Friday Night - GYDO @ Leucadian

I miss this bike...

Looked great, felt great, never ran well, never held a charge, barely kicked over, but I miss it now that I have a bike that runs well. Winter Project a CB?

It was a sad day when I sold it, but it allowed me to get my first Harley which was a pretty cool day as well. Maybe I'll contact the guy I sold it to and try to buy it back....

super badass

and nothing you can do about it.

Little Fowl - Bar Pink

Headed to North Park last night to catch some live music courtesy of Little Fowl, a new band out of San Diego. Great tunes, full rock n' roll ala Rolling Stones-ish/Hives-ish type sound. Hope they are happy with me saying that. Also John, who plays drums in GYDO and sings in the Foothills Band with me plays drums for them as well.

I snapped a few pics.

fender options with the crappy pics

at the risk of being too similar to my last sportster, i think its the length of the current fender that I'm not digging just yet. and maybe the sparto tail light as well. They both add a lot of weight to the rear of the bike ABOVE the tire which for some reason makes my eyes look there..... I've got to reshoot this with better settings/light, but once my head gets going in the direction of seeing options, I usually have to just do it in photoshop for comparison's sake.

Current, shorter, and then slightly shorter still...(shorter versions will get side mount light and license plate)

While I'll probably go shorter with the rear fender, it definitely will not be as narrow as the L'Orange rear fender.

dark but updates nonetheless

I still need to figure out how to use the G10 at night, but I took a little ride around the corner into the bowling alley parking lot to snap a few pics......iso settings, longer shutter speeds...etc, ugh, if you've got some good presets that you use, hit me up. these are just grainy as hell.

Most recent updates include:

Moon Eyes Air Cleaner

Breather kit from Debrix Cycles

Swapped back to Mids from the Forward Controls

Remounted the solo seat to have a bit more kick towards the front.

It's still not where I want it to be, but getting there all the while rideable. Gotta love a sporty.

Saves the Day

I'm slammed at work right now. just too much to do and too many meetings all week and today is no different, but pulled out this jam on the way to work and played air drums and air guitar like I haven't in years! , so........here's an amazing jam from back in the day that used to make me feel so good and it still does and it will for you as well!

S.T.O.K.E.D.

A few days ago I posted about a request for some new snowboard videos in order to get me pumped up for the upcoming season. Attention SLC and Portland friends....we're making some trips this year, get those spare bedrooms, aka air mattresses in the living room, ready!

After my post, Seth sent me an email with a nice surprise little download and I can honestly say that his part in Nice Try is both mind blowing and body jarring. When its over, you feel the battle wounds and want to jump for joy. Great editing with the music during his intro!

Then, upon my return from Rhode Island last night, this little package was waiting for me. Jeremy put together a nice assortment of this year's best. You can catch up with TRJJ on his personal website and blog and with also on the Bolts Action blog along with Seth, Hobbs, and Stone.

the package awaits me...

addressed box...

opening...oh the excitement...what's inside?....

the spread....

and the hand written note....

one of the things i can honestly say is that we have a healthy amount of the ability to mock each other in a way that never ends....well maybe its just him mocking me....I'll get him back! (read in a whiny voice coming from me...."but its not even purple anymore"......haha)

Rhode Island for the weekend

This past weekend, Leigh Anne and I headed back to good old Rhode Island for our great friends' Dave and Ashley's wedding. After the ceremony, we decided to do a Slatch haus reunion photo with Ashley in the photo. Dave, the one with the red beard, was ecstatic all day and I'm pretty sure I've never seen him this happy.

The Slatch Haus was the house we lived in during our later years of college and into our first years of 'professional' life. It was a brand new house in a really nice neighborhood when we moved in and by the time we moved out, it was a house with the wood floors ruined, cabinets ripped off the walls and holes in the sheetrock throughout in a worse off than before neighborhood. Its very rare that you can take a picture like this and realize all of us look better NOW than we did back then. Probably due to all the excess drinking and hotdog eating back then.

One day, Jon B will open up the slatch.com archives to make the coffee table book that should have existed 5 years ago.

food and cooking

Williams-Sonoma never lets me down. This time, they are offering a great price on an Ebelskiver Pan and these gorgeous Ebelskiver flipping tools shown above. They are really just a Danish/Swedish take on chopsticks, but look at the form and shape of them.

So.....what is an Ebelskiver, its a small round pancake that you can either fill with fruit or chocolate chips or just leave as pancake batter. you use the pan above, flip them over when they are half done and eat them when the batter in the middle is 'barely' cooked. and I've already been corrected by Mr. Frank Hermansen that WS spells the word wrong and that the english language is clearly missing the AE looking letter in our alphabet.

super fun and potentially in my garage

Today I got to ride this awesome 1989 Honda Hawk that belongs to one of my buddies at work, Matias. This thing is really fun. Super fast, really nimble, handles like a champ and is smoooooth. The single sided swingarm is really rad.

They look good together, don't ya think.

Well, if he ever needs a new home for his bike, I've already volunteered to hold onto it. Of course, it would probably get a new paint job and a slightly larger laced wheels, and maybe a cafe style seat and then some clip on bars, but I'll tell you what, sport bikes are fun.

after 45 miles on my commute this morning...

...I can say that having even 1/2" of travel on a swingarm is WAAAY more comfy than running the struts.....I thought it felt the same on super familiar roads near my house, but man, a few doozies on the 5 north today and my back feels like someone put it in a compression chamber, not to mention the weird pain shooting down my right leg to my foot....

anyone got any 10" shocks laying around?

with an actual rigid frame, you have the room to put in seat springs which can even make a slight difference while the frame's geometry will also have a slight bit of 'give' but you can't run springs under a solo seat on a stock frame with struts. it just don't look right.

Snowboard Videos

...are one of the things I miss about my last job. Right about now, my mail box at the office would be filling up with this year's offerings from the snow heavens in order to keep my stoke lit up in SoCal. There's nothing like getting a new video, grabbing some beers and the bros and a few ladies and watching a new video with a small little screening in the conference room after hours (or sometimes during the middle of the day).

SO......if any of you out there have some extra copies of the new videos, feel free to 'donate' them to the Videos for LandMan fundraiser and you can even use this handy address:

137 Valencia Drive

Vista, CA 92083

anyone who actually sends one will be rewarded with a nice free gift back. of my choosing.

2 days in the garage

it was a very productive weekend in Vista. Nice to finally have a few days to work on the new bike. (well new as in I've had it for one week and its a 2001). A few tools that I swear have legs of there own, some phone calls to friends who have the answers, a saturday delivery package, removing bits and pieces and eventually everything, rewiring a new tailight and getting rid of emissions BS and I'm back on the road....

This is what I started with when I woke up Saturday morning. I had already changed out the bars it came with to some Biltwell Chumps that were cut down suuuuper narrow. Also I had pulled all the switches off the bars as well at this point.

and here's the same bike but with the following changes on Sunday at around 2PM:

Biltwell Risers in Cast Stainless

Biltwell Window Bars in Chrome

Biltwell Seat - Black Tuck n' Roll

Stock 2.2 Gallon tank from 1991 Sportster

Stock Black Fender chopped courtesy of Chris Brown

Sparto Tail light and license plate holder.

and of course my patented mess of wires until I rewire the starter and hi/low beam switches.

I still wasn't fully stoked on the stance, and most of that is due to the 12" shocks with the stock style fender. They just leave way too much of a gap between the tire and the fender. Even though this bike already has the 1" lowering kit on the rear of the swingarm that moves the shock mount bolts back, it still looked too high.

And here's where we're at after getting home from the first shakedown run to Encinitas and back.

A nice little stop to Chris's house turned into a few hours of just pulling shit out of this bike, like breather cables, stock petcock, and then replacing the stock 12" shocks with some Biltwell 10" struts and I was headed back home. I always swore against struts on a swingarm bike, but after riding 15 miles they honestly feel just like my old 10" skullman shocks that I was running on my previous bike.

Things to do next:

Biltwell Pipe Kit to make some sweet custom pipes

New Skullman or Licks 10" shocks

Order a West Eagle Thin Long solo seat pan - I miss that seat.

Mount the double stripe whitewall Dunlop tire I scored at the swap meet for 20 bucks.

Frisco Mount the tank like it was on the other sportster potentially

Rewire and move switches and ignition

Remove the riveted points cover and replace with Bench Mark cover.

chrome shoes - midway

got hooked up with a pair of these during Interbike. great comfy shoes with a little bit of cycling thought put into them from a brand that 'gets it'. The coolest feature of these shoes is the reinforced fiberglass shank in the midsole that helps the sneakers feel more like a cycling shoe when riding. they still flex from the ball of your foot forward, but they don't flop and flex under your feet while pedaling.

From the Chrome website:

We fused our tough cordura with durable suede to create a style that is uniquely Chrome with a toughness we could rely on. Like our bags, we make them with the most industrial materials we could find and build them to last.

• Made of our Weatherproof 1,000 denier Cordura and Grey Suede with back-padding
• 100% vulcanized construction
• Low profile design to better fit into a toe cage
• Re-enforced nylon/glass fiber shank to support the midsole
• Board lasted sole to eliminate pedal hot spot
• Skid resistant contact rubber on the sole
• Polyurethane contoured crash pad insole
• Durable rubber heel cup with reflective safety hit
• Lace garage so laces don’t get caught in your chain
• Steel anglets to keep laces from fraying