Where do I start? I think it would have to be in August of  2001.  I have always been a big time biker and have always had at least 2 or 3 old bikes around to work on and ride. But of course only one good license plate and insurance card to swap at my pleasure.

I was surfing EBay.com and that is when it all happened.  I had a 1976 CB 750 SS so I was looking for parts for it when I ran across a bike that was titled CB 750 Amen Savior. I did not know or care what a Amen Savior was but I knew I HAD TO HAVE IT. Well as a lot of us know about EBay it is hard to win some times and the bike ended up going for more then I could get in my grubby hand at the time. But this did not cure my illness I still had to have one. At that point in time I had 6 bikes in the garage, 3 running 2 very close to running and 1 parts bike. I decided to liquidate every thing I owned so that I could get money for one.  I even at one point in time had figured up a schedule of how many visits to the plasma donation booth it would take to get a Honda Chopper.

I put all my bikes in the paper and sold them all but a GL1000 and a parts CB 500(which Bob gave me for free because his wife did not want it on her back porch, this will be more relevant latter in the stories to come). One day during my add in the local newspaper I got a call about my CB 500 and the guy was asking alot of question about it and its condition. Being the curious person I am I asked him what he was planning to do with it. He told me he had a Amen CB 500 Honda chopper frame and he was going to swap everything off my parts bike onto his frame. WELL THAT MADE ME SIZZLE IN MY SEAT WHEN I HEARD THAT. I said "You have a Honda chopper?" and then started to beg him to sell it to me. The next day I went to his house and that is when it all started. I was now the proud owner of the Amen frame, fender and sissy bar you see above. I started working on cleaning it up and looking for parts. And of course there has been a lot of people who have helped me with my bike.

And this is where Bob comes into the picture. Bob had came over and helped me with my bike a couple of time before he got the illness. Next thing we know Bob sells his near mint 1985 Kawasaki 900 Eliminator (for way too cheap) and starts his hunt. After about 2 weeks me and Bob located the Amen CB750 frame (show at right ) in Chicago, Illinois, which is 9 hours from were we live.

He threw his wife in a truck one Friday and off they were to go get his frame. But little did they know what they had in store for them. Picking up the frame was easy it was the drive back that almost killed them.  When Bob left he knew that there was a storm on the way but he thought he could out run it and get back before it hit. WRONG!  Right after leaving Chicago, it started. He was driving directly into the worst snow storm that hit this year. Needless to say Bob almost died and his wife was pissed (Fuck Up number 1 on Bob). But they did make it home in one piece.

After that it was the beginning of LARRY VS. BOB. A fight to the pavement. I do have to say we have done a decent amount of parts swapping between the two of us and a lot of helping and hunting for each other...

First thing I knew that I had to have was a front end. I looked at all the bikes in the Gallery on Hondachopper.com. I decided that I wanted to get a Springer. It wasn't very long until I found out that they were rather pricey. I hunted until I found the one in the picture to the left in local bike shop and bought it for $50.00 and all I had to do was clean it and get some bearings for the neck. This picture (at left) is after I cleaned it for many hours and mounted it to the frame. I have to say since it was my first time doing loose bearing in a head, it was very hard to get them to stay as I slid the front end on (this was still hard even with 10 pounds of grease to hold them in place). Later after talking to a old Harley rider,  I found out there is some tricks and a tool to do it. I guess you learn the hard way every time.

In a basement about 10 miles away Bob was hard at work (the basement idea was mine since mine was in the house but I did not think of how heavy these fuckers get). The paint job on my frame was pretty good and I decided to keep it but Bob has a different way of thinking and decided he wanted to express himself with Krylon, Battleship Gray and Glossy black Krylon Rust Free spray paint to be exact. YES I said SPRAY PAINT. At first I thought he was a nut, but after seeing what came of his many hours of painting in his homemade paint booth under the stairs in his basement ( which has no ventilation) , I decided that the many years of him touching up his vehicles with Krylon had finally paid off.  To the right you can see the finished KRYLON job that Bob did. Isn't she a Beauty. Not bad for his a 3.00 can of spray paint. Can we all say RAT BIKE together!!!