Alternative Transportation, or yet another way to go green

I went down to the Columbia River this last weekend, to help a friend re-assemble his custom 3-wheel motorcycle. I guess it’s officially a motorcycle, even though it’s made using a diesel engine from a Mercedes car. We had a lot of fun bolting all the pieces together, and when it’s finally finished, he’ll have an efficient, fun vehicle that gets 75+ miles to the gallon and can run on biofuel.

This is a picture of the work in progress. There are still some pieces that need painting and then should be added on to what’s here. Aspen, the friend in question, is planning on using this as his primary form of transportation. The back platform is 9 square feet and will haul a substantial amount of stuff. He’s also put a trailer hitch on the back so he can pull even more. And with the MB220D engine, he’s got the power to do it, too.

His father, John Price, built the first one pictured above. I got a ride on his and it was as much fun as a motorcycle without being nearly as scary in the turns. He's got close to 10,000 miles on it so he considers the design well proven. If you’re interested in learning more, check out John’s webpage, http://www.warhorsetractorco.com/.

To add the obligatory art interest to this post, I'll just mention that I made 2 patches for them featuring the art John has used on his webpage. This was an interesting challenge, using heavier materials than I usually work with (canvas rather than quilting cotton, or silks) and I learned some things about stitching on leather. My brain is now scheming for ways to use the rest of the leather needles I bought...

Here's the patch on the back of aspen's vest. It's 9 inches square, roughly. Canvas fused to canvas, edge stitched with polyester thread in a satin stitch, and then fused to the leather with heavy duty wonder under and then stitched down around the edges with polyester top stitching thread using the leather needles with my big Bernina. The only trouble spot was the seam in the leather vest down the middle behind the patch which caused my machine to hesitate on a couple of stitches. Otherwise, it was a fun and fairly quick project.