Track Day

The Buell Company (division of Harley Davidson) sponsored a track day at a nearby track, which I attended. Besides a really good price, they also provided a set of demo motorcycles covering their whole line of sport bikes. I tried out the 1125R sport bike and the Ulysses adventure bike. Both were splendid - although the Ulysses was so tall I needed help getting the kickstand down after my demo ride...

Here is a sampling of the day, including one lap of Eagles Canyon Raceway aboard my VFR. (A very slow lap... A good lap time for motorcycles is about a minute and 50 seconds! The track record (for cars) is about 1 minute 28 seconds. My lap time was about 3 minutes...)

Overachiever Lemon Tree

Here's our potted lemon tree, doing its best to be a big producer.




Four lemons! One yellow almost ripe one (back behind the leaves), and three others.

Of course, its little Lime Tree buddy is trying hard to catch up.... I see six limes.

Grammie's Got New Shoes!!

Check out Mom's new walking shoes.
Aren't they beauts?!!

Today I finished re-reading C.S. Lewis Screwtape Letters.

I found it striking in its unusual structure and wonderful language, and convicting in its masterful reverse-psychology skewering of most of the errors of today's denominational Christianity, as well as many of the old heresies that have emerged since the beginning. Amongst all that, Lewis subtly paints a picture of what Christianity really is about.


Mr. Lewis is high on the list of folks I look forward to visiting with when I get to Heaven.

Weird words

So, if Real Estate means land and buildings --
then what is Imaginary Estate??

Our friend Wink

Particles

Did you hear about the nuclear physicist who sent his friend a box of bosons?

It took over a month for it to get there, because it went Particle Post.

Houses I've Lived In

Here's a list of the places I've lived... that I can remember.

Brenham, TX (don't know the address) - 0 to 9 mo
Bristol Road, Ft Worth, TX - 9 mo to 6 yr
Donaldson Avenue, San Antonio, TX - 6 yr to 7 yr
333 Quentin Drive, San Antonio, TX - 7 yr to 8 yr
215 Coyle Place, San Antonio, TX - 8 yr to 10 yr
415 Shadwell Drive, San Antonio, TX - 10 yr to 11 yr
231 Laddie Place, San Antonio, TX - 11 yr to 12 yr
West Hall, Schreiner Institute, Kerrville, TX - 12 yr to 13 yr
#3 Methodist Encampment, Schreiner Institute, Kerrville, TX - 13 yr to 20 yr
2801 Whitis Avenue, Austin, TX (The Campus Guild) - 20 yr to 23 yr
1305 Bickler Road, Austin, TX - 24 yr- wedding
5109 N. Utica Avenue, Tulsa, OK - year 1
(Pat & Ron Halcomb's house) Tulsa, OK - year 1
E. Marshall Street, Tulsa, OK - year 2
10601 East 23rd Street South, Tulsa, OK - year 2 to 5
Bridgeton, MO - year 3
2805 South 94th East Avenue, Tulsa, OK - year 5 to 9
12627 Shadyridge Lane, Farmers Branch, TX - year 9 to 12
1912 Richland Drive, Richardson, TX - year 12 to 30
Ruhland Avenue, Redondo Beach, CA - year 30 to 31
310 The Village, Redondo Beach, CA - year 31 to 34
22883 Nadine Circle, Torrance, CA - year 35 to 35
Wildwood Travel Trailer, USA - year 35 to 36
401 North Old Orchard Road, Lewisville, TX - 36 to 38
Saluda-Paynesville Road, Hanover, IN - year 38
6320 Virginia Parkway, McKinney, TX - year 38 to 40
Where we are now, McKinney, TX - year 40 to now

My Mother's notes

There's a new blog:
http://BerniceHorn.blogspot.com/

So far, it contains a transcript of notes my Mother wrote a little while before she died. She wrote out what is mainly her medical history, with the thought that her descendants might find it useful for understanding their own medical problems - at least those that might have a genetic factor.

'65 Honda Hawk - In Racing Trim

This is my 1965 Honda, set up for racing.

The changes:

Alternator rotor removed
Racing camshaft installed
Open megaphones exhaust (LOUD, but sweet sounding at 9500 rpm!)
Headlight and other bodywork removed
Clip-on handlebars
Aluminum rims
Racing tire(s?) - rear for sure, front was stock street tire, I think
Hand-made fiberglass tank and seat

Everything else was stock.

This photo (and the next) was taken at a race event San Angelo, around June 1964. (My thanks to Mom - for finding these photos. I was very excited to see them, because only a few nights ago I found myself wishing I had a photo of the racing gas tank I built!)


The bike next to mine is Mike Bonnel's racer (29N). He was also a mechanic at the Honda of Austin, where I worked part time. His bike was dedicated to racing duties; mine also did street duty between races.


Me riding my bike.



I'm not sure where this is, but the bike has the stock tank and street mufflers, so it was probably a country road somewhere near Austin. I was chasing a friend who was riding a stock 305 Super Hawk.

Quote of the Day

"Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines." -- John Benfield

Grub-level Politics

[Grub-level: somewhere below Grassroots...]

On 'Super Tuesday', I attended the Republican Precinct Convention for our voting area.

There were two of us in attendance.

Meanwhile, in the same room, the Democratic Caucus was forming - there were at least 300 of them - quite a contrast in interest level. It was probably the fact that the Republican selection process appears to be a done deal that contributed to the low interest level.

Anyway, following the official procedures, the two of us - the Temporary Precinct Convention Chair and me - elected ourselves Permanent Chair and Secretary, respectively. Then we nominated ourselves to be delegates to the Senate District Convention (which is the next step in the process to select delegates to the National Convention). The slate was approved unanimously.

The final order of business was submission of party platform resolutions. We each had one. Mine reads:

Whereas: the Constitution stipulates that citizens shall not be subjected to illegal search and seizure;
Whereas: the present administration has undertaken to collect electronic (text and voice) information transmitted by citizens without legal authorization (e.g., FISA) and without their knowledge;
Resolved: The government shall be prohibited from exercising surveillance of any citizen without an official warrant issued by the judiciary in accordance with Federal law, regardless of circumstances.

So there - take that, you legal-process-bypassing-evesdropping-
-on-everybody-in-the-name-of-so-called-national-security-but-
-in-actuality-another-step-toward-Big-Brother-totalitariansm
President!

I sort of doubt my resolution will make it to the national GOP platform...

We need to impeach Mr. Bush.

My Father's Journal

A new blog, John Henry Horn - Notes, contains a transcription of personal notes my Dad made between January and September, 1934. He was 22 years old at the time.

There will be a total of 27 posts, each representing an entry in his journal, with the post title being the date of the entry.

I have added footnotes which explain a few of his remarks, identify persons (he used only initials), and to include notes my Mom added later.

In a few places, pages are missing - either through accident, or intentionally. I have inserted a comment in brackets [...] to indicate each of these omissions.

It is my hope that his writings will help give his descendants a bit of feeling for who he was, by revealing some of how he thought at a particular season of his life.
__________________________________________________________________

John H Horn, in 1935. He was the Assistant Registrar at Schreiner Institute. He was also the faculty advisor on The Recall (annual) and The Mountaineer (student newspaper).


His younger brother, James, also in 1935 when he was a College Freshman at Schreiner.

Third Motorcycle

During my next to last year of college, my buddy Gene and I were driving thru downtown Austin when a fellow on a motorcycle passed us, with its engine singing the most delicious, high-pitched scream. Since both of us were motorheads, and enamored with high-rpm engines, we naturally followed the bike until the rider stopped for a light, so we could pull up beside him and ask "What in the world kind of bike is that, and how many rpm's does it turn!?" It was a Honda CB92R - a 125cc, sort of factory-racer-privateer street bike. And it was red-lined at 14,000 rpm - an astounding figure for the time.

Next day: I am at Honda of Austin, down on West 1st Street, drooling over a 1965 Honda CB-72 250 Hawk. A short while later, after hanging around the Honda shop a lot, and persuading my Uncle Jim (who lived in Austin) to co-sign a loan for me (very much against his will, but he felt sorry for me), I rode home on my brand new blue Honda Hawk.

This is Gene sitting on my bike, in front of The Campus Guild - the men's coop where we lived in college.

This is a view of the cockpit.

What a sweet bike! About 25 horsepower, redlined at 10,200 rpm, huge dual-leading shoe front brake, racy riding position... It came with a complete tool kit that even included a small pair of scissors for trimming tire patches to size. I still have most of the tools. But, alas, not the bike. More on that, later.

After I bought the bike, I got to know the owners of Honda of Austin - Fred and Alta Mae Kretchmar. Eventually, I was hired to work in the shop as a mechanic. Another mechanic, Mike Bonell, was an aspiring road racer, so I began to get interested in racing. I stripped the Hawk down, bought a racing cam, aluminum wheel rims and a Dunlop racing rear tire.

I actually went to three races. The first was at an abandoned airport in San Angelo. Mike won first and I placed third but didn't get a trophy because there were too few riders to award a third place trophy. The second race was again at San Angelo. This time, I had replaced the stock steel gas tank and bench seat with a fiberglass tank and solo racing seat which I built from scratch. When my race came up, I wasn't ready and started about half a minute after the beginning of the race. I was doing well, moving up to second place (behind Mike, of course) when my engine suddenly made an awful rattling noise and quit running. When I pushed the bike back to the pits, I found that a valve had floated, hit the piston and bent. No more racing that day. My final racing attempt was at the AMA nationals in Chicago. I crashed in practice, got a concussion and bent my fork, and didn't get to race. Mike won the novice class.

The Hawk was my main mode of transportation for my last two years of college, during which I met and married an extremely cute and vivacious young lady from Houston. Her parents expressed some concern about the husband of their daughter riding a motorcycle, so I sold it to my brother-in-law, who then resold it.

If anybody knows where it is, please let me know. I'd like to buy it back!

Second Motorcycle

In the summer after my third year at UT Austin (sidebar: I went to UT for four years, following two years of junior college. Can you spell "wrong major"?) I decided I needed a motorcycle, and found a likely candidate in the local classified ads. (This was 1965 - classifieds like Craigslist were printed on paper then!) It was a 1957 Zundapp 250 Super Saber (I think) that had been stripped down to the bare essentials. That is, no front fender, no working ignition, a burned piston, and torn seat cover. However, it had been bored out to about 300 cc and the seller threw in a magneto off some other kind of motor. $45 bucks.

My buddy Gene helped me tow it back to the coop where I lived, and I set to work. We fabricated a mounting plate and little chain drive setup for the magneto, recovered the seat, and replaced the piston - with a Volvo car piston, following a tip the seller had given me. I made a head gasket from an aluminum beer can (which, as it turned out, was a big mistake.) Oh, and I recovered the seat, spray painted the tank and frame and adapted a new rear sprocket.

After a few weeks of fairly intensive work, it came time to fire it up... and by golly, it ran! In fact, it was really pretty quick for that size motor. No muffler (of course), as loud and abrasive as only a two stroke single can be. I ran it up and down the street in front of the coop a few times, then set off towards the countryside. About 5 miles from home, as I was cruising along the highway, it suddenly stopped running. No compression. When I pulled the head, there was a big hole melted in the top of the piston.

I couldn't afford another new piston, so I took that one to a welding shop and had it welded up. Much hand labor later, spent filing and smoothing the globbly aluminum weld, I reassembled it and got it running again. A short ride later... same thing. A nice hole in the middle of the piston.

The bike sat around in the basement of the coop for a few months. By this time, I had a job as a motorcycle mechanic, and I towed the Zundapp down to the shop and stored it with all the other derelict motorcycles in the back room. When I left Austin, I forgot to collect it (just married, you know...). A couple of years later, I stopped by the shop, but the bike was gone.

Years later (like, last year), I finally realized that the beer can head gasket I made was too thin, which raised the compression ratio to some astronomic value. This made terrific power, but when the piston got hot, the pressure was just too much and blew a hole in the weakened metal. Wish I had known that then!

This is a picture of a 1956 Super Saber, with all of its parts. If you removed the front fender, it would look a lot like mine.

New Boots!

My First Motorcycle

It must have been when I was 16 or 17. My friend, John Ike, got a Triumph Thunderbird 650 twin, an awsome bike - very much like the one Marlon Brando rode in "The Wild One". So I wanted a bike, too. After browsing the Triumph brochures, I quickly realize there was no way I could afford even a used 350. About this time, I spotted a small bike for sale at a garage near downtown Kerrville. After a little dickering, I took it home for the grand sum of $25.

My first bike was - a Harley Davidson. But not just any Harley big-twin cruiser. No, this was a Harley HUMMER. One Hundred Twenty Five cc's of two-stroke single power-lessness. It had lost its muffler, leaving just a straight exhaust pipe. I fabricated something that looked a little like a muffler, by wiring two beer cans together and making a hole in each end. It was still just about as loud, and the psuedo-muffler vibrated to pieces in short order. I ran a straight pipe after that.

I remember that first gear was very low - it would go about 5 mph wound out in first. Three gears total. Solid rear suspension, fat tires, tractor style seat with springs, and a sickly metallic green color - no wonder not many of them were sold. Prior to my ownership, it had lost its headlight, tail light, speedometer and front fender.

The front fork was a "girder fork" design, meaning solid legs with a pair of linkages and a spring at the top. But the spring was a pair of large rubber bands! One of the pivot bars was broken, so after a while I welded on the stem and fork scavanged from an old BSA frame I bought for $5. Now my Harley actually had a telescopic fork. The fork probably weighed as much as the rest of the frame. Of course, I didn't know you were supposed to put oil in the forks, so the front end was pretty bouncy.

I rode this frankenbike most of the summer, around the campus of the boarding school where we lived. I can't imagine how much the other residents must have hated the loud, annoying blatting of an open two-stroke motor blasting around our otherwise pleasant neighborhood.

When the fall semester began, I sold the bike to some poor soul - probably for about the same amount I paid for it. It would be eight years before the bug bit again and I got my second bike.

Photo courtesy of www.HarleyHummer.com