Rough year  10/25/06

It's been a pretty tough year but things are finally getting better.

I've continued working on the drawings, scrapped some for lack of good reference, and am in the process of redoing others. I'll be making some updates to the site over the next few weeks, including the RSS feed, and a way to buy limited edition prints through PayPal. I'm not sure on pricing yet so let me know what you think. info@classicmc.com

This drawing is a nearly completed 1948 Vincent HRD - I just have a few more details to complete and it will be ready to print.

Sorry for the site problems  8/5/05

Sorry about problems with the website. As some of you probably noticed I forgot to renew my domain and classicmc.com was shut off for awhile. Well we're back up and I'll have a few more drawings up in the next few days.

If you were hoping to grab this domain - well, close but no cigar.

List of drawings  7/24/05

I've decided to create a page to list the drawings I'm working on. I tend to start a number of drawings at the same time (ADD) but will eventually get back to finish them. Not all of the drawings are of vintage motorcycles but I'll include them in a separate category and may eventually move them to my other site when I get that up on it's new server.

Link to drawing page

Triumph X75 Hurricane  7/24/05

First a quick apology for leaving the wrong email address in the Contact link. For some reason the new address didn't "take" the first time I uploaded the update, or more likely I forget to upload all the changes. It's working now.

Another drawing I'm working on is of Triumphs X75 Hurricane, a rare limited production machine designed by Craig Vetter. Vetter is best know for design and production of the Windjammer Fairing and touring packages of the seventies and eighties. He has a bunch of stuff on his website including a new book on motorcycle design.

Larger view of Triumph Hurricane

It's been awhile  7/22/05

It's been awhile since doing much with this web site and it's taking a little time to figure out using the software and templates again. Tinderbox isn't the easiest program to wrap your brain around and it's missing some of the nicer features of blog software. More accurately you have to create those features yourself.

I'm working on a bunch more drawings (not all of motorcycles) and they are coming along nicely. It takes a lot of time drawing in the details and photo reference doesn't always help. I see now that I need to change the way I shoot pictures are various events, getting more close ups of details that don't show up very well in wide angle shots.

Here's a drawing of a Matchless I'm almost finished with. All that's left is to fill in the fine details I was talking about.

New things  7/14/05

Working on some new stuff

For the last few weeks I've been working on some new stuff, specifically line drawings of vintage motorcycles in Illustrator and some of the drawings are turning pretty good. I've run a few test prints of these drawings and they look good printed on 13X 19 inch paper using my Epson Archival printer. I was surprised to find out they look especially good printed on Epson Bright White Watercolor paper because normally I hate textured papers. The drawings actually look better on the watercolor paper than Epson Archival Matt which is the paper I usually use for photographic images.

Each of these drawings take two to three days work to complete and I'm usually working on more than one at a time. Using the Epson 2000P printer these images should last around one hundred years if matted and framed. Although not technically considered an archival paper Epsons Watercolor paper is exceptionally good so the longevity shouldn't be a problem. The large size is also nice although I'll probably have to cut the matts myself because I haven't found any commercially available to fit this size. Since these are drawn in a vector based program I can also print to 8 X 10 and 11 X 14 without any loss in quality, but the larger size is more impressive.

Larger View

Another Image  12/6/04

Here's another image of the BMW R75/5

I shot this picture on my way home from Yellow Stone National Park. The BMW ran well the entire trip but didn't have much power going over Bear Tooth Pass. Rain, sleet, and even a little snow never slowed it down the entire trip. The only problem was when the speedometer needle broke near the border of Minnesota and North Dakota.

For Sale in Minnesota  12/6/04

For Sale - 1970 BMW R75/5

Easy project bike. It ran when I stopped using it a few years ago. This picture is from a trip I took with it in 1998 to Yellowstone National Park.

Clear Title, seat hinge needs some work, and carb diaphragms probably need to be replaced, new tires. Speedometer needle is broken and needs to be replaced.

Make reasonable offer, Bike is located near Buffalo Minnesota, west of Minneapolis. I will not ship.

First Thursday Pics  8/6/04

This is an image of one of my favorite Harley's from the AMF years. It's a CR1000 the motor companies attempt at building a cafe racer. They didn't sell all that well back in the seventies but now are popular with collectors and vintage enthusiasts. This one has been nicely restored to show room condition which is a rare sight around here.

With the nice weather Dulono's was packed. Bikes were parked for several blocks up and down the streets and a lot of riders had to park in another lot across Hennepin Ave. This thing just keeps getting bigger and more popular all the time. I'm not sure how much more this event can grow before some of the local residents and businesses start to complain too much. Fortunately, it's a very laid back crowd of people who are just there to look at bikes and socialize.

Tomorrow I'll try and post more images from the August First Thursday at Dulono's in Minneapolis.

More CR1000 images

and here are a couple of crowd scenes

First Thursday Video  8/5/04

I found a video I shot from First Thursday at DuLono's last fall. Hopefully this will look pretty good although the file is a bit big. This video will not play unless you have Quicktime installed. Unless you have a broadband connection it will take some time to download.

I'd like to do more Digital Video since I have a camera and a decent editing system. If you have a vintage bike you would like featured let me know. Hopefully posting a short video once in awhile isn't going to get me into trouble with my ISP. Anyway, this gives you a general idea of what First Thursday is all about.

August First Thursday  8/5/04

It looks like it's another beautiful day for the gathering at Dulono's in Minneapolis so there will probably be a lot of people there.

I've been dealing with some medical problems and haven't updated this website as much as I would like to but hopefully that's all coming to an end and I'll be able to write a lot more than I have for the last several months.

I'm going to get some DV of some of the bikes and people tonight and should be able to post that in the next couple of days. At this point the video will only be in Quicktime format but in the future, I'll provide it in other formats as well. I'm not sure what this is going to do to my bandwidth usage but I hope people enjoy it. At least it will give you a small taste of what First Thursday is all about.

I had planned to ride my 1971 BSA Thunderbolt tonight but the battery died on it so I'll be ridding the Concourse in again. Unfortunately, as the numbers of people coming to First Thursday has increased the number of vintage motorcycles showing up has decreased. Enough of the old iron still shows up to make the event worthwhile for old bike enthusiasts; it's just not, what it once was for fans of the old bikes.

April Fools First Thursday a Success  4/1/04

Good turnout for the April 1 First Thursday at Dulono's in Minneapolis. The weather cooperated but was a little cool, and an early sundown probably kept some riders away. Fewer than normal vintage motorcycles showed up but this is normal for this early in the season.

A very nice 1973 Honda 450 Scrambler showed up and drew some admiring looks. Hopefully we can find out a little more about this bike and it's owner in the near future. I'll write some more about the event tomorrow, but wanted to get at least one image up tonight.

FT and GP movie  3/31/04

If the weather holds the April 1, First Thursday should draw a good crowd. I wouldn't expect as many vintage bikes as usual because there is still sand and salt residue on the roads. Expect a good crowd if the sun is shining and it's not to cold. There were lots of bikes on the roads today so, I expect some of them to make find their way to Dulono's tomorrow afternoon.

Where - Dulono's Pizza near Lyndale and Lake Street, Minneapolis

It's not about vintage motorcycles, it's about GP Racing, so this is a little bit off topic. The documentary film Faster is coming to the Twin Cities this weekend. There are so few movies featuring motorcycles that aren't pure crap that I recommend seeing this one. It just might be the "On Any Sunday" of the new millennium.

Check out their propaganda at :

http://www.fastermpls.com/

And the trailer at:

http://www.fastermovie.com/trailer.html

Note: This website has no financial interest in or affiliation with this film. - we just think real movies about motorcycles are cool.

Word from Oz  3/27/04

I just received an email from my brother in law in Australia giving me his opinion on the design of this website. Mostly it was positive, so far everyone seems to like the design, but then I forgot that the annual motorcycle show is this weekend so most of my critics are probably there.

It's nice to get some feedback on the design, but isn't there anything you think I should change? What about the use of the small tag images vs the larger ones? Images on the left or the right? Perhaps alternating them first left then right? Let me know what you folks think.

Multi level stories  3/26/04

For whatever reason I'm having difficulty getting multiple level story's to work using Tinderbox. I know this is possible because I've seen it done on other websites. It's a nice feature when it works. Of course to get it to work I have to modify the same templates that were giving me so much trouble before.

What this will do when completed is create a link to another page when a post exceeds a certain length. This will help keep the main page from becoming to long with more in depth posts and articles.

Templates are now working  3/26/04

This is a further test of using a Tinderbox run blog for the front end of an online publication.

Hopefully, it's possible to design the agents and templates well enough to manage this entire site with only one person.

The next project is to get the (more) or (continued) feature working so each posting doesn't take up as much space on the main page as they now do. When I get this feature working there the first paragraph of each story will appear on the Home Page, but with a link to the rest of the story that's on another page.

On the right hand side of the screen I want to include links to as many of the clubs and organizations as possible. It probably won't take long before these links will need to be placed on a separate page. Having them sorted my state and province might be a good idea as well.

Coming to a Dulono's near you  3/26/04

This is another test just to see how the images are transferring to the new website. I'm still not used to using relative paths when it comes to these things.

I appear to be having some problems with the style sheets for these pages. The link colors are all wrong, and the font size is to big for navigation section on the bottom of the page. It looks like I'm having more problems than just using relative links.

Also the image appears to be a link that goes nowhere, when it's not supposed to even be a link. I may have to rear down apart the template and redo it to get this stuff right.

Nothing is going to change the fact that this is going to be a big page because of the images. I'd like to go a little smaller, and save time for people with slow connections but the subject matter dictates larger images to be effective.

One option may be to adjust the number of posts on the main page down from twelve to eight. That would save a little time, but not very really very much.

Test note CMC  3/26/04

This is simply a test note for the CMC website. Which is currently under complete revision - no really, this time it's for real.