Times Gone By
Years ago on a road trip to texas... Don't let anyone try to convince you otherwise... Volkswagen's Beetles suck big time. Believe it or not this one here I bought off an old lady who only drove it to Church on Sunday's. It had 49,000 miles on it. Course the fenders were dinged up a bit but that was not her fault. I found out later it was the scotch that caused that.
I decided that a volkswagon would be great for an nine thousand mile road trip. After all it got 27 mpg when it was running good. Think of the money we would save. Course if you don't set the valves or whatever every two thousand miles then the milage drops radically. Oh sure its not a big job and the mechanics always had our cash and us out the door in no time. I never factored that into the gas milage. The old Ford Galaxy we were going to take would have only gotten 24 mpg.... course that would have been rain or shine. We would not have had to stop every two thousand miles and drum up a mechanic to set the valves either. We would have had tons of elbow room and could have put on twice the miles every day. With out training, two or three hundred miles a day in a Volkswagon is far more than enough... that is if you are young and fit like we were then.
I have since learned after owning a few Volkswagon beetles is that if the motor is actually running it is on the verge of going to hell. If it is parked it has gone to hell. If someone is selling a Volkswagon it has got a new motor. If you buy it and drive it then the new motor will go to hell. You will then park it and before long you will miss the beast and put a new motor in it. After a few miles you will remember the beast and thus put it for sale. The ad will say Volkswagon Beetle, has new motor.... Oh and if you don't believe me ask someone who is selling an older beetle how the motor is. I guarantee you he will say it's got a new motor. I have proven this already to a few doubters.
On a positive note while this beetle was running it always started. In -40 F. it would start on a dime. During one long cold spell it would start up every morning when no one elses car would start. Oh sure if you let the clutch out to go back in the house while it warmed up it would stall. The trick was to spend about fifteen minutes slowly letting out the clutch every so often until the transmission loosened up enough and the oil got warm enough due to friction. Oh and one other picky little point with them is they don't have heaters. Oh sure they have some kind of micky mouse little thing that works great in the summer but if there is snow on the ground forget it. Luckily though they have back up gas heaters that almost break the chill. Trouble is they burn gas and thus suck your milage waaayyyy down.
Yes it was a glorious day for mankind when Hitler finally got enough "revenge" and Volkswagon shut down production of beetles.
My very first flight off of Mount Swansea... brick short of a full load...no back up chute... on an Eagle Cloud...
My instructor Andrew giving me some last minute pointers about going toward the light when I see it.
My 165 Comet... and back up shute! What a dream flying machine. Flying at ten thousand feet, five thousand feet above the mountain top, in a hundred and twenty pounds of aluminum and plastic is undescribable!!
This was my second paint job I ever did. Of course as you can tell it turned out pretty good. I had a natural knack for glossy no run paint jobs. 1956 Ford Customline, 292 3spd standard with overdrive, duals out the back and a sound unmatched by any other car ever. Should have never sold this beast...
Here is my first street bike... 750 Yamaha twin along with my 1963 bus I fixed up... right before I found the book... Rolling Homes. Thus...
I had no choice but do the sensible thing which was to lop off the roof, raise it and build a back porch!
Add a little siding later followed with windows...
Then a little interior work, eagles on the ceiling, barn wood on the walls....
Tucker in the trees and it's home sweet home. 1968 Mustang I restored in fore ground.
The Smell from Hell
Years ago while living in Invermere BC my girlfriend and I decided to rent this very small 12 x 16 foot dilapidated cabin. It was located in the middle of this field on a very large ranch. It was a one room cabin that came with a woodshed that was caving in and a very old outhouse with no door, all for $60. a month. This was very cheap for back then.
Up until then we had been living in this old bus I had modified into a motor home. With winter coming though we knew the bus was going to be hard to heat. In fact we used to call the bus our mobile summer home. The cabin was supposed to have a wood stove but unfortunately someone had previously stolen it. So before moving in we had to buy a new one. The new one was very good and made it very toasty while we fixed the place up. We eventually got the place in livable shape just as it got very cold out. In fact the day we moved in was around ten below with an inversion going on. That is where the upper air is warmer than the lower air. You can tell this by the way wood smoke only rises so high and then levels out.
Anyway the day after moving into this cabin we started noticing this absolutely wretched smell whenever we went outside. It was not always there but when it was you could not imagine how bad it was. We were completely stumped at where it was coming from especially since the freezing cold meant it would not have been a dead animal lying somewhere out of sight. The nearest house was over a mile away so could not blame them and we were stuck in the middle of this huge field! Well two weeks later it had warmed up and we had pretty well given up trying to figure out what the smell was. Besides with the warmer weather most of the smell was gone anyway.
Since it was warmer I decided to chop some more fire wood for the next cold spell. Of course no sooner than I had cut a couple of pieces I had to use the washroom and since the outhouse was easier decided to use it. I walked into it as usual checked down the hole. To those not versed in out houses you always check the hole for wolverines, tom cats, bears or hornets before plopping your exposed vitals on the seat. When I did this I could not believe my eyes! The deep pit under the outhouse was virtually empty!! Last time I used it and checked it was more than overfull. Now it was almost empty! This was crazy I thought as who would steal mud from an outhouse! At first I thought I was seeing things and bent down to get a closer look. That is when I noticed smoke in the hole and in that same instant caught wind of the smell. I stumbled backward out of there on the run and almost vomiting. It was that same wretched smell we had been tolerating for the last two weeks!
It was then I figured it out. Just before the cold spell hit two weeks earlier I had cleaned out the ashes from the woodstove and dumped them down the outhouse hole. I had read in Mother Earth News that it was good for making the “mud” decompose quicker. Well as you may know with woodstoves when you clean out the ashes there are almost always smoldering ashes that you don’t notice. I guess some small embers in the ashes had actually lit the outhouse mud on fire and it was just slowly smoldering away all that time. We had the world’s biggest incense stick in our back yard giving off the most horrid smoke you could ever imagine! Words could never describe the stench it gave off.
Knowing the cause of the smell made it ten times as bad as it was before we knew. I would have never imagined outhouse mud would burn. Part of the reason may have been because it was so old and maybe dried out but I am not sure. The inversion caused by the cold spell is what kept the smelly smoke from rising up and drifting away which is why it got better when the weather warmed up. I had to haul pail after pail of water to finally douse all the smoldering embers in that pit! When friends asked us if we ever figured out that horrible smell we just nudged each other and said “nope, but at least it’s gone now!”
Back when I had my beard.... just rolled an old car off the cliff....
Old 51 Harley p.o.s just before I bought it....
Looking better here.... 51 Panhead with shovel top end, Andrews cam, super b carb, hand shift.... 80mph all day long. If you got the cash Harley's will run forever.
No rest for the stupid my Dad always said... thus a color change and more tweaks....
On a road trip to Golden BC the tank on my Harley sprung a leak... I pulled into the Spillimacheen gas station. The gas station owner Don was a real nice guy. Never said much but a real honest salt of the earth type of guy. Help anyone out in a bind no questions. He ran a... SERVICE Station. They don't exist any more.... well at least the Service part anyway. His station was one of the two or three places that kept the very small town of Spillimacheen afloat.
Anyway I asked him about borrowing his gas torch so I could weld the leak on my Harley tank. He never said much just looked at me for a second and said "Sure" as a nice wide grin spread across his face. He said I would have to roll the torches out of the shop and do the welding a fair distance from his station. I did and he closed the door behind me. Then out of the corner of my eye I watched as he arranged himself into position where he could watch the show that was about to unfold. Well unfortunately I was quite versed in the art of mixing gas, fire and steel tanks. Thus the show he appeared to be expecting did not happen. I realize now that he was a pretty smart guy. He knew well in advance not to try and offer advice to some young, know it all punk on a harley how to go about things. That would have been fruitless. Afterwards I felt him radiate a sense of impression with what I had done. I am pretty sure he was excpecting to be lugging me off to the hospital by that point. Even though I never knew the guy well he was not much of a fast or big talker but saved the day for far more people than most ever thought of.
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