Friends Bikes: Sam's W650

Monday this week I helped Sam put the rest of his Kawasaki W650 together.  Enjoy the pictures.  More later.

Beast of Burden: Tire Delivery

Tires for a friend of Metro who is working on a Lambretta for designer David Miller.

Frequent Haunts: Lookout Joe's

I meet another motorcycle friend here once a week before we both ride to work.  Lots of friendly regulars, really friendly staff that is always genuinely glad to see us.  It's a real place, and independently owned, hard not to love

The Rusty Cowl

The rusty cowl is a side panel from an old Vespa PX that's been sitting around by the dumpster at Metro Scooter.  We've been meaning to dress the scooter up and use it as an outside display.  People always ask if it's for sale, but I explain that it's had everything useful salvaged from it already by people that have experience with rebuilding and restoring vintage Vespas.  

It took just a little modification to the cowl, and I pushed a big dent out of it, swapped out the rubber trim and turn signal assembly.  So hence the new Blog title, as soon as I figure out how to change it.

I remember having a fear of anything rusty when I was a child; what if I wasn't current on tetanus shots?  Lock jaw sounds scary.  So it's kind of a reclaiming of courage now that I've grown, but I find that other grown ups are afraid of the rust, as if it's going to damage the bike, or give someone lock jaw.

Casio Film Watch Pela

My favorite wrist watch was a Casio Film Watch Pela. I believe that it was Number FS-00R-7 which was a diagonal hexagonal display. It had 12 or 24 hour time readouts, world time zones so I could scroll through the world's zones and see what time it was in London, or at LAX. It also had a stopwatch, an alarm and a telephone number data storage that I never bothered to use. My watch was broken in a punk show mosh pit in the third year that I wore it. The strap closure broke, and when I found the watch the face had been cracked so that the display looked like an ink blot. I thought about it for a couple of weeks, and have said that I was going to replace it with the same watch ever since. Now years have gone by and I still miss it but I haven't had time, literally, to make it a priority. I got my first film watch with it's reflective face and silver urethane band on ebay for around seventeen dollars, including shipping, prices have gone up, and the choices of styles of the display and the band have changed as well. And so finally today I did some shopping, picked my favorite from the options that are now available and I am now waiting for a response from an ebay seller in Germany. This week my time table needs precision. I may have to borrow a wristwatch from a friend til my new Casio arrives, but at least it's on it's way.