Slaying the Dragon

US 129 is 318 turns in 11 miles through the mountains between TN and North Carolina. The story is that it is an old foot trail and if you have ever seen it you would believe it.  Most know it as Deal's Gap but it is also known as the Tail of the Dragon.

I scheduled a trip to to Deal's Gap to coincide with a Desmo Motorcycle club trip but the week before I was going to leave, Blue was stolen so I didn't go.    By later that summer (2002 I think) I had another bike and I decided to make the trip.  This time I didn't book a room at Deal's Gap I just packed my bike and left for the weekend.

The first Day I made it about half way there, I stopped for a few hours at Gettysburg and explored some of the sites like little round top.

Towards the end of the second day I was in the mountains; it was dark, I hadn't seen a gas station or frankly any sign of life for miles and I was running on fumes.  Bugs the size of pidgeons were bouncing off my jacket and helmet, smearing the view through my face shield.  I didn't have any idea if there was gas ahead or even how close I was to the hotel where I planned to stay.  I had directions but hadn't been keeping track of the miles or the gas either it seems.  Before long I started to imagine scenes out of Deliverance by the side of the road.  If I ran out of gas I was seriously going to be screwed; the Monster isn't a really heavy bike but the road was a series of hills that were steep as hell so if I had to push the bike I wasn't going to get very far, very fast so hence the over active imagination about scenes out of Deliverance.

So one minute I am really starting to sweat the lack of fuel in my tank and then next minute I round a bend and there was the hotel and several hundred Mazda Miatas.  I make my way into the hotel and at the front desk the woman asks if I have a reservation, when I say that I don't she shakes her head 'It's Miata Week'.  'What??'  Apparently some Miata owner's group comes to the Gap every year and takes over every hotel in the area.  According to the woman at the front desk there wasn't going to be a hotel room for miles.  I ask her if anyone hasn't showed up for their reservation and she mentions that she has one.  The room was above the kitchen, a shared bathroom and the the reservation hasn't shown up yet.  'It's 11 PM now, how late do you have to hold it?'  I didn't care if it was a fold out cot in a back hallway, I was tired, dirty and all I wanted was a relatively quiet place to put my head down.  She smiled and offered me the room.  The kitchen is closed but we are serving steak tomorrow night, would you like me to put you down for one?  We always run out.  I nodded my head and asked her if there was a bar or a place I could get a beer.  She told me that she would get me some beer out of the kitchen as we walked through it towards my room.  Suddenly the evening was getting a little better.

Thirty minutes later I was sitting on a lawn chair with a cold six pack of beer, watching all the Miata nerds jack off over their cars; the idea of pushing my bike through the mountains in the dark a faint memory.    The hotel owner's son was sitting next to me and we were talking motorcycles and making fun of Miata's.

For the next two days I shredded those hills and canyons and had a blast.

KZ400 Bobber Dispatch #2

I made some progress on the KZ400 Bobber project this afternoon, I managed to strip it down to almost just the frame and engine.  I am really excited about this project, this bike is the perfect little bomb around town scooter and I have always wanted to build a little bobber.  I am planning on a weld on rigid frame from TC Brothers, single saddle on springs, maybe a 21" front wheel - I am not sure yet but it doesn't matter because the process is half the fun.  This isn't the first bike that I have stripped down to the frame and I am always a little nervous about getting it all back together again but this time there was a certain freedom knowing that it didn't matter because most of what I am taking off won't be going back on and in the end I really don't care.  Early first steps.  

KZ 400 Bobber Project

So the other project I am kicking off this weekend is turing my 75 KZ400 into a bobber.  I replaced the battery and the plugs but the bike is running really, really rough.  It is getting gas, spark and the compression seems pretty good but there a a lot of variables to look into (ignition unit sending a weak spark?, bad gas?  blocked jets?) so the next step is to empty the fluids and start stripping it down to the frame and drag it into my little work space in the basement.  This is probably going to be the priority while I figure out exactly what I want to do with the Ducati project.

The FrankenMostro Project

The red monster has seen a lot of life. Track days, racing and more than a few wrecks on the race track only to be reborn as a SS.  I shoved the 01 motor into a 93 SS frame which was a much better set up for the race track.  Two years ago I had a guy here in Seattle rework the bike to give it more pep on the track. New suspension, extended the shock to increase the pitch, and new front forks off a 748 as well as some engine work that resulted in a few more horses.   Before I even raced that season I threw the thing down the track, during a practice session pushing it too hard on cold tires-dumb.  I was disgusted with myself because I had spent a shit load of money to get it track ready and it also shook me up a bit because it was the first time racing and crashing as a father.  Seeing those bikes dive past me while I am sitting on the track and all I could think was 'you have a daughter'.  So I rolled the bike into the garage and kept myself busy doing other stuff.  Well that was two, almost three years ago and now I am feeling the need for two wheels again.  I am not going to race and while I love track days what I need is something to run around town on.  So I am going to put the monster back on the street, most likely in a monster like configuration rather than the SS frame but what I really want to do is to build a Ducati chopper.  Maybe bobber, maybe extreme cafe racer I am not sure yet but this project is on.  Monster frame from ebay is on the way.  I also have an idea to try some struts from Biltwell Inc in place of the shock but I am also thinking of some sort of weld on rigid tail.  I am not sure how this is going to work and most of the Ducati choppers I have seen so far I don't like a whole lot.  This evening I replaced the plugs and the battery and got the bike running.  It seems to be running strong but I am not sure it is 100%.  I am so out of shape and stiff that I had a hard time putting my feet on the rear sets.  My hips are so stiff from sitting at a computer for 12 hours a day.  We will have to work on that.

Monster #2

So because I am a dumbass, I forgot to lock up the Blue monster one night and it was stolen.  Dumb.  I went out and bought the 2001 Monster 900 before I even knew what I was going to get from the insurance settlement.  I was hooked.

The Desmo Siren Song

I had been living in NYC for a few years and I was living in my own apartment without roommates for the first time since I landed.  It had been two years without a bike and all of a sudden the jones started and I was thinking about building another bike.  By this time Ebay and a bunch of forums meant it was a whole lot easier to find used parts to piece something together.  So within months of having my own place I had the beginnings of another harley chopper project as well as a Triump tiger in a box in my 450 square foot apartment.  You see the rationalization was that i could get the triumph up and running fast so I would have something to ride while I built the harley.  Every year in January the motorcycle show came to NYC and the Jacob Javitz center and I went with some buddies.  One of them couldn't stop going on about the Ducatis.  I had seen them in the past but didn't really think much of them.  Well we found the Ducati booth and I sat on a Monster (Dark) and about an hour later one of the booth guys told me that I had to move on, that other people were waiting to sit on the bike.  I don't know how much longer it was but by that spring I had purchased the Blue 900 City.

This was actually my neighborhood in Brooklyn.

Rita

I was working in Houston, TX.  I was managing a bar and was bored in general with my life and I wanted another Harley.  So I sold my car, and started building.  I bought an old Yamaha 1100 so I could get around town and started to gather parts in my living room.  Early on I decided that the bike had a name and it was Rita.  That is a long story and not a very interesting one but Rita occupied my mind and heart for a lot of years.  She evolved a bit over time and suffered mostly because I was the chief mechanic but she was a great bike.

This was the final configuration.  3" belt, jockey shift, 21" front tire.  I had to sell Rita to finance a move to NYC which in the end was the right thing to do and one of the best decisions I have every made.  I met my wife in NYC and it was there that I met my first Italian Sportbike

Either out of my system or in for life

So a Yamaha XS 750 Triple was how it all got started.  Prior to this, it was just longing and desire.  I was in college, and I bought it from a guy for about $400 if memory serves me.  I figured that I would either get bikes out of my system or I would be done for life and I guess it was the latter.  I had an experience on this bike that might have saved my ass.   Prior to plonking down the $400 I had never ridden a motorcycle before, not even a mini bike really.  It was about two days after I bough it and I was out on a country road, flying along, having a blast and believe it or not I was belting out 'Wanted Dead or Alive' by Bon Jovie at the top of my lungs inside my helmet.  You know, 'I'm a cowboy, on a Steel horse I ride' - that part.  Anyway, I was flying along, not paying attention completely unprepared to handle any situation that might arise when suddenly I noticed, a bit too late, that the road was a much sharper curve than I realised.  I hit the front break pretty hard, and I was riding the edge and the wheels slid in some sand on the side of the road and I went down.  Went down fast.  I ended up on someone's front lawn with the bike still idling (god those old Japanese bikes could take a beating).  I was shook up but no worse for the wear.  I had slid on one side and that sleeve of my leather jacket lost the zipper and was scuffed ( I still have the jacket today) but I was wearing a helmet, boots and the leather jacket so I was fine.  It scared the shit out of me and I realized how fast things could go wrong.  It was a good lesson to learn early on and without too much pain and I think it helped me stay out of too much trouble until I actually knew what the hell I was doing.