Monthly Archives: April 2024

GEORGE  THE  PAINTER, aka GTP, aka George Frizzell

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NSFW content ahead. Brace yourselves.

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….if the viewer is open and brave enough, they are going to meet an America few folks will talk about; a grim, hostile underbelly filled with proud white trash, loud motorcycles, barflies, brawlers, booze and sex and rock ‘n’ roll. George the Painter takes all of this in, and then flings it at the viewer like blood, sweat and spinal fluid, in violent knife-edged spasms of color, light and shadow.

Pussy and Bourbon # 1 by George ‘GTP’ Frizzell.

The term ‘acquired taste’ was coined for characters like George the Painter, but I confess that it is a taste I have acquired. In my collection I have a number of his prints, purchased from the artist himself through the old The Horse / Back Street Choppers readers’ forum, where we were both frequent flyers in the early ’00s. I look forward to displaying some of them in the Adults Only section of MMMoMMA soon. 😏

Life of Kings by George ‘GTP’ Frizzell.

♫ I’m trailer trash / drunk off my ass / and my savings went to liquor so I’m all out of cash…. ♫ © 2021 Caroline’s Daughter. 😆

Rebel by George ‘GTP’ Frizzell. The ‘RAT LIFE’ tattoo is one of GTP’s own.
Oh Hell Yea [sic] by George ‘GTP’ Frizzell.

When he chooses to, GTP can get downright representational, as with the Sporty above and the moonlit chopper below. I find that painting particularly evocative.

* EK87S *, a commission by George ‘GTP’ Frizzell. Titles marked with asterisks are ones I made up, because the artist’s title was unknown.

Others evince a technical mastery of light, color and shadow that nudges the neighborhood of realism, without fully crossing the line.

Hogster by George ‘GTP’ Frizzell.
* Knucklehead * by George ‘GTP’ Frizzell.
*Knucklehead * by George ‘GTP’ Frizzell.

….and when he’s not painting blowsy barflies, GTP is capable of more pedestrian images.

This looks suspiciously like the scenic and thrilling Tail of the Dragon, which leaves Maggie Valley, North Carolina, (home of Dale Walksler’s famous Wheels Through Time Museum) and meanders over the state line into Tennessee, with a challenging 318 curves in just 11 miles! 😮 Overconfident (or overserved) riders have come to unhappy ends in those hills, but it’s a destination ride for our tribe, and motorcyclists come from around the world to challenge the Tail and visit the motorcycle museum. Highly recommended, BTW.
* Peterbilt Posse * by George ‘GTP’ Frizzell.
* The Boys * by George ‘GTP’ Frizzell.
* Pickup * by George ‘GTP’ Frizzell.
* Cometic * by George ‘GTP’ Frizzell.
* Chopper Couple * by George ‘GTP’ Frizzell.
* Kiss * by George ‘GTP’ Frizzell.

Richie Pan was a renowned artist, tattooist and bike builder from New Jersey who was killed in an auto-pedestrian crash on his way home from the annual North Carolina Smokeout. I mentioned him in my article about David Mann, but GTP knew Richie Pan, had been tattooed by him, and painted two portraits of his friend.

* Richie Pan in his shop * by George ‘GTP’ Frizzell. Richie is seated on his beloved panhead, Viola.
* Richie Pan in the wind * by George ‘GTP’ Frizzell.

As with David Mann, Edward Hopper and other favorite artists, George Frizzell will insert himself into his work at times, as with this oddly-named canvas: Intergalactic Attack Formation # 1….

Intergalactic Attack Formation # 1 by George ‘GTP’ Frizzell. That is GTP hisself, trademark sneer in place, aboard the shovelhead he calls ‘Leaky Latowski’. He reports that the original canvas now lives in Australia.

….and this, where he demonstrates Leaky Latowski’s low-end torque.

When Pigs Fly by George ‘GTP’ Frizzell.

Finally, in this recent canvas, GTP notes that he ‘wanted to paint a loser with a busted ass bike and it ended up being a self portrait.’ He was raffling off the original canvas, and noted, ‘I’ve been off my Shovel for long enough and this raffle will send some cash in the right direction!’ I can relate! If they were still on offer, I’d buy a ticket or two myself! 😎

* Loser * by George ‘GTP’ Frizzell.

However, like a lot of bikers, GTP seems to delight in the age-old game called ‘shocking the squares,’ and he plays it well!

Rothouse 187 by George ‘GTP’ Frizzell.

GTP’s work is sometimes hard to look at – rude and graphic and in-your-face, much like the artist himself – and not everyone can hang with it.  However, if the viewer is open and brave enough, they are going to meet an America few folks will talk about; a grim, hostile underbelly filled with proud white trash, loud motorcycles, barflies, brawlers, booze and sex and rock ‘n’ roll.  GTP takes all of this in, and then flings it at the viewer like blood, sweat and spinal fluid, in violent knife-edged spasms of color, light and shadow. 

V by George ‘GTP’ Frizzell.

If you can hang, study what GTP has created on canvas, and you will discover an uncompromising artist with a hard-core, anarchic sense of self, which makes him a Charles Bukowski of the painted word. 

Blow Job by George ‘GTP’ Frizzell.
Two of George’s more noticeable tattoos: WHITE TRASH ICON and RAT LIFE.

SHOVELHEAD LOVE

Like me, George loves his shovelheads, and they feature prominently in his art. I’m always glad to see my favorite Milwaukee motor represented, but….

* Shovelhead SS * by George ‘GTP’ Frizzell.
* Shovelhead with Swastika * by George ‘GTP’ Frizzell. With that dual-throated carburetor, the engine takes on the look of a demented, malevolent WALL-E, from the animated film, or a Star Wars robot…. or maybe Cujo? 🤷🏻‍♀️
* Shovelhead * by George ‘GTP’ Frizzell.
* Shovelhead * in charcoal by George ‘GTP’ Frizzell.
* Shovelhead * in charcoal by George ‘GTP’ Frizzell.
Some wag suggested * Hogwarts’ Hagrid gets a Harley * as a title. Whatever. It’s another Shovelhead by George ‘GTP’ Frizzell.
* Shovel Jesus * by George ‘GTP’ Frizzell.

If you’re really brave, read a few of GTP’s columns in back issues of The Horse / Back Street Choppers — the now-defunct biker rag that gave Frizzell a resident platform for his art and off-the-wall screeds — and you’ll see that George comes by his ‘fuck the world’ brand of hardscrabble individualism honestly. He is brutally forthright about living his life his way.  Dilettantes and poseurs need not apply.

The Horse / Backstreet Choppers

The Horse / Backstreet Choppers was a weak imitation of the OG Easyriders* magazine, which began in 1970, but The Horse did feature owner-built choppers in amongst all the pouty-lipped models, hipster-bearded and tattooed ‘old skool’ wannabes and eye-boggling graphics. The Horse / Backstreet Choppers was GTP’s home away from home for many years. They published his artwork and many of his rambling, overheated screeds. Those columns were later collected into a ‘bathroom reader‘ that is now out-of-print, and listed for stoopid money on eBay and Amazon.

Yet another shovelhead; this one with the inscrutable title Deluxe Space Robot by George ‘GTP’ Frizzell. That is his Leaky Latowski fuel tank on the floor.

In a documentary series, Richie Pan’s America, George said he wasn’t much of a writer, wasn’t much of a painter, wasn’t much of a bike builder, and yet he’s famous. 🤷🏻‍♀️

He also made a comment that speaks volumes about him, and about bikers in general. He said, ‘Being poor and destitute without a motorcycle is completely uncool, but you can be the same motherfucker and have a motorcycle between your legs — still have no place to live — and it’s cool….’

I don’t know about George, but in my career as a biker, I’ve been homeless, without a car, a job or bank account, but I’ve always had a bike, and yeah, that’s pretty feckin’ cool! 😎

Let’s let GTP go out the same way he came in, with a hearty ‘Fuck You’ to all and sundry! 😎

George the Painter can be found offending the world in these locations (to name just a few): https://www.instagram.com/georgethepainter, https://www.instagram.com/fineartforw_hitetrash, https://georgethepainter.bigcartel.com/products, https://fineartamerica.com/profiles/george-frizzell/art/george+frizzell, https://www.facebook.com/GeorgeFrizzellJr,

And his latest endeavor, Chopper Hostel, billed as ‘a great place to hide the bodies,’ at https://chopperhostel.com/

* Easyriders (mentioned above) went under in 2019, after almost a half-century in print. Its quality had waned considerably in its final decades, even as print publications in general lost readership, so few longtime readers mourn its passing. However, an upscale clothier has acquired and is attempting to revive the title as a less ‘trashy’ and ‘more inclusive’ publication. 🙄

Easyriders was a big influence on me as a teenage wannabe in the early ’70s, and was still the biker rag of record when I began riding later in the decade. It featured art by leading lights like David Mann and Duffy Duggan, fiction by writers like Larry ‘Rabbit’ Cole, and humor by psychotics like former Mouseketeer J.J. Solari. I take great pride in the fact that my first manuscript sales — fiction and non-fiction — were to Easyriders, and I consider the late Lou Kimzey my first editor and mentor in the world of writing.

I’ve only seen one issue of the ‘new’ ER and am thus far not impressed. 🤷🏻‍♀️

Original since 1970? 😮 I don’t think so! That’s like Indian claiming they are ‘the oldest American motorcycle manufacturer’. The revivalists — Indian and Easyriders alike — bought a name and nothing more. No lineage connects either venture to the originals.

WILDLY KINDA SORTA OFF-TOPIC POSTSCRIPT: and a sad story. Whilst researching this article, in a deep dive search for some of my favorite Easyriders writers, I unearthed the tragic tale of Jody Via. Jody was one of my faves from back in the day, capable of fashioning darkly compelling crime yarns from bolts of whole cloth….

….except that, per police, Via’s ‘yarns’ weren’t fiction at all. They say he was effectively recounting crimes he himself had committed during a murderous spree across Pennsylvania and Ohio in September, 1972, and selling them for publication!

First, we have Good Samaritan Harry Hoffman. Mr. Hoffman was a gas station owner who stopped to help what appeared to be a young couple stranded at roadside. Hoffman took them back to his service station, and even made a fresh pot of coffee so that they could get warmed up from the chill night air. For his troubles, he was bound, shot in the head and left for dead in the back room of his service station. Mr. Hoffman survived, and later identified his attacker in court.

Next, we have nineteen-year-old college student Jane Maguire, who fell for Via’s ‘stranded’ ruse and offered him a ride. Her body was discovered in a highway rest area. She had been raped, bound, shot in the head and left for dead, but did not survive.

Via, who had holed up in his wife’s home, was arrested, charged with and convicted of the crimes, and received a life sentence. While serving that sentence, Via began submitting poetry and short stories to Easyrider, which published several of his works. He later sold some pieces to Outlaw Biker magazine, as well.

However, in 2019, investigators working the September 1972 cold-case murder of twenty-nine-year-old salesman Morgan Peters, in Pennsylvania, were directed by two of Via’s ex-wives to look at Via’s published writings. There, in the stories Via sold the biker magazines, police found fairly detailed descriptions of each of his crimes, including the as-yet-unsolved slaying of Peters. Via, still in prison for the rape and murder of Jane Maguire, was charged with Peters’ slaying in 2019. He was seventy-five years old.

I have yet to learn what became of those charges or the defendant.

Man, that took a dark turn, didn’t it? 😮

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY TO US!

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❤️ A brief pictorial history of a love affair for the ages. ❤️

Forty-five years ago I was a kid with a dream of owning a Harley-Davidson. I put away the alcohol and drugs that I’d abused all through my teens, got not one but two jobs, saved some money for a down-payment and worked with my credit union to establish credit. Now it was time to find the bike of my dreams….

….and find her I did.

I began my search at the stealership on Burnet Road in Austin, just south of Koenig Lane, where the sales manager treated me like the Julia Roberts character in Pretty Woman. For whatever reason — my age, my long hair, my jeans-and-t-shirt wardrobe choices — he apparently assumed I wasn’t well-heeled enough to afford a Harley. When I announced that I was there to buy a bike he said ‘The used bikes are outside,’ waved a lazy hand in the direction of the door, turned on his heel and walked away. In previous visits to that shop I had watched that man do everything short of performing fellatio on the showroom floor to make a sale, so, yeah, I took being treated that way personally.

But it worked out well for me, because as I was leaving the stealership I spotted a Harley in a used car lot two doors up the street….

….and that Harley — the 1974 FX-1200 Superglide I named The Bitch — has been under my ass or in my garage ever since.

Forty-five years! 😮 Outside my blood relations, there is not a single relationship in my life older than the one between me and The Bitch.

So, Happy Anniversary, baby! Let’s do forty-five more! 😎


Forgive me, Ralph, for I have sinned….

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In his 1979 article* about the Bandidos Motorcycle Club, Texas Monthly writer Dick Reavis created a humorous sidebar about the First Church of Harley-Davidson, located in Denton, Texas. The sect’s theology is a little off-center — the church’s founder, Malvern Daugherty, AKA ‘Reverend Box’, describes it as a ‘beer-and-reefer church’ — but some members claim to believe in Ralph, the little tin god of all things Harley-Davidson.

True believers feel that Ralph lives within each Harley-Davidson engine and, as Reavis writes, ‘that he is a jealous and exacting god. In order to worship him, Harley owners must kneel and carry out monkish acts of ritual devotion, like changing oil, tuning up, and keeping Ralph’s motor-temple clean. “The more religiously you carry out maintenance, the more Ralph smiles on you,” oracle Box proclaims. Inspired study of the Harley repair manual is considered necessary to gain Ralph’s grace.

‘First Churchers fear Ralph’s wrath, which a few of them have suffered firsthand. “You’ll be puttin’ down the road one day when all of a sudden your motor will thunder out ‘Rraaaallphh!’ That’s his punishment for infidels. You’ll find that your motor won’t run anymore, if it’s in one piece, and as for Ralph, he’ll be gone from it, back to his celestial home.” This vengeful visitation, Box says, is called “Ralphing it on the road.” ‘

While I’m not a member of the First Church of Harley-Davidson (if it still exists; that was written in 1979) I will allow that some spirit lives within Harley-Davidson engines — that’s what gives Harley-Davidson its legendary ‘soul’ — and that it is possible to piss them off….

….as I have apparently done.

You see, I sinned by taking The Bitch — my beloved 1974 shovelhead — for granted. When I parked her years ago, I didn’t do the things one must do to keep Ralph happy while his motorcycle home sits idle. I didn’t add fuel stabilizer to the petrol tanks or, better yet, drain the damned things. I didn’t put the battery on a trickle charger to keep it fresh, or fire the bike up and run it for fifteen minutes or so, which is apparently what is required to burn off any condensation that may have accumulated in the oiling system. I didn’t do nothin’ except hoist The Bitch up on a stand and slap a chain and padlock on her.

To be fair, I didn’t realize I was parking the bike for years. I’d had a get-off that destroyed the inner primary, and assumed I would make the repairs and get back in the saddle in short order. However, life had other plans.

In December, on my way to a Toy Run, FFS, I had a get-off in a highway underpass. The hows and whys are a story unto themselves, but the end result was a very expensive jigsaw puzzle!

For one thing, I got an opportunity to return to college, to complete the bachelor’s degree I had begun working toward the same year I bought The Bitch. There were forms to fill out, an application essay to write, interviews and appointments and registration…. and then there were classes, and homework, and, y’know, life stuff, like family gatherings and dates with my wife and dinners with friends, and I simply lost track of time. One day I looked up and realized it had been years.

That is when my quest to trike the shovelhead began in earnest, but still, The Bitch sat in the garage, more hat-rack than Harley, as I did all I did to try to procure a trike frame for her. After those efforts failed, and I bought the Freewheeler I am currently riding, any urgency to get The Bitch running quickly waned again. I had something new to distract me, and the learning curve of getting used to life on three wheels. The shovel would wait. 🤷🏻‍♀️ Yet another sin against Ralph.

As noted in my previous post, I got a wild hair to enter my shovelhead in the Handbuilt Motorcycle Show, so I began working on replacing fluids, battery, et cetera. I foolishly believed The Bitch, my faithful steed of forty-five years, would magically not suffer the degradations of time in idle limbo; that the gas would probably be just fine, the carburetor still fully functional, the inner tubes still airtight.

Yeah. That didn’t happen.

Believing the fuel tanks to be close to empty, I poured most of a gallon of fresh petrol in them before learning that the carburetor was not still fully functional, and that the damned petcock leaked whenever I turned it on.

This leaking petcock would need to be replaced. I had to loosen the fatbob mounting bolts fore and aft to get the petcock, with its 90° outlet, past the backside of the shovelhead’s rocker boxes.

I ordered a carburetor rebuild kit and replacement petcock from Amazon, available for next-day delivery, and called it a night. The next day, when the new parts arrived, I got stuck back into my penance…. umm, my mechanical efforts…. and began draining the fuel tanks as I rebuilt the carburetor.

Yeah, that didn’t happen, either.

The rebuild kit was nothing but made-in-China crap — the gaskets didn’t fit and the float valve needle was a full 1/8th of an inch longer than OEM! 😮 It’s as if, in creating this kit, the manufacturers looked at the pictures in a service manual and used their best approximation of the necessary sizes. Utterly useless, and on its way back to the Commie bastards who created it.

She’s missing something, but I can’t quite put my finger on just what….

So I turned my attention to the tanks, and realized there was far more petrol in there than I’d realized. The first can I used to catch fuel overflowed, so I deployed a second, and thought I’d pretty well gotten everything out. Time to replace the petcock then, right?

Except that, when I removed the petcock, another gallon of petrol splashed out!

I was panicked, getting doused with the stuff and unable to get the petcock back in place, but I did finally managed to get a gas can under the tank outlet and catch the last one-third of a gallon. However, the rest splashed all over the floor and began spreading rapidly, as petrol is wont to do.

In a mad scramble, accompanied by much cursing, wailing and gnashing of teeth, I used crumpled newspaper to sop up as much of the stuff as I could, but the smell remained. Dunno if you’ve ever had the pleasure, but years-old petrol reeks even worse than the fresh stuff you spill on the side of your car at the local convenience store. It reeks, and the stench lingers for a really long time!

Bless her heart, Jackie braved the hail of cusswords and self-recrimination I unleashed in the moment to come to my aid. She also did a quick Google search, and learned that kitty litter will supposedly absorb the odor. I will tell you that at this moment, over thirteen hours after I spread the kitty litter, it is no silver bullet. If any of the odor has been absorbed, or dissipated out the vent fan that’s been running for the past forty-eight hours, I can’t tell. That crap still reeks!

UPDATE: It took over seventy-two hours, the aforementioned application of kitty litter and a good scrubbing of the garage floor with a mixture of vinegar and baking soda to finally clear that stench from the garage! 🤢

I did manage to learn why the tank retained so much petrol after I thought it drained. Turned out that the petcock’s filter was clogged almost three inches up its length — the rust a fuel stabilizer might have prevented, don’tcha know — so that, even with the petcock on its ‘reserve’ setting, none of that last gallon of gas could escape….

….until I removed the petcock, of course! 🙄

Neil Young tried to warn me: RUST NEVER SLEEPS!
Who knows what kind of rust and other crud is up there, inside that hole?

So here I am. The shovel can’t be put back together because I don’t have the carburetor rebuild kit required, and I’m probably going to have to remove and cleanse the tanks — just the job I was hoping I would not have to do!

Ralph is really stickin’ it to me, dammit! 🤬🤬🤬

  • I will reproduce Mr. Reavis’ article in a future post. The Bandido MC photo at the top of the page, from Mr. Reavis’ article, was taken by Chris Wahlberg © 1979 Texas Monthly

It was a thought….

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The Bitch, my beloved 1974 shovelhead, has been sitting and gathering dust and cobwebs for several years more than I care to admit. Long story, but anyhoo….

Jackie and I are packing up the house in Austin — it’s already listed for sale — and prepping for our anticipated move to San Antonio, so I’ve felt fortunate to have the 2016 Freewheeler to ride, and assumed The Bitch would be trailered to SA in its existing condition.

But then I saw the announcements for this coming weekend’s Handbuilt Motorcycle Show, including a call for entries. I scanned the photo galleries of past events, and didn’t see anything that looked like The Bitch, so I thought, ‘Hmmm…. Wouldn’t that be a kick in the head, getting my weary old road warrior in a show with all these slick, sleek professionally built custom bikes?’ What can I say? 🤷🏻‍♀️ I’m evil that way. 😈

Only trick is that when you submit an entry, you promise that the motorcycle you show will be running when you deliver it to the showgrounds. Hence, with Jackie’s encouragement, I started scrambling to get The Bitch fired up.

That’s just the color you want to see on a set of plugs!

First step: drain as much sumped oil as possible from the crankcase. I pulled the sparkplugs, still a lovely shade of tan because I know how to tune the shovel properly, and dropped the feed from the oil-bag, and started kicking, and kicking, and kicking….

Oil being returned to the oil-bag as I kick drains into the oil pan on the floor.
The flow from the crankcase, as I kick, is forced out the chain oiler through the crankcase breather.
Imagine: we used to let that waste oil drain into the ground and think nothing of it. Now we have to collect it in containers, and make an appointment to take it to the Hazardous Waste Recycling Center, which is all the way down IH35, south of Ben White Boulevard! It’s a wonder more people aren’t just dumping the stuff on the ground, still. Not me, of course — I’m a good steward of the earth these days — but I’ll bet there are a lot of gearheads who can’t be arsed to drain and retain the way I do.
UPDATE: a couple weeks after publishing the post you’re currently reading, I rediscovered this clipping I had in my files, from Popular Science back in 1963, and thought I’d share it with y’all.

I finally got enough oil out that I thought I might be good to go, so I reattached the feed line and poured two quarts of Valvoline Grade 50 into the oil-bag. It will officially hold three, but in my experience, that includes any oil stored in the external filter and connecting lines. The tank itself might hold two and a half. However, since the 50 is just to flush the system, two will do what needs doing.

The last battery I bought The Bitch measured 5.25×3.5×7″ and weighed 11 pounds! 😮

Next up was the battery. I’d been buying lovely gel batteries from the BMW shop on North Lamar, but the bastards had the nerve to go out of business. However, Cycle Gear over on US Highway 183 at Burnet Road came to the rescue. It took a couple of tries, but they came up with a Lithium Ion battery from Duraboost. First one I’ve ever purchased. It’s smaller and lighter, with no acid to fuss about, and has the added advantage of being mountable in any position, even upside down, without leaking or malfunctioning. Not a cheap date, but worth every penny, IMO. I imagine chopper builders the world over are ecstatic about these things!

This little jewel measures 5.3 x 2.6 x 3.6″, and weighs a measly 1.3 pounds! 😮😮😮 It also fits neatly into the battery box with inches to spare!

Added bennie: Cycle Gear gave me a discount for being a veteran! 👍🏻

Thinking I might be ready to give The Bitch a try, I took her off the hydraulic stand she’d been resting on for years — an adventure in itself — and leaned her over on her kickstand, where she immediately began puking oil all over the floor. I started to panic, thinking all my nice new 50-weight was going to end up soaking into old issues of The Austin Chronicle. Apparently I hadn’t cleared as much of the sumped oil as I’d thought, but it stopped in short order.

So now I have oil, lights and power. What next? Oh, yeah…. petrol! 👍🏻

Behind that very ‘old school’ panhead air cleaner cover is a fifty-year-old Zenith Bendix 38mm carburetor that has served me very well for forty-five years!

The Bitch still runs the OEM Zenith Bendix carburetor she came with from the factory — a juicy, easy-to-kickstart mixer that has served me well over the years. The Bendix has powered The Bitch and I well over half a million miles, from sea-level Galveston and Corpus Christi to the top of Rocky Mountain Nat’l Park — 11,798′ above sea level — and from the Texas border with Mexico to the Badlands of South Dakota. We’ve been up and down the Rockies on numerous trips, and all over the desert Southwest, with nary an adjustment or stutter. I spent years working the parts counter at Bud’s Motorcycle Shop on East First Street, and I was just agog at the pains some riders went through to rejet their carburetors in advance of road trips. Some even installed adjustable main-jets! Me, I was always, like, ‘Why?‘ 🤷🏻‍♀️ The Bitch just never needed it.

But as good a carb as the Bendix is, no carburetor will tolerate being ignored for years. They develop…. issues, you might say, and mine was not the exception I was hoping it would be. Nope. I poured some petrol in the tank, flipped the petcock lever, and….

Nothing. Nada. Zip. Not a drop of petrol was getting from tank to jet. Curses! 🤬

The carburetor prior to disassembly….

I dropped the bowl, catching the requisite handful of petrol as I did. One of my least favorite things, the smell of gasoline on my hands, because it lingers. C’est la vie, right? I wiped the bowl clean and blew compressed air through the passage from fuel pump to jet, clearing the passage of whatever obstruction it had, and thought I’d scored big-time! I reassembled the carb, turned the petcock back on, and watched heartbroken as petrol Niagara’d all over my engine from the vent at the back of the bowl. Curses again! 🤬

That petcock has less than fifty miles on it, and leaks like a sieve. Apparently, that’s a common problem with aftermarket petcocks. If the one I get tomorrow fails, I guess I’ll be shopping at the stealership again.

I took it all apart again, inspected and cleaned the float needle, and gave it another go. Same mess. Dammit! And, as if that weren’t enough, the petcock, which is virtually brand new, has sprung a leak as well. Imma have to get used to eating food that tastes like gasoline for the next several days. 🤢

I have a coffee can filled with petcocks, fuel filters and carburetor parts — even a spare Bendix carb — but in the rush to prep the house for sale, I naturally packed it and stowed it in the storage unit we rented. 🙄 I ran up to the storage unit and retrieved that tin and another filled with fuel line and clamps, but did not find the Bendix rebuild kit I thought I had in stock. Need I say ‘Curses!’ again? 🤬

The carburetor in amongst spare parts from my stash, but I decided against trying to piece it together with odd parts. I’ll have the rebuild kit tomorrow, and handle it then.

Since Bud’s is no longer in business, following Bud Reveile’s untimely death in 2015, the odds of finding a rebuild kit in town are slim to none, so I jumped on Amazon and, sure enough, they have ’em available for next-day delivery! They also have a petcock that will allegedly fit my 1997 Softail tanks. Fingers crossed they’re right. 🤞🏻

So, I’m at an stopping point for the moment. More anon….

….but during all the mad dashing to get the bike running, I received a message from the Handbuilt Motorcycle Show staff telling me my entry has been rejected! 😭 REJECTED!?!? How could they do that to my baby? 😢

Seriously, I knew my last-minute, unconventional entry was a longshot in a show packed full of sleek, pristine machines, but it was worth a shot, no? 🤷🏻‍♀️ And it gave me the kick in the ass I needed to get The Bitch fired up. No reason to quit now!

And I’m still going to the show, despite the slight! 😎 Maybe see some of y’all there!