A Knight Reborn

Wow, I am feeling a sense of overload at the thought of recalling all the stuff I want to bring up in this post. I'll try to get it all in. I went on this scooter ride with a bunch of kids from that Scooter Lounge place and had a lot of fun so I joined there scooter club: Brighams Bees. Well on one of our trips I noticed a scooter that was all red with no decals or anything. I thought it looked so cool so I decided I would take off all the decals on my scooter. I ran over to the Scooter Lounge and they were nice enough to let me use their heat gun to remove all the decals. When I got them off though it left this horrible residue that was to be expected. What wasn't expected was that the residue would be cursed by satan and that it would be unremovable. I used gasoline, deisel fuel, alcohol, vinegar, soap and water, Goo-gone, carbureator cleaner, brake cleaner, WD-40, and probably 3 other chemicals to try and get it off but to no avail. It was going no where. Now I had this sticky stuff all over my scooter and dirt and leaves and all sorts of crap was getting stuck to it. In a last fit of rage I took some sandpaper to the side panel just to see what it was going to take to get it off. Well, after making it look plenty worse with the sandpaper I gave up and decided I was going to be stuck with a ghetto-booty scooter till it died. Well on one of my random trips to the Scooter Lounge I was offered a job by the very generous owner of the store, Dave. I gladly accepted and began my new job selling scooters and accessories. During my time trying to get the residue off Lady Laser I got a lot of input from Jake Everitt, a total stud who also works at The Scooter Lounge. Around my second day there he noticed that I still hadn't taken care of the mess. He told me to "just repaint it, man." At the time I thought I knew a thing or two about my scooter but I had never even taken it apart to see what it looks like from the inside out. I was pretty intimidated, I didn't even know quite where to start. But Jake and the other mechanic Cam helped me the whole time and I was finally able to get all the panels off that needed painting. After 25 bucks worth of paint and sanding materials I was able to scrub down the panels and prime them for some flat black paint. Jake helped me with the first coat of paint and left the rest to me. He's a great instructor and I'm very proud of the work I did on the rest of the panels. It was a lot of fun to paint the scooter. Well after I got all the paint done and the panels back in place, it was time to move on to the next part of the job. Taking a tip from Dave I decided I would take off the "rabbit ear" turning signals in front and use the Euro light alternative that my scooter just happened to feature. With some quick handiwork from Dave we got the contacts out of the old lighting fixture and into the new one. Dave even threw in some gnarly sweet white LED lights to finish off the coolness. I still had the yellow lenses in the back to take care of. Jake made a trip to Eco Moto in Salt Lake and picked me up some smoke colored lenses while he was there. What a sweet heart! Haha, anyways, I got those bad boys on there and I thought I might be finished. Then some guys in the shop started joking about making the scooter "KnightRider" themed. I thought the idea was hilarious so the only thing we could think of besides some sweet decals were some scrolling red LED lights to decorate the front of the scooter. I also got rid of the gray carton box on the back and got a black one to match everything else. That's about all I can think of at the moment. Time for a picture!

The Route

Here is a map of the exact route we took. Just so ya know. You'll have to "View Larger Map" or just zoom out until you can see the whole thing.

View Larger Map

And that's the end of that Chapter

We should have taken a picture but after Fairview we got stopped in the middle of this canyon due to construction. We happened to be at the front of a huge line of cars (they weren't able to pass us due to the nature of traveling through a canyon) when we came to the stop. We were told by the lady holding the sign that it would take about 10 minutes until we could go so we hopped off the scooter to stretch and eat some snacks. We talked with the construction lady while we waited and missed another good photo opportunity. Oh well. After the wait was over we had all the cars in line go ahead of us which also allowed us to be the "flag carrier". We were given one of those bright orange construction flags which we carried through the canyon all the way to the next flag guy who we passed off to him as we drove by in a cool looking fashion. From here it was just a 15 minute drive behind the Wasatch Mountains before we ended up in Springville then finally Provo/Orem! We made it!

Road Demons

Snow Canyon Warriors?

Mt. Pleasant was nice when we pulled in but by the time we got out of town it was POURING rain, I mean, it was really coming down. We could see the sunlight on the road a few miles out so we pushed Lady Laser as hard as she could which was good and bad I suppose. We were able to get out of the rain fast enough, about 5 minutes, but we got nailed...hard. This was the most painful part of the trip. We were both covering our faces with our hands to avoid the sting of the rain. I of course was driving so I had one hand on the throttle and one on my face. Wow, I remember when we came out of the storm we were both soaked and shaking with cold for at least 10 minutes. This was the last bit of rain we had to deal with the rest of the way home though.

Manti

Manti was another awesome stop along the way. The temple there is so intense!


Dan

Kenner

More Towns along 89

Gunnison: PROGRESS WITH PURPOSE!

Sterling and Pettyville: Two for the price of one

Awesome artillery cannons in Gunnison

Longer than we thought

The time really seemed to fly and before we knew it 6 o'clock was creeping on us. The original plan was to make a stop in Redmond, Utah to visit my Grandma June and have a good meal, and although it was possible to keep on keepin' on, we were both very tired and thought it would be best to just spend the night instead. And we're lucky we did because right as we arrived at her house a HUGE rain storm came through that would have destroyed us. Oh yeah! We made a stop in Richfield and I was finally able to buy a long sleeve!


You can see the storm gathering in these pictures.

I love you Grandma! We got to her house that night and she cooked us the perfect meal: bacon, eggs and potatoes. It was exactly what we both needed. It's crazy how much energy you can lose just sitting on your butt all day long, but the sun, wind and rain can really beat the crap out of you. After eating our dinner we joined my grandma in the living room and watched the Denver Nuggets beat the Lakers. GO NUGGETS! This picture was taken right before we left the following morning.