Product Review: Turmeric

Turmeric. The idea is that it reduces inflammation. Your mileage may vary, but it seems to be working for me.

I’ll start this blog by saying I’m not a believer in dietary supplements, but turmeric seems to be working for me.   Here’s the deal:  I had what most folks would agree is a fairly serious motorcycle accident 10 years ago.  I was riding my Triumph Speed Triple on my way to teach a class at Cal Poly Pomona early in the morning when I exited the westbound freeway.   It was a trip I had probably made a zillion times before, but this morning would be different.  As I rode across the overpass, I saw a guy in a Camaro aggressively braking on the eastbound exit.  That’s the last thing I remember, other than briefly waking up when they were loading me onto a helicopter, and then briefly waking up when the helicopter was landing, and then realizing:  Man, I hurt all over.  I wondered if I was dreaming.  Was I still in the Army?  Was I in Vietnam?

Nope, it was none of the above, and it wasn’t that guy in the Camaro that I hit.   It was a woman in a Volvo one block further south, but I didn’t find that out until weeks later.  What I did learn a few days later was that I had broken my back, and I had broken my femur in two places, and they needed to operate to put a plate in my leg.  I didn’t remember anything about the accident because I landed on my head 50 feet from my motorcycle (the top of my helmet looked like a hard-boiled egg after it had been slammed against a countertop) and I had what they call traumatic amnesia.

My 2007 Speed Triple, unquestionably the most beautiful motorcycle I’ve ever owned. It was fast, buzzy, and twitchy, but it made me look good. Did I mention it was fast?

So there I was, in the hospital, in a drug-induced stupor.  The doctors reduced the morphine drip enough for me to sign the waivers for my surgery (hey, what else was I going to do), and then they did the body-and-fender thing on my left leg.  It was a week in the hospital, then a week in a skilled nursing facility (a misnamed place if ever there was one), and then three or four weeks in a rehab facility.  That was followed by months in a wheel chair, then a walker, then crutches, and then a cane.

My “I got screwed” photo, showing the plate and screws in my left leg. That plate ultimately broke, and I needed a second surgery to remove every metal piece you see in this photo and replace it with a femoral nail. You can see the two fractures in this x-ray, one at the top of my femur and the other about 5 inches down. Ouch!

My leg hurt like hell for the next year and a half, and then one day it really started hurting.  As in hurting Big Time.   Back to the docs again, more x-rays, and more bad news:  The plate had fractured.   It was time for revision surgery.  Trust me on this, “revision” and “surgery” are two words you never want to see together.  It seems the top fracture (the really big one you see at the top of the above photo) had healed, but the bottom one had not.  Maybe one out of two ain’t too bad in some things.  This wasn’t one of them.

So the doctors removed the plate and all the screws, they surgically broke the unhealed fracture again and did bone grafts, and then they put in what they call a femoral nail (that’s a metal rod that extends nearly the entire length of the bone, from the hip to just above my knee).   More time in a walker, then crutches, then a cane, and then I was on my own two legs again.  My leg still gave me a lot of grief, and then it was yet another good news/bad news story.   The remaining fracture finally healed after another year, but the femoral rod fractured.  But it didn’t matter, they said, because the bone had healed, and in any event, removing the broken rod wasn’t an option because of the way it broke.   That piece of metal in my thighbone would just be along for the ride for the duration.  These guys were starting to sound like a few motorcycle mechanics I’ve known.  You know, the kind who work in the big dealerships (that wire’s supposed to be hanging out below the headlight, Joe).

What about my left leg still hurting?  Man up, they said.  Well, they didn’t actually use those words, but it was clear to me these guys had done about all they could do.  I couldn’t take the Oxy they offered because it made me hallucinate (why anyone would take that stuff recreationally is beyond my comprehension), and Tylenol/Ibuprofen/Alleve and all the other over-the-counter pain meds didn’t make a dent.   Steroid injections and pills helped, but they came with their own set of problems, like terrible cramps and (don’t laugh) uncontrollable hiccups (I once had the hiccups for 4 days straight, day and night).  About the only thing that gave me some relief was riding my bicycle, but you can’t live your life from the saddle of a road bike.  I was doing a lot of overseas travel, and long airplane rides always aggravated the pain (especially those long flights to Asia flying coach).  It felt like someone had stuck a hot knife in my thigh nearly all the time.  Every once in a while the bastard would twist it, too.

The docs tell me what I have is traumatic sciatica, which is an injury to the sciatic nerve along my femur (rather than plain old vanilla sciatica, which is induced by compression of the sciatic nerve as it exits the spinal column).   Okay, so it has a name.  I quit bitching about it and basically, you know, manned up.  There wasn’t anything they could do.  That hot knife sticking in my leg became the new normal.  I rode across the US with it, I covered a lot of miles in Baja with it, I rode through the Andes in Colombia with it, and I rode across China with it.  I had, indeed, manned up.  But it was a gold-plated bitch.

My good buddy TK, who is a little younger than me, has his own set of orthopedic challenges.  We would sometimes compare notes on where it hurt the most.  You know, two old guys complaining about the results of too many good times on motorcycles.  It was kind of like that scene in Jaws when Quint and Richard Dreyfuss are comparing scars.  And then what I consider a miracle occurred a few weeks ago.  TK mentioned to me that turmeric was giving him a bit of relief, and hell, I thought I’d try that, too.  I’d tried everything else.  Like big city folks voting for a Republican, I had nothing to lose.

Much to my great surprise and relief, the turmeric seems to be working.  The idea is that it reduces inflammation, I’ve read.   That’s the same thing the steroids would do, but the turmeric doesn’t have the side effects that the steroids did.   The acid test for me was my recent flight to and from Singapore, and I got through that just fine.  My leg is feeling pretty close to normal these days.  I’m not at 100%, but I’m way better than I have been.  I even did a 7 1/2 mile walk while I was in Singapore with no pain.  I hadn’t done that since before the accident.

I bought my turmeric from Costco, and I only started using it after I checked with my doctor to make sure I wouldn’t be screwing anything else up (like most guys my age, I take pills for two or three other old guy ailments).  So here comes the disclaimer:  I’m not a doctor and I’m not recommending you start taking turmeric.   But if you have motorcycle-induced or other old age aches and pains that won’t go away, check with your doctor first and then consider trying turmeric.  It’s working for me.


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Catching up and what’s coming up!

Snacks at an engineering seminar in Singapore. Those are hard-boiled quail eggs and they were good!

I’m back after a 3-day hop over to Singapore, and it’s good to be home.  I thought I’d do sort of a catchall blog to mention a bunch of things.  For starters, Singapore was fun (it always is), but that 15-hour time change is a bear.  I was over there to teach a class, something I do two or three times a year.  They treat me well in Singapore and I love traveling to Asia.  I think I’m back on California time already, thanks to keeping an altered sleep schedule while I was in Asia and a good sleeping pill that let me sleep through the night last night.  If you’ve never been to Singapore, you might want to add it to your bucket list.  It’s one of the world’s great places.

I kept up (as many of you did) with Joe Gresh’s Endurofest fun in Flagstaff, and it looks like the only downside to that adventure was his good buddy Hunter crashed and cracked a bunch of ribs.  Hunter, we’re thinking of you.  Get well soon.

At the spot where Joe’s buddy Hunter crashed. He got through it with six broken ribs. Ouch!

And speaking of cracking things, you’ll remember the story on my .257 Weatherby Ruger No. 1 cracking its Circassian walnut stock and me shipping it back to the factory.  I called Ruger, but I still don’t have an update on the fix.  They were supposed to get back to me later today, but it’s already later today so I expect I won’t hear anything until tomorrow or Monday.  I’ve got a bunch of .257 Weatherby brass polished and primed, and I’ve got the Barnes monolithic copper bullets my good buddy Mississippi Dave recommended.  I’m eager to get that rifle back and continue the load development for it.

A 200th year Ruger 77 in 7×57. You’d think with all those 7s I’d get lucky, but I haven’t found a way to get tight groups yet. I’m working the problem.

In the meantime, I’ve been playing with a beautiful 43-year-old Ruger Model 77.  It’s a 200th year Ruger in a very classy chambering, the 7×57, which is the old Spanish Mauser cartridge.  I bought it used in 1977 and it is in pristine condition, and I think I know why the previous owner sold it.   It doesn’t group worth a damn.  But that makes it more fun (half the fun with these things is searching for a good load).   Stay tuned, because if I ever find a decent load, you can be sure there will be a blog on this one.

The carb on my TT250 is gummed up and it won’t idle.  That’s not the bike’s fault.  It’s mine.  I sometimes go months between rides on that bike, and that’s what happened here.  I’ll take the carb apart to clean out the passageways, and when I do, I’ll photodocument the approach so you can see how I go about it.   I’ll have to re-read the tutorial I did for CSC Motorcycles on the TT250 carb first.  These bikes are super easy to maintain, and they have to be one of the best deals ever on a new motorcycle.

Hey, another cool motorcycle deal…my good buddy Ben recently published a book titled 21 Tips For Your First Ride South Of The Border (and it’s free).  You can download it here.

Let’s see…what else?  Oh yeah, we have a bunch of stuff in the blog pipeline for you.  There’s the Yoo-Hoo product review (we haven’t forgotten about that one).   There’s a very cool watch company (Gear’d Hardware) that follows the ExNotes blog, and they recently sent two watches to us for review.  The review will appear here in the near future.  That’s good; we’ve been meaning to start a watch review series and this will get the ball rolling.

A Gear’d Hardware watch, one of two Gresh and I will review for you here on the ExhaustNotes blog.

More good stuff:  I’ve been playing with another Ruger No. 1 chambered in yet another Weatherby cartridge (the mighty .300 Weatherby), and I’ll be posting a blog about that soon.   Another product review that’s coming up is one on turmeric, the dietary supplement that’s supposed to work wonders for arthritis.  I don’t have arthritis, but that crash I had on my Speed Triple 10 years ago has bothered me mightily for the last decade, and taking turmeric is getting it done for me.  I don’t normally believe in these supplement wonder pills, but folks, it’s working.  Watch for the blog on this stuff.  And we haven’t forgotten about a near-term ride up the Pacific Coast Highway (good buddy TK and I have been talking about that one).

California’s Pacific Coast Highway: It doesn’t get any better than this.

Stay tuned; there’s always good stuff coming your way here on the ExNotes blog!


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Masks at the Gilcrease Museum

During a recent Oklahoma visit, one of our stops was at Tulsa’s Thomas Gilcrease Museum.  Gilcrease (that’s him in the photo above) was an Oklahoma Native American who discovered oil on his property (Come and listen to my story about a man named Gil, sung to the tune of the Beverly Hillbillies theme song).   Mr. Gilcrease collected artifacts of the Americas, western art, and more (cue in the Indiana Jones music), and he built the museum bearing his name.   The Gilcrease Museum is an impressive place, and the collection of Native American masks is particularly impressive.   Here are just a few, all shot at ISO 3200 on my Nikon.  Enjoy, my friends.

The Oklahoma City National Memorial

When we were recently in Tulsa, one of the places we wanted to visit was the Oklahoma City National Memorial.  Oklahoma had a design competition, much the same as occurred for the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, except for this monument the people most directly involved (family members of those lost, survivors, and rescue workers) selected the design.

Like 9-11 and the JFK assassination, most of us remember exactly where we were and what we were doing when we first learned of the Oklahoma City bombing.  It happened at 9:02 a.m. on the 19th of April in 1995.  I was on a business trip in Seattle, in a car talking to one of our marketing guys, when I heard about it.   I remember the first day and the day after, when folks thought it might have been done by Islamic terrorists.  But it was a homegrown crackpot, rapidly captured and ultimately executed for his crime.  Another conspirator inexplicably drew multiple life sentences (he will die in prison), and a third testified against the first two, served a relatively short prison sentence, and is now in the witness protection program.

I knew the Oklahoma City National Memorial would be a moving experience; what I had not expected was just how emotional it would be. The gravity of the crime that killed 168 men, women, and children who were simply living their lives that morning is wrenching. That said, the National Memorial is well done, seeing it was time well spent, and it is something no one should miss.

Endurofest Five

A fresh, new Enduro rider joined Endurofest 2019 today, Husky Dave on his 1975 DT400.  We celebrated by scrambling around the trails behind Flagstaff’s miniature airport.

Only a few miles out of town the single-track through the trees was a new experience for me. The track itself was narrow, like 12 inches wide, and deep enough that if your tire got scrubbing along the wall you’d have to dab a foot to keep the front from washing out. The trees were both close and low. It was a place you had to pay attention or a branch would slap you upside the head.

We did ok there, or at least we thought we were doing ok until a kid on a modern T-2 Husky ripped past us. The guy was just flying through those woods, sticking in the rut and dodging trees like a humming bird.

The tight stuff was mentally exhausting so I was glad when we headed back up into the mountains north of town. The trails are wide up there and a guy can do a bit of sight seeing.  Until he hits a damn rock the size of a basketball, which I did. We were slowly climbing a mild grade, the trail was very dusty and the dust lingered. Big tree roots cut across the trail making a stair-step type of surface. I rode into the dust hopping over the roots and the next thing I knew I was on the ground. Godzilla kept popping away like nothing happened. I switched off the motor and looked back to see what the heck I had ridden over. I couldn’t believe the size of the rock.  It was huge. How could I not see the bastard?

I restarted Godzilla and continued the climb. The motor was bogging down. Turns out the brake lever was bent and the bend applied the rear brake. Meis stopped by and we had to loosen the brake adjuster to allow the rear wheel free movement.

After sorting out my crash we went through a few gates and found some interesting snowshoe trails, then we circled back to Hunter’s crash site. At the exact spot Hunter’s ribs augered into the ground Greg built up a wood and stone memorial and we held a mock ceremony to honor Hunter’s busted ribs.

Hunter is feeling much better now. We visited him in the hospital and when he saw the monument and photos of us standing around with our heads bowed he called us assholes. So things are returning to normal.


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Hey, want to catch up on the Yamaha Endurofest and Gresh’s ruminations on the whing-ding-ding-ding-dingers?  Well, here you go!

Endurofest One
Endurofest Two
Endurofest Three
Endurofest Four

Endurofest Four

What with Hunter going on injured reserve yesterday I didn’t get a chance to work on the now dead Godzilla, my 360 RT-B Yamaha Enduro.  There was a Flagstaff-morning nip in the air when I checked for spark at Godzilla’s sparkplug and found none. I then moved on to the spark plug cap, the coil wire itself and found no spark. I checked the coil windings, it had resistance so was probably ok.  Then I cleaned the points, but nothing worked: Still no spark.

One thing about riding old motorcycles at Endurofest, you’ll be with a bunch of guys that know more about Yamaha two-strokes than anyone else save for Yamaha.

Meis brought over his flywheel puller and we removed the flywheel to gain access to the points. We couldn’t get the points to break. It was like they were grounded all the time. We started unplugging harness wires trying to find the problem but no joy.

Don, our resident Enduro Guru took a look at our ohmmeter readings and said, “Something is incorrect.” Don got down on his knees and pointed at a tiny silver piece of wire, like something from a wire brush, that was shorting against the point connection nut and a part of the aluminum boss that the stator screws into. “That’s it, take that wire out and it will run.” I grabbed the needle nose pliers and removed the tiny wire bit. It was probably 1/16-inch long.

Godzilla had spark! After reassembling the bike I still couldn’t get it to start. I figured that one out by myself; it was out of gas. I switched to reserve and Godzilla roared into life. The wire must have shorted the points out at exactly the same time as the bike went on reserve. What are the odds?

While the rest of the crew ran down to Sedona for lunch and trail riding I went to the Flagstaff airport to retrieve Hunter’s wife Lori.
We were riding in Brumby. I was sure she wasn’t going to like the old rattletrap but she’s made of sterner stuff than I thought.  I could have gone riding and let Lori take a cab to the hospital but I felt I needed to make some brownie points with Lori. I’m not sure she’s all that into the Brumby-Godzilla schtick. Hunter and me are always playing around in the dirt on old motorcycles and here I broke her husband again.

At the hospital, Hunter looked much better. He wanted out now. I left those two to plot their escape.

Back at the motel I briefly considered trying to find the main group but with Godzilla acting up a bit I decided a nap was the better option. That’s how Endurofest goes, you’re free to ride or nap or do nothing. It’s a relaxed get together of like-minded dirt riders.


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Endurofest Three

I try not to be “That Guy” but sometimes being “That Guy” finds a way. Seven old Yamaha Enduros showed up for the first trail ride of Endurofest 2019 in Flagstaff and the sound of all those cackling dirt bikes was magical. I could listen to that carbon-based music all day long.

Our first stop was a gas station top up. One of the guys knew a short cut through town and we were going to follow him. In all the gassing up and bikes moving around I kind of lost the plot. I took off down the road following a guy on a motorcycle that I thought was one of our group.  That bike turned out to be a VStrom Suzuki so I pulled off the road and waited. And waited. Several motorcycles passed by but no smoking old two strokes. I turned around thinking, “Where the hell is everyone?”

I went all the way back to the gas station without seeing the group. I figured I’d make another slow run to see if I could find them and if I couldn’t I would just go for a ride.  I caught a glimpse of a bike down one of the side streets and it turned out to be one of our group. He led me back to the gang and they were not exactly glad to see me.

“Rule one: If you don’t know where you’re going, don’t go!” they told me. I felt pretty bad holding up progress and all. I tried explaining how I followed another motorcycle but it was pretty quiet.

My wing man, Hunter had gone off looking for me. We waited and waited. The thing turned into a cluster and we had not even make the first turn. Once Hunter returned we headed up into the mountains north of Flagstaff. The trails were fairly smooth but you had to stay alert because often a big rock would be in the middle of the trail. Also it was hunting season so a big, lifted pickup truck might be coming the other direction and you don’t want to end up a hood ornament.

With all seven strokers ripping through the woods I’m sure more than one hunter drew a bead on us after we spooked their game.

Don’s 1973, hot rodded 175 Enduro broke its kickstarter stop and the lever was bouncing against the frame making a hell of a racket. He sorted it with a bungee cord.

In areas with trees the shadows on the trail made it hard to see rocks. It all looked like rocks! Hunter nailed one and it knocked the front end sideways. The bike went down and Hunter landed hard.

I was the 4th rider to get there, Hunter was on his knees hunched over cussing so I figured he was ok. We kind of stood around, asking Hunter if he was ok. He mostly just cussed.

“Help me up.” We got Hunter vertical. I knew he was hurt bad because he said we better call an ambulance. I’ve seen Hunter ride one-handed with broken bones through some rough trails. We got the ambulance on the way.

Hunter asked me, “Can you go get my Jeep and take my bike back to the motel?” Another rider, Larry, and I headed back to town. It was a rough couple miles to get to pavement and I was wondering how that ride in an ambulance would feel.

Four-tenths of a mile from our motel Godzilla died. No sputtering, no hint anything was wrong. It was like someone turned off the key. I kicked the bike until I could kick no more. Then Larry have it a few hundred kicks. It was dead. I could see the Motel 6 but to get there I had to push down Prospect Street over to Butler Street. It was a round about way because of all the fences blocking a direct route. I was fairly gassed so Larry pushed me the last few hundred yards.

We got Hunter’s Jeep and drove back out to the crash site. The boys were still there waiting. Hunter uses one of those bumper mounts to tote his motorcycle and with the rough trail we were worried about breaking the thing. Larry decided to ride Hunter’s bike back to the motel as it seemed undamaged.

Everyone made it back safe and sound but Larry said Hunter’s 1975 DT400 handled like crap. It wasn’t until we were loading the bike onto the bumper carrier when we noticed the entire rear section of the frame was broken. Did it happen before the crash, after the crash or on the ride home? We didn’t know but we blamed Larry and said he was riding too fast.

Hunter is in the Flagstaff hospital with 6 broken ribs on one side. I’m not sure how many ribs there are per side but that seems like most of them.  We are working on logistics, sorting out how to deal with Hunter’s stuff. Hunter’s wife is flying out to take charge of the situation.

Hopefully the rest of Endurofest will be less exciting.

The 2020 Corvette

The 2020 Corvette, as I configured it online. The pastel blue paint added big bucks. Hell, just painting the brake calipers red added $500. But it sure is pretty!

I received an email last night from Chevy advising me I could configure my own new 2020 Corvette online with their website.  Hmmmm, that sounded interesting.   The new Corvettes are mid-engined, like a Ferrari and some of world’s other exotic sports cars.  After doing as Chevy suggested, I’m mighty tempted.  The new Corvette is stunning.

I guess I first got the Corvette bug back in the early 1960s, watching a couple of TV shows.  One was Route 66, a story about a young Marty Milner and George Maharis (Todd and Buzz) bopping around the US in a Corvette solving the world’s problems.  The other was Bonanza, the great western sponsored by Chevy.  We watched it as much for the Corvette ads as we did for the show.  Ben, Hoss, Adam, and Little Joe.  They’re all dead now, I think, but I remember them well, and Adam (Pernell Roberts) even appeared in one of the Corvette ads.

I’d wanted a Corvette ever since I was a kid, and in 2004, as Chevy was transitioning from the C-whatever body style to the C+1 body style, they allowed the dealers to sell the ’04 models to GM employees at the GM employee discount.  It’s a long story how I qualified for it, but the bottom line is the discount exceeded $17K on a Z06 (a car most folks pay over MSRP for), and I was in.

To make a long story a little less long, I kept the Z06 for 14 years, and when I sold it, the car had a whopping 40,000 miles on the clock.  That’s about 2850 miles annually, and when you consider insurance and registration, that worked out to something slightly south of a dollar a mile just for insurance and registration.   Throw in our California fuel costs (currently well over $4 a gallon), depreciation, and maintenance (surprisingly little on a car like the Z06), firing up that silver streak was expensive.  I should have driven it more to get my money’s worth, but the Corvette was more of a toy for me than real transportation.  I loved the thing, but it wasn’t a good daily driver.  I didn’t regret seeing the Corvette go, but every once in awhile I think about another one.  Like when I received the email from Chevy last night that led to me playing around with their online configurator.  That pastel blue one you see above sure grabbed my attention. There’s no denying it: The new Corvette is an incredibly-beautiful car.   And I still qualify for the employee discount. But nah, I don’t think I’ll be pulling the trigger on this one.

Endurofest Two

After Payson, Arizona and just a little past Pine, Arizona there’s a steep grade that climbs up into the mountains. Hell, it’s all mountains out here in northern Arizona.  Ahead of me was a older Chevy truck, one of those faded metallic burgundy ones that is only burgundy underneath. The topsides were more of a peeled silver with just a hint of grape jam.  The truck was struggling on the grade; it sounded like three or more injectors had lost their tips and raw fuel was pouring into the cylinders. Thick, black smoke flowed out of the tail pipe and I could hear the engine stuttering from 150 feet back.

Brumby, my 2.5, 4-banger Jeep smelled blood. This had to be the first and best opportunity to pass a car on the entire 500-mile trip to Endurofest.  A series of tight corners opened into a short straight. I shoved Brumby into 3rd gear and gunned the little 2.5, neatly slotting Brumby alongside the old Chevy. I could see the driver of the Chevy now. He was long-haired, thin, with no shirt. He resembled one of those backwoods reality TV stars and when he saw Brumby’s hood hove into sight his expression changed from complacent anger to rage.  He gunned the Chevy and a noxious cloud of almost pure dinosaur squeezings engulfed the road behind us. Damn it! That Chevy was picking up speed! I dropped Brumby into second gear and mashed the throttle to the floor. My efforts were rewarded as the Chevy dropped back, still missing and smoking.  All this was happening at about 15 miles an hour. It was slow motion road rage for sure but Brumby passed the test.

Me and Hunter arrived late to the party and as we pulled into Endurofest headquarters several cackling two-strokes were already on their way out to explore our new digs. Next door to the Flagstaff Motel 6 was a combination Subway sandwich franchise and massage parlor. I thought that was pretty cool. I considered going into the massage parlor after eating a foot-long veggie delight but I had pretty good cell reception so I just looked at them on the phone.

Tomorrow I’ll get Godzilla started and join the fun.

Endurofest One

Things have been hopping and getting ready for the 2019 edition of Endurofest has only increased the load on our fragile infrastructure. The Toyota started shaking in that now-familiar way that indicates a bad driveshaft U-joint. And it was. The front joint was a mess and the others looked ok so I went to the auto store and picked up a joint.

While I was at it I figured I’d change the center bearing just because it had a zillion miles on it so add another hundred. The job went as well as any U-joint replacement, kind of a brutal war and a finesse combined to accomplish what needed to be done. Except that the middle u-joint had to come out to split the front drive shaft (to replace the center bearing) and It didn’t look so hot. Another trip to the auto store and I managed to button up the Toyota without further drama.

I turned my attention to Brumby, tackling a loose exhaust system that was an easy fix: One of the rubber hangers had deteriorated letting the pipe swing around playing a tune under Brumby. Another trip to the auto store and a slick-jiffy had the pipe suspended like a proper off road weapon.

The soft top on my tow rig, Brumby, had been damaged by a hailstorm earlier in the year. The ice balls went right through the windows and generally made a mess of things. Amazon sent along a nice Sierra soft top and all I had to do was send them a cool $250. The top went on without issue except for the rear door latch became stuck in the locked position.

The linkages for automobile locks are small bits of bent wire rod and they are held in place by tiny pieces of plastic that snap into the rod. The problem with this system is that after 20-30 years the plastic becomes brittle and breaks. When they break the link rod falls off whatever mechanical device they were supposed to operate.

The fix would be to dismantle the door and replace the plastic bits, assuming you can find them. I don’t have time for this hokey-pokey so I drilled two small holes in the link rod. Using a couple small washers and cotter pins I reattached the link rod and I could open the rear door and finish the soft top installation.

But that’s not all! The Harbor Freight trailer had been sitting in the sun for about a year and the wiring to the lights was rotted off in several places. Luckily there was enough wire to cut out the bad section and splice in new. I really have to replace the entire lighting system on that trailer but it will have to wait for another day.

The trailer was looking a bit like a shantytown and I had some house paint solidifying in their cans so I dumped the stuff onto the trailer in an attempt to make it look a little less distressed.

With the tow rig out of the way I could get Godzilla, the 360cc Yamaha ready. It needed a new tire in the rear but of course I’m not spending the kind of money they are asking for new tires nowadays. I managed to borrow a slightly used M21 from my buddy Hunter when he momentarily turned his back on me. The tire was relatively easy to install. Which really threw off my plans for the day.

I also fitted a new tail bag and assembled a new concrete mixer, the mixer having nothing to do with Endurofest.

Finally all was ready and loaded. Only one small problem remained: somewhere in all this messing about I lost track of the days and I am actually a day ahead of schedule. Ah well, it’s too late to change things now, this train is leaving the station. Next stop Flagstaff, Arizona.


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