Quick Afternoon Trip

Last Sunday afternoon was so beautiful that Molly and I couldn't stand to stay at home, so we ate a quick lunch and headed north.

Spring was barely here with the buds just coming out and even the breeze still chilly.
We drove up Hwy 321 through Blowing Rock to the Blue Ridge Parkway and headed south.


We stopped just after the Linn Cove Viaduct and if you're not sure what that is click on the link and check out the pic. The hiking trail was closed so we didn't get any pictures of our own.

"Closed" seemed to be the theme on our little trip; as we headed down the parkway it was closed just south of Hwy 221 and we decided to start making our way back home. The closures were due to the large amount of snow the area got this past winter and the hash storms a few weeks ago which caused an awful lot of damage to the trees and littered the road with limbs and debris. Molly snapped a few great shots out the car window as we made our way though the valleys back toward I-40.

It was just a short few hours but I'm thankful that we live close enough to make it up on short notice and sad that we don't make it up more often...

QUEEN CITY ACES

A couple of weeks ago Molly and I joined a motorcycle club that is just starting up here in Charlotte. The club caters toward vintage and cafe' style bikes. We had our first meet and great and first ride before we even had a name. We decided to me at Fuel Pizza and the weather could not have been more beautiful.

It didn't take take long for everyone to trickle in and to start to tell stories about their bikes, where there got it, what work had to be done and what awful things the previous owner had done that had to be addressed.

A sweet little 1976 CB360

1978 KZ650Z Cafe'

1982 Honda CB750K Cafe'

1975 CB 750

We rode through uptown Charlotte then south of town to the Triumph/BMW/Ducati dealer followed by a long rural ride though the country back home.

Later that week the original eight members of the club decided to name it
"The Queen City Aces"

Seat Progress...

There are several reasons why I decided to recover the seat on Molly's CB450:

It looked awful, the seat is obviously old worn and not that appealing, so off it came.

As you can see the seat foam made a wonderful home for some mice over the years.
(on a side note, I'm tired of mice!)

After getting rid of all the junk foam and padding and sandblasting the seat pan I was ready to reshape the pan a bit. Even though the bike is pretty small Molly is smaller! She doesn't quite touch the ground when standing up on the bike, so one of the things I'm doing to make the bike fit her is to narrow the front of the seat pan. This will let her stand up straighter when getting on and off and at lights so her feet are more comfortably on the ground.


I bought some seat foam on line and have some different density foam around the shop to use for the base. I'm going for a somewhat cafe style seat so hopefully that's what I'll end up with.


I cut the foam down the middle and glued the two half's together with some 3M foam adhesive. This way I got the thickness I was looking for without having to buy a 4 inch thick piece of foam. Cheap is the name of the game! I painted the bottom of the pan and glued on the foam. Using an electric kitchen knife I trimmed all the edges around the pan. Let me tell you, the electric knife is the way to go!! Later when I start to work on the final shape of the seat I'll use an electric grinder with a 120 grit sanding disc. This also works amazingly well!
You can see the part that I narrowed up in this picture...

So here is the basic shape with quite a bit left to do. I'm hoping to get a chance to finish it up in the next week or so. It may not look like much now but it's looking better than what the mice were working on.

this post dedicated to
my friend Erik O.