May 2025

I’ll bet you’re tired of hearing about my motorcycle.
Well I’m getting tired of working on it.
I want to ride it, but first, I need an exhaust system.

The exhaust that came with the bike had rusted through and fallen off.
Needless to say, they don’t make them like that any more. Not even aftermarket.
And since I want to be riding it this summer, not next summer, I decided to keep it simple, and I picked a package with all the parts and pieces I needed.
Not cheap, but if you buy the mufflers, they give you 379 dollars worth of pipes and headers for 70 bucks.
So I bought it, I got it, and I put it on the bike. It took me about an hour to fit up one whole side. It’s bright and shiny, and guaranteed to get the girls.

“This ain’t right,” I said to myself. “This is too easy.”
My old headers are handsome units, and I hated to chuck them just because they have holes in them.
Like socks.
If I ever want to enter my bike at the county fair, then OEM headers just might be the difference between a red ribbon and a blue one.
So I decided to sacrifice my 70 bucks, repair my old headers, and run custom pipes from there to my new mufflers.
Or try, anyway.
Because I’ve never done anything like it, and it sounds hard.

You’ll recall that, last summer, I bought a TIG welder at an auction.
(It’s older than me. )
(Stupidest thing I ever did. )
And ever since then, I’ve been looking for a project to teach myself to TIG.
Wouldn’t it be cool if I could weld up my own exhaust pipes? And if I screw it up, I can always use my store-bought spares!
Normally, I’d ask: “What can go wrong?” But it’s probably obvious.

So I bought some stainless two inch tubing and some fittings, and I practiced making mistakes.
TIG is hard, and I never did get good at it, and my vintage welder was … not helping. But I managed to tack enough joints together to repair the headers and route my exhaust thru three 3-D angles and out the back of the bike.

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Meanwhile, we’re going to Scotland.
Hooo boy. That snuck up on me. Suddenly, I’m gathering charger cords and packing backpacks, and we’re leaving first thing in the morning.

I am a reluctant traveler.
I am happy and fulfilled hanging out in my basement, and I always feel like, when you’re travelling, you’re paying people to be nice to you. Plus, the planning is a pain, the language is a barrier, and you need a lot of luck for everything to go smoothly.
But Kirsten did a ton of planning, the Scottish speak English, and my luck is due for a change.
I was out of excuses, so I wrote a check, set aside 10 days, and hunkered down for a good time.

But first, we gotta get there.
We drove to Logan, sailed through security, and settled into our seats. So far so good.
“Stay hydrated,” Mary told me, “or your System will seize.”
She set a good example with a Jack, a Coke, and a water. And pretty soon, she had to pee, so I  stood in the aisle to let her by, and when I sat back down, I got jostled and I spilled my drink in my lap.
Dead center.
It was not a lot of water, and my reflexes are pretty good, and I mopped it up as best I could, but it wicked its way through my jeans and my underwear, and my privates were cold and wet through two movies, six time zones, customs, a train ride, and a six block walk through Edinburgh.
I tellya, that cup mighta been almost empty, but it felt half full.

We stayed at a cool B&B which was four to eight flights of stairs above the street, depending on how you count them. And since we got there first, we picked a bedroom with a bathroom.
And since I was still damp downstairs and my System was well hydrated, I hit the head.
<TMIalert!  squeamish=”Stop” >
In Scotland, the toilet seats are shaped differently than they are here. And as I sat there, um, flexing my abs, my butt lost traction and slipped sideways on the seat. My cheeks squoze together, and my load launched crooked.
</TMIalert! >
It was a bit of a mess, and I suppose you could argue that the first thing I did on my vacation was to wet my pants and shit myself, but by the time the rest of the crew arrived, everything was dry, neat and tidy.

My plan was to get up early, get a walk in wherever we were, and then join the group activities. Nope. I did that exactly once, and even when I did, I wasn’t the first one up.
We did all the usual stuff: toured through the alleys of the Royal Mile, walked in a cemetery, the museum, the royal yacht, toured castles, drank whiskey, ate fish, and lived in close quarters with people we really ought to know a lot better than we actually do.
We drove 350 miles. Kirsten led the way, and I stayed on her bumper. We practiced on freeways, dodged certain death on highways, and learned to love country roads.
Gas worked out to $6.54/gallon.
I got serenaded on my birthday. Lets hope that’s a once in a lifetime thing.
By the time we got to the Isle of Mull, we’d been on a plane, a train, an automobile, a boat and a bus, and we never got our feet wet.  We saw the usual suspects. Sheep, puffins, seals, dolphins, highland cattle, basalt, and the abbey where the Book of Kells was made.
Only the dolphins said hello.
We climbed a hill with a famous rock at the top. It got steeper and steeper, and only I made it to the top. Mary climbed a little past her comfort zone, and the trip down the boulder strewn path was perilous. How do you ship a dead body back to the States?
We stayed in the lavishly refurbished Kilmartin Castle and had a catered meal to celebrate Wendy & Gary’s 45th anniversary.  It was mighty tasty.
The weather was perfect, the people were friendly, and after a week, we were ready to go home.

We split up on Sunday. They went North, and we went south.
We drove for hours, and GPS served us well, but 1 mile from our Hotel, it told me to ‘take the first exit’ in a rotary, and suddenly we were on a brand spanking new bridge on a brand spanking new stretch of highway, and there were no other cars on the bridge.
None. At 7:00 pm.
And the GPS kept insisting: ‘Turn left! Turn Left!’
There are no left turns on a bridge, and I started to wonder if the road was going to end at the end of the bridge. I slowed way down.
The road didn’t end. It dumped us back into traffic, and pretty soon, GPS was taking us back to the same rotary, and telling us to take the same first exit.
But this time, map in hand, we took the fourth exit, which took us to the hotel bar, where we toasted our trip with Scottish spirits.

We had a morning flight, so we were up at the crack of dawn to pack, check out, drive, drop off the car, check our bags, hit customs, eat, and catch our plane.
I had a rubbery egg at an airport restaurant, and it needed salt, so I picked up a black and a white packet at the condiment station.
I salted my egg and I shook my pepper packet. It said ‘brown sugar’ on it.
And the ‘salt’ was sugar, so my egg was sweet.
And it wasn’t half bad.
Welcome back.

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Where was I ?
I went right back to work on my exhaust system. By the time my jet lag wore off, I’d glued my wooden jigs and dropped off my tacked assemblies to be welded for me.
I got a little emotional about it, too, because there are only two things I’ve paid someone to do for me on this whole motorcycle project:
-Put the tires on the rims, and
-Weld a custom exhaust.
I tried it and I couldn’t do it. And my pride took a hit.
Wait till next time.

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While I waited for my welded pipes, the whole motorcycle project screeched to a halt.
I had a couple days on my hands, and I needed a change of pace.
For four years, I’d been telling myself I was going to finish the GL1000, but I never went near it. Until I finally did.
Well, it’s been four years now that I’ve been telling myself I’m going to finish the apartment, and I haven’t done it.  So ….

A couple days was just what I needed to get good and started.
I bought a load of 2×4’s, and it was like old times.  I framed out some cold storage, and I put in blocking until I ran out of wood. It felt good to swing a hammer.