Coop's Corner: December 2015

Sunday, December 20, 2015

Musical Weekend

Last night Peg and I finally were able to attend one of the area's concerts that our daughter is performing with. The always pleasant drive down the river was as enjoyable as always, the low sun angle highlighting the shore across the river over in Wisconsin a unique look at the bluffs and shoreline in nature's spotlight. After so many of our past days under dark and gloomy clouds, rain and mist, the sun was especially appreciated.

After dinner we dropped Lauren off at the LaCrosse Symphony's concert hall on the campus of Viterbo University and waited in the lounge area with some very heavy duty people watching for the 7:30 concert to begin.

Home For The Holidays was the theme, the first half of the concert highlighted Christmas and Hanukkah favorites and then after Intermission, Prokofiev's Prelude and Ball Scene from CINDERELLA (1944). There were some pretty darn good young dancers that then remained on stage to help the entire audience sing a verse or two of 10 favorite holiday tunes. A wonderful, festive, put us in the holiday spirit evening.

I knew it would be an especially good evening when I saw this ad in the Program Notes, sharing a certain hobby of Maestro Alexander Platt, here promoting one of the area's major LaCrosse Symphony Sponsors......

Before we leave the subject of music, the other weekend Peg and I watched (it wasn't very easy) Bill Murray's Netflix Christmas Special. I'd heard a couple of reviews that mostly panned the production but we were willing to give it a go, hoping for some of the holiday warmth and joy present in the old Bing Crosby styled shows of old. Threatening at any moment to Roku a different selection, I'm glad that we stuck with it at least long enough to hear our Little Troublemaker Miley Cyrus sing "Silent Night". It's just possible that even though angels are known to have wings, they may not always wear them 24/7. If you've not heard, look for it.

The TW200 is out of the shop and ready for Big 2016 Adventure.

December 20th and I was out riding through the pasture without a hat, without gloves.

The Sport Touring Honda CT90 quickly had an oil change and a valve check, spending so little time in the shop that it didn't really have a chance to warm to workshop temperature.

Next is the big black one......

Sunday, December 13, 2015

Milestones

Our oldest daughter had a traditionally significant birthday this weekend and while it was her big day, a milestone of her own, it was one for her mother and me too. The little girl that was home with us this weekend is now older than Peg and I were when we brought her into the family. An amazingly wonderful thing.

A few weeks ago she made a request, "Can we work on a project together? I need a Tack Cabinet for my horse, a place to store things at The Barn. No hurry, not a rush-before-Christmas thing...it can take as long as it takes, just something we can work on when we can."

A set of plans were found, obtained, adjustments to get the cabinet just right for Katlyn's horse being made as we go. I had the van so picked up the sheets of plywood on my own a couple of weeks ago. This weekend we actually got started making sawdust.

In addition to some birthday cake, some other early season eating and drinking making Merry were begun. There's a 1000 piece jigsaw that was assembled on the card table and I imagine that it will be there for a number of days still before being disassembled.

With sawdust in the 'storage' section of the garage, things on the lift in the heated shop have come to a momentary standstill.

My first rally of the '15 riding season (not counting Slimey Crud) found me at the Madison BMW Club's Great River Road Rally, riding my trusty ol' TW200. On the ride down I noticed that my right boot was getting some oil spray, something I'm not at all used to on any of the machines. Over that May weekend, the oil only got worse. With other attendees gathered around, speculation was that possibly a hose clamp on a crankcase breather tube might have grown tired of just gripping the hose and moved on to cutting off the hose instead.

I parked the TDub in the garage where it waited for the OFF riding season for the discovery and repair. Numerous times all summer I looked over in the corner, wishing the Little Mule would be available, instead choosing one of the other bikes for that day's ride. This fall, before the hoses outside were frozen solid, I rolled the Yamaha out of the garage, used degreaser and cleaned off a LOT of grungy, baked on dusty oil. It didn't take more than a mile or two to source my problem.

The case gasket, at 12 o'clock straight above the clutch basket, had somehow for lack of a better word, collapsed, dropping down inside. Maybe it was just age and gravity (gets us all eventually) that dropped the gasket around that arch between those 2 bolts above the clutch. The gasket was ordered, as was the kickstarter oil seal before I even had the bike on the lift in the shop.

While cleaning off the old gasket from both sides of the cover/crankcase faces, I just happened to notice that a circlip on the kickstarter shaft was missing part of its circumference. These two pieces were still one before I tried to remove the 'clip. These clips are never a complete circle though still in place, this one was even less of a circle than normal.

Waiting now for that last circlip, then assembly and some fresh oil. I'm not sure which of the other machines get lifted next but one of them better get in the shop soon, I've a fair amount of work to do on the others, too many tires to change and time is moving. Spring and more riding will be here before we know it.

Sunday, December 6, 2015

Friday, December 4, 2015

CYCLE GUIDE - June 1972 - Yamaha XS2

Oriental Express - The '72 XS2 is a vast improvement over last year's model.

Others say....

"it was auspicious to approach any situation from a deferential, inquisitive place. Conceding that there is much to learn is the best blueprint for discovering something new." ----B. Fuller

The Man straightened stiffly above the block of salt fixed to the stake and looked at the young cattle ringed about him. The pasture was holding out well and the stock was looking good. This bunch would be ready to sell in another month, maybe sooner if the market was right.

A stir among the cattle down near the river brought him round to face the swinging bridge he'd built years before. Someone was coming toward him from the bridge. Someone in breeches, but it didn't look like a man, somehow. What was a woman doing in his pasture this time of night?

He bent over the salt again; maybe if he paid her no heed she'd go on past and let him mind his own business. He heard her footsteps come nearer and stop. "Good evening," she said.

Her voice was smooth with book learning but friendlier than most, and somehow almost shy. When he made no answer she went on, "I've been sitting on your swinging bridge....I thought I'd like to say thank-you...." Her voice stumbled a little, then she tried once more.

"You are Mr. ____". His name sounded strange in her voice, but she went on to tell her own.

"That's what they've called me the last sixty-eight years," he said, looking past her face to the hills fast darkening under a single star. "I reckon the woods are free for those that like to walk there."

The unfamiliar voice laughed a little. "That's what Emerson said: the grove belongs to the man who walks in it with an open heart....On that basis I guess I've owned part of your woods for a good many years.....". She made a final effort. "I've always wanted to thank you....."

Something deeply hidden stirred in him. "There's a stump up there, in the notch of the woods", he said slowly, "that before the timber grew so tall you could stand on it and see all over this country."

He kept still a minute, remembering, then, "I used to stand up there an' look at things, an' wonder how they come to be like they was, an' how the hills was created, an' all the things in Nature.... I told my wife I guessed all the religion I ever had I got standin' on that old stump, a-wonderin'..." He turned his face away from her.

She helped him out. "I know about that, a little. This afternoon I saw......." Her account of a thing she had really taken time to look at eased him, and he answered with telling of the badger den at the foot of the swinging bridge.

When she had gone, he turned to watch her. After a moment she stood clear and unmoving against the sky. You could hear the sounds of the river where she stood. She was one that could stand still long enough, he thought, really to hear what a body was saying, or a river.

Then she walked down the farther side of the slope and was gone. ------Margaret Snyder from A Chosen Valley

Fall was the end of harvest, end of the growing season, a burst of color and sun-warmth before killing frost turned the land gray and cold. Fall was a moody time, full of both life and death, a time when we were reminded of the power outside of us, reminded that the seasons happen to us. We do not invite the change to come.-------Ben Logan, from The Land Remembers

When you get those rare moments of clarity, those flashes when the universe makes sense, you try desperately to hold onto them. They are the lifeboats for the darker times, when the vastness of it all, the incomprehensible nature of life is completely elusive. So the question becomes or should have been all along, what would you do if you knew you only had one day, or one week, or one month to live. What lifeboat would you grab onto? What secret would you tell? What band would you see? What person would you declare your love to? What wish would you fulfill? What exotic locale would you fly to for coffee? What book would you write? ------- Ben Tyler

We were also cautioned about journeying far from home. As an example of the dangers, the town had a badly crippled lady named Lucy, who as a girl had traveled to New York City. As she traveled along a sidewalk, sightseeing, she was struck by the outstretched hand of a suicide who had leapt from high above. Her spine had been shattered and for the rest of her life, she was to walk bent forward at the waist, tapping the sidewalk with two black canes. Whenever the subject of travel to a big city was raised, someone would say, "Just remember what happened to Miss Tripp." ---- Ted Kooser, from Local Wonders

"Steamboats are like wedding cakes without the complications...." ----Mark Twain

"It's not about having lots of money, it's about having lots of options......." -----Chris Rock

As the very proud father of three former ponytail wearers, hopefully I can get away with this....."For the past few years it's been fashionable for young women to wear ball caps and to snap the strap on the back under their ponytails. I like the looks of that, their shiny ponytails jauntily swinging, but it's hard not to think of the rear ends of horses. There's a piece of harness called the crupper that goes just under a horse's tail to keep its nose down. If the horse lifts its head to look for a way out of whatever predicament it's in, the crupper tightens and hurts the horse. But it's foolish for parents to think that a ball cap might keep a young woman from running away. Anybody can see they're made for running." ------Ted Kooser, Local Wonders

"I tell the guy's girlfriend that the only difference between the book's main character Phaedrus and myself is that I am neither brilliant, tortured or insane, she looks at my bike and there is an uncomfortable silence." --------ahendepe (a.k.a. Vermin)