3 Clan plan in Oregon, 5-7 August. 09/23/2011
In order to do a little scouting for next years Beaver Toss, hosted by the Stumptown Clan (stay tuned on that one!), a bunch of us from the Rainier, Stumptown, and Sawtooth Clans all met up in Eastern Oregon for the weekend. Man, what a great idea! We were in the are of Enterprise and Joseph, it was some of the best riding country I have ever been in. Beautiful roads, no cops, and the weather was perfect. The Beaver Toss is going to rock. That's the Rainier Clan on the march, we lost Pete though...He had to turn back to see his grandson being born. Good call, Pete! Here's the campground we stayed at the first night: On the road Saturday.... Good times were had by all, looking forward to doing it again next year...Look in the Gallery for more pictures. 1 Comment Sully 07/22/2011
1st Wed again. 07/22/2011
Its been a weird summer, weather sucks and everybody's been pretty busy, but we have managed to get together a few times anyway. Plus we have the Beaver Toss scouting trip in Oregon coming up, and we have been making it out to Backfire and our 1st Wed meetups. Heres a few shots from 1st Wed this month, had some tasty food and then checked out old bikes at Goldies....The Cretins were having a band and get together at their clubhouse, so we hit that as well. Cretins rock. A couple of posts down I wrote about putting a 70 something Yamaha light on my Bonnie....The bullet style signals I had on there from the last light just didn't look right, plus they were not working anyway, riding all winter had destroyed them internally. I went to Bent Bike and got a couple of 1980 Kawasaki KZ440 signals to replace them with. They were chrome, so the first thing I did was prime and rattle can them with black rustoleum so they would match the tailight...Plus my white trash soul enjoys spray painting things with rustoleum....Sorry for the quality of all these pictures, I did this job on my duty day at the Base and didn't have anything but my cellphone camera. It was actually pretty easy to pull off the old ones and crimp the wires on the new ones to the signal plugs under the fender. Of course these signals are set up to be running lights too, so there were two power wires I could choose from. I chose poorly. The first time I hooked up the running light filament, and they were way too fast, it was like they were a third grader who just ate a whole box of Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs. After switching to the right wires, all was well though, they work like a champ now. And they "fit" with the tailight as well.... I used my SpliSeal kit again, ( http://spliseal.com/index.html ) but was not as impressed this time around. It does make a nice water tight seal, and looks pretty good, but its a little bulky when its done, and I did 4 in a row this time. The mold got hot and it took forever to cool enough to take it off without ripping the "rubber". I think in the future I will stick to heat shrink tubing. Its got its place, especially in a wet or marine environment, but overall I think its not worth what they want for it... Finally, here's my baby parked outside the office, waiting to ride home tomorrow morning. Looks good, the picture really doesn't do it justice. Some of the Rainier clowns made it out to Slims Last Chance Saloon to see the Hillbilly Hellcats play last night. After meeting up at Smartypants and having a PBR or two, Erik, Pete, Lawrence, and Deacon headed over to Slims. Pete found a "shortcut" that was more or less an urban motocross track, gravel, holes, piles pf dirt, and so on but we powered through and rolled into Slims in plenty of time to get some chow before the show. Lots of bikes there! The opening band was awful, and the next one was mediocre at best...But the Hellcats were awesome, as expected. Chuck Hughes may have been pretty lit and having trouble with the words by the end of the set, but his guitar playing never suffered, and the bass player was slapping that doghouse around! We split around 1, the band was winding down but not quite finished. Its worth noting that Leon Berman of "Shake the Shack" was there as well...Heres a couple pics of the Hellcats doing their thing... Backfire 25, 15JUN2011 06/18/2011
It was a beautiful day for this months Backfire, Pete, Rich, Adam, Randy, and Chris hit Dicks for a delicious burger prior to riding over. DaViking met them at the Bit , where there were probably 200 + bikes, almost all of them really cool machines. Had a good time looking at bikes, drinking tasty adult beverages, and generally enjoying the company and the sunny weather. No pictures, but somebody got a video of us arriving, which since I am a computer retard I will just post a link too... BIR arriving Ok, I mean it this time. 06/13/2011
For like the 4,000th time, I'm saying that I am going to keep on top of this page. Contrary to what it looks like here, we have been doing a lot since March. I just have been to lazy to post up anything or put in pictures. I can't remember all of it, and its too much to write up at the moment, but I am putting the pictures I have in the gallery here. Highlights include the Cretins Mods and Rockers, where our own Deacon won the best bike and best Rocker awards, Cash'd Out, several Backfires, Memorial Day BBQ at DaVikings, a couple tech days getting machines in running order for the summer, and a lot more I don't recall at the moment. I WILL start getting stuff posted up here before I forget form now on. This time I mean it! Really. '72 Suzuki tailight on Vikings bike. 03/13/2011
Lots of Rainier workshop business this weekend, not only did Chris put some new bars on his ride (see last post), but DaViking committed a sin against nature by putting a '72 Suzuki 750 tailight on his Bonnie. The old cat eye lens Lucas knock off he'd been running finally broke, lens had enough of Washington freeways I guess... Always on the lookout for something just a little different, DaViking saw a '72 Suzi light at Bent Bike that looked like it might fit the bill. Sure enough, it just about matched the curve of the fender and seemed like it might be just the ticket. A little rattle can Rustoleum and after knocking off the two reflector tabs with a cutoff wheel, this was ready to bolt on. I bought a kit from a company called Spli Seal that allows you to make a perfectly sealed capsule around your crimp on connectors to avoid corrosion problems, figured this would be a good project to try it out on. First step is to crimp your wires together, same as always. Then you clamp the mold around, and using the high temp hot glue gun and rubber material they provide, you inject the mold. What you wind up with is a neat little capsule, looks really professional when its done and should be pretty effective at maintaining a good connection. Its supposed to be heat and oil resistant. That was it except to bolt it all together. And maybe cut out the first connection because you're an idiot and read your diagram wrong, resulting in wiring it backwards the first time. But eventually it all got put in place, and looks pretty sweet.....Good times. Rude Boy in the shop again. 03/12/2011
So Rude Boy continued his quest for motorcycle perfection this weekend by putting on his new clip ons. Thats clip ons, Deacon, not strap on. After a little wrenchin', sweatin', and cussin', things are looking good. Chris says the riding position is great, better for his wrists than the M bars these replaced. Next up is rear sets...... Ruby Dee and the Snakehandlers 03/07/2011
Erik, Mrs Da Viking, Mark, Shana, Chris and Deacon all made it out to the Hwy 99 Blues Club to see Ruby Dee and the Snakehandlers on Saturday night. The food was decent, beer was cheap, and a good time was had by all. The house band was pretty good, but the opening act, The Picketts, needed a lesson in how to set up the stage in less than 45 minutes. But it was worth suffering through their set for Ruby Dee. As expected, the Snakehandlers kicked ass, high energy show, really good tunes, and they seemed to have a lot of fun. We stayed till the end of the show at 1:30, when Rich and Erik enjoyed a shouting contest with a crazy drunk on the way back to the car....Good times, we'll see them again |