My uncle died last night, He had been in the hospital for the last month. It wasn't looking like he was going to make it so I had been preparing myself for it. Got to see him right before he passed away.. was weird because he was pretty much out of it .. drugged up... not cognitive at all I thought. I said to my mother I was going to go. It was too much for me to see him like that. As I moved to go ... he all of sudden came back and was talking again.. he looked at me and opened up his arms to give me a hug. I didn't even think he knew I was there.

Life is so strange.. you go around thinking you have all this time.

Best memory with my uncle.. when I was a kid he took me to the first Seattle Supercross in 78. The smell of 2 stroke filled the Kingdome and I got completely hooked on Motocross from that point on.

Shinto

When sorrow lays us low for a second we are saved by humble windfalls of the mindfulness or memory: the taste of a fruit, the taste of water, that face given back to us by a dream, the first jasmine of November, the endless yearning of the compass, a book we thought was lost, the throb of a hexameter, the slight key that opens a house to us, the smell of a library, or of sandalwood, the former name of a street, the colors of a map, an unforeseen etymology, the smoothness of a filed fingernail, the date we were looking for, the twelve dark bell-strokes, tolling as we count, a sudden physical pain. Eight million Shinto deities travel secretly throughout the earth. Those modest gods touch us-- touch us and move on. Jorge Luis Borges

More parts broken down but cheap to resurrect in my near future. This is a cakewalk compared to the offset springer I remade that's on my bike now.. you can't beat the price. I worked on the wishbone frame for a good number of hours straightening the seat tube, filling drilled holes and touching some dodgy sections up. In the end it didn't look much different .. that's always nice.. when you spend a bunch of time working on something and you can hardly see any progress. It was raining hard out most of the day and the light went from dark to dim to dark again.

hybrid

back from the the scrap pile

I found this wishbone frame at a swap meet for 100 bucks. Ever since It's been one of those projects I've been putting off. I finally started into it today.

It was a complete frame when I got it but stretched over a foot in the stays... it had a ton of bondo all over it and looked like like hell. I really wish I could've seen a photo of the bike built because I'm curious as to what it was. Had some strange battery box setup. The castings were all there for the most part. I figured for 100 bucks at least it was worth it for those. I burned off the bondo and cleaned it up..cut off the stays completely, there was no saving that mess. The rest of the frame isn't looking all that bad. Got some tubing and spent the day working on it. I have enough parts laying around to make a roller out of it. Not sure what motor is going in it yet. Maybe another pan.. or maybe a 67 shovel motor. I know one thing this bike is going to be able to ride a passenger on it.

This is my friend Peter's Knuckle. The cases are matching 36, the jugs and heads I'm not sure and the frame is 42. All original paint. The motor has been rebuilt recently but for the most part it's been surving like this for a long time. Before Peter it belonged to his father. His father had one new originally .. sold it along the line somewhere.. then in the 60's found this one collecting dust in a barn owned by some farmers. Fast forward to a few years back and the bike was being stored in a garage along with a 64 Panhead. Thieves came and took the Panhead and left the knuckle behind. They never found the Panhead. The knuckle is alive and well. I love this bike.

Chabott in GQ

The photos I shot of Shinya and Ayu at Bonneville this last August have 6 pages in the October issue of GQ Italia. It was the best time I had all summer and I felt privileged to see Shinya do his personal best on the Knuckle called Spike which he created for a client in Tokyo. The client has encouraged Shinya to take it out and race it at El Mirage and Bonneville. That's what you call a great customer! Gary Inman of Sideburn wrote the story. There's even a small photo of Nikki and writeup on her by Gary in his new monthly column he's doing for the magazine. It just arrived at my local newstand, it's probably come and gone in Europe already. It's the 10th anniversary issue. So to celebrate I guess there are 10 different covers available from 10 different graphic designers from around the world.

Spike