old weirdness

ingenious, but essentially useless

so of course i'm completely fascinated with it. Ray Clift's steam powered motorcycle, Bellingham, Washington - early 1940's

lifted from: http://blog.makezine.com/

wow, thats what this country really needs: a bacon sundae

hahaha
http://www.dennys.com/#/menu/menu-10

let the bacchanalia begin

first thing shannon o'connor'll see when he pulls into the property tomorrow

hahaha l

that muther eric england shore can throw a party

the weather this year at ton up nashville's vintage bike show was almost complete 180 degree from last years. last year i could barely breathe it was so hot so split quick-like, and this year...let's just say if you're gonna spend an afternoon looking at british bikes, might as well have some british weather to boot. felt like it dropped 10 degrees over the course of the afternoon, and then proceeded to spit all over us. it was a cold wet ride home, couldn't feel my hands til 9pm. some sick ass bikes,some weird bikes(i didnt even know they made rotary engined bikes), and the bands were 20 times better'n about any other bike show you'll run up on in tennessee...good times (& for a sunday for sure)

yeah i'd have a shit eating grin too^

that rotary suzuki was like a bad 80's table top cassette player, and the blk and green dutch rotary(van veen) was supposedly the most expensive bike on market in '77, 15k british pounds. guy who designed em lost his ass on the company. had these crazy square/kinda octagonal pipes, guy said they weighed 40 pounds a piece, haha. owner is a rotary engined bike nut, has a museum in tullahoma of over 300 bikes, all rotary. gonna go check his collection out some weekend, be an excuse for a ride to tullahoma...

  

^i don't know squat from squat, but this beast looked jacked up as hell, what a sweet bike

summers just aint the same

i don't know how i got sucked down this memory hole last week, but i can't believe i miss this place as much as i do...

i'm glad their freaking mall flooded...bastids

rip doo wah ditty city

day 4 & 5

so we leave pueblo with birthday hangovers, and head up to colorado springs with the intentions of hitting garden of the gods and a ghosttown up the road from pikes peak. the garden of the gods was awesome looking but extremely crowded, would be killer in winter or early on a weekday when no sunday strollers are out. but it didnt take long for us both to get thouroughly disgusted, so we headed up the pass towards pike's peak. we made it as far as green mtn falls when jeff got an extreme case of altitude sickness. we dicked around in the little town there waiting for it to subside with no luck, so we didnt head up cripple creek after all haha. its not really a ghost town anymore anyway, but there were several in the vicinity and i wanted to see the architecture. but whatever, so we head back into colorado city/colorado springs. up and down the chintzy 1950's section of the strip, looking for an open room or rv park, with little luck when the van starts acting up again. after hiking through a deserted downtown colo sprgs for food and gas, we decided that she was just overheated. so we chucked the last leg in favor of getting the van back closer to his new hometown, and struck out for loveland. we made camp at the property they had just rented a coupla days before but havent occupied yet. killer digs, nestled in the foothills outside loveland up against some cliffs, sweet craggy red rocks poking out of every hill around the place. the whole trip was a great time, freakin epic journey & i'm glad i got to spend it with an old friend...thanks brother, best roadtrip ever.

the grand tour day3

so we drive forever towards the dunes, and finally after 45 minutes we arrive at the gate and pay our fee, following the inordinate speed limit to finally arrive at the parking lot. the sun was brutal, cooking my cracker ass. after seeing a group of 20 something's who had gotten cooked the day before at the hot springs, i opted not to hike across and climb the dunes. i found a nice cool tree to hide under while jeff took pics. jeff had been here before and had been pounded by blowing sand, but i had heard from a local that the wind really didn't pick up til afternoon, this was why we got an early start over the desert to the park. sure enough, around noon the wind kicked up like it was ordered by someone with more clout than i, so we left. was weird, one minute it was calm and the next a steady buildup of wind had begun. it was literally buffeting the van by the time we reach the gate of the park.

after freezing the last 2 nights and considering it was jeff's b-day(and the fact that i couldn't face my turn sleeping in the top of the camper again), i was determined not to stay in the van another night. we hightailed it up and over the mountains to the front-range side and headed north, eventually finding a koa outside of pueblo and i got us a kozy kabin. met a cool old cat from tennessee who had been out west since the 60's and bullshitted with him for awhile, quaffed a few cocktails & we went for dinner. then after a few more drinks back at the camp, and some more long exposure shots later, we tumbled into the "kabin" for some warmth, finally. 

the grand tour, day 2

so after going through hoosier pass,  we made our way to the one authentic ghost town i just had to see, st elmo. it was way up a dead end valley, hardly passed anybody other than a couple of rangers and a couple of campers. didnt know if the road was gonna be snowed in or not but we made it up to the top and past all the herds of bighorn sheep crowding the road to find the old mining town completely deserted except one fellow working on some property. the place has only 5 full time residents. very cool, my ghosttown cravings were completely satisfied.

after backtracking back out of that alpine valley, we came down gently into the san luis valley, where eventually we got to a point where you could see 85 miles east to west with mtns on either side, and the valley ranged north to south 300 miles or so down into new mexico. forget about the sequatchie valley, this place was immense. you could watch car headlights come at you from 60 miles on, flattest land i've ever seen. a huge valley of NOTHING...literally. settlements are far between and there is nothing other than tumble weeds growing there. the van started acting funny, so we jammed it on down the highway forever and ever until we finally came to a town(sorta), opening the back of the van to find his alternator had broken a bolt and wiggled out the other 2. the damn thing was just sitting out free on a ledge, its a wonder it didnt fall out the back. even the belt was still there, although he had a spare. so after walking to one freaky compound with hardware, tires and lumber painted on the side, the ass who ran the place proceeded to way overcharge us for the wrong bolt, while failing to tell us the general store across the street sold bolts without the 300% markup. no wonder the fool does his business behind a locked gate with a tiny hole for transactions. i tell ya, folks sure werent friendly out there.

so jeff gets her up and running and we plugged rv park into his iphone and found a sweet campground with hotsprings swimming & soaking pools. unfortunately in our drive towards the only town we could see, we had gone 40-50 miles out of our route, so back across the big nothing we trucked. the soak in the hot springs was so worth it though, melting away all our altitude sickness and lingering hangovers. such a cool place, and i swear, the nicest people we met out in the sticks the whole time. little place called sand dunes swimming pool and rv park. really great place, about 7 miles north and 20 miles west of great sand dune national park in the middle of freaking nowhere. killer place to stay. i'd recommend the hell out of the joint... http://www.sanddunespool.com/

it was so nice to be warm again when we hit the high plains desert, but it wouldnt last. after a tasty steak dinner whooped up by jeff, and many more drinks, madness and yelling into the night we crawled back in the van, and proceeded to freeze again the whole night, with windgusts over 40mph, if not way higher. it got well below freezing, for when i got up at crack of dawn, AGAIN, my swimtrunks were frozen stiff as a board. i had to dip them in the hot springs before going into the changing room haha. but the springs soon had me up and at running speed in no time. so after coffee and a dip we headed out to see the mighty dunes, more on that later...