I love the Minnesota summer, and have been enjoying our neighborhood outings, with Brandy on her leash, and Emmett in the stroller. Jess sometimes rides her bike. But I’ve been pretty stressed out at work lately, so I was very glad for a break which we are using to head out to Atascadero, California via San Francisco. My brother is the Director of Wine Making at EOS Estate Winery, and we are staying with him and Kristin at their beautiful new house.

We caught a Sun Country flight from Minneapolis/St. Paul to San Francisco on the 15th at about 10pm. We got into SF at about Midnight, and to the hotel by 1am (local time). We were wiped out tired, but Emmett and Jess were perfect on the plane. Jess really liked flying, and Emmett only fussed for a total of about one minute the whole time!

The problems began at the hotel. We checked in fine, and got to the room, but Emmett would not sleep for anything. He finally fell asleep around 2:30am, but woke up at about 4:30am. We got a total of two hours sleep, and then I went and got the rental car from the International airport.

I picked up the family in San Bruno, and then we set off on the 101 heading north; our route was up across the Golden Gate, then down highway 1 along the coast to Watsonville. Turning inland, we would head through Salinas, stopping to pickup a few baby necessities, and then continue down 101 to Atascadero.

It was unfortunate and awesome that the fog was in, and as thick as it was. It was absolutely gorgeous, but the shroud of fog was enough to keep the tops of the towers hidden. We went across, stopping at the scenic viewing area, and then turned heading south. Going across again, we managed a few photos, and then we paid the toll, and exited onto Highway 1.

To be continued…

I’ve been bicycling most of my life (haven’t we all?)… riding BMX, freestyle, flatland, Mtn. Bikes with no/front/full suspension, and currently am riding a Trek that I’ve cobbled into a singlespeed (freewheel, not fixie… yet) ‘cross type bike. For the past several years I’ve wanted to build my own bicycle frame, but haven’t had the tools to do so (oxy/acetelene torch or TIG), but now that I have a TIG, I’d like to give it a shot!

After seeing this Excelsior Henderson race bike, I now had the inspriation to do so! I found a junk 70’s frame at my grandparent’s house for practice, and am hoping to get going on it once we get back from California in a couple weeks.

Here’s some more inspiration I came across from Zach Suhr for your perusal:

Somehow I had not heard about when this was happening this year, but I came across some excellent photos at this gallery.

Here are a few of my favorites:

This Excelsior Henderson just blows me away! I love the cast aluminum paddock stand too!

You might recognize this BMW from a prior post. It’s just as sexy now as it was then!

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I’m happy. We have about two weeks before we leave to visit my older brother Nathan and his girlfriend, Kristin in Atascadero, California! We’re going to be flying into San Francisco, then driving down, along the coast for part of the trip. The recent fires around Big Sur kinda threw a kink into the plan though, but we won’t be downhearted about missing that part, we’re just excited to checkout their new house, and spend some time with them.

I haven’t been doing any work on the truck lately, I’ve been enjoying my new bike, and working on a couple of websites, one I hope to finish up tonight, if not this morning!

This weekend, I hope to start working on building a utility trailer for hauling the lawn mower/4-wheeler/motorcycle/etc., and hope to have it done, or close to it before we leave. I am hoping when we get back we’ll have enough money left over to buy a nice-sized cedar swingset for the kids. We might end up going with treated (they don’t use arsenic anymore, so it’s a viable option), but I’d really like to use cedar.

Finally, I’m thinking about going back to school to work on getting my associates degree, eventually working towards my Bachelors in Computer Science. It’s something I’ve wanted to do for a long time, but just haven’t had the initiative. Lately I’ve been very blah at work, so I want to find something to spur me on in my career.

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My Maternal Grandmother’s 80th Birthday is coming up in September. As a part of the preparations, my parents have been going through boxes and albums of photos and scanning them. They sent a couple of them last night, and I thought I’d share, as we all like photos of old cars.

The first is my Grandmother pumping water in front of her parent’s house. The house was torn down back in the 80’s; the land it was on was purchased by a concrete and paving company, and is now a gravel pit.

The second photo is of my Grandparents together. I think the girl in the background is one of my Grandfather’s 12 siblings.

The final photo is of my Mother and her younger brother, along with their dog Sam. I’m not sure what car is in the background… a Galaxy, perhaps?

Anyways, I was just excited to see the photos, and thought I’d share.

-Ben

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I haven’t posted in a while because I’ve been busy working, working on website side-projects, and looking for a motorcycle. With gas prices being close to four dollars a gallon, the Jeep is really not the thing to be commuting with! So, we pretty much right off the bat liked the Buell Lightnings. We looked at V-Stroms, V-Stars, VTX1300s, GSXR1000s, and many other bikes, but kept coming back to the Buells.

Through the whole process, Michelle has been 110% on board, and seems to be as excited as I am about it. We just need to get her some safety gear now (Jacket, Helmet and Gloves, she bought new boots already), and we’ll be ready to go two-up across country… well, at least cross county for now.

We ran up to Duluth last weekend in search of a 2003 XB9S, but it had sold the night before. So, I found this 2005 on Craigslist.org, and so we loaded up, and went to Cumberland, WI yesterday about noon to meet the owner, and take it for a spin.

The first thing I found out was that Emmett did NOT like the noise when I started it up… he started crying immediately! Poor kid! The next thing was that it’s very torque-y, and has far more power than any bike I’ve ridden before. Because of the short wheelbase and my height, I have to look down to see the gauges, or any part of the bike for that matter! It feels as though you are floating out in front of the bike.

Here are some photos of it, I’m sure I’ll post more about it soon, but Emmett is starting to fuss…