Sometimes, it sucks to work.

I have spent most of what would otherwise have been a great week to work on the dragon trike in New Mexico working. I enjoy New Mexico and I like our people there, but I wanted to stay home.

Even after spending the week out of town, I wasn’t going to forsake the Dallas appearance of the International Motorcycle Show to work on the trike. Overall, the show was pretty good. Enjoyed seeing the Ducati stunt team. Nothing sounds quite like a Duck. Found that for all the hype, the Honda Fury is unridable for the same reason most other choppers are. Long bike, long seat, long pegs, short bars. Who want’s to ride when folded into a cramped “C”?

The bigger problem with the show was with what was missing. This is my third year attending. The first year it was held at the Fort Worth Convention Center. Besides being my home town and essentially walking distance from work, the Ft Worth show seemed much…. I don’t know, “fuller”. More vendors, more manufacturers, more.. stuff. Last year in Dallas, there were fewer bike vendors than the previous year in Fort Worth. Absent in Dallas last year were names such as Moto Guzzi and Vespa and Kymco that were prominent in Fort Worth the year before. Similarly, some notables were missing this year, like Victory, KTM, Triumph, and of course, Buell.

We still managed to have fun and shop a lot.

One thing that occurred to me suddenly whilst I was in the Kawasaki pod was that my plan to use the throttle bodies that were apparently from a Ninja 650 might be simplified by the acquisition of some stock parts.

One of the part fabs I will need to do is some kind of adapter between the TB and the manifold. The Ninja (or the Versys; they use the same engine) has to connect the TB to the engine, so maybe their connector can be adapted to my manifold easier than building something from scratch. According to Kawasaki Parts House, they are only about $20 apiece. Unless i can get RIGHT on fabricating something, I will probably order a couple of them.