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The Lorazo Micro-Rally Fishing Tractor Pull Tech Session

99007

99007

El Dookey loves to ride.
Since I was unable to attend the Solstice shin-dig at Lake Loraz, I invited myself down for the week-end to see his place and what not. Was so excited to go I woke myself up at 4:45 am and hit the road before the sun did.
It was a brisk 52 degrees and I was glad for the sweatshirt under my vented jacket and turned on those lovely heated grips. Big pockets of cool fog awaited me at the bottom of hills and by the time I stopped for gas I was dang close to being chilled. But it got nice and warm fast.
Here is a shot of the sunrise on M-50 as I was heading for the SE corner of Michigan.
 

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we have to include the bike in our shots, right? Here is the Snow Queen basking in the 89 degree heat along the straight-as-an-arrow OH224. There were a lot of farms, fields, fields, farms, and fields to be seen as I cut acoss the top part of Ohio.
 

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Made it to Chez Loraz and put the bike in the stable with his TWO bikes. They seemed to get along fine - there was no fighting or noises from them the whole time I was there.
 

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Well, Chef Loraz greeted me in the finest way possible - with food and stuff! After we chowed on some sausage and sauerkraut, he gave me a tour of the area that he lives in. The lucky &^%$ found a house in this really cool subdivision that is wrapped around Cinnamon Lake. Nice choice, Gale.
Well we went by the clubhouse/pool/tennis courts and what do we see? Bunch of folks having a tractor pull with souped up lawn tractors. Perfect entertainment for a couple of boys like us.
By the end of the competion these little tractors were pulling over 6,000 pounds. It was cool. As you can see, they made the young folks wear helmets. One older lady told me her husband flipped his tractor right over backwards on his maiden voyage and missed cracking his head open on the pulling sled by a couple inches. ATGATT!
The sound of these engines was really great and a couple of them were burning alcohol. (Wonder what will happen when they find out about nitrous!)
 

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Some truth and some fiction...you sort it out.

Then we settled in for some "feeshing". This lake has no gasoline engines allowed - all the float boats have battery powered 5 hp motors and there are lots of canoes, row boats etc.
I started out mostly feeding the fish - they were taking crawlers off my hook faster than I could bait them. Loraz kept hauling the fish out (we put everything we caught back).
I really missed my Glare Cutter 3 fish finding sunglasses, but managed to have fun anyway. One time I know I got a hit from a rare Fresh Water Marlin. Dang, my wrist nearly snapped from the huge hit. It was a good thing I had my Triple Titanium Wrist Rest on or I would still be in the hospital.
(I did manage to catch 5-6 fish...mostly blue gills and one that Loraz told me was a Rock Bass, hell I thought sure it was a Lost Grouper.)
Loraz pulled in 4 fish on 5 casts, then I noticed it was the same fish every time. Seems he worked on some kind of cash deal with this fish to swim over and hit his line every time after he was released.
That skullduggery ended fishing for me.
This is the lovely spot from which we caught the multitude of feesh.
 

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They feed me good at Chez Loraz.

After we feeshed Lorazo put on his chef hat (and washed his hands Thank God) and fixed us a couple of big ole steaks along with some fresh squash and onions. MMM-mmmm, Dang. Yum and all that.
Once we ate we sat around a campfire drinking a brewski and telling each other the absolute truth.
ps- you can really see the stars on account of the neighborhood does not allow mercury/sodium lights. The Milky Way was kicking butt on a clear night.
Here is the happy chef.
 

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Tech session in the morning. Gale is a patient teacher for sure. He walked me through a valve adjustment and throttle body sync. Dang - the Snow Queen purred all the way home after that.
It made me right happy to wrench my own bike and my checkbook enjoyed the savings. Next time I'm gonna do it on my own! (Gotta order one of them Twin Max things - that was waaay cool.)
Here is photographic proof that not only was I working on my bike, but also that my hair is thinning out pretty fast!
 

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well after all that hard work (actually boys and girls, under Gale's excellent teaching it was a fairly easy process. I enjoyed it) we had to eat some more. We had the Lorazo Especial Breakfast number two with toast and donuts. Mmmm, eggs scrambled on the grill with some onions and more fresh veggies and dee-licious peach preserves for the toast. Did I mention the Amish butter? Brunch doesn't get any better than this.
Then Gale and his sweetie Barb (she is a sweetie, too) elected to ride with me back across Ohio. Here they are looking all cute and leathery in the garage.
 

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But not before some parting gifts

This was just like a rally...a rally just for me. We had fun, fishing, and BS around the campfire. Then we had a tech session. We ate good food and we left together on our bikes.
But there was more. Sensational prizes! Since I was the only one at the rally I won all the prizes. Loraz The Generous rendered me speechless with his generosity. First he hands me a leather jacket with vents. Tells me to try it on and then tells me to wear it home and keep it. DANG! What the...? Not only that, but I am now the proud owner of the coolest magnetic tank bag - it is the little one Cortech makes. Perfect for me and the Snow Queen.
I put my camera in the tank bag and it made it easy to pull up to this bronze sculpture of two bears in front of the Cabellas on my way home.
 

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What a great week-end. Gale and Barb are tremendous hosts. All I had to do was keep them laughing and they kept feeding me and giving me prizes!! Whoo-hooo. Plus I learned how to adjust boxer valves and operate a Twin Max. Life is good for this Michigan boy.
Here is the sun saying good night as I was rolling home along I96 about 30 miles from home.
For milage freaks this effort for me was a BTBMB297. Translation of that is Back To Back Marshmallow Butt 297 as I went a total of 594 miles from Saturday morn to Sunday evening.
Thanks Loraz and Barb for a great week-end. You are the best.
 

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1. great report!

2. gale - is that a beetle parked out on the grass?

3. cliffy - youre still using the titanium wrist rest? i would be embarrassed to admit that! i've got the new gyro-comensated one now, carbon fiber of course, and it has a wireless connection to a fish finder device. the fish finder observes the movement of the fish and transmits this to the wrist rest and it autmatically compensates for the movement thus preventing injury.

without the wireless, i can still use it for bowling.

4. good job on the valves/TB sync. was it really smoother? how long did it take? i'm close to doing that work myself.

5. gale's 'hood looks sweet.
 
username said:
1. great report!

2. gale - is that a beetle parked out on the grass?

3. cliffy - youre still using the titanium wrist rest? i would be embarrassed to admit that! i've got the new gyro-comensated one now, carbon fiber of course, and it has a wireless connection to a fish finder device. the fish finder observes the movement of the fish and transmits this to the wrist rest and it autmatically compensates for the movement thus preventing injury.

without the wireless, i can still use it for bowling.

4. good job on the valves/TB sync. was it really smoother? how long did it take? i'm close to doing that work myself.

5. gale's 'hood looks sweet.
Click to expand...

I will ignore your obvious attempt to (yet again) out carbon fiber me. Besides that anyone who is any kind of a fisherman knows that with the gyro-compensated units you lose the feel of the fish on the line. What shows are you watching on Sunday mornings anyway?

The job probably took 90 minutes or so. I didn't really time it. The valves need some careful tinkering. I noticed an improvement in the 20 to 30 mph range where I had been experiencing some hesitation. Almost surgelike, but I know the twin sparkers don't surge!

his hood is really, really cool. The lake has fingers all over the place so it is not like some big round or oval type lake so there is a lot more privacy. With no motors allowed it is nice and quiet, too.
BTW - the red house across from the feeshing spot is for sale!
 
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GeoffMiller said:
No pin? T-shirt? Mug?
Click to expand...
Nah, I guess I will just have to make do with the crappy tank bag and leather jacket, but hey, don't tell Loraz I said anything, okay? This is just between you and me......
 
Hey, great micro-report buddy!

I knew that this Loraz character wasn't as bad as the police reports I've been reading... :D

Mike
 
Good to see that boys are playing well together. Not that the rest of us feel left out or anything. No we're fine on our own. Hmph. ;)
Maybe I'll invite BG over for some girl things. Like changing our oil...or doing our nails.
 
username said:
1. great report!

2. gale - is that a beetle parked out on the grass?

3. cliffy - youre still using the titanium wrist rest? i would be embarrassed to admit that! i've got the new gyro-comensated one now, carbon fiber of course, and it has a wireless connection to a fish finder device. the fish finder observes the movement of the fish and transmits this to the wrist rest and it autmatically compensates for the movement thus preventing injury.

without the wireless, i can still use it for bowling.

4. good job on the valves/TB sync. was it really smoother? how long did it take? i'm close to doing that work myself.

5. gale's 'hood looks sweet.
Click to expand...

1. Cliffy is just too nice. You guys will think I am a nice person or something if you believe him.

2. Yes it is. My neighbor collects *historical* vehicles. That is the nice version and I am sticking to it.

3. I talked cliffy out of using his laser guided, gps enhanced wrist rest and fish finder. It is not good manners to outfish your host using the latest in fish catching technology.

4. Come on up, I will walk you through it and you can see for yourself.

5. Thanks man, I love it here, so peaceful, and it relieves the stress of the day almost as much as a ride does.
 
if i get anywhere near that part of the US again on the bike, i'll take you up on that offer.

of course, you're welcome to head this way and do some hill country riding with us anytime. since my bike is an oilhead, by definition it can always use a TB sync and valve adjustment, and we can do the tech session here. :D
 
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