Snowbum's BMW Motorcycle Repair & Information Website

Before I moved to Lake Tahoe, I lived in Mar Vista, a suburb of the Venice-W. Los Angeles area.  That's my new 72 Corvette, and one of my R75/5 BMW motorcycles; the one with the Avon Fairing, which I purchased brand-new, from 'my' dealership.  This photo was taken at the front of the same house (shown with the huge garage and description), in a prior Photo Gallery.  This Corvette was specially ordered in full-race condition, modified before delivery to me by Chevrolet Racing Division, from a stock LT1 Corvette.  It came with such as air conditioning, but with the compressor, etc., REMOVED!  I, naturally, put all the 'comfort' stuff back into operational condition, modifying a few things to enable them to work.  I did have to make a few modifications for street reliability.  I had it on the racetrack too, several times.

It's not a secret that I cook. Early childhood years were spent living over a bakery run by my grandparents, who made Fine Pastries for the best hotels.  I learned a fair amount.  As an adult, I had always wanted something akin to the finest stoneware pottery of the middle ages, as used at Royal Palaces.  I also have a big thing for the Baroque era.  In the early seventies I met a Swiss pottery instructor from the University at Santa Barbara, Oscar Bucher; I was very fond of his work.  I commissioned him three times, to make stoneware to my ideas, for an all-out full-service for 12 people (with a 13th setting for spares). These exquisite pieces included over-sized dinner plates and very thin-wall goblets, etc., all of the finest quality.  What you see in this photo is the result of the first two Commissions.  I Commissioned him a third time and so I have many more of his items, particularly larger pieces.   He has retired, but his work will live on, hopefully for generations.  

All my pieces will probably have to be sold, eventually, if and when I die, or maybe the collection will all go to a museum.  I now have the entire collection in about a dozen large boxes at our house in Carson City, Nevada.

Not long after I moved to Lake Tahoe, I resumed an interest I had in hand-tying flies ...and fly fishing.  I spent much of one particular Summer trying my hand at fly fishing.  I found a unknown & hidden fishing spot half a day's hike into a wilderness area near the top of Ebbett's Pass.  It is still the only place I would hike-to for Golden Trout, my favorite trout for taste and texture. I would pack the trout home in my backpack, surrounding it with snow from a nearby snowfield.   The fish here weigh about a pound and a half.

One of the fun things at So. Lake Tahoe was the yearly motorized bar-stool races, at large motel parking lot.  I had a fair amount to do with design & preparation of winning entries.  I made a good steering system and some other niceties.  My designs were often winners; and I had good drivers too.  Power was not a problem, I used a hand re-wound 6 volt truck starter & a 12 volt battery. "The" problem was handling in turns, these things loved to fall over.  I designed a hidden suspension system. No other entry ever had a suspension. I made it so that no one could easily see that there was a sway-bar too.  We won the first year & came in second the final year, would have been first, but for a collision time-waster. Yes, the girls did the racing!

We had an unexpectedly large snowstorm.  This is my 1958 Cessna 182.  N9917B.   Here I am digging out the airplane.  That's my 1975 Chevy Suburban on the right.

In 1977 my landlady, from whom I had rented a house since I moved to Lake Tahoe about 4 years prior, suddenly decided to retire & wanted the house back.

We moved into the Alma Avenue house in early 1977, and I decided a nice fresh berry pie was going to be a good celebratory dessert for that evening. I had brought my large-size English Pie tins with me from Los Angeles.  I planted raspberries and strawberries later on ...for hand eating ...and pies.

In 1977, even with the new house, I started on a backpacking trip that I had dreamed about for a dozen+ years, wanting to do the entire Pacific Crest National Scenic Trail, from Mexico to Canada.  It is over 2600 miles.  I did it in multiple yearly sections due to my work load.  With careful planning I started the first section at the Mexican border on February 12th.  In 1978 I did another section.  I finished the final section the day before my birthday in late 1979.  I have the certificate from the PCT Association.  My trail name was FLASH. My only ever super-long backpacking trip. Other trips were a few miles to a few hundred.

One year, by early Summer, I was feeling I needed a break from all the construction work & business.  I packed the supercharged R75/5 & headed for Oregon to visit friends. It was well over 100°F when the above lake appeared, I rode over a barrier & went skinny-dipping.  Someone was passing by & took this photo of me & my R75/5; then sent it to me.  Actually, there was a second photo, full-on-frontal, me naked, getting out of the water.

As purchased there was a brick fireplace. That fireplace had a terrific appetite for wood in the Winter. I re-designed the fireplace to efficiently burn anything, be adjustable to burn slowly, such as overnight without needing attention.  The re-design included a lot of metal work, and the bending, welding, shaping, etc., was all done on my driveway from flat steel sheets. I purchased the firewood stove insert, modifying it extensively.  The insert is double-walled, that is, it has a second steel wall & a hidden blower forces air through the enclosed space into the room.   The ceiling box contains a triple insulated jackshaft.  Even the doors and 15" pipe & hood, etc., were hand-made right on my driveway from flat steel.    It is not quite as efficient as a full-on catalytic burner type.  One final modification was made around 1988, to install an 8" SS pipe INSIDE the 15" pipe, separating them by extreme heat rated ceramic wool pad material.  This enabled rapid heating of the stack & the ability to go up to 15 hours+ before adding more wood. I sometimes removed the triangular section in front.  We could cook or boil water on the hidden shelf of the insert.

After 15 very long years as a bachelor, I remarried. Penny & I have been very happy ever since.  We were married at the State of Nevada's smallish Genoa Park, which I had completely rented for the occasion.  We made our arrival ...and departure ...on my sidecar rig.   I still had that sidecar rig & used it regularly, occasionally even in Winter snow, up until June 2019, when I sold it.   That is a tux-T-shirt; the suspenders are known as the Green-Red's, an 'in' thing then, and refers to a TV program from Canada.

The skunk 'flag' on the rear of the sidecar trunk was from a trip back-East on the sidecar rig, where we attended two sidecar Rallies ....one was the Skunks 'up Nort'; the other was the USCA National, in Duluth.  We did 5500++ miles on that round-the-USA trip, on the sidecar rig.

Had a K1 here at my shop. We put a turbo on it, a special set of camshafts.....and a lot more. It was VERY fast.