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  The Joys of Country Living: Water Edition
  • rr2241tx

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  @shakeyhand I should buy a lottery ticket! Turned out somehow the jet broke in half AND the pump guy had a salvaged part! We swapped out the automatic pressure switch for one with a low pressure cutoff that will keep this from happening the next time the cistern runs dry. Flush toilets are restored and my Better 3/4s wants to stay through the weekend. Backstrap, gravy and mashed taters for supper tonight!
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  Prone to Getting a Flat Tire ...
  • buddhaman

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  Tweels, as Michelin calls them, are good in specific circumstances but they tear right up if you get rocks in the spokes. I’ve been running CAT skid loader tires filled with foam for 19 years in granite rocks and heavy thorns. Two tires ran 15 years with a sidewall cut from the tread right to the bead from the first weekend they were in use. The current set went on in June 2017, there’s a bite or two out of the tread but nothing yet that will cause a failure. They’re rough riding and cut up the ground but a heck of a lot more rugged than rubber tracks and Tweels in my applications.
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  Bonanza!
  • rr2241tx

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  Hoss, Adam, AND Little Joe! Congrats
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  San Antonio
  • buddhaman

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  @rr2241tx glad to have struck a chord with you about earlier times. Sounds like the culture was and remains rich, something that makes memories genuine, filled with detail.
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  Modern Hay Operation.
  • bigfoot

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  @bigfoot it does look like it's making sausage.
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  The Yips in Life
  • buddhaman

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  Horny Toad
  • bigfoot

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  @shakeyhand I couldn't resist I gave this one a belly rub and he or she stiffened up and went to "sleep". We have plenty of red ants and I will have a wreck before I run over one of these guys. I had boxes of them when I was a kid and even had one spit some pink stuff at me one time. It's true they will do it the one that spit was really big. Right now in the evenings just before dark the bullbats are out by the hundreds flying over our field. I had a small one one time for a few weeks we rescued off of a nest that had dead parents. They have a bad habit of nesting right in the middle of the road like a killdeer. A car most likely got them. I caught it insects and would crush them and add water so it could eat but one day it got a big grasshopper away from me and tried to swallow it. Wouldn't go down and couldn't go up. I never had much luck with wild animal rescues. Isn't meant to be I guess.
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  Barndominium Addition
  • bigfoot

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  @shakeyhand Every time I look at that brace I laugh. I know it works but man the angle just ain't right. Oh well. I got out today and pressure washed the truck and carport. This red dirt doesn't wash off very easy.
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  A Shrimpers Story
  • bigfoot

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  @shakeyhand The Hawes family owned all that land the air base was on and ran cattle on it for many years. When the war broke out the land was condemned and taken for the war effort. The DOD made a deal with them that after the threat of any war they would release the land back to them. Well, the government didn't hold up their end of the deal and would only lease them their own land for grazing rights with term limits They pulled the last cattle off of there a few years ago. It was an island so they had to be barged across the intercoastal canal or swam them across. That was the country club of the Air Force and now is under either the Department of Interior or Texas Parks and Wildlife and is a park. The Hawes were left empty handed.
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  It's what's on the box that matters what's inside ..
  • buddhaman

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  @buddhaman I hope you were able to keep that powder dry!
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  Home Generator
  • bigfoot

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  @orkan you'll never regret it
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  Big Grasshoppers
  • bigfoot

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  I have eaten shrimp smaller than that thing.
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  The Best of Any World ...
  • buddhaman

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  @orkan she's the best a guy could have. Pulled out my best rope so as not to let her get away!
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  Friends You'll Always Have
  • buddhaman

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  Rough Night
  • bigfoot

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  No loss of life in these storms thankfully. The tornadoes that spawn are F1 variety but still can easily kill. The storm that went west of us a week or so ago had three tornadoes imbedded in it. Lots of property was damaged we totally missed it. All the years I was fishing for a living gave me great respect for the weather.
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  Bobcat and Rattlesnake
  • bigfoot

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  @bigfoot your right about nutrias being imported to eat lilly pads that clogged up the freshwater waterways, but the people that imported them didn't realize that the nutrias preferred to eat marsh grass instead ..... marsh grass that holds our marshes together, hence the destruction and eroding of our coast here in Louisiana. Chef Paul Prudhomme tried to get people to eat nutria, but we have much tastier things to eat here in Louisiana and most everyone said "No way!!!" And there are also some nasty ass birds that live down this way as well ..... But in general, in Louisiana, you can make a pretty good meal out of most anything that comes from a ditch (crawfish, crabs, turtles).
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  Presidents Day
  • bigfoot

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  They don't call Louisiana sportsman's paradise for nothing lots of fishing going on there. My mothers mother was raised on a rice farm in Houma I believe her father operated a gin there. This was pre depression times. We passed over the Frio River a few weeks ago and it is bone dry down this far only the springs are feeding it I have only tried tubing it one time and it wasn't running then. When it's running it's crowded for sure. Garner State Park still gets lots of visitors.
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  Caracara
  • bigfoot

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  @orkan Black headed buzzards or juvenile buzzards are just as bad. The juveniles haven't developed their sense of smell yet and go after calves and fresh kills or so I am told. They were working on the pigs rear end already. A pissed off momma cow will run them off usually if she can.
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  Christmas Gift For The House
  • bigfoot

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  Christmas Cactus
  • bigfoot

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  @lottie Interesting article. Well, we did move from a very humid almost tropical climate here and they have been sitting out in a plant rack getting some sun and some shade. The nights we are dropping below 32 degrees we have been bringing them in a freeze would likely put an end to them. They sound kind of like orchids they don't grow in soil and we had very little luck with them I even bought orchid food and we kept a schedule but alas, they always died. The Christmas cactus sure as heck don't like it really wet. The white one now has a peach colored bloom.
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  Hungry Babies
  • bigfoot

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  Big Changes
  • bigfoot

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  Well, we have wireless internet. Slower than molasses in a blizzard.
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  Rotary or vibratory tumbler when using rice?
  • muller

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  I have a very large rotary tumbler. It is an 8” pipe about 30” long. It is an awesome tumbler with stainless pins. It does work with rice, but it is not nearly as quick or effective as a vibratory. It takes about 3-4 times longer to get similar results as a vibratory. If you are going with rice over stainless (which you should) then you should go with a vibratory over rotary. I can’t remember who makes my vibratory tumbler, but it was not too expensive and works quite well. The store bought vibratory will probably cost less than building a quality rotary. Motor, bearings, shafts, pulleys, belts, pipe, etc. it ads up fast.
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  What actually happens in school right now
  • tyler c.

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  we home school as well. Wouldn't have it any other way at this point.
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  Cell Phone Booster
  • bigfoot

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  @orkan I'm getting one. I will do a full review.
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  Barbecue
  • bigfoot

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  Been a while since I did a brisket and they have been really scarce in the stores. I am guessing the heavy beef processors might be back up and running lots of cuts of beef have showed back up on the shelves including brisket. They had lots of small ones like this little one I grabbed and I also bought a whole sirloin for $2.99 a pound. It weighed about 18 pounds so lots of steaks and stew meat off of it. I have to watch out on my intake of red meat but include it a couple of meals a week. Most of this brisket will be sliced and frozen into two servings in vacuum bags. Just me and my wife and we try to stretch a dollar. This small brisket should be done around six this evening.
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  July 15 2020
  • bigfoot

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  @martino1 Richards boat in the picture is a Striker. It's aluminum and I guess close to 50'. The 3412's should be around 600hp each and it has a diesel power plant. I have been on it and the finish is pretty good it needs a lot of work he bought it as a fixer upper. Like I said it just sits there and he tinkers on it and hired a motor crane to set it up on blocks to change some of the plate in the bottom several years back. Electrolysis got into the aluminum and it started leaking probably from shore power from other boats near him. He had it financed through a boat builder and they ended up writing it off and letting him have it just to keep it from sinking. I told him he should have snuck out of that deal but he had too much invested to walk. The two happiest days of boat ownership is the day you bought it and the day you sold it.
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  Science Project
  • bigfoot

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  Hanna
  • bigfoot

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  They have cute nicknames for the mayor and the County Judge there. I forget the millions of dollars they were given under this mayors term to rebuild houses that flooded during Harvey but I believe only fourteen or so were rebuilt. Talk about a swamp and I'm not referring to the kind alligators swim in.
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  Epic Music...share what your listening to!
  • lottie

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  I'm not sure Larry gets the credit for this song but he added some personal touches to it. The acoustic version was one of my dads favorites.
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  2020 is the year of the unreasonable and illogical.
  • orkan

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  I've been talking about the dunning kruger effect for years. https://www.zmescience.com/science/the-dunning-kruger-effect-feature/
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  Day Tripper
  • bigfoot

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  Winter showed up.
  • orkan

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  Here's the drought map for our area. If you move the cursor over the map it gives the county name. Where my property is it's one adjacent to the red area on the border that is Maverick and Zavala counties. We are in Frio County and rr2244 is somewhere around Blanco County I assume. Even Calhoun County which is next door to where I live on the coast is in an unusually dry pattern. We seem to be getting large amounts of rain at once then go through long dry spells here. We had close to eight inches in one day just a couple of weeks ago here. Crazy for sure. https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/CurrentMap/StateDroughtMonitor.aspx?TX
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  The question that explains almost everything
  • mamalukino

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  Road Trip
  • bigfoot

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  @lathoto Mark loves that Harrison. He just put a new chuck on it after twenty years I guess. He uses soft jaws a lot he has a cabinet full of jaws for different od's and got a new gadget that attaches to the jaw holes for boring them so you don't use a ring. I don't remember the company that sold those lathes I think they were in Rhode Island. Every year he would go to the ASME shows in Houston and Chicago compliments of them and I got to go one time to Houston. CNC machines were gaining popularity for small job shops then and there was lots of little guys drooling over tools. I spent two hours at the Bridgeport Booth playing with a retrofit CNC set up for a knee mill. I wish I had taken more pictures of the tool cabinets when I was there. When I worked for him no cameras were allowed in the shop and we were always under scrutiny by the engineers we worked for. Eventually there was a sting that busted some guys that worked for our customer selling machine work under a dummy corporation using parts from our shop and others relabeling them and selling them back to the company. Corruption has no borders. I will pump Mark and see if he knows where any used lathes might be maybe he knows something.
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  Happy and Healthy Thanksgiving
  • mamalukino

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  Fall Harvest
  • bigfoot

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  I don't worry too much about the seafood caught around here. We have a bunch of marine biologists stationed here that do several samples weekly for fish and shrimp also oysters that include water quality testing and also tissue testing. Lots of money generated through the sales of license at least they have a few good programs they spend it on. The oysters are really regulated and about time they are.
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  Our elections are binary choices
  • mamalukino

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  New breakthrough in optic lenses
  • rhyno

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  I remember when Simmons came out with the Aetec line of scopes. Aspherical lenses, boy they were the cats meow. I fell for it and bought one for around a hundred and fifty bucks. Buddy of mine had a slew of them on his pig killing rifles he used at night with a red spotlight. Better than a Zeiss he claimed. I still have one on a 6.5 x 55 but the second one I bought used I retired to the back of the cabinet. Certainly nothing like a Zeiss.
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  Garden 2019
  • bigfoot

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  We are wrapping up our spring garden this week. Wednesday it rained almost twelve inches and last night another half inch but we got most of everything picked before all this rain. I went ahead and pulled two rows of sweet corn yesterday and cut it off the cob for freezing. I still have six rows I planted later than yesterdays that should be ready pretty quick. Sure hope it doesn't sour or rot. I mowed the major portion down of my corn but it wasn't doing anything so that's the way it goes. If it would have all made it I would have some major work on my hands like years past. We picked a few blackeyed peas and they are already in the freezer for the winter, eight two cup packages to be exact and we have a table full to be shelled right now from yesterdays pick. I made Polish Dill Pickles and my wife has been making sweet and bread and butter style as well as some kind of squash pickles. That may be a bust, never had them. I guess enough sugar and vinegar and you can tolerate them. We ended up with enough tomatoes for 16 half pints of salsa and some for the table to slice and put on sandwiches. Home grown tomatoes are so different from store bought hot house varieties. Dang mockingbirds sure like them. I got a few pictures before we picked and some of the finished products. Sweet corn silks are really colorful sometimes and for some reason I didn't have one single worm in the ears. I didn't spray anything on it I guess the moths didn't make it this year in all the wind we had. What little damage I had was from a chinch bug looking insect and very few of them. Pickle Factory Finished Wife's Canning Blackeye's G 90 Sweet Corn
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  April 13 2019
  • bigfoot

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  Well, the African Lily is doing its thing finally. Another day or two and it should be 100 percent. The striped Amaryllis shot out a couple more blooms also. It's going to hit ninety here today and the winds have been blowing in from the Gulf to the tune of thirty miles per hour just about every day this week. That's the fuel for all the violent weather going on at the frontal boundaries. Plenty of humidity to go with the wind, almost see it in the air. Got my shadow in one of the pictures.
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  Good Cop/Bad Cop
  • ragnarnar

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  @rhyno This happened in my city, so I am familiar with all of this. Charlotte has a notoriously shitty police department, I could go on for days about just how sub-par they are at their job. This is a primary example of their poor police work. However, in this particular situation, I think it is all a bit 50-50. They police violated several standard practices that, if followed correctly, would have likely left the situation with everyone still breathing. But there has to be some blame on the man shot here. He came into the BK with a gun, threatening people, and went into the kitchen area after someone he was having a dispute with. He then still had the gun in his possession and did not respond in a smart way to the officers when they arrived responding to multiple reports of someone threatening people with a gun. I don't know what his state of mind was at the time: watching this it seems obvious he was not right in the head, and I would think that an officer should have been able to draw the same conclusion and react in a different manner, but his erratic actions are ultimately what put himself in danger. So to me, the shooting was almost certainly unnecessary, but there is no way the courts are going to rule it anything but justified. And this is coming from someone that, if you have read some of my other posts, thinks very little of the Gestapo we now have as police officers in most parts of this country. The policework here was certainly shoddy, but there is nothing anywhere as close to as bad as the Philando Castille incident. And they let that shitty cop off 100% free. So there is no way anything is happening to the cops on this one
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  Congress sets voting, gun ownership, drinking and enlistment age at sixteen
  • mamalukino

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  @mamalukino ... ok, then don't put it in the "news" section.
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  angrier and more extreme
  • mamalukino

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  BANNED
  • racegunnr

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  Worst for me is I am selling a new Nucleus action and had 3 guys on the line for it. Now I can't contact any of them....
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  FedUp Fails Again, Hard
  • rr2241tx

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  FedUp Ground couldn’t find my freestanding business when I was downtown, literally ACROSS THE STREET from FedUp Office. They took several adult signature packages to the health food store directly behind my shop. There was a 25’x4’ lighted sign facing their door. There were similar signs on each side EXCEPT the back that faced the health food store. The little vegan snowflakes would nearly die of fright when multiple cases of ammo and rifles from the auction would show up. The mailman there for a while was a slender young lady who never filled her bag more than a quarter full. Small flat rate boxes with 70# of lead ingots were invariably hand labeled in her script “Very Heavy”. She had a tall curb and four steps to get lead boxes from her truck to my front door. I would see her trying to get those out of her truck and go get them myself.
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  Netflix watch list.
  • irish

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  Seige of Jadotsville on Netflix is pretty good, from the little research I did it stayed pretty true to actual events, certainly didn’t paint the UN in a good light.
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  How does the NRA work?
  • rhyno

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  I don't care about bump stocks ... I DO care about the way they were gotten rid of ... I care about that a LOT. They were gotten rid of by changing a definition. A definition about technology. And the technology did not change. So how could the definition change? Well, logically it could not change. Hence it was not changed for logical, scientific, rational reasons, it was changed because a tiny few dukes and duchesses wanted it to change ... and THAT IS BAAAAD. Once we allow laws to be made by the dukes and duchesses, we know where that leads ... well, we're already there ... hecque ... maybe we've almost always been there ... but yes there are some of us, like moi (and most on this site) who are the real liberals. Those who believe in liberty. And that means in part ... PHUQUE THE KANG !!! :D
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  Seriously Mentally Ill Indiviuals with guns
  • martino1

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  Being good and Godly doesn't mean going to a building with a cross on it. It means being righteous every minute of every day. Seeking truth, in all things. Fighting evil, no matter its form.
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  Santa was running a few days late
  • bull81

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  Careful what ya get them interested in, it can get spendy LOL This was Drew at 15....by 18 he had gridded up as a pro racer with MotoAmerica.... Oh the guns i could have owned back then! LOL Glad he's on his own building guns for me now!