4th of July

 Mountain Home, Arkansas

 Fireflies...watermelon...blueberry pie 

Paul and Diane's family will begin arriving tomorrow for the big summer blowout. They don't do the 4th fireworks shows anymore because:

1. It scares the grandchildren.
2. When they set the woods on fire it's too hard to put out.

I have a watermelon chilling for the occasion. I'd also like to make three blueberry pies. There is a blueberry farm just up the road.

  
One Blueberry Pie

3/4 cup sugar
3 tablespoons cornstarch
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
4 cups blueberries
9 inch double crust pie pastry
1 tablespoon butter

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees F (220 degrees C).
2. Mix sugar, cornstarch, salt, and cinnamon, and sprinkle over blueberries.
3. Line pie dish with one pie crust. Pour berry mixture into the crust, and dot with butter. Cut remaining pastry into 1/2 - 3/4 inch wide strips, and make lattice top. Crimp and flute edges.
4. Bake pie on lower shelf of oven for about 50 minutes, or until crust is golden brown.

 It's a pretty place. After listening us to us debate buying a house for nine years, they offered us their spare house for as long as we like to see how we like living in a house again...It's OK but after a few days we decide to stay mobile and avoid unnecessary entanglements and things like lawnmowers, leaf blowers and paint brushes for as long as possible...

The berry farm has onions and other produce...

A lot of deer in the neighborhood...the fireflies are very thick here in the early evening. My favorite species is the Photuris that kills other fireflies. The Photuris sucks out the juice from other fireflies to retrieve bad-tasting chemicals from their bodies, which it uses to protect itself from predators.

Kilroy was here

Mountain Home, Arkansas

During WWII, this particular graffiti began to appear wherever the American G.I. advanced in Africa, Europe and the Pacific. Although it was not known originally where the phrase came from, one explanation was provided by James J. Kilroy, a New England shipyard welding inspector. According to Kilroy, The shipyard riveters at that time were paid by the rivet. At the end of the day they marked the last rivet installed with chalk. Less ethical workers might erase the chalk mark of the previous worker to be paid more. To counter this, Kilroy would write "Kilroy was here" on each chalk mark. These markings were subsequently discovered in many ships and landing craft when sealed compartments were accessed for maintenance. The inaccessible locations and ubiquitous frequency  of the markings lent an almost supernatural air to them, and soon the icon (borrowed from a 1938 British cartoon) and phrase was everywhere that the army went.

Our friends have invited us to stay in an extra house in they own in the woods in Mountain Home, Arkansas. It feels odd and a little confusing to be rambling around in a 3 bedroom, 2 bath home after nine years of living in a 300 square foot motor home.

 This weekend we went down to Conway to help their son-in-law Jason and daughter Caroline a little in the new home they bought. It has six acres and about 4,000 square feet of space with a pool and a tennis court. It was a sadly neglected short sale and another casualty of the great recession.  We worked on the kitchen rebuild and ate some good burgers, watermelon and key lime pie.

They are gutting the old kitchen, putting in a tile floor, new ceiling and lighting as well as installing new cabinets and appliances.

Like everything else, the tennis court is going to need a little work to bring it back.

The neighbors had called the pool "the black lagoon"...They pumped it out, scraped up a lot of black stuff with snow shovels and pressure-washed it...

I got to take about a six mile walk early Sunday morning....it went past the University of Arkansas School of Business...their mascot is the razor-back hog, I think...

I had my own graffiti during my travels in support of Vietnam in the Pacific Rim. It was on a rubber stamp and green ink pad that I carried in my flight suit....the stamp was meant to be ironic...it said

KILL A COMMIE

 FOR CHRIST.

 Perfect for restroom stalls in officer's latrines...Perhaps there is a god...if so, One still wonders how it would feel about the general human practice of making war in its name?

The Clinton Presidential Library

Little Rock, Arkansas

The Women's RV Forum Get Together at Petite Jean was a great success. I think that the ladies had an average of 2.4 dogs each. There was a skunk in a culvert next door and a number of Canadian Geese in the lake. The pot luck dinners each night were fun and the handful of males present sat outside the circle and discussed cigars, Fidel Castro, politics and taxes...it was all very civil despite a wide range of viewpoints.

For the next few days we'll be running a straight line East on I-40 though Little Rock, Memphis, Nashville, Chattanooga, Asheville and Raleigh to see the grandchildren again before returning to Florida for the winter.

Speaking of cigars and politicians, Mrs. Phred and I broke away one day to visit the Clinton Presidential Library in Little Rock...We are collecting all 16 libraries and we are about half way there.The building itself is nicely designed, but we felt that on the inside there wasn't much "there" there...

There was the usual collection of odd gifts and Christmas Trees, but the Clinton Administration offered only unprecedented job growth, prosperity, poverty reduction, no wars, balanced budgets and dramatic economic growth...all hard stuff with which to create library drama...we greatly preferred the LBJ and Truman libraries...for the interesting times...

Clinton was the youngest person ever elected as a U.S. Governor. He was also the youngest to be defeated for a 2nd term, although he did come back and win four more terms as Governor of the Razorback Hog State.

The Oval Office and desk are reproductions. The original desk in the White House is made from the timbers of the H.M.S. Resolute, which was trapped in the Arctic ice about 1810. The Americans towed it back to England when the ice melted and the English took it apart and shipped some timbers back to Washington with the suggestion that they be made into a piece of furniture...

IMHO Clinton got a bad deal with an out of control Special Prosecutor by the name of Kenneth Starr. That whole impeachment thing for a minor peccadillo was totally inappropriate constitution-wise. The library had a little section on that waste of time and money. Clinton was a bright and likable boy who often said funny things:

"It depends on what the meaning of the words 'is' is." –Bill Clinton, during his 1998 grand jury testimony on the Monica Lewinsky affair

"What's a man got to do to get in the top fifty?" –Bill Clinton, reacting to a survey of journalists that ranked the Monica Lewinsky scandal as the 53rd most significant story of the century

"When I was in England, I experimented with marijuana a time or two, and I didn't like it. I didn't inhale and never tried it again." –Bill Clinton

"It was a real sort of Southern deal. I had AstroTurf in the back. You don't want to know why, but I did." –Bill Clinton, reminiscing about a pickup truck he once owned

"Being president is like running a cemetery: you've got a lot of people under you and nobody's listening." –Bill Clinton

"I asked him to do it because he was the only person that I could trust to read all 150,000 pages in the Code of Federal Regulations." –Bill Clinton, on asking Vice President Al Gore to tackle federal regulatory reform

"Sometimes I feel like the fire hydrant looking at a pack of dogs. For six years I had declined to tell those kinds of jokes, because I have been told it is not presidential. But I feel kind of outdoorsy today." –Bill Clinton, at a party honoring the 150th anniversary of the Interior Department.

"Look, half the time when I see the evening news, I wouldn't be for me, either." –Bill Clinton, in 1995, on a pre-campaign swing through Montana and Colorado.

"It wasn't my finest hour. It wasn't even my finest hour and a half." –Bill Clinton, after giving an endless nominating speech for Michael Dukakis at the 1988 Democratic convention.

"You'd think he was running for First Lady." –Bill Clinton, on George H. W. Bush's criticism of Hillary Clinton

Lake Norfork

Mountain Home, Arkansas

We're spending a couple of weeks here. Mountain home is not easy to get to, which is one reason I like it. It's in the Ozarks and there are no interstate highways within 200 miles. The signs going into town say that the population is 11,012 but those are the 2000 census numbers.

They have five tennis courts and several movie theaters. They are moving the town library to a new site. There is a meat market that sells excellent steaks. Lake Norfork winds for miles way up into Missouri. We're hoping to catch the Arkansas Chili Cookoff up at Bull Shoals before we leave.


The Wal-Mart is world class. Wal-Mart started here in Arkansas...We have friends here, Paul and Diane. Almost all my friends and all my pets are dead. Paul and Diane have made the cut...it's more about who they are than that they are not dead yet...We used to camp in their compound in the woods, but the new motor home won't negotiate the driveway so we stay on the lake in an Army Corps of Engineers campground. It's only $9 a night with our senior discount.

Paul has given us the key to his pontoon boat, the "Ratty Bastard". We take it out on the lake and swim and float and sleep and read...Someone is siphoning his gas at night...we go out a mile and back and use 8.5 gallons....he's going to put a lock on the tank tank...


This is a place we could stay for a month and watch the leaves change..I play a lot of tennis with Mrs. Phred and have three 6-4 losses....almost my best ever...They are spending stimulus dollars to upgrade the campground...It's somewhat like Roosevelt's CCC program although the workers zoom in and out with big shiny new trucks...

On the One Hand...

Lake Norfork, Arkansas

We're parked on the shore of Lake Norfork. Our campground is provided by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. When they build a dam and create a huge recreational lake, they usually throw in a few nicely engineered campgrounds.


You probably read about the incident in California where an old man punched a health care supporter in the nose and had his little finger bitten off in return. It wasn't me. I'm strictly a nose-biter. Sure...it's true I could have put on a pair of adult diapers and driven 30 hours to the California rally. But I didn't...really.


The old guy didn't like the idea of government being involved in health care. One of the biggest worries of this type is that the wrong kind of people might get treated for illnesses or injuries. Then there is also the concern about "death panels" denying treatment to registered Republicans. The irony is that the the old guy got his finger treated with his Medicare card. The doctors couldn't reattach the pinky because of concerns about bacteria. Medicare will cover a tetanus shot.


The lake is lovely. Paul and Diane loaned us their pontoon boat. We go out every day after tennis and read, picnic and swim in a sheltered cove. We used to be boat owners. Due to a long series of expensive disasters, Mrs. Phred and I really appreciate the concept of "other peoples boats" and feel very lucky to have such generous friends.


The boat is called the "ratty bastard". We are a little disappointed that Paul has removed the tiki torches. It's a long boat, with a turning radius similar to an aircraft carrier. As we try to dock it, Mrs. Phred gives me a stream of shouted instructions. I try to turn the helm over to her, but to no avail.

The prime rib at Keller's cove was excellent, as usual. The tattooed waitress tells us that she had her baby since our last visit. They no longer have karaoke, which is an annoyance since I had seriously rehearsed "Billy the Mountain" by Frank Zappa in preparation for the visit.

Motorist Bites State Trooper

Mountain Home, Arkansas

We're back in Arkansas to see our old friends, Paul and Diane.

The first morning I raid the laundry fund for two quarters and head down to the Wal-Mart to buy a Baxter Bulletin. The news in Mountain Home always has a different flavor.

On the right side of the front page I read that a local lady has been sentenced to three years in the Arkansas State Prison for rustling 20 cows. The left side of the paper has several pictures of a man being wrestled into a police car by five burly state troopers.

The man left the road a high rate of speed, leaped over a culvert and crashed into a fence. When State Troopers arrived on the scene, the man refused to get out of his car and responded to the officers with a stream of obscenities. When the officers attemped to forcibly remove the man from his vehicle he responded by biting one officer on the hand. I prefer biting ears or noses, but he probably couldn't reach one of those. The motorist is now in the Baxter County jail. Apparently local bail bondsmen have declined to help him post bail.

The property next door is for sale. It is 25 acres of woods and pasture with a four bedroom home and a four stall red horse barn. The asking price is only $250,000. Paul says he will give me $60,000 to title over the 15 acres closest to his property. I imagine making a workshop out of the big barn.

It's 298 miles to Big Brutus. The route leads though Webb City, where we know the librarian. I borrowed Paul's library card yesterday. They were updating records and asked my address and telephone number. I had to confess it was a borrowed card. They asked me Paul's wife's name to make sure I really knew Paul. In a less trusting place like New York City, I probably would have been spread-eagled on the ground by armed security guards.

WFD Discovered in Arkansas

Lake Norfork, Arkansas

At 4:45 AM Mrs. Phred and I tiptoed down the driveway to set up our lawn chairs. We drank our coffee and stared up from the deserted country road at Capella in the constellation Aurigid. Venus and the Sun rose at about 6 AM. We find we are a little too far East to catch the meteor shower caused by the long tail of the Comet Kiess. Kiess swung by about 83 B.C and again in 1911. The tail it left behind intersected our orbit this morning at about 4:36 AM PDT. It will not happen again in our lifetimes.


In the morning we had a wood-chipping and garage cleaning session. As we sifted though layers of debris in the three-car garage, we discovered many strange and exotic artifacts.



Water Flotation Devices were spotted deployed in actual use in Lake Norfork, Arkansas yesterday afternoon. The locals refer to these strange objects as "noodles".


I got to go diving in the lake. I was weighted for salt-water diving and didn't bother to reweight for the less buoyant fresh water. I saw a few striped bass. The water got much colder at depth. My 25 year old buoyancy control device blew out while I was 50 feet down and wouldn't retain any air. I didn't want to leave my weights behind, but I was much too heavily weighted to swim up. So I went hand-over-hand along the rocky bottom to the shore, dropped off my weights and swam back to the boat.


They let me drive a jet sky later. I only fell off once, while trying to do a 180 top speed turn on a dime.


Paul's 8-week diet was over, so we all had 2 pound chunks of prime rib, baked potato with butter and sour cream and blueberry cobbler with ice cream in the evening to celebrate. A nice day...time to move on.

Back to Work

Mountain Home, Arkansas

When we eat supper in the new house we all solemnly take our blood pressures. Mine has dropped to 121/76 which I attribute to the new diet of fruit and fish. That which doesn't kill me makes me stronger. There was a time when none of us thought about blood pressure that much. We don't discuss regularity yet, but we see the future.

Two evenings we go out on the old pontoon boat (the Ratty Bastard) and bar-b-q and swim in Lake Norfork until after dark. The motor is a 55 horse, 1977 Johnson. Usually it can be coaxed to start. It's all decorated in redneck chic: tiki torrches, American flags, astro turf and plastic lawn chairs. Paul tore off the roof attempting to dock last week so we jump in quickly.


We will have to boogey after Labor Day to make my nephew's the wedding in Alpine, New York next weekend. It's 1200 miles.

Our friends in Smith Mountain Lake, Virginia, tell us that they are selling their new house and boats and moving to Annapolis. They have decided, after a year, that they don't like country living. They are disappointed with the country club. That means our plan to buy a house there is out the window. Mrs. Phred and I admit to each other that we didn't really want to live there anyway.

I got one coat of yellow on the big house Wednesday and then ran out of paint. I used a rectangular aluminum hand-held paint shield to keep any over spray off the windows and shingles. The spray-gun does a good job of one-coat coverage. The local paint store is out of that paint. We're on deadline now and may have to make a run into Harrisonville two hours away. I have exterior doors to finish this morning, then a decision about the run west.

After some thought, I call my old boss, the CEO, and tell him I'm ready for this vacation to end and want to work. He says he has projects for me. He doesn't say what. He wants me to call a week before we hit Tampa. I worked for him for 22 years before this two year vacation. With this piece in place, our plans are fixed until at least the end of February.

I've Seen the Light

Mountain Home, Arkansas

I get up and seven and paint until five. With a four-inch brush I get one coat on the siding of the big front porch. I figure at least 100 hours to brush the whole house with two coats. Paul puts Janis Joplin, Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd on for me to listen to as I paint. I'm feeling spoiled and pampered.


I consider house-painting as my next profession. My father was a house painter. I started working new construction with him at age 13 and did it weekends and summers with him before college. It still feels good.

Diane comes home around six and I tell her I can do the whole thing in one more day with an airless spray-gun. She gives her approval and we all head down to Home Depot in the evening to pick out the shiny new tool. It's dawn now and I get to open the box when the sun comes up.

The liver is the seat of the emotions.

Paul has become convinced that meat, sugar, bad fats and alcohol clog the liver with fat and bile and cause bad emotions, heart disease, body fat, fatigue and diabetes.

He's lost 40 pounds since he changed his diet eight weeks ago. Diane has lost 30.

I become an instant disciple. Beans, vegetables, fruit, baked fish and ground flax seed is my new mantra. No dairy, no alcohol, no meat. Fortunately Tuscan halibut is still on the menu.

Think about goose pate. That kind of liver can't be good for you or for the goose.

The liver becomes clogged with fats and poisons with the standard American diet. The fat released by the liver in bile is 90% reabsorbed without sufficient fiber in the diet. Bad fats and toxins tax the liver.

The liver is like the air filter on your car's engine. You need to keep it clean.

I've seen the light.

That Trip is Over

Mountain Home, Arkansas

The trip to Alaska is over. We are in Paul's backyard again.

We will move on to Virginia next. We have mixed feelings about buying a home, but it feels like time to find a place to park the wheels after two years as gypsies. We ran into some real gypsies in Nebraska. There were about ten families with new trucks and old trailers in Grand Isle. The trucks looked nice and had "rust-proofing" signs on their doors. These folks are notorious swindlers that travel around the U.S. spraying worthless whitewash on things for the elderly and the gullible.

They've been busy here since we left under icy conditions last winter. The Mansion-in-the-Woods has been newly sided with Hardy Board, a miracle material of cellulose and concrete.

Paul has offered me the opportunity to hand-paint the whole thing with some miracle paint he has picked out. I could do the whole vthing in a day with my airless equipment in storage, but for some reason, Paul wants it brushed.

We went swimming in Norfork lake yesterday. The water temperature was perfect. In the Southern evening the crickets sing under a full moon.

We only have one credit card from a bank. I was astounded yesterday to see that they had added a 3% fee to a tankful of $6 a gallon Canadian gas. The avarice of American banks is astonishing. If you travel, use American Express or a credit union for your debit and credit cards. I paid the fee and cancelled the card. Strangely, cancelling credit cards can reduce your credit score.

An Arkansas Education

Mountain Home, Arkansas – February 1, 2007

It’s 4 AM and completely overcast with low gray clouds. There is five inches of fresh white snow on the ground. The small amount of light from neighboring houses reflects off the low clouds and onto the snow, making everything strangely bright and easy to see.

The pond is frozen over. I spent an hour yesterday, before it snowed, throwing big rocks up in the air to land on the ice. I love the sound the rocks make when they hit the ice. It’s a crisp, long Twangggg! that cuts the frozen air.

My friend here in Mountain Home is a national expert on credit and debit card transactions. He travels about the country keeping the heads of big banks and credit card companies abreast of new developments. We met in 1972 just after Vietnam, 35 years ago. I like to stop here, sample his homemade wine, and help him hang doors in the evening on the house in the woods he has been building, one piece at a time, for the last three years.

He tells me that the Republican controlled House and Senate passed a new law on credit cards last year. Now credit card companies can increase the rates they charge consumers if they are late on a single payment on any credit card or if the consumer’s credit rating drops slightly. Of course, he says, consumers in the US can no longer escape credit card debt though the bankruptcy process. The higher rates approach 40%, rather than the standard 20%.

Also interesting is the newfound ability of thieves to read the information on a debit card and calculate the card's PIN number. He tells me that a debit cards magnetic stripe contains an account number and a PIN number offset, which uses a 256 bit encryption algorithm, use to validate the PIN number. This information is read and stored each time the card is used at, say, Starbucks for coffee.

One US bank was hacked into and lost the information on 50 million accounts. The customers then began to find their accounts emptied though withdrawals at ATM in places like Latvia and Bulgaria. Paul believes that the PIN Number offset algorithm has been cracked, the only logical explanation for the Bank’s customer losses to date of $12 Billion dollars. Other banks and vendors have been hacked for account information.

The temperature is not projected to rise above zero degrees Centigrade for about ten days. We’d like to go to Florida and play tennis with friends camping in Sarasota, but driving out of here may be problematic.

Rock on, Mrs Robinson

Eisenhower State Park, Texas - 27 March, 2006

We decided to stay in Arkansas a few extra days to help Paul with his front porch. The porch floor is made from 2 inch thick maple salvaged bowling alley wood. It's durable and beautiful. There are 6 x 6 posts every eight feet (twelve of them) which he plans to clad in cedar. We installed the last twenty 2x4 rafters for the porch to support the tongue and groove pine siding ceiling.



It was painstaking and slow work, making sure that each piece is exactly parallel to the next and that all pieces are level at any given height on the expanse, which has a gentle slope and changes from a ten foot to eight foot expanse and back again and negotiates two 45 degree turns. Here are some Arkansas pictures.

Paul has a geocache out at a place called Robinson's Point. He says I can get some nice pictures from there. A posting on his geocache site says the disposable camera that he left in the cache is fully exposed, so we take a 45 minute hike though the woods and change it out, after removing the rock hiding the cache. The camera is for people who find the cache to take their own pictures so Paul can post them to the geocache site. His hidden treasure site is called "Rock on Mrs Robinson".


Yesterday we left his house and drove though Northeast Arkansas on back roads and then down into Oklahoma and Texas to the Eisenhower State Park in Denison, Texas. This is Ike's birthplace. The park is on a big lake. They rent canoes and pontoon boats here.


Dallas is 80 miles to the South. We both want to see the Grassy Knoll, Dealy Plaza and the Texas Book Depository. That's going to involve driving the RV into a big city. I'm going to ask Mrs Phred where she was when she heard the news. We've been to his grave in Arlington

Cross-Dresser Arrested in Pigeon Park

Mountain Home, Arkansas

We spend a few days cutting and installing pine siding on the front porch ceiling of Paul's new home. He's been building it for three years now and just moved in during February. The weather has been cold and wet with the threat of snow. The Crocuses have bloomed and gone.

The new Wal-Mart Sirius satellite radio has a channel called 'classic radio' that carries programmes from the 1940s: Jack Benny, The Lone Ranger, Hop-along Cassidy, Amos and Andy and The Shadow. I run it for three days and kill the van battery. I actually remember hearing one of The Shadow programs called 'Sabotage'.

Paul's son-in-law, an IT genius, gives me three seasons of Boston Law and five seasons of South Park on DVDs. They're in an AVI format so I download a free AVI player to my laptop.

The news in this small town (Pop. 11,012) is fascinating. The Baxter Bulletin comes each morning. A local man is being sought on charges of attempted murder (girlfriend) and arson. Coincidentally, his institutionalized brother attempted to break into the White House under the delusion that Clinton's daughter still lived there.

There is a nightly courtroom TV programm where local criminals are tried and sentenced on live TV. Most of them are convicted of passing bad checks. That's an automatic 60 days in this county. A few are sentenced to longer terms for cooking 'meth'. 'Meth' is a big problem in the rural parts of the US.

A man in a black dress, wearing false breasts, heavy make-up and high heels, was arrested in a local park. He was charged with felony possession of stolen license plates

The Wienermobile

Mountain Home, Arkansas - 17 March, 2006

We are parked in a heavily wooded clearing in the Ozarks. This is Paul's redoubt, heavily fortified and secure. Paul claims to have papers that certify him as insane due to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. We met in 1972 shortly after we both returned from Vietnam. We find time to sit in rockers on his porch and he explains his latest research.


Paul sells his research to the money changers. He is perhaps the foremost expert in the world on the credit and debit card industry. Paul spends most of his time flying around to interview corporate moguls and magnates so that he can sell his findings about new developments in this strange new form of money.

He talks to me about waving a cell phone at a cashier to pay for a cheeseburger. He speaks of RFID. This are the tiny rice-grain size passive chips that make the alarms go off when one walks out of the store without paying. RFID chips are being implanted in factory workers to eliminate time clocks, provide access to secure areas and aid in job cost calculations. This new technology, he tells me will soon speed airport luggage to its destination. These chips, with medical history are being implanted in elderly Washington, DC patients. Wal-Mart tractor trailers now are completely inventoried as they roll past a scanning device.

Later, Paul takes me to the local Wal-mart where we see the famous Oscar Meyer Wienermobile parked and serving hot dogs. Paul takes my picture with his cell phone standing in front of this incredible and artful piece of American culture. I buy a package of JB Weld epoxy and a Sirius satellite receiver for a total of $42, including tax.

My faithful companion and I drive Paul's 1982 Dodge Ram pickup truck into town. I have my best tennis scores ever and only lose 6-2, 6-2. At times I was close to making it 6-3 with lots of add-ins and add-outs.

The JB Weld has lots of testimonials on the back of the package. One man says he used it to patch a cracked block on a D-8 Caterpillar tractor and saved $10,000 and 30 days of down time. We pull the tank on the motorcycle, mix up the two tubes and try to patch the leaking gas tank. We also adjust the chain tension and apply molybdenum chain lube. The epoxy is drying overnight.

We watch Batman Begins in the evening on St Patrick's day after a dinner of corned beef and cabbage. This is the latest and best of the Batman movies. Paul has partially moved into the new house he and Diane have been constructing for three years. Tomorrow he plans to work on his front porch while his son-in-law installs a 24 port network switch and punches down the RJ-45 receptacles.


Visits here are always very interesting. Paul's new grand-daughter, Lena, arrives in the evening. She is four months old. The Epoxy patch on the leaking motorcycle gas tank works.