Story time....

[Bumblebee]

Speaking of cats....when my boys were young we got a girl orange tabby.....she was a great cat and treated our sons like her kittens.....

I should have written a book about her adventures.....each boy in different years tried to smuggle her to school in their backpacks for show and tell but were caught each time when she stuck her head out of the zipper.....

Many times I found her in one of their dresser drawers when she got in there and they didn't notice then closed the drawer...I'd hear a faint meow and find her.....I'd find her in their laundry basket in a closed closet the same way...a meow...

Anytime I was packing to deploy, she'd get in my barrack box and get grumpy when I took her out....

I recall one day riding home from work on the bike and seeing my boys and a few neighborhood kids looking up this huge elm tree we had in our yard.....I looked up and saw this orange speck and knew the critter climbed the tree......so up I went.....I stuffed her in my uniform shirt and brought her down...

She lived until she was a little over 18 and was a great friend......

I was trying to find a picture of her but can't at the moment....

 

[Oz22]

Earlier today, I was talking to a friend of mine who took his Ducati Panigale V4 via enclosed trailer to Florida to ride around during the holidays....

He rode it for a day and it broke....he took it to a dealership and the part he needs is back ordered so back into the trailer it went.....

I swear the only time, in all my years of riding, that a bike broke down on me -other then a catastrophic failure flogging a 650 katana- was back in 1982. I was cruising up the West coast highway north of Perth and suddenly the bike lost all power. I got my tools out, pulled off the the little round alloy side case on the engine and one of the two sets of points had a broken bakalite lifter, so the points were permanently closed. You wouldn't believe it, I broke down 100m or so past a roadhouse. I went in and dropped the offending set of points on the counter and the attendant pulled a set of Lucas points for a Holden off the wall and they were an exact match. Back on the road again .

Ducati, no thanks. Once you've grown up reliability you have no time for problems, of any sort!

 

[Bumblebee]

I swear the only time, in all my years of riding, that a bike broke down on me -other then a catastrophic failure flogging a 650 katana- was back in 1982. I was cruising up the West coast highway north of Perth and suddenly the bike lost all power. I got my tools out, pulled off the the little round alloy side case on the engine and one of the two sets of points had a broken bakalite lifter, so the points were permanently closed. You wouldn't believe it, I broke down 100m or so past a roadhouse. I went in and dropped the offending set of points on the counter and the attendant pulled a set of Lucas points for a Holden off the wall and they were an exact match. Back on the road again .

Ducati, no thanks. Once you've grown up reliability you have no time for problems, of any sort!

My Bumblebee left me on the side of the road a couple summers ago.......it was a real sinking feeling.......

I was trying to get hold of our auto club to come get me for a half hour and out of frustration decided to try and start it......bang, it started right up......I threw my gear on and went down the road towards home........it quit again.........I waited for a half hour and then tried it and it went....I made it home with the FI light flashing all the way....

Got it home, shut it off......deescalated my anger and then tried it again....it started right up with no FI light.....took it around the block and it ran perfect until I got 20 feet from my driveway and the FI light started flashing and it quit..

I went into diagnostic mode and started with anything that wasn't factory on the bike....first thing to go was the Bazzaz fuel system.......I plugged it into my laptop and nothing came up.....it wasn't communicating with my laptop and I noticed one of the lights on the Bazzaz brain box wasn't lighting up.....I hit the reset and nothing.....so I went to the Bazzaz site and they were out of business but left a diagnosis program on their site so I downloaded that and still nothing....

So off came the Bazzaz.....I ran it on the stock tune for the summer...it was a bit of a dog though....even though the ECU was flashed it still had stock mapping because the Bazzaz took care of them.....

I managed to retrieve one of the dyno tuned maps and sent that along with my ECU to Chris Moore and they set up the mapping....

When I put the ECU back in the bike and rode it, I could instantly feel the difference, it was like it was when the Bazzaz was working.....a lot more snappy and responsive....

 

[Oz22]

...first thing to go was the Bazzaz fuel system.......I plugged it into my laptop and nothing came up.
So off came the Bazzaz..

Well, aftermarket tinkering, what can you expect
I'd never touch the motor, 180HP is enough for me. I just upgrade pipes and forks and you can't get into any trouble there. Glad to hear you got home! I demand basically 100% reliability out of the factory. It's what I grew up with. Today many riders think 98% or 90% is adequate and will buy these Chinese and Euro bikes happy to put up with a breakdown out in the middle of nowhere as long the bike is Orange or otherwise distinctive in it's marketing. They try to make out it's normal for a bike to breakdown. It's not normal, it's a sign of bad or rushed design.

 

[Bumblebee]

Was out and about last evening and visited a neighbor who was a Korean war veteran....he's getting way up there in age and likes talking to a fellow veteran...

He was telling me of when he was in the battle of Kapyong where Chinese and North Korean troops regrouped for a counter attack......he was a tank commander and was saying how the waves of enemy troops surged across the field towards their positions, the lead wave had bandoliers of ammo, the second wave had rifles and when the first wave dropped the second wave picked up the ammo, the third wave picked up ammo and rifles from the ones that dropped in front of them...apparently there weren't enough rifles to go around.........
He said the infantry and tanks were in a hull-down position and he said they fired so much that they burnt out the barrels of their main and co-ax guns.......he also said there came a time when they called in artillery on their own positions as the Chinese got into their lines....he was shooting the enemy off other tanks and vice versa........everyone was beyond scared......

They fired a round called a "flachette" round which was basically a big shotgun shell......and they were devastating....when they ran out of those then went to HE rounds firing direct....he said it was days before he could hear anything other than ringing in his ears which made commanding a tank a challenge to hear anything on the radio.

They eventually broke the attack and made the enemy withdraw......enemy snipers then set up amongst the dead and started targeting them.....so they called in a couple British Crocodile tanks which lit up the field, he said you could hear the screams of any sniper that was caught in the fire stream and the cooking off of any rounds laying out there.......he said sometimes he still hears those screams.....

Sadly fellows like this will soon be gone from us and their experiences will go with them...it's only through talks with us younger veterans who can relay them to other generations.........he has a few kids but none of them ever served and he said they don't seem interested or understanding of what he tells them about his war experience....