Grand Rapids in the HOUSE!!! Literally.

This week was F-U-N. And exhausting.
Gabe Bandit along with his friends Derek, Caleb, and Esther came to Seattle because they had a film in NFFTY.
Not content to merely attend a film festival and explore a new city, the Michigan natives decided to participate in a Grand Rapids 24 hour film festival remotely, submitting their project online.
If you're not familiar with the concept of a 24hr film fest, the idea is that participating film-making teams are given a theme, location, spoken line, and prop that must be included in all of the competitors films. Then you have 24 hrs from that moment to create a short film using only footage shot within that 24 hr period.
I tagged along and actually became the villain in the movie!

DEATHped made it's riding debut, and after a manic night of riding mopeds all over, and one narrow escape from the authorities, we wrapped filming at 9 am.
The judging for the film fest ends this weekend so once that ends perhaps I can get a vimeo file of the final product posted up here.
Derek, who acted as the Director of Photography snapped some really great shots over the course of the weekend and he graciously allowed me to post them up.





So like I said earlier, right before those crazy mid-westerners invaded Kastle Kvernmo, I finished DEATHped. I rode it quite a bit this weekend during shooting, and on Sunday I did some more fine tuning at a Mosquito Fleet fix-it day. I asked Derek to take DEATHped for a ride so that I could do a plug chop and when he returned he informed me that DEATHped had claimed it's first victim. In his words, "I was riding down 8th and it was hauling pretty good, and this little bird swooped in and it bounced off the headlight and into my visor. This is the final poop of a dead bird."

So apparently DEATHped is carnivorous.
Based on the advice of Naz and Shannon, I'm running it super rich right now, every once in a while I've gotten it to rev up high enough to actually hit the powerband and that's when things get exciting. For the most part though, it just kinda feels sluggy. Once I feel like it is broken in a little bit I'll get the jets a bit more tuned in. I think I may also switch out my front sprocket, I'm running 18 x 45 gearing right now and I'd like just a bit more torque. One thing that I need to change ASAP is the carb needs an air filter. I've heard that Gilardoni kits like to spit gas, but hooboy, my pant leg smells like I've been refining gasoline as a hobby. I walked into a bar and was asked if it was me that smelled like gas, because otherwise they were worried that they might have a natural gas leak in the kitchen. I like this filter and I'll check it out soon.
In other news, this blog is moving. Yes, moving to my other site; joelkvernmo.com. I'm trying to flesh out my site a bit more and I thought it would be nice to take my blog over there. I'll continue posting on both blogs for a little while but at some point I'll abandon this blog and continue over there.
Stay tuned for some rough cut moped footage from the 24 hr film and perhaps the finished product.