Month: May 2020

Another 1917 Revolver Record!

You may recall that I posted a blog last year about a handgun I bought that is over over a century old.   It’s a pristine Model 1917 Colt, a U.S. Army handgun issued in World War I.  Mine was a real find…it appears to be unfired, it has the original blue (not Parkerized) finish, and it is just awesome.

My Colt 1917, chambered in .45 ACP. Read our earlier blog; this is a great story.

As you know from reading that blog, the Army had two versions of the Model 1917, one manufactured by Colt and the other manufactured by Smith and Wesson.  One of the Smith and Wessons (in comparable condition to my Colt 1917) closed on a Gunbroker.com auction yesterday for the astonishing price of $2,525.

The Smith and Wesson Model 1917 that closed on Gunbroker.com yesterday for $2,525. When the Army purchased these for World War I, they cost about 1/100 of that amount.

I spotted the Smith 1917 when it first appeared on Gunbroker and I thought it would be nice to own both an original Colt and a Smith, but the price shot up to over $1,000 very quickly (many days before the auction closed).   I knew I wasn’t a player at those prices.  And then it kept going up, and up, and up, all the way to $2,525.  Wow!  I’m feeling even better about my Colt, and I didn’t think that was possible.

More gun stories are here!

Day 1: Adventure Riding the Andes!

Our Colombia adventure continues…a circumnavigation of the Colombian Andes on a 250cc motorcycle.  For those of you just joining in, I’m reposting a series of blogs I did for CSC Motorcycles describing my ride through the Andes Mountains in December 2015.  After spending the previous day tearing around Medellin and its surroundings, I had become acclimatized to the mile-high altitudes.  As the adventure continued, we would head even higher, all the way up to 14,000 feet, but that’s all coming later.   On this, my second day in Colombia, we headed into the Andes and then down to the Caribbean.  Our real journey had started, and here is that story.

Wow! I never thought I’d been typing this, but here I am. I just rode across the northernmost range of the Andes Mountains.  On an RX3.  Here they are: The Andes!

I took that shot from a cool little spot where we stopped for a typical Colombian breakfast…hot chocolate, scrambled eggs, and arrepa. More on that later…here’s a shot of the bikes at what has to be one of the coolest biker restaurants I’ve ever enjoyed.

And here’s another shot of my AKT Motos RS3 (the RS3 is the carbureted version of the RX3).

I liked that restaurant a lot. They painted it to match my jacket.
We rode about 370 miles yesterday, and about half of it was in the Andes. 370 miles may not seem like a lot, but picture riding Glendora Ridge for 6 or 8 hours. The Andes are a motorcycling paradise. The Andes Mountains.

Wow!

I guess you never know what you’re going to see in the Andes. This old goat was kind of cool…and I had to grab a shot.

We stopped to take a break and some of the local paramilitary/police guys came over to check out the bikes. The RX3 is a prestige motorcycle in Colombia (just like it is in the USA) and these boys wanted a closer look. They gladly consented to a photo. They are most definitely well armed. You see police and military units everywhere.

These next photos are from the saddle after we descended from the Andes. Good times, my friends.

These next photos are of young ladies who are gas station attendants. When they saw our 250cc RX3 motos, they wanted to know what it was like riding such huge motorcycles. That’s a bit different from what you might hear in the USA, I suppose.

It was a long day, and it ended in a town called Covenas, right on the Caribbean. We stopped for a few shots with the sea in the background.

Keep an eye on the blog, folks. I won’t be able to post every day, but I’ll do my best.

And that wrapped up the second day of my time in Colombia, and the first day of our ride through the Andes.  We’re going to make it a little easier to track this adventure for our blog readers.  You can get all of the good stuff from our Colombian ride here.  I’ll post the next blog from our Colombia adventure in a few days, so stay tuned!

British Motorcycle Gear: Our newest advertiser!

Our good buddy Andrew Capone has taken the reins at long-established and legendary British Motorcycle Gear.  Located in Sea Girt, New Jersey and shipping all over the world, BMG sells a variety of Belstaff, Barbour International, and other top quality moto clothing and accessories.   You may recall Joe Gresh’s review of BMG’s outstanding Rapido gloves here on the ExNotes blog a few weeks ago.

While you’re on the BMG site, visit their BMG Moto Media page, too.  With articles on T.E. Lawrence, the Isle of Man, and more, it’s muey cool.  And on that Isle of Man TT topic, Andrew started going to that event several years ago and it has become an important part of his life.  He’s an Isle of Man marshal, he has been Motorcycle.com’s correspondent on the event since 2008, and he goes every year.

British Motorcycle Gear is a family-operated business and the principals are motorcycle enthusiasts, so when you buy from these folks you’re not just pumping money into a faceless corporate Internet outlet with no appreciation for our world.  Andrew owns 14 motorcycles, ranging from a 1961 Moto Morini 175 up to a Ducati Multistrada 1260S.  There’s a 1968 Norton P11 Ranger and a Triumph Thruxton in that mix, too.   He’s the real deal, folks.

And one more bit of good news…when you order from British Motorcycle Gear, use the ExNotes discount code BMGJOES and get 10% off any purchase.  Run your order up to over $199 and you’ll get free shipping, too.

Medellin!

My ride through Colombia started on 13 December 2015 (it’s hard to believe it was more than 4 years ago; it feels like it was last year).  What started this trip down memory lane for me was the Netflix TV series Narcos, and yeah, Susie and I binge-watched the first two seasons (which culminated in the Colombian forces taking down Pablo Escobar).  It was an awesome series, filmed in Colombia, and the scenery took me back to that awesome adventure ride with my good buddies Juan and Carlos.   Like I said in the last blog, I wanted to treat you to the blogs I wrote for CSC when I was on that trip, and this was the first one I did upon my arrival in Colombia.

There are no straight roads in Medellin, there are more motorcycles than cars, the weather is awesome, and the cuisine is incredible. If that doesn’t sound like heaven to you, well, you need to rethink your concept of fun. Colombia, folks! On an RX3! What an adventure!

So today is Day 1, we put a couple of hundred miles on the AKT Moto RX3 motorcycles, and we haven’t even started our journey yet (it officially begins tomorrow). My good buddies Juan Carlos and Carlos (there are a lot of guys named Carlos over here) set today aside just to let me get used to riding in Colombia.

Here’s a shot of me with my two moto buddies in a village somewhere in the mountains surrounding Medellin.

Back to the RX3 designation…AKT Moto is one of Zongshen’s largest customers, and they sell a carbureted version of our favorite motorcycle called the RS3. It’s a cool bike. Here’s a shot of mine…it’s the one I’ll put 2500 miles on here in Colombia in the next week or so.

And that village? It’s actually called Mesopotamia. Folks, I can’t make up stuff this good!

Motorcycling in Colombia is substantially different than what we’re used to. For starters, there’s the prevalence of motorcycles. I’m not exaggerating. I saw far more motorcycles today than cars. It seems to be the national pastime. There were thousand (maybe tens of thousands) of riders in the hills this morning.

More interesting facts:

    • Motorcycling is predominantly a social activity here in Colombia. We must have stopped at 4 or 5 coffee houses and restaurants today. The pattern is you ride for 45 minutes or so, and then stop for coffee. Hey, is this what café racing is all about? Juan Carlos knows everybody at these coffee stops, and they all know him. Juan Carlos founded the only motorcycle magazine in Colombia (DeMotos), and he’s an icon over here. Any you know what? Some of these guys recognized me! Juan Carlos ran a feature story in his magazine on our Western America Adventure Ride, and these guys were all familiar with it.
    • The bikes are predominantly in the 100cc to 150cc range, and these folks are all happy with that. Small bikes rule over here. We saw people dragging their pegs on these things having as much or more fun as we do on the big bikes in the US. Nah, scratch that…they were having more fun!
    • I asked about freeways and the guys laughed at me. They pointed to the winding set of twisties just outside the restaurant and told me, “that is our freeway.” These are my kind of people!
    • There are elite riders over here on Triumphs, Ducatis, BMWs, and MotoGuzzis. There are lots of large Yamahas over here, too (or, is they say in Colombia, Jamahas). They’re not arrogant. We had coffee with a bunch of them, and they were all great guys. The photo below is a typical roadside restaurant, and they all looked like this. What a place!

The food is awesome. Here’s a shot of my lunch at that restaurant above. The dish is called Capresse Buenaventura.

Ah, let’s see, a few more photos from some of the little villages we rode through today.

Juan Carlos picked up his cousin Heronimo (you gotta love their names!) and he rode with us in the afternoon.

After I took that shot above and Juan Carlos and Heronimo pulled out, I saw a cool police bike painted in fluorescent safety yellow (or is it a green?). I always wondered what a bike would like painted in that color.

Bikes are both sporting propositions and utilitarian vehicles down here. I saw bikes carrying all kinds of cargo (no photos, but I’ll get some of those later), and I saw a few bikes that had to be 20 or 30 years old and were still doing hard time.

One of the guys I met at one of our coffee stops is a retired US Army Colonel named Miles. I liked the guy immediately…he’s a dead ringer for Lee Marvin and he even sounds a little like him. Talk about stories…this guy has been everywhere and when he retired, he decided to hang his hat in Colombia. Here are a couple of photos of my new buddy Miles…the first one with the guys listening to him in Mesopotamia, and a shot at yet another coffee stop. I sure drank a lot of coffee today!

Well, I think that’s enough blogging for Day 1. We’re rolling out at 4:30 tomorrow, and I want to get a good night’s sleep. The altitude bothered me a bit yesterday and I didn’t sleep too well, but I think I’m used to it now. The plan tomorrow is to put 300 miles on the bikes, and like I said, there are no straight roads in Colombia. We’re climbing up over another mountain range and headed for the coast. It’s going to be fun!

So there you have it.  The above was my first day in Colombia, and it was sort of a “get acquainted” bit of tearing up the roads around Medellin.  The real journey, our romp through the Andes Mountains, would start the next day.  Stay tuned, folks.  There’s a lot more to this story.

If you’d like to see the entire Colombia ride, just click here!

Plata O Plomo: Filmed in Colombia

Susie and I are hanging out at home, getting out for our daily walk or two, and generally obeying our fearless, fiercely-partisan, and fear-mongering leaders as we wait for them to declare a CV19 victory.  We’ve been watching a lot of TV while under house arrest, and it’s a big deal when we find a series we haven’t seen before.  We had one such discovery last week with Narcos, a series on Netflix about the drug wars in Colombia.

Silver or Lead, Amigos y Amigas. Or in this case, a Model 625’s stainless steel and six full metal jacket .45 ACP rounds.  That hat is one of my favorites.

Somehow we missed Narcos the first time around, although I was vaguely aware of its existence from a hat I picked up at an International Association of Chiefs of Police convention in San Diego two or three years ago.  Good buddy and retired police chief Mike was going to the IACP convention and he invited me along as his official “Assistant to the Director.”  I was even issued an official laminated ID card, but Mike drew the line when I asked him if I would get a gun, too.  His answer was immediate and clear:  No.  That’s okay, I already had a gun.

Mike and I had a good time at the IACP show and we came home with a lot of swag.  One bit of that haul was a Narcos hat embroidered with the show’s tagline:  Plata O Plomo.  If your Spanish is a bit rusty, it means Silver or Lead, with the premise being (if you were a Colombian cop or politician) your choice was either a bribe or a bullet.

The Narcos Netflix series is the story of Pablo Escobar, the activities involved in taking him down, and the drug wars in Colombia.  From the first episode, I thought the scenery was stunning.   I mentioned to Sue that it looked exactly the way I remembered Colombia from my Andean adventure.  We started in Medellin’s Antioquia neighborhood (which, by the way, was Pablo Escobar’s old stomping grounds).   Sue checked it out on her cell phone and, sure enough, Narcos was indeed filmed in Colombia.

Riding with good buddy Carlos in Colombia.  That’s me in the green jacket.  Photo by good buddy Juan DeMotos.

We’ve been binge-watching Narcos and every scene brings back a memory for me.  Colombia is a magnificent place, and I loved every minute of that adventure.  I’m going to recreate that ride by posting some of the photos (the one above is but a sample) of one of the grandest adventures I’ve ever enjoyed.   I’ll post a series of blogs from our Colombia trip over the next two weeks.

Stay tuned, folks.  This is going to be good.

CSC’s new colors and some good adventure video…

I stopped by CSC Motorcycles last week to visit with my friend Steve and see the new TT250, San Gabriel, and RX3 colors.   I and my camera will try to do justice to the new CSC paint themes, and hey, while we here, we’ll share a few videos.

The TT250 line has an entirely new set of colors, and I like the new look.

There’s a cool decal on the TT250 side panel, too, which i like a lot.  It reminds me a bit of what new Triumphs had in the 1960s, when every one of their bikes had a “world’s fastest motorcycle” decal on the tank.

As you know, I have a TT250, and mine is from the very first shipment that came into CSC a few years ago.  Mine is black with bold TT lettering on the tank and side panels.  I like that bike, I’ve ridden it in Baja (the video below is taking it through the Rumarosa Grade in northern Baja), and I’m going to fire it up and ride it around a bit today.

Next up is a photo of the San Gabriels. The new colors on the SG250 work well, too.

You know, I did one of the very first San Gabriel videos when those bikes first came to America.  It, too, was a hoot.

And here are a few photos of the CSC RX3, a bike that has generated lots of smiles and lots of miles since its introduction to the United States in 2015.  The new colors are much more interesting and maybe a little more subtle than what we’ve seen on RX3 motorcycles in the past.  There’s a gray and turquoise theme, and a silver and red alternative.  They both look good.

I like the new RX3 paint themes, and I like the original ones, too.  I ride an RX3.  Mine’s a 2015 model and, like my TT250, it’s one from the very first shipment to the US.  My RX3 is orange (the fastest color, as good buddy Orlando knows), and it’s one of the early ones that faded to a kind of subdued yellow (that’s before Zongshen started adding color stabilizers to the paint).   I like that look and I’ve had a lot of great rides on RX3 motorcycles, starting with our initial CSC Baja run.  That ride was a hoot and a half.  Imagine that:  A brand new shipment of RX3 motorcycles (the first in the US), and yours truly and 15 other intrepid CSC riders did 1700 miles in Baja on these bikes.   Take a look:

Our next big RX3 ride was the Western America Adventure Ride…5000 miles across the Western US, from So Cal to Sturgis to Portland and then down the Pacific coast to home. I didn’t do a video on that ride, but good buddy Joe Gresh sure did!

We did several more CSC Baja rides, a bunch of rides in the US, and our absolutely amazing 6000-mile ride across the ancient kingdom on RX3 motorcycles:

Not enough?  Hey, how about a ride through magical Colombia on RS3 motorcycles?   The RS3 is the carbureted version of the RX3, and it, too, was an amazing adventure:

If you enjoy watching YouTube videos, we have quite a few more on our YouTubby page.   Grab a cup of coffee, click on the YouTubby link, and have fun.  I sure did.