said just cut them out with a set of wire cutters.

So, I did. Then I managed to get one of the rims sandblasted.

I’m going to try and get the other two sand blasted over the next few days and then maybe see about getting them powder coated. I painted one of them already and I’m not to thrilled about how it looks. I’ll see what the cost is and go from there. 

I need to have some work done on the engine parts, stuff I can’t do, and I found a guy not to far from me to do that work. Only problem is he’s about 2-3 months out. That means I’ll have to build the motor this winter. It’s fine, I’ve still got a ton of work getting all the other parts ready anyway. So, pretty much, late winter or early spring before I can get it running.

We’ve been to a couple of concerts over the last two weeks. Saw the Doobie Brothers last week and then saw Chicago this week. The in about 10 days or so, we’ll go to the rescheduled Santana show. Been a great summer so far.

And, last but not least, I decided to get my ear pierced! For those of you who know me don’t faint over! I just decided I was going to do it and found a little wrench for an ear Roth at should be cool and kind of be me at the same time. Just had it done this morning.

I’m returning to my hippie days I guess! LOL!

Well, I think that’s all for now.

Talk to you soon,

TVI

Back from the trip and right to work

 Hello everyone,

Well, Hawaii is as wonderful as everyone says! From the moment you get off the plane you feel like you came home, it’s a strange and wonderful thing.

This was the view from our balcony, on one of the days we were there, the water was so clear we could see huge turtles swimming right off the beach!! One of the things I discovered was they distill my very favorite alcoholic beverage near where we were staying. I don’t drink a lot but I do enjoy Ocean Vodka with lemonade or cranberry juice.  It turns out the distillery is on Maui!

They didn’t have lemonade or cranberry juice so, a screwdriver it was!

They also make rum and gin, which I didn’t know so we had a little taste testing! All quite good!

We went out to eat at Mic Fleetwood’s restaurant and unfortunately my wife got food poisoning!! Sick for about a day and a half. The food was delicious, so I don’t know what happened. Anyway, the rest of the trip was delightful!

We returned to Indy early Friday morning(1 am) slept in Diego and went to see Santana on Friday night. Earth, Wind and Fire played with him and they were outstanding! We had heard he had collapsed at a show on Monday from dehydration and were sort of expecting it to be cancelled, as it turns out he still wasn’t feeling well and they cancelled after EWF had played, tickets will still be honored on August 3rd, hopefully he’s fully recovered by then.

We finally landed at home Saturday afternoon and discovered a huge tree had fallen from our property onto the neighbor’s property( the nice neighbor!!). So today we started cutting and splitting it up for winter firewood.

It’s a lot of wood and very heavy, but we did get a little extra help:

The neighbor’s dog, he just a big dumb playful pup!!

I have several things on the agenda this week before I can get back to the bike, but I’m going to try and get the wheels up to the guy who’s going to unlace them for me. Probably toward the end of the week.

While I was in Maui I spotted a shirt that reminded me of my cousin “ Shop Teacher Bob”, everyone besides family calls him “ Chief” so here it is:

I was going to buy it for him but all they had were smalls, I figured he needed at least a large so, sorry all you get is the picture!!

Well, I think that’s all for now.

Talk to you soon, 

TVI

Good music and packing

 Hello everyone,

I have to say I’m so glad I got to see Jackson Browne. I’ve been wanting to see him forever and it was worth it to finally see him.

We spent the night after the show in Indy and then while farting around in Noblesville, I ran across this.

 Which I thought was kind of cool. Unfortunately, like many small town businesses it closed and the building is for sale.

The next night we saw Josh Groban, it was good but, not really my cup of tea.

Got home on Friday and started the arduous task of packing to go to Hawaii. We got a really good deal and decided to go with some friends who own a timeshare. We don’t have to pay for a room and the flights weren’t terrible so, off we go.

In between I did get one of the rims for the bike painted and also one of the hubs. I decided to go with black rims and chrome spokes and I think it will look pretty good. When I get back I’m going to take all the wheels to a guy and get them all undone and then clean, blast, and paint all the parts and then take them back to him and have it all put back together.

After that I’m going to sandblast and paint the frame of the bike. I do have on little bit of welding to do on the neck. I need a pin for the steering damper knob to key on. After the frame is painted I’m going to start on the engine!

I’m hoping to start on the engine before the end of July. If, and it’s a big if, that all happens I might be able to get it at least running by late fall. I’m hoping……

Well, I think that’s all for now.

Talk to you soon,

TVI