TwoTone

After a wonderful 5-day weekend full of sun and warmth... Monday evening has rolled out the wet... Typical Oregon weather...

Edge, you're correct for the most part... Here's the scoop on this bike ~ Yamaha’s XS650 has become one of the ubiquitous custom platforms. With a production run of around 13 years from 1970 onwards, there are still plenty around. This custom is the second project from a new Australian outfit called the Modern Motor Cycle Company; it isn’t slick by any means, but it has a certain rugged charm. ‘MMCC 02‘ is based on a 1974 TX650, which was part of the XS650 model family. (The TX version was given a new frame and swingarm to improve handling, a larger tank, and alloy rims similar to those on the W-series bikes.) The bike was a non-runner when bought by its owner James Cecil (of the band Super Melody), and he briefed MMCC to create a rat-style custom that retained the original tank—with its beautiful porcelain-like, cracked paint finish—and the original brown headlight bucket. MMCC then fitted shortened aluminum fenders, clip-ons, new instruments, and a vintage-style taillight. A new wiring harness was built in-house, and the battery relocated out of sight. A serious performance jolt comes from a pair of Mikuni round-slide carburetors, free-flowing air filters and reverse-cone megaphone mufflers, plus a Boyer Bransden electronic ignition kit.

Here are some shots from our weekend in Manzanita...

A look into the Kowloon Walled City in Hong Kong. It truly was one of the most amazing and terrifying places on earth. Being slightly smaller than an NFL stadium, the structure was built of 350 smaller interconnected buildings and hosted, at it’s peak, a population density of 5 million people per square mile. To put those numbers in perspective, this would be like taking the entire population of metro Philadelphia, the 4th largest in the US, and putting it in 1 square mile instead of 1,744. The area was also largely ungoverned and unregulated. Factories, apartments, schools, temples, churches, shops, cafes, hotels and almost anything else one could imagine were housed within the structure that never had a full blueprint of it done. Buildings were built onto buildings, expanded, rebuilt, and re-purposed as needed without a central authority of any kind. Within the structure, natural light was almost non-existent, and an unknown number of miles of jury-rigged wires provided electricity to everything. Water constantly dripped down to the lower levels from both rain and leaking pipes, while garbage filled every passage. A constant yellow haze filled the structure and there were never any government safety inspections. The Kowloon Walled City was demolished in the early 1990s as part of the deal that returned Hong Kong to the Chinese from the British. The entire area is now a park. I find places like this fascinating, it is just incredible what we, humans, build and live in. This, hive, for lack of a better term, was one of the most interesting structures I’ve yet looked at. Click for a decent docudrama on it...

Walt Siegl FX Roadster...

Jack... One awesome dog...