Moo

A little sketchy sketch during Jeopardy.

Croc

I drew this last night. I need a new scanner. Not that this is an amazing drawing, but all my drawings lose little warm subtleties and get a little washed out. I'd like to get a decent 11X17 flatbed scanner, that would make my scans a lot easier.

Look, Listen, Maneuver

I choose neither

Been sketching out ideas for a website front end redesign. This one didn't make the cut. Still thinking.


By the way we went to the The 'Lob tonight. I crave anything made with butter and made of sea roach at this moment.

My dad had an axle to grind

Shortly before Christmas I made some drawings of a custom axle so I could use my Triumph forks with a 21" Bultaco wheel. The axle on the Bultaco is just slightly smaller than the Triumph axle, so I had to make a stepped down axle with a removeable end (so the bearings can be slid on. My dad, being a machinist, hooked me up. He made me the axle and 2 pieces of aluminum spacer. Not only that he sent a gremlin bell with it. How rad is that?

Sheena's New Dress!

Lori made this last night! And before you freak out about "dog's feeling stupid," Sheena BEGS for us to dress her.
Sheena's New Dress!

Dueling Projects

Oldies

I'm trying to get my actual website, vorhese.com, updated again. It's been THREE AND A HALF YEARS! Jeesh, i can't believe I've been slacking that bad. What's even worse is I have very little to show for it. I've been exploring some old image galleries and finding stuff I haven't seen in quite a while. Here are some oldies (yet goodies?)

When I was working at IBM I was wanting to find a job designing video games. I did a few sketches. Here's one. I never applied, thus never got the job.


Here's another from my IBM days. I remember being bored and drawing this at my desk one day.


I just always liked this doodle. I think it's just a happy drawing.


I went through a robot phase




Don't ask me...












She seemed like a good idea at the time. But I still like the drawing


Ah memories...

At Long Last!

Our wedding on October 24 flew by and I haven't really mentioned it too much on my blog. I was waiting for pictures to come in. They came in just before we left for our honeymoon so I had to hold off. Well, they're finally here. Lori is beautiful! What a great day.

552 Pictures by Erin Michelle
Pictures by our friends and families

I smell weiners

This week, while considering new ideas for "date night," Lori and I stumbled upon the Wiener Nationals Dachshund race being held at Golden Gate Fields Horse Racing track in Berkeley. We'd never been there so we thought we'd go bet on some horses and watch the wiener dog race. We bet $50 total and got back $16. It was actually pretty fun. Here's some pics and a video.

All pictures

Watch it in HD!

Hondaman is the man

A few weeks ago I sent my CB750 swingarm out to get rebuilt and modified by Hondaman. These swingarms were notoriously bad at staying lubricated and were known to fail and ovalize. Well, he worked his magic. He adapted a '74 swing arm bolt to work with it. The '74 and earlier bolts have zirks on both ends to feed grease, the '76 only had one. He also machined a new collar with better oil channels. Guaranteed for life!

Fuck Jay Leno , Fuck NBC

Not much to say today except

I Scream

Grandpa's Tools - A Short Story

I had been wanting to write a short story since getting back from vacation. I had this idea floating around in my head. I decided this morning to just write it and see how it went. I hope you enjoy it.

Grandpa's Tools

New Years Resolution #1

Resolution #1: Finish this painting, do more art.
It's really hard to juggle life and hobbies. Sometimes I go through phases of doing one thing and not another. I've been pretty heavy into working on my Desoto and motorcycles for 3 years and haven't done much in the way of art. A few things here and there, but nothing to speak of. There was a time when all I did was art. Of course, I didn't have a job (or a girlfriend). I don't think I can ever find time like that again, but I would like to put more time aside. Coming home from work work I'm tired, hungry, have a wife to feed, and dogs to take care of. But if I can get past that, I usually just plop myself in front of the tv and vegetate the rest of the night. TV is the drug I have ti get off. This week I found myself just disgusted with most of television and can't deal with it anymore. The same shit over and over. Maybe this is my chance to make my move.

So I cleared off a space behind the couch so I can still be social with the family, and started working on this painting again. It's been about 3 years since I last touched it. But I have the drive again. I quickly learn all my inabilities and weaknesses, and pushing through them is the hardest thing. It's hard to not just say, "DAMN I SUCK!" If I can get past that, I just do the best I can. The next one will be better right? Just keep chugging away. Progress comes with practice.

RIP Kenny Eggers

I just learned that Kenny Eggers, an amazing flat track racer from the 1950's, died on December 29th. The man was rad.

Listen to these
http://www.theriderfiles.com/?p=2327

"My bike was geared for Larry Headrick, who was 30 pounds lighter, and was way too tall and Sifton refused to change it," Eggers remembers of the Springfield race. "In the final I was so mad at Sifton for not lowering the gear, that I was thinking about laying the bike down on purpose. The gearing was so tall that I got a bad start and was way back in the crowd. I worked my way through and finally caught up with Bill Tuman, who was running second. I got by Tuman and his front wheel was rubbing on my leathers in the corners. This was about 14 laps into the 25-lap final.

"I just never let off the gas and three laps later I caught up to Hill and was just getting ready to pass on the inside when the bolt holding on my chain guard broke. The chain guard fell off and I ran over it. That threw me sideways and I bounced off of Hill than ended way up near the fence. The clutch was dragging on the chain and the motor wouldn't pull top speed anymore, so I finished second."
http://www.motorcyclemuseum.org/halloffame/hofbiopage.asp?id=96

It's the little ones that are bad

After a 22 hour trip from Buenos Aires we spent the last week of vacation in Arizona at Lori's parents' and just vegetated. Many tamales were consumed. Much brain decaying television was watched. And many naps happened. One morning I put on my shoes to go outside with the dogs. I felt something in my shoe so I took it off. I looked inside and then screamed like a little girl. Welcome to the desert.

The Honeymooners

It has been a month since my last post. Where the hell have I been? Buenos-fucking-Aires! Lori and I finally got our honeymoon taken care of. The flight there is murder, especially in coach, but we did make it. We rented an apartment for a week and a half and just became semi-incognito tourists. We mostly walked, a few taxis, and used the incredibly cheap subway system. The Argentine peso is valued at $3.90 to $1 U.S. A typical steak dinner is about $35 pesos, so about $7 U.S. Riding the subway was a flat rate of $1.10 Peso, or about $.30 U.S. An hour train ride to Le Tigre cost $1.50 Peso.

Argentina is well known for their parillas, which are basically a carnivore's dream. They're all over. I ate so much steak and sausage my body forgot what a vegetable was. They also have a lot of pizza places, but their pizza is nothing like ours (Ours wins hands down). But you can get empinadas everywhere. They're delicious hot-pocket like things filled with meat, olive, and egg. I pretty much picked out anything but the meat. The night before we left we went to one of the most expensive restaurants and ordered a huge decadent meal with appetizers, filet mignon, wine, desert. The bill came out to about $110 U.S. Our typical decent meal cost us $80 to $110 Pesos. So, in essence, once you actually GET to Argentina, you can eat like a king.

Anyway, I can go on and on and on about our adventures. I did take pictures. you can see them all here.
http://vorhese.com/gallery/album376

We began our time in Buenos Aries getting dropped off by our friend's mother at our teeny apartment in the Recoleta area. I have to say, I am now a bidet convert. Lori thought it was weird.


Just so you know, if anything says "Sweetbread" it's beef intestines.


There wasn't too much in the way of street food, sadly, but every once in a while you could find a place selling choripan, which is basically a sausage sandwich. Which I loved. $4 to $6 pesos.


We quickly learned that at our regular dinner time of 6 P.M. no restaurants were open. Nothing got going until about 9 P.M. I guess most people have a 4 P.M. snack of some sort. So on this trip I had my first coffee, believe it or not, and I guess I got a taste for it.


So what did we do besides eat? We took 3 showers a day because humidity was 95%. We took afternoon naps. And we did a lot of sight seeing. Buenos Aires is full of monuments and amazing architecture. We spent most of our time in the Recoleta, Polermo, and San Telmo areas wandering around. The first big stop was the Recoleta cemetery which is just amazing. Evita (Duartes) Peron is buried there.






The eerie thing about the mausoleums is often they are just stuffed with caskets and you can see right in. Creepy stuff really.


We also hit the Recoleta and San Telmo fairs twice while were there picking up cheap bootie.


Our swag


One odd thing after hitting the San Telmo fair near the Plaza de Mayo was we walked into a Chevy commercial being filmed. Everyone was American. They had an artificial rain machine and did a lot of sitting around. They said no pictures but I snapped a few.


I'm skipping over a lot due to space, but you can see all the pictures in the above link. We hit the Japanese Tea garden, walked around outside the dilapidated zoo, went shopping in the hipster Polermo district. The other big thing we did was go to the delta and Le Tigre for a day and took a catamaran ride around the delta.






Did we do everything we wanted? No. There just wasn't enough time, money or energy. We missed taking a boat to Uraguay. And we didn't make it to the Iguazu Falls. But we still had a blast. But it sure is nice to be back home.