April 28 Dixie Roundup Day

Kyle and Tyler from Lowbrow are the nicest guys you will ever meet.

This is not exactly a comprehensive account, but this is, in short, the day through my narrow window.  Wake up at 5:30 and go to the University of Alabama at Birmingham to take a standardized test with the intention of expanding my teaching certification....don't know if it worked.  Go home.  Get the Honda, ride it to the dojo where Justin Moon and I add a break cable to the 69er trumpet whose rear drum is operated by a right hand lever because thats the way it was when it was raced and it broke on me on the last trip... sketch.  Mean while, he pesters me with questions about changing a cable and I fix the carbs which have rattled a main jet loose, also on the last trip out of town!  All of this so he can ride the Triumph until it breaks around 6:30 and he has to coast it back down a mountain to where our friend Ryan will put it in his minivan.  Oh, but back to when we were working at the Dojo.

The triumph is running and we are preparing to leave when a rumble containing the shaky rattle of engaged open clutches coasts to a stop at the corner of 29th and 4th Ave.  I wave, thinking this group of vagabonds may be looking for a local garage and all ten or so of them turn the wrong way down a one way street and head towards me and the gate of the Dojo.  Only skilled riding spared the representatives of Lowbrow and Biltwell Inc., Walt and friends on they way to the gate.  They have ridden from all corners of the states to Birmingham for the local event, the Dixie Roundup.   We combined groups for the ride to the country.  Their bikes were amazing, but I didn't take a great deal of riding photos because I didn't want to scare my new riding companions with my kook riding antics.

Good times where had though I was negligent in taking photos at the event.  I will post a link as soon as i find someone who did.  Here it is: JT

Nick's bike

Killer ride.

Uncle トリス

Daily rider

Doug's Photos

Been trying to get my long time friend Doug Baulos to come by the Dojo for some time now.  He finally did!  Anyhow he took some pictures and sent them to me and to break up the monotony of my own pics and show what real artists do with there phones ....

Daytime pt 2

Birmingham Jam

Spencer at the Night Jam

Spencer is the man in the shadows behind a lot of brilliant metalwork that rolls out of Birmingham.  His personal bikes have always inspired me.  

the Greenest

Probably because of my transience in past years, and no winter to speak of, Alabama is an exaggerated green this year.  The storm that just went over my house and the hail that rained on the Dojo also looked dark and strange.  Today a ten story cumulus cloud promised rivers in the city streets and blew trees onto their sides.  Last year Japan looked exaggerated as well.  It seemed I didn't have anything to compare it to.   Everything dripped with thickness.  New paint on thousand year old temples.

In Alabama we have only the more recent history of the last three hundred years, at least of those of us from European backgrounds.  I can pretend though cause I am about and eighth native.  My grandmother still bares some strong physical traits.  My father and I got the high jaw and neither one of us can grow a beard.  That's our claim to the ancient.

Still we wander, with our friends, two lanes to a four way stop town where the board walks are still right up to the lanes of the blacktop (they never moved the buildings to make for parking for four wheeled obstructions).  You go into the only shop in town, which happens to be located on the corner at that same four way stop.  You look at guns, various forms of canned meat, instructions for a bomb shelter, and umbrellas that have been in the same spittoon with the same price on them for 25 years.  You better have cash for that confederate bandana too because the bearded owner on his high stool behind the counter doesn't take new world order.  Lets get back on the road this weekend.

Ai...man

North Country Weekend

I neglected to get any pictures of the brilliant Alabama Swap and Drag that Rick and Michael put on.  Five times the people on their second try.  I stumbled late out of my hammock into a world of vintage parts glory whose dreamy aura was amplified by the haze I was seeing through.  Even with my timely neglect I happened upon parts from choppers' past which must proceed into choppers' future by way of fair trade (thanks for carrying it all home Bowles!) I also neglected to take a picture of the giant swollen lip that a spider must have given me in my hammock the next night at our cliff side camp.  I did however get the camera out for the fishing and some of the ride home.