A Little "Off Topic"....

Since today turned into a dreary, wet, rainy day, there wasn't much going on.

We lost electricity for a couple of hours this morning due to the neighbors had hired a guy to use his backhoe to clean out the ditch along their driveway. He accidentally dug up the buried cable while he was moving brush.

While the power was out, Deb and I went out to pick more corn. We're getting down to the "nitty-gritty", now - just a few more rows and it will all be done!

After lunch, I took a load of wood up to the neighbor's house so he could split it. He bought a real nice splitter. It's called a "Super Split". It uses a ram to split the wood, then retracts in about 2 seconds. Looking at it, it doesn't look like it would last long but, the he has put over 100 cord of wood through it this summer and fall and it is still going strong.

It didn't take us long to split the bed of my F-150 full of nice pieces 16" long and 2 inches (or so) around. They will be perfect for Deb's old fashioned cook stove this winter.

This afternoon, I was reading on one of the online forums I visit. One of the other posters put on a story of a gentleman he knew from the 50's and 60's, that raced BSA motorcycles.

Me, being a great fan of BSA, thought it was quite interesting. While I've never raced, I have done a couple "foolish" things back "in the day".

I posted this as a reply to his story:


I was no racer but, I remember a nice cool day in 1985, on a long flat curve near Corona, CA. I was on my 1967 BSA Lightning 650. It had stickers on the battery cover that said "Fastest in Class" and "World Speed Record Holder". At the time the bike was made, that World Record for class was 150 mph. Since the road was (I thought) empty, I decided to lay down on the tank and let 'er rip. I was going flat out as fast as I could when I saw a CHiP (California Highway Patrol) car coming at me. I can STILL see the officer's face as he zipped by me. In my mirror, I saw him hit the brakes and start to turn around. You could see forever on the road, so I decided that I'd better just pull over.

I let out of the throttle and coasted down to a stop.

It wasn't long before he pulled in behind me.
He got out of the car, came strutting up and - in his best TV cop move - yanked his sun glasses off of his face.

"BOY, do you KNOW how fast you were going?"

"Not really, Sir, the speedometer on this thing doesn't work (I lied....)."

"I clocked you at over 135 mph!"

I looked at him and in a relaxed voice, I told him, "I'm sorry, Sir, but this bike was made in 1967, it has a hard time making it to THIRTY-five, let alone a HUNDRED and Thirty-five."

He looked at the bike, looked at me, shuffled a bit, grunted some, then said "You're right, my machine must be (insert expletive) up".

"Have a nice day."

With that, he got in his car, turned around, and headed off down the road.

I waited until he was out of sight, then kicked her to life, almost in shock that he bought my story.

I put the old girl into gear and headed on down the highway, albeit - at a MUCH saner speed......


I have never since gone that fast on a motorcycle - nor have I WANTED to.


I'm glad I got it over with......