Month: June 2021

Air Travel, Social Distancing, and Full-Figured Flyers

First things first…I enjoyed Gresh’s last blogs on his cataract surgery, but I’m sure glad he didn’t get a hemorrhoid removed.  Ah, the selfies he might have posted…the horror of it all.

So the topic du jour is air travel (and I sure have had a bunch of it in the last 30 days) and masks.  The secret mission business has come back with a vengeance, and what that’s meant for me is the air travel has been nonstop.  It’s all been domestic (I hear travel overseas is a bit dicey still).  It seems the Covid thing is still a problem in other countries…

Covid?  What Covid?  We don’t need no stinkin’ Covid.  And the 6-foot social distancing thing?  As Tony Soprano might have said: Fuhgeddabout it.  The airports and the airplanes are packed, and you’d be lucky to get 6 inches (let alone 6 feet) of social distancing.

I’ve been on about a dozen domestic flights crisscrossing the country in the last four weeks, and every plane has been full (as in completely full, with not a single empty seat).  I always seem to be seated next to fat folks, and to make a long story only slightly less long, those tiny airplane seats make the experience more intimate than most of my high school dates.  There’s a lot of full-figured folks in America, and it’s only gotten worse during the pandemic.

Yeah, the Covid thing is still around and I’m a bit apprehensive about being herded into tiny places with an amazing array of strange and oversized mammals (it’s what flying has become), but I guess the good news is that we’ve been kicking Covid’s butt.  If we weren’t, the air travel thing would be in one mainstream media story after another about super spreader events.  But it is not.  The rates are continuing to come down (the Covid rates, that is…not the ticket prices or the media’s fear mongering), so the vaccines and the masks seem to be making a difference.

Ah, the masks.  God, I hate those things.  Breathe out and the world fogs over.  Without realizing it, I have adjusted my vision and worldview to seeing the world only when I inhale.  But the masks and the vaccines, I think, have helped us.  I’m not looking for a political argument here.  I’m just stating my thoughts.  Hey, it’s America.  You’re free to be wrong if you think otherwise.

ExNotes Medical Review: Southwestern Eye Center Cataract Surgery Part 2

I’m typing this while looking through a brand new lens on my left eye. The result of my cataract surgery was a dramatic improvement but not the eagle-eyed sharpness I was hoping for. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

After my first office visit where all manner of tests were performed and measurements taken I was sent home with several days worth of drops in a small vial. The drops were a cocktail of three drugs designed to get my eye ready for the trauma it would soon be subjected to during surgery. I put the drops in four times a day for three days and stopped putting them in on the day of surgery.

I get panicked over any kind of medical procedure; even drawing blood from my arm may see me faint to the floor in a cold sweat. The thought of someone cutting into my eye while I was awake was freaking me right out. Everyone kept telling me it would be no problem. Sure, no problem for them, I muttered to myself.

After the routine check in stuff the admitting nurse asked me which eye they were doing. I told her the left one and she put an X over the left eye with a marker and strapped a fluorescent green plastic bracelet on my left wrist. Then I walked into the pre-operation room.

The pre-op room was about 50 feet wide by 30 feet deep and beds were arraigned along the walls. Between the beds were metal racks with curtains that when closed allowed each bed to be sort of private. A jovial 80-something geezer that used a walker and an oxygen tank occupied the bed next to me. I could hear him cracking jokes with the nurses and generally being the life of the pre-op party. I sat in my bed thinking, “Don’t freak out…don’t freak out…don’t freak out.” Of course that kind of thinking just makes you freak out.

The anesthesiologist stopped by and I told him that I was going to have a hard time being awake for the surgery. Don’t worry, he said, I’ll be there the whole time, just put this pill under your tongue, don’t swallow it. The pill tasted horrible, like health food or something. A nurse kept stopping by and putting in eye drops. She asked me which eye they were doing and I told her the left one. This went on for several sessions of drops.

I wasn’t feeling any effect from the pill. I asked the nurse if it was supposed to get me high and that I didn’t feel anything. She said that it was just to relax me and that I wouldn’t get high from it. In my mind this did not bode well. I was expecting to get wiped out and not remember a thing. The damn pill was taking forever to melt. My mouth had a bitter taste. I wanted water but could not have any since two hours before the surgery.

My surgeon stopped by and told me everything was going to be fine and did I prefer dirty jokes or clean jokes while he was working on the eye. I asked for dirty jokes but not too funny as I didn’t want to move my head and cause problems. The nurse piped in and said I needn’t worry about the jokes being too funny. I found that funny.

The nurse, surgeon and anesthesiologist wheeled me into the operating room and it seemed like everything got bright and loud in that instant. My head was angled left and clamped between two bolsters. The surgeon asked me which eye he was doing and I told him the left eye. “This will only take about 8 minutes,” he said.

A rubbery-plastic shield with a sticky back was placed over my left eye and once secured the nurse peeled the center out exposing my eye. Some kind of clamping apparatus was attached to my upper and lower eyelid making blinking impossible.

It was hard to see what was going on because the room was so bright. There were two bright, square-shaped red lights side by side. Underneath the red lights was a single bright white light. These three lights were in the upper left hand side of my vision but the background was all dazzling light.

The surgeon was asking for this tool or that tool and I asked him when did I get the dirty jokes. He said that they were too dirty for public consumption and that I’d have to call him later for the joke. I could feel him tugging at the eye and at one point a crazed clear sheet slid away to my left, like a thin layer of dirty ice moving across a puddle of water. I assumed that was the cataract being removed. I thought it was strange that all this was going on and I wasn’t freaking out. I didn’t seem to care at all.  If they removed my leg and I would have calmly watched them do it.

Besides the cataract I had cornea Map-Dystrophy and floaters. My left eye was in pretty bad shape, almost useless really. There were strands from the pupil attached to the lens (or something) and the surgeon wanted a pupil expander tool. The nurse went looking for one and I chatted with the surgeon while we waited. They were taking too long so the surgeon used some other tool and managed to get the new lens in and everything buttoned up. It seemed like forever but the total time I spent in the operating room was 10 minutes.

The recovery area was in the same room as the pre-op beds except no curtains. The surgeon came by and asked how I felt and explained that my pupil wasn’t working quite right. I knew my pupil was messed up from a severe bout of conjunctivitis 40 years ago. It never expanded or contracted very well afterwards. Recovery only lasted 10 minutes and the nurse had me on my feet walking out the door. I was a little tipsy but managed to get in CT’s Jeep for the ride home.

The next day we had a follow up visit at the location where the first tests were done. The doctor examining my eye sad there were some loose strands floating around and that my eye was slightly swollen under the lens. My eye test went from 20-200 to 20-60, not what I had hoped for but a huge improvement over the old, yellowed smudge-vision I had before. When I went in the first day I couldn’t see the first big E on the chart and now I could see down to line 6. Before, reading my phone required the screen to be inches away, I can read the phone a foot away now.

The pressure in my eye had gone up so he gave me some drops for that and the pressure went back down in a few minutes. The doctor said my vision might improve as the eye healed but it’s been a few days and it looks about the same so I’ll probably still need glasses. I’ll withhold judgment on the final outcome as I’m still squirting medications in my eye four times a day.

Southwestern Eye Center’s customer service was stellar throughout this procedure. As far as my vision, every eye is different. My result may be as good as it can be considering the beat up eye they started with. Things seem a lot cleaner with the new lens. I drove my car with out glasses the other day and I could see pretty well. In a month or so when my eye has settled down I’ll get a new prescription and new glasses.

I think I’ll leave the right cataract alone for a year or maybe forever. It’s not nearly as bad as the left one. I sure could use some more of those relaxing pills though. I could be brave, like a hero or something.

Part I of the cataract story is here.

More product and service reviews are here.

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Seven Mini 14 Accuracy Tips

I love shooting and writing about the Mini 14.  Having said that, let’s get to today’s main attraction, and that’s how to get the best accuracy out of a Ruger Mini 14.

Tip 1:  Refine Your Shooting Techique

There’s a lot to say here.  I won’t spell it all out, as we’ve covered this topic before.  Focus on the basics and refer to our earlier post on Mini 14 Marksmanship.

Tip 2:  Reload Your Own Ammo

Ah, this statement will light up the trolls:  There is no great factory ammo for the Mini 14 and bulk ammo is generally inaccurate.  That said, mark my words:  Some troll will post that he shoots 200-yard half-inch 10-shot groups offhand using iron sights with (fill in the blank) bulk ammo.  Why such individuals aren’t competing at the international level instead of wasting their time posting comments on Facebook I can’t say.  Trust me when I delicately suggest they are not honest information brokers.

You might consider my experience and that of many others when I state that you really need to reload your own ammo to attain optimal accuracy.  For starters, there’s the issue of the chamber size.  With the exception of the short-lived Mini 14 Target Model, all .223 Mini 14 rifles are actually chambered for the 5.56 mm NATO round, and that chamber is actually slightly larger than .223 Remington ammo.   For this reason, neck sizing brass that has been fired in your Mini 14 will assure a much better chamber fit and accuracy will improve significantly.  You can read more about that here.

Regarding the specifics, I’ve had great luck with Hornady boattail full metal jacket bullets of either the 55-grain or 62-grain persuasion crimped in the cannelure with the Lee factory crimp die.  I’ve also found that the more expensive Hornady V-Max bullets are quite accurate.  As for powders, my best results are with IMR 4320 (no longer available unless you have a stash), ARComp (a superb powder), IMR 4198, and Winchester’s 748.  Other folks report good results with Varget (I have that powder, but I haven’t tested it in my Mini 14).  My most accurate Mini 14 loads are with charges near the upper end of the charge spectrum.  As always, start low and work your way up watching carefully for pressure signs as you increase the charge.  I never go above the max charges listed in my load manuals (and neither should you).

To get the best reloading results, you might also consider:

    • Sorting your brass by manufacturer.
    • Trimming the brass.
    • Cleaning the primer pockets.
    • Cleaning the brass.

As you read this part of today’s blog you might be thinking “but I don’t reload.”  If that’s the case, I have but one word:  Start.  You can get a good handle on the reloading process and the equipment you’ll need in our prior posts on this topic.

Tip 3:  Let the Barrel Cool

This might have been listed under Tip 1 (Refine Your Techniques), but I see so many Rambo wannabees on the range I want to include it as a separate point.   You know the kind of inbred I’m talking about:  The guy (it’s always a guy, and typically a younger guy) who wears camo gear (but has never been in the military).   He’s the guy who loads 20 or 30-round magazines and rapid fires all of them as if the ability to shoot 30 rounds in under 3 seconds somehow equates to shooting skill.

I think that guy’s name is most likely Richard Rambo, and you don’t want to be like him.  Don’t be a Dick.

I only shoot 5-round magazines, and I let the barrel cool between shots and between magazines.  The Mini 14 has an assymetrically-contacted, relatively thin barrel.   Heat that barrel up via rapid fire and your rifle will string its shots.  If you’re shooting for accuracy, let the barrel cool.

Tip 4:  Install A Tech-Sights Rear Sight

There’s an after market rear sight manufacturer, Tech-Sights, who offers a dramatically better rear aperture sight than the stock Mini 14 setup.   Get a set.  They are more easily adjusted and they will make your rifle easier to shoot accurately.  Make sure you LocTite them in place during the installation; if you don’t, they will shoot loose.

You could put a scope on your Mini 14, but I’ve never had good luck with a scope on a Mini.  Even with LocTite, the scope mounts always loosened after surprisingly few rounds, and before they did so, the group sizes really weren’t any smaller.  Tech-Sights is the way to go.

Tip 5:  Clean the Rifle

The good news about the Mini 14 is that it seems to run forever without cleaning, and the bad news about the Mini 14 is that it seems to run forever without cleaning.  I say that because accuracy will degrade long before reliability does, and if you’re fundamentally lazy like me, you’ll shoot hundreds (and sometimes a thousand or more) rounds before you clean your rifle.  Yeah, it will keep shooting, but the accuracy won’t be there.  Clean your rifle (including the bolt’s innards, the action, and the bore) after every range session.

Some folks will tell you the bore needs to be fouled before the rifle will attain its best accuracy.   They suggest you shoot a couple of magazines through a clean bore before testing for accuracy.  I haven’t found that to be the case; my Mini 14 is accurate with a freshly-cleaned bore.  In fact, my rifle doesn’t even display the typical first-shot-through-a-clean-bore flyer that other rifles exhibit.

When you clean your Mini 14, take care not to let the cleaning rod drag at the muzzle’s edges while doing so.  Give it a good soaking with Hoppes No 9 using a cleaning patch, let it soak for an hour, and repeat that until all the black powder residue is out.  Then let it soak for a few hours with Hoppes No 9, run a patch through the bore, and repeat that over the next two days to get the copper traces out.  I know I’m done when there’s no green or turquoise on the patch.

For the bolt, I spray the hell out of it with carb cleaner.  Taking the bolt apart is a nonstarter for me (you need special tools to do so), so I just spray it well (outdoors, of course).  Then I go to work on the other action components, using a brass brush on the piston and its surrounding areas to get all the carbon residue gone.  When everything is squeaky clean, I’ll lightly oil it all as I’m reassembling the rifle, except for the firing pin in the bolt.  I leave that dry.

Tip 6:  Glass Bed the Action

After seeing the positive accuracy impact on my M1A from a glass bedding job, I did the same on my Mini 14.  I use AcraGlas from Brownell’s when I bed a rifle.  Other folks have had good luck with Marine-Tex.

Bedding a Mini 14 is different than bedding a bolt action rifle.  The Mini 14 action beds along inside edges of the stock, and along the top edge of the stock where it contacts the bottom edge of the upper receiver.  It doesn’t take a lot of bedding material, and you don’t want to slop it all over.   You just want capture some at the rear of the receiver where it interfaces with the top of the stop, and under the receiver interior rails where they interface with the stock’s interior near the magazine well.

You’ll feel movement between the receiver and the stock of a Mini 14 that hasn’t been glass bedded; once you glass bed the action that movement disappears (if you’ve done the bedding job well).   That’s what you want.  This is one of the more significant tips in this article; a good bedding job will improve accuracy significantly.

Tip 7:  Practice (A Lot!)

You want realize your rifle’s accuracy if you are an occasional shooter.  I find if I don’t shoot my Mini 14 for a few weeks, my edge disappears and I need a couple of range sessions to get back in the groove.  When I take my Mini 14 out every week, the groups get smaller and they stay small.  It’s funny how that works.

Parting Shots

Some folks like to use a barrel brace under the Mini 14 barrel just forward of the stock.  It’s the thing that resembles an M1A gas chamber and makes the Mini look like an M14.  I’ve never tried those, so I can’t say if they work or not. It seems gimmicky to me.  Folks (including yours truly) have tried shimming the receiver where it mates with the stock, with the idea that this will remove any play between the stock and the barreled action.  I’ve tried that (before I went with glass bedding) and I found that the shimming approach made no difference in accuracy.  If you want to get rid of the play between the barreled action and the stock, glass bedding is the way to go.  I’ve also played around with smaller gas plugs.  More testing showed that while these did reduce how far the Mini 14 tosses spent brass, accuracy stayed the same while reliability decreased, so I went back to the stock Ruger gas port.

A lot of folks ask about my Mini 14 and its Circassian stock.  A dozen years ago Davidson’s (a large Ruger distributor) commissioned a run of Mini 14s with Circassian walnut.  Most had plain, straight-grained lumber, but a very small number were superbly figured.  I watched Gunbroker.com for several months and when the one you see here appeared, I pounced.  I bought it new for $699.  My attitude has always been you can’t pay too much for a gun; you can only buy it too early.  And no, this one is not for sale.

More Tales of the Gun!

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ExNotes Medical Review: Southwestern Eye Center’s Cataract Surgery

I’ll be blunt about it: the staff here at ExhaustNotes is getting a bit long in the tooth. Oh, we still ride motorcycles and punch holes in paper. We still pour concrete like we pour gin & tonics but we are falling apart gracefully. Luckily, decrepit old men are perfectly matched to the motorcycle consumer demographic.

My eyes have never been all that good and the last ten or so years have seen (or more accurately, not seen) degradation in my left eye. What the hell, we have two eyes, right? I adapted by curtailing my night driving and learned to accept a less precise representation of the world around me. I kind of knew what everything looked like anyway so my mind could fill in the details.

Time marched on and I could no longer use corrective lenses on the left eye due to the blurring: The eye wasn’t out of focus it was clouded. Things look yellower in the left eye compared to the right. It’s not a big deal. I can see fairly well in the daytime. The left eye still contributed to stereovision. Driving in the daytime is pretty easy. I can read signs and move about well.

Due to light refraction through the cataract driving at night is a harrowing experience with each point of light replicated five times. One oncoming motorcycle looks like a ring of five oncoming motorcycles and as the gang gets closer the lights combine into one. You can imagine the scene at a busy intersection with multiple lanes and traffic signals. A double yellow line looks like four yellow lines that merge in front of the bike. It’s more than I care to deal with.

But I like riding at night. I finally decided to do something about the problem last year but then Covid hit and everything was put on hold. Things are getting better covid-wise so CT decided we need to move on the cataract before I start running into walls while carrying scissors.

Southwestern Eye Clinic is located in Las Cruces, New Mexico and is a hotbed of retirees. The oldsters come for the sunshine and mild winters. The whole damn town is set up for end care, if you get my drift, so cataract surgery is routine here. At least as routine as any surgery can be.

The whole thing is so fast! I went in for an exam and found out the right eye has a smaller cataract also. The team at Southwestern ran a battery of tests (12-volt, deep cycle) and electronically measured my eyeball for the lens needed. I had the option of seeing far or up close and one other choice: A multi focus Panoptix lens that supposedly works like bifocals.

You know how I feel about new technology so the bifocal was out. You only get one chance at this and I didn’t want an eye that was constantly messing with my head. I’ve always been nearsighted so I opted for distance vision. My right eye has actually gotten better at distance over the years so I figured two distance eyes would match up better. I’ll probably still need glasses anyway. It’s ok, I’ve worn them since first grade.

The next step is surgery. I have some eye drops I’m supposed to start putting in four days before the operation. The surgery itself is out patient. You come and go the same day. After that I go back the next day to have the job checked over and then again a week later. It’s all so amazing and not that much more than an expensive pair of glasses.

I’ll file an ExhaustNotes follow up report after the surgery is completed and my eye has had time to heal. One downside is I have to rest for a while afterwards. I have a hard time resting. That means no lifting bags of concrete until the doctor gives the eye an all clear.

More Joe Gresh?  Or more Joe Berk?

Pan America Adventure Motorcycle: The World’s First No-Compromise Harley-Davidson

What does that even mean, no compromise?

Hear me out. Like you I’ve read all the reviews on Harley’s new Pan America Adventure-Glide and they have been uniformly positive. Surprising is the word most frequently used by the tattered remnants of the moto-press when describing the Pan America. And it is surprising.

I’m not likely to ever test ride a Pan America. I offer Harley-Davidson nothing but suffering and heartache. Why would Harley loan me a bike in a category I pretty much despise? I can’t stand big Adventure bikes. I don’t like them one little bit. I think they are dangerous off road. Anyone who sends me one to test ride is a fool and Harley-Davidson’s marketing department is not populated by fools. Luckily I don’t need to ride one because Kevin Duke, the hardest working man in motorcycle journalism, says the Pan America is a good bike and that’s all you really need to know.

The no compromise hook in this story is the most impressive part of the new Pan America. It’s the first Harley (since the late 1960s) that competes head to head with the best the world has to offer and does it at a competitive price. In all areas the new bike is acceptable, meets expectations and is even, dare I say, good.

Most all the high-end, heavy, dangerously inadequate offroad Adventure bikes clock in at around 20,000 US dollars retail and they all weigh nearly the same ground-crushing 600 pounds. It must be a class requirement. Check out the manufacturer-provided spec sheets on a GS BMW, Ducati Multi Service, and KTM Breakdown. All of the numbers are within spitting distance of each other.

And that’s the amazing part. Harley-frigging-Davidson has made a competent motorcycle for the same price as everyone else. There’s no brand penalty. Harley-Davidson has made a motorcycle that the owner isn’t required to look through leather-fringed, nostalgia-tinted lenses to justify. No more having to tell non-Harley riders that they don’t get it when their questions turn pointed. Like all cults, the Harley cult requires actively looking the other way when hard facts and performance figures per dollar are bandied about.

With the Pan America there’s no need to believe in the Harley mystique. There’s no need to defend anemic performance by waving an American flag. The Pan America stands on its own merits as a motorcycle, nothing more. Is it as good as the other big Adventure bikes? I can’t say but the fact that it’s spoken of in the same breath and held up in comparison to the world’s best Adventure bikes is a stunning turnaround for a company that seemed hopelessly stuck in neutral by its mad marketing genius.

As much as I hate big Adventure bikes, I love the new Harley-Davidson Pan America.

I hope it’s a harbinger of change. I hope it succeeds beyond Harley’s wildest dreams and ushers in a new era of 150-horsepower Sportsters that handle, stop and are as fast as any other guy’s bikes. The late 1960s was the last time Sportsters were hot. That’s a long, long time to rest on your laurels. Let’s hope the Pan American gives stodgy old Harley-Davidson new life and a desire to be measured against the very best. Listen, if there’s any way you can afford to go out and buy one, go out and buy one. Tell Harley I sent you. Maybe they’ll even let me take one for a ride.

Berk, on right, telling Gresh to go back to Starbucks and fetch a Pumpkin Spice Latte for him.