Oliver Gettin' Clean

So a few days of hard work have completely cleaned the pistons in the bike, at the cost of my arms, fingers, a few brushes and more solvent than I care to have inhaled.  At this point I am pricing out the various gaskets and parts I will need once I get past cleaning the rest of the engine.  Alas, some of the parts are needed due to my own clumsiness.  But I prefer to consider it enthusiasm!

• New carbs (My fault, and I get to learn how to rebuild a carb!)
• New piston rings (Maybe my fault)
• New engine gaskets (Time is a killer of all things sequestering)
• New brake, throttle and clutch lines
• New bolts, screws and other miscellany (a mixed of old metal and... my fault)

So lots of items to get ordering and get cleaning and get putting back together.  I want to clean out the valves, which are full of carbon.  That is going to require special tools, so I can add those to the above list as well.  But Oliver is looking pretty solid on a fundamentals side, so we are that much closer to hitting the road!

Two Hikes, or Meeting Strangers in Dusty Places

Over the last week I went on two night hikes in the LA are.  One near Malibu, the other in Griffith Park.  The most intersting difference was not the terrain or the views, both of which were phenomenal.  It was the people who organized and led the hikes that made each feel so different.  I found both of these groups through Meetup.com (a fantastic group probably worth a post by itself).

The first hike was on a Friday night, started at 9pm and was about 6 miles out to a spot called Parker Mesa.  This is a beautiful spot overlooking Malibu, Santa Monica and the greater LA area.  The hike was awe inspiring.  A marine layer drifts in at night filling the valleys on wither side of the trail with an ethereal blanket of white mist lit by the lights below.  Once at the point, the mist began to roll back and reveal the entire coast from Topanga Canyon to LAX.  The moon was full and one adventurous fellow brought a telescope so we could watch the moon and stars.

The second hike was this evening, starting at the Griffith Park Merry-Go-Round, up to the woods ET was filmed in, then down and back up to Lookout Point.  We had great views of Burbank and Glendale to the north, Downtown LA and the Griffith Observatory to the south.  While not as remote as Parker Mesa, it was still a very pretty gem tucked away between the Valley and the City.

But more importantly, Parker Mesa was a miserable slog through uncertainty, whereas Griffith was a great time, and may lead to some new friends to explore other hikes and events with.  It all came down to the people running the show.

Out in Parker Mesa parking was a nightmare compounded by odd park rules and no streetlights within 5 miles of the trail head.  It took many of us a good fifteen minutes to figure out we were in the right place and then make our way to the trail head.  The group leader left 5 minutes past the meeting time, and the remaining two thirds of us made our way by guessing and luck to the overlook, only two find a man who complained that we got there late.  I could have had fun, but I spent the whole time running back and forth between the fast lead group who would not wait and the slower group that was lost.  I hoofed it out a few minutes at the top and will not be back to that group again.

Tonight was amazing.  One man who lead the hike chaperoned over 60 people together across four and a half miles, and even helped out a few people who got some unlucky bee stings by popping out a first aid kit.  He gave out chocolates to everyone who wanted them at the top of the hike.  He waited and made sure everyone was accounted for each leg of the way.  Most importantly he made everyone feel welcome and made sure everyone knew what was going on.  SO on this hike I got to enjoy conversation, meet some new people, and have a relaxing time taking in the strange beauty of LA lights at night, especially when compared to the beast it can be when the sun is up.

So in the end, two very similar groups set out on two different nights to accomplish the same goals: Enjoy nature, meet some new people, and relax for a few precious hours.  Over each evening, one person completely changed the atmosphere in hugely different ways.  I know I will go to another hike with Bob.  I have already forgotten the other man's name.

All Growed Up

Over the last half decade I have always wondered, in the back of my mind, when the moment would come when I finally feel like an adult.  It hasn’t happened yet.  I used to think it would come after I graduated from college.  Then I thought it would come after I got a Real Job.  I thought it might come when I fell in love, or when I had my own place, or financial freedom.  I have experienced or achieved all of those things, but the moment has not yet come.

I do feel older, I suppose.  I understand how a 401k works.  The ideas of a budget or planning (and paying) for a vacation now seem familiar.  I am more responsible than I used to be, but that is more a function of making my own way in the world.  Paying bills, doing taxes, holding a steady job, realizing that sometimes we have to subsume desires for duties.  I know true depression and heartbreak.  I know the joy of love and the happiness of having true friends.  None these things have left me feeling as though I am all grown up.

There are so many things that have not changed though.  All the silly emotions, desires and follies are still lurking under the nine to five life I live.  I still make mistakes I would tell a younger me to steer clear of.  I still find myself occasionally wasting an afternoon on the simple joys that don’t seem adult.  And the best part is this does not bother me.

The longer I have been an “adult”, the more I realize there will be no moment when it all suddenly clicks into place.  Perhaps having a child will do it, but somehow I think that may not change things.  After all, of all my friends who have had children, they seem younger on the whole than the rest of us.

It seems to me that becoming an adult is a mindset we use to box ourselves in and limit the “what ifs” in life.  We call people free spirits and refer to people who act youthfully young at heart.  What comes to mind when year someone described as dour or frumpy?  I have given up on growing up.  Don’t take this to mean I support kidults (a horrendous term) or the shirking of things we must do!  By all means we must be responsible and considerate and emotionally mature.  There are some advantages to knowing what children do wrong!  But moving forward, let’s forget about growing up.  Instead just grow, period.

Back Off Track

After quite some time, I have gotten back into the garage and pulled apart the engine head and cylinders.  So far the casualties in the screw department are starting to mount.  The metal just gives under the pressure of either a screwdriver or the drill, so the next tool coming up will have to be a manual impulse driver.  Although I have started to pick up on the art of extracting stripped screws, it is time consuming and I'd rather avoid it if at all possible.

Aside from the screw issues, the cylinders and pistons look ok, aside from some nice thick carbon build up.  Hopefully once that gets cleaned up it'll look nice and undamaged.  There aren't any obvious wear marks on the pistons or the cylinders, so all looks good in that department.

Mmm, carbon!

Belated Books

So I finished a few more books lately, but have been lax is getting the photos sorted and up.  Here is the first, that I made for a friend doing some extensive traveling abroad.  It is my first full leather hardcover, and it turned out ok.  I think a wood cover with leather over it would give a much nicer feel in the hands.  Maybe that'll come in a bit.

A little about this:  I used suede leather, with thick car covers and a "soft" spine.  Linen paper, hand stitched book block.  Played with adding a headband and ribbon.

Music Notebook

I just finished up binding a notebook with blank sheet music (staffs?) for one of my friends who is finishing up her Master's in Flute.  It may be a little late, but hopefully it'll be useful for auditions.

I took a nice old piece of sheet music and used that to make the covers.  Endpapers on this one are just simple black.  Inside, each set of facing pages has 6 staffs on the left and a blank page for notes on the right.  It was interesting setting that up, as this is the first printed book I have done..  Binding is just black cloth.  Since it will hopefully be seeing use going into and out of bags on the go, the corners got the cloth treatment too.  the only part not really visible is a black ribbon page marker, glued into the binding.

New Books Coming Soon

It's been crazy with work over the last month or so, but I have two new books I just finished!  I'll get the pictures up soon (as in later this week).  And I've finished my first leather bound book, which is pretty awesome!

The Beast Beyond the Door

I know it is out there. The beast, the monster. It sits outside my door and waits. Patient like a tiger in the reeds, lurking, waiting for a sign of weakness. I've seen the small gaping maw, full of spinning bright teeth. I saw it devour a chicken, bones and all in a matter of seconds. The thing has been silent since last night, but I know it is waiting for me.

It growls and rattles and I can feel the rumble when it eats. Those small teeth spinning, tearing, grinding. I've managed to slip by it so far, but I know it is always watching. I can't understand why it has come for me yet. It never seems to move, but somehow it always finds another meal.

I can smell the dead on the beast's breath from here. It can kill the odor from time to time, but the smell returns when it sits there, languid after gorging on god knows what. Sometimes it it reeks of blood and death, others of mold and rot. It seems to crunch and grind anything it can find into gristle. Bones, plants, once I could swear it had just eaten the udder of a festering cow. I hope the calf made out alive.

My friend has disappeared. He had a conversation with the beast a few days ago. The thing pretended to leave, slamming the door after it had ground through him. Now the car is gone. There was a crudely written note, something about leaving town, but I know my friend is never coming back. The beast ate him up with those teeth, and now it is toying with me, daring me to get too close. How it disposed of my friend so cleanly, I do not know. I must watch the beast closer, find out how smart it is, learn how to kill it.

It never leaves waste behind. Night and day I can hear it eating, but it must go somewhere else to leave the droppings. Or perhaps it is a miracle of carnage, digesting everything and leaving no scrap for a predator to track it by. Everything save metal it devours. Any small rings or knives it tries to eat are spit out violently, mangled and ruined. The beast's gullet must be as tough as the teeth. I have seen it drool, but never bleed.

I know the beast is out there, hiding, waiting for me. Watching me. I'll keep trying to study it, but it can only be a matter of time. It never tires. It never sleeps. It never closes that damn jaw. That dark circle, black lips pursed above those clean, shining, spinning teeth...

The New Old Song

For most of my life, I have lived under the assumption that I understood what songs meant. I have been very wrong. I understand the words, literally. I know how keys work to play on our moods, and how song structure can impact the effect of a song. But I have not understood much of the music I listen to. The actual underlying emotion that the songwriter captured and the layers of feeling a song can evoke are something I now know I will never completely understand.

The reason for this is very simple. The vast majority of songs you or I will ever hear were written to address a particular emotion that most listeners have never actually experienced. Therefore we have no real way to understand, and also do not realize we do not understand the song. We don’t know what we don’t know. As a counterpoint, movies and television can sidestep this issue by showing us what is going on, and by nature of the medium, there is much more exposition and narrative to fill in the context of a particular scene. Music does the opposite.

Songs are the scene with no intro or epilogue. A good songwriter can bring up excruciating pain with a few syllables, or use a phrase to evoke tremendous joy. But the listener needs a reference point. And as the listener grows in experience, familiar songs suddenly take on new meaning. If the listener does not have that shared experience, the song will sound completely different.

Go listen to “Somebody to Love” by Queen. On the surface it is a song about finding love. It is a short song lyrically, having only 20 or so individual lines. But the beauty of the song is only truly apparent if you have listened to it during at least two very distinct emotional points in your life. First, listen to it when you are happy, or in a relationship. Then listen to the song after you have been dumped. You have had your heart broken, you want that person back, and hate yourself for wanting that, and now you want to get over it. Suddenly it is a much better song, and Freddie’s croon will hammer you heart in a way it never could if you have not experienced that.

“I Will Survive” is a thematic sibling with a slightly more militant take on the same idea. Almost every song by Death Cab For Cutie has to be listened to before the crucial I-need-to-get-over-this stage, or it loses a lot of vicarious heart-tugging power.

The interesting upshot of this is that many songs I have long thought are horrible sound fantastic once I have met the emotional criteria. For some reason country gets better as I age and lose some of my younger self’s swollen ego. I can listen to country songs now and find it very rewarding, whereas I used to think country was the epitome of formulaic songwriting – I identify with the “mundane” topics found in those songs more. This sympathy through shared emotion is a great tool. If you have an open ear, so to speak, you can go back and hear completely different meanings on the radio, in your CD case, or on your computer.

So onward! I know I don't understand most of the songs I listen to, and that makes listening evenm ore exciting!

Quick Update

Over the weekend I was able to find some nicely aged sheet music (Schubert's Impromptu), and get some work done on a second book I have been working at.  I currently have a book planned with music staffs on one page face and blank space for notes on the other.  I need some more paper for printing, but the covers may happen this week.

Motorcycle update:  The Clymer Manual came, but this weekend saw no work.  Paycheck time is needed for some cleaning supplies, then work on the engine can start up!

Let the Faux-Proletariat Raise Their Glasses!

File this in “LA Observations”.  Since moving out here, I have come to learn that my definition of many words and concepts is completely foreign to what the rest of reality, or at least my local LA reality, agrees upon.  The most puzzling to me is the term “dive bar”.

Background:  I am from, and learned to drink, in Wisconsin.  So I have a few general categories of bars:

• College bars, defined by the patrons.


• Sports Bars.


• Upscale bars that have some sort of dress code, and are populated by people usually classified as “adults”, or perhaps the average age is at least 35.


• Themed bars.


• LGBT Bars.


• “Scene” bars that are loud and filled with party people.


• Normal bars.


• Dive bars.

My problem out here is that to me a normal bar is where people go to just hang out with their friends and have a few drinks, without any other agenda such as watching the game.  This is the meta-drinkological equivalent of Cheers or the pub in How I Met Your Mother.  A dive bar is a step below this, to me.  Where you have 3 guys at the bar who were there when you got in, will be there after you leave, and will be there next week.  A place where you think you could get into a fight with a local through no fault of your own.  A place where you know getting completely tanked will probably not be noticed, or will have one of those three guys becoming your best friend for an hour.

So the conundrum becomes this:  As I try to find new places, I tend to go to Yelp! to see what people have said about prospective bars.  Inevitably I started finding the places I like to go, and they are all called dive bars.  Yet they seem to be populated by mostly 20-30 crowds who typify the normal bar crowd to me.  There seems to be a cultural perception in LA that if it’s not a club, it’s a dive bar.

I have been to a few real dives out in LA.  They are not pleasant, and I have the unfortunate honor to have actually been 86’d from one.  Living up to the preconception of the bar, perhaps?  But none of the people who talk about dive bars in LA would even stop at these true dives.

My hypothesis:  Many people in LA are drawn to both the Hollywood scene, but want to try and distance themselves from it at the same time.  Some manifestation of the precarious balance in the unconscious herd’s love/hate relationship with all things pop-culture played out on the internet and in conversation.  We want to show that we are not all those stereotypes that we love to hate, and secretly thrill to indulge in.  So the response is to oversell it both ways.  Make the posh clubs the height of sexualization of every possible facet of life, and make the rather normal bars and pubs into the dives where we can just go and be our ur-selves, reveling in our underclass awesomeness.

But I still want all those “dive bar” patrons to come with me to few little places in the Valley.  It would be an entertaining night.

Pavlov Must Have Been a Drag at Parties

Birthdays, break ups, the smell of fresh snow.  Time, distance, rarity.  I have always been amazed at how almost every thing we encounter can trigger gutwrenching responses in us.  I am also amazed at how these emotional responses can change when we least expect them to.  Finally, I am awed at the things we do to feel the ghosts of past emotions and find new ones.

A personal example:  I had a girlfriend who lived in a studio apartment with two cats.  She was not the greatest at cleaning out the litter box.  If you have ever had a cat, or known someone who has, that combination leads to a very strong smell, and possibly taste, that hits you in the face when you walk in a door.  At the start of the relationship, I complained about this state of affairs regularly, even cleaning the litter box once in a while to push back the odor.  As time went on, I began to smell that odor and realize I was home.  This was not because I fell in love with the cats, or the scents they left behind, but because as the relationship grew, walking in the door and smelling the cat piss and kitty litter that told me I was about to see the woman I loved.

Now if I smell that same odor, it comes with a wall of feelings: lost love, distaste for ammonia and cat fluids, lazy afternoons watching old television shows, regret, and a touch of happiness from what I learned about myself and life from my time in that apartment and with that woman.  A stew of nostalgia.  And now, in some strange way, I enjoy that smell while being revolted in the same breath.  I'll breathe it in a little bit if chance across it.  I am sure most of you can relate to this.  Once in a while you buy that shitty beer because it reminds you of an awesome summer of parties.  A Blue Jeep reminds you of that asshole boyfriend you couldn't quit, but you check the plates anyway, and you are just a bit disappointed when it isn't him

We even go out of our way sometimes to seek out these triggers if they make us feel good.   Pushing a workout past your saftey zone to feel the accomplishment for a few more hours.  Staying up that extra hour to keep the conversation going.  I've heard this described as nostalgia for the present moment, and it fills us with a wistful happiness that fades even as we feel it.  We do the opposite to avoid the painful feelings and memories as well.  Avoiding your ex's street to pass the pain of seeing her porch where you spent so many nights together watching the drunks and drinking until you both joined them.  Not drinking grape soda because of the time you got sick at camp.  But what interests me most is the when we seek out that which causes us pain.

Most of the people I know seem drawn to pulling back the scab of old wounds and even rubbing salt into the nerves.  This may be indicative of the people I know more than anything else, but I still find it morbidly fascinating.  Why do it?  What memory is worth that pain?  I am left to think that underneath the pain and sorrow we willingly go back to, the joy that bred the hurt is too tempting to avoid.  And that fills me with hope.  We endure the bad, because the good must be underneath it somewhere.   That happiness is something we will keep trying to find.  Something that we will hold on to and push through the world to find again.  God be damned if we aren't going to try and dig down through the shit until we unearth that one grain of diamond!

Engines Are Not Light..

I spent Saturday tearing Oliver apart after taking a boat load of pictures before starting. With a little help from the roommate, almost every part of the engine/transmission has been removed and is now ready to be taken apart, cleaned, and inspected.

Unfortunately I broke one of the two throttle flaps connected to the choke. But, better to find out they are in bad condition now than when it is up and running on the 405!

So, here is Oliver before the teardown:


And here he is closer to the end:
And the money shot - we got the engine out, so of course I had to hold it high and pretend to smile while trying not to drop it!
I estimate the engine weighs at least 90 pounds, and after holding it up for about 30 seconds, I need to hit the gym a bit more.

Now I am waiting on the shop manual to come so I can begin taking apart the engine and seeing how much work this project is really going to take!

Random Thoughts of the Last Week

A few things lodged in my head over the last few days:

• I am surrounded by oil:  The fork I use in the cafeteria, the keys I am typing this post on, massive amounts of plastics that sits all around me.  If I think about it too much, I feel surrounded by the melted, extruded, squeezed, and pressed bodies of thousands of dead animals that were dug out of the ground.  None of us find this creepy.  Now imagine a car or building or computer made of less decomposed and processed bones and bodies.


• I went for hike and climbed 800 feet in elevation.  Once I got to the top, I realized half of the hill I was hiking on was a landfill.  In order to escape the city, I went to a hill, but the hill only exists because it is the accumulated trash of the city.  In a few million years, will the hill become the building blocks of some new society's utensils and television analogs?


• I am enraged over the pointless squabblings on the news about all of the problems we are having.  As a nation, as a culture, as individuals.  I talk to friends about these things over and over.  Yet I haven't actually written a letter or gone to protest, or done anything.  How many people like me are out there?  How do we reconcile supreme apathy with intense emotion?  Is this some sort of inherent human trait, or is this a slow, societal decline of involvement?

Good luck to us all, I suppose.

Red Oak is Tough Stuff...

Over the holidays, I made my first piece of wooden furniture: A red oak corner desk for my room. I learned quite a few things along the way, destroyed a few drill bits, and now have polyurethane drops on my junker shoes.

A few lessons I can share:

• Smoking drill bits are bad
• Red Oak is hard!
• Measuring twice sometimes doesn't work
• Eyeballing sometimes does
• Everyone should own a miter box.

Here is the beasty, somewhat from start to finish.






A few problems did crop up - one of the legs is not straight by 5-10 degrees, and the mitered joints on the runners are not all flush. But all in all, I am satisfied considering this is my first real woodworking project.

The Siege of TPS Report Holdfast

While waiting on a few people to get back to me at work, I found myself with about 20 minutes of downtime. So I used the remnants of a late night coffee run to construct a catapault of stir sticks, straws, tape and a spoon.


The range is about 3-4 feet with a Hersey's Kiss, and the arm has a tendency to fly off as you launch anything. But now I can threaten my coworkers from behind the dubious safety of rickety siege weaponry!

Binding Fun

Over the holidays I decided to learn how to bind books. It turns out to be great fun, and rather relaxing. And you can drink while doing it! I started with some open stitched (coptic) bindings. After deciding that I do not have the sewing skill to actually bind those tight enough to be useful, I moved on to a simple covered binding. This has given much better results!

I have bound about 10 or so books so far, to various degrees of success. As gifts, hand made books work really well, and since you can put one together in a night after some practice, I highly recommend it.

Here are some examples of what I have put together. (These are gifts, no copyrighted materials have been sold to anyone, if any lawyers come read this!)




Look closely, and you can exactly what I was drinking while making this book.

Oliver has loaded!

This begins my attempt to restore my father's 1968 Honda CL 350. Oliver was loaded onto the back of a truck today, and should be arriving here in (not currently so sunny) Los Angeles next week.

This is the end of one project, and the start of a new one. Over the last decade or so I have tried to convince pops to fix the bike, let me fix the bike, fix it together, etc. Last summer I delivered a challenge: get the bike running in 6 months, or hand it over to me! He failed on his end, and now I get a crack at it.

Here is the bike (named Oliver, courtesy of Richard Hammond and the Botswana Special):




We put the parts together, and now it looks like a functioning motorcycle. Dad even polished it up a bit after I got some of the parts back on.




Oliver has been in parts and on blocks for fifteen years. Time to see if he can clean up!