This Day Last Year....

I was getting ready to go see my all time favorite band play at Zydeco. Southern Culture On The Skids is a great band that have been playing for a couple of decades and they are even better now than they ever were. If you don't have fun at a SCOTS show then you are a loser. Rick Miller is one of the most underrated guitarists playing today, Mary Huff lays down some killer and super solid bass lines and Dave Hartman plays drums just as good and as complicated as most drummers except he plays them standing up! Unfortunately for me they are playing in N.C this year but I'll still blast them a couple of times today and then go home and groove to a few of their videos on youtube. Maybe I'll even download their new CD Zombiefied, or at least go ahead and order the disc. Back to the bikes tomorrow, but TODAY WE DANCE!

The very first video ever released by SCOTS. It's a fun song and appropriate for Samhain/Halloween.

My favorite Bass Player, in her Halloween finest. Yeah I've got a crush on her. It's OK, my Wife knows and just shakes her head thinking how silly I am

Rick playing the Alabama guitar the Music in Alabama group took around to various shows all year letting bands play it while their picture was taken for the group to use to promote music in Alabama. By the way Rick said he was dressed as Fee Waybil in case you couldn't tell.

Dave giving the drums hell in his Waffle House uniform. I guess he was late getting off from his day job and had to rush to the show.

I was dressed as an extra in a 60's Biker flick. Yeah, it was cheesy but I was in a rush to put something together. Hey, the damn blonde wig got me noticed by you know who ;-)

During Camel Walk these girls were tossing Little Debbie oatmeal pies into the crowd.

The title song from the new album . It's actually an album made for Australia years ago that is being released here with a bunch of new songs added. This video was the contest winner to make a new video for the song.

Back the the bikes tomorrow. I made a new sissy bar for the softail that I can show you pics of.

Another Visit To Conte Kustoms!

After Spenser left GarCo Saturday I figured it was to early to head home so I headed on over to Conte Kustoms. to see Raf. As usual they were busy making cool stuff happen. They had Raf's brothers Marauder torn down and getting painted. They are also finishing up a 750 Shadow ACE that is looking pretty bad ass. The main bike of the day though is this Sporty that was recently finished. This bike is so kool that it was recently featured on the Lowbrow blog. Kinda makes me proud to know these guys. Check out the pics and if you're ever in town check out the shop. I know Raf will be at Bama Swap & Drag Nov. 12th & 13th at Sand Mtn Dragway so try to catch him there if you can.

A customer came by to look at the Sporty so Raf took it for a blast up and down the road to show what she has. This bike IS for sale, give em a call or go by and check it out 205-757-7238

Going back the other way.

The 750 ACE being finished up. I personally put over 67,000 miles on mine. This one has less than 3k so it has a long life ahead of it.

The Sporty in all its glory

Look at these clean lines. Classic beauty with modern dependability.

Even the headlight was changed.

Call em to say hello or go on by to hang out. You're sure to have a good time.

It Was a Small Ride To Lunch This Weekend

I finally got back to the shop this weekend, but Larry and Spenser were leaving early for various reasons. That left us with a smaller group for lunch. Someone had the great idea of going to Nino's and of course this made me very happy ;-) Ian and I rode our bikes, but Bill decided to ride in the truck with Ross ( I think they had important stuff to go over, or partake of, or whatever they were doing). Lunch was great, then we rode back to the shop to watch Spenser lock up and we all left. I ended up riding over to Conte Kustoms, but that's a post for later this week.

Parked outside Nino's, I LOVE their "meat lover's" calzone. Damn! It's good.

Ready to leave Ian was giving Bill and Ross a ration of crap for driving as he should have. Actually I think they were deciding where to meet to ride up to Talladega the next day.

Ian waiting for traffic to clear.

Bill leaving the shop. To get to Conte Kustoms you turn right at that stop sign and go back into the industrial park.

Back in that area is also an old quarry that used to be a regular swimming hole for people. Now it's a scuba school and pretty much blocked off. Normally you can't even see the water from the road, but since it is getting colder and the underbrush is dying off a gap appeared along one edge and I pulled over to take a few pics.

These pictures make it look so nice, but I was standing in a dumpy, trashy area of an industrial park, quite a juxtaposition I must say.



Stay tuned there's more fun to come!

Need Some Help Picking My Best Pic!

Some of y'all have been here since the beginning and I appreciate that. Now I need your help,  I want to enter a pic in a contest and can't decide which of my pics is the best. If any of y'all have a favorite pic that I've taken let me know which one it is. That will help me decide which one is number one. To me their like my kids, I like em all ;-)

Some examples of the style's of pics I've posted.

Riding the Good Road.....

Looking Sweet Standing Still

Trying to Give Life To the New Beast

Look around and find your favorite and let me know which one it is.....

TRIED To Work On The Flyrite Sporty Saturday, Need Seat Help!!

I was SUPER excited Saturday. It's the first day I could go by Garco and do some stuff to the Sporty since the Barber's Vintage Fest. Mt Brother Roadside had sent me a special seat from his stash as a birthday present and I was ready to try it out. Get to the shop, go into the fab room where the Sporty is hiding these days and DAMMIT! It won't work! Apparently it's for a big twin frame with more of a V where the frame and fender meet. If you look at the pics you can see what I mean. With the seat flat on the fender the front of the seat sticks about 6 inches up in the air. I'm pretty bummed because A. the seat came from Marty, B. the seat looks kick ass and is BRAND NEW, it still has the stickers and a wrench has never touched the bolts in it. and finally C. I can't afford a new seat. SO, after conferring with ChopMaster Marty it was decided that I should use the seat as trading material for another one. SO Who has a cool seat that would like to trade for a new Corbin-Gentry chopper seat. I'm open to anything that will look cool and ride decently with this bike. Let me know what you've got.

With the back down the front goes up...

With the front down it looks like I just launched her ass into the air.

Since this bummed me about the Sporty and because Larry and Spenser were busy plus planning to leave early I decided to start on the sissy bar I'm making for my softail. I'm not reinventing the wheel on this one, just too cheap to buy a pre-made one PLUS I like to bend metal and make stuff. This will be a smaller version of the one on the Sporty plus it will mount in the stock sissybar sideplates when I'm done. At least I made progress on SOMETHING!

Mostly bent up, still have to get it all flat now.

Not perfect, but not bad for a 2nd attempt at bending round bar.

You can kind of see how "not-flat" it is. Hopefully I can finish it this Saturday and get the front tire on theSporty AND the Softail. Gonna be a busy day next weekend.

Stick around, got a few interesting posts lined up for this week.

Last Post About New Orleans......Maybe!

Just a few more pics then it's the weekend and I can get back to bike pics.

This car passed as we were leaving the Music Festival. Nice car, but I'm not a fan of this style of flames. Good work though by who ever did it.

This was in the window of the tourist welcome center. I guess they rent them or something. It looked sad being locked up inside like that though. I wanted to break it out let let it go free but the Wife wouldn't let me.

Found this girl "lounging" out on the roof of our hotel Sunday morning. She was awake, but didn't seem very happy. I'm guessing she had a few hurricane's the night before.

The number of old guys with Hawaiian shirts at this party was pretty impressive.

You would not believe all the people wearing Saints support stuff. An I don't mean simple t-shirts and stuff. It was hot out there and these people are wearing black pants with black Saints jerseys and hats. They were not casual fans they all had uniforms on for their team. This woman's cheerleader outfit took top honors though.

Is this Clay from Sons of Anarchy?

She couldn't decide if she's a Saints fan or if it was time for Mardi Gras.

Local Bike Club of some sort arrived just before we left.

On the way north to Natchez there was a wreck on I-55. Since the interstate is all on a bridge any time cars wreck it completely stops traffic until they get it cleared up. This one had us held up for about 45 minutes to an hour. I did get out of the car and look around a bit while we waited. It feels weird to realize you are walking an an Interstate where just a short bit ago all the traffic was moving at 80 mph.

It was a long way to the front of the line. It was good to see the people actually clear the center for the ambulance and wreckers though.

I saw this baby alligator off the other side of the road from where we stopped.

This critter crawled out of the car that tried to ride the white line and sneak in the front of the line after the wreck traffic started moving. Of course I didn't let them in. Screw em they can get back in line where they were. We stopped for gas and I guess they did too.  The Wife says this beauty was in the bathroom having a LOUD conversation on her phone while she sat on the toilet. Is she not the classiest unicorn you've ever seen?

And to finish it up here's a pic of a classic 70's ride.

More From New Orleans

Some more pics from my weekend adventures in New Orleans. I have a few pieces for the Sportster so this weekend I'll be able to get back to the regularly scheduled chopper fun. In the meantime indulge me and enjoy the pics.

I told you these were bad ass little vehicles. Just look at the old school hardcore "I'll Kill You" look this player was giving me.

Marie Laveau's grave in the Easy Rider cemetery. She was apparently a major Voodoo Queen and if you make 3 x's on her tomb and leave an offering she'll grant your wish or some other sort of nonsense. I didn't pay that much attention to the story, but it looks like a lot of other folks did.

A plaque with some info about her.

Santa stopped by to feed his parrot.

This guy set up a little booth to sell some stuff, but he forgot to sober up before he started working.

And just to keep it bike related I did see this guy a couple of times this weekend.

Spent The weekend In New Orleans.

My Wife and I took off for a 4 day weekend and went to New Orleans for the "Crescent City Blues and BBQ Festival". We had a great time and saw some great musicians. We spent a lot of time just wandering in the French Quarter taking pictures (like that is a surprise, me taking pictures ). I won't string this out too far, but it will take a day or two to share some of the fun we had. I'll also be posting stuff on my other blog from the trip, but it will be mostly pics from the "photographer" side of my brain. I'll post the fun stuff and the critter related stuff here.

This is the only "regular" pic I'll post here I guess. This is the statue of Andrew Jackson in Jackson Square with the Catholic Church in the background. If you've been to New Orleans you know where this is.

We made a couple of visits over the weekend to the Crescent City Brewhouse so I could get some more of their Octoberfest special brew. It was a great brown ale that I would have brought home a keg of if I could have.

The ONLY cool bike I saw all weekend. It was in a shop on Decatur Street and as usual I didn't catch the name of it. It's not hard to find though, just walk down Decatur until you see a shop with some actual cool stuff inside instead of the cheesy plastic Mardi Gras crap like in the other shops. I talked to John the guy who owns the bike and he says that he DOES ride it, but since it's not his only bike it makes a great display in the store while it waits for its turn to roll. He didn't know who the builder was since he got it from ebay, but was pretty sure it was built in Atlanta. (If you read this John and want to correct me or add any details please feel free to jump in through the comments.

I finally got to visit the St. Louis #1 Cemetery where the acid trip scene of the movie Easy Rider was filmed. It was pretty neat to be in a spot where a movie that I've seen so many times was filmed. This mausoleum is showing thew wear of 40 years of movie fans coming by and climbing on it. The statues hand is missing and the surface wear on the statue is obvious. Some people can't seem to show a little respect for stuff that's not theirs I guess.  The movie may be more of a hippie movie than a biker flick, but the riding scenes have never been equaled in any other film.I wish someone would make a modern movie with the great kind of riding shots that Easy Rider has.

Close up of the statue where Peter Fonda was sitting in the scene when he was crying and talking to his "Mother". You can see the wear on her if you click the pic to see the large version. I guess 40 years of having people put their oily skin up against her face takes its toll.

The scene from the film in case you don't remember it.

Neat old Chevy Impala with Sailor Jerry graphics wrapped all over it. It was a really nice car, but even though Sailor Jerry is the only rum I'll drink I still would rather have seen a nice flake job on the car. It does its job and catches you attention though.

Stay tuned more to come.