Post #9 of 3650 on this very blog was about this fat fuck and his stance on cycling. Don’t even get him started on AIDS or “Orientals” or Italians, Communists or basically anyone that isn’t an obnixious, cracker slob. Apparently he’s ahead in the polls? Unbelievable.

I saw this video of Shinya Kimura a couple of months ago and thought it was beautiful but I think I was still in denial of the fact that this blog would soon be mostly about motorcycles for a little while at least so it never got posted.

A couple of days ago a friend sent it to me thinking I’d like it (she was right) and I watched it again; now with much more riding experience under my belt there were a couple of lines in this that really resonated with me; mostly “It feels nothing like how violent it looks from the outside. It’s very serene.”

I’ve been trying to put into words what falling in love with motorcycles feels like without waxing poetic in a way that sounds totally contrived but it’s very difficult – all of the clichés are absolutely true.

Super rad video concept: Watch Yours | Watch Mine | Download Chrome

Note: I didn’t realize that I still had iTunes on when I watched this and a Dead Meadow record I hadn’t heard was on… I thought that it was the actual soundtrack and was going totally mental!

Chris had a prior engagement but I was way into it! The weekend was pretty shitty, weather-wise, but today was supposed to be pretty good so the rest of us put together a crew to go for a ride. Meet at the Beaconsfield @ 10, grab a coffee, pick a direction and boogie.

We had a pretty good little rag-tag group of riders, I think 13 all in all; a couple dual-sports, a few harleys, a couple café racers, a couple custom bobbers (care of Dutra), a few mid 70′s CBs, a couple sport bikes and a bunch of dudes that just really wanted to ride their motorcycles.

Only downside? The weather wasn’t pretty good. In fact, it was the opposite of that, it was pretty fucking dismal so we hung out inside and waited for the rain to clear up a bit…

Carlos & Paul ride awesome bikes but they are severely lacking in the fender department and as such don’t make for great rainy day rides… They had to turn back after a short time but it was totally understandable and given that the weather only got worse, they did the right thing.

For the rest of us the storm rolls on… We’ll go anyway, momma nature ain’t gonna ruin a boy’s fun, no ma’am!

We pulled over somewhere between home and Wasaga once the rain broke to have coffee / dry off / warm up.

We rolled into Wasaga… looking totally fucking cool – totes obiv.

The weather sucked but the view was still pretty.

Casa Playa in the Hizouuuuuse!

Is a Lone Wolf still a Lone Wolf when he runs with his pack?

Yep, still the Lone Wolf.

Thanks for the ride, boys, it was a little grueling at times but a super fun day all in all. Shout out to our pal Lyndsey Westfall who unfortunately couldn’t come on the ride because her apartment burned up the night before… I’m sure I’ll post something about that soon because I’m sure that she’s gonna need some new stuff…

First order of the day: New Brake Pads. Unfortunately one of the bolts is rusty and stripped easily but just the same, the pads got replaced and despite the massive squeaks I get now, she stops much better.

Second order of the day: New Carb Boots / Clamps / Main Jets. Rubber that is nearly 40 years old just won’t hold air the way it’s supposed to so the best thing I could do was just get new ones. The low RPM engine wavering will hopefully be quelled once we make this switch.

The new ones were tricky to get set just right but once we got them set just right, everything bolted up nicely.

While Yan tinkered with the carbs some more I got going on replacing the stock turn signals with something a little bit less big/dorky.

Once the signals were done I replaced the stock tail lamp, again with something a little bit less big/dorky.

Both required a bit of cannibalizing old parts from the stock lamps and slightly modifying the new ones but that’s all part of the fun, right? It is for me, anyway…

While we were there Yan noticed that my chain tension was way off so he taught me how to adjust that, too.

Moment of truth…

Success!

She runs SO MUCH BETTER now! All of the low RPM fluttering seems to have stopped… I’m very, very excited.

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I also decided to finally make a move on those replacement side covers I got a short while ago.

I located the code for the original paint but tracking down paint quickly that hasn’t been made in decades is not super easy so I opted to just eyeball it at a local automotive paint supplier and had them mix up a spray bomb for me.

Sean lent me the basement of Bikes On Wheels so I spent the bulk of the day priming / waiting / priming / waiting / painting / waiting / painting / waiting.

I took a break from painting while the primer dried to help Alex cut a seized lock off her bike.

Sparks into the crotch? That’s grown man business, right thurr.

Back at it…

I think they’re a little rough and a bit too light / too blue but it doesn’t bother me too, too much right now. Over the winter I’ll likely get the proper paint and re-do them but for now they’ll look much, much better than the cracked / repaired / cracked again originals.

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What else? Got some new bags courtesy of the King Of Hipster Beach, himself,

…and my new Mark Weaver prints came in. They’re fucking fantastic!

I opted out of looking at a single map or using the GPS on my phone – it added a little extra time to the trip but it was fun and it took me through a bunch of places I really like and down roads I’ve traveled many times but never appreciated how beautiful they were like I do now.

It was a great week away; I was ready to come home but instantly regretted leaving the second I got stuck in Toronto traffic for the first time. C’est la vie!

I talked to a few old guys that know older CBs at the coffee shop and they suggested that I go see Chris @ Tiny’s and it was well worth it.

He took the bike out for about 45 minutes until he could replicate the (intermittent) problem and when he got back he narrowed it down to a vacuum leak in the 3rd carburetor boot. I called Rob @ Honda Powerhouse in Mississauga and ordered new ones right away… They came in the next day!

More on that later! I spent most of the day rolling around the neighboring towns like South Hampton which are all really beautiful.

I got a text from Yan earlier that morning saying that they’d really enjoyed their time on the Bruce and were coming back with Yan’s little boy, Leonard: future lady-killer.

We promptly got them settled in at the place and headed straight to the beach!

Perfect way to end another perfect day…

With the bike parked out front it wasn’t hard to make new friends with the locals who would give me great advice on places to ride and things to check out while I’m there. I’d planned to take the coast up to Tobermory but one of the locals warned against it on the count of a lot of sketchy gravel roads that aren’t much fun to ride on.

He suggested instead that I take the road through Mar which would take me across some pretty marsh-land and would ultimately get me there about an hour sooner.

Lone Wolf for The Lone Wolf. Just Lone Wolfin’ like it’s nobody’s business!

Kelso‘s Peoples in the house!

Despite a bunch of construction the road to Tobermory was beautiful.

Tobermory, at the tip of the Bruce Peninsula, is a pretty little town and a good jumping off point with ferries to Manatoulin Island, Flowerpot Island, etc.

It’s also home to the Crow’s Nest pub… If I can’t have a beer at The Crowsnest back home, I’ll have one here.

I wanted to take a glass bottom boat tour of the shipwrecks in the area, which I did when I was last here, but the timing didn’t work out if I wanted to be back in Port Elgin before dark.

As per usual, the views on the way “home” were spectacular.

…and this, I love this.

I’m not really much of a “go to the beach by myself” kind of guy but after a day on the bike, nothing could have been more refreshing than going for a swim and having a little catnap in the sun.

The sunsets here are truly amazing and there is a short stretch of coastline 30 seconds from the place so every night at sunset I’d rip along the coast.

I can’t probably describe what that’s like but it is pure magic, mostly. I took some video of it but I’m too lazy to compress/embed right now so here’s a screenshot from one of those videos.

After that, tonight I headed off to Kincardine to try to snap a few snaps of these giant wind turbines that are speckled across the countryside…

When I pulled onto a side road to get closer the bike just stopped. Oops! No more gas!

Thank goodness for reserves!

Everything I own is covered in dead bugs so to get a nice little refresher I took my baby to the hand-wash for a hand-job.

She’s just a shinin’ so bright now! All gussied up and ready for a night on the town…

…I rented The Road instead and passed out by midnight.

I haven’t been up here since I was a teenager and I feel like an idiot for it. I mean, in my defense I haven’t had a car in a very long time and it’s just far enough away that going up for one day hardly seems worth it but between the moto and the week off, it only made sense to come up here.

Seriously, this is how close it is to the beach. I really am an idiot.

Yan, Takami, Aner and I headed off to the Bruce on Saturday for the beginning of what will be my first week off in some time and if I don’t mind saying so myself, it was very well deserved. I left work on Friday August 26th and I won’t return to work until September 07th. I’m seriously so stoked.

Aner had to turn back around Durham due to prior commitments but it was nice to have him along for the ride.

We rolled into town and found somewhere to eat and grab some hops. Just so happened that there was a local HOG chapter poker run this weekend and one of the perfect gentlemen asked Takami to pick a winner for a raffle for some antique weaponry (?!) – Jack Erection won.

There were Harleys as far as the eye could see! I’m lucky I got out of there alive after parking in their row… you know… “I’d rather see my sister in a whorehouse than my brother on a Honda” and all that jazz…

See that little silver spot down there? That’s a nail in my tire…

Fortunately it went in mostly sideways and broke off so it didn’t puncture anything… that would have sucked if it had blown out on the highway… Fortunately it didn’t.

Feeling the need to tinker and address some of the problems I’ve been having with the bike, Yan popped open the points again and adjusted the timing… It helped some at high RPMs but affected the low RPM driving (which already sucked) in a negative way.

We headed down to the waterfront to walk around some and get acclimatized to Port Elgin living…

Port Elgin living is good…

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Goin’ away for a couple of days. See y’all next week!

“A lone wolf has gotta do what a lone wolf has gotta do, just… you know… like… be a lone wolf.”
- The Lone Wolf

Thanks Matias!

On display will be 5 frames custom painted & sharpied by Mike Giant along with new works from Benny Zenga, CHUNKS, Frank Maidens, Tobin Reid, Toby Reid. I was by the Mascot last night while the boys and girls were hard at work setting everything up and everyone’s work looks great – it’s gonna be a fun night!

More Info Here.

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Brendt Barbur, Founding Festival Director, was compelled to start the Bicycle Film Festival when he was hit by a bus while riding his bike in New York City. He insisted on turning his negative experience into a positive one. In 2001 Barbur started the Bicycle Film Festival as a platform to celebrate the bicycle through music, art and, of course, film.

The Bicycle Film Festival has been a major catalyst for the urban bike movement, one of the most powerful and culturally relevant forces of the last decade. The BFF is sure to carry this momentum into the next decade.

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While we’re talking about having fun on wheels (Nice seque, right? Ok, not really… I’m tired) check out this here video my good buds at Breadwinner made along with ReadBull… Dundas Square, kick-flip the semi, NBD.

I recognize posting a bunch of photos of someone who isn’t otherwise famous is borderline creepy but I don’t even give a care – not a single one. She’s a major babe and I’m moving to Oakland.

Thanks, Scott Pommier, for taking and posting beautiful photos of beautiful people/things. Can’t wait for the book…

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Oh Hello, New Stuff.

Got a couple little packages today from the states and the land of Aus…

The last time I had to do anything electrical on the bike, I discovered that the wires leading into my dash (turn, oil, neutral, beam… you know, the idiot lights) were all gnarled, rusted, the boots were all dried out and causing shorts all over the place so I set to task in finding a replacement cord – 37581-323-000. Problem is, for all the parts Honda still makes for these things, they stopped making that one years ago, even the places I found online that said they had it… didn’t. So I just snagged the full assembly off a ’73 CB500 hoping it’d be better… It’s good enough, better than what I’ve got, but not perfect so it’s still gonna take some silicone and electrical tape for them to work perfectly… C’est la vie! At least the Rubbernecker Cardigan from Deus is a real beaut!

I’m a touch disappointed in the Matchless Poster – not because it’s not awesome but because I didn’t read the description properly… I assumed it was silk-screen and it wasn’t and I also didn’t note the size, it’s huge! That’s gonna be a pricey frame.

Can’t wait for all this stuff to come in next week, mostly from Vintage CB750.

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Edit: That was quick!

I think this new Cateye Taillight is going to work amazingly well on the bike. While I don’t care all that much of things are “stock” I want the bike to look pretty stock – I don’t want to add anything that isn’t in keeping with the original style of the bike and I think this works while giving the rear end a much lower profile… Can’t wait to wire ‘er up!

100 limited edition screen prints
letterpressed, signed, numbered, and stamped
18X18 in., 5 color on 80lb. Oatmeal Speckletone French Paper

Just couldn’t help myself – a little more Weaver for 1•38.