Continuing the Colombia adventure, this was my post for the CSC blog on the 18th of December in 2016. We were having a hell of a time and very nearly everywhere we went good buddies Juan and Carlos explained to me that we could not have ridden these roads just a few years ago due to the narcos and FARC instability in Colombia. It was an amazing trip and I was thoroughly enjoying myself.
More riding, another Andean crossing, a bit of rain, and we arrived in Barichara!
Barichara is an artist’s town, and it’s one of the most exclusive places in all of Colombia. It was another glorious day of mountain riding. I did not take too many photos on the ride to Barichara, mostly because of the rain, our late arrival, and I was enjoying our dinner too much that evening in Barichara to break out the Nikon. But I did get a few photos.
My lunch at a restaurant along the Chicamocha River…
One of my “from the saddle” shots of a hydroelectric dam on the Chicamocha River…
A couple of shots chasing Juan Carlos through a massive tunnel in the Andes Mountains…
A fine feathered friend at a fuel stop…
And finally, a shot after the rain ended of the Chicamocha valley…
I’m enjoying the AKT Moto RX3. It’s different in a few minor ways than the CSC bike, and they are both fantastic motorcycles. I’ll do a blog after I return home describing the differences.
I’m calling it a night, folks. More to follow…as always, stay tuned!
I’ll post a few more photos and another video or two from Barichara in the next installment of our Colombian trip travelogue. I wrote this blog before we went out that night, and I grabbed a lot more with my Nikon on our night out in Barichara. It was an impressive town. I’ve got to get back there one of these days.
More of the Colombia adventure and other epic rides are here!
Once upon a time I wanted to be a boat mechanic. When I met Virgil B. Patterson I got the chance. Everyone called him Virgil B. The Patterson part rarely came up. I met him at Admiralty Marine down on Shelter Island in San Diego where I had been hired to install bonding systems in boats.
Bonding entails electrically connecting all the underwater metal components of a boat. Stuff like rudders, props and shafts, thru-hull fittings for water intakes or transducers for electronics. These components may be bronze, stainless steel or any amalgam of metals the manufacturer used when they built the part but they are never pure anything. Bonding connects these blended combinations of atoms to a zinc or magnesium sacrificial anode. If you dip the whole mess into salt water you have a nice .75-volt battery. The zinc, being a less noble metal would slowly lose mass as a slight electrical current passed between the zinc and all the rest of the metals. By sacrificing itself the zinc protected any more-noble metals in the circuit .
There’s a lot more to bonding but the rest of it was just as boring as that last paragraph. At first I liked the job. I crawled around boats connecting things with one long, continuous piece of #10 gauge solid copper wire. We used one piece of wire to eliminate the possibility of a bad connection at one fitting causing a disconnect down the line. The wire looped back to the beginning, forming a circle so that if the bonding was cut once everything was still protected. The last thing you want is a bunch of dissimilar metals electrically connected without a chunk of zinc in the circuit. It would be better to leave the boat un-bonded and let each part corrode at its own metallurgical pace.
My initial enthusiasm waned. Bonding became a tedious and thankless task. I could work on a boat for 60 hours and it would look exactly the same as when I started. Nothing on the boat worked better or, for that matter, worse. Unless something goes very wrong electrolysis is a slow process. It took months or even years to see if you actually accomplished anything electrolysis-wise. The worst of it was that it always seemed like the customer didn’t really know why you were there.
When I wasn’t bonding boats Virgil B. would take me along on engine or transmission jobs. Virgil B. was a Marine and tough as nails but he was getting on in years and he needed a young back to help with the heavy stuff. My job was to lift the heavy stuff, carry his toolbox down the docks, run to get parts and drive him home at night after we got hammered on Mickey’s Big Mouth malt liquor. Mickey’s were unique in that they came in little green-glass hand grenades. We loved the things.
Getting hammered on Mickey’s Big Mouth malt liquor was our way of winding down after a hard day’s work. We put in a lot of time at Admiralty Marine. It was a busy shop. 60-hour weeks were normal. One week I clocked 90 hours. I was making $3.25 an hour so I needed all the time I could get. It was 6 or 7 pm when we quit and drove to the store for some Mickey’s. Virgil B. drove a 1973 Ford Ranchero Squire. The one with wood trim. At that time it was a fairly new car.
Some nights, and I never figured out why, Virgil B. wanted me to drive his car home and drop him off, then I would go to my house to sleep and pick him up in the morning. He was no more hammered than I but who knows? I tell you what, that Ranchero hood looked about 70 feet long after 4 malt liquors.
Virgil B. taught me to be the end of the line. The buck stopped with us: If we couldn’t fix the problem then we damn sure figured out how to fix it. There was no quit in Virgil B. and we never failed. The man was relentless. Lowering a 200-pound Paragon transmission (with a reduction gear!) deep into the bowels of a sail boat while Virgil B. held my legs to keep me from sliding into the hole gave me the confidence to complete any task. I was taught that there is no one else coming along and that the job was all on me, on us.
I got real busy with bonding systems so Admiralty Marine hired a full-time helper for Virgil B. He was a young Marine fresh out of the military. I’ll call him Eric because he resembled Eric Estrada. The son-of-a-bitch looked like a movie star. Virgil B. picked Eric from the other applicants because he was big, strong, a Marine and he was beautiful.
Virgil glowed with the pride of ownership. Standing Eric next to me was comical: Eric towered 6-feet 3-inches, I was 5-foot 7-inches. It was like Pee Wee Herman next to Charles Atlas. Eric was well into the lower 200-pound range. I had long, scraggly hair and weighed about 130 pounds.
But the pride of ownership soon faded. Eric and Virgil B. were sent out on jobs and kept coming back with problems. This wouldn’t come loose or that was heavy. Even simple things stalled Eric. He was just lazy, was the problem. Virgil B. took me aside one day and said “I don’t know what happened to the Marine Corps but Eric wouldn’t have been a Marine in my day.”
The final straw was a diesel Ford Lehman cylinder head Eric was to bring in for a valve job. The Lehman is a mid-sized diesel and the head is one big ass chunk of iron covering 6 cylinders. Eric came back to the shop empty handed and told Virgil B. that it was stuck. The frustration welled up and in disgust Virgil B. turned to me and said, “Joe, go get that god-damn cylinder head.”
There was no way in hell I was going to let Virgil B. down. I would have died if that’s what it took. The buck stopped with me. I broke ratchets and sockets. In the cramped engine room I strained lifting the cylinder head off the block and carrying it up from the engine room, down the docks and into the truck. It really should have been a two-man job but I brought Virgil B. that Lehman cylinder head. At the shop I dropped the pickup’s tailgate revealing the cylinder head. The look Virgil B. gave Eric was worth every single BTU of energy I had expended. If couldn’t be pretty or tall at least I could be relentless like Virgil B.
Eric was fired. I overheard Virgil B. telling Admiralty’s owner “He just doesn’t have it.” After the Eric debacle, Virgil B. took me along for all the hard jobs. The jobs that nobody wanted to do. We drank malt liquor and worked late. We rebuilt Perkins and Chevys, Toroflows and Atomic-4s. It was a wonderful time in my life and the methodical trouble-shooting lessons I learned from Virgil B. have served me well. But the most important lessons Virgil B. taught me were that if I never quit I can never fail and that the buck stops here.
I had my RX3 out this Memorial Day weekend. It’s an iconic motorcycle, and it’s one I’ve ridden on three continents. I hadn’t ridden the RX3 in a few months, and it felt good to be on it again. Light, responsive, fully equipped, and five years old, my RX3 can and has gone the distance.
I’m thinking about a motorcycle ride up the Pacific Coast Highway to Hearst Castle, and Hearst Castle is a bucket list destination on a bucket list road. I’d like to do it on my RX3. Trust me on this: It doesn’t get much better than the Pacific Coast Highway and Hearst Castle.
The Pacific Coast Highway. Life doesn’t get much better than this, folks. Any motorcycle ride on the PCH is magnificent, and a stop at Hearst Castle makes it even better.
What’s Hearst Castle all about? Here’s the Reader’s Digest version: William Randolph Hearst is a dude who had more money than God. His dad came to California during the Gold Rush and somehow managed not to find any gold, but he went a few hills over and hit it big with silver. Ever hear of the Comstock Lode? Well, that was George Hearst back in the 1800s. Father George was a mining guy, and he sort of fell into the newspaper business when he accepted the San Francisco Examiner as payment for a gambling debt. While all this was going on, young William Randolph Hearst (George’s son) got himself expelled from Harvard, and somehow after that landed a job on the Examiner (ah, nepotism in action). And while all that was occurring, George bought 40,000 acres in the Santa Lucia Mountains (on the central California coast) so the family had a place to go camping.
I guess some folks run out of things to do when they’re rich, but not young William. He decided to he needed a castle. So he built one. On the family property (which he inherited in 1919) in San Simeon. It’s one hell of story, and there’s more to it than I can cover here in the blog, but it will soon be in a major motorcycle magazine (and when that happens, I’ll give you the link here). In advance of that, though, I’ll share a few Hearst Castle photos with you.
The front door to Casa Grande. Bill Hearst liked big doors.Art, tapestries, ceilings, and more…all this stuff is the result of Hearst’s agents scouring the castles and churches of Europe, and returning the good stuff to California. It’s good to be the king.One of two Olympic-sized pools at Hearst Castle. This is the first one Hearst built, but guests complained they could hear the staff working upstairs. Undaunted, Old Bill designated this pool for staff only, and built an even larger one outdoors for his guests. The indoor pool makes for a stunning photo op, I think. The blue tiles are custom crafted. It really is amazing.Dinner was a big deal when Bill held the Hearst Corporation reins. The word “impressive” just isn’t adequate here.The view from La Cuesta Encantada (the Enchanted Hill) looking west to the Pacific Ocean.
So there you have it. But there’s more…lots more. You have to see Hearst Castle to believe it, and it is a stellar thing to see. Hearst Castle and the Pacific Coast Highway make for a great motorcycle ride.
Tinfiny Ranch is a steep and rutted place. Located in the foothills of the Sacramento Mountains we get a lot of runoff. When it rains water flows through the joint with alarming speed carrying off soil as fast as I can put it back. After living here only 4 years we lost 18 inches of dirt and the house’s foundation was laid bare. The solution to handling intermittent, mass quantities of water is terracing and concrete. I built a long retaining wall and back filled it with dirt but I wanted a bit more tip resistance than just the extended foundation and concrete slab top would provide. The new grade is much gentler slowing the speed of the water and directing it away from the house.
Enter the tieback. The tieback is a belt and suspenders type of thing. In my case I bent a loop on pieces of 5/8” rebar, ground the ends as round as I could by free hand (If I only had a lathe!) and threaded the bar for 5/8 coupling nuts.
The nuts spin on to the threaded rebar until tight, but seeing as how the threads were kind of ragged on the rebar I decided to give them a lick of weld to ensure the bar won’t pull out of the nut. I used an Oxy-Acetylene welder because it’s the only type of welding I can still see.
After welding the tieback I dug a T-shaped hole for concrete. In this setup the concrete is mostly there to protect the rebar from rusting. Any tipping force on the wall tries to stretch the rebar and pull the cross piece through the dirt.
The rebar connects to a 5/8” threaded rod cast into the poured concrete columns. These poured columns tie each 8-foot section of wall together and have a L-shaped foot protruding on the fill side. The L-foot column is yet another tool to prevent tipping.
Once poured, the tie back is buried and the dirt compacted. About 6-feet long with a 24-inch cross bar, one of these tiebacks anchors each 8-foot section. The idea being the wall would have to move a lot of compacted, dry dirt to fall over.
The wall has 3/8” rebar every few cells of the block sections. This rebar is poured into the foundation of the wall and all the block cells are filled with concrete. The 3/8” rebar stands proud of the final slab elevation.
Capping all this monkey-motion, the protruding 3/8” rebar is bent over below the finished grade of the slab and tied to more steel. Another rebar runs parallel along the wall to emulate a cap. Then the slab is poured making a nice beer drinking or steak grilling patio.
Obviously if you’ve read this far you’ll realize I’m not an engineer so all this may be excessive or futile but to tip the retaining wall you’ll have to lever the foundation L-feet, pull the tie backs through the dirt and drag a 30-foot long by 10-feet wide patio across the ground. It’s not impossible given enough ground saturation but the wall is only 4-feet tall at its highest and I’m hoping the slab keeps the dirt beneath dry.
If this wall fails I’ll just leave it for fill and start another wall a few feet away from the wreckage. It’s been a fun project and I plan to extend the retaining wall another 30 feet after this year’s monsoon season is over.
I don’t like barbers, and for good reason: When I was a little kid, I was traumatized by one. I didn’t know that’s what you call what happened to me at first (more on that in a bit), but I sure was. Traumatized, that is.
The story kind of goes like this…I grew up in a rural part of New Jersey. Yeah, we were only 40 miles outside of New York City, but in the 1950s central Jersey was farmland, most folks built their own houses (like my Dad did), doctors made house calls (ours did), you could shoot a gun in your backyard (we did), and several towns shared one barber. We did, and he was Charlie the Barber. He probably had a last name, but to us he was simply Charlie the Barber. Usually my Dad took me to Charlie’s when he needed a haircut, but on this one day that task fell to Mom.
I was only about 4 years old, but this business of going to Charlie the Barber with Mom (instead of Dad) represented change, something I knew I didn’t like even at that tender young age, and I was already feeling a little uneasy when it was my turn in the big chair. Charlie was a little guy who was a flurry of motion, and to be blunt, he made me nervous. He was one of those barbers who was constantly snipping mostly air. Snip snip snip snip snip, and maybe on the fifth or sixth snip the scissors would zoom in and get a little hair. Scared me, Charlie did. He wore a white jacket and had slicked-back jet black curly hair (he used way more than just a little dab of Brylcreem), he had this pencil thin mustache, and he had a voice kind of like Dudley Do-Right (you know, Bullwinkle’s buddy, of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police). The voice, the mustache, the flashing and slashing scissors, the slick hair…the words didn’t match the music. I didn’t know what it was, but something was off and it made me nervous.
So I’m sitting in this elevated barber chair, the scissors were swimming in front of my face and all around my head snipping furiously at nothing, and I’m thinking in my four-year-old mind this is not a good situation. Then, what happened next was really bad. Remember I mentioned the country doctors who made house calls? Well, ours was Doc Bristol, who weirdly enough looked exactly like Doc on Gunsmoke (i.e., Milburn Stone). Doc Bristol, I suppose, was a nice enough guy, but he’s another dude who made me nervous. When Doc Bristol came around, it usually meant things like hypodermic needles weren’t far behind, and to this day, I don’t like needles.
“Ah, I see you got little Berky on the hot seat,” Doc Bristol said.
“Snip, snip, snip, snip, snip” went the silver scissors millimeters in front of my face. Charlie was on fire. He was in the zone. Zip codes hadn’t been invented yet, but I didn’t like the one he was in.
“Cut one of his ears off,” Doc Bristol said, “I need the business.”
That’s all it took. I went nuts. All fours year of my existence went absolutely dogshit nuts. I screamed. I wiggled. I slid out of the chair with a lopsided, unfinished haircut. You don’t tug on Superman’s cape, you don’t spit into the wind, and you don’t tease a four year old. I ran out, screaming all the way home.
The bottom line? There was no way in hell I was going back to Charlie the Barber. My Dad bought a set of hair clippers and he cut my hair until I went in the Army 18 years later. In the Army, I did a lot of crazy things. I jumped out of airplanes. I fired 106mm recoilless rifles (a weapon so loud you shake hands with God every time one lets go). I tromped around in rice paddies and on missile sites in faraway places. Nothing scared me worse than getting into a barber’s chair. And I still feel that way. I tense up every time I get in a barber’s chair. A very attractive young lady (a hair stylist, not just a barber) once asked me if I was okay (probably because my knuckles were turning white from the death grip I had on her barber’s chair). I get that wired when it’s time for a haircut.
Most guys worry about going bald. Not me. I’d be fine being completely bald, because then I wouldn’t need to see a barber. But there’s still enough fuzzy gray stuff on my noggin that I need to get a haircut occasionally.
One time a few years ago we had a couple over for dinner, and she was a clinical psychologist. For whatever reason, the conversation turned to haircuts, and I told the above story. “Aw, little Joey was traumatized by his barber.” Ah, so that was it. That’s exactly what happened. The word fit perfectly. I had been traumatized by a barber.
So we’re into this shelter in place thing, you know, what with Covid 19 and all, and I needed a haircut. Evidently, so did a lot of people, because when I tried to order a set of hair clippers online, everyone was sold out. But last week supply caught up with demand, and thanks to Amazon.com and Fedex, I now have my very own hair clippers.
I bought Hoford hair clippers and they work great. They are battery powered and the kit has all kinds of accessories. There are three or four standoff combs/spacer things that are for folks with longer hair, but I didn’t need any of them. I set the clippers at the lowest setting (a set of hair clippers is like a lawn mower…you set the blade as low as possible and you don’t have to mow the lawn very often). I hit the ON button and the clippers came alive! Buzzzzzzz! I love it! I gave myself a haircut, both my ears are still in place, and I think I look good. I used to pay $8 for a haircut, so in four more haircuts, these new clippers will have paid for themselves. Life is good!
As much as I enjoy concrete work I need to take a break now and then. I ran out of mud for the back patio (164 bags, missed it by 10 bags!) so I decided to get my old South Bend 6’ lathe up and running.
My Pop bought the South Bend way back in the late 1960’s. I was just a kid but I remember riding in Pop’s Chevy ¾ ton, picking up the machine and unloading it at our house. It was and still is the heaviest thing I ever want to move. We were lucky in that the South Bend came with a crap load of attachments: a full set of collets, three steady rests, a 3-jaw and 4-jaw chuck and hundreds of tool bits were thrown in with the lathe.
Pops gave me the lathe 14 years ago. He said he was never going to use it again and he needed more room. I took the lathe down to The Florida Keys, where we lived at the time, and it went under water several times due to hurricanes. The motor was mounted lower on the lathe frame so it was lost to the elements. The rest of the lathe sat higher and was ok. All I did in The Keys was work so the South Bend sat for many years and I dragged it out to New Mexico in The Big Haul Ryder truck.
With the Covid, stay-at-home orders I decided now is the time to get the old machine running again. Back when we first got the lathe I asked my dad, “What does it do?” He told me “Everything”. He said, “You can make another lathe with a lathe!” Pops was a good machinist and he showed me the basics of operation. I was cutting threads on the South Bend within a few weeks.
The South Bend came with a hokey, home-made motor/pulley setup that we were going to change 50 years ago but never got around to it. The pulley set up is ugly but it works and that’s probably why it stayed. This go-round I’m leaving it as is. The next guy can come up with a better system. Because with lathes there is always a next guy: they don’t wear out.
The old motor had a wider mounting bolt footprint and one hole of the 4 mounting holes was used for an adjuster bolt. I re-drilled the plate to suit the new motor and tapped the holes for 5/16” bolts.
For the adjusting bolt I used the existing motor mount holes but made a bar to go underneath. The new bar extends past the motor plate to line up with the adjuster bolt. It looks a little better than the previous setup. I need a few parts to finish the new motor installation so that will have to wait.
The South Bend is a 6” lathe but at some point in the past it was jacked up to an 8” lathe (swing over V-ways). The 1” spacer blocks look so well made they may be factory parts. I’m leaving them.
One of the nice things about this lathe is that it has not been abused. The thing is probably 70 years old and V-ways are smooth and unscarred from work falling out of the chuck and smacking into them. This means that a good machinist ran the thing.
That is, it was unscarred until I got my teen-age meat hooks on it. That gouge in the carriage was put there in the early 1970s by yours truly. I was cutting threads on a shaft, or maybe it was a taper, and the carriage self-fed into the chuck making a loud banging sound. I was confused; Pops was not happy and reamed me out. I never ran the carriage into the chuck again.
The forward/reverse switch is shot so I am replacing it with a toggle. Only because I have a 4-pole, double throw, center off toggle in stock. I’ve wanted to use that oddball switch forever. I’m also relocating the switch and wiring the motor 240-volt so that the 6000-watt solar-powered inverter can start the motor easier. With the old set up you had to reach over and between the spinning belts and pulleys to access the switch. It was sure a thing to keep you on your toes. Front mounting the switch will be mildly safer.
A lathe is one of the handiest machine tools you can own. The old ones are slightly clunkier to operate and I’ve forgotten most of what I knew about operating one. I’m sure YouTube is full of how-to lathe videos so I’ll brush up before I start making scrap metal.
While I wait for parts I’ll start cleaning the beast. Part 2 will cover the motor mounting, belts and wiring.
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Our Colombian adventure continues…this is the blog from the third day on the road in beautiful Colombia. It was a ride sponsored by CSC Motorcycles and AKT Motos (one of the largest motorcycle manufacturers in Colombia). Our destination was La Playa de Belem and it was awesome. Juan and Carlos were taking good care of me, proudly guiding me through their beautiful country, and I was loving every minute of it.
They tell me la playa means beach in Spanish, and Belem means Bethlehem. There was no beach, but I’m getting ahead of myself.
La Playa de Belem was our destination on the third day of our Colombian moto adventure, and it was indeed awesome. We did a cool 260 miles to get to the evening’s destination, and I have to tell you that 260 miles in Colombia is a long day. What I didn’t realize when we started in the morning is that a good 40 miles of it would be on dirt. And sand. And mud. And I’d even get a chance to play cowboy, except I was mounted on an RX3 instead of a horse.
No kidding, folks, those are cows, and they were on the road. This was something new to me. I mean, when you’re on a 250cc motorcycle, how do you make cows get out of the way? Even if you’re on a big bike, what’s the protocol? These questions were on my mind, when like always, Juan Carlos took the lead. Our bovine buddies just kind of moved aside to let him move through the herd. I wasn’t too sure about that, and then a guy on a little 100cc something-or-other did the same. In for a penny, in for a pound. As I got closer, the sea of cows parted, and I was through. Amazing stuff.
As was the case the day before, it was sweltering, so we stopped to get a juice drink. They have a lot of juices in Colombia, and I’ve been trying them all. I haven’t found one I didn’t like yet.
This little gal was fascinated by us. She let me take her picture.
What I missed getting a photo of were the dinosaurs. No kidding. I looked over at a tree and there were three or four iguanas that were huge. As in 2 1/2 or 3 feet long. They startled me. We ain’t in Kansas anymore, Toto. I jumped up and fumbled around putting the 70-300 lens on the D3300, but by the time I was ready the lizards were gone. Maybe I’ll see more of them again on this trip. Who knows? Things like that are incredible. I’m enjoying the hell out of this trip.
Ah, a few more “watching the world go by in Colombia” photos…all the gear, all the time.
After dodging and dicing through traffic (and there’s lots of traffic in these Colombian towns, and it’s mostly motorcycles), we finally hit a highway that ran straight. Yippee! We accelerated up to about 70 mph and cruised, and then Juan pulled over. What he pointed out to me was amazing. Ant hills. Not the little kind we are used to, but big monsters that are as hard as concrete. Check this stuff out, folks.
And then, much to my surprise, the animal signs started popping up.
Okay, that one was easy. Fox. I get it. I never saw a sign before warning about a fox crossing, but I can wrap my mind around that one.
What came next…well, that wasn’t so easy to surround with the old gray matter.
Anteaters. Wow. The image quality isn’t so great, but hey, we were zooming along and that one crept up on me. And how about this next one?
Okay, enough monkeying around. Back to the journey.
We entered the eastern arm of the Andes Mountains and started to climb. It was a two-lane road, and we rode it for a good 150 miles. It’s like the Angeles Crest Highway, but it goes on forever, and there were construction stops every 10 miles or so. These next few shots were taken at one of the construction stops. Juan Carlos told me we were very close to the Venezuelan border at this point.
A shot of Juan Carlos.
A Colombian taxi driver.
I’m seeing medium-sized trucks that are 60 years old nearly every day on these roads. The ’56 Ford seems to be especially popular.
Our next stop was in another Andean town at a cool little restaurant. This was our waiter.
I had chicken and mushrooms. It was awesome. I ate maybe half of it.
Carlos and Juan Carlos both ordered something in Spanish (naturally), and they were excited to get it. I thought it was beef, or maybe pork. Nope. It was pig stomach lining. Very tasty, according to them. They offered a taste, but I declined.
A word or two on the riding is in order, I guess, at this point. It is exhilarating and terrifying at the same time. In the cities and towns, it’s a free for all. It’s like one of the YouTube videos you see of city intersections with tons of scooters in Asia. Here, it’s scooters, motorcycles, cars, and trucks. There are few traffic lights, and Juan told me nobody pays attention to the stop signs or speed limits. “They are like suggestions,” he said.
I’m a big fan of the twisties, but in Colombia, they take on a new meaning. The national sport seems to be passing everyone you can everywhere you can. It’s tense. Juan Carlos and Carlos are totally used to it. I’m getting there, but it is unnerving. It’s also weird just how good every rider seems to be. I’m riding at my limits (not the bike’s limits, but mine) too often, and while I’m doing this taking a corner way faster than I ever would in the US, some Colombian will pass me on a 125cc Suzuki cruiser or something with his girlfriend on the back, leaned way over, like it was the most natural thing in the world. They look totally at ease doing it, too. These folks are natural riders, and they’re good.
We arrived in La Playa de Belem about an hour before sunset, and immediately split for a one of many Colombian national parks. It was kind of like Bryce. I grabbed a few shots there, including one of my AKT RX3.
Getting in was interesting. We had to ride a pretty rough dirt road that had a stream running down it because it had been raining. The RX3 took it in stride.
So, back to the Bethlehem thing (as I said at the start of this blog, Belem means Bethlehem in Spanish). La Playa de Belem is a beautiful little town dominated by the town square and a magnificent church (like many little towns in Colombia), and it turns out we arrived at a special time. The Colombians start celebrating Christmas nine days before Christmas, and this was that day. The town was buzzing. We hung out and watched kids singing at an outdoor service, we saw fireworks, we watched the service in the church, and then we got to see the vaca loca. I recorded it, so I won’t tell you the vaca loca story now, but if this Internet connection holds I’ll upload the video and tell you about it later.
Two more quick photos in La Playa de Belem, a video, and that’s all for now.
There’s lots more coming, folks. You probably already know this, but I’ll say it anyway: I’m having fun.
If you want to catch up on the Colombia ride, or explore any of the other exotic rides we’ve had, click on over to our Epic Rides page!
During this Covid-19 lockdown I’ve been racking up the miles of Zed. I fill the tank before I leave home and gas up once mid-ride making sure to rinse my hands with gasoline to kill any virus remnants left on the bowser keypad or handle. For those of you who are concerned about my crashing the bike and adding to the overwhelmed medical staff, fear not: I am riding easy like Easy Rider. Also Southern New Mexico is at the very beginning of the infection curve so the hospitals have plenty of room.
Since the last oil leak was stopped Zed has done 650 miles and she’s dry as a bone. I checked the oil level and it has not dropped. I feel confident that zed’s engine will take me anywhere. It feels like the bike is running a wee bit too rich but my riding area goes from 4500 feet elevation to 9000 feet. The jetting is stock in Zed’s carbs so if I chose to ride only in New Mexico I’d re-jet the thing. As it is I get a fairly steady 40 miles per gallon, mostly highway miles @ 70 to 80 miles per hour.
But I’m not going to stay around here. Berk and me are going to ride down to Mexico when this thing is all over. We’re going all the way to the end of the road, man. We’ll pick up Big John on the way. We’ll drink Modelo beer in the evening and eat Mexican food until we burst. Berk has a new 650 Royal Enfield that will get enough miles per gallon for both of us. I’ll bring my syphon hose. Orlando has a Texas Hill Country ride planned and I’d like to get down there. I’ll be interested to see if Zed’s fuel mileage improves at lower levels. I tried the magic gas treatment on Zed but unlike the 10 MPG improvement I see on the fuel-injected Husqvarna the magic sauce doesn’t seem to do anything for the carbureted Z1. Maybe there are just too many carbs.
Riders today think all bikes handled badly before they came on the scene. The Z1 was reputed to be ill handling, not as bad as the two stroke triples but still deadly. I’m not feeling it. At sane speeds the bike is steady and it corners with a delightful, easy steering. The bike does not show its 500 pounds. Winding it up to 110 MPH reveals no wobbles. Hitting a bump mid-corner induces a tiny wiggle but it’s no worse than other bikes I’ve ridden and quite a lot better than some late-model heavy weights. Maybe modern bias-ply tires are better than they were in the early 1970’s.
The front brake squeals at slow speed. The aftermarket pucks did not have the threaded hole to screw the thin, anti-vibration shim to. I thought I could get away with leaving it out. Looks like I’ll have to try some of that disc pad backing goop. Or, once all other options are exhausted, get the correct pads.
I’ve tried to social distance on my rides but in the Carrizozo Park my perimeter was compromised by a scraggly looking dude walking two scraggly dogs. “Nice day for a ride!’ he exhaled a dense stream of almost pure Covid 19 virus across the picnic table. I staggered to stay upright, it was a water main gusher. My to-go hamburger was glowing with a faint greenish light. Covid dripped through the expanded metal tabletop peeling the paint from the metal as it went. “Yep, It doesn’t get any better” I said scooting farther down the bench. “What ya riding? A 200?” the wind was at a better angle now, the covid pooled by the dog with one front paw in a sling, who sniffed at the greenish mass with nothing like enthusiasm.
“No, it’s a 900cc.” I said. Scraggly squinted at the bike. “That’s a small bike, 900 you say?” He didn’t believe me and I didn’t want to prove it with a tear down and bore inspection. “I’m a Vietnam vet!” He said. “I’m crazy but it’s not my fault.” He had one bad eye and used it to glare at me. “It’s the stuff they made me do, and now the VA won’t help me!” I said I thought the VA was supposed to be getting more money. He laughed; a chunk of grey, spongy lung flew out of his mouth. “That’s all a lie! That money is going in their pockets.” He stuck his right hand in his pocket for emphasis.
“This town sucks, there’s no prostitutes!” he shouted. I looked around and had to agree that this section of town did not have any working the street. “I hate it here. I’d like to go back to Vietnam and kill people!” I was beginning to suspect Scraggly might really be crazy. I quickly ate my burger and stood up. I told Scraggly, “Well, I’ve got to hit the road.”
“Okay, I’m leaving in 28 days, going to Georgia.” We shook hands; at that point I was already covered in Covid. Back at the bike, I stuck a paper towel inside Zed’s gas tank and used the cool gasoline to wash my hands and face. Then I cleaned my arms and then lit a match and set the whole shebang on fire.
The brakes on the Z1 are not awe-inspiring. It takes 4 fingers to get the front tire to break traction. The rear is pretty good but who uses rear brakes? The front suspension clatters as it tops out over bumps but after a few cycles they quiet down. The back shocks are original and I assume 45 years old but they keep the tire from hitting the fender and that’s all I can ask from shock absorbers.
Me and my riding buddy Mike took a long, 280 mile ride. The Z1 ran perfectly. Mike was on his Fatboy Harley. The Zed hits reserve kind of early. Like 100-110 miles. I still have a lot of gas so I may shorten the pick up tube a bit. I don’t like drawing from the bottom of the tank if I don’t have to. The 104 cubic-inch Harley gets 50 miles to a gallon! Zed is a thirsty beast.
Next up is an oil and filter change on Zed as soon as my oil arrives from Amazon. I’ll be checking the spooge closely for any odd bits of metal. That is, assuming I’m not on a ventilator by then.
The Model 625 with a box of my reloaded ammunition. The ammo in this photo had Xtreme 230-grain roundnose bullets. I found the Missouri cast roundnose bullets to be more accurate in my revolver.
Good buddy Rick C., one of the world’s great philosophers, once told me that every time he reloads he learns something new. I think he was right. This story focuses on reloading .45 ACP ammo for the Model 625 Smith and Wesson revolver, and what I learned during a recent reloading session.
The Model 625 is a beautiful revolver. It’s a direct descendant of the Model 1917 that Smith made for the US Army in World War I. The only thing I sometimes find annoying about the 625 is that sometimes reloaded 45 ACP that chambers easily in a 1911 auto won’t chamber in the revolver. This blog focuses on that issue.
The 625 and a box of ammo. This is a sweet-shooting and accurate handgun.A typical 6-shot, 50-ft Model 625 group with my favorite load. That ain’t bad from a 4-inch revolver.
There are two kinds of ammo for these revolvers. The first is standard .45 ACP, firing the same cartridge as the 1911. The other is .45 AutoRim. Firing .45 ACP ammo in a revolver like the Smith and Wesson 625 requires the use of either star or moon clips (the star clips hold six rounds; each moon clip holds three rounds). Individual cartridges clip into these. The clips provide proper headspace by holding the cartridges in place in the cylinder, and they allow the extractor to push the rounds out of the cylinder. They also work as speed clips because you can insert six rounds into the cylinder simultaneously. Theoretically, you could fire .45 ACP ammo in a Smith and Wesson revolver without the clips, but then you would need a probe to knock each case out of the cylinder. The .45 AutoRim cartridge is very similar to the .45 ACP round, but it has a rim. That eliminates the need for the clips.
.45 ACP ammo in 6-round star clips. The clips allow chambering .45 ACP ammunition in 1917-type revolvers. They are necessary because the .45 ACP cartridges don’t have a protruding rim to allow extraction.
Over the years, I’ve found that .45 AutoRim always chambers easily in a .45 ACP revolver. With .45 ACP reloads, however, that’s not always the case. That’s not good, as it sometimes prevents closing the cylinder. Even if you can close the cylinder with difficult-to-chamber .45 ACP reloads, the loaded cylinder will often drag on the frame, making cocking or double action fire difficult.
I recently loaded a batch of .45 ACP ammo that I intended to fire in my Model 625, and as is my normal practice when loading for the 1911, I put just enough of a flare on the empty cases to allow the bullet base to start into the case. After priming the cases, charging with propellant, and seating the bullets, I adjusted the seating die such that the brass just kissed the crimping ring in the seating die. At this point, I thought it would be a good idea to check the first 10 rounds in the 625 to see if they chambered fully, and you can probably guess where this story is going. A couple of rounds only went about two-thirds of the way into the chamber. I put a little more crimp on the cartridge; of the two that would not chamber, now one would and the other wouldn’t.
In examining the loaded rounds, I could see where the case had expanded circumferentially slightly after the bullet had been seated (it had a slight bulge at the base of the bullet. I wondered if perhaps the Missouri 230-grain roundnose bullets I was loading were just too big, so I measured them. The box told me the bullets had been sized to 0.452 inches, and that’s exactly where they were. Then I measured the case outside diameter for the loaded rounds just below the case mouth. They measured 0.475 to 0.476 inch. Then I went online to see what that dimension should be. Here’s what I found:
The drawing above is misleadingly dimensioned. The dimension we’re interested in is the 0.473 case outside diameter at the case mouth (it looks like an inside diameter on the drawing, but it’s the outside diameter. My reloaded ammo was 0.002 to 0.003 inch above this. I played around with the crimp a bit, but I couldn’t get that number to come down via crimping with my RCBS bullet seating die.
Then I had an idea. I removed the decapping pin and threaded shaft from the resizing die, and adjusted it to just kiss the loaded round a little to square up the bullet in the case and decrease the diameter at the case mouth a bit. I adjusted the depth of the seating die in the press such that I obtained a 0.473 outside case diameter result at the case mouth. The first case chambered. I then repeated the partial resize on 10 cartridges; all but one sucked right into the chamber with no circumferential play. I still had that one, though, so I played with the resizing die adjustment again until the dimension was right at 0.472, and that did the trick. It removed the flare completely, and every subsequent cartridge I loaded using this technique chambered perfectly. Basically, I was using the resizing die as a crimping tool.
It bothered me that I had to go .001 below the 0.473 inch spec to get the ammo to chamber 100% of the time in my revolver, and I was a little worried about what this might be doing to the bullet diameter. I wondered what factory ammo measures, and then I realized I had some. So I pulled it out of the ammo locker and measured it. The factory ammo measured 0.470 inch at that dimension (0.003 under the 0.473 specification), which explains why factory .45 ACP ammo always chambers so easily in this revolver. I also checked the drawing for the .45 AutoRim cartridge. It shows the case outside diameter at the business end to be 0.472, which is coincidentally exactly what I found to work perfectly for my reloaded .45 ACP ammo in the revolver.
I was a little bit worried that in running the cartridges part way into the resizing die I might be swaging the bullets to something below .451 inch (the minimum bullet diameter for this cartridge). To check on this, I measured the case wall thickness. On my Winchester .45 ACP brass (which has a wall thickness perceptibly greater than other brass I sometimes use) the wall thickness is exactly 0.010. Since my ammo measured 0.472 at the mouth after my post-load resizing/crimping operation, that should leave the bullet at exactly 0.452 inch (or 0.472 – 2*0.010). That’s exactly where it should be. The cases hold that wall thickness for some distance into the case, too. I think what the operation is doing is aligning and straightening the bullet in the case.
I’m not using any lube for my secondary resizing operation. I have carbide dies, and they do not require it.
The proof on all of this was how the rounds grouped, and folks, they grouped well. It was a little windy when I fired these groups at the West End Gun Club, but the gun and the ammo did what they are supposed to do.
Four groups of 6 shots each with the Model 625. 5.6 grains of Unique with a 230 cast roundnose bullet has always performed well for me in both revolvers and 1911 semi-automatics.
I like this modified approach (resize/decap, clean, prime, bellmouth, charge, seat, remove the FLRS decapper, and then crimp the ammo to 0.472 with the resizing die). It works well, it produces an accurate load, and every round chambers easily in the Model 625.
My shooting buddies Rick and Robby tell me that the Lee factory crimp die does the same thing as what I’ve described above. I ordered one for the .45 ACP and I’ll reload ammo using it, but that’s a topic for a subsequent blog.
Like what you read above? More Tales of the Gun stories are here.
The Colombia adventure continues. For those of you just joining us, this is a series of blogs I wrote four years ago for CSC Motorcycles when I was rode an AKT Moto RS3 (the carbureted Colombian version of the RX3) through the Andes Mountains. Day 2 of that ride was absolutely awesome, ending with a visit to an enchanted town after a ferry ride down the Magdalena River.
Our second day on the road in Colombia started in Coveñas, and the humidity was oppressive. It was going to get worse as the day went on. We’re in the tropics, not too far from the equator, and hot and humid is the normal way of things here. On the plus side, you don’t care if it rains because you’re already drenched. It actually helps because it’s cooling.
Anyway, back to the morning in Coveñas. We ate in the hotel, and while we were waiting for breakfast, this dude was selling some kind of yams or roots, and Juan Carlos pointed out the scale he was using. It’s about as crude a scale as I’ve ever seen, but it’s sound technically, and it sure makes for an interesting photo.
Here’s a typical Colombian breakfast: Scrambled eggs with tomatoes and onions, bread, and a corn or flour tortilla with cheese (that’s called arrepo). The Colombians are big on cheeses, with different regions producing unique cheeses. It’s quite good.
The guys pointed out this car as we packed the bikes. This probably didn’t end well for the passenger, who most likely was not wearing a seat belt. The riding in Colombia is glorious, but it is stressful. Juan and Carlos said when they ride anywhere else (other than Colombia), it makes them sleepy because there’s only scenery. In Colombia, there’s scenery, but you have to watch out for everyone else. It’s intense. In a country full of twisties, people pass on blind corners routinely. I guess the theory is you pray a lot. People think nothing of passing if the oncoming traffic has room to move over, or if the oncoming traffic is a motorcycle. It’s weird, but you kind of get used to it. But it is intense (just like the heat and the humidity).
When we got on the road after breakfast, we only went maybe a mile when Carlos had a flat tire. Watching the guy repair it was interesting, and so was hanging out watching the world go by in Colombia.
And here are some of those watching the world go by in Colombia photos.
Here’s a photo of our RX3s somewhere on the road, headed to the ferry that would take us to Mompos, a remote town 45 minutes down the Magdalena River.
This church was across the street and just down the road from the ferry loading spot.
I only grabbed a few photos while we were boarding the ferry. The heat and humidity were getting to me at this point. It was about 4:00 in the in the afternoon, and it was sweltering.
Once we were underway, it got a little cooler on the river. You probably saw my video of that ride.
We arrived in Mompos and it was impressive. It’s the oldest town in Colombia, and to say it is off the beaten path would be an understatement. We had dinner in a restaurant run by an Austrian, where I had the best pizza I’ve ever had in my life.
After dinner, we chatted with the owner for a bit, and then we walked along the river front…I grabbed a bunch of photos there.
Folks, that’s about it for now. I’m a day behind in keeping you up to date on this trip, but Internet connectivity is dicey in these remote locations. As always, more to follow, if not today, then in a day or two (or three). Stay tuned.
If you’d like to see our earlier blogs in Colombia, please click here.
