Well right now I'm trying to decide whether I should wait to build the engine in my better equipped shop in FL or begin here after I clean out the garage. In it's current state it's impossible to even set up a work bench but I have been plugging away at cleaning it up over the last few months and its looking much better but still has a long way to go.
What I have been doing is, some window shopping. I have an idea what needs to be done to the engine to get her all tightened up and purring nice but I have to price all this out carefully. I'm on a tight budget and will have to make the pennies stretch.
I always get a bit angry when I see how tight the wife and I are now on one income (still waiting for my SSD#). Take our medical for example, we have a $3000 deductible every year that has to be met before we can get a fair shake in buying our meds. WTF is the point in having coverage? Tell me. Anyways, we're doing what we can to survive, Mama is working full time still God bless her heart, she should be retired. I don't blame anyone for my financial situation as far as my retirement goes, I wasn't always a genius and I didn't plan real well for my future. First off I never thought that this Olympian body of mine would give out once I hit 50, but it has. 33 years of mostly hard labor employment (I finally smartened up and went back to school in my late 40's to get a degree) a few years working in an office environment as a Senior Technical Illustrator but it took it's toll on me.
One example I remember is when I worked at Slater Steel Industries, started in 1979 after working 5 years full-time as a busboy and finally bartender in a restaurant at a horse track (I was 14 when I started my first full-time job). Well working in a Steel Mill was something I never imagined but I have to admit I thought it was cool. Even though safety was still very archaic in the plant. We didn't have a lot of safety protocols in place and safety in the work place was just becoming a small issue with the government at the time, so companies got away with less stringent protocols. One thing that always scared the shit out of me although I never said anything at the time was "cleaning out the jack holes" under the furnaces. We had 3 huge electrode furnaces, I forget how many ton of molten steel they held each but the electrodes resembled an arc welders electrode only about 1.5 foot in diameter and about 30' long there were three placed through the roof of each furnace which "Arced" and melted the steel by electricity. Sounded like a huge ass thunder storm only feet from where I worked. Anyhow, once every 6 months or so we would have a plant shutdown, where we would stop our regular work and do clean up and repair of equipment around the plant. One job was to clean out the furnace jack holes which are exactly what they sound like, The furnace had basically a big hinge on one side and two jack posts that went into the ground 50' or 60' feet on the other side. The jack legs would be in the holes and when they needed to pour off a heat ( a load of molten steel), the furnace would tilt towards a pit where a ladle (in a pit) held by an over head crane would catch the molten steel as it was poured off. There were huge ratchets that would click and hold the furnace up as the steel was poured off and as the molten level got lower in the furnace, the furnace would jack up higher to pour the last of the steel out. Then the ratchets would release or reverse and the furnace would lower level again and begin the process over.
Well eventually those Jack holes would become jammed and clogged with scrap metal that the crane dropped in there while filling the furnace and on shut down we had to go down there and empty this scrap to the bottom of the jack hole. The jack hole had no more than about 1' of room around my shoulders when I was down in the hole, we had to climb down a ladder that was then removed when we were in the hole. The hole was hot well over 100 degrees. a guy up top would lover a bucket on a rope with a brick laying trowel and I would use the trowel, crouched down to fill the bucket then tug on the rope to have the guy up top empty it and lower it again. you would spend several hours down there and then be spelled for 1/2 hour and do it again until the hole was cleaned out and you hit concrete on the bottom. Dirty hard work, your back and knees should knew it. Anyways that's how I paid the bills.
I also did crap like work for a demolition company and I gutted the tallest building in my city, the Pigott Building, took every floor out to the outside walls right up to the penthouse. Swinging a sledge hammer all day and poured rubble down a chute with a wheelbarrow. I dug holes laying all the runway lights at a large airport the holes had to be dug by hand because of UG utilities all over the place. I was a bouncer for 4 years in an old hotel called the Collins. I drove a cab in a town full of drunks. I did about half a dozen other jobs as well from installing aluminum siding on houses to building fire trucks. Point is, it does take a toll on you but someone has to do that type of work and fill the job.
Now I'm 55, I have a list of things going wrong that is half as long as my arm lol but I can still walk, talk, sit and move my fingers an toes only I can't do it for 8 hours a day anymore and employers don't hire people that can only work part time for full-time work and especially with a lot of special needs that need to be considered. So here I am disabled (I hate the word but you have to be able to physically work 8 hours And not part-time but full-time to not be classified disabled).
I've had my run of bad luck in cars too, I've been rear ended 4 times in a car and the last time I was hit in the ass by a dumb illegal alien broad while riding my Harley. Unbelievable! Anyway all those bumps have fubared my back permanently not to mention almost killed me a couple of times. The bike accident was worse because I managed to hang onto the bike and not fall over as she plowed into me from a skid at about 40 miles per hour. The cop and firefighters on the scene (they were putting out a bush fire on scene) couldn't believe I didn't lose the bike either. But I paid the price, jerked my back out again and popped both arms out and back into the shoulder sockets, that has left me with nerve damage all over my back. And it gets worse every year as I age.
OK, OK enough whining about what ails me there is more but enough is enough. Point is, the wife and I do not live high on the hog we are lower middle class folks just struggling along like the rest of America thanks to Obama.
Well back to the Bobber project. Oh by the way you'll notice that this blog now has its own domain name. this should make it much easier if your so inclined to pass this sometimes soap opera on to friends so they can be amused also?
There a fairly new web site out called Pinterest, I am thinking its pretty cool because it allows you to make groups of things you like and when your browsing the web such as shopping for bike part deals etc., and you pin these to that site in your little groups. This allows you to kinda keep projects organized but also to share them with others etc. I use it to make little groups of things I need to get my grubby hands on and things that are interesting to me. Pretty cool and you should check it out.
Well in Pinterest, I have a bobber group where I drop links and pix of stuff I need to finish this bobber project. Makes it handy to find all the stuff under one group. You can follow me as William Buchen and share pins. So that's what I have been doing lately is trying to amass some information and links to parts I will need for the project, it also lets me compare prices by saving the pins from different stores in the same group and deleting the more expensive ones. Kinda like a virtual swap meet, pretty cool stuff.
When I get enough nickels saved I will slowly buy the more pressing parts needed and get on with the project. Until then I'll try to keep yas amused with tales of my youth in the Biker world and such.
So keep coming back, subscribe and pass it on to your bros and sis's. Http://www.thebobberproject.com
