Mid-West Mini-Fest Wednesday Part 3

Next stop Waterloo, Iowa for lunch. My old good friend James "Bierkan" Vierkant met up with us and actually bought my lunch. I hadn't seen him since the years he spent exiled in Oklahoma from Iowa.  We got to work on his 750 Honda a bit with limited success. His sense of humor that causes more people to shake their heads than laugh seems to still be intact.


♪ ♫ Big River ♪ ♫





Time to hit a random tavern in Wisconsin.


Great place with a nice big horseshoe bar.


And a tavern dog.

Mid-West Mini-Fest Wednesday Part 2

Well the choice was ride the last 300 miles by myself or load up my bike and RV it with Di and Terry. So I said why not roll out like a yuppie headed to Sturgis.


The third bike in the trailer was a trick though. I had to pull the floorboards off my bike to clear the axle of their bikes.


"Oh, that uh, that there's an RV. Clark. But, don't you go falling in love with it now."


I should have bought one of those cassettes. The FM wasn't working and so Terry's XM modulator rig wouldn't work either, but the company was great.

Mid-West Mini-Fest Wednesday Part 1

Terry has some cool stuff.














That was a party for sure.

Mid-West Mini-Fest Tuesday Part 3

Well this looks like fun. 


I'm holding out hope that I can dodge the worst of it.


That looks pretty nasty to the East of me for sure. I might just make it.


Well probably not.


The cold air hit me and the sign by the exit said 14 miles until next exit so I got off to gear up. I happened to stop perfectly right for a #mirrorselfie.


That's looking rough for sure.


Turns out that I got rained on a bit, but not bad really at all. I made it to Terry and Di's house and it was great to be there.


There was a killer "Scooby-Doo" moon later that evening too.

Mid-West Mini-Fest Tuesday Part 2

Most folks don't have anything nice to say about driving through Kansas. I must say going East to West seems to take forever to get to Denver, but honestly Eastern Colorado is about as bland as Western Kansas. Anyhow I do love driving through the Flint Hills.


I just don't have equipment or expertise to capture the place in a photograph.


The beauty and grandeur that is the America West. Those dots are cattle. Beside the fences keeping the cattle off the highway you don't see any other fences. I would bet that working cattle in open county like this would take real cowboys on horseback the same way it did 140 years ago.


Blue skies and green pastures...


as far as you can see.


The countryside gives way to the city as it always does. Kansas City Skyline.


Watching the clouds cutting through Missouri.


I took a huge bug, but luckily over my nose and not really in front of either eye.


WOW! They still have brand new tapes for retail sale at the truck stop. Sadly, nothing even worth getting as a novelty though.

Psycho's 6th Annual Mid-West Mini-Fest Tuesday Part 1

This is how I GPS. Looking to spend the night at Deacon(Terry) and Di's place. Des Moines or bust.


Loaded for bear.


Running up I-35.


Beautiful day for a ride.



Gas stop in Kansas, I was getting a bit nervous about my gas situation.


Good advice right here.

Mid-West Mini-Fest Thursday Part 9

Lanny says, "it's fixin' to rain." Well he is from Indiana so he probably didn't say "fixin' to".


But, yeah it's fixin' to rain.


Batten down the hatches!


Yep. It's raining.


Only a shovelhead can break itself riding in a trailer.


The crew is mostly still dry.




Kelly gets to work to get her bike sorted out.

Shout out to Longbow Custom - New Progressives

Daniel with Longbow Custom in Bartlesville, OK has been helping with a ton of advice on my Shovelhead. I thought I really need to show him some love, so I asked if you could get me Progressive rear shocks for my Vulcan. He hooked me up with a great deal on some stock length Progressive 412 Shocks. He even dropped shipped to my house and with sales tax, he was about the same as any random eBay seller.

Genuine Harley-Davidson Bug Remover

This actually started as a joke on my Instagram feed. I saw these at a local HD Dealer and took a picture.

"What's the saddest part? These exist, these are almost sold out, or that the parts guy asked me, "what's a super E? " At least they still carry 50 weight. They used have it out on a shelf, now they look it up in a catalog to find the part number."


Well some how or another, a shovelhead friend decided to send me some with the help of his unknowing daughter. She's a shovelheader, too.


While I'm still not a paid endorser(I did get these for free), I need to check them out and do a review.



I don't really have fancy paint or a windshield that I would need to stop and wipe down, but my helmet and visor do get really nasty. I honestly don't know why you would use a special moist treated wipe if you still needed to start with a water hose. I figured I would see how they do without water on my helmet and visor.  I also don't have a Genuine Harley microfiber cloth or Genuine Harley Gloss, whatever that is.


I figured I would try this out on my crusty bugged helmet with no water. I did lay in on the bugs, and let it "soak" for a bit, before I starting wiping with it.  I am very pleasantly surprised with the results.


I used a clean dry bandana to swipe it down and there wasn't any issue with streaking on my vision. That's a big deal considering that a streaked up visor is worse than a bugged up visor riding at night.


There was still enough towel left to work over the van bumper, but there's probably no hope for that to look nice again.