Thursday, April 22, 2010

My dog loves horseshit.


My dog loves horseshit. Otherwise she’s a wonderful dog…nearly perfect in every way. A pure yellow lab, Sadie fetches a tennis ball with enthusiasm, obeys basic commands like “sit, stay, and come.” She doesn’t bark at night, avoids digging in my yard, doesn’t chew much now that she’s 2 years old, and is eternally cheerful. But she has a “thing” for horseshit.

About a quarter mile down the road from our home in the country we have some neighbors who raise a half dozen horses. When we let the dog out of our gated property for a run she blasts out of the gate like a Patriot Missile targeting an enemy rocket and homes in on the horse pen. In seconds she skids to a stop amid a cloud of dust and gravel and crawls under the fencing in order to browse the buffet that the horses were so kind to stock with exotic varieties. Ya got yer green balls of horseshit – with pieces of undigested straw sticking out of them. Then ya got yer brown mushy piles of horseshit that look like a Frenchman’s beret, when in actuality they are no more than well-used oats. There might be more options from which to choose, but I tend to keep my distance from Sadie’s culinary preferences.

It doesn’t take her long to select her favorites for the day, and is soon chowing down like Rosie O’Donnell at a Hostess Twinkie eating contest. Sadie eventually gets her fill, but even being completely satiated doesn’t stop her from continuing her excursion in to equine excrement. If she can’t eat any more, she apparently feels obligated to roll around in it. Occasionally she’ll stop to check to see if she has missed a spot on her fur, then dives back in. She is…if nothing else…finicky about developing an even layer of horseshit. I guess there is something to be said for a dog that strives for completeness and has an eye for detail.

OK. She’s an outdoor dog. We don’t bathe her. That’s what rain is for. It has been raining all day today, so I assumed that Sadie would be relatively free from the filth that she so carefully accumulated yesterday. I went into my shop to work on my Harley, and Sadie followed me in.

Did I mention that Sadie is a loving dog that always feels the need to be rubbing up against me or poking her nose in my crotch? I was sitting on my work stool putting the air cleaner back on my bike, and Sadie tried to practically crawl into my lap. The aroma of a wet dog combined with day old horseshit was overwhelming. Sadie mistook my frantic attempts at pushing her away as a signal to play and doubled her efforts. Eventually I was able to coax her outside and then stagger back into my shop, gasping for oxygen.

I’m not going to say she smelled bad, but the EPA came to my house this evening. They were all wearing space suits and asking questions about my dog. The odor she had generated would have been rejected by Saddam Hussein as “too cruel” to use as a chemical agent during battle. Chuck Norris would have trouble functioning in an atmosphere that smelled like that dog.

When I entered the house later that evening I was told by my wife (who obviously has an acute sense of smell) to take my clothes off in the garage. Thanks, Sadie.

Like the old joke goes:

“My dog has no nose!”

“How does it smell?”

“Awful!”

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Upcoming videos

Though I have several new products in the works, my next videos *might* be more instructional instead of an advertisement. There are a number of mechanical tech tips I can offer as well as riding techniques that will increase your enjoyment and safety on the road. We'll just have to see what shows up in the video camera.

Thursday, April 15, 2010

Re: The Fuel Tank Tamper video

I received a great message from Greasychopper. In the video there is a still photo of a fuel gauge. As Greasychopper noted, real bikers don't use fuel gauges. We prefer to estimate our range by either monitoring the odometer, or better yet...we just make educated guesses about how much fuel we have left in the tank. That estimation is accurate because a real biker has had so much riding experience that he can "just tell" when he's getting low on fuel.

I elected to put the fuel gauge in the video for the visual effect. Artistic license, if you will. Hey...it's my video!

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Question about the FTT and metric bikes.

Metric bikes can benefit from the Fuel Tank Tamper, too. The current model is, of course, constructed of 5/8th inch material and designed for "American iron." An FTT for a metric bike will need to be built of 15 mm material. This is all fine and good as long as the bike is in the US. Once the metric bike enters a country that uses the metric system for liquid measurement it will need to be recalibrated from gallons to liters.

Frank

Frank, the Real Biker

More on the FTT

Some folks on another forum have been discussing the wildly popular FTT. Here is a cut and paste of parts of the thread:
--------------------------------------------------------------------
>> Does Frank make a model that will work on the new 6 gallon tanks?
>> >>
> >
> >I'll hafta ask him, but since it's using a split-phase tri-conductive
> >modulator, I assume it will work for all tanks. The amount of
> >compression will be a factor of the initial volume of fuel.

I thought it was more the split frequency of the heterodyne in micro
kilohertz that was a factor in the 6 gallon tank more than the phase
tri-conductive modulator. Ya know, more amplitude controlled?
--------------------------------------------------------------------

As you can see, development continues.

Frank, the Real Biker

Update on the "FTT."

An interested person asked if there will ever be a version of the Fuel Tank Tamper that collapses or folds for easy storage. Currently it is in the design stage, but there are a number of considerations to be dealt with. One, the folding/collapsing mechanism must be intrinsically safe. Even a small spark from the device could ignite the fuel, causing a rather robust chain reaction which would yield great heat and rapidly expanding gasses. Two, the FTT must be fairly rigid during the tamping process. As we all know, holding something with your fist while quickly going up and down with it in a repetitive motion requires a hard rod. If it was limp, you simply cannot do it and achieve the desired results.

We will just have to wait and see how the newer version perform in our tests.

www.franktherealbiker.com

New Product Available

The Incredible Fuel Tank Tamper is now on the market. After several years of research it is finally available to the public. The "FTT," as we call it here at our engineering lab, lets you compress the fuel in your tank so you can put in more! With a typical motorcycle fuel tank that holds 5 gallons, you can easily "tamp" it down and get a 6th gallon in there.

Check it out at Frank, the Real Biker.