Modern Vespa

Today was a special day for me. I met a guy I've admired for over 40 years. Mondo Porras of Denver's Choppers. He's a chopper building legend in that genre of PTWs. What a nice guy! He spent an hour showing me around his shop, showing me about 20 choppers, and walls covered in memorabilia spanning his 50+ years of bike building. He seemed genuinely excited to look over my old panhead chopper survivor and gave me a lot of encouragement. A very gracious guy to spend all that time with a fan.

Before I left he said, "Hey, can you give me a hand with something?" I then helped him lift an old motor out of a frame and drop a new motor in its place. He did the bulk of the lifting, I just helped guide things and avoid dinging the frame. It was cool to get my hands dirty helping out a chopper legend. It was a good day!

Nothing tops that does it ?

He probably talked very highly of you also.

It cheers me up to see people pushing their vespas to the limit ...

Nitrous oxide 🔥

https://www.instagram.com/p/C8yiTxMyNQl/?igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

I screen-shot the two best things I saw yesterday. The first was an email from HR (who we privately referred to as the "Employee Morale Destruction Team" with instructions to block my access, along with three others whose last day was yesterday. I was the manager of the technology team, so that's something I or one of my guys would do.

The other was a login screen saying that my access was blocked.

I have a big ride coming up in two weeks, and would like to ride my 2018 Yamaha Xmax.

A month ago, I was getting it out of the garage, pushing backwards while seated, and it felt strange.

Flat back tire.

I put a sticky string patch in the hole and have been riding it anyway.

But for riding 450 miles to North Carolina, 700 miles in the mountains, then 450 miles home, I preferred to put a new tire on the scooter.

I always keep spare tires in my garage, so, today, I took the wheel with the old (7,000 miles on it) tire off, got my new tire off the shelf and called Favre Motorcycle Shop, asking if they had time to swap tires today.

They said that they could do it.

I put both old with wheel and new in the tiny trunk of my Miata and went to them.

When I arrived, the old Italian guy took my tires, went to the tire changing machine and changed them out while I waited.

Maybe 15 minutes.

I got home and reinstalled the new tired wheel.

Great service.

Bill

Here's the thing. What started pissing me off, ended by cheering me up. Big time!
Thursday morning was one of those lovely rain free, sunny winter days, perfect for a ride and a café meet-up with a couple of mates. Through the suburbs and, on to the motorway, at 100kmph the wind was pushing Gordon ( Vespa's familiar name) around a bit and on to the nicely contoured country road. That's where the handling began to feel rather strange. My first though was the wind again, but into a right hander I know well had me off line and definitely getting the message that all was not well. Could be a puncture- lots of new 'shoe-box building around Auckland- luckily there was a gas station about five minutes away where I hoped to limp in and check out the tyre. It had to be the rear, maybe they'll have a pump... What greeted was where the really pissed off happened. There was a large empty hole where the valve should have been.
Streuth!! What are my options? First let my mates know,. Then what-contact the AA-was the best I could come up with.
Behind me a voice said " You ok mate, you need a hand?" Well, as they say 'you wouldn't read about it' Guardian angels take unusual forms. This one was a strongly built gentleman of a certain age, who looked at my bike, said " I live up the road, I will go get my bike trailer and we can drive to a bloke I know who has small bike shop-he'll sort you out" His bike was a 70s Triumph Trophy and his trailer was used for his grand kids trail bikes. Not only did I get my bike sorted-I had to pick it up next day- my Triumph riding mate drove me home.
To say that cheered me up would be understating it.

PS. Half the valve stem was in the rim, the mechanic said it looked like it had perished ?? On the plus side he had fitted a short valve stem. Much easier to check the pressure. Neither I, nor the mechanic could see any side-wall damage. I'll get the front changed to a short one at the next tyre change.

Not quite the right thread ...

How much gear do I wear on a winter ride? 9.5kg (not including helmet mounted gopro)

This is why so much
https://www.instagram.com/p/C83651qxr8K/?igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

Scooter Pic of the Day! (Post 2690644)

My Bank texting me twice this morning warning me that I was about to go overdrawn and if I go overdrawn my direct debts may not get paid today.

I dutifully go to the Bank to resolve the issue and the amount I'd gone overdrawn by was a hefty £7.01 so roughly $10.

A coffee and a sticky bun's worth of being overdrawn.

Bah.

I noticed after riding the Vespa in the parade that my tail light was out. Again. With visions of a failed (brand new) regulator or some other electrical problem, I pulled the bulb... and discovered that after installing the SIP 12V AC system I'd left the 6V bulb in the tail light. Put the 12V bulb in, that should fix it.

Rode the Vespa up to Deadwood early this morning for the first time in weeks.

One hundred miles of Black Hills back road pleasure on a superb little machine that always impresses with how much it can deliver from so (seemingly) little.

Here in the USA they would have added a $25 penalty to your $10 overdraft

I got up around 6:30am and installed a hoist for our second kayak. It will be nice having 2 kayaks when we go to the lake. That cheers me up!

After installing the hoist, I road around the entire shoreline of Lake Tahoe on my old Panhead chop. 151 miles and 2.6 gallons of gas. 58mpg at high elevation isn't too bad. Stopped at a little market on the west shore and got a wonderful pastrami sandwich. Days like this really cheer me up!😃

This post was not quite
What we were hoping to see
Try again, perhaps?

caschnd1

You are living the life.

Ain't THAT th' truth!

Victor

I'm doing my best to enjoy retired life as long as I'm healthy enough to do so. I've seen too many folks kind of waste away watching TV after they retire and I don't want to go that route. I try to keep active with a variety of summer and winter "hobbies" 😀

Weight reduction

https://www.instagram.com/reel/C6NnzGKxhsR/?igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

Everytime I upload something like this it makes me happy.

Think I'm getting the hang of it and getting quicker at editing them.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/C86wRWEvYZd

The mob of Black Vultures weren't looking for me this morning over the Deadwood coffee shop, they just circled around a few times overhead and then moved on.


Tomorrow is a different day, however.

As long as you can still kickstart that beautiful Panhead, you'll be alright.

It's 106F outside - so being indoors I watched some telly - with the A/C on for the first time this year.

Now I'm not normally a huge fan of men's football (soccer) - too much wasting time and writhing about on the ground - but I've just watched a brilliant 100% full throttle match between Austria and Turkiye in the last-16 knock-out stage of Euro 2024. Hugely enjoyable for the whole match, back and forth with no let-up, most of it in pouring rain. Both sides thoroughly deserve plaudits, and the eventual loser (I'll not spoil it for those who haven't watched it yet) can hold their heads high once their despair has dissipated.

It cheered me up to have witnessed football as it should be played.

I got out of bed this morning to 1.4C at 8.30am.

Inner city in Melbourne, AU

Brrr...

I didn't mention I'm also very pleased the A/C works so well, having completely 'remodelled' it earlier this year. 106F still outside, a very comfy 80F set-point inside (~40C vs ~25C).

Ice on the car roof this morning. Not on the Vespa though. The pushbike stayed in the shed.

The NBA (basketball) has been trying to stop the "flops" with some, minor effect, but in even the little footie I've seen the flop is doing quite well in "soccer". Jim, I might have enjoyed that game, as I'm starting to get it.

Kudos for using the correct spelling for Turkiye, most people are either not aware or have the due respect to spell or pronounce the name of the country
how it should be.

The US State Department has only just recently changed the officially-designated US name for Türkiye to correct this longstanding oversight.

https://www.npr.org/2023/01/08/1147704945/the-state-department-will-begin-spelling-turkey-as-turkiye

Huh. Learned something new today.

We were in Kusadasi and in Istanbul a year ago, and I had already picked up the correct spelling of Turkiye (don't know how; I'm not usually so bright...). Boy, were the locals tickled with me! Kinda nice, since I don't aspire to be the "Ugly American" when we travel!

A big ol' nod to Jess, too, for mentioning the correct spelling.


BTW, we both LOVED Kusadasi!

Victor

Brrrrr, a bit Chile in here.

Yeah I've never understood the concept of charging someone for being over drawn when by doing that you'll put them even deeper into the red.

Lucky that I'm in there on a weekly basis so it was all resolved very quickly but it was a little unnecessary.

£70.00 Yes. £7.00 No.

What. The. Actual. Fuck.

(But it does cheer me up!)

Sounds fine to me, as I see no reason why any country should not be able to designate its own name. On the other hand, as far as I know the State Department still refers to the large country in Central Europe as Germany. I am quite sure that is not what that country has ever called itself or chooses to call itself now. Why the difference? Many more examples of course.

"The different names reflect the linguistic and cultural differences between the German and English-speaking worlds."

And you could say much the same thing about the difference between Spain and España, Russia and Rossiya, or Turkey and Türkiye. Just curious about the inconsistancy on the part of the U.S. State Department.

I think it's sufficient to state that geographic names and their historic and linguistic variations are a very complex subject.

I used to work with a guy who was passionate about his idea that The United States was the only country in the world that didn't have a name. He would go on, and on, and on (and on) about it until you just agreed with him to get him to shut up. "It's not a name! It's just a description! It's as if your name was 'Third Son'! Every other country has a name! What's wrong with this place?"

What I mostly got out of all that was a burning desire to become self-employed.

The difference is the people of Turkiye have made a point of asking the English speaking nations to refer to their country as Turkiye as they no longer want to be compared in name to a bird eaten at Christmas or Thanksgiving etc.

As far as I'm aware Germany, France, Spain or anywhere else has not made the same request.

I agree. That is likely the primary difference. Of course, as far as "anywhere else" not asking, some others obviously have - Persia vs. Iran and Burma vs. Myanmar come to mind.