It's a Great Day ......

to whup somebody's ass. Not because it's a bad day but rather the opposite is true. Probably the old boxer coming out in me. I was feeling pretty froggy last evening when I wrote this.

First thing, I took the wife to the oncologist yesterday and everything is still good - CT scan and the blood work were all aces. Hallelujah!

And now it's pickin' time. Our field got picked about a week ago but when I went for a bike ride last evening I went past three fields that were being picked and I had to pull over for another big combine that was moving down the road. Actually, it was more like he pulled over for me, thank you very much. Those big combines take up most all of the road even without a grain head on them. The farmers are looking at three or four good days in a row for harvesting. There probably won't be much left in the fields around here after that, with the knucklehead behind me being the notable exception. I'm looking for him to pick the corn someplace close to Thanksgiving.

Surly brought me a fender to throw on the sidecar to either use or to mock something up, or to get out of his garage - the last one probably closest to the truth. However, the radius looks about right and the width is surprisingly close to what I need, so it might be helpful from a design standpoint as long as I don't have to move it around much. The damn thing ways a ton. 

I got the frame for the windscreen made up. Since I had made a pattern when I made the fairing for the road racer, I used that for my layout for the frame - drew a line around it and bent the flat stock to fit inside the line. I welded the frame to the table and then heated up a strip about one inch down from the top edge and used an adjustable wrench to bend the edge inward to match up with the taper on the windscreen. It took me a couple of times around the perimeter and a little hammer work but when I checked it after it cooled it was just about dead on the money. Sometimes you get lucky. I'll get it tacked on to the sidecar frame later today. 

I did the heating and bending at the college when there was a high school class in there. With the exception of one kid, none of them seemed to be interested in what I was doing. The windscreen is clearly a motorcycle part. I figured that would have aroused a little bit of interest. Apparently not. Seems like more and more of them are just too wrapped up in the smart phones to take an interest in what goes on around them in the real world, and these are guys that are getting college credits while attending. The school is currently going through an upgrade to insure that the cell phone coverage is state of the art. If I was in charge I think I'd be going the other way - make it a dead zone except in a designated area like the commons or the cafeteria. 

I've got a lot lined up the next few days. I need to make a couple of decisions on the sidecar project before I continue on that but no shortage of things to do while I'm thinking about it. The temps are getting down in to the thirties, so time for a bit of winterizing and outside work before the snow flies.