Modern Vespa

With the Rally180 back in the GT160 (Running but still needs to be tuned.) I decided to move on to the next projecto on my long list of projectos.

I walked out to the lift and uncovered my nemesis... the ET3ernity.
I stared, disgruntled and uninspired. After 5 minutes of exhaling loudly and cracking my knuckles absentmindedly.... I went and walked the dogs.

Not today Satan. Not today.

Get the Rally/GT dialed in. It's close enough to done and that way it'll be there waiting when you want it.

Fabulous write up!

I was right there with you reading this. My P2 is curren4ly my Nemesis.... I haven't touched it in 6 years as it always finds a way to f*** me over when I think I have dealt with the gremlins

I have today off for MLK day, so I might get out to the workshop today. I'm still not over this cold, so we'll see. (I was thinking about it, and I've been sick with something fully 25% of the time since I took an in-office job five months ago. Fuck RTO.)

Anyways...with all the progress I made yesterday on the Riverside, my brain will now let me turn my attention back to the GL, which has picked up some annoying carb misbehavior that needs investigation and remediation*. It seems like the bowl is running dry under heavy load, which makes no sense with a fuel pump, plus suddenly not wanting to rev out right. It also needs the choke cable connected up properly now that the weather has turned cold.

Alternately, I could take a look at the electricals on the Stella, but I expect I'll be riding it this week because of the cold, so that may be my excuse to not look at it.

Or maybe I'll do nothing. Only time will tell.

* The dirty secret of having multiple scooters is that when one starts having issues, you just switch to another one until the supply runs low, then you go back and fix all the backlog stuff you've been ignoring.

I agree wirh every point made here Every time my manager encourages me to return to the.office, I remind them I took this role as a WFH with onsite as appropriate to delivery of project and would rhey really want me to waste 4 hours a day travelling to the office 3 days a week???

As an aside I have done 70 hours extra since 6th January

You'd be hard-pressed to find anyone in the Lanyard Class who doesn't I expect.

My commute is only about ten minutes each way and I ride to work, which is the one upside. For added insult, though, literally every single person I officially work with (I primarily advise project teams like an internal consultant), including my boss, are 100% WFH.

And they wonder why they struggle to hire...

chandlerman: Take photos of your office and whatever is behind you, set it as a background in Zoom, stay home. Problem solved

I already said I was going to do that, but the effin' "follow my head" feature (that doesn't turn off) gives it away.

Time to comedown with a communicable disease and keep others in your office safe while you are infectious! Working from home to protect your coworkers good health shows you are a team player! Sad news: you are permanently infectious and must work from home for the foreseeable future.

Where there's a will, there's a way!

Ah, I missed that! Then, maybe print a giant banner of your office and hang it inside the room

Something like that...

Yes!

First time since I entered the workforce that I had MLK's birthday off. Technically, I worked, since I went to the old office to meet an architect that bailed at the last minute with a "family emergency".

Ran some overdue errands, saw the upholstery guy and the machinist. Had lunch with howardr. I still had some daylight left, so I set to work on the latest free puppy.

Seriously, getting bought by Piaggio was probably the best thing to happen to Aprilia; their older scooters are stupid to work on. Even the small ones used a half-dozen different fasteners; I hope Piaggio fired the fastener guy...out of a cannon.

It's close to ready, but I need finish fitting the fuel and oil tanks, make sure they no longer leak and then bleed the autolube system before I can finish reassembly.

Any opinions on old twin-plug Kawasaki two-strokes?

My opinion.... share progress updates 😀

Today I didn't want to wait for 2 month to get something from Ali, and also didn't want to overpay exuberant prices for the same product locally.

So funk 'em, designed and printed my own, magnetic switch operated comparater (dial gauge) holder.

Oooooooh

Shiny!

Wow.

Today I....

Picked up some old rims i had powder coated.

Today I spent a little time getting ready for Snowpocalypse Fern, which is due to drop 5" of ice and snow (especially ice) on us starting overnight tomorrow.

In honor of the ice and the solid odds of it taking out power lines, I finally got around to replacing the carb on my generator. The last time I needed it a couple years ago, the float/float needle was leaking so bad that I had to regulate it using the fuel shutoff, so that needed fixing. And since it's a cheap-ass carb, I just replaced it.

What was really annoying was that the carb bolts were reverse torx, so I now own a set of torx socket drivers. This is the second time I've had to buy drivers for weird-ass fasteners because modern manufacturing apparently hates hex nuts or even phillips head screws.

But the job is now done, so while I might be inconvenienced, we won't be miserable if the power goes out.

Good luck! We are supposed to get 2-4" of snow and public schools have announced no school for tomorrow. Make sure you raise your wiper blades if you park outside! This way they don't get frozen to the windshield.

Hec

you, too!

I grew up with ice storms in North Texas, then 25 years in Chicago. I know all the winter weather tricks. We have a carport, which won't do much good if it's blowing at all, but certainly won't hurt.

Not that it matters, because I live on a hill here, so the car won't be going anywhere for at least a few days. Also, the idea of Nashville drivers in snow and ice is effing terrifying. This town legit has the worst drivers of anywhere I've ever seen.

I hear ya! I was in Nashville in Nov for a conference, the same week as the CMA's. I had an exiting Uber drive to dinner one night!

Hec

Facts. Southerners can't drive in snow or ice. When I lived in Huntsville, they would close the roads over the hills east of town whenever there was a winter-esque event. After being stuck in the city more than once, I figured out the back ways so I could get home.

It's embarrassing to the good ol' 4WD boyz when you climb on past their ditched pick 'em up in your shitty old diesel VW van.

The good ol' boys don't understand that while 4 wheel drive might help them get going, it doesn't do jack to help them stop again.

When I was growing up north of Dallas, there was a road with a dip in where it went over a creek. Every ice storm, that dip would fill up with 4x4's who came to the dip, couldn't stop, and then couldn't climb back out, either. It was hilarious.

My stripped down Honda civic did pretty well, though.

I'm actually hoping we get a decent amount of snow. If I can't ride my scoot I can ride this death trap! It'll do 30 mph and feels like it going to slip out from under you at any moment!😳. So far it hasn't!

Hec

I'm going to be stuck in a hotel till Tuesday probably from the storm. We're in lake placid for a hockey tournament and our last game is Sunday at 10:30am. There should be 6-8" in Philly by the time it starts up here. Then 1-2' expected the entire drive home. So we're just gonna wait for clear roads.

First game is fun. Second pure adrenaline. 3rd, your equipment is soaked, which is better than frozen, tho sometimes it's both. If u make it to the 4th, u half wish u hadn't. Then there is the drive home.

Which is to say: they are pretty awesome.

Good luck.
Enjoy the beer.

This town legit has the worst drivers of anywhere I've ever seen.



Try driving round Paris by the Arc de Triumph or the motorway around it... . That is two utterly mental places even in rhe middle of.summer

Yeah... we are getting the 'just the tip' of Fern down here.
Temps in the upper teens and 20's. This equates to absolute mayhem for Houston. Supposed to just last 2-iash days. But, people are buying up months worth of TP and stockpiling like it is end times.

Today the Weather forecast has backed off on our snow totals now. It's colder than a witches tit though. Oh well I guess I'll start on my vape electronic ignition install this weekend.

Hec

We don't get much snow here, maybe 3 to 4 inches, once or twice during the height of Winter. Then we may go a few seasons with just a dusting, so it's a big deal when it happens. Most of the time it melts off in a few days. What terrifies me is freezing rain/ ice storms that we get more often. The drivers around here haven't a clue. It doesn't take much ice to make everything go sideways (literally), 1/4 inch will do it. We are suppose to get at least 1/2. I'm not going anywhere unless I'm walking.

So, I ended up buying a project. The "owner" owed my machinist money and he didn't have the wherewithall to fix it. He actually had two bikes, but I didn't want a shitty Kawasaki Vulcan. Believe it or not, I have some form of standards!

I am now the custodian of a '73 Kawasaki F7B 175 "Bushwhacker". It has 25K on the clock, the autolube is missing hoses, but it's otherwise complete and lacking in egregious farmer fixes. The plate expired in 1990, so it will likely need a rebuild with fresh seals at a minimum. The odometer suggests it's likely not on the original bore either, but time will tell.

It's still at my machinist's shop for now; I may take it to a pay 'n spray to make it easier to figure out what all it needs. Then it'll go in one his storage containers to help protect it from the elements. I'm putting a pin in it for a few months while I work on more pressing projects, but it was interesting enough to drop a paltry sum on and my machinist was glad to finally get some of his money back.

Bushwacker makes sense, being the 70's. 🤣 Cool score. You're the man for the job. I love when you bring bikes back from the dead. 🫡

Way too much garage space is being taken up for shelving, but necessary to clean out the storage unit

Still stuck in Lake Placid. My son's team pulled off an impossible feat. Won the Bronze medal, Went 0-2-1 scoring only one goal (last game was a wild 0-0 tie) and the team they were set to play forfeited due to the storm that's coming. We're staying till Tuesday to make sure the roads are cleared and can actually visit the town since we'll have a full day of freedom.

I don't mind snow, but this f'ing ice, 1/2 inch so far. more on the way.

I just went out in the yard with my dog (he doesn't care for this weather either) and noticed that I was just walking on top of a sheet of ice. My feet didn't even break through. I'm up in Greenville, SC...don't recall seeing anything quite like this before. We usually get fast melting snow if we get winter weather.

Yup. We're at least that much, and it'll get worse as the temp drops. Over 200,000 customers without power here and still climbing. I don't know if that's service addresses/households or estimated people, but over 30% of the total service area.

I hear branches breaking every few minutes and the street in front of my house is half-blocked by a fallen branch.

Power here went out about 7:30 this morning and the little generator is running for my computer and a heating blanket for dogs. Unfortunately, it doesn't have enough juice for a space heater.

Now I have to decide at what point I fire up the big generator and danger-plug it into the heater long enough to heat the house back up. I'm thinking when the inside temp hits 60, maybe.

My main concern is if I have enough gas for the generator. I started with six gallons, but that was dry tanks. I should have filled the tanks, then gone back for more, but I can only do so much before I'm just a full-on prepper, right?

Ice Ice Baby! Word to your Motha!

Stay safe!

Doing our best here. Fully 1/3 of Nashville is currently without power and the wind is kicking up, so I expect that number to rise in the next couple hours.