Holy fuck, this has been a shit season. 1 little fire in the entire month of August, unprecedented in my career. I can hear the horseshit screed “Well, it’s good not to have fires. Smokey Bear and all that fire is evil shit.”

Wrongo. It’s not like fuel conditions reset to zero if the shit doesn’t burn in a given year. It just means the biomass reservoir gets larger and the potential for even more impactful fires grows yet another year.

But I’ll go more into that stuff in a later post. Right now I’m biding my time for this dreadfully non-lucrative season to end so I can return to Bend and school.

To keep the mental monsters at bay I’ve been futzing with Thumper a lot. KLR forums are a blessing and a curse. Lots of good ‘fix it’ help, way too much ‘I did this custom thing, try it out!’.

So, you may recall from Stupidbook posts the thing looked like this:

Well, I got bored and now it looks looks like this:

Gonna have to hit up Next Adventure for another sweet sticker for the fairing as it was the most noticed thing on the bike. And I love promoting those guys. If you have no idea what NA is, Google ‘em, visit them, buy stuff from them.

It started with a forum thread and me going out, pulling a side panel and hitting it with some rattle can to see what it would look like.

Not good. Got up early this AM, rode up to Hailey Coffee Co. for some joe and delightful bike babble with the cute red head barrista then hit the hardware store for some primer, paint and clear coat. Spent a good while stripping the plastic off the bike then wishing I had taken photos of the wiring connections and complex removals. It all worked out fine, thankfully. The memory is still fairly solid.

Thumper looks a little weird naked:

Now to let it sit for a day in the sun to really cure up nicely then into the Craters of the Moon area for some exploring on Tuesday.

Unless some shit decides to burn burn burn!!!!!!!! Doubtful, but a boy can dream.