They are building an Outlaw bodied coupe like ours except full fendered. Bob's garage is impressive and so is his workmanship! I got (stole) several good ideas from him and will be doing a few similar things to our coupe.

Lisa and I are looking forward to seeing Bob and Sheila at rod runs in the future. God bless the Internet.

I have a new friend! Meet Angel, the newest addition to our family. She's a 14 week old American Eskimo (dog) and the name is appropriate. Funny how a puppy can make a 200lb man turn to putty with one look. She loves the garage! Now I have someone to keep me company and there's finally a woman in the house who listens to me.   ;)

She "helped" me install the water pump the other night.

I just *knew* I had 2 gaskets laying out...

Dogs like this really love the cold so my 50-degree garage and  our cold, snowy South Dakota winters are just her thing.

The shop is looking like a street rod shop!
With the bike shop closed the shop has taken over with car stuff. The back shelves are now stocked with parts for Project33 instead of bike stuff and the body now resides on rollers in the old work area of the shop.

The peg board has been stripped of bicycle tools and awaits an array of rod building tools. Two workbenches are nice when you're multi-tasking with body/chassis projects going on simultaneously, etc.

I'm going to hate to give this up someday when we move to a residential area.

The Bad:
The Showroom area of the old bike shop is depressing to view. In my spare time I've been doing an inventory of any remaining parts and accessories to be liquidated.

After living in this building for most of my life it just doesn't seem the same. It always had that "bicycle shop" smell, of tires and oil, that I took for granted for 30 years. Now I believe it's one of the things I'll miss.

It isn't all bad though, just to look at.
I don't miss retail at all and my outlook on life has changed since I've been working fewer hours. If you ever get a stupid idea like taking on 2 full-time jobs at the same time - WAKE UP!  :)

The Ugly:
Here's a picture of a friend of mine doing his job as a fire inspector. The building he's standing in is the place I get the Project33 T-Shirts printed!

I have a few shirts left in stock at this writing but my next order of shirts might take a bit longer. I haven't had the heart to try to contact someone from there to see if the Project33 artwork or screen survived but I highly doubt it.

A while ago an order for a child's size small came in from a guy in Canada. I thought it was odd for a guy to order only a childs size so I contacted him to make sure. His email address was incomplete so I was forced to resort to snail mail, and International mail can take a long time to receive!  During the long wait I forgot all about his pending order and arranged to loan my credit card processing equipment to my brother-in-law to use in his store over the holidays. I had the equipment in a box ready to deliver one morning and decided to check my email before I left. There was an email from the fellow requesting a size XL and thanking me for inquiring before sending the wrong size. Talk about close! I was able to plug the equipment in to run his credit card before I left. We had cancelled our credit card processing account, since it was the bike shop's, and his order was the last one processed. To top it all off there was only 1 XL shirt left in stock! - Real close! 

The next day when the screen printers burned down I though to myself how many things could have kept him from getting that shirt. If he only knew...

The T-Shirt Order Page is now set up to use PayPal's processing service so you can still buy a shirt - if it's in stock. :)

You can read my past ramblings from previous months by clicking the Links below.

Keep the shiny side up!