An Experiment in Bearding

It has been a long time since I have updated my blog. Bets and I have been busy hiking for the past 5.5 months. You can go to walkingtomaine.blogspot.com to see the adventure thus far.
We are really excited to be doing anything but hiking, which means that when we get home we will be looking for jobs and a place to live. The next adventure for us will be having a home and, Lord willing, a family.
Weather permitting we should be returning to Lebanon, Virginia around the first week of October.

Please Excuse My For Sale Add

  So I am trying to sell my truck. I have listed it online, but wanted to put more pictures here.
Behold my beloved Davey.

A Month's Work

 My brother-in-law Mike Lantz.

When I told Mike about my dream bike he said "wow, that is a sweet bike, but its really expensive and a lot of bike to start out on."
So he lead me in the direction of some sweet older four cylinder bikes. This really began to shape my taste for older motorbikes. As a result of this I have named my bike "Mike". Please don't be wierded-out Mike Lantz.

So I began to look locally for an old Honda CB550. Then one day I met a man who had a 1978 Suzuki GS550 that had been sitting in his garage for lots of years (the last inspection was 1987...whoa).
He ended up selling it to me for $150.

So I took it home, it was not running and I really didn't know if it ever would.

I took the carbs off and cleaned them.
I had a motorcycle dealer put new tires on the rims I took them. By the way, this was a big time dealership in our area and the jokers acted like they had never put tires on anything older than 2006. Whatever.

 

I then stripped everything off the frame and began to clean it. Now, up to this point I had never really ridden many motorbikes, much less worked on them, but I have a sweet manual (which came with the bike) and a meticulous mechanical understanding of "righty-tighty, lefty-loosey". I try to keep a mental picture of how I took things off and then I put them back the same way. However, if you are like me you are laughing right now knowing that memory is not always the best way to work on cars or bikes. With that said...I still have a little pile that I am trying to figure out where these things go, and the bike is all back together. Hmmm.

Here are the exhaust pipes, one cleaned, the other anxiously awaiting a cleaning. By the way, Brillo pads (with soap because the soap acts as a lubricant keeping the scratching to a minimum) works wonders for bringing back chrome.

I didn't go very deep into the engine, but I did replace a few gaskets that seemed to be leaking oil.

I started putting things back together. By the way, once I got it all back together, with a fresh battery and some new gas I tried to start it up. To no avail. I was at a loss. I found a website dedicated to these bikes and found out that I needed to rebuild the carbs again due to a step that I missed. So off came the carbs. Once they were cleaned and reinstalled Mike ran like a champ.
As of right now I am still working on fixing the charging system which is requiring me to purchase a couple more parts. However, today it passed inspection. I know, I didn't think it would either, my cars never do at first, but it did.

Alas, the mostly finished product.

It has been a fun month working on this bike. I have been riding it around town lately and loving it.
Thanks Betsy for putting up with me for all those late nights in the garage. I love you.
Thanks dad for your help with the front brake...eventhough it was really frustrating.
Thank you Kathy H. for the garage space and for not fussing about having to step over tools when you got out of your car.
Jesus, thank you for grace on this project.

Looking Ahead

I'm no motorcyclist.
However, I think getting 5o miles to the gallon is a great way to go.
Not being a motorcycle follower I find it interesting that my tastes run with the vintage.
Here is the bike of my dreams...well not my dreams, but my hopes.
Sometime in the next 5 years I hope to own something like this.
Know that my desire to own is not only so I can ride on the weekends with my hot wife aboard,
but it is to be used as a commuter bike. I plan to ride to and from work, most days, on this sweet thang.

The 2007 Triumph Scrambler

Me...a Consumer?

Ok, so Betsy and I have stopped shopping at WalMart, I'm reading books like "Deep Economy" by Bill McKibben and "Culture Jam" by Kalle Lasn. We are really excited about the Farmer's Market starting back up, and have high expectations about growing our own veggies some day in the near future. We want to be real people who love what pleases the heart of God. We want to always have a little dirt under our nails and the stain of a freshly killed chicken on blue jeans...to know where our food comes from. Ok, so Betsy doesn't like the whole killing our own chickens thing. I want our kids to be brilliant, creative, cultured, but also dirty. I want them to be familiar with seasonal changes and what foods grow during each. I want to shut off our TV and never turn it on again...but I really want to want to do it.

I am learning that God made nature. He spent 5 days working on it. He put a lot of care into it. Then He told us to care for it. To "have dominion over it."
Now I know all this, I have known it from my youth. God is our Creator. He made the heavens and the earth. But somehow in Christian Culture I have come to believe that Nature is disconnected from my day to day life. I have come to believe that it is ok for me to go into a grocery store and purchase a banana in January ( I live in Virginia). Now you will surely say "what is wrong with that?" If you and I trace that banana back to its origin we will find that it was grown using chemical substitutes for the natural nutrients it needs, it was sprayed with pesticides (which later end up in our drinking water...increasing the possibility of cancer and other diseases), then it was shipped long distances by vehicles that get horrible gas mileage.

Ok, maybe I sound like a bristle-faced, hemp necklace, pot-smoking hippie to you at this moment, but it seems to me that something is wrong with the banana. What about gas mileage any way? Who cares? I mean if the Ozone layer depletes that just means Jesus comes back sooner, right? "Don't give me all this environmental bull-crap...we as believers have more important things to worry about, like Evangelism, etc."

I agree, Evangelism is much more important than Environmentalism. I believe that people have souls that will last for eternity. I don't think the same for trees. But its not that easy. That tree provides something very important to my life...its called oxygen. If I keep cutting them down so I can have extra paper to fulfill my sticky note needs, then someone has to stop breathing. What about the perfect Snow White looking apple we find in the grocery store? How do we get apples that don't have worm holes? We put pesticides on them.

Taking care of the environment should never be our biggest agenda. Recycling should be something we do along the way...like putting shoes on in the morning, or doing our hair, or clipping toenails. If we made the environment a huge priority through our whole lives it would never be a big deal...it would be taken care of.

I don't know how to change all of this yet, but I am learning. I have been a bad example of the heart of God on this matter, but I'm changing. Christians, stand up. Do not be the product of what is easy. Remember that God puts a huge emphasis on the environment. Let this not be a political battle to be won by the most clever politician. Make your life a sustainable one.