alpha whiskey hotel

This subway ad, featuring a magic pumpkin carriage, was plastered all over the trains this morning. Does anybody else think that the pumpkin carriage looks like something else?

Law-Men Cafeterior!

At Ikea. You can fit a decent amount of stuff into one little car. But a 2m high bookshelf is longer than you would think.

I got a car! Ish. I signed up for a local car-share service. It’s like a fully-automated, short term car rental system. You pay them 2100 yen to check your drivng record, then they give you a card. The card opens the car, which you drive, and then when you’re done, lock it up again with the card. The cars are parked in convenience store parking lots, so when you are finished, you go into the store to pay for your rental. Today was the “explanatory meeting” for all of us who passed the record check.

I ran the moped out of gas, so I had no choice but to push it 1km to the nearest gas station. Pictured here is the current state of the gas station. Oh well, it was only another 1km to the next one.

Rick, manager of Geronimo, left Japan recently and left behind his 50cc 2001 Yamaha Vino moped (actually Victoria’s moped which she hasn’t learned how to ride yet). I have been wanting to learn a bit about how to work on bikes, so I have taken over the moped and will work on it during the summer.

In general the bike seems to be in decent shape mechanically — the clutch is smooth, whereas the clutches on 50cc mopeds tend to go gravelly after a while. Also, the bike has no problem getting up to 60 km/h which suggests to me that the drive belt hasn’t worn down (or has been replaced). There may be a bit of a problem with the choke, since it’s hard to start when it’s cold.

There are a couple of “roadworthiness” issues that I need to address — the tail light is not firmly attached to the bike, the horn does not work, and the lenses are missing from the turn signals. After that, I can get cracking on the cosmetic issues, where I will learn how to repair body work and paint plastic motorcycle panels.

So, here is Part 1, where I reattached the tail light to the moped.

Here’s what we’re starting with.

I must say that the rear fairing made of duct tape is not very attractive, and it may be a bit of a safety issue, as the tail light is not secured to the bike and is moving freely.

I took off the duct tape and found that some of the plastic from the rear fairing is missing entirely. It seems to have been kicked in at some point.

Here is the bike with the side fairings and rear fairing removed. Scooters are not very attractive without fairings; I guess that’s why they’re so expensive.

I took as many of the pieces of plastic as I had and cleaned them off, and then held the jigsaw puzzle together with masking tape. It’s still missing a lot.

I used a fiberglass repair kit (which consists of some sheets of fiberglass cloth, some resin, and some hardener) to build up some fiberglass from the inside of the panel to give it some structural integrity and hold all of the existing plastic in place.

Here is the repaired panel from the outside. The panel still doesn’t look very good, but it is strong enough that it can hold the brake light in place. I have put about 100km on the bike since then and it seems to be holding up well. The next step, once I take care of more roadworthiness issues, will be to fill in the cracks and missing areas with Bondo, then sand and repaint the panel.

Big sister and little brother together in the parking lot!

Stay tuned for Part 2 of the project, where I will address the issue that the bike is insufficiently horny.

I went 247km round-trip to Utsunomiya for a plate of gyoza. Obviously the purpose was the actual ride, not the gyoza, but the food was good too. Pictured here is a statue of the gyoza-shaped mascot of the restaurant we went to.

Nice to see that the local Fat Guy Store has all of the most prestigious name brands available.

I am at the Softbank shop waiting to upgrade my mobile phone. In this poster on the wall, Softbank points out that they’re the best because babies can be contract holders, while other phone companies make kids wait until Grade 1.

They were handing out wigs at Disco Inferno. This picture is proof positive that anybody can look cool if they just put on a clown wig under a baseball hat!