Almost June

Went for a ride around the neighborhood with my sister, brother in law and son on Saturday. Nice 30 minute easy cruise, looking at the houses and such. Plenty of bikes to loan a couple out for a while. My brother in law got the hang of the bar ends on my Long Haul Trucker fairly quickly and both he and my sister seemed to enjoy the cruise.

I started on my next project tonight, which is getting my pre-war Colson fat tire cruiser cleaned up and put back together. My progress on it over the winter was slower than I had planned, and all I ended up getting done was cleaning the skip tooth chain. However, I'm pretty sure it's an original chain, so it's very cool to have that done. A few of the links still have some of the bluing on them which is pretty neat to see after all those years. Tonight, I got the paint cleaned off of one of the rims. Wire wheel and an electric drill made short work of things. I don't have the tire side portion as clean as I would like yet, but I'm not sure that it's completely necessary. I do want to make sure that I have all of the rust removed doing anything else. The wheels were in good shape, so it won't take a lot of work. I'm not quite sure if I'm going to repaint the wheels, polish the steel up to a high gloss, or have them chromed. I can benefits of each. The polishing would take the most time, and the chrome would be the most expensive. Since I haven't decided what color I'm going to repaint the bike, I still have some time to decide. I'll have to spend some more time over at Rat Rod Bikes looking for paint ideas. Flat olive with red tires for that Indian motorcycle look has some appeal, as does a nice candy apple red metal flake with chrome wheels.

The Dirty Kanza 200 is this weekend. I'm going down with Matt Maxwell from Ames. Unfortunately, my friend and riding buddy Paul Jacobson will not be able to make it this year due to some family issues that cropped up the last minute. It won't be the same trip without having Paul's positive attitude along. Hopefully things will work out alright for him and his family. The weather forecast for this weekend looks really good right now, with highs in the mid-80s and a light south wind. I'll keep my fingers crossed, but I won't start believing anything I read until Thursday night at the earliest. It will also be good to ride with some people I haven't ridden with since last year, and as always, make new friends and acquaintances along the route. I'm hoping to finish more quickly than I did last year. However, the route, the weather, and time spent in the controls will play a large part in how that works out. There should be close to 100 riders starting this year. I'd be ecstatic with a top 25 finish knowing the caliber of riders that show up for this event. I have to finish to place, so that, as always is the main goal.