Topic: The Happy-ish Thread. Share your small wins and mixed blessings.

[Kevin D]

Budman did a terrific job on this years awards for Franks Challenge 24 rides in 2024. He sent them to me for distribution and I have mailed the first two awards out to lash and BallAquatics, keeping myself on top of things. But I have yet to ride my CB this week and I’m about to correct that.

[lash]

Received a pic of my 1971 cb750 sold on Friday from the new owner. Pic taken somewhere in cottage country around Huntsville, On. Says he loves the bike, his first 750, so I’m very happy about that!

[PeWe]

Received a pic of my 1971 cb750 sold on Friday from the new owner. Pic taken somewhere in cottage country around Huntsville, On. Says he loves the bike, his first 750, so I’m very happy about that!

That bike looks very fine, easy to like it very much!
I'm sure that lots of people will talk about old good days at ride stops. Still wanna have one.

[Trevor from Warragul]

A neighbor (David) has sold his house & is moving to Officer (Victoria, Australia). He said he had some "bike stuff" in his garage that might interest me. I mulled over this pair of vintage fleece lined leather gauntlets (owned by his Dad), before eventually buying them for $20 (AUD)...

[Terry in Australia]

Nice Gloves Trevor, geez David isn't moving far, about 60Km? Anyhoo, after getting some bad (expensive) news about some repairs required for my new (22 year old) truck to get thru it's roadworthy inspection last week, I remembered that I was gonna get my "Hindenburg" BMW K100RS to Jeff to do the Roadworthy Inspection so I can occasionally ride it to work. I'd received a replacement "stick on" mirror from England and I'd bought some used parts for it a few weeks ago including some footpeg assemblies, because new footpeg rubbers are quite expensive, so I installed them, and gave it a bit of a de-grease underneath. (not leaking any fluids, just coated with 40 years of road grime) 

I rode it over to Jeff's after buying an unregistered bike permit, and bumped into a mutual friend (who I need to contact again about a possible bike swap for one of my other bikes) so we just shot the sh1t while Jeff did all the checks, and gave me my new certificate. I rode it home again and took some shots to send to my club "Classic Plate" coordinator.

K100RS Roadworthy Sat 1 Jun 2024 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr

The weather was cold and threatening rain so I didn't do any more riding, instead I dropped the oil out of the other BMW (with the blown engine) and removed the oil/water pump that I restored a couple of weeks ago. I took it over to Spotty's place today, and gave it a good cleaning, then installed it on the "new" engine I bought for it a couple of weeks ago, that Spotty and I cleaned up and painted last weekend.

K100RS Sunday 2 June 2024 1 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr

K100RS Sunday 2 June 2024 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr

On Friday I received another care package from Motobins (BMW parts dealer) in Britain, which included a clutch alignment tool. Spotty and I had carefully marked, removed, and cleaned the clutch in the "new" engine and measured the clutch plate, which was perfect, (better than the one in the white bike, which slipped occasionally) but needed the alignment tool like you do when installing a clutch in a proper rear wheel drive car. I probably could have machined one up, but for the equivalent of $10 USD, I couldn't see the point, and it held the clutch plate exactly where it needed to be while I torqued the clutch back together.

K100RS Sunday 2 June 2024 2 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr

Only around 3 hours work today, but it was both cold, and miserable, so we both thought we'd spent enough time on it. Next weekend we'll hook up the trailer and tow the white BMW over to Spotty's place to separate the engine/trans/rear wheel from the frame, remove the engine, and bolt up the new one. Hopefully, it'll start and run, and all will be right, with the world.

[BenelliSEI]

Received a pic of my 1971 cb750 sold on Friday from the new owner. Pic taken somewhere in cottage country around Huntsville, On. Says he loves the bike, his first 750, so I’m very happy about that!

Good news. I’m always a little nervous when I sell on and old bike……

[simon#42]

sell bikes! how does that work then .

[BenelliSEI]

sell bikes! how does that work then .

Good point!

[Kelly E]

sell bikes! how does that work then .

Good point!

Yeah I need to know how to pick the one to sell too.

[BenelliSEI]

sell bikes! how does that work then .

Good point!
[/

Yeah I need to know how to pick the one to sell too.

The one that somebody wants, at your price! That’s what moved my K8.

[Terry in Australia]

I haven’t done very well so far this year, I’ve sold some, swapped some, and acquired some. I’m going to be a lot more motivated as soon as the weather improves, winter here now and not a good time to sell bikes. That’s my excuse, anyway…..

[Trevor from Warragul]

Picked up a new HP all-in-one computer yesterday, paid for by my motorcycle club. One of the few perks of being Secretary. It's not exactly "free", as I do hundreds of hours of unpaid work every year.

This computer doesn't take 10 minutes to boot up, doesn't take hours to perform updates, and doesn't crash the Microsoft Office apps...

[Terry in Australia]

Nice! I need to buy another new laptop so I can continue working from home, before the end of the month, so I can claim it on my tax. The one I bought during Covid lockdown has been great but won’t run fast enough to log into the defence website any more.

[grcamna2]

I haven’t done very well so far this year, I’ve sold some, swapped some, and acquired some. I’m going to be a lot more motivated as soon as the weather improves, winter here now and not a good time to sell bikes. That’s my excuse, anyway…..

Terry,you seem very well motivated.
I appreciate reading your posts,when they come about;I sometimes feel happy-ish,but it doesn't last. The projects which you've put on hold many times did interest me;hope you get back to them,in a 'Keeper' type of way. 

[Terry in Australia]

I haven’t done very well so far this year, I’ve sold some, swapped some, and acquired some. I’m going to be a lot more motivated as soon as the weather improves, winter here now and not a good time to sell bikes. That’s my excuse, anyway…..

Thanks Bill, the biggest problem I have is wasting 5 of my 7 days per week going to work, especially in winter when it's hard to stay motivated when you're freezing your tits off. I have my mental list of "bikes to keep" vs "Bikes to flip", but the sad part is that apart from one or two, I really wanted these bikes, so it's hard to let go of them. I need to replace a holed piston in my T500 and then install the new electronic ignition, get the T350 finished, fix the Z1-B, and the '73 Ironhead Sportster, fix the ignition on the K0, and sort the lighting system on the DT250, get my second Ducati going, sell one of the Ducks, get the KZ750 going, build at least one H1 500, and some other stuff that I've forgotten. Too many bikes, too little time, but in 18 months when I retire, it'll be bike day every day.........
Terry,you seem very well motivated.
I appreciate reading your posts,when they come about;I sometimes feel happy-ish,but it doesn't last. The projects which you've put on hold many times did interest me;hope you get back to them,in a 'Keeper' type of way. 

[Terry in Australia]

A few weeks ago I managed to tip a cup of coffee into my printer. I disassembled it as best I could to dry it out and then left it. Today I needed to print a form to get my club plate for the "Hindenburg" BMW, and kept getting a message that "The original is jammed in the paper feeder" so pulled the paper feeder apart, but nothing was jammed. I got out my torch, and found a Werthers Candy wrapper had fallen down the chute. I fished it out with some weird kitchen implement I found in the kitchen drawer, and managed to actually print the form. Yay! I'm now a computer tech!

[jgger]

Did it print extra fast because of the caffeine?

[Alan F.]

Yeah Terry, some of us make an ok living driving hundreds of miles in company vehicles to make simple repairs like that. Years ago stuff used to break, now 65% of the time I fix things without replacing any parts.

[Terry in Australia]

Ha ha, no, if anything the print quality is worse which pisses me off because I just spent $162 on new printer cartridges. When computers first came out, computer techs were earning enormous money. Our repair guy would charge $65 each way just to drive across to look at one before he even touched it, and one day they called him to come over and fix one of our computers only to find that a cleaner had unplugged it to plug in her vacuum cleaner. Even I would have checked to see if the power was on…..

[PeWe]

About printers... the ink printers cartridges were so expensive so it was a better choice to buy a new cheap printer.

[Terry in Australia]

Yep, the printer was cheaper than buying new cartridges but the cartridges that came with it lasted around 5 minutes so hopefully the new ones will last a bit longer. New printers are a ripoff.

[Gurp]

After yesterday kind of having a mental break and destroying my chainsaw starting with a 40 ft throw to the driveway and then beating it off the driveway.....

Today I collected myself got a new saw bought a used mower and me and the oldest boy got out and done a lot of yard work and I'm currently burning the brush pile it's been in my yard trying to force myself for some progress to induce a bit of serotonin.

Sent from my LE2127 using Tapatalk

[BenelliSEI]

Out with the grandchildren chasing fire flies this evening. Cool, damp evening and literally thousands in the deep grass, behind the house. My daughter took these photos with her phone! Simple pleasures are often the best.

[grcamna2]

Out with the grandchildren chasing fire flies this evening. Cool, damp evening and literally thousands in the deep grass, behind the house. My daughter took these photos with her phone! Simple pleasures are often the best.

Very nice 

[Don R]

 My oldest granddaughter was in a 12-U softball tourney in Des Moines Ia. They won all 6 games, she pitched a shutout and had part of another one out of four total, only two teams even scored against them. I think one was 11-3 and the final was 11-5.
 Her batting average was .883 with a walk, one or two fly balls and no strikeouts. One they will never forget. Almost all of her hits went to left field, before this tourney they had been mostly going to first base.