More Choppers

This is turning into one of those places you end up when you google "chopper" and your not looking for helicopters...but here are some anyway. Been super busy at work! Maybe a few of you got stuck in the traffic when we closed Tumwater canyon for this fire? If you look closely in the 1st pic., you can see the highway below. The hike to the point (from the highway below) where the pic. was taken is brutal.

Viewdale

Viewdale drive in. Overgrown with weeds, forgotten about, and for sale. Was riding around and noticed the gate was open so I snuck in... Nobody around. I'm sure this piece of history will be swiftly removed and replace with something "better". Glad I got to have a moment with it before its gone. On a better note I remembered I can get non-ethanol gas and even 110 octane from one of the local gas places. Burned a tank on purpose just to try it out, bike ran killer. I'll be going back to get 5 gallons of TRICK to mix with some premium...I pulled up and the guys that run the place were checkin out the Z using phrases such as "extended swingarm" and "dragbike" reminiscing about their buddies that used to run 900's and 1000's back in the seventies and early 80's. Pretty cool.

Back to the Pan

Thanks T.P. for posting this photo. This is what my Panhead looked like when I found it and brought it home. Looks good to go right? What you don't see is the completely stuck front forks, water in the engine itself, tons of bondo on all but the fenders, bent bars, clapped out primary set-up, seat that isn't attached to anything (but its a Bates pan) trashed exhaust, the list goes on. I sat at my shop today and stared at the current Pan, the way it sits today, and pondered the exhaust. If I had to do it all again, I would have carefully just rebuilt everything needed to safely propel me down the highway, and left the rest alone. This bike was cool as hell just like this! Damn. Maybe I will tell the whole story one of these days from the adventure we had getting this bike...

Work.

These are a few images from the past few days. Some of the expensive toys we get to play with from time to time. The rest of this fire was pretty boring, and when it wasn't I was too busy to get out the camera...Anyway, this is all part of what I do for a living.

Done.

Table for my woman is done. I promise the next post will be far more manly, pipes for the Pan are coming up next.

Day Off!!