September 11, 2001, is a day everyone remembers. I was just getting up when my daughter ran in to tell us about what was on the news: A plane had just hit the World Trade Center. Then, while watching the news, we saw another plane hit the second tower. Then we heard about the Pentagon. And finally, we heard about Flight 93: The plane that went down in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
It was story that would develop over the next several days. Unquestionably, beyond the horror, anger, and emotions of that day, the story about the bravery of the Flight 93 passengers emerged. Words that would become known around the world emerged from Todd Beamer, who simply said “Let’s roll.”
We made the trek to the Flight 93 National Memorial recently. It’s something we all should do. The riding in that part of the world is epic, the scenery is stunning, and the Flight 93 National Memorial is an emotional experience. I don’t mind telling you I choked up while up visiting the Flight 93 National Memorial, and I’m choking up writing this blog.
The Tower of Voices, near the park entrance. It’s a gigantic set of wind chimes still under construction. The sign includes another famous quote from George Bush as he was standing on the World Trade Center debris.A closer view of the Tower of Voices. It’s not operational yet. I’m going to make the ride here again when it is.
The Flight 93 National Memorial is somber, dignified, and elegant. It consists of the Tower of Voices near the entrance to the area (see above), the impact area, a building with exhibits (in which no photography is allowed), a dark stone walkway denoting Flight 93’s flight path and point of impact, and a wall of 40 tablets (each carrying the name of Flight 93’s victims).
The large structure on the right is the museum. It is thought provoking, emotional, and somber. The dark walkway traces Flight 93’s direction of flight to the impact point. The grassy area to the right is the edge of the debris field.
The dark stone walkway shown in the photo below points to the impact area. At its end (where you see people) you can gaze out over a large grassy field bordered by a hemlock forest.
The walkway pointing to the impact area.Taking the walkway in the opposite direction takes you on a counterclockwise walk to the tablet area and into the debris field. We visited on a glorious Pennsylvania day, much like the weather on 9/11.The large boulder you see here weighs 14 tons. It was moved from the Tower of Voices site to this location, which is where Flight 93 impacted. Its speed was 563 mph.The 40 tablets, each carrying the name of a Flight 93 victim.Todd Beamer led the passenger assault on the bastards who hijacked Flight 93.This small tile was at the base of the Todd Beamer tablet shown in the photo above.
We believe that Flight 93’s intended target was the United States Capitol. Had the Flight 93 passengers not acted, our national catastrophe would have been much greater. Both houses of Congress were in session that morning.
Another view of the 40 tablets.It was hard to see some of this.
A grate of formed stone pointed from the tablets to the impact zone. Looking between the slats, the boulder denoting the point of impact is visible.
The impact field.The boulder marking the impact point.
As I mentioned above, I had a difficult time maintaining my composure when visiting the Flight 93 National Memorial. There is evil in the world, and it was out on September 11, 2001. Todd Beamer and the other Flight 93 passengers prevented the criminals who hijacked Flight 93 from achieving their objective. The Flight 93 National Memorial is a fitting tribute to their sacrifice.
There is much symbolism in the Flight 93 National Memorial. The dark sidewalks and borders represent the coal mined in the Shanksville area. The lighter stone structures (the walls of the museum and more) are impressed with the grain structure of the hemlock trees bordering the impact area. The angles in the sidewalks and walls are representative of the hemlock branches. There are three rows of benches in the viewing area, representing Flight 93’s three passenger seats in each row.
The areas around Shanksville are all rural and the riding is amazing. Shanksville is in the Allegheny Mountains, and this part of Pennsylvania is stunning. We visited in April and the Spring weather was a brisk 60 degrees in the day. It gets hot and humid in the summer. The Fall weather offers stunning views of the trees changing colors. I’d think twice before attempting this ride in the winter months due to the freezing temperatures and snow.
Nearby Somerset’s Rey Azteca’s chile relleno with chicken. It was exquisite.
We stayed in Somerset, Pennsylvania, when we visited the Flight 93 National Memorial. Somerset is the nearest town of any size. It’s about 10 miles away from the National Memorial. Shanksville is a very small community without hotels, although that will probably change (the Flight 93 National Memorial is the least visited of the 9/11 memorials, no doubt due to its remote location). If you stay in Somerset, the best kept secret is Rey Azteca, a Mexican restaurant with awesome cuisine. Rey Azteca’s chicken chile relleno is prepared in the Guatemalan style and it is awesome.
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Wow, this is cool: The Indianapolis Motor Speedway! That photo above? I snapped it as the Indy car was entering Turn 3 at about 200 mph, panning the camera with the car to blur the background and get the car as sharp as possible (which is a bit of a challenge when your subject is doing 200). There were a lot of photo ops at Indy, and I sized most of the photos at 900 pixels to show off a bit. We were having a good time.
We didn’t see the race (it’s today, and it starts about three hours from when this blog was posted). We were in Indianapolis a couple of weeks ago to visit with good buddy Jeff, whom you’ve seen in other recent blogs. Jeff took us all over Indianapolis and the surrounding areas, and our itinerary included the legendary Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
We walked the huge infield area. The track is a 2.5-mile oval and that gives it plenty of room on the infield (there’s even a golf course in the infield). One of the best parts is the museum, which houses historic cars and winners of past Indy 500 races.
After spending some time in the museum, we went up into the stands to watch the cars practicing. The Indy 500 is, as the name states, a 500-mile race, and with the cars running over 200 mph, it takes about 2 hours. I can see it producing more than a few headaches, sitting out in the sun and listening to the high-pitched and loud whine of the cars whizzing by. Our day was perfect…we took in what we wanted to see and I shot a lot of photos.
There is a very cool photo of Mario Andretti in the Indy 500 Museum. The story behind it is that the photographer asked Mario Andretti if he could grab of photo of his rings, and Mr. Andretti posed as you him in the photo above.
There was also an Indy 500 simulator in the museum. It let you “race” for about a minute, but I didn’t last that long. The simulator included motion in the steering wheel and in the seat, I felt woozy as soon as I started, and I had to stop shortly after I started. I guess that makes me an official Indy 500 DNF (did not finish).
My favorite photo of the day is this selfie I grabbed of yours truly and good buddy Jeff reflected in the radiator cover of a vintage Miller race car.
So there you have it…our day at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. I’ll be watching the race today.
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I have several favorite restaurants in Baja, and Los Naranjos in northern Baja’s Guadalupe Valley is certainly one of them. It’s address is México 3 22850 Ensenada, Baja, and what that means is the restaurant is about 80 kilometers south of Tecate along Mexico Highway 3 (the Ruta del Vino). It’s on your right as you head south, and if you blink you’ll probably miss it.
The Los Naranjos location on Mexico Highway 3.
If you’re coming north from Ensenada, Los Naranjos will be on your left. It always seems to me I’m on top of the place before I realize it when I’m riding north. You have to watch for it.
After you park, head in through the arch and you’ll enter another world. The grounds are immaculate (like the restaurant). You can poke around and explore a bit before you go into the restaurant, or you can do so after you’ve had a fine meal (which is the only kind of meal I’ve ever had there).
Entering the Los Naranjos grounds.
The food is exquisite and Los Naranjos is popular. You might see a Mexican riding club parked when you enter; the place is a well-known spot for an excellent dining experience. You can have breakfast or any other meal, and I’ve never had a bad meal there. Los Naranjos pies are exceptional, and their orange juice is off the charts. It’s fresh squeezed, and if there’s better OJ elsewhere, I haven’t found it.
A superb breakfast at Los Naranjos. I’m getting hungry writing this blog and seeing this photo. I need to ride south soon.
The Los Naranjos grounds are interesting. There are sculptures in the exterior walls and various poultry species wandering the grounds. I don’t know if the chickens are committed or simply involved in the breakfasts and other selections (“involved” means they only provide eggs; “committed” means, well, you know), but a walk around is always interesting and full of photo ops.
Wall sculptures abound at Los Naranjos.A turkey fanning its tail when I approached with my camera.Indeed, the photo ops are plentiful.More wall sculpture, in this case the Virgin de Guadalupe. This is a common sculpture in Mexico; the figure beneath the Virgin is an angel with the wings of an eagle holding her aloft.
There is a high end, small hotel directly behind Los Naranjos. I’ve never stayed there, which is a character defect I intend to correct on my next trip south. You’ll read about it here on the ExhaustNotes blog.
It was an epic battle, fought over just three days, with monstrous casualties incurred by both sides due to a deadly combination of improved weaponry and Napoleonic tactics. Muskets transitioned from smoothbores to rifled barrels (greatly enhancing accuracy); military formations (not yet adopted to the quantum leap forward in accuracy) fought in shoulder-to-shoulder advancing columns. Both sides held their fire until the Union and Confederate armies were at can’t-miss distances. It was brutal. Gettysburg suffered 51,000 casualties. Eleven general officers were killed. It was the bloodiest battle of the Civil War, but it was turning point. General Robert E. Lee, the previously invincible and charismatic hero of the South, had been soundly defeated. General George Meade, appointed to command the Union troops just days before the battle, achieved a tactical victory regarded by his superiors as a strategic failure (Lincoln later said Meade held the Confederate Army in the palm of his hand but refused to close his fist).
Perhaps best known for Lincoln’s Gettysburg address given months after the fighting (delivered at the dedication of a cemetery), Gettysburg is a town, a free National Military Park, and hallowed ground. But first, read these 275 words…275 of the most elegant words ever assembled by anyone:
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
Elegant, eloquent, and to the point: Lincoln spoke for a short two minutes after a two-hour speech by a former Harvard College president. Lincoln wrote the words himself (not, as rumor would have us believe, on the back of an envelope during the train ride to Gettysburg, but carefully crafted by Lincoln in the White House and then polished upon his arrival in Gettysburg). No speechwriters, no opinion surveys, no communications experts as would be the case today. I wish that in a nation of 330 million people we could find another Lincoln (rather than the continuing cascade of clowns we’ve had to choose from in the last several elections).
I first visited Gettysburg 60 years ago as a little kid and I was a little kid again on this visit. Gettysburg was way more wonderful than I remembered but still the same. The Visitor Center is new and better equipped. There are more monuments (approximately 1,350 such monuments; you will see just a few in this blog). The battlefield remains the same. It is impressive. You need to see it.
There are many exhibits in the Gettysburg Visitor Center, including two large displays of Union and Confederate sidearms.
You can take your car or motorcycle through Gettysburg National Military Park on a self-guided tour, you can take a bus tour, or you can hire a guide. Any of these approaches are good.
Cannon line a typical road through the Gettysburg battlefield.
The Battle of Gettysburg occurred over three days (July 1 to July 3, 1863) that changed the calculus of the Civil War. Lee took his Army of Northern Virginia north, hoping to continue an unbroken string of Confederate victories, so sure of his likely success that he ignored the tactical advice of his generals. He prevailed on the first day, but flawed tactics and a combination of Union brilliance and resolve turned the tide and the War. It culminated in what has become known as Pickett’s Charge, a Confederate uphill advance across a mile of open land into unrelenting Union cannon fire. The Union artillery had the reach (two miles of direct fire; there were no forward observers adjusting fire as we have now). The cannons were deadly, and then troops closed to small arms distance, and then finally to hand-to-hand combat. More than 12,000 of Pickett’s men marched into the Union killing fields; nearly half were foolishly lost. It was the turning point for everything: The South’s success, the Battle of Gettysburg, and the Civil War.
The views are magnificent. We were aided by an overcast day, with diffuse lighting that made for improved photography.
Numerous state militia fought at Gettysburg. Each of the states and their militia erected monuments in the years following the Civil War. The New York monuments were always the largest, at least until New York completed the last of its statues and structures. Pennsylvania, waiting and watching patiently, then built a monument that dwarfed New York’s best efforts. But all are impressive.
The 91st Pennsylvania Infantry monument on Little Round Top near Cemetery Ridge. This area was the high ground held by the Union.
The two armies had been maneuvering near each other, and as is usually the case in such things, first contact was accidental. The Confederate forces initially prevailed and their leader, General Robert E. Lee, assumed this success would continue. Lee’s subordinate’s told him it would not, as they did not hold the high ground. Lee pressed ahead anyway, suffering a defeat that marked a turning point (one of many) in the Civil War.
A view from Little Round Top, looking down into the killing fields of Pickett’s Charge. 12,000 men marched forward; more than half were lost in a single afternoon.
Gettysburg National Military Park is a photographer’s dream, and many battlefield areas present dramatic photo ops. The monuments are impressive and more than a few offer several ways to frame a photo.
The 44th and 12th New York Infantry monument on Little Round Top at the south end of Cemetery Ridge, framing the field of battle. This is a massive and impressive monument.Artillery lines in Gettysburg National Military Park. Many of the cannon are original items and saw actual use in the Battle of Gettysburg.When the ammunition ran out, it was hand to hand fighting at Gettysburg. This is the 72nd Pennsylvania Infantry monument on Cemetery Ridge. The 72nd Pennsylvania Infantry played a key role in defeating the Confederate advance known as Pickett’s Charge.
I was up early the next morning before we left Gettysburg, and I returned to the battlefield to capture a better photo or two of the State of Pennsylvania monument. It’s the largest in Gettysburg National Military Park. I was so impressed by it the day before I forgot to get a photo.
The State of Pennsylvania’s monument, at 110 feet tall, is the tallest of 1350 monuments on the Gettysburg battlefield. You can climb an interior spiral staircase to see the entire battlefield from this monument.The beautiful 8th Pennsylvania Cavalry monument framing the State of Pennsylvania monument. The tree trunk beneath the horse was necessary to support the statue’s weight. Interestingly, the 8th Pennsylvania Cavalry did not take part in the fighting at Gettysburg, but instead guarded supply lines in Maryland.
The country roads leading to Gettysburg, and the riding in Pennsylvania, are way beyond just being good. Several rides to Gettysburg are memorable, and everything on the battlefield is accessible via an extensive network of narrow lanes. Take your time when navigating the Park’s interior battlefield lanes; this is an area best taken in at lower speeds.
A 180-degree panoramic view from Little Round Top. Click on this image to see a larger version.
Getting to Gettysburg is straightforward. From the south take Interstate 83 north and State Route 116 east. From the east or west you can ride Interstate 76 and then pick up any of the numbered state routes heading south. If you are coming from points southwest, Maryland is not too far away and the riding through Catoctin Mountain Park on Maryland’s State Route 77 is some of the best you’ll ever find.
The best kept secrets at Gettysburg? On the battlefield, it’s Neill Avenue, also known as the Lost Avenue. It’s the least visited area of Gettysburg National Military Park, and probably the most original with regard to how the battlefield looked on those three fateful days in July 1863. As for good places to eat, my vote is for The Blue and Gray Bar and Grill in downtown Gettysburg (just off the square in the center of town; try their chili) and Mr. G’s Ice Cream just a block away. Both are excellent.
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The Quail motorcycle show Facebook page posted up photos of the bike that won Best In Show. The bike was a Vincent V-twin engine slung into a banana style frame. The front wheel was almost all brake drum with the levers and pivots inside the polished backing plate/dust cover. The foot pegs were forward mounted and the handlebars were very low attached near the top triple clamp, the control levers were internal cable type to leave a clean tube.
To ride the bike, if it was even rideable, your body would be bent into a severe “C” shape. For me, the bike would be unusable and I don’t think anyone ever really planned on riding it more than a mile or two. I don’t want to pick on this particular machine. There is no denying the skill that went into the build, but the bike reminded me why I’ve gone sour on custom, show bike stuff. Here’s my list of 5 reasons I don’t like custom bikes.
Reason Number One: Professional Builders
I understand that people have to make a living. If you are good at building custom bikes you should get paid for it. However, from the customer standpoint hiring others to build a custom bike for you ultimately means nothing. Well, not nothing…I guess it means you have the money to hire a builder. Yea you.
Motorcycles are tools to build your personal experience. They are the means, not the end. The rides you take in the stinging rain, switching to reserve on a lonely highway or cold ice cream from a glass-top freezer are the true artistry of the motorcycle. Making the mundane exceptional is the reason motorcycles exist. Having a custom bike won’t make that experience better any more than a gold-plated paintbrush will make you a better artist. Throwing tons of money at a professional builder to win a bike show hollows out the win. What was it for? You didn’t paint that picture.
Reason Number Two: Regressive Engineering
I’ve built custom bikes in the past. They would be considered Tracker-Style today but back when I built them the goal was lighter weight, improved handling, better braking and more speed. I wasn’t averse to making the bikes look cool as long as it didn’t get in the way of a better motorcycle. The modern custom bike scene sees master engineers and amazing craftsmen devoted to making fantastically intricate clockwork movements that cannot tell the time of day. Look Ma, no hands! Useless quality, while nice to look at, is still useless. The custom-built bike turns out to be a worse motorcycle for all the effort. The handling is worse, the practicality is much worse, the braking is worse.
We see beautifully designed, narrow tube chrome forks that work as if they have no suspension. We see swoopy frames connected with buttery welds but poor in every factual way. They scrape the ground rounding a mild corner and flex under the slightest load. Think of the misallocation of skills: we have our best and brightest motorcycle engineers and craftsmen wasting their time building non-functional wall hangings. We are squandering talent and treasure and there isn’t that much around here to squander.
Reason Number Three: Art for Art’s Sake
I hear you. These are rolling art projects. Custom bikes aren’t supposed to be sensible. I learned a long time ago that art is defined by the artist: If you say it’s art then it’s art, dammit. My problem is that there’s nothing particularly new or innovative going on in the custom bike scene…oops… I mean art world. The motorcycles are all derivatives of each other with the few new-ish ideas getting beat to death over and over. Is it really art if we are just coloring between the same lines? Is bolting on a tiny fireman’s ladder art? How low can we set the bar?
I’m going to cause hurt feelings here but the custom bike scene is no more artistic than making a different length lanyard in your grade school arts and crafts class. In fact, it is craft, something that can be taught and through repetition honed to perfection.
Reason Number Four: Stupidity is the New Cool
Up until the 1980s most custom bikes were rideable. A little rake, a bit of extension to get the stance right, funky pipes, and maybe a cool seat, but the bike could still get around without causing too much pain. Those days are gone, replaced by the excess, the decorative, and the soulless. Now custom bikes must tick all the stupid boxes. Hubless wheels? Check. Horribly ugly bagger with giant front tire? Check. Cookie cutter, store-bought choppers that look exactly the same as every other cookie-cutter chopper? Check. If you’re going to remove the burden of function and place a motorcycle in the art world then that world demands better than what we see now. How many Mona Lisa copies does it take before someone builds a melting landscape? The custom scene is boring crap and deep in your heart you know it.
Reason Number Five: I’m Getting Too Old For This
When we were kids we used to cut up good running motorcycles thinking we were doing something worthwhile. My dad would tell us to leave it alone, that we were just going to make it worse and he was right. We did make the bikes worse. There are a million Harleys out there so go ahead and butcher them if you must, but when I see a nice classic bike tore up to make look it look like a child’s toy I say, “I’m getting too old for this.” I realize that everything I cherish will disappear eventually. I know that it’s your bike and you can do what you want to it. I know it’s none of my business, but if destroying nice bikes to make boring customs is your thing I don’t have to like it. Skill and craftsmanship do not absolve you from responsibility and I will not go quietly into the night.
Looking both large and deceptively small from the outside, the Indiana War Memorial is located in the center of Indianapolis. Susie and I were there for a visit with good buddy Jeff, whom I’ve known since before kindergarten. We both migrated west after college, both of us did so for work, and Jeff staked his claim as a Hoosier. We spent a few days recently bopping around Indiana and Ohio and it was a hoot. One of the first places we stopped was the center of downtown Indianapolis, and we wandered into the amazing and impressive Indiana War Memorial. It wasn’t on our itinerary; it just looked interesting, it was open, and we entered.
The name is a bit misleading, as the Indiana War Memorial is both a memorial and a world class military museum, tracing the history of American combat from the Revolutionary War to our most recent conflicts in Vietnam and Afghanistan. The building itself is impressive, with tall halls and huge lower level display areas. The displays are impressive. So is the architecture.
The Indiana War Memorial wasn’t crowded; in fact, we had the place to ourselves.
Peering up in the main tower, this hall focuses on The Great War.
Moving on to the lower floors, the displays focus on the Civil War, the Spanish American War, World War II, Vietnam, and the Persian Gulf and Afghanistan conflicts.
This is an interesting exhibit from Gettysburg, which we had visited just a few weeks ago.
I enjoyed the small arms displays. That’s my buddy Jeff in the photo below.
One of the last halls we viewed focused on the Vietnam War. This is a Huey Cobra helicopter with a three-barreled Gatling gun mounted in the nose.
Admission was free, and during our visit we had an extra treat. When we first entered the Indiana War Memorial, we had a nice chat with a guy about our age. Jeff mentioned that his father had served in World War II, and that I had served in the US Army. Our new friend told us he had been in the Air Force. As the conversation progressed, we learned that we were speaking with a retired general officer, who was now the Director of the Indiana War Memorial (General Stewart Goodwin).
Not too long ago, I posted the Model 60 handjob blog, which was a story about fitting a new hand to the revolver to correct an out-of-time situation. When I took the reworked Model 60 to the West End Gun Club to check its performance, I brought along my Rock Island Compact 1911. Both guns are on my concealed carry permit and I thought it might be cool to rapid fire on the police qualification target at 7 yards.
As you can see from the photo above, the guns appear to be comparably sized, but that photo is a bit misleading. I don’t feel like I’m printing with the Compact 1911 (you know, allowing the gun’s outline to standout against my shirt), but the 1911 does hang heavier and it presents a bigger shape under an untucked shirt. I’ll get to the specs of both guns in a minute, but first let’s take a look at how they compare on target. The first target is the Model 60; the second is the Rock Island Compact 1911.
50 rounds, rapid fire, at 7 yards from the Smith and Wesson Model 60 (all fired double action).50 rounds, rapid fire, at 7 yards from the .45 ACP Rock Island Compact 1911.
I shot both targets using a two-hand hold from the standing position. Both are accurate and close enough, as they say, for government work.
The loads were fairly stiff. I used a cast 158-grain truncated cone bullet with 4.4 grains of Unique propellant for my .38 Special ammo, and a 185-grain cast semiwadcutter bullet with 5.0 grains of Bullseye for the .45 ACP. Given the choice, I wouldn’t want to be hit by either one. But I’m betting that the 1911 hits harder.
.38 Special and .45 ACP reloads. Both were fairly stout. The 158-grain truncated conical bullet .38 Special loads are potent. The .45 ACP semiwadcutters come from Jim Gardner’s casting operation, and they are accurate and hard hitting.
The Model 60 Smith and Wesson weighs 19 ounces empty and it carries 5 rounds (which adds another 1.8 ounces, for a total of just under 21 ounces). The 1911 weighs 34.6 ounces empty and it carries 7 rounds in its 7-round mags (that adds another 3 ounces, for a total of 37.6 ounces). The loaded 1911 weighs almost twice as much as the loaded Smith and Wesson revolver. Anything you measure in ounces may not seem like a lot, but trust me, when you carry it all day, it is. From a weight perspective, the Model 60 has an advantage.
I know all you keyboard commandos want to tell me I could carry 8 rounds in the 1911, but I won’t carry with a loaded chamber in a semi-auto. Save your breath if you think I should. The Israelis don’t carry with a round chambered and they seem to know what they’re doing, we didn’t carry with a round chambered when I was in the Army, and I’ve seen more than a few accidental discharges from folks who carried with a round chambered in a semi-auto handgun. Nope, it’s an empty chamber for me. Your mileage may vary.
From an accuracy perspective, you can see from the targets above that I shoot the 1911 better. I don’t think the 1911 is inherently more accurate than the Model 60. But in my hands, and with my old eyes, I can hold a tighter group with a 1911. Most of that has to do with my 1911’s sights. I have a red ramp/white outline set of Millet sights that good buddy TJ (of TJ’s Custom Guns) installed on my 1911, and those things are the best handgun sights I’ve ever used. The Model 60’s sights…well, let’s just say it’s a game of hide and seek with them. The 1911 gets the nod from an accuracy perspective.
You might think 7 versus 5 rounds is a tremendous advantage. On paper, maybe. In real life, the average number of rounds fired by a concealed carry permit holder in a confrontation is less than 2 rounds. It’s kind of a draw from a capacity perspective, at least from my perspective. If you’re a keyboard commando, you may feel differently. Go post your opinions on Facebook; they need folks like you.
So what’s my preference? Most of the time, it’s the 1911, but I love both of these handguns.
Susie and I were channel surfing on Netflix the other night and a trailer for Operation Mincemeat appeared. It looked like it might be interesting so we hit the play icon. Wow, this movie is great. The story is about the British military intelligence deception operation to convince the Nazis the 1943 Allied invasion of Europe would begin in Greece and not Sicily. Everyone knew Sicily was the logical choice, including the Germans, but the Brits managed to pull off a miracle and the Germans diverted the bulk of their forces to Greece. I won’t tell you much more about how MI5 did this (beyond what the trailer below shows) because I don’t want to spoil the movie for you.
Operation Mincemeat is a dark, foreboding movie, as it should be. Literally tens of thousands of lives and indeed, the future of humanity, hung in the balance.
One of the interesting characters in this true Operation Mincemeat story is a mid-level British Intel officer named Ian Fleming.
Johnny Flynn playing Ian Fleming in Operation Mincemeat. Here Fleming is intrigued by a Q Branch watch with a bezel that becomes a buzz saw. You have to pay attention or this and other scenes that inspired 007 will zip right by.
Yes, that Ian Fleming…the one who went on to create and write the James Bond stories. He and several other MI5 officers were working on spy novels while the real Operation Mincemeat was unfolding. At one point, the man in charge (played to perfection by Colin Firth) exclaimed, “My God, is there anyone here who isn’t writing a spy novel?” There were other James Bond references, including the senior MI5 person everyone referred to as “M,” Q Branch, and more.
Trust me on this: If you are a James Bond fan, you will love Operation Mincemeat.
Nah, that’s too restrictive. Anyone who enjoys a good movie will enjoy Operation Mincemeat. It’s on Netflix and it’s one of the best movies I’ve seen in a long time. I enjoyed it so much I watched it again from start to finish the next day. It was that good. You can thank me later.
I grew up in the South, way deep south, which means open-wheel automobile racing has always been a little suspect to me. Stock cars built in the good old USA slamming into each other every corner was auto racing. Tracks were small ovals either paved or dirt and the fence wouldn’t save you if a Chevelle climbed the wall just right. Stock car racing was total immersion. Saturday night, roasted peanuts, greasy pizza, burning rubber and beer will transport me right back to Hialeah Speedway in the late 1960s. For a young punk it was a glorious way to pass a hot Florida evening.
Yankees raced open-wheel. Yankees to me were any people that lived north of Fort Lauderdale. I couldn’t tell the difference between Indy cars and Formula One cars and truthfully, I still can’t. The open wheel cars raced far away from the crowd: almost nothing ever hit you at an Indy car race.
Roger Penske was a successful Indy car team owner before he started renting big yellow moving vans and he has a multibrand luxury car dealership with a small museum attached. I had time to kill so I wandered over to the museum with a southern-chip-on-my-shoulder, cocky, dirt oval attitude: Show me what you got, Big Daddy.
The museum is small, all on one floor with a gift shop and a lunch counter a floor above the display cars. Turns out Penske won the Indy 500 more frequently than you would assume and the 500-mile winners in the museum are the actual race cars tidied up for display.
The first engine on your left as you enter the place is Mercedes-Benz 500/265E. Right off the bat with the foreign car stuff, you know? This sweet looking 3-1/2 liter V-8 put out 1024 horsepower at the relatively low RPM of 9,800. The first time out this engine won the pole and the Indy 500 in 1994 with Al Unser behind the wheel. The Mercedes 500 was the first car to pull off this stunt so I guess they got it right the first time.
Mark Donohue won the 1972 Indy 500 in this Drake-Offenhauser powered McLaren M16B. With a 4-speed transmission the car burned through methanol 75 gallons at a time. The car averaged 191 miles an hour for the race, which is about 91 miles an hour faster than the cars on my beloved dirt ovals.
Rick Mears of off-road racing fame won the 1984 Indy 500 in a Penske-March car powered by a Cosworth-Ford. Averaging 207 miles per hour I’m guessing the Cosworth fairly sipped fuel from its 40-gallon methanol supply. Or, maybe the pit crew was really fast. When you’re circling in top gear all the time you don’t need more than the four speeds the March transmission provided.
Now we’re getting somewhere: a Chevy 2.65 liter V-8 pumping out 720 horsepower at 10,700 RPM. This engine won the 1991 Indy 500 with Rick Mears behind the wheel again. This engine went on to win 72 races.
I find it hard to believe that these tiny, multi-plate clutches can hold up for 500 miles pushing 200 miles per hour. The things aren’t much bigger than a motorcycle clutch. Maybe I’m wrong? Is this an accessory drive?
Penske didn’t just run teams, he raced real cars like I like. This Pontiac super-duty 421 cubic-inch beast won the 1963 Riverside 250 with Penske behind the wheel. A Borg Warner T10 handled the shifts, Monroe Regal Ride absorbed the bumps and a Carter AFB mixed the fuel/air. I guarantee the bodywork was not this nice in 1963.
Joey Logano won the 2015 Daytona 500 with this Penske-chassis Ford Fusion. The 358 cubic-inch Ford put 775 horsepower to the famed Daytona high banks.
The photos above show an unusual Lola T-152, 4-wheel drive Penske car from 1969. It’s plenty potent with 850 horsepower squeezed from the Drake-Offenhauser engine at only 9000 RPM. That big hair drier on the side must have made lots of boost. This car also lugged around 75 gallons of methanol.
There are more cars and engines at the Penske museum but I’m leaving them out so you’ll have to visit the museum to see them all. Penske even built a small racetrack for Mini Coopers behind the museum but that area has been taken over as a parking lot by the dealerships. Land Rover enthusiasts have a couple of artificial hills to practice on but the lady who runs the museum said that they don’t use those hills any more.
I came away from my visit impressed by Penske’s many racing successes. He’s not just a rental truck guy. I’ll go as far as to say if Penske raced at Hialeah Speedway back in the late 1960s he would have probably banged fenders with the best of them and carried many golden trophies somewhere north of Fort Lauderdale. Where the Yankees are from.
The Penske Racing Museum is located at 7125 E Chauncey Lane in Phoenix, Arizona.
People collect for different reasons. Some are completists…they collect to own every variation of an item ever made. Others have a theme…something guides their collecting and they can’t rest until they have acquired items that show all aspects of that theme. Still others are brand loyalists…they want everything associated with a particular marque. Others collect to rekindle memories…items in their collections bring back better times. And people collect different things. All kinds of things.
As I surveyed the expansive and overwhelming contents of Bill’s Old Bike Barn, I wondered: What made Bill tick? What fueled his desire to collect? I asked the question and Bill answered it, but I’ll wait until the end of this blog to share the answer. Hold that thought and we’ll return to it.
When I knew we were going to Pennsylvania and my wife Susie Googled motorcycle museums…well, silly me. I thought we would find a motorcycle museum if I was lucky and it might make a worthy topic for a blog or two. Maybe an article in a motorcycle magazine. Susie gets the credit for finding Bill’s Old Bike Barn. I didn’t realize we had hit the Mother Lode. We had stumbled into a more advanced collection than we had ever seen.
No, wait: I need to restate that. It would be unfair to call what I found in Bill’s Old Bike Barn a collection. I realized when assembling this story that what Bill created is not a mere collection. It is, instead, a collection of collections. Bill’s Old Bike Barn might have started as a motorcycle collection, but it goes beyond that.
Way beyond.
Anybody can collect and display motorcycles. Well, not anybody, but you get the point. In the course of curating a collection, advanced collectors, the guys who go exponential and become collectors of collections, amass collections of all kinds of things. Then the question becomes: How do you display your collections? What’s the right format?
Bill had the answer to that, too.
Billville.
Hey, if your name is Bill, and you have a collection of collections, why not start your own town, and display each collection in different stores and businesses and government offices, all in a magical place called Billville. You see, if you have your own town, you will also have streets on which these shops are located. And you can park different cool motorcycles on the streets in front of the shops. The Billville concept solves several challenges simultaneously. The streets let you display the motorcycles and the shops. People see the shops and what’s in them and they want to add to the collection, so they bring in and contribute more things you can exhibit. The shops grow and the town of Billville thrives. Sense a pattern here?
Bill, at home on the streets of Billville.One of many streets in Billville. The streets in Billville are lined with something even better than gold: Vintage motorcycles and Bill’s collection of collections. Bill’s collections are hypnotic in their appeal.
Being a world-renown blogger and motojournalist, I had the grand tour of Billville, led by Bill himself. Bill led, I followed, and my jaw dropped with each turn and every stop in Billville. Billville. I get it. It’s brilliant.
The Billville camera shop. Nothing is for sale, much is on display, and the inventory exceeds 6,000 pieces.
We started in front of the Billville camera shop. I had my Nikon D810 along for the shots you see here. I’ve been a photography enthusiast all my life. I asked Bill if he was into photography, too, when he mentioned the camera shop. “Nah, I just had a few cameras on display. Folks see that and they come back a week later with a bag of old cameras. There’s more than 6,000 cameras in the collection now.”
There’s a very cool Norton parked in front of the Billville Camera Shop. The bike behind it is a Velocette. Per capita motorcycle ownership in Billville is off the charts. Billville is huge, the streets are long, the shops are amazing, and the collections are dreamlike. Pick a collectible item, and there’s a Billville shop housing a collection for it. Into Coca-Cola memorabilia?
An Aermacchi Harley and Harley’s attempt to penetrate the scooter market, the Topper, parked in front of the Billville Coca-Cola shop.
You can’t have a town without a police department, and police paraphernalia are collectible. Billville has its own PD, with a police stuff collection.
The Billville PD and its neighbor…a shop with walls constructed entirely of collectible beer cans.Every police officer who wanders through the Billville PD probably leaves a department patch.The Billville PD has, as you might imagine, its own contingent of motor officers.
Bill told a funny story about visiting firemen. After seeing the collections, they asked Bill if Billville had a fire department. When they asked the question, Billville did not. So the visiting fireman offered to donate their vintage fire engine if Bill would build the Billville Fire Department around it.
A vintage Mack fire engine. A local fire department donated it.
“Then I had to make a fire bike,” Bill said. After all, this is a motorcycle museum.
Bill and his personally-crafted fire bike. This is cool stuff.
Bicycles? You bet. Billville has an interesting collection. Check out the badging on the one shown in these photos.
Want to guess who made this bicycle?Check out the chainring. HD. Cool.Harley-Davidson. I had never seen one of these before visiting Bill’s Old Bike Barn.My Nikon was earning its keep during my visit to Bill’s Old Bike Barn. If you make the trip, don’t forget your camera.
Some people collect toys. Bill is one of them. What would a town be without a toy store?
Another place to display one of Bill’s collections. That’s a cool two-stroke Harley parked on the street in front of it.
Billville has a post office and a restaurant. Take a look at the ornamental wrought iron surrounding the restaurant. Bill told me he purchased huge quantities of wrought iron when he was buying up motorcycle dealer inventories in Europe.
The Billville post office is on the left; the restaurant is on the right.A vintage bike in front of the finest dining in Billville.
Are you into Avon collectables? Billville has you covered there, too.
A 1970s Harley two-stroke and a vintage CL Honda Scrambler. Bill’s collections are extensive and varied.
There are several spiral cases throughout Billville. I thought they were purely decorative. But there seemed to be more to see upstairs, so I climbed one. My reward was more collections. How about phones? Yep, those, too.
Some of the phones in the Bill’s Old Bike Barn phone collection……and more phones.
Bill told me again about people bringing things to him. Matchbox cars? Why not?
Matchbox cars line a wall. There’s something for everyone here. Dads, moms, and kids.
Into horse collectibles? You bet.
Horsepower. Lots of it.
As you might guess, there was an area for Elvisabilia (or should that be Presleyana?).
The King.
If you were wondering, Billville has a dentist’s office, too, complete with vintage dentistry equipment.
Vintage dental stuff. The photo ops in Bill’s Old Bike Barn were endless.
And, of course, Billville includes the motorcycles, motorcycle engines, and everything-associated-with-motorcycles collection. Bill’s collection doesn’t stick to only one marque. You’ll see Harley, Indian, Moto Guzzi, Triumph, Norton, Velocette, Honda, Yamaha, Zündapp, Peugeot, and many, many more motorcycles.
An airbrush painting on one of Bill’s trailers. Check out the vintage Harley and sidecar.Now, check out the actual vintage Harley and sidecar.A vintage Knucklehead in the main hall. Note the spiral staircases on the right. There’s more up there, folks. Lots more.Vintage Indians. Some are left unrestored; others are restored to better-than-new condition.
Bill’s collection is eclectic. The collections themselves are eclectic, and within the collection, the pieces Bill has exhibited vary widely. He’s not just a Harley guy or an Indian guy. He likes anything that’s interesting. You saw the prior blog about Bill’s favorite ride, a Zündapp. Other bikes pepper his collection, including one I always wanted…an early SL350 Honda twin. It’s the color I always wanted, too, and it’s in its 100% original, unrestored condition. I stared at the SL so hard I might have worn away some of its paint.
A stunning and unrestored SL350 Honda.Ah, the mileage on the SL350 Honda…the motorcycle is over half a century old, and it has but 4,000 miles on the clock. Wow.
So, back to that question I posed at the top of this blog: What makes a collector collect? Everyone has their reasons, and like I said at the beginning of this blog, I wanted to know Bill’s. I asked the question. Bill smiled, lowered his gaze, and answered softly. “I like to see peoples’ reactions when they see the collections,” he said. That being the case, I think Bill must have really enjoyed our visit. We sure did.
A sparkadillo. There’s a lot of folk art in Bill’s Old Bike Barn.
Our first blog on Bill’s Old Bike Barn? Hey, here it is:
