Hitting My Stride

I spent much of this weekend in the garage. Did I accomplish anything? You betcha!

I started my day yesterday by doing the usual mundane stuff like dishes and the like. When I finally came to grips with the fact that I was going to have to get dressed to ever get anything else done, I sighed heavily and put some clothes on.

I decided to start my day doing something a little different, but yet still garage related. I wanted to spend a little time seeing if I could get a stand made up for my traffic light. What? Traffic light!? Yes, I have a full-size, genuine, fully operational traffic light. Why do I have it? I don't know... I thought if was cool when I saw it at the swap meet a few years ago so I bought it. I spent a little time updating the cracked and deteriorated wiring after I brought it home, then bought a solid state control unit online to make it blink exactly like a working traffic light. It never did get mounted on any kind of stand though, and it's been following me around for about 5 years or so now. I have a heavy duty steel 3-legged stand out in the garage that I was going to put on it but couldn't come up with a way to mount it to the light without ruining it. I went over to Lowe's yesterday and bought some steel pipe to get me started.

I stopped by Teresa's house on the way home to browse through my steel supply that's still in her garage, carefully selecting a few choice pieces I needed for the Harley. We talked for a bit and I told her today would be a good day to get her car's oil changed if she were to pop on by, because I was planning on being in the garage and dirty anyway.

After spending a short time with the traffic light and not getting anywhere, I turned my attention to the Harley. I used a piece of steel I brought home and fabricated a mount for a new electrical thing I had to mount under the gas tanks, and got that welded in and painted. I then ended up devoting the rest of the afternoon to the resurrection of my rear fender. I spent the rest of the time I was out there just doing the tedious job of paint removal. By the time I was done I was a mess. I called Teresa to see if she was coming over before I got cleaned up. She said she had forgotten, so I went inside to eat some dinner and watch a movie.

About halfway through the movie, Denis came over to drop off some tools he had borrowed, so I hurriedly threw on my lounge pants (jammie bottoms) that I keep nearby. I proudly escorted him to the garage to show him the progress I had made since he had been here last. He was pretty impressed. We discussed a few related items and he gave me a few more pointers and ideas for certain repairs. He said if I finished it today I could bring it over and he could get started with the bondo process.

This morning when I got up, I spent a couple hours processing the pictures I took on my digital camera of the Harley, and put together a web page covering the first part of the Harley project. It's on my main Harley page, but if you want to just skip to it for now you can just click here.

After I went out there today I spent time working on the traffic light again (with a fresh idea) and I pretty much finished it. Now I just need to do a couple little things and it's finally finished. About midway though the afternoon Teresa finally showed up and I changed her oil. Although it's obvious she will never learn to do it, she does at least make the effort to try to understand it. She had coveralls on and was under her car while I was doing it. Gotta give her points for that.

The rest of the day was spent taking care of things Denis and I had discussed. I was tired and pretty much outta time to worry about rushing over to his house. I feel like the fender is 99% finished as far as what I can do. I say 99% because I'll go out one more time and give it a once 0ver with a fresh attitude before I call it complete and take it over to his house.

I can finally see a light at the end of the tunnel...