Big Ben

Building Big Ben

As most of you already know, I retired in January of this year.

There were several events to mark the occasion , one of which was held at the Acapulco  restaurant on Firestone Blvd in Downey.

At this event my long time friend and colleague, Charlton Suzuki presented me with a gift.

It was a LEGO model of Big Ben in London.
Whilst I'm no fan of London, I loved the model.

Since LEGO was introduced to the UK in the late '50s or early '60s I have been a fan,
The tactile sense is fully engaged in this product.

So having taken this gift home, I thought OK, I'll keep it for those long cold winter nights.

But....

Then I thought, what, 60 degrees is a cold winter night, maybe not.

I decided that I should get this thing built before the arthritis in my hands gets any worse.

Thank goodness for the hand massage machine my friends Barb and Leon bought for me.

It really does work wonders.

So I brought out the box and looked at the instructions.


This thing has 346 parts, some of which are very small...


So construction began.

Slowly we crept ahead with assembly..

The tower grows.

Finally we have Big Ben!

As you can see from the pictures, the finished article looks  just like the box!

My very best regards go to Charlton and his family for this gift which entertained me for a considerable time.

Now that it is built, it is a thing of beauty which will have a place of honor on my book shelf.


Thank you both very much.


Ciao Bella

Norm

Trip To Surprise Az

A quick trip to Surprise.

Just in case you don't know, Surprise is a city in Arizona just north of Phoenix.

We took the trip to visit Barb and Leon following the surgery that Barb underwent to remove a kidney.

Anne and I were so impressed with the progress Barb has made, she is so much more mobile and getting around unaided, no walker, no cane, just getting on with life.

Well done Barb, and I'm sure that I can speak for all of your friends in congratulating you for your efforts.

We took some flowers from Erik and Fabienne in Belgium.

Just shows to go you  (SIC) Barb has friends all over the place.

On Wednesday when we arrived, Leon had prepared a barbecue with some Desperate Dan steaks.

Very good they were too.

Leon has his own secret recipe for the rub used ahead of grilling.

Excellent flavor.

Leon has added his own Arizona interpretation to the yard.

He made the cactus motif and attached them to the fence.

A very skilled guy is Leon.

Next day we headed out for a tour of the area, 

It's amazing how the cowboy image remains strong here, some of the bars and restaurants maintain the theme very well.

This one in Cave Creek was especially good.

We all had a wonderful lunch in a great place.

Later in the day, just as counterpoint, we went to an Italian restaurant in Surprise.

Carrabbas, they had one of their specialty dishes on the menu.

Chicken Bryan

Leon opted for that and pronounced it one of the best chicken dishes ever.

When we got home I looked it up and made it for myself.

The only downside that I could see, is that it may be addictive.

If you want to give it a try, a link to the recipe is below.

Click on Chicken Bryan.

Chicken Bryan

All to soon it was time to head for home.

We left on Friday morning and got on the road back to HB.

It never ceases to be a source of wonder to me just how big this country of ours is, we only went over one state from California to Arizona.

The distance from our house to Barb and Leon's house is 360 miles.

The equivalent distance in the UK is shown below.

Durham to Calais.

The only difference is that I may have used a bit more gas than you would in the UK.

More soon.

Ciao Bella 

Norm

Old Bikes New Lives

How Sweet It Is!

10/11/2015
This post is for the gear heads and the inveterate tinkerers of the world.
Read at your own risk!

After a lot of diddling around and quite a bit of work; today my buddy Rick and I reaped the rewards.

We rode the Triumph and the Velocette to the Orange County Vintage Bike Meet.

OK it's just a bunch of old guys talking about old bikes and bad mouthing their wives,

Nah!

Most of them never even mention their wives.

During the run up to this momentous day lots of stuff needed to be done.

When you read the manual for the Velocette, it talks about using a Rizla paper to set the gap in the points. (These are papers used for hand rolling your own cigarettes)

When we were on vacation in Spain with Teresa and Ron (sister-in-law and brother-in-law) I mentioned the Rizla papers.

Look what showed up in the mail.

Of course as these are now an endangered species I needed a safe place for them to live.

This is their new home in the tool box.

One of the other uses for them is shown in this picture.

The paper is placed on the object to be cut and the tool brought down to touch the paper, you hold the paper and pull slightly until the tool is holding the paper.

Now you know that you are set 0.0015" above the part.

This makes setting the cutter depth easy.

I know TMFI.

In an effort to make the Velocette start more easily, I decided to add electronic ignition.

The whole kit came from the UK.

When the kit arrived I checked it out and and it seemed like an easy install.

Rick came over to help with the project and we got off to a good start.

However, we soon found that it was almost impossible to remove the bolts from the old magneto.

Hmm, special tools were required.

So this set of wrenches (spanners on the other side of the pond) were adapted.

Hey, John Charlton, these look like something Teddy Rowntree would have!

The problem being that these are Whitworth wrenches and about as common as rocking horse shit in the USA.

New wrenches were ordered to replace these.

The timing device was designed to fit in the place of the magneto.

All the other bits were mounted inside the tool box to make the install virtually invisible.

There's still some fine tuning to do but otherwise I'm really happy with the outcome.

The Triumph was a different story.

It was a bit sporadic it would run and then not run.

One cylinder would not run at all reliably and it was always the left side.

Rick worked methodically through draining the gas.

Cleaning every orifice in each carburetor.

Checking the throttle sync.

Adjusting the float level.

Eventually we were ready for a test firing.

Lo and behold it worked.

We had a bike that would start and run with a modicom of reliability.

It Runs

Click on the link above to hear the Triumph.

The shake down ride today was, in my opinion, a success.

The next step is to replace the ignition control on the Triumph and put some miles on it.

We are just lucky that we can tinker outside 300 days of the year.

However for Southern Californians and even Texans like Rick it has been almost too hot to tinker for the last few days.

Actual shade temperature on Friday October 9th.

This is 1.5 miles back from the ocean.

Woops!

Correction

I have now found out that Teresa has a broken ARM not a broken wrist as originally reported.

Sorry about that Teresa.

I hope that you are well on the way to recovery.

You will be able to do this again real soon.