A Trip To The Holy Grail

[dimwittedmoose51]

While riding RAGBRAI last week, I stopped at a guy's mobile home property and was drawn in by his Sanford and Son front yard, and all the cool stuff he had in his yard, including a single open end wrench that had a 4+" gap and weighed over 100#.  As we talked old tools and stuff(he's on his 4th stroke, walks with 2 canes and is portly to say the least), he started digging in one of his storage sheds and was going to show me one of his special finds.  I'd already seen enough to  make the stop worthwhile, but once he got to the bottom of the pile, there it was; one of the Blackhawk Torpedo tool boxes in amazingly good condition, but this box appeared to have all the original tools in it plus an extra Blackhawk flexover(newer design) and a couple of Plomb bits.  He let me take it out and photograph it and organize the sockets etc. and having never seen the proper tools for this box, I instantly fell in love with the bullet type taper to the ends of the rat, the flexover and the  speeder.  Even the extension had a cool sleeve on the outside for spinning the innards.

Of course they weren't for sale, but he got the box and tools for a winning bid of  $160 at an Oliver Tractor dealer that was going out of business.  He had a lot of other neat stuff not related to tools, like some railroad switch parts etc. but the Blackhawk sighting was one of the highlights of the week for me.

BTW, I hauled an old Hinsdale socket box the last 30 miles on the back of my bike on day 1. Also found a tapered Upson nut driver that looked pretty cool and later in the week, A Chief Vise, a New Britain lead body rasp, a partial set of the JOAR conduit wrenches, and a few other bits for the collection.  Photos???  yes.

DM&FS

[Papaw]

A tool connection to get you to tell us about RAGBRAI. Post about it in General Discussion.

[fflintstone]

I too have no knowledge of your acronym.
The tool set is nice for sure.

[lbgradwell]

I love those torpedo sets. I'd have been all over that at $160!

[johnsironsanctuary]

The Torpedo set is awesome.  How far around Iowa did you ride?

Here is the RAGBRAI info link.

http://ragbrai.com/about/

[fflintstone]

Here is the RAGBRAI info link.

http://ragbrai.com/about/

Cool concept.
Here in Michigan we have the Michigander. I went one year. This was its 22 year. same type of deal but for mountain bikes because they highlight rail trails and some are not paved (I wish none of them were paved)
http://www.michigantrails.org/michigander-bicycle-tour/
The year I went I did a 6 day tour and road from Midland up thru the center of the state, then over to Charlevoix and up to Mackinaw then down to Petoskey.

[Papaw]

Impressive. I bet I can't ride 1 hour on a stationary bike!

[fflintstone]

Impressive. I bet I can't ride 1 hour on a stationary bike!

I cant even ride a bike now either. I bought a recumbent trike and I cant go more than a few hundred yards.

[dimwittedmoose51]

Yeah, RAGBRAI stands for Register's(Des Moines Register newspaper) Annual Bike Ride Across Iowa.  It's the oldest mass bike event in the country(started in 1973) and there are a handful of folks that have done all 41 of them.  This was my first and I must admit, I'd never done more than 28 miles on a bike before July 21st.  Even though this RAGBRAI was one of the shortest(406 miles), we did catch a relative break in the weather with only two days that were hot.  It's not a race, but more a journey.  If you can get your hiney used to a bike seat and average like 10 miles an hour, this trek can be done.  If the back or butt don't cooperate, then get a recumbent bike.  One guy rode the whole thing on a unicycle with a motorcycle tire under him.  Imagine doing 30+ mph down a steep hill and losing your balance on one of those.....  Admittedly, I wasn't sure if I was going to finish it with the knee issues I had in June, but those went away andchanging to a 63cm road bike I paid $320 for , well.......I wasn't sure I was gong to finish my first marathon either, but that was only 35 years ago. 

The traditional dipping of the bike wheel in the Missouri river at the start and the Mississippi at the end is classic.  Food is the real star of the show as every stop over town puts on a show for the 10,000+ riders that travel through their town on that day.  Des Moines picked up a bunch of lacal riders and estimates were that over 32,000 rode through Des Moines on Wednesday afternoon and Thursday morning. Even took a lap around the Knoxville Speedway, home of the sprint car nationals( I took the high bank, as it was a lot less lumpy). 

I was accepted as a member of the Barking Spiders Team from Ames Iowa, as I knew the owner of that bus and for a C note, they shepherded me around all week.  It costs $150 to get your wristband to ride all week and the road food is not cheap.  $4 cinnamon rolls, $7 Turkey legs, $2 for a bottle of cold Gatorade(a bargain if you're thirsty and out of gas...lol),  but there were usually free watermelon and free bananas along the route if you looked carefully.  The lines for the portapotties and food vendors were very long and the coffee vendors were busy most all day too.

The perennial motto is "What goes on in the cornfield, STAYS in the cornfield."  Photos on request.....

DM&FS

[CRTDI]

Wow! Nice Nugget find. I'm sure it would have seemed nicer if you could have acquired the set though. There certainly looks like some pretty decent 7/16" drive pieces in this set.

[dimwittedmoose51]

I wasn't totally sure how the ratchet changed directions, but the direction it was moving felt like there were a ckouple hundred teeth in that mechanism.  I'l lwatch the obit pagesfor that area and when he does finally pass on,  he said that stuff would all be up for auction as his wife would have no use for it.......lol


DM&FS