Modern Vespa

Have a safe trip, and send some of that warm weather my way!

I'm cheered up by a couple things today. Last year we moved from Phoenix to Reno. In Phoenix the riding season was 365 days a year. So when it was time to tear into my PTW for major work, I felt like I was missing out on riding time. Also it's miserable to work in the garage 1/2 the year because of the heat. Here in Reno, there is an actual off season. So I can take my time on a big tear down and not feel like I need to hurry so I can ride again ASAP. It's kind of nice.

Another thing cheering me up is that I have time to do this work now that I've retired. I used to work 6a-5p (or later) then rush home, eat dinner, and try to get 3 or 4 hours of garage time before bed. Now I get up and I can be in the garage by 7:30a and work there until I've had enough for the day. And there is still plenty of time for other things.

Last week I started a complete teardown of my 1949 H-D. I've been making really good progress without feeling any time pressure. I'm really enjoying wrenching again.

Brilliant! Nothing like getting back into the workshop...mine's not so tidy

Nice Panhead.

My hops have sprouted after the winter. Hopefully whatever killed them last year has moved on and I get a brew out of them.

Advanced homebrew 🍻

During our summer, the local craft brewers in San Diego seemed to be all about NZ IPA's and Pale Ales.

A friend of mine brought over 24 bottles of his own made Plum Porter last night, if it's anywhere near as good as the Chocolate Porter he brewed a while back I'm in for a treat

24? I'd say that's a pretty good friend!

Not that good, he brought them over and I paid him for them.

Well, darn, but still....

This is cheering me up today.

I finally got smart(?) and removed the six octave strings from my 12 string Fender acoustic/electric, achieving a quick and dirty conversion to a much more playable six-string.

It's a fairly cheap guitar that I scrounged from a pawnshop, but considering it's cost, is a pretty decent instrument and all that, but I hadn't been playing it much over the past several years because I was simply having such a difficult time cleanly playing a couple of very basic first position major chords, particularly C major and F major.

Also, I only play fingerstyle with picks, and a 12 string is a bit of a challenge to play that way, and I'm, no Leo Kotke either, so it has been collecting dust for too long now.

I've owned a bunch of 12 string guitars over years, including several Taylors, but in recent years I haven't been quite able to retain even the mediocre playing level I had achieved with them, and this one wasn't contributing much to that goal either, so it's not a serious loss.

This morning I just said the heck with it and yanked six strings off of it, tuned it up, and now I have a very comfortable-to-play six string guitar with super spacious string spacing at both ends of it, and a really decent 'finger pickin' guitar.

Of course it still has the 12 string nut, which makes for some goofy string spacing on the B string but I can adapt to it for now. I was able to recenter the string back at the bridge with a teensy bit of file work.

I removed the lid on my Harley-Davidson 4-speed transmission today to give it a thorough inspection. Everything looks perfect. Better than I thought it might look. No sign of wear on any gear faces/teeth and no sign of excessive wear on the shift dogs/forks. I just need to refill with fresh fluid and button it back up.

I rebuilt this transmission in 2011 and haven't looked at the internals since.

This is cheering me up today. 😃

Mom's oatmeal recipe lives!

My mother, who recently passed, was an amazing baker, and among her signature items was an oatmeal cookie recipe that a surprising number of people have remembered for years. It was uniquely flavored, and probably tweaked to be "healthier" knowing her. I was a steady recipient of those as well as cinnamon and pecan rolls, coffee cakes etc, etc (why don't my pants fit so well?? ). Anyway, after she passed, the recipe came up in discussion, I looked at my recipe file, took her recipe file and searched it, and nothing. Mu sister didn't have it either.

Of course all of these things take outsized proportion when they're gone, particularly when grief is begging for comforting.

Sitting around munching the cookies that I made just for sentimental reasons, my wife mentioned that her sister in Mexico had asked my mother for the recipe and had it! Why she didn't memtion that in the past weeks, I'm not sure, but who cares, it existed...would have to be translated back from Spanish, but minor detail.

Then she suggested I might have overlooked it in my recipes....and sure enough, I had. It was titled "Oatmeal Oaties" for some reason, and I'd flipped right past it.

I suspect there will be at least two ovens turning these out once again....

Well, where is it then?

Squirreled away in my recipe file. I'm holding it hostage for favors from my sister.

Or were you interested?

I'm always interested in cookies.

Me too!

I have a great poundcake recipe. Please share your Mother's oatmeal cookie recipe.

That is so amazingly cool. Strum it to perfection, my friend.

Here is a cool strummer tune.

I'm always interested in a good oatmeal cookie recipe. I'm guessing your sister doesn't read MV?

Oatmeal cookies recipe. Interested.

You could also pop that nut off and recenter it back on the neck. This would give you the original string spacing. Of course one edge of it would hang over a bit and the other moved in. Not a real big deal. The other option is to get a new six string nut for not much money that matches the neck width. I imagine it's 1 7/8th or 1 ¾". Or just leave it like you have it and just have fun.

I have a couple Rickenbacker 12s. I don't know how they get 12 strings on those skinny necks. Not for fat fingers.

I agree with you. Acoustic 12 strings are just too hard for me to play also these days.

Nice collection you have there.

I picked up a 12-pack sampler pack of Cider from Aldi the week before Thanksgiving, with the intention of bringing it with me to my MIL's house to enjoy while there.

I promptly forgot it when packing, and only remembered when we were an hour into the drive.

We went out to dinner in Ft Smith the day we arrived, and stopped at a liquor store on the way back to my MIL's house in Van Buren. I picked up an 8-can sampler pack of cider from a cidery in Fayetteville (Black Apple Cidery). It had two cans each of four flavors: Pineapple, Cherry Limeade, Honey, and Hibiscus. I figured that I'd like the Honey best, followed by Pineapple, Cherry Limeade, with Hibiscus being the least likely to be enjoyed. I was wrong. The Honey was ok. The Pineapple was pretty good. The Cherry Limeade tasted more like tart cherry than cherry limeade. The Hibiscus was surprising. I figured it would be more floral, and that I wouldn't like it. It was not floral at all. It was sweet, but not too sweet, and I really enjoyed it.

When I got back home last night I had one of the bottles from the Aldi 12-pack (Raspberry). It was really good.

Okay, okay folks. Sister's getting it too, so no blackmail.

Fledermaus,

Colonel Saunders and Coca-cola would never have given up their secret recipes. Thanks for sharing - I am a cookie nut. Every morning with coffee.

Bob Copeland

Last week I was a bit annoyed with myself. I misaligned a spacer on my clutch hub puller and it resulted in a broken kickstart cover on my transmission. One of those moments we all dread but inevitably happen when you have been wrenching for 50+ years.

I put the broken cover on the "wall of shame" in order to remind myself to slow down and double check my work.

I have a rather large collection of old parts on the shelf. I sifted through some transmission parts and found an older original Harley-Davidson cover to replace the aftermarket cover I broke.

I'm actually kind of happy I broke that aftermarket cover. I like the looks of the original cover so much better. No chrome, and the lines aren't nearly as straight and blocky. I also found a one piece kickstart arm from 1946!

What started out as a bad thing has cheered me up today.

I like the the "new and improved" look better, too.

Yep, a small bit of heaven to start each day.

Chris From CLE

(In point of fact, Mark Twain never said this, and the quote more-or-less belongs to Clarence Darrow — and even then, it's not an exact quote).

And that's all I'm saying about that.

A couple of days ago, the rear wheel on my GTS became 'graunchy' when pushing the bike around. Rode just fine. So I took the transmission cover off, and sorted the 46mm nut that had started to unwind from the clutch. What cheered me up was spotting the belt was 'slightly worn' before it broke with prejudice:

Glad you caught it! How many miles on that old belt?

About 6,200 - OEM Piaggio belt. That's mostly suburban riding, with Dr Pulley sliders, a Fuzzy washer and always taking off at maximum oomph.

Those outer teeth were hard as concrete - that belt must have got super hot on occasion.

A Malossi belt now installed.

Thank you for your reply.

Hmmm, I always thought it was Dorothy Parker. Wonder why the heck I thought that!

Quotations (and who we believe said what) are notoriously unreliable.

I agree as I'm still not convinced Confucius uttered the immortal words "That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind"

FIFY

how old was the belt and was it old stock when you installed it?

Probably the best part about retirement is just that - being able to take your time. And a question: is that a modified 49 frame with a weld on hard tail or a 48 or earlier Knuck frame?

That my silly wasp thread is about to hit three pages.