What in the world am I doing out of bed at 5:30 am on a Saturday morning? Hunting season is over and I don’t have anywhere to travel to, so why am I up, sitting at this computer, drinking coffee and writing to you? The reason that I am so excited is that today I get to go out to my shop and work on motorcycles! I have been incredibly busy doing such things as replacing the steering column in my old Chevy van, doing a bit of work at my place of worship, and setting up my web store that is attached to this blog. But today things are different and I plan to take full advantage of it.

There’s a new AGM battery hooked up the trickle charger in the shed, it and a couple of gallons of premium gas are going into a Kawasaki Brute Force 750 that I rebuilt the carbs on a few weeks ago. The new rear fender came in for Project wAMMO and I have the exhaust pipes welded up and ready for a trial fit. My main goal for today is to fit this rear fender and get it mounted into place. The owner didn’t really like the Fat Bob fender so I bought a new Electra Glide style front fender that will be turned around backwards and cut down to fit. I can already see it in my mind, and it looks good.

Somewhere along the way I picked up a seriously roached out 85 Kawasaki LTD454 that you’ll see in the Junkyard Dogs section of the blog soon. If I can talk my wife into it I’m going to teach her how to rebuild carburetors using it for a project. The guy I bought it from poured some gas into the carbs and it started up and sounded okay, but it really does look awful. If it runs really good, it might become a project, or even if it runs okay, it still might go to the VMA swap meet as a box of parts.

A while back Cycle World editor Kevin Cameron wrote a great piece titled “The Tyranny of Tools,” and he was so right sometimes having the knowledge and equipment can be a pain. You really wish you didn’t have the ability to do things, such as replacing the steering column in a van or repairing your homes heat pump, but even if your significant other can be convinced to let you sub a job out, the demons in your mind will insist that you do it yourself just to make sure it is done right. But on a day like today I am the tyrant and the tools become my army and we will conquer the tasks at hand. At the end of the day when the recalcitrant metal has been subdued and the projects are that much closer to completion, or in fact done, we will celebrate with a nice medium rare slice of dead cow served with a bottle of that Irish brewed nectar of the gods, Guinness Extra Stout.

Gee I hope I am still as happy at 6:00 pm as I am at 6:00 am….