Tool Box or Shrine?

I decided to redecorate my room moving all my Harley stuff around my new tool box. I ended up pretty much making a shrine to my Sportster.

At least i have a new spot for my show trophies....

Repurpose a Relic...

I had this MSDS (Material Safety Data Sheet) book and wall rack I saved from the dumpster at work. It was in the old darkroom and when we went to digital all the chemicals and materials were removed.

The damn thing was hanging in my room for about 10 years and I finally found a use for it...

I painted the back plate black and the wire rack orange and cut some custom graphic and I now have a wall mounted HD Service Manual rack. Hung it on the wall next to my new HD tool box.

Blue Skies Are the Best

When the high is going to be mid-70° range and there is not a cloud in the sky Im going to do something. I didn't feel like playing a round so I started up the bike and headed north. Before I knew it I was in Warrenton and was getting hungry so I stopped at Firehouse.

I continued north and ended up in Front Royal to hit Skyline from mile 0. There was a very long line of traffic at the gate but luckily I had my season pass and cut to the front of the line. The cool temps kicked in as I climbed up the mountain and took my first break at the top.

I can't get enough of Skyline on a day like today. The weather was perfection and Spring was in full green mode.

Considering the line at the entrance the actual traffic was not bad at all. The only problem was tourists stopping at a sharp curve to photograph a couple of bears. Which I have no problem with but don't stop in the middle of the road on a blind curve. It tends to be dangerous on a busy day.

Another reason I love Skyline so much....

I rode from mile 0 at Front Royal down to the 33 interchange at mile 64. I ended up riding about 225 miles today. I held up pretty good. I didn't get and kinks until I got back in to the 'Burg.

Tool Box is Done...

The great tool box reorganization is complete. Got a lot of great deals capped off with the Craftsman 4 drawer roller box for $55 after sale prices and discounts. All I had to do was cut some custom graphics and I have a Harley Davidson tool box.

I think I have the wrench situation under control. I still have another complete set of box ends in my other tool box. The chrome short wrench set was sent by mistake instead of the 7mm wrench I ordered but I'll learn to deal with it.

Top compartment, ratchet box ends, orange drawer polished chrome extended box ends and the bottom drawer has the short chrome box ends and regular box ends. (Metric & Standard)

Afternoon Ride....

Clear blue skies was all I needed to hit the road and get some miles in. Rode north to check out Quantico Harley Davidson since they changed ownership and checked out the new bikes. I'm pretty sure that a new Softail Classic is going to be my next ride.

On the way home I stopped by the National Marine Museum. It's one of the best museums around.

Can't Have Too Many...

Spring is here which means only one thing...

Time to get the Sporty ready to ride. A byproduct of that is I start checking out Craftsman Club for any deals on tools and I found a couple of great deals.

I only buy Craftsman and when these came on sale I was all over it...

When I went in to pick the wrenches up I noticed a HD tool box on sale from $99 to $79. I check on my phone and the Club price is only $59 that's less than standard 3 drawer red/black box. Plus I got another $15 off making the final price $44 so that was an impulse buy.

I got it home and quickly made some custom graphics to add...

BYOB Garage

A friend that has a passion for motorcycles is jumping feet first in to a new concept and I'll be coming along too.

BYOB Garage will be the Fredericksburg, Va region's first community motorcycle shop. 

 

 

BYOB Garage is a community motorcycle garage catering to the needs of the DIY rider. BYOB stands for Build-Your-Own-Bike. We will provide the facility, tools and equipment necessary to complete everything from oil changes to total restorations.

BYOB welcomes all types of motorcycles and ATVs. From Harleys to Hondas. From Ducati to Triumph, it doesn't matter what you ride as long as you ride.

Customers will have access to eight workstations by hourly appointment. Walk-ins are welcome on a first-come first-served basis. Each station will have a motorcycle lift and a complete set of tools featuring both standard and metric sizes. Two of those workstations will be customizable for servicing ATVs. Specialized tools such as a tire changing station, torque wrenches and welding equipment will also be available.

BYOB will offer a range of educational opportunities covering subjects from basic maintenance to engine rebuilding. If you prefer a little hands on guidance, experienced mechanics will be available by appointment to assist you.

If you need time on your project or just need to keep your motorcycle somewhere safe and out of the elements, BYOB will offer storage rates on a monthly basis including rates for parts.

Dave Ellis, owner 

Hopefully BYOB will be open in a few weeks. You can follow the progress on Twitter @BYOBGarage

First Ride of 2015

I was supposed to play a round with a friend this morning to teach him disc golf (his first ever round) but I was sick as hell and bailed.

After a few hours and a bottle of Pepto the skies were sunny and it warmed up enough to do some riding around town.

I ended up doing a 50 mile circuit and ended up at the Central Park Buffalo Wild Wings for lunch and watched some NASCAR. Made it home just in time to get a text that I need to work tonight for a coworker that's not feeling well so I just strapped my helmet back on and rode in to work.

Was a great first day ride....

Time to Ride....

The weather has finally started to warm up. This year I'm going to do more riding than I did last year.

Disc golf is still fun but I'm so discouraged playing tournaments. I play so badly now I can't even pretend to compete in advanced grandmasters. Hell, I can't even compete playing Rec division. When the new season comes around I believe that this is the year I can turn it around. But then I play and suck so bad it just about crushes any will to want to play. It wouldn't be so bad finishing last but by the time you pay entry fees, gas for the road trip, lunch and other stuff you could drop $100 which is too much money to spend just to come in last. I can do that at home for free.

I really have to come to terms that I will never be good at disc golf and just need to stop playing tournaments. When something isn't fun you should not do it. I love the camaraderie of seeing by DG buddies but the frustration of bad play just sucks all the fun out of it.

I get started on preparing my bike and right off the bat the electrical needs to be worked on.  hate working on electrical because it takes me a while to find the problem. But I get that fixed. Then hook the battery up to the charger to boost it back up to full power.

Now comes the fun of polishing the bike that has gotten covered by a coating of dust sitting in my room all winter. (Yes I keep my Sporty in my room right next to my bed)

Have you ever hand polished an 80 spoke wire wheel? If not I highly recommend it. It takes about 2-3 hours of knuckle busting cleaning. Especially the stuck on brake dust. But if you put your bike on a lift being able to spin the wheel freely makes it much easier. Next year I'll take the front wheel off and really polish it.

I take the bike outside to start it up and it cranked right up on the first try...

BQO Trophy Discs

If you are looking to start hosting disc golf tournaments and are wondering what trophies I can afford. This is a great way to go.

My friend John is hosting the Betty Queen Open II. The most economical trophies are custom dyed discs.

I designed the art for John last year. This year he gave me 10 discs from his extra disc stash that every long time player collects. Golf discs that you will never use or will ever trade because no on throws these molds anymore.

Why not use those discs as custom trophies?

Last year I hand cut the masks but this year I used my Sihloette plotter and was able to cut all 10 masks in about 30 minutes.

 Another hour or so to weed them and put them on the discs. That cut the process down to what it seemed like nothing at all.

Set up my dye and while one was cooking in the pot I was getting the other one ready. Then using hot water to help remove the masks as others were in the dye. It took about 5 hours to get them all dyed.

Even if all the dyes were the same it didn't take me long at all to get 10 trophies done and they turned out great.

I highly recommend learning how to do this if you are looking for an alternative to tournament trophies.

Trophy Time...

The 2015 disc golf season is coming up. I have about 15 trophy discs to do for club events.

I decided to dye my new 150 Star-lite Boss with the Greendale Community College. I've always been a Human being at heart.

Six Seasons and a Movie....

Let's Get This Shit Started...

Like every self destructive habit disc golf has that going for me. I really love playing it ever since I first started playing way back in good ol' 1986. It's one of the games I hate because I will never be any good at it.

I have never really been a good player. I'm ok and every now and then I have a great round but that's a rare event.

Surprisingly I was on track to play my best disc golf ever and then November 8, 2013 I had a heart attack walking up the hill on #4 Loriella. I finished the round before I ended up in the emergency room 3 days later. That summer I had to drop out of a couple of events because of being exhausted after the morning round. My clogged arteries were the culprit.

I really thought 2014 was going to be better. I was feeling good not getting tired and my stamina was up. But last year was a disappointing one at best. The more I practiced the more I sucked. I wasn't looking to become the next big thing. All I wanted was to just be competitive with my peers.

As usual I was on the brink of giving up all together. 

But it's 2015 and all I want to do is play Disc Golf....

What the Fuck is wrong with me?

Anyway I have the back yard set up and ready for daily practice sessions of 100 putts a day.

Lets get this shit started....

Latest Project.... iPhone app

My latest project is an attempt to create a Spotsy Disc Golf iPhone app. It would be a simple app that would have directions to Loriella and Pratt. Course maps and hole descriptions.

I downloaded X-Code and began to teach myself what I'm doing. It's going slow but slowly I'm pretty confident I can get it done. So far the overwhelming aspect is all the custom art files I need to create. Like app buttons, park maps and hole descriptions.

I did get the hole descriptions  for Loriella done....

The course map took me a while but it turned out pretty good....

Now all I have to do is figure out how to create the app pages so everything works. Stay tuned....

Santa's Little Helper....

I normally don't take commissions to dye custom art on discs. But I was contacted by someone who wanted to get 2 discs dyed for Christmas presents for her brother & father. One wasn't too complicated, a UNC Tarheel logo. The second one was inspired by my Calvin & Hobbes putter I did a while back. This one would be the pair under a starlit sky.

I decided to add some edge design shaving cream elements to surround the logo to kick it up a little.

It turned out Pretty good. The logo could have been centered a little better but overall it was a good 4 stage dye.

The Calvin & Hobbes dye would be much more difficult. The mask took a lot of time cutting all the star shapes that would be in the sky. The unknown was how to get a gradual fade from dark blue on the bottom to the black of the top.

What I ended up doing was holding the disc with the bottom edged in for the blue and rolling the disc along the bottom edge to get the dye darker on the bottom edge but also arch the top so it would just reach over Hobbes.

I reversed the process for black dye.

I finished up with the Calvin & Hobbes colors. It turned out very good considering I had never done any fades before this attempt. I forgot to take a pic of the bottom but what I did was take some Orcal vinyl and cut a solid mask along the bottom of the leading edge of the disc. The bottom is a clean white with a crisp separation line around the disc.

This will probably be the only time I take commissions to dye plastic. It's too nerve racking. The pressure to get it right because any mistakes or fuck ups and the disc is ruined. There is always some pressure on issues like that but when someone drops money for a service it bumps it up more than usual.

#830RatedforLife....

Today was the Falls Colors at Newport News. Last year I was signed up to play Advanced Grandmasters but my heart attack kinda got in the way.

Since then I have decided that from now on I'm only going to play Recreational because my PDGA rating has dropped down to the 830 range. Two Weeks ago at the IFO I finished 8th out of 12. The first round was fine and was in 3rd place but the second round I had my usual bad play late and ended up 8th out of 12.

The Fall Colors is one of my favorite tournaments. But it's in Newport News which is 120 miles away. Is it worth it to drive 240 miles to play Rec? There were 24 in Rec and most players were rated around 825-860 except for a few unrated players. It's the unrated players that usually end up winning. Sometimes it's just a new players first event but they are usually pretty good players that if they were PDGA members would be rated too high to play Rec.

The morning round I started on 18. Despite the cold it wasn't too bad. I started off slow and before you know it I was 8 over and was looking to drop out after the round.  Hole 5 was a custom set up that sucked. It was a severe right hand dogleg in to tight woods. Throw a great drive to set up the up shot and end up with a 5 after missing an easy putt. Hole 6 I was able to hit a 30' turbo putt through the trees and promptly double bogeyed 7. I started cruising after 7 and threw some great drives that parked 11, 13 & 16 for easy birdies. It kind of saved the round from total disaster.

I ended up on the 3rd cars in 12th place. The leader shot 60 so being 6 back I figured I was probably out of the prizes. I was going to drop out and drive up to New Quarter park and play 18 before driving home. But was talked out of it.

The afternoon round started on 12. I was looking forward to this start figuring I could hit a few birdies early. I was still throwing great drives but this round they were just off enough to keep me out of putting range. But I got in to a groove and with 8 hole left was only 1 over. The hole 5 again. Great tee shot good up shot but a tree kicked me away and I ended up missing another putt. Hole 6 was just a disaster. I was getting tired and hit the first tree about 10' off the tee and my "Give a Fuck" meter hit 11. I went from 1 over to 6 over in three holes. I figured I was out of it. Uncharacteristically I was able to pull my shit together and finished with 2 straight birdie shot, finishing at 4 over. 

Over all it wasn't too bad of a tournament for me. Just a few mental errors. I had consistent tee shots and putts. My up shots let me down this time. 

I ended up in 10th place out of 24. The prizes were paying out up to 12th. I ended up winning a Crystal Buzzz.

As I expected the Rec winner was unrated and shot both rounds 900+. Out of the top 5 3 were unrated. 

17th Annual Fall Colors Ams

Disc Girl

I believe that the future of disc golf is women playing the sport. When I first started in the 80's there were never any women players. That has gradually changed. Spotsy has about 10 women that play and Newport News has a women's club.

The more women that play the more universal the appeal of the game and where women are more guys tend to show up.

I started cutting vinyl stickers of the club logo and other stuff and decided to design one for the ladies in the club.

That became Disc Girl....

It has become very popular among the Ladies DG circles. The cool part is I can customize them easily to personalize them.

Dyeing For Some New Discs....

It had been a while but I dyed the trophy discs for the Hawk Hollow Ams event. It's not hard at all but it got me back in to wanting to do some new dyes.

This time I wanted to do some multicolor dyes. I decided it was time for some new putters. I order 2 white star Darts. The first design was a Calvin & Hobbes cartoon I updated to a disc golf theme.

This one wasn't too hard to do. I used the shaving cream dye to paint the different colors. I was debating adding some grass & sky but I decided against that and it came out really clean.

The other putter I went with a more ambitious design. I found a stained glass Flying Spaghetti Monster and adapted it to fit a round design.

I started with heat dying the black lines then orange on the outer edge (I also dyed the underside orange too) and finished the heat dye with the yellow. Then I used shaving cream dye to do each different element. To try and keep it under control I would only peel off the mask of the color I was going to dye. Red for the meatballs & eyes. Then blue, followed by purple and finishing with green.

For the difficulty and challenge of the FSM dye it turned out a lot better than I could hope for. Only a few bleeds and the colors came out great.

Ace Race Fun....

Went up to Hot Shots for my friend Jerry's Discraft Ace Race. Basically you get 2 prototype discs and throw ace runs at shortened holes. Whoever gets the most aces wins and metal hits are used as tie breakers.

The discs this year were fairly over stable for my arm. It took me the first 8 holes just to get the range in. I had several really close misses.We were not scoring any hits and then on hole 16 I threw a huge hyzer-bomb and it looked good. I wasn't going to say anything but the guys in my group were yelling for it to go in. The disc dropped straight down and hit the chains and stuck. The bonus was it was a CTP hole too, unless someone else aces that hole I at least will win something.

That put us all in a good mood and the others in my group started hitting metal.

The second round I was in 2nd place Mike had an Ace and 1 metal hit and I had 1 Ace. By the 8 hole I had scored 3 metal hits to take the lead on my card. But Scott scores 2 Aces and with about 10 holes to go my back tightened up and my gas tank was running on empty. I had several close calls but just couldn't score that 2nd Ace. On the last hole I threw another big hyzer-bomb and the disc hit about 24" from the pin and was able to win 2 of the 4 CTP's

Even though I didn't like this disc that much I did pretty good with it. It's kinda between an Avenger and Avenger SS. I'm not that big of fan of Discraft. Their molds just don't seem to fit my throwing style. I was a little disappointed I didn't win but I was competitive and did good.

On a bright note I did win the #31 Spotsy tag off of Jerry and he ended up with my #44.

2014 Hawk Hollow Open

Last weekend the pros descended on one of the toughest disc golf courses I'll ever play, Hawk Hollow.

October is Hawk Hollow Open time. It's amazing watching good disc golfers attack a course like this. Plus it's a fun place to take really good DG images. The cloudy weather created a huge softbox that gave me some even light.

Some of my favorites of the weekend.

I really like getting shots like this....

Guys photo bombing behind another player is something that is happening more often, it makes the day more fun.

 This was a one frame hit. The player nailed an uphill 40' putt from inside the tree.

I had been waiting for a few years to get this shot. Finally Stephen was practicing putts before the start of the round.

It was another fun weekend. For all the images click the link....

2014 Hawk Hollow Pro Slide Show

Shaving Cream Disc Dyes

I have been coming in to dying discs again. I have been inspired by some great work on DGCR that have been using shaving cream to do some beautiful tye-dye and other effects on their plastic.

I practiced on a few old discs and after I was fairly sure I could pull off the look I would be going for I gave it a try.

The basic concept here is you mix the dye in with standard shaving cream and then create patterns for certain effects. This process take a few hours to work instead of the few minutes with heat dyes.

The Big Lebowski was going to be the design. I started off with the black outline dye.

The next step would be to color the lenses of the sunglasses. I dropped small blue dots in a star pattern with a few yellow dots and then I filled it all in with red.

Then I created the outer pattern to go round the art. I was trying to create a flame pattern.

I then peeled off the outer edge mask. The dyes on the sunglasses was left on the disc. It was thich enough to stick and not move.

I left the disc to sit in the dye for about 4 hours....

... and this is what I ended up with.

The colors are a lot brighter than is the pic. To finish the disc I added a brown to color the hair highlights. It turned out really well for a beginner's attempt.