Cafe Racer

Ladies and Gents, this is my (Brandon) first blog post and it is long overdue.  Christine would have you think that this will also be my last post, but I will have to prove here wrong.   Now, not too long ago Christine took the liberty of crafting a little post about my cafe racer.  It was titled "All Things Manly" and can be remembered as one of the finer posts ever to have graced this blog.  

Fortunately she did a fabulous job and provided some much needed backstory including the kindness of my father-in-law, the ATM, and multiple trips to Utah.  On July 15th I made my last trip up to Utah

with a clear determination to get this Cafe Racer back to the OC where it belongs.  Friday when I arrived in SLC my father Lynn and I headed down to the shop and worked on hanging the exhaust, and putting the front brake back together.  Saturday was an all out Motofest working from 8:00 AM until 5:00 AM the next morning.  My dad stayed the entire time and was a huge help in this entire project. Take a look at this video to see how we made out...

Early the next morning, my father-in-law Brad, fresh off a week long Boy Scout trip, went with me to the shop to pick up the bike.  As you can see we got "El Toro" loaded up nice and right, went to pick up  Darrell (Christine's uncle) and we started the road trip.  13 hours later we coasted into Irvine and even had the energy to take the bike out for a spin.  

Here is a nice before and after shot.

This shows some detail on the custom side panels that we fabricated from scratch...

Beauty shots on the beach...

Great way to finish this project with these awesome pictures right on the beach in CDM.  We found this tiny beach with one guy on it, right at sunset and got some amazing shots in less than 15 minutes.  The guy even helped push the bike into position and set up some of the shots.

All and all this is one of the most fulfilling things I have ever done.  It really feels good to take on something that you are completely unfamiliar with, and just go for it.  This took nearly 150 man hours to complete this project, and there was an insane amount of frustration along the way.  But it has all been worth it.  Fortunately I was blessed with some incredible people to help with this project (Brad, Lynn, Darrell, Christine, Linda, etc.) that dedicated their time, energy, and money to see this come full circle.

And that's the story of how "El Toro" came to be.