just perfect

I've posted this bike before, but I found it again in my random pics folder. I really love the way it looks. I'd love to find a nice 2 gallon peanut tank that will fit my bike and do up some paint/graphics like this for it....

really digging these boots

yep, I think Doc Martens are cool again. The Weston model in Black Whitney Leather is super nice.

Whitney is a luxurious full analine leather with waxy feel and light pull-up effect when worn. they will be mine, oh yes, they will be mine.....

random photos in taiwan

walking around this country is a gold mine for me.

matias modeling an amazing dessert idea

plastic lid sealer machine for your iced coffee or milk tea

the guardian of the house

when I travel, I miss being home. I miss my wife, my cats, my house, the motorcycle, playing my guitars, playing with the bands, etc....

BUT, i sleep soundly knowing that KHAN is home with Leigh protecting her in case of intruders. Here is a picture of him in full guard dog and protecting stance, which is how he is for about 18 hours a day.

fierce.

video games and twitter

on my way to Taiwan I ran into Tony Hawk at the carlsbad airport. I haven't seen him in a while, so it was good to catch up and see what he's been up to. I worked with him on some of the new watches during my times at Nixon, and he's always been a super nice dude.

He was heading to Germany for the GamesCon convention for the launch of his new Tony Hawk RIDE skateboard video game which looks like its going to be amazing. He's been working with the developers on the controller for 2 years now which looks and feels like a real blank skate deck and has tons of sensors for your feet AND hands so it actually knows what tricks you are doing.

Snapped this super great picture of the two of us on our walk to the airplane. I think we were both satisfied with our compelling nerdy looks in this particular pic. I especially look terrible, although that's probably what i look like...ugh.....

ALSO, if you are a twitter fan, you should follow him on there. He's been doing some really cool stuff like hiding skateboards in random places when he visits certain cities and he'll leak out some info on where its hidden, i.e. 4th street, behind the dumpster next to Jim's Hardware store. He's working on a bigger plan with this idea and I'm sure it will be pretty epic once the details are released.

and now back to work...

sitting in the Tokyo Narita airport right now for my layover enroute to Taiwan.

Its a three hour flight from here to Taipei, then a 20 minute bus ride to the high speed trail station, then an hour train ride followed by a 20 minute cab ride to the hotel.....

Then and only then, will i arrive to my destination of 10 days. Looking forward to hitting up Robot Station for an iced latte and some hunky peanut butter toast. (texas toast sized bread with molten peanut butter).

Get Your Dub On TONIGHT at the Belly UP

Get Your Dub On are an experimental club band who began performing a wandering mix of rock, punk and tradiontal dub reggae. Get Your Dub On embraces the high spirit of improvisational music while staying true to dubs meditative and reptitious nature.

Come and check out some live Dub Reggae.

I've got some free tickets as well, so if you want to go either hit me up through here, or if you know my cell number, give me a call and I'll hold the tickets at the door for you.

http://www.bellyup.com/show/detail/21696

a REAL concern at work

upon our new candidate for the open accounting position's departure from the office I noticed that she was good looking. I'm not being weird about that, she was blonde, pretty, tall, whatever, I guess kinda the standard so-cal looking chick. (and everyone knows I'm into redheads anyways...)

BUT then the phone rang at Carl's desk. It was our head of accounting calling Carl from her desk upstairs. Here is the conversation in a nutshell.

S - "so Carl, did you see the last candidate that I just interviewed?"

Carl - "ummmm, yeah...why"

S - "well....she's really qualified, one of the best we've met with. and she has a great personality and I think she would be a great fit"

Carl - "ok, she was really pretty so you should just hire her then...(laughing) just kidding, what's up?"

S - "that's my concern. Is she too good looking? Will she be a distraction here in the office?"

Carl - "uhhhhh, what? i've never really thought about that....."

followed by a moment of silence....

Kinda weird right?

I wonder if they had the same conversation after I left my interview...

anatomy of the Eames Lounge Chair

On friday the lower back panel of the chair arrived at my door back from Hume Modern who did the necessary surgery to fix the side shock mounts. Which means that we had a nice little project for Saturday morning.

Ellie hides under the seat part of the chair while Khan looks up at me to give his sign of approval. There it is right in front of us all, all the parts ready to be reassembled.

Step One: attach the spider base to the chair base.

Steps 2 and 3: Attach Base to Lower Back Panel via the arm rest support brackets.

Step 4: Attach Top Back Panel to Lower Back Panel and shock mounts.

Steps 5, 6, 7, and 8: Reattach Leather Pads to the seat, back panels and then screw in the Arm Rest Pads.

So there you go. An amazing find for an incredible deal, a few bucks spent in getting some broken parts repaired and some patience and a tiny bit of elbow grease and its back to perfect condition!

Les Paul - my hero

I've owned many guitars in my life and other than one (i'm sorry Les) butterscotch telecaster I always came back to my Les Pauls. I agreed with Les that while the SG is badass looking, it was not a Les Paul. I tried to work it out with 2 different SG's and we just didn't see eye to eye or eye to hand or whatever.....

So, in his honor, tonight, I will play my Brown sunburst Les Paul Special 55-77 ('55 reissue made in '77), my Wine Red 88 Les Paul Standard and my White Les Paul Custom at the same time. and the tone will sing songs to the heavens.

I've also owned an early 2000's Natural Les Paul Smartwood which was an interesting one, it was the thickness of an SG, but with 490 and 498 pickups and it had no Nitro finish. It was almost like the finish of the newer 'faded' series but all the woods were from reclaimed forests and the lacquer and plating were all pretty green as well. Nice guitar, but didn't really sound like a Les Paul.

Then after that one I found a '75 Les Paul Deluxe in a guitar shop that was near my house in Narragansett, Rhode Island in the town of Wakefield. They were only asking $900 for it, so I knew something was wrong. after some long negotiations, i walked out with a beast of a guitar for 700 of my college loan dollars. that was SUPPOSED to help me pay for my room and board, but cash in the hands of a musician is never a good idea.

WELL, here was the checklist of the issues:

it WAS a Deluxe Goldtop, but someone stripped the gold finish and refinished it natural blond.
it WAS routed for the mini humbuckers but someone routed out the fucking body to fit standard sized humbuckers
oh it weighed almost 12 pounds - which hurts the shoulder.
it did have the SWEETEST neck profile though, i still miss that.

Turns out the neck started to get the sweet mid 70's 3 piece maple warp and it got to the point where the headstock was almost visually rotating....so i got rid of it. it wasn't Les's fault though....so don't blame him for that era of weird 3 piece necks, 3 part pancake bodies and improperly routed les paul belly's...

get your DUB on

the other incarnation of the GYDO line up and music will be playing the Belly Up in Solana Beach on Tuesday August 18th. Full Live 100% DUB reggae.....

here's a little video we shot at practice last week. in this band, I play drums and John plays guitar, the ole 1,2, switcharoo.

This Saturday - Get Your Death On

As part of the "north park music thing" which used to be called North by North Park....

Check out the best in music from southern California, learn music business strategies, and support community music projects, all in one event. The annual North Park Music Thing boasts the finest talent in music, with the likes of the Night Marchers and the Presidents of the United States of America, and Black Heart Procession. NPMT Music and Media Conference will hosts panel discussions, workshops and demo review sessions, where musicians and music industry professionals can learn the latest in music business, including alternative publishing and licensing opportunities, marketing with social media, promoting and merchandising with your fanbase, and recording quality demo. Proceeds go to support the San Diego Music Foundation, designated to uplift the music community within San Diego County. 2-day passes cost $25 in advance, $30 at the door and will include access to workshops, N2NP tradeshow, entrance to 20 different venues, showcasing 150 musical acts from Southern California. For more information, go to www.sandiegomusicfoundation.org/npmt. For even further information go to npmt.iamhypeonline.com

Today's Tech Session How To...

install an aftermarket solo seat pan on an 04+ sportster.

so its time to ditch the big bulky stock seat and there's no simple bolt on option to get a seat pan on your sportster? well maybe there is, but I didn't find one, so this is what I did.

Step 1.

Remove the bolt that holds your gas tank to your frame.

I bought a standard generic seat pan hinge from custom chrome or one of those other suppliers/distributors. Its what my local shop had.

Step 2.

What I did next is take my trusty angle grinder and cut two notches in the thick part of the frame that the tank mount bolt goes through that match the width of the hinge's mounting flange. You can see in the picture the two slits/notches and the seat hinge.

warning, either take your tank completely off for this or just be careful to NOT hit your tank with the grinder. it would be shitty to get your seat mounted, but then be unable to ride due to the gaper in your tank....

Also, I had to shave off some of the material from the frame inbetween the two notches to get the hinge to fit all the way into the notches so that the bolt would go through the tank mounts/frame and hinge itself. You can see this area because it has a bit of rust below:

Step 3.

before actually screwing your seat pan of choice (I went with the West Eagle Slim model) try reassembling your bolt through your tank mount and through the hinge to make sure it actually fits in the slots properly. It may take a bit of wrestling to get it to go through, but it should.

Once you confirmed the fit, remove the hinge, screw it to your seat and reinstall as seen below:

Step 4.

I cut down the spring mount screws a little bit. Basically don't install the springs if you are running rear shocks on your bike. Not that I'm the beacon of what looks good or is cool, it just won't do you any benefit having both your rear shocks and seat springs and it looks dumb. haha.

After cutting them down to get the seat at a good height off my frame, I cut some wood dowels to screw onto the the threads, you could also find some rubber stoppers for this, or just cut the screws off completely and let the seat pan rest on your frame. (before cutting anything, just measure for fitment of the random screws/tabs/mounts that your bike already has and look for any intereference that may occur)

Step 5:

On my bike, the ignition module was under the seat so I just relocated it to be under the battery cover on the left side of the bike, thus letting me get my seat lower onto the frame. I made the mistake of letting the hinge rest on the ignition module and that caused my bike to randomly short out and shut down (on the highway) every time I hit a bump. NOT FUN.

Step 6:

grab a beer and look at the new side profile of your bike with your much cleaner and lower profile seat.

questions? let me know.

so tomorrow, which is technically today....

....i will be posting a small little how to for mounting a seat pan on an 04+ sporty. this may work for older sportsters as well, but its definitely targeted towards the newer ones.

I'll also post a link from the chop cult website to this also.

nicK, I'm sorry i've lagged in posting this. I have no excuses. well, a few, but they aren't really all that good......stay tuned.

New Skinny Rear Tire

I've never been much of a whitewall tire guy, in fact when I told Kim about putting the new tire on, his only email response was "WHITEWALL???" But Chris and I were talking about new tire options for my sporty and he brought this one up.....I thought it actually might look good with the white stripe around my tank as well and went for it. So this morning, I took the rear wheel off, brought it down to English Tony's in Oceanside to have them put the new tire and tube on and I put the wheel back on when I got home.

Needless to say, I'm stoked. Looks WAY better than that fat 150 width tire.

This one is a 130/90 or MT90 as they call it, not sure which is the 'real' way to measure the tires anyway. to simplify, stock tire is about 6" wide and this one is 5" wide. Other big difference is the stock tire is super rounded so you see just how wide it is whereas the more vintage style of the new tire is more squared and boxy so it looks even more narrow that 5". make sense? sorta? me too....

Its funny how the smallest changes can make a big difference.

oh and the puddle of water was from washing the blue paint off of the white walls. that was fun to remove.