Where to begin…it's been a long time since I've been on here, so I've got lots to tell to bring you up to speed.

The Bike Rebuild

In November of 2010, Kemper wants a new bike…after much talking and looking, talking and showing me bikes to me online, and talking about new motorcycle, kinds of motorcycles, colors, why this one is better than that one, talking, reading to me about them, showing me, looking at and TALKING about, every bike in the greater Houston Metro. He decides to tear his down and rebuild it…ME: "Will you do that in Garage?" HIM: "No I'll do it at the shop during the slow months, I'll have space, time and tools to get it done by spring, it’ll be fun." ME: "Whatever you want to do, It does sound fun"

Who knew how long it would take him and how many sets of bags, fairings, windshields, gauges, etc. he'd wanna show me and talk to me about that he has found, on line, in magazine, beside the road…driving down the road, on TV…OMG…….ME: Just buy something." And so he did…deliveries everyday for several days, big boxes…little boxes…brown boxes, white boxes…explaining to me every piece he bought and why… By now the warehouse has filled up with units for Home Depot, calls and orders were flying. Bike rebuild was on hold…yet the bike is like a million colors and in no way ready to ride….BUT, he has to get it out of the shop, so, he recruits me to help him hurry to finish it enough to get it to our garage at home. I'm just saying…but I am not a fan of holding the big monster while he puts it on the lift and raises it off the ground. After 2 days, and several meals eaten in his warehouse he has it back together enough to drive it home. We load my car with the many, many boxes of parts and pieces of several bikes and lots and lots of tools. He rides the bike of many colors and iffy gauges to the house and put it in the garage, as I follow, holding my breather the thing stays together long enough to get it home.

Once in the now full garage and a bit of tweaking here and there it time to talk about paint…and TALK we did…about color, about design, about theme….OH DEAR LORD STOP THE BLEEDING…I did however, through all of this find out that I am quite the motorcycle paint/design artist provided a box of map colors and a jumbo bottle of wine. The laughing continues…Thank God Kemper found Ken Hill of Magnolia to take over the efforts of designing the look and painting the bike. Ken came out one afternoon in February, looked at the bike, we gave him some ideas of what we wanted…Kemper wouldn't let him see my handy work to give the guy some real idea what we were talking about and the quality we expect. The deal was done, we weren't real sure he knew what we wanted but he's the artist; he's really quiet not a lot of conversation…hope he doesn't drink wine. So we tear the bike down …AGAIN…and get everything ready to deliver to Ken on February 27.

The New House
Oh…I haven't mentioned that during all of this we decide to buy a house…DR Horton came through the neighborhood bought all the empty lots and started building…so on April 19th we moved about 8 doors down from the property we were leasing. As soon as we closed, we went and bought our extra furniture and a fridge, by 2 pm we've picked up the key to our new home. We first go to the old house load both cars with everything we can and take it to the NEW house, woohoo. Even though we had movers coming the next day we were excited and wanted to continue to move as much as we could. By about 11pm we were getting pretty tired but couldn't leave it alone…so we made one more trip back to the old house, on this trip we brought down, our mattresses, all the bedding, the dog, her kennel, fresh clothes, bath towels, washcloths, bath soap, toiletries and the coffee maker. Most of you know that Kemper and I are marathon movers…we can't deal with clutter and everything has its place.


The ACTUAL move
Please keep in mind we have the skeletal remains of the bike in the old garage…Kemper wouldn't let the movers handle it. As my mother and I are unpacking and putting things away in the new house the movers and Kemper are loading up at the old house, after a few hours I hadn't even seen Kemper which is unusual…in just a bit he comes through the door, sweaty, out of breath and looking as if he may die. ME: "What have you been doing?" HIM: "Can you come help me push the bike up the driveway? ME: "OMG!!!! I told not to push that thing down here by yourself!" Well he did…and now the ugly beast and the hundreds of boxes of motorcycle CRAP are strewn about the NEW three car garage.

Nearly May
Still no completed paint parts are ready…let's see…it's nearly May, best riding weather of the year. We are so ready to ride at one point Kemper runs into the house and said he figured out a solution...huh? ME: What, How? HIM: Come see!! I walk into the garage to find that he has strapped a lawn chair and a gas can on the bike...ME: Okay, where do I sit?  HIM: I'll work on it.

My patience have run out...ME: Call Him! HIM: I'll send him a text… ME: did he answer you? HIM: Yeah he said he have the faring by Friday. ME: Cool, I'm excited.

FRIDAY…ME: hey did you talk to your boy? HIM: no, I'll send him a text. ME: did he answer you back? HIM: Said it's gonna be Tuesday, he needs more clear coat. ME: Oh.  

TUESDAY…ME: Call him. HIM: I'll send him a text…Anyway you get it…several Fridays and Tuesdays more went on with the same conversations…until one Thursday Ken Hill arrives in our driveway with the faring…still tacky to the touch but crazy cool! After about 3 more weeks the parts started coming in piece by piece the bike was coming together. Our maiden voyage was May 27th, 90 days to the day on the paint.

Okay, so there ya go, you're up to date so far…