The Hits Just Keep on Coming

Got deep into the saddlebags yesterday. A refinish of them was required due to cracking in the paint on the curb side bag lid...

I figured just sand off the cracked paint...

clean off the dust... primer if I went through into the gel coat...

... and then I'd just rattle can on a fresh new coat of black... and a new clear coat...

Good Plan...

Yeah... there I go planning again...

I hadn't but started sanding to remove the cracked paint...

... when I discovered that the cracks didn't originate in a failed paint coat...

... but in the underlying fiberglass...


I worked for a little while... searching out all the spots where the paint was cracked... I'd noticed the first little crack maybe a year ago.

Over time they multiplied... and sure enough...

Underlying each spot of cracked paint... the gel coat was spidered with a thin crack.

There was also no shortage of bad spots... at least it's only... as far as I can tell, the one single saddlebag lid.

So... work on the saddlebags is temporarily suspended... while I wait on some word from the manufacturer of the bags.

I'm not expecting any good news to be honest. My recent experience with companies and warranties has not been confidence building... but we'll see. I did at least get an automatic email response from the outfit.

It advised me they were "On Holiday" until the 22nd... so... I'll go do something else for a bit... maybe study up on Motorcycle Saddlebag Fiberglass repair.

At least my son-in-law who did the paint job can wipe his forehead and breathe easy... it wasn't His screwup. ;)

Grab Your Handles and Ride
Brian

I've Ridden Many Saddles...

The first was a fifteen year old kid cowboyin' back on the Arizona Desert... on a bay horse named Joker...

 Chasin' genuine wild cows in the Santa Rita Mountains south of Tucson...

...I grew up with memories of old hands and places that are gone now...

... buried under asphalt, concrete and rooftops.

I started ridin' bikes then too... rippin' through that same desert.

Horseback or standing on the pegs... that kid was free and wild as the wind.

There's many a day I miss the guts that kid had.

He ran off to do his duty... and got caught in the blender of life in a society that eats its young.

Like many he spun in circles trying to find his way... trying to be that person he was told he was "expected" to be... and most times failing.

... and always... looking on that person he was "Expected" to be... with disgust. All he could see in that image was a trained and beaten down monkey.

Along came a different sort of saddle to straddle... on that different sort of horse...

Cutting the wind on that he once again began to feel some of that freedom he'd known.

He could feel some of that wild wind again in his thinning (ok gone) hair...

But always... in his heart and his mind lived the memory of those horses on those sunny slopes of the west in his soul.

Now the mysteries of life have come full circle...

...I Never Sold My Saddle...

I rode that saddle through thundering hail storms and twenty below blizzards. I roasted in it and got mud bogged on it. That saddle has memories tattooed on my soul...

...Life never seems to give up. It works 24/7 to beat you into submission. 

Thing is... the only thing you get when you try to whup a Cowboy... is one hell of a fight.

I still have no real sliver of an idea where I'm goin' or how I'll get there...

I just keep on Saddlin' my Horses and ridin' my circles...

When I ride my last circle... I'll be where I'm goin'...

Grab Your Handles and Ride

Brian