Neanderpundit

I haven’t been able to get set up for an ABATE class in indiana, and the illinois ones are anoyingly scheduled. I hope to hell I can get into a class before the end of the season.If not, I suppose it gives me the winter to make the bike pretty before I take it out and scratch the hell out of it.

Meanwhile, I’m remedying as many of the mechanical difficuilties as I can, most involve leaky gaskets and failed O rings. Took out the carbs, dropped the bowls and cleaned the floats, etc. I use a one gallon can of stuff called “carb dip” that cleans carbs like blazes, though it will burn the skin off your fingers in no time. I got the carbs back together, but fell into a case of shipfitters disease (that’s where you start replacing a nail in a bulkhead and end up changing the engine) but i limited it to cleaning up the starter cover, repainting it, cleaning and readjusting the cam chain tensioner, and replacing a frayed starter wire. I also discovered a bad signal generator unit, which at $165, I think I’ll find used. Have to find out what caused it to fry, lest I fry the new one too.

The intake boots had also separated from the plates, but those seem to be cheap, and in the interim, I’m gluing the bastards back together with silicone glue.

Anyway, the jury is out, but it looks like I may end up wintering the project over and starting fresh in the spring. Worse has happened.

Read.

I’ve been seeing a lot of shit about “the refugees couldn’t leave because they were so poor”, even seeing one site (scalzi) where they painted a sorry picture of how nobody understands what it’s like to be poor. No, I won’t link to it, it’s horsecrap.
Heres’ the thing. I’ve been broke. I grew up broke. When I was growing up, dad worked, mom worked. They didn’t both work because they wanted to have extra money to play with, they worked to make ends meet, which we barely did. They both worked, and dad worked a lot of long, hard hours, and his health was never good, because he wanted to do better. He wanted to make sure his fathers hospital bills got paid. Dad wanted to make sure his brothers and sisters had food in their bellies and roofs over their heads. Mom worked so we could go to catholic schools and get a decent education, as the local schools in the 60’s had already begun to go to hell. Dad drove a truck all the time, not because it was cool, because back then it was not, but because he was always helping someone with some project or another.

We ate well. We did so because mom carried a purse heavy with coupons everywhere she went. Because we always had a garden, and when we could buy produce cheap, in season,. we’d buy like crazy and cook and can until we all sweated pounds off. Dad would stand with the pantry door open and look at the rows and rows of canned green beans, tomatos, pears, peaches, assess how well we’d fare that winter. We bought eggs for pennies a dozen from a local farmer, picked them from under the chickens themselves, candled them in his basement. We brought our own egg cartons because the farmer charged a nickel for each paper mache carton.

We wore clothes with patches. Everyone did those days. Shit, I remember a kid whose pants were more patch than pants. I was especially hard on knees and butts, and I’d get jeans so tough and hard (to play in) that they chafed my balls something awful.By the time I outgrew them, they had just worn enough to be comfortable. I had shoes to go to school/church in, that had to be polished every week on saturday night, and shoes to play in, that were usually last years school shoes, pinched and tight and crudely re-soled by dad.

Dad worked side gigs when he could for extra cash, sometimes helped some farmer with haying in exchange for a side of beef. He hunted, a couple of shells he reloaded time and time again, walking afield with two shells and as often coming back with four or five quail.
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