What a beautiful bike! I ran across this on a Triumph Bobber website I hadn’t come across before. In my humble opinion, this is one of the most elegant, and beautiful Triumph Bobbers I’ve seen. Good job guys!
Here’s a link to the Falcon Motorcycles gallery for The Kestrel:
http://www.falconmotorcycles.com/gallery/2-The%20Kestrel%20.html#0
I ride my bike to work nearly every weekday. I say this with the confidence that comes from learning to live with a single car and a motorcycle to share between my wife and myself. The car is hers, she can have it. My Buell is mine, and she can ride on the back whenever she wants to.
Since we moved to Dallas, TX back in April of 2010, I’ve only had the bike to commute on, so when it rains, or ices (contrary to what Texans say, it does not snow, it rains ice that sort of, but not completely resembles snow), I either work from home, borrow the car (which she rarely allows… yeah, so I’m whipped), or her and the boy will drop me at work, and pick me up in the evening.
That said, we’ve reviewed the number of days I’ve not ridden, and we’re quite certain it’s less than 20 days in the past year and a half. To say it again, in roughly 380 possible days of riding (figuring in vacations, etc.) I’ve ridden 360 of them. To me, that says a ton about how good the weather is down here! It also says that anyone who really wants to ride can’t use weather as an excuse down here… there’s only been one day when I really got soaked, and I simply planned ahead for it.
Having ridden nearly every day for the past year and a half, I’ve seen the good side of it (haven’t spent more than $11/week on gas!) and the bad (is it bad when your legs burn because you’re riding 15 miles at 26 degrees, with just jeans on?). The only things that I now think are mandatory for doing this, are:
A few more items that I suspect would make the riding much more pleasant:
And there you have it… my list of what I’ve found to be essential to make riding everyday possible, and even enjoyable.
What would you add to the list? Any specific gear suggestions?
I’ve dropped the ball on updating this site, and after Brian Turner’s guest post, I figured I’d best stop slacking, and start writing. Problem is I have writers block!
So, tell me: what is the thing you want to know?
Do you want to know how to build a Triumph Bobber on a budget, or a howto article on shortening forks? Do you want more information on putting a Volare front clip in an F-100?
What’s the question that brought you to Henry’s Rod Shop to begin with? What haven’t you gotten an answer to, that I might be able to help with?
Email me: bcarlson@henrysrodshop.com or post a comment… I’m happy to help!
-Ben
Image via Wikipedia
I’ve gotten burnt out on doing website side projects (yet again), and at some point downloaded a program called Blender. I’ve been working with it for a few weeks now, and am pretty happy with my progress. To give a quick overview, this is the type of program that Pixar and Dreamworks use to create movies like Toy Story, and Shrek (ok, that’s GREATLY oversimplifying it, but I’m trying to be breif). This software can also be used for making “stills” or “renders” that are photo realistic. That’s what I’m trying for. You can see some of the work I’ve been doing with it in my gallery here, under “cg” (as in “Computer Graphics”).
Polikarpov I-16 Render in Blender
So, after playing with rendering a Polikarpov I-16 (I thought an airplane would be easier to start with, and I was right!), I ran across a forum that was having a contest to create your favorite movie car. Many of mine were already being done by others, so I finally decided to do the Ferrari from “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off“, a 1961 Ferrari 250 GT Spyder California; but like the post title, it wasn’t quite that simple. After digging into it, it turns out that the car in the movie was actually an MG with a bodykit that made it look like one of these exceedingly rare cars. In addition, I was unable to find enough reference photos of either car to do a dead-on accurate version, so I’m doing my best to get pretty close to what I think it looks like.
Here’s a few images (more in the gallery):
1961 Ferrari 250 GT Spyder California
1961 Ferrari 250 GT Spyder California
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:
This past Sunday, Michelle, Emmett and I took the stroller down to Blacksmith’s in Hugo, to Emmett’s first swap meet.
We put him in the stroller, and he slept most of the morning, doing a little looking around. We ran into Titus from the HAMB, and he had a nice GM Tilt & Telescoping Steering column for cheap, so we bought it, and on the way back to the car, we found a cool old three gauge cluster with three generic gauges in it. It’s cast aluminum, and chromed, and kinda 60′s-ish, so we’ll use it in the truck.
