Less may be best when it comes to design...

but more is king when it comes to Christmas lights. I love our neighborhood.

Almost there

Just finished the first draft of a memorial piece I'm writing on John Shoemaker. John died a racers death last March at over 270 mph in a top fuel drag car. It was a sad day in the history of drag racing.

Writing about people's hot rods, race cars, and motorcycles is easy. Trying to represent their entire lives in 1500 words or less is not. This one's been a challenge for sure! It's a great honor though and I've really enjoyed getting to know Judee and Jim Shoemaker, along with other friends of the family. Great people!



As as a teaser, here's a picture from the Shoemaker photo archives of John's first dedicated drag car, an altered wheelbase '34 Ford.

The other pictures from the photo collection are amazing too. Basically, they're a walk through the history of drag racing, ranging from the late 50's to last year. Pending acts of God or Editors, the feature will run in the Spring 2009 issue of Traditional Rod & Kulture Magazine.

No more yanky my wanky...

Kills me every time. My adopted brother is Asian and turned into 'The Donger' whenever he'd get lit up as a kid.

Old 45 Racer

I shot this old privateer flat track bike my friend Casey restored last week. Sadly, on the same day I was taking pic.'s, Casey was in surgery having his second kidney removed. What a bummer. The bike is now owned by the local HD store and the kid in the picture, Ty, helped me load, unload, and jockey it around. Nice guy.

Coffee Shop Sunset & Living Room Sunrise

Did a little writing last night from my favorite coffee place. Nice sunset off the back deck.

And here's this morning's sunrise from the living room. The hump on the horizon is Mt. Rainier.

Nelson

It's a pretty small world. Four or so years back a former friend and I were heading to a swap meet and he said "hey, we gotta' pick this other dude up." OK. We grabbed the guy, headed off to the swap meet, and moved on. Little did I realize that the guy we picked up would fast become one of my closest, if not my closest friend. That dude was Josh Higgins.

So I'm into Harleys at the time along with cars. I try to pull Josh over to the dark side of cycles due to not having anyone with an old bike to ride with and I offer up a rough Indian Sport Scout to him for free, but he won't budge. He's a Hot Rod guy. In fact, in the world of period-perfect Hot Rods he's fast becoming one of THEE Hot Rod guys. Just don't tell him I said that.

At-any-rate, we'd banter endlessly over how cars were cooler than bikes or vice-versa from my end, and somewhere along the way Josh mentioned that his roommate in Hawaii, as well as in LA was into choppers. Neat. Long story short, his roommate for years was Nelson Kanno.

Nelson has shot and written for magazines for a long time now and has something like 200 or so articles under his belt. I've gotten to know him a little over the past couple of years; spent some time talking with him on the phone and such, and he's shared quite a bit of valuable info. about how not to get smoked in the magazine game with me. Real cool guy, a hard worker, and does what most just talk about.

So, while Josh and Nelson were living in Hawaii, Nelson built the bike below. At the time, the Japanese had just hit the underground Harley thing full-bore, so being half Japanese, Nelson saw an opportunity and sold the chopper to someone over there for more than he'd have ever gotten here in the US.



He then took the cash from the sale of his Shovel and proceeded to build this clean, 50's style Knucklehead.



Good dude with good taste. Aloha.

Mandrew and His Girl

A buddy and his girlfriend. Good looking couple.