Monthly Archives: December 2011

Putting Spiky Bike back together

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Real progress! Yay!

Today three friends came over and helped me do a bunch of stuff to my RD.

We got the frame stabilized and whew, that was tough. Time for a break and some homemade beer!

Ah, that’s better. Now to install the motor!

I’m sure there’s a joke here… “how many guys does it take to install an engine into an RD350?”

Ba-dum-cha!

Success was ours!

I’m probably going to need a new kickstarter at some point. This one has cracks.

We got the swingarm and rear wheel on – and for some reason I have no photos of that.

Next we tackled the wiring harness. What a tangled mess we weave…. Oh, wait, that’s something else. We got the harness set up pretty good, but ended up losing our light before we got to really get into troubleshooting it. So, more work on that soon.

I’m not sure what Dino is doing to my bike here, but I’m sure it’s something naughty.

Okay, so I do know what he was doing with his arm up to the elbow in my bike. He was hiding some electrical bits under the tank!

from a different angle:

More hidden electrical bits:

With a little help from my friends

I’ll be tearing around on my RD around soon!

track days

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Watching the dark morning sky lighten while packing last-minute almost forgotten items into the car. Driving to the track early in the morning before church-goers, while the late-night partiers sleep… It is often cold on those mornings and staying snuggly in bed might seem like a more comfortable alternative, but we have a disease that compels us out of the warmth into the brisk morning.

There is fog rising from the road today as I turn off the main road to the racetrack. It is beautiful swirling low and cloudy thick. I haven’t seen fog since I left Illinois and even though it means the air is cold, it makes me a little giddy with delight.

I pull into the pit area and scan around for a space to park and set up. I’m late and the pits are already pretty parked up. I drive through and find a perfect spot sandwiched between two friends.

One of the draws to this life is the camaraderie. I pull out my canopy and without a word suddenly there are three people helping me unfold it and set it up. A mug of hot coffee appears in my hands as a welcome warmup.

I sit in my little set up watching bikes ride by. People wave, friends stop by to chat. It’s social with a purpose.

The sky is clear and it has finally warmed up to the point where we can no longer see our breath. The ever-present squeak of race boots and the stiff leather-clad walk of riders walking by are familiar and always make me feel a little like I’m home.

doors

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I’ve never been good with closed doors. I like open spaces. Rooms that are arranged in a circle so that there are no corners. Maybe I should get some of those large roundy security mirrors in any corners so that I can see into the other rooms.

I’m not sure why I have this problem. Or when it started. Closed doors mean disappearing, secrecy, and aloneness. I want to know what’s on the other side, because there could be anything on the other side.
My imagination makes sure I know that.

When I was a kid, I didn’t like being in a room with the door closed. It felt like the world outside had fallen away. I would leave the bathroom door cracked for fear that if I closed the door all the way I would suddenly be in a free-floating bathroom in some inky void. Too bad there wasn’t a fridge in there, I would have been set.

This caused problems later on in life. As a young adult, I lived in a large, cold twelve bedroom house with eleven strangers. I hated closing my bedroom door all the way. Apparently, leaving my door cracked six inches caused great consternation with my floor-mates. At least one of them felt because my door was ajar, she had to tip toe around in the morning. I told her a few times that she need not change her patterns, but it gnarled her up bad enough to cause a rift in the house.
I started closing my door.

I still dislike closed doors and I prefer to keep them open if possible.
But as difficult as it might be, sometimes I have to close a door.