Modern Vespa

SteelBytes,

Nice looking cat.

Bob Copeland

Found this guy in my airbox when replacing the filter. Guess the filter did it's job

I'm going to have to go with drum brake on the front wheel of an ET4.

Really?!?

How did that even happen?

Underpants gnomes got bored prolly. Seen it dozens of times.

Vespa ET4 150 brakes

Fascinating.

Saw Captain Jack Sparrow waiting to cross Main St. in Nashville, Indiana yesterday. He is pretty far from the sea. Wonder who he is hiding from?

Davey Jones ?

So my local Postal Worker called around to my place this afternoon without any actual post to deliver.

She just wanted to hang out for a while.

That's a first.

I am getting this notice to re-verify my email address when I log into ModernVespa. I do so, then it says an email will be sent to my email and I should follow the link to further verify my email.

Problem, the email to me never arrives. Has anyone had this problem. I also appear to not be getting any emails from ModernVespa.

Help!

Bob Copeland
email rorval48@yahoo.com

I finally took a photo of this pedastal-mounted twin engine Beechcraft as I passed by it yesterday on Wyoming I-90. It's not really near anything, just up there on its pole, swiveling around into the wind like a giant weather vane.

A Twin Bonanza! The Army had hundreds of these at one time. Generals loved them. The leather seats smelled like a new Cadillac.

Giant fungus. Gloves for scale

Smaller (about fist sized) but weirder.

Or maybe you just have really small hands.

Big enough to hold a beer

My best friend's mom used to always tell him he should have a been a BJ.

I saw a shaven headed gentleman today wearing eyeliner and those large circular ear lobe things and he was tucking into an oversized sausage roll.

As he tried to get his mouth around the tasty snack he looked just like Nosferatu.

So this is a thing. Bill, are you trying to send us a message?

Yeah, don't talk about yourself in the 3rd party.

New Pirelli Angels arrived today.

Search level = expert.

This news story. 3200 scooters??

https://www.nbcnewyork.com/local/hell-on-wheels-nypd-cracks-down-on-illegal-scooters/5139357/

This could also come under "What's Pissing Me Off Today", IMO.

Watching the video did piss me off.

My understanding is this has been a real problem in the UK for some time.

Some years ago it was hooligans on bicycles. Now it's scooters - what's next?

Mopeds.

Roller skates.

OFG

"Real bikes".

That's the wind direction indicator for the airport. The one I used to maintain was a 1947 model. My younger sister lives in Dickinson and sent me a pic of it about 4 years ago asking me WTF brother? Small world.

Along I-90 westbound, about twenty-five miles from Sioux Falls...

Now that would be pretty scary on a foggy morning

It's some pretty strange stuff.

The bull's head must be forty feet high, there's a stairway beneath it where you can climb up inside it and sit on a bench.

'Items' seen for sale at a Mitchell, South Dakota gas station/convenience store yesterday.

I categorize these under the 'Home and Office Decor For The Morbidly Fucked Up Among Us' file.

I almost never use an 'F' bomb in my posts, but feel that it's usage in this case is at least appropriate, if not absolutely necessary.

"Pheasant pelt, head and feet $159.99"

?????????

Yeah, def weird.

Not unlike the 'Jackalope heads' at Wall Drug, another creepy item that I've always thought of as a 'Twilight Zone Product From Hell'.

My first thought when seeing these things is of the imagery of some backwater, garage-based, 'production facility' where someone is sitting at a work bench on a steel bench stool, screwing small antlers onto a severed jackrabbit head that's stretched over a foam plastic rabbit head from...probably a tepid can of Mountain Dew and a half-full ashtray of generic cigarette butts at the side...maybe the sounds of 'let's make a deal' from a TV set somewhere in the background, and a small electric floor heater by the feet of the 'Jackalope Assembly Technician' that turns itself on and off every several minutes or so.

Where do they get the small antlers that are attached to the heads? They appear to be real, and probably not resin cast imitations, judging by the differences between them, though I can't be certain about that.

Are the rabbit heads 'locally sourced', or do they arrive lovingly packed, frozen, in an ice chest sent from the barren steppes of a far away and remote land...you know, like Wyoming, perhaps?

$230 for a dead rabbit's head? (+South Dakota's 6% sales tax)...so about $244 to take one of these handsome, and humorously disturbing treasures home?

I don't know much about industrial Jackalope production techniques, but I would guess that the antlers are sourced from naturally-shed whitetail deer antlers. You can buy bulk antlers (e.g. here).

Well, they're certainly putting them to good use!

I think it would be much more interesting if they'd offer some of them with Moose antlers...you know.....'Jackamoose'.

I suppose a display of Jackamoose heads would take up too much retail wall space for what they might be able to get for them.

The Germans have the mythical 'Wolpertinger', which apparently sports wings and fangs along with the antler thing, so I guess that I should probably lighten up a bit on the South Dakotans pumping out Jackalopes for the debatably demented tourist trade.

For the category, this one is going to be hard to beat...The German Wolpertinger!

Considered by many European nations as an invasive species, it had migrated to Poland in 1939, and was soon found in France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and even made inroads to eastern Russia for a time, but was successfully repelled and eventually was, through a great collaborated effort, almost driven to extinction.