House moved in and SNOW in Houston!!

OK! So I've been moved into my house for almost 2 weeks now and things are starting to settle a bit, not COMPLETELY yet, but we're getting there that's for sure!
I've still got a couple of pesky warranty items that need to be taken care of, but I've learned you just need to keep on them and don't give up!

So let's start with a few of the house pics, then get to the fun!

Kitchen's shaping up quite nicely, in fact, I probably spent the most time on trying to get that room all spiffed up ;)

From House DONE

From House DONE

Breakfast and bar area, always ready for guests to chill and have a drink and some food!

From House DONE

The living room with the new couches (man I need a bigger TV!)

From House DONE

From House DONE

Bathrooms

From House DONE

From House DONE

From House DONE

And the study!

From House DONE

and don't forget my OTHER favorite room

From House DONE

From House DONE

Now for the fun! Snow in Houston!!

From House DONE

look at the pile!

From House DONE

which helped in making...

Leaning snowman...

From House DONE

standing snowman

From House DONE

And snowman without scarf-because-I'm-not-about-to-leave-a-scarf-out-for-people-to-steal-but-it's-totally-ok-if-they-want-to-steal-my-2-dollar-santa-hat-but-that-would-be-really-sad-if-they-did...

From House DONE

DOOOHHHHH, and just like that, my poor snowman didn't make it through the night, heck, didn't even make it through one hour... can we have a moment of silence please?

From House DONE

This thing deserves an update

So it's been VERY busy as of late. The house is now pretty much done, with my very first official walkthrough happening on Monday.

From House update, pretty much done!

I really love my master bath shower, that thing is awesome!

From House update, pretty much done!

And of course the kitchen's no slouch either:

From House update, pretty much done!

From House update, pretty much done!

All utilities are set to turn on when I close next week, even got my trash can already:

From House update, pretty much done!

Insurance is set, mortgage is done, one furniture order is set to be delivered a week after I close.

Still have plenty of stuff to set up, pest control, one more furniture order, mattress(es), linens and blankets, groceries and toiletries. With all that still left to do, I unfortunately don't think I have enough money to get my nice big TV yet, so it's going to have to wait ='( but oh well, such is life =P

On my way out to Kelly's engagement party in Austin this weekend. This time next week, I'll be a homeowner! *clap clap clap*

House? ;)

Sooo... for any of you who read this... sneak peak:



Study ;)



Master bath:



Brick work started!



Check out the arches!





Brick on all 4 sides too =)

Romeros Las Brazas and the King Biscuit Cafe

So I've had a chance to start up the search again and I got to experience a couple of choice places this weekend!

Romeros Las Brazas:
Heck if I know what the heck that translates to (I'm sure I could google translate it), but all I know is that the breakfast tacos were amazing! The place is waaay out off FM1960 and 290, but if you live out that way, it's worth a stop over. Probably worth a stop over even if you don't live that way!

The tortillas were, of course, FRESH made daily and served hot. This is almost a requirement of a mexican place for me now (spoiled? maybe.). I had two tacos, the chicharrones and the barbacoa.
The chicharrones one was good! For the uninitiated, chicharrones are fried pork skins, yes, that stuff. =) Except they slathered the pork skins with a beautifully spicy green chile sauce stuffed into that fresh tortilla, yum.
But the real scene stealer was the barbacoa! I've never tasted barbacoa with quite this kind of flavor before! It was mild, yet flavorful, with a wonderful mouthfeel that wasn't super greasy, but you could still taste all the goodness that is fat rendered out of the meat! And for 1.75 a pop, that's about the right price for the quality of fare here.

YUM.


The King Biscuit Cafe:
Now this place had ambiance! I would regularly go to this place if I could! It was a cute little cafe out on the north end of downtown in the older section of town. Brightly colored inside and out, lots of kitsch and interest without being pompous at all.
Maggie and Nick took care of us as if we were guests at their house, awesome. You could really tell that the people who work here care about the place and it not only was reflected in the food they served, but in their outright interest in their customers!
I found out that Nick wasn't even a server! He's actually the night cook! And Maggie was filling in that morning as well for one of the other workers who just decided not to show up. I tell ya, the place was so cool, it made me want to go and put some hours in myself!
I had the biscuits and gravy, and this was a very different biscuits and gravy for sure! Although I do love the traditional buttermilk biscuits with white meaty gravy, this one had a wonderful white meaty gravy with big ol chunks of breakfast sausage in it, but on special toasty rolls with just a hint of sourdough it seemed (maybe I was wrong)... Very good stuff and with very nicely cooked country potatoes, what a great plate! reasonably priced at 6.95 for the dish as a brunch item and we were definitely good to go =)

Oh the woes of the ducati desmoquattro valve adjustment

So the 748 has been due for a valve adjustment for about the last 300 miles. I finally got down and well, frankly, spent the money to buy all the tools I would need to complete the job. Biggest purchase were the MBP collets and shim kit, but both are one time costs for sure that will set me up for later adjustments with no issues hopefully!

So here's the bike all torn down:


Had to take all the plastics off, fuel tank, seat, airbox, throttle bodies, and eventually will take the radiator off too to make things easier:



Belts had to come off with the adjustment pulley removed, new lock nuts ready to go:



Got new belts ready to go too, old and new here:


So I start on the vertical head because frankly, it's both the harder and easier head to work on depending on which side we're talking about, intake or exhaust.

I got my first look into the head of a desmoquattro:



And once you get the opening rockers off and the cam pulled, you can get really easy access to the valve shim stacks:



Access to take measurements isn't exactly easy depending on which head and which side, but I was able to at least get to them...

Here's the first reason why I decided to replace the half rings with MBP collets, those are supposed to be in TWO pieces, not three! And I found two valves with half rings in at least 3 pieces or more:



To get the closers off (and to get at those half rings, you push on the back of the closer rocker and things slide down pretty good:



Good shot of the shim stack with the opener shims removed:


Good shot of the OEM half rings and the MBP collets, check out the beefiness and the sheer better engineering:



Unfortunately, the VERY first problem I ended up with is that I lost one of the MBP collets down an oil passageway!!!!!!!! ARGGH. I'm almost certain now that it is in fact in the engine somewhere. I don't quite know what to do, but I will be flushing the engine with a couple of gallons of cheap dino oil to see if the collet will come out on its own. hopefully it does...

That was day 1, 9 hours of work, only 2 valves got adjusted.... ='(

Day 2, 9 hours of work again, but all closers were adjusted. BUT, I found the biggest kicker... All the opener rockers having flaking chrome!!!!! ARGH. The desmoquattro was well known for this issue as Ducati outsourced the coating process on the rockers. The outsourced company did not do the final heat treatment to relieve the stress in the chrome and after some hard wailing on the bike, the chrome starts to flake, your valves go WAY out of adjustment and your cams start to get damaged if you don't catch it.

Luckily, I think I caught it in time. I will have to look at the cams again though to verify. The problem though is that this bike already had the rockers replaced once! Unfortunately, the rockers were replaced with OEM rockers which have the same problem! tell me the logic in that!

So, unfortunately, I was not able to adjust the opener shims as I had to pull all the opening rockers to send off to california cycleworks for an aftermarket megacycles chrome plating...

here's the damage:





So now it looks like I will have to wait at least 2 more weeks to have all this back to me, probably more like 3, plus another 700 bucks!! OUCH...

AND on top of all that, i STILL have a collet probably in my engine that I need to get out! ...

someone buy me a beer... =(

2008 Hill Country Trip Day 3

Ok, getting back, I know it's been a while, but I should probably finish the update!

Day 3 was our first FULL day of riding and when I mean full, I mean FULL! We started kickstands up at 9AM and didn't get back into koyote ranch until like 6 or 7PM!

What a gorgeous day to ride though! Here's how the day started!





Our little friend was ready to go too ;)



After a bit of riding



we ran into our first bit of trouble on highway 337:
hmmm, someone smell burning brakes???


Ron's 1098S unfortunately burned up a rear brake caliper so eventually after some work on the ground:

we decided to rip the sucker off so he could continue riding for the rest of the day, rear brake? who needs em! =P (apparently not ron!)

We soon hit the nice roads going uphill into the twisties on our way to Leakey:



unfortunately, somebody thought it would be a great idea to tear the road up completely for 10 miles into Leakey!!! WTH!!??

right before that though, we had another bike go down with a non functioning clutch... pull the clutch in and it wouldn't let go...

luckily, after some time on the ground, I was able to get the bike going enough to get into Leakey for some fooood:



Back on the road again after lunch:





Why can't we have roads like this in Houston!!??



check out the pugglepod in action!


Had to stop to see how everyone was doing on gas, too bad we had to go find a gas station!


Duke's hiding out at 90mph!


Found a gas station that had been there for literally generations! I believe the people running the joint were 4 or 5th gen family!



and weird enough, peacocks?



so we end the day getting back without any more issues...

BUT, so at some point when we get back, Bryant let's me take the 'white unicorn' as we call it out:



So after saying no once, I decide, what the heck am I thinking??! hahaha, so i take her out and am hanging off the bike after the second turn! That thing just BEGS to be thrown into the turns!

Unfortunately, on the way back, I'm full lean, off the side of the bike, and in the middle of the turn, there's a cop going the other way!!!! I can't even think of what the cop was thinking as I'm flying through the turn...

So I have to make a decision, and FAST. My decision? I can't say it was the smartest conclusion in the world, but I decided that it would take that cop a bit of time to turn around and make it through those turns... so I decided that if I just BLASTED through the last set of turns as fast as I could, I could avoid seeing him again!

................ ... well, it worked =X made it back to camp, flew through camp, parked the bike, hopped off, went inside as fast I could, and grabbed a beer! =X

The rest of the night was beeer, ribss, and hot tub/pool. good times.