One year ago today: April 1, 2014, my 1955 Roadmaster.
Five years ago today: April 1, 2010,
Ten years ago today: April 1, 2005, trouble brewing.
MORNING
Sorry, no pictures. I’ll give you the accurate but useless explanation. The older 640x480 cameras I’m using require the unit batteries to store pictures. If they go dead or wink out, so does the memory. So you don’t get to see all the neat photos from my two mile walk this morning. Ah, but I cannot walk two miles. That’s correct, it too me two hours doing it in three block segments. Dang, they were good pictures, too. Like that apartment I mourn that JP and I didn’t buy up on Jefferson.
Why was I walking? The scooter brakes. It’s done, I’m home, and I’m broke. The difficulty is that the muffler has to be removed for the brake job, and that is the muffler that has given nothing but trouble. The mount is broken, you may recall pictures of the repair. Wait! What’s this? When I went to move the batbike into the back yard, I heard a rattle. Motorcycle owners know their rattles.
Sure enough, remember I mentioned how the expensive batteries lost when the package blew out of the sidecar in a crosswind on the way to Okeechobee earlier this month. Guess what fell out of the package first? If you see a photo of the crack in my muffler pipe, then you’ll know that worked out okay for me. Good, the AAAs were a buck-fifty apiece.
Ah, there’s the photo. I’m spending the late afternoon in the shade fixing these pieces for the nth time. Why not just get a new muffler? Well, because we are so insipidly stupid over here we haven’t the brains to figure that out on our own. And neither have the local motorcycle mechanics I’ve taken it to over the years.
One more time, Ken, Wallace, etc. It is not the muffler, it is the mounting bracket behind the muffler. It is unique to that model year and impossible to find. The bracket is an integral part of the motor frame and I am not paying to buy a whole new frame unless I have to. Savvy?
NOON
"Whenever somebody asks me if I want water in my scotch, I say I'm thirsty, not dirty." --Joe E. Lewis.
The say I see it, the last time I said that muffler bracket could not be fixed, I didn't own a mig welder. I look at at enough different ways to say it's worth a try. Now what was that somebody told me to do before you weld a vehicle body? If you don't hear from me tomorrow, you'll know I got it wrong. For now, I'm drilling into the frame and adding more bolts with double nuts. I didn't have a drawer full of those list time around, either.
On the ground you can see all is hand tools except for the battery drill. Tedious hours to get the metal into place, I have not yet welded, I know not to stick my neck out on that one. If I had a decent camera, you would see the drill bits on the left. And the broken drill bits on the right. This has to hold until I get back from the clinic later in the week. Then, welder time.
Bottom line: keeping this scooter has been worth every penny of it, probably several times over. If I was even a little mechanical-minded, that would be unquestionable. I find I have adapted to scooter travel in town and average 66 miles per week for several years now. When I operated a car, I systematically put three times as much miles on it. I’m not a heavy driver, so that goes to show owning a vehicle lets you create uses for it.
JZ called about the county fair. Unbeknownst to me, they have extended it another five days. So all is not lost. The only thing worth seeing is the kid’s craft hall, or as JZ calls it, “the model airplane room”. Only this year, some of the grandkids have exhibits. Seriously though, the fair otherwise has degenerated into a Disney-style midway. I haven’t time to look back, but the last time JZ and I were there was in 2012 or so.
And it cost us something like $11 for two paper plates of fries. I believe JZ went there last year and spent $10 on a slice of pizza. Other than the exhibition hall, the place has become a burn. You can’t fee the farm animals your own carrots, you have to buy a little cup of identical fair carrots. Plus, the farm aspect has really suffered. I like poking around farm stuff, if only because stuff I grew up with is now treasured collectibles. City folk don’t know you can buy a real washboard up at MacDonald’s Hardware for $12.00.
So maybe we’ll make it there yet. Last time I was there, I smuggled a huge carrot into the zoo. I just stuffed into my right pants pocket and things kind of balanced out. If there is one lesson I've learned this afternoon, it is that a man can never own enough 1/8th inch drill bits.
AFTERNOON
Make that late afternoon. I worked on the scooter until nightfall. Now, I have to test drive it in the dark and the only logical destination is the club, Jimbo’s II. I have grease stains on my upper arms so I’m going to waltz in without washing them off. It seems to work for the other guys. I’ve got to make sure the ladies consider me more than just a sensitive intellectual with a pretty face, you know.
However, that tactic did not work. Since this is Florida, there were no ladies in the bar. A couple of aging, fat hookers, and runty-looking whatever, I don’t know what she was in there for. But the really disgusting patrons are always the men. Every one of the regulars are pigs. This makes the bar a sow-woman’s hangout—I’ll explain in a moment. You see, unlike the first Jimbos, all of the barmaids in this one are babes.
Sadly, we live in a world where the average blurry-eyed laborer thinks his barmaid is single and available. The barmaids do little to dispel this myth. So every night, you get the really annoying age 35-45 ball-cap crowd in there thinking they need only pick the right guitar solo on the jukebox to win over their dream-date. And when that falters, it is the fat lady’s turn. End of explanation.
Ah, you ask, what has that situation to do with me? Smoke. What? That’s right, smoke. A lot of these ladies smoke, some heavily. They quickly learn if they sit near me, the men will leave them alone, at least the extent my bearing prevents them from using their bag of juvenile pick-ups lines. I used to tell how the smoke did not bother me and it didn’t for years after I quit. But starting around three years ago that changed. Second-hand smoke now offends my senses.
EVENING
My calendar says mention food. But, but, I haven’t even gone out except to the Hungarian shop. I made a gallon of buckwheat—hey, how about buckwheat news? You got it. Back when, buckwheat was a staple on the farm. We were mistakenly told it was called that from a form of German slang for Russian food. We ate buckwheat around twice per week as a side dish.
I still love the aroma of fresh buckwheat and eat it with salt and butter. In my diet, it is beginning to replace that substance that American food suppliers falsely call “corn”, but slowly. Buckwheat is not something you take to instantly. It is often sold by the distasteful name of “groats”. I like it mixed with just about anything except rice. Buckwheat and ham, buckwheat and whatever as a side. But I will eat buckwheat and brown gravy as a main course. Not when I’m famished, rather as a treat.
It was a clear early evening, so I attempted sextant readings with my new horizon marking. It’s a lot of discovery. The positions of stars I am most likely to measure is washed out by a string of distant street lamps. Pure bad luck for me. The alternative is to use other markings than the one on my entranceway. I’ll have to ponder that, for the mark consists of a single black line around four inches long. So what’s to ponder?
Lots, you see, the people who work here are peasants and I’ve been on to the peasant mentality since I learned to read. They have no comprehension of navigation because they are so gawdaful stupid it is wonder the law lets them live. But you put a sing dot on “their” property, they will find it the first day and have a conniption fit. They don’t care if it is good or bad for mankind, once they know you are up to something, they will fight.
Last Laugh
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