She likes it electric

Okay, so I've got the headlight on and most of the nest of wires fits in the headlight bucket, so it really cleans up pretty good. It is a really tight fit, and I have some wires that don't have a home yet, but I've successfully got the headlight and turn signals connected.

That said, two things are apparent:

1) The heavy turn signals have no place to go. They will fit on the headlight bucket, and they look kind of cool, but the stalks they came with ~barely~ fit. I've ordered a lightweight cheapo set from Hong Kong that I can attach to the faring directly. This will also solve another problem I have. I'm eliminating the chrome from this thing, since much of it is pitted and rusted. I'll cover all the chrome parts in a gloss black engine enamel. However, the retro turn signals are just too pretty to paint over. The cheapos will paint just fine and blend in instead of standing out.

2) Things aren't blinking. When I relocated my rear turn signals to the back of the bike, they wouldn't blink. Not sure if they did before, but I know they worked before teardown. So now the question is what has to be connected to get them working. When I hooked up the front turn signals, they lit up just right, but did not blink. So either I have a blinker unit that is shorted out, or all the connections need to be made to get it blinking. I'm not going to over pursue it at this point. My battery will need to be replaced for the new season and it may just be that I'm short of power to work the blinkers.

Meanwhile, the motorcycle is looking pretty good. I tried the faring out with the new bars and headlight and it's is going to look like a cool old BMW going down the road. Much work left to do however, and summer is coming.

Wasted Calories are Sinful

Just read Slate's review of TC Boyle's new book "When the Killing is Done."  It follows the clash of an environmental engineer trying to eliminate invasive species from two islands and her running battle with an animal rights activist. The title comes from the animal rights activist who calls environmental engineers "Nazis" and states "I'll be civil when the killing is done." The Slate writer has a great line:

The killing, needless to say, is never done. Nature is as murderous as human beings, and neither is likely to change.

As an environmental science writer, I used to cover stories of these sorts of conflicts all the time. They also reveal two worldviews -- one scientific and analytical and the other moral without reason or perspective. As we've become increasingly divorced from nature as a people, we have lost our connection with its inherent brutality. The natural world is all about domination, all about killing and eating things. Our romanticism seeks to restore "order" and "harmony" that never existed. Natural systems are always dynamic and amoral. Everything is food for something else. Wasted calories are the only sin.

Lyrics: Coffee Love, Coffee Love

I'm in a fog, I'm half dead
Tractor beam pulls me back to bed
Until I get that first drop in my head

Morning cup of coffee, need you so

Chase away that sandman

Wash away the gloom

Morning cup of coffee how i love you so

Don't like the cream or frothy thing
Just fill it to brim and it'll make me sing
Works better than any alarm bell's ring

Black with sugar and I'm

Good

To 

Go

I'm grumpy cuss with a fuzzy head
Tractor beam pulls me back to bed
until I get that first drop in my head

I can smell it while its brewing
that magic that it will soon be doing
get me through another day
just a few drops away

Morning cup of coffee, I need you so
chase away that sandman
wash away the gloom
Morning cup of coffee how I love you so

Is it need or is it love?
Cus I can't stay away
even for a day
I'm an addict and I'm here to say

Morning cup of coffee, I need you so
chase away that sandman
wash away that gloom
Morning cup of coffee
I can't live
without
you

Forty days of rain

Found this old ball
and here's the glove too.
I don't think they'll ever dry out
Just a few things from my past
drowned in flood
but I ...
I can't let them die

Forty days
and forty nights too
Forty feet high in my mind
Forty years
Forty years and two
God willing, I still have some years left
With you

You can see
the water got this high
highest it has ever been
High water comes
most every year
But we won't see the likes of
this again

Silver light
shines on silt-brown fields
everything is corrupted and dull
little fish
fight for life
attracting a flock of gulls

All we had
was just things you know
and memories, we still have a few
guess we better
start again
Thank God I still have you

Forty years
where'd they go
staring out the window at the
rain rain rain
Forty days Forty nights
Forty years and two
Give me forty years with you.

Forty days of rain
Forty nights
Forty feet high
Forty years
Forty years and two