It Takes Balls To Navigate

A very long time ago, back when ‘close enough’ was ‘right on point’, back when we Northmen still used alcohol, mushrooms and Sextants to navigate by the stars when setting sail out to sea, when Astronavigating drunks went berserk on barbarian crusades 365 years a day…

 

Back then there was a brighter group of men on the other side of the planet that used a way more refined method than our celestial system to locate their ships latitudes. I’m talking about the Polynesian Islanders of the South Pacific, and they certainly did not use Sextants or any other star reading device to navigate, they used their testicles.

Testicular navigation is the art of dipping your scrotum below the surface to sense the motion of the ocean and by doing so being able to navigate to your location. Now that sure is a heavy cultural art form that shoots way beyond any man made material apparatus.

Human and nature, ocean and island - full contact forever, the way it’s supposed to be. But I admit, I love human made material too, like Vard forks and alcohol and complicated hydraulic fork internals.

I’m just about getting ready to start a complete rebuild of this Vard fork. Notice the brake mount on the left side fork slider (second & fourth pic), that’s how the H-D Vards are set up. The Indian Vards had the brake mount in a bit different location and on the right side fork slider. In the last pic you can see an original Vard brake arm that has been chromed at some point in time, a shimmering and rare little piece of history for sure. This fork is so big and clunky and it’s got to be the heaviest fork ever made, maybe not quite as heavy as Polynesian testicular navigation techniques, but hey – close enough, the way it used to be.