An intro to an intro.

To Do List:

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Cleaning and painting
    [ ] Swing arm
    [ ] Headlamp bucket
    [ ] Kickstand

Ordering parts
    [ ] Head bearings
    [ ] Tires
    [ ] Rear wheel bearings/spacers

Need to build

    [ ] Motorcycle stand

    [ ] Paint "booth"

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I have amassed many pages of notes and writings, as well as pictures of the time I've spent with my "new" 1981 Yamaha XS650. Over the next few months [edit: This is b.s.], I'll be transferring all of these to this blog in order to share the fun -- and the not so fun -- times that I've had tinkering in the garage with this bike. I feel that a short introduction, and a bit of back story, is in order first.

I randomly acquired this bike from a neighbor for the excellent price of free after mentioning that I thought it would be cool to have a bike. It turned out that this bike had been sitting on some property he owns out of town and had been sitting so for the last few years. He didn't have a title for it and the guy he got it from reminded him, "of the movie Deliverance." Great. He assured me that he had ridden it at at least one point but, if he remembers correctly, black smoke had been seen coming from under the seat. What could this mean, I wondered?

He said he would load it up in his truck (it just so happens to the the red one in the picture) the next time he went out to "the farm" and would drop it off. I waited impatiently for a few weeks until one day, I found it sitting in my driveway when I returned home from work. The pictures below were taken before I even took off my work boots that day in July of 2008.

One of the first things I noticed that would need some work was where the seat cover was torn and that the back tire was flat. And that it was purple. Little did I know that these would soon be but footnotes on my to-do list.