We were in Oklahoma last week and it was awesome. It was an opportunity to visit with a wonderful friend and see the sights. And folks, Oklahoma has them. One of our stops was the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City. It’s an amazing place with a collection of Native American artifacts, rodeo trophies, art, sculpture, firearms, and more. The guns on display were impressive, and one of the firearms that caught my attention was John Wayne’s Weatherby.
John Wayne’s Weatherby, chambered in the mighty .300 Weatherby Magnum cartridge, on display in Oklahoma City’s National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum.
I’ve always admired John Wayne, and I love Weatherby rifles. This particular rifle was of interest for several reasons, not the least of which was John Wayne’s connection to Weatherby. I remembered seeing John Wayne in Weatherby ads decades ago, and I knew he appeared in at least one of the magnificent Weatherby full color catalogs. I found the photo I remembered in my vintage Weatherby catalogs, but it didn’t show Mr. Wayne with this rifle. Then I did a search on “John Wayne’s Weatherby” hoping to find a photo showing him holding the rifle you see in the photo above, but I did not find it. Wayne appeared in several photos and advertisements, though, like the one you see here:
An early ad showing John Wayne with a Weatherby rifle. It’s not the rifle I saw in Oklahoma City.
The Weatherby in the Oklahoma City National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum was interesting from several perspectives beyond the fact that it belonged to John Wayne. Take a look:
This is very early Weatherby, built on a Mauser action. Weatherby used Mauser and other actions before he designed his proprietary Mark V action. Note the dark finish on this rifle.Optional extrended checkering with a fleur de lis, skip line pattern. Note the scratches and dings; this rifle was not a safe queen. John Wayne rode this one hard!Extra-cost fancier-than-stock checkering on the fore end. Some of the dark finish is worn away near the rosewood fore end tip. Did Wayne pay Weatherby to have a darker finish applied, did the rifle darken from too much oil over the years, or ???A shot of the Mauser action and an early proprietary Weatherby four-power telescopic sight. Note that the windage and elevation turrets are in line on top of the scope, rather than today’s practice of placing elevation on the top and windage on the right of the scope barrel.An ivory or maple stock inlay, darkened along with the rest of the stock. The inlay was almost certainly done in Weatherby’s custom rifle shop.
So there you have it: John Wayne’s Weatherby at the Oklahoma City National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum. We enjoyed our time there, and I’ll add more photos from the Museum in subsequent blogs. If you’re in the area, the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum is a spot you won’t want to miss.
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Churchill Clark in 1969. Our graduation yearbook was dedicated to him. I saw Mr. Clark again at our 20th reunion. He was one of the greats and the creator of the Exhaust Notes name. Sadly, he is no longer with us.
The year was 1968, I was a 17-year-old pup, and Churchill Clark approached me with an idea for the Viking Press. We were the Vikings (no one is quite sure how we got that name, as there were very few Scandinavians in South Brunswick), and the Viking Press, you see, was our high school newspaper. Mr. Clark was an English teacher (a great one), and he was the Viking Press faculty advisor.
A bit more background: There were several cliques in our high school (there were, are, and always will be in any high school, I guess), and I belonged to the greasers. You know, the gearheads. We lived and breathed GTOs, Camaros, Hemis, motorcycles, street racing, and anything that ingested fossil fuel. We were in the middle of the muscle car era, maybe one of the best times ever to be a teenager in America. Old Mr. Clark wanted to get our crowd reading the high school newspaper (he was a bit of a greaser himself), and as I was one of the more literate greasers, he asked me to write a column about cars.
“What do you want me to say?” I asked.
“Whatever you want,” Mr. Clark answered.
So I did, and I have to admit, it was a heady experience seeing something I wrote appear in print for the first time. My idea was to have a little fun with the war stories and poke at the ridiculousness of it all. Mr. Clark titled the column Exhaust Notes and he drew the little car that appeared at the top of every article. I liked both, and the Exhaust Notes name stuck. When Joe Gresh and I started the blog, there was no question about what it was going to be called.
A few months ago my high school class, South Brunswick’s Class of 1969, held its 50th reunion. My good buddy and friend since kindergarten, Kathy Leary, told me she had saved a few of the old Viking Press newspapers, and she scanned a couple of the articles for me.
Those were great times, folks, and great memories. I’m glad Kathy had the foresight to hang on to those old papers, and I’m grateful she scanned and sent a couple of the articles to me. And I’m glad old Mr. Clark trusted me to run with the idea.
One of my best friends from high school is a guy named Natty Bumppo. That’s not his real name, but it’s what he goes by when he’s out killing mockingbirds and I thought I’d use it here. Ol’ Natty sent a link to me for a NY Times story about what motorcycling in Manhattan has become (the story is in today’s edition). Natty has a knack for knowing what I like, and he sure hit the mark on this one. The cover photo, in particular, hit home. But there are a lot more photos in that article and they’re all good. They are in black and white, and that added to the feel of the article.
Anyway, the story reminded me of a piece I did for the CSC blog a ways back about Shinya Kimura. My photos for that piece were in color, but the nature of Kimura’s customs and the feel of his shop lent a sepia feel to the photos (even though they are in color). There are a lot of photos in this piece, folks, so it may take a minute or two to load.
When I rolled into the CSC plant yesterday, Steve Seidner asked me to come along with him to visit a shop a short distance away to meet Shinya Kimura, a man who builds custom bikes. Steve thought it might be fun to grab a few photos of Mr. Kimura’s shop, and I was all for that. Little did I know about what I would see.
From the outside, all I could see was a small shop (at least it appeared that way initially), but when I entered, I was immediately stopped dead in my tracks by one of the most beautiful custom motorcycles I had ever seen. It was a CB750 Honda (one of the very early ones) with an incredibly beautiful sculpted aluminum fuel tank. The overall effect was visually arresting. I had never seen anything like it. The lens cap came off my Nikon, I dialed the ISO up to 800, and I had started snapping away.
Steve introduced me to Shinya, and he invited to look around the shop and photograph whatever I wanted. And I did just that, not really knowing who this guy was. But the shop…wowee! It was more of a studio than a shop, and it was amazing.
Last night I went through the raw files I had captured with my little D3300 and I processed them in Photoshop. I think they are some of the best photos I’ve ever taken, but that’s not me bragging about my photography or my Photoshop skills. It was what I was shooting that made the photos what they are.
Enjoy, folks…
I was lost in the wonder of Shinya’s small slice of motorcycle Nirvana and I guess that was obvious. Shinya smiled at me and asked me what I thought about his place. “I’d like to live here,” I said. It was that cool.
I grabbed one last photo, and I think it was a good one…
Good groups with cup-and-core copper jacketed bullets, but I had to slow things down to get the groups to shrink. What I need for this rifle to get the velocities up are solids.
Wow, I was absolutely elated with the groups I fired with the .257 Weatherby Ruger No. 1 and when I was cleaning my rifle, I was thinking about how much I was enjoying the rifle now that I had it shooting well. I knew it wasn’t living up to its potential yet because of the excellent inputs I had received from my new good buddy David from Mississippi, who I think is maybe the most knowledgeable guy out there about the .257 Weatherby cartridge and the Ruger No. 1. David explained that I really needed monolithic (solid copper) bullets to reach the kinds of velocities the .257 Weatherby attains, and I ordered a couple of boxes of Barnes solids based on his advice.
I was eagerly awaiting the arrival of my new Barnes copper bullets when I started cleaning my No. 1, thinking about them and admiring the grain in the rifle’s Circassian walnut stock. Then something caught my eye. Whoa, what’s this?
The stock had cracked. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, but there it was. No, I didn’t get a photo. But I had two small cracks, just behind the receiver, one on the top and one on the bottom of the rifle. When you inlet and fit a stock to a rifle, you’re supposed to provide a bit of relief between the back of the tang (the rifle receiver’s rearmost structure) and the wood. What you don’t want is the tang bearing directly on the walnut, as it can act as a wedge and crack the stock. That’s what happened on mine.
Beautiful Circassian walnut; the best I had seen after looking at dozens of .257 Weatherby Ruger No. 1 rifles. But it was all for naught.
I felt sick about the stock cracking. I had selected my .257 Weatherby No. 1 (after looking at a bunch of them) specifically based on its Circassian walnut stock and matching fore end. Well, it is what it is, and bitching and moaning won’t make it better. So I called Ruger’s Customer Service, they emailed a shipping label to me while we were on the phone, and I returned the rifle to Ruger. I’m hoping they’ll find a stock that’s as nice (or nicer) than the one I had, but I’m not worried about it. Ruger’s Customer Service is legendary, and I’m sure they’ll do good by me. You’ll know about it as soon as I do. And I’m eager to try the loads and new bullets my good buddy David recommended. Stay tuned, my friends. I’m going to explore the terrain above 3,500 feet per second with this rifle, and I’m going to produce tiny little groups doing so. We’ll see what happens!
I’m a big fan of electric motorcycles. I like electrical stuff in general and I spent most of my working life as an electrician with benefits. Harley’s new Livewire E-Hog is an impressive first effort but at $30,000 dollars a copy it is a lousy deal compared to E-bikes from other manufacturers. You can easily beat the Livewire in both speed and distance for half the cost but that’s not the Livewire’s major problem.
The Livewire’s problem is industry-wide. Harley and those other guys are trying to duplicate the internal combustion experience with an electric motorcycle and they are burning a lot of joules doing it. Electric motorcycles are not direct IC replacements and their riders understand this.
For motorcycles, battery technology today is not compact enough and recharges too slowly for a rider with no fixed destination in mind. Until manufacturers can agree on a standard-sized, easily swappable battery pack we are stuck waiting for the bike. The first battery operated power tools were like this: you had to plug the whole tool in and wait. No work could be done until the thing was charged.
With standard-sized batteries (within a product line) cordless power tools have nearly supplanted the old, outlet-bound stuff. It takes only a second to swap in a new battery and you are back on the job doing whatever it is that you do. No one has range anxiety because there’s always a hot battery in the charger ready to use. Tesla is working on speeding up charge wait times by swapping the huge battery in their cars and it only takes a few minutes. When an electric vehicle can pull up to a gas station and swap in a charged battery as fast as I can change my power drill battery they will have become viable transportation.
The reality is, manufacturers are not going to standardize battery sizes. The best we can hope for is a battery changeable along the lines of the power tool situation: each battery is specific to the brand. Even that will not happen soon and maybe if you move the goal posts it doesn’t need to happen for the majority of users.
That leaves commuting back and forth to work as the ideal use for an electric motorcycle. You can have a charging source at both ends of the ride and you will be busy working or puttering about the house while the bike charges so there’s no down time. Give up on the idea of e-bikes matching IC bikes in all instances. The highest and best use of electric motorcycles is a situation where you have time to kill between rides.
I know The Motor Company is not going to listen to me, but here goes: Harley, stop making expensive, high performance electric motorcycles. I’ve seen your lighter weight electric bikes and they are so far removed from the traditional Harley-Davidson customer they might as well be electric Buells.
Harley’s marketing for as long as I can remember has been based on heritage. Timeless styling and traditional products have served you well. For a successful E-bike look to your past and the Topper scooter; it’s the ideal commuter platform to modernize (not too much) and electrify. The boxy rear section can hold a huge battery bank without looking like it’s holding a huge battery bank. It’s a classic form that simply drips Harley-Davidson heritage and the youth of America will go gaga over the styling. Keep the thing below $4000 so a normal person can afford one. You’ll have to outsource most of the drivetrain components to keep the price reasonable but you can slap the parts together in an old V-Rod factory and call it made in the USA!
I was up in Seattle about a month ago, and while we were there, we visited the Chihuly Garden and Glass Museum. It’s just below the Seattle Space Needle. I enjoyed it, and if you are in the area and you want to experience something new, this is a place you might consider visiting. I had seen exotic blown glass in Venice (Italy, not California) a few years ago and I guess I was expecting to see more of the same, but trust me on this, the Chihuly Museum is unique. It features the blown glass artistry of Daly Chihuly, and it’s unlike anything I’d ever seen. The shapes, the colors, the size of the sculptures…all of it was amazing. Take a peek…
The Chihuly blown glass sculptures are huge, and it you look carefully at the photos, you can see people in the background and that will give you a sense of scale. The Nikon’s low light level capabilities came through for me here; these photos accurately portray what we saw in the Museum’s darkened interior.
There sure are a lot of interesting things to see here in the US, and I’m constantly amazed at how many of them I had never heard of before. The Chihuly Museum was in that category. There are other exciting destinations out there, and when Gresh and I find them, you’ll read about it here. Gresh is headed out to the Yamaha Endurofest in a couple of weeks (watch for that), and I’m headed overseas again. More good stuff coming up, folks!
My RIA Compact 1911. Ported, polished, and breathed on internally to feed any kind of ammo, it’s 100% reliable and superbly accurate. Its plain Parkerizing and simple walnut grips remind me of the 1911s I carried in the Army, and I like that. This 1911 is smaller, easier to carry, more accurate, and thanks to TJ, it works every time.
When you meet someone who is a master in their field, that’s a good thing. There’s an old saying that only 10% of the people in any profession are really good at what they do, and in my experience, I think that 10% figure is too high. It doesn’t seem to matter what the field is…motorcycles, medicine, and everything in between. I commented on this one time to a really good medical doctor, and she asked if I knew what you call the medical student who graduates at the bottom of the class (the answer, of course, is “Doctor”). It’s everywhere. You don’t often find the truly greats in any profession, and when you do, you stick with them.
So, to the point of this blog, I know a gunsmith who is one of the greats. This is a story about my good buddy TJ. TJ is gunsmith like no other. He is more of a perfectionist than I am, and let me tell you, I am one picky guy. I’ve been going to TJ for years and he’s worked his magic on several of my handguns. He has never disappointed me.
I first met TJ more than 30 years ago when I hung out with the falling plate crowd at the Ontario indoor pistol range. Those were good times. A bunch of us would get together on Tuesday nights, I think, and try to knock down six steel plates as quickly as we could pull the trigger. I never won, but I didn’t care. I had a lot of fun and I met some interesting people. The guns were usually highly customized race guns built specifically for the falling plate game. Custom 1911s and heavy-barreled S&W revolvers were the order of the day (I shot a revolver). The go to guy for these kinds of guns back then was TJ, and that’s were I first met him. TJ was just starting out back then, but word of his talent spread quickly, and it wasn’t long before TJ had a loyal following. The big names, Special Forces guys, federal law enforcement officers, and others for whom handguns were critical to their profession and their survival started turning to TJ as word of his talent spread. TJ’s guns were soon featured in several gun magazines. The guy is in the big leagues, and appropriately so. TJ’s work is both functional and gunsmithing art, and everything is focused on supreme reliability. It’s as good as it gets, in my opinion, and way better than you’d get from anyone else.
My first custom gun by TJ was my bright stainless .45 1911. TJ put in a Les Baer match barrel, polished and ported the receiver and the barrel to feed anything, and he installed custom fixed Millet sights. That .45 became a 100% reliable, tack driving thing of great beauty. I don’t say that lightly; in the 10 years since TJ customized my Colt 1911, it has never failed to feed, fire, or eject, and it groups supremely well. Usually, when you prioritize reliability in a handgun accuracy suffers, but that doesn’t happen with a handgun TJ has touched.
So when my Model 59 started acting up a month ago after 45 years of faithful service, I knew there’s only one guy I’d trust with it. I called TJ, and I asked him to fix the extraction issues. While he had the gun, I also asked him to add the custom jeweling he does so well on the chamber and other bits and pieces. TJ went beyond that with a custom polish and porting job on the feed ramp and chamber, and my Model 59 is ready for the next 45 years.
A lightly customized S&W Model 59. Zebrawood grips, lots of engine turning, and this 9mm auto is good to go.
TJ also spun up my Rock Island Compact 1911. The drill there was similar: Custom engine turning on the chamber, and polishing the feed ramp, the chamber mouth, the barrel exterior, and the guide rod. TJ told me the gun’s extractor was junk and he fitted a new one (and now, the occasional extraction and ejection failures I experienced with that 1911 are gone). I love shooting that Compact .45, and I send a couple hundred rounds downrange with it every week. It feeds everything now, from 185 grain cast wadcutters to 230 grain hardball, and it does so flawlessly. Every time.
Engine turning on the Compact 1911’s chamber. Engine turning has a pearlescent effect. As you turn the gun, the chamber appears to come alive. It’s very cool.The barrel and guide rod are polished (along with the feed ramp and chamber entrance) to enhance the 1911’s reliability. This pistol is one super reliable 1911.
And hey, I thought why not spin up my Mini 14 a bit, too? So I asked TJ to polish and jewel the bolt. He did, and that rifle has never looked better. It’s a little dirty in the photo below, but that’s okay. I sent a whole bunch of full metal jacket 62 grain bullets downrange with it yesterday.
An unusual touch for a Mini 14: A jeweled bolt. It really adds to the rifle’s appearance. Yeah, I like engine turning.
The bottom line: You won’t find another gunsmith as good as TJ. The guy does work that is superior in every aspect. He communicates well, too. While my guns were with TJ, I had a steady stream of photographs and emails from him clarifying the work and reporting progress. Where else can you get that? I’ve already sent several of my friends to TJ, and now I’m telling you about him. You can get to his site here, and you might want to do that even if you don’t have any immediate gunsmithing needs. You can spend hours just looking at TJ’s custom guns, and that would be time well spent.
We never used re-bar caps back when I was doing construction. I don’t think they had been invented yet. It was a different time: You had to be tough, man and I was. If you tripped and fell onto an exposed re-bar the thing would go clean through you and out the other side. The jobsites I worked on were grisly with dead men impaled on rusting steel. I’ll never forget that smell. In the hot Florida sun the bodies bloated fast, seemingly still alive as they twitched and waved a stiff, blackened hand each time a bubble of gas escaped.
Guys getting skewered on re-bar was so prevalent we didn’t bother to pull them off until it was time to pour the concrete. Why bother, another man will just come along and land on the thing.
I never fell onto a rebar myself. I’ve come close but managed to avoid spearing the bar, because I didn’t run up a bunch of debt going to college or paying exorbitant hospital bills for puncture remedies. Back then people took responsibility for their actions, not like now. Those guys stuck on the rebar? Maybe they should have eaten less fast food or bought a cheaper car. Today you see rebar covers all over construction jobs. It’s all part of the dumbing down of America.
Back to the rebar covers, I’m reinforcing the ground surrounding The Carriage House and there are a bunch of re-bars sticking up from the retaining wall. I’m not so worried about falling onto them (because I made wise life choices) but the damn things are sharp. The bars will eventually be bent down into the formwork and covered with concrete, until then I’m getting cut to ribbons. A good-sized gash to the elbow was the final straw.
At first I was going to use empty beer cans to cap the bars. That visual might be too much for my wife to handle and anyway I’d have to drink like 75 beers to get the job done. I’ve been trying to lose weight by drinking gin and tonics as a calorie saving measure. Processing that many beers through my gastrointestinal system was a non-starter. I found the MY caps online for 50 cents apiece.
The caps fit rebar from 3/8” to ¾”, inside the cap are 4 vanes that conform to the different sizes. It’s a good set up. The bright orange color alerts you to the bar so there’s less tripping and zero cutting on my jobsite.
They’ve been out in the sun for a few weeks and the color hasn’t faded yet. Kind of funny that the packaging says “Does not protect against impalement.” Which is the main reason you buy the damn things. I suspect some cell-phone owning construction worker fell 13 floors onto the MY cap and managed to sue the company.
Go ahead and call me a nanny-state mason. I deserve it. I guess you could say I’m getting soft in my old age. Seeing all those orange caps sitting atop the rebar makes me sad. I miss the old ways. I miss personal responsibility. And, funnily enough, I miss that smell.
I’ve been drinking my stash of Yoo-Hoo (the review is in the works), but wouldn’t you know it, each of those little containers is 100 calories. To a male model like myself, that means more time at the gym, and that’s what I’ve been doing. Usually I roll over there in the Subie, but today was a bit different. I rode to the gym on my old RX3.
It sounds funny to refer to the RX3 as old. Four years ago, it was the hottest thing since sliced bread, and news of an inexpensive, fully-equipped, adventure touring machine was big news indeed. The RX3 price has gone up since then, but the RX3 is still a hot smoking hot deal. Mine came in on the very first shipment from Chongqing, it has about 20,000 miles on it, and it’s still going strong. I don’t ride my RX3 much these days because I’m usually on someone else’s motorcycle for an ExNotes blog (the RX4, the Royal Enfields, the Janus bikes, the Genuine G400c), but every time I get on my bike I still feel the excitement I first felt when I rode an RX3 for the first time. That was in China. You can badmouth small bikes and Chinese bikes all you want, but I know better. The RX3 is one of the world’s great motorcycles.
I’m going to do a trip on my RX3, most likely up the Pacific Coast, in the next couple of months. I’m thinking something leisurely, around 200 miles each day, with stops at the La Purisima Mission, Jocko’s in Nipomo (best barbeque on the planet), a run up the Pacific Coast Highway to Carmel, and then a jaunt east through Hollister to Pinnacles, Highway 25, and the 198 down the center of California. I’ll probably swing further east for a Del Taco burrito in Barstow (it’s the location of the original Del Taco, and if I had to explain why that’s significant, you might not get it). Yeah, that could work. Lots of photos, lots of meeting new people, and lots of fun.
What would be particularly cool on a trip like that is the RX3’s fuel economy. We’re up around $4 per gallon here in the Peoples Republik of Kalifornia (about a dollar of that is taxes), and being on a bike that sips fuel always makes me feel like I’m getting away with something. I consistently get better than 70 mpg on my RX3. That’s a good thing. Gresh seems to have stumbled on to something on his B0nneville adventure using Lucas fuel treatment in his Husky. His fuel economy improved significantly after adding Lucas. I’ve always used Lucas fuel treatment in my bike, and I’m wondering if that’s part of the reason I’ve always had great fuel economy.
Anyway, lots more coming up, folks. Stay tuned.
Read about some of our other adventures on the ExhaustNotes Epic Rides page!
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CSC 150 Mustang replicas parked in front of Mulege’s Las Casitas Hotel. Yep, we rode down there on 150cc bikes!
I have several places I like to stay in Baja, and one of those is the Las Casitas Hotel in Mulege. (Mulege is pronounced Mool-a-hay, with the accent on the “hay” syllable; it’s not mule-lidge as I sometimes hear gringos say.) I could give you directions and an address for Las Casitas, but it’s really not necessary. Mulege is a small town along Baja’s Transpeninsular Highway and the Las Casitas Hotel is easy to find. Just take a left into town under the arch as you’re traveling south on the Transpeninsular (the main, and in many cases only, road through Baja), head into town, and sort of bear right when you come to a fork entering this interesting little village.
Looking into Mulege from Baja’s Transpeninsular Highway.
My good buddy Javier is the hotelier at Las Casitas. He’s a guy about my age, we became friends as soon as we met, and he’s just a plain old good guy. You know what I’m talking about. Sometimes you meet somebody and you like them immediately, and for me, Javier is a guy like that. That photo you see above with the Heroica Mulege arch? It was erected to commemorate the actions of a small band of Bajaenos who held off a large group of invading seaborne soldiers. I was telling that story at dinner in the Las Casitas one night and I couldn’t remember who the invaders were. “It was you, the Americans,” Javier reminded me, and we all had a good laugh.
Las Casitas has a bar and a restaurant, and if you’re traveling with a group, Javier has no problem setting up a world class meal to keep the gang happy. I’ve had seafood dinners, chile rellenos (my favorite Mexican dish), and more. Javier does a great breakfast, too, and the coffee is superb. The real treat, though, is the fresh-squeezed orange juice. It’s worth riding the 700 miles south just that alone.
A dinner in the Las Casitas on one of the CSC Motorcycles rides.Chile rellenos, as prepped by Javier and his crew. Wow, were they ever great!
Las Casitas has a tropical feel to it, and that’s not surprising as Mulege is damn near in the tropics (the Tropic of Cancer, the northern edge of what officially constitutes the tropics, is just a few miles further down the down from Mulege). The hotel rooms are arranged in two rows with an enclosed courtyard, and Javier’s okay with parking the bikes in the courtyard at night just outside the courtroom. It’s really not necessary as there’s little crime in Baja (and on more than one occasion, infused with sufficient amounts of 100% blue agave Tequila and the inevitable accompany bottles of Negra Modelo, I’ve left my motorcycle parked on the street with no problems). But it’s a nice touch to be able to bring the bikes into the courtyard.
In the Las Casitas courtyard with the bikes. Javier is the second guy in from the left.
The little town of Mulege is an oasis along the Rio Mulege, and it’s one of Baja’s date-farming centers. It would be a crime against nature to not stop at Mulege’s ancient mission, 1700s-era church still in daily use.
The Mulege Mission. It’s one of a small group of 300-year-old missions dotting the Baja peninsula.Inside the Mulege Mission. It’s still on active duty as a working church.A statue in the Mulege Mission.Looking out of the Mulege Mission.Date groves along the Rio Mulege, as viewed from an observation platform at the Mulege Mission.
Writing this blog on this fine Friday morning, I am realizing I need to get my knees in the Baja breeze again. Maybe that feeling will pass, and maybe it won’t. We’ll see.
We never used re-bar caps back when I was doing construction. I don’t think they had been invented yet. It was a different time: You had to be tough, man and I was. If you tripped and fell onto an exposed re-bar the thing would go clean through you and out the other side. The jobsites I worked on were grisly with dead men impaled on rusting steel. I’ll never forget that smell. In the hot Florida sun the bodies bloated fast, seemingly still alive as they twitched and waved a stiff, blackened hand each time a bubble of gas escaped.
