RDawson

Here's a link to their mission page. I admit I'm a sucker for kids, I'm a pushover (just ask my wife) when they want something. I have two girls of my own and several hundred "adopted" young men and women I worked with volunteering thru the school. I've coached t-ball, softball, basketball, and for the last 11 years worked with the marching band. I build their props and drive the truck and trailer hauling equipment. I'm the go to guy when something breaks, someone is injured, or one of the kids is uneasy with strangers come around because I'm the big scary teddy bear for them. I admit the girls are my favorite because they wear their feelings on their sleeves and show more appreciation when helped. I go thru regular background checks and training for this. My youngest is a senior this year so I'm about done traveling with the group and BACA stands out as something I'm interested in to fill some time. Working in the fire service means I'm on the local college campus often, I regularly have college students come up to me to talk about sports or band days and give me a hug. I take pride in the fact that just maybe I made life a little better for some that needed it or made a bad day a little better. https://bacaworld.org/mission/

I have read several articles about BACA, even one here of a former member/family, I haven't seen anything to scare me away from them. They have a strict no weapons, no violence policy. I recently talked to a LEO who had great things to say about the group and his limited dealings with them. I am forbidden to join any groups such as this while employed by local government but plan to check into it closer on retirement. I was involved with one of my daughter's friends whose family was going through an ugly divorce, she spent a lot of time with my family that year even going on vacations with us. She thanked my wife and I many times about the time she spent with us away from the problems, rough for an early teenager. She wasn't abused like the ones BACA takes care of but it wasn't a good environment.

Gotta agree Mama. I rode some in my youth when I was 10' tall and bulletproof until I came to the conclusion I was riding way above my ability. Got off the bike for 20 years, started back on a Virago just for riding to work. My wife decided one day to hop on back for her first ever ride and decided she liked it. We aren't small people so I started looking for a tourer, that's when I found my 86, paid too much for it, and we started day rides around home. Googling problems on the bike kept bringing me to VR. After a few fixes I started feeling guilty about using the free knowledge here and sent Don my $12. I figured out my long legs and back issues wouldn't let me ride the distances on the 1st gen I read about so I searched out my 07 and went to MD 2018. Now we're hooked on the rides and VR get togethers. Without VR we probably would've stayed riding local and day trips, now we've been to Don's, Niagara Falls, Florida, and several shorter trips with a month long western tour planned as our retirement gift to us in two short years. I don't do social media or any other forums because of attitudes I see on them, the climate here fits me as I have zero patience for smart a$$ attitudes.

Don't get him started Puc, took the school marm out for 225 scooter miles yesterday. Got in a good afternoon before rain and cold creep back in. I'm liking the 65* weather in February.

The scam calls and texts are going crazy, I get several a day. Credit cards, car warranty, health insurance, now lottery. I wish I could get my hands on these people just for a few minutes. The worst one was an Ebay scam, I won an auction for a Skytrak extenda boom forklift. Within 30 seconds of auction ending I got an official looking EBay email from the "owner" wanting me to wire the money. I had made contact with the real owner with plans to fly to Florida to check out his description and pay in person before I ever bid on the item. It could've been a several thousand dollar swindle.

Nope, my texts came from Alexandra. Hope she brings me the money in person, nah I've had the marm going on 28 years and I'm getting too old to break in a new one.

I won $780,000 in the world lotto. They are so anxious to deliver my prize they texted me twice to hurry me up in claiming it. To make it even better my wife won it also, they only texted her once so they must like me better. Two winners in one house, whodda thunk it? That's 1.56 million, new bikes in the shop and new trucks in the garage soon as I get it. To top it off its it's gonna be 62* here Sunday. We're going riding and hope the checks are in the mail when we get home. I figure that I have as much chance of the USPS delivering on Sunday as I do winning money.

I'm not a dr but I have stayed at a Holiday Inn. Go see a doc.

Wadded up aluminum foil works wonders on rusty chrome. I like it because it doesn't leave steel particulate to rust later.

Sorry to hear of the problems. Take care of yourself as well as her.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/1178675465505536?view=permalink&id=3171963369510059 Might be a deal for somebody looking.

What works for me: start with a quality puller, run a piece of webbing thru the puller bolts and tie it off to the fame leaving a little slack. It will keep the whole assembly from taking flight. Tighten the puller TIGHT and tap on the end of the puller bolt with a hammer. DO NOT USE A BFH OR SLEDGE HAMMMER. All you're trying to do is set some vibration into it. After a few hits you should be able to tighten it a bit more and repeat. The last two I did this way took 10 minutes or so to remove. Heat and/or impact ruin magnets, something like a 16oz hammer has plenty of impact without swinging it hard. Never ruined flywheel magnets this way.

The local DQ still uses the old recipe for ice cream. My daughter's class had the owner in for a speech and he talked about the throwback location and recipe being a huge draw. Two picnic tables under the awning and a few more under some shade trees are always busy. Usually a few bikes there in the afternoon.

And 43 more until DQ is back. We have one of the few walkup DQs left in the country. It opens March 1st and closes Halloween night. I've been killing time reading old posts way back in time and it just occurred to me Big Tom couldn't make it here. No burgers or chicken, just ice cream, chili dogs, and drinks 8 months of the year. Guess our DQ season here is like the riding season up there. The difference being we can ride 20 miles to the next town with a DQ. :cry:

Thanks Bill, we are very proud of both of our daughters. The oldest is the dr to be and the youngest starts this fall in Huntsville to be an aerospace engineer. I tell everybody that with a dr and a rocket scientist we should at least have a nice nursing home in our future. They're both hard headed enough to go get what they want so they should be fine in the future.

Wow I think I like the dying in my sleep better than that reality check of what can happen. My soon to be Dr daughter has been on me and putting a bug in her momma's ear about my health and work load. She's convinced I'm gonna have a heart attack young. My eating habits aren't great but I have slowed my fab business down to a more manageable rate as bad as I hate to turn business away to reduce the load and stress. 2 more years running into burning buildings and I'll have my time in there and get rid of that stress load too. Daughter takes her boards and starts hospital rotations in 2 months so I'm sure I'll hear more about me then.

Like I said before no two are the same. Doc gave me 3 months for what I had done. I told him when we scheduled surgery for March 5th that I was riding to Don's in June and he gave me the ok. Your surgery sounds different than mine with 4-5 months. The one thing we did NOT discuss was picking up a down bike, I'm a glass half full guy. Putting mine off wasn't an option, I couldn't retire yet and couldn't work through the pain anymore. Good luck with it.

Yep, getting old ain't fer wimps.

Thanks Sky, unfortunately the snoring is just a symptom. The real problem is I stop breathing and my oxygen levels drop dangerously low and periodically stay there for over 2hours at a time. On average I stop breathing almost once per minute while asleep.

The school marm has been after me for a while to go get a sleep study, she claims I snore loudly but I don't believe her. I think she even sunk low enough to get my crew at the firehouse in on it because they claim the same thing. Doc called me today to let me know I don't have "sleep apnea"- I have "severe sleep apnea" , the kind you can wake up dead from. :shock3: I haven't felt good in quite a long time, always exhausted and not sleeping well so this is probably a big part of it. The 6 months off work last year for a couple surgeries didn't help since not working my normal physical jobs caused my other issues to worsen, the furniture disease sorta kicked in. The one where your chest drops to you drawers. I don't consider myself way overweight at 6'-2" 220 but I'm definitely not in the shape I was in a few years ago which I'm sure is making the apnea worse. I'm hoping it'll help if I drop the extra 20-25 lbs I've somehow managed to add on and rearrange a few more back where they came from. I'm gonna get back in the gym a little more to work on that. In the meantime I go back in soon to get my CPAP or BIPAP machine ( not sure which) which brings me to the point of the whole post. Anyone here have experience with certain brands they recommend or ones to stay away from? Wow, I went back to proof read this before posting and realized I wrote an essay to ask one question. Now I'm worried a little of Cowpuc is rubbing off on me. :bowdown:

Well Ben and Jim how are y'all making out now, haven't seen any updates so I hope all is well.

I did my first WNY last year, if I can get the time off I may try a southern run and make this one. After I took that last promotion getting time off got a lot harder. I'm partial to hot showers and good beds so what accommodations are recommended? I'll be running solo since the marm will be back in school.

Congrats on both the beautiful bike and lady. Take care of both of em, they'll take care of you.

In my head (which is a scary place to be) if the healer was programmed to throw the speedometer off to a faster reading you might be able to get 4th gear CC back. Just another of my crazy ideas. It wouldn't be worth it to me but I'm always thinking out of the box. I bought the DRD to get the Speedo right, it always bugged me being off.

The speedometer sensor is in the pumpkin. With only neutral and 5th gear sensors my understanding is the TCI "computes" gear by matching RPMs with speed. With the lower gearing running higher revs for the speed it computes 3rd instead of 4th. That's the explanation I've found online and since it's on the internet it must be true and that's the story I'm sticking to. If that's true I wonder if you could trick it with a speedo healer or DRD. I run the DRD to fix the true speed and probably won't test the theory. If it did work it would change the 80 mph cruise limit.