I liked good buddy Jose’s blog about his Marlin Glenfield .22 rifle, and we thought it would be a good idea to include a Rimfire Series category here on ExNotes. When the idea first surfaced, I thought we might have done a blog or two on .22 rimfire firearms. When I searched through our blogs, I found that we’ve already posted six .22 blogs. For your quick reference, here they are:
We’ll be including a category for these on our Tales of the Gun page, too.
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Watch for upcoming rimfire stories in this series, including a blog or two on the GSG .22 1911, the Ruger Single Six, the Smith and Wesson Model 41, a Mannlicher CZ Model 455, a Trainer CZ Model 452 , a Winchester Model, a Remington Custom Shop Model 504, a Ruger Mannlicher 10/22, a 200th year Ruger 10/22, a target grade Ruger Mark III, a vintage Winchester Model 62, and more. Yep, we like our rimfires. Big time. Stay tuned, Amigos!
If you’re on the Pacific Coast Highway and you’re riding through the little fishing village of Moss Landing, it’s nearly impossible to miss the moto art at the J&S Eagle Iron and Leather Shop, although that’s exactly what I did on a trek north a few years (no doubt because it was raining so hard). On the way back, though, the sun was out and I when I saw these I knew I had to stop for a few photos. I shot these photos about 5 years ago and I don’t know if these moto sculptures are still there. It might be worth a ride to check it out.
Ernie Buck, the store manager, told me these gigantic bike sculptures are Hecho en Mexico and go for about $20K each. I guess that’s not that far-fetched considering what a new Harley or BMW costs these days, and these things are easily three times the size of those bikes.
The first moto gigante was constructed mostly of license plates. Bear in mind that all three of these sculptures use giant tractor tires (that will give you a sense of their size). Like I said above, they’re huge!
The next one was fabricated from horseshoes. Horseshoes! Imagine that! Where do artists get their ideas?
It was cool. I liked the gangster whitewalls. I had a set of those on my ’92 Softail. You know, the top of those tires was about the same height as me!
The third bike was fabricated almost entirely of shovels.
Maybe the bike above is a Shovelhead (you know, the one that came after the Panhead). It was cool.
You know, the bikes above make for interesting displays, but I wondered where I would put such a thing if I owned it. You’d need a huge lawn or a spacious home in which to display this kind of art, and even then, I’m pretty sure Sue would have none of it. They sure were interesting and they made for cool photos.
The Pacific Coast Highway is an amazing road and it’s always been one of my favorite rides.
200+ pages of single-spaced, profusely-illustrated motorcycle content from the two Joes who started ExNotes. The collected works, so to speak. With selections including magazine articles, road tests, opinion pieces, travel stories, ExNotes blog posts, and even a few listicles. American bikes, European bikes, Japanese bikes, Indian bikes, Chinese bikes, vintage bikes, modern bikes, dream bikes, wild conjectures, and more. A Foreword by none other than Jack Lewis, perhaps the brightest and most literate star in the motojourno constellation. It’s about to land. The book is already written. All we need is the title. That’s where you can help. That, and of course, buying the book.
We’ve got a few titles we’re considering:
Dos Joes Dos Moto Joes Two Good Joes The Two Moto Joes Moto Stories from Joe and Joe The Collected Works of Joe and Joe The Collected Works of Two Moto Guys Motorcycle Stuff Motorcycle Musings Please Click on the Popup Ads
We’re not limiting our title selection to the above. If you’ve got a better idea, let’s hear it. Whoever makes the winning suggestion gets a free, signed copy of whatever we decide to call it. After we’re dead, it will be worth a lot of money, and we’re not spring chickens.
Send us your thoughts in the comments section. Let us know what you think. Operators are standing by.
Good buddy Jose, who has written for us before (I’ll give you a link to his other articles at the end of this blog), sent this story to us a day or two ago. I enjoyed reading it and I think you will, too.
By Jose Armenta
Hi Joe!
I have one you might like….
“Minute of Golf Ball”
I was at the range two weeks ago on a very busy day fooling around with the first 22 semi auto rifle my parents bought me for Christmas when I was 12 years old (um, I mean Santa Claus did). It’s a Marlin Glenfield Model 60 and it came with a 4x scope.
Anyhow some years ago I mounted an inexpensive BSA “Sweet 22” 4×9 scope on it, I mean really inexpensive like 60 or 70 beans. I put four golf balls out on the ground by my targets at 100 yards while some kids and the range hands looked on. Using bulk “rot gut” Federal ammo, I picked off all four balls with four shots. Golf balls fly about 10 to 15 feet when hit with a 22, sort of like when you hit them with a chipper iron. Two kids with a Ruger 10/22 tried bouncing them to no avail. So next range break I set them back up and did it all over again, and the results were 4 for 4!
I told the kids my 50+ year old department store rifle was “minute of golf ball.”
Oh, and yes, it does have the famous Glenfield squirrel stock. I learned to hunt with this rifle so it will always be my favorite.
Who still shoots their first 22 rifle?
Jose
Jose, that’s awesome.
To answer your question (Who still shoots their first 22 rifle?): I know I do, good buddy Greg does, and I suspect quite a few of us do. My first .22 was handed down from my Dad, who bought it when he was 8 years old for $8 in New Jersey of all places (a state with what are probably the most stringent gun laws in the country). I like your story a lot, Jose. It’s a good story, it hits on a topic that many of us can relate to, and it suggests a new blog line: The Rimfire Series. Thanks for submitting this to us, and if you have more stories, please send them in!
ExhaustNotes recently featured Honda’s 305cc twin in both its Dream version and the Super Hawk version. I figured I might as well jump on the bandwagon with my own 305 Honda stories.
I owned three Dream 305 bikes in the early 1970’s. This was back in the days when people thought Japanese motorcycles were junk, much like Chinese bikes are thought of today. Even though the Dreams were only five to seven years old they seemed much older, like Japanese bikes were aging in dog years. When a Japanese bike would stop running the first thing an owner would do is strip the screw heads because he used the wrong screwdriver and then complain about cheap, cheesehead Japanese screws. I was one of those guys. Never mind that there was no need to use a hardened, grade 8 screw that is threaded into soft aluminum. If you think people are stupid now, back then a simple, maladjusted contact point or dirty carburetor would doom a Japanese motorcycle and cause the bike to be sold as junk.
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When I was a kid I bought a lot of those junk bikes and today I can take apart 50-year-old Japanese bikes without too much trouble. Have the screws hardened with age or have I become more educated in the proper use of hand tools? Regardless, it made the mid-60s Japanese bikes inexpensive for a young man on a budget, like me. I never paid over 25 dollars for a 305 Honda. I got two of them for 15 dollars each. At the time, I was earning about 2 dollars an hour washing dishes so I could nearly buy a motorcycle every day. That’s some cheap motorcycling even considering that the USA was still on the gold standard and those were pre-inflation adjusted dollars.
From three Dreams, a 1962, 1964 and 1965, I took the best engine and combined it with the best transmission. I used the straightest frame and the gas tank that had the least number of dents and the best chrome. I went through all the shock absorbers hand testing them and picked the four that seemed to damp best. (Two rear shocks, two front shocks) I tested all 6 wheels and selected the truest of the bunch along with the thickest brake linings.
I had one clear title and a bill of sale for the other two bikes but the good frame I used didn’t match the title. My pop and I fixed this by welding over the existing frame numbers, grinding the steering neck smooth and re-stamping the numbers to match the title. We made a neat job of it except one number was slightly out of position. That wasn’t unusual even for factory stamping.
Growing up there was a Honda dealer not far away on 36th street in Miami; it might still be there. All us kids hung out at that dealership and pestered the parts guys until they started giving us good deals on new old stock. Again, even though the Dreams were not that old the Honda factory had moved on to newer, brighter motorcycles and those Dream parts were already obsolete. Honda wanted to sell CB750s; they didn’t want to mess around with old sheet metal framed 305s.
I bought a brand new, original, black vinyl dual seat for twenty dollars. Imagine that: the seat cost more than the motorcycle. Honda used to sell touchup lacquer paint in little tin cans that held about a cup of paint. The parts guys let me rummage inside a big, dusty, cardboard box of mixed colors looking for the original red color. The guy got tired of me digging around and said, “Why don’t you give me ten dollars and take the whole box?” Man, I painted dozens of motorcycles with that sweet candy tone Honda paint. It was quality stuff. JC Whitney, the Amazon of that era had Carlisle tires in the odd, narrow 16-inch size the dream required.
After a bit of bodywork, painting and assembly, I had what looked like a brand new 305cc Honda Dream for a little over a hundred dollars. This was the biggest and fastest motorcycle I had owned to date. The Dream would top out around 90 mph and I could cruise on the South Florida highways all day long doing 70 mph. The Dreams have a single carb and single ignition points so they are very easy to keep in tune. Mine would outrun a Honda 350 four cylinder up to 80 mph. It had more grunt off the line. You could short shift it and the motor would lug down and purr. The 360-degree crank made it sound sort of like a Triumph.
There were a couple things I didn’t like about the Dream. The front end was a leading link, sheet metal affair. Unlike the smaller Honda forks with two individual swing arms that chattered the front wheel in hard corners, the Dream swing arm was one piece and was routed behind the fender. Still, the thing bobbed up and down in corners with a seasick inducing motion. I think better front shocks would have cured this issue.
That new dual seat was not very comfortable. Honda built the seat with almost no padding; all it had was a few dozen springs stretched between the seat frame to give the seat some cushion. It was a squirmy feeling seat that never gave you a firm platform to work off of. Other than that the bike was reliable. All the electrics, including the electric starter worked every time and it never left me stranded.
I sold the Dream after a few years as I had too many motorcycles and was getting more into dirt bikes. Before I sold it I took the Dream down to the Honda dealer on 36th street. The whole place emptied out to see my bike. They remembered me scratching around their parts department for bits.
When it comes to their 305cc motorcycles Honda’s Hawk was always the cooler bike. It looked great and it was sporty. The Dream was kind of stodgy, an old man’s bike. I think I’d like to own a Dream engine in a Hawk frame. It would still be plenty fast and really be a zero maintenance motorcycle to enjoy in our too-modern world.
I visited with good buddy TJ of TJ’s Custom Gunworks a few days ago. I’m having TJ work on my Smith and Wesson Shield (we’ll post that story in a future blog). While I was there we talked about the poor trigger pull inherent to striker-fired pistols, and TJ mentioned his custom Glock. He showed it to me and I was blown away. It is beautiful. I’ve seen custom Glocks before, but nothing like the pistol you see here. This one is in a class all by itself.
TJ calls this pistol the Rock Glock for good reason: Check out the granite-speckled, multi-color Dura-Coat finish. The pictures are good, but they don’t do the gun justice. In person, it is visually arresting. Stunning. Beautiful. There are probably more adjectives I could use, but you get the idea.
TJ’s Glock started life as a Glock 22. Here’s a partial list of the custom features TJ incorporated:
Custom Glock 34 9mm slide
Match barrel with MWG compensator
Double-textured grip stippling on the front strap and trigger guard
Custom contoured slide release (it provides a much easier lock and release)
Extended magazine release
Doctor red dot optical sight-scope
Custom Overwatch aluminum trigger
Match connector
Full action and reliability work
Like all of TJ’s custom handguns, this one is not simply a collection of drop in off the shelf custom parts. TJ does a full customize, fit, and polish on everything (the custom parts and the mating Glock components). The Rock Glock is old world craftsmanship applied to modern weaponry. The man is a perfectionist and it shows in everything he does. It’s what keeps me coming back to TJ when I need (or want) custom work done on my handguns.
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Interestingly, TJ kept the factory Glock striker (the firing pin) in the Rock Glock. He finds them to be much better made than aftermarket strikers. Kudos to Glock on that.
Check out the grip area (both front and back) and the trigger guard. They are deeply stippled to assure a rock-solid, zero slip grip.
One of TJ’s purposes on any project is to assure absolute reliability. That’s not hype. I’ve experienced it with all the guns TJ’s modified for me. Part of that includes recontouring and polishing the feed ramp on semi-auto handguns. Check out TJ’s touches on the Rock Glock’s feed ramp.
TJ let me dry fire the Rock Glock and I was impressed. He told me that the stock gun had a 6.5-pound trigger pull and it was rough. The Rock Glock now has a 3-pound trigger pull and it is buttery smooth.
It was a good visit and I’m eager to get my Shield after TJ works his magic on it. You’ll get the full report here on ExNotes when I do.
I’ve traveled extensively in Baja and I want to get down there again as soon as possible. It’s the best riding on the planet, the food is amazing, the scenery is incredible, and the people are great. The whale watching is a religious experience. I know Baja is almost indescribably awesome and you do, too, if you’ve been there. When I talk about Baja with folks who haven’t been there, though, the question always emerges: Is it safe?
The short answer is yes. But one time, we came pretty close to it not being safe. On one trip out of many over the last 30+ years in Baja, Susie and I had a bad experience. I almost didn’t write this blog because I didn’t want to scare anyone away from Baja. I’ve been to Baja many times since, and I plan to keep visiting Baja.
The best bike for Baja…my CSC RX3 on the malecon in Loreto, BCS.
So, with that as an introduction, let me add a bit more. I was setting up the first CSC Baja expedition, with the idea being that we would offer free tours to Baja with the purchase of a CSC motorcycle. That idea worked fabulously well and we successfully ran the CSC tours for years, treating people to the ride of their life, selling a lot of motorcycles, and generally having an inordinate amount of fun. It convinced me that the RX3 motorcycle was possibly the best bike ever for exploring Baja, and I still feel that way. You may disagree, but hey, it’s okay to be wrong.
But I digress. To get back on topic, I hadn’t been to Baja in a while and I was taking a big group down, so Susie and I rolled south in my Subie on a pre-ride scouting expedition. With the intro stuff done, here’s the blog I wrote for CSC on that trip.
Susie and I are down in Baja scouting the locations for the Inaugural Baja run, and it sure has been an interesting two days. I didn’t have any Internet access in Catavina yesterday, but I have a spotty connection in Santa Rosalia tonight, right on the Sea of Cortez, and we’ll see how much of this gets through.
First, a few quick photos of our first couple of stops…
Rolling across the US border into Mexico…Jesus, a giant statue on the way to Ensenada.Breakfast in Velero’s in Ensenada…worth the trip into Mexico all by itself!The Blue Pearl, on the beach…
After we rolled through Ensenada, it was on through the mountains south and Baja’s agricultural district. Boy oh boy, did we have an adventure. All that stuff I’ve been telling you about how safe it is down here? Well, I still believe it, but my confidence (and Susie’s) was sorely tested yesterday. See that guy in the photo below? FYI, you’re not supposed to take photos at these roadblocks, and I want you to keep that in mind on our CSC Baja trip…but I never have done too well following rules. I’m talking about the infantryman talking to the car in front of us at our first military roadblock (one of many Puesto Militars) on the way down. He’s the dude standing to the left of the white car.
Mr. “Okay, go ahead…”
Well, things got very interesting after that. That photo was about 175 miles south of the border, just north of San Quintin, where we got caught in a mini-labor riot. Turns out the migrant workers down here are not happy with their wages on the farms. A lot of them come from mainland Mexico with their families, including their kids, whom they evidently put to work picking whatever crops they pick in the fields north of San Quintin. The Mexican government is clamping down on child labor, so that affects these people and they are plenty angry about it. Real angry, apparently.
One of the military checkpoint guys told us the road was closed (that dude in the photo above) about 80 km ahead but he didn’t speak English and he didn’t tell us why. I thought it was because they were working on the road, which happens frequently in Baja, and when that happens the road is closed for about 20 minutes. Then you can proceed. Happens all the time. Amazingly (based on what we found out a few miles down the road) that young soldier let the car in front of us proceed, and then he let us proceed.
About 30 miles later, we started seeing what we thought were small piles of asphalt on the road with lots of wires (you know, like for fixing potholes, which they have a lot of in Baja, but I couldn’t figure out what the wires were). We saw this for about the next 15 miles. We saw hundreds of people milling around, too; far more than I’ve ever seen in these little farming towns.
It turns out that we what thought were piles of asphalt were actually the remains of burning tires. As in “let’s light a fire and shut the main highway down burning tires.” The ag workers have been having demonstrations (actually, labor riots) in the San Quintin area, and we found out (the hard way) that this had been going on for 2 days.
We went a few more miles and encountered a roadblock (more burning tire remnants and boulders blocking the road) with about 50 men milling about who immediately surrounded us. They wouldn’t let us go forward or turn around. One of them threatened us and the Subaru with a 2×4. They were all over the car. Susie had the presence of mind to lock the doors. These guys were mad at the world, and we were the world at that instant. I didn’t know what to do, so I fell back on what always seemed to work elsewhere in the world: I asked the guy who seemed to be in charge if I could pay the toll to get through. He seemed genuinely surprised at that, he thought about it for maybe 5 seconds (duly observed by his subordinate seditionists), and then he realized this might be a viable alternative income stream (Sue designs and manages automated toll roads in the US; it seems to work for us). Our Mexican revolutionary said, “hokay,” I gave him a ten dollar bill, and he told the insurrectionists “let them pass.” Crisis averted. Whew!
The tire remnants continued for another 5 miles, but there were no more roadblocks. While we were stopped at the impromptu toll plaza, one of the seditionists keyed my car door on Susie’s side with initials, presumably the initials of their labor movement (LPS or something like that). I’ll guess I’ll get my body shop guy to repaint it when I get home. That little Subie is going to end up having more bodywork than Joan Rivers. A couple of months ago I dropped one of the RX3s into it. This week it was the Nuevo Mexican Revolution. I’m keeping the body shop business alive in California. Or maybe not. I might leave those initials there as a war wound. At the very minimum, I am re-christening the Subie. She’s no longer the Starship Subaru (sorry, Carl, that was a good moniker, but its time has come and gone). My car is now known as the War Wagon.
We found out from a busload of people in El Rosario (next town down the before getting into the mountains) that they expect the demonstrations to continue for a couple more days and then it should be over. One guy had his windows shattered, probably by the same guy we saw with the 2×4.
Folks, all the tourists down here (and there are lots of us) were talking about this. No one had ever experienced anything like it before, and most of us have been coming down here for decades. It’s a blip, and I’m guessing it is already over. It sure was exciting, though.
We continued south after that… and that meant it was time for a few more photos.
Mama Espinosa’s in El Rosario…great burritos!Cardon cactus in the Vizcaino Desert
At one point on our way to Guerrero Negro, I spotted several vultures fighting over a dead rabbit. Time to put the 70-300 on the Nikon and see how close I could get.
The Baja Department of Sanitation hard at work.
When you roll into Guerrero Negro, there’s a giant Mexican flag flying in front of a giant metal structure (an artist’s interpretation of the Mexican Eagle). You’re not supposed to take pictures here (it’s a military installation), but I still had the 300mm lens on the camera and I got sneaky.
The largest flag I’ve ever seen.
That point is right on the 28th Parallel, which marks the border between Baja and Baja Sur (the two Mexican states in Baja).
You know, being anywhere near the 28th Parallel and not stopping for a fish taco or two at Tony’s would be a crime. I’ve been stopping at his truck for the last 21 years…every time I come down here. What’s cool about it is Tony always recognizes me, even though sometimes it’s a year or more since I’ve seen him!
The best fish tacos in the world!
My good buddy Tony Lopez, who is a fish taco chef extraordinaire!
Tony told me he’s been in business for 22 years. I bought my first fish taco from him 21 years ago.
We stopped in San Ignacio next and I grabbed a couple of photos of (and in) the mission there.
The San Ignacio Mission, built by the Jesuits in the 1700s…it’s still in use as a working churchFlowers inside the MissionOne of the figures inside the San Ignacio Mission
That’s it for tonight, my friends. Time to sign off and get some shuteye. We’re headed south again tomorrow. Watch for more photos!
So there you have it. With more than three decades of exploring Mexico under my belt, this was my one negative Baja experience. I communicated the above to all the followers we had on the CSC blog and asked if they wanted to change the trip to someplace else here in the US, and everyone answered with a resounding No! We did the Baja trip with 15 or so riders, and we did several more CSC Baja rides after that. Every one of those trips was a blast. Here’s a video I prepared from the first CSC ride:
You can read more about Baja and our adventures down there in Moto Baja.
I made a lot of good friends on those Baja rides, many of whom still ride their CSC motorcycles and many of whom regularly follow the ExNotes blog. You’ve seen their comments here over the last four or five years.
To me, Baja is the best riding there is. If you’re headed into Baja, make sure you get insurance. It’s not likely you’ll need it, but the Mexican government requires that you be insured and your regular insurance won’t cover you in Mexico. The insurance provider we always go with is BajaBound.
The Highwaymen, starring Kevin Costner and Woody Harrelson, is not a new movie and maybe you’ve seen it already. But if you haven’t, it’s worth watching. In my case, it was worth watching again. I’d seen it twice already when it popped up on the Netflix menu last night, and I watched it a third time. It was great. There have been a few movies and a lot written about Bonnie and Clyde; in my opinion, this movie stands way above the other stories.
The real Frank Hamer was a hell of a man (as was Maney Gault), although one of the earlier Bonnie and Clyde movies portrayed him as a bumbler and a buffoon. His widow sued Warner Brothers over that and the studio settled out of court. This movie sets that record straight.
Maney Gault (left) and Frank Hamer (right).
The story is about two Texas Rangers (Frank Hamer and Maney Gault) coming out of retirement to track down and kill Bonnie and Clyde. I don’t know how close it adheres to what actually happened, but that doesn’t matter (at least to me). From what I’ve previously known and the research I did online, I think The Highwaymen stays pretty close to the truth. It’s a hell of a story and it’s extremely well done. It hits home for me, too. I’m an old guy and I can sympathize with the two geezers played well by Costner and Harrelson. Their aches and pains made me laugh. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a bad movie with Harrelson in it; I have seen one or two turkeys with Costner. But in this film both actors were superb (as was the writing) and I appreciated the attention to getting the firearm details right. There’s a gunstore scene that’s awesome. In one of the opening scenes, Hamer is shown to have a pet wild boar. I tried to find out if that was true and what popped up on Google was inconclusive. There are references to his having a pet javelina.
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Trust me on this: The Highwaymen is a wonderful flick. Watch it and you can thank me later.
Here at ExNotes we cover a wide variety of topics. Some relate to motorcycles or outdoorsy type of activities. Some are about ways of telling time or shooting a bull’s-eye with great precision. This ExNotes story stretches our genre as tight as my t-shirts stretched around my belly. I wouldn’t have written this story had it not been for Berk’s suggestion. So don’t complain to me. It’s all Berk’s fault.
I have a bad relationship with food. I’ve always had a bad relationship with food. When I was a tiny, undersized kid my Pops used to harangue me to eat more food. He would pound his fist on the table point at my plate and yell, “You’re never gonna get big unless you eat!” Mealtimes were misery for me. Mom wasn’t that great a cook and with the old man badgering me to eat more the whole dinnertime affair was something to be endured and gotten over with.
For years I dreaded mealtime, there was always such a stupid drama over my food. I wanted to throw the food against the wall and tell him, “You eat the crap, I’m done!” I used to hide food under my plate to show him I’d eaten everything. I just wasn’t hungry, man. I can’t really blame my dad. He came from a poor family and food was scarce. It must have galled him to see me rearranging food around my plate in an attempt to make it look eaten. Wasting food was the ultimate sin in our house.
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As I grew older and slightly larger my appetite increased. I could tuck into some fried chicken and collard greens, you know? For most of my life I never had to worry about being fat. I kept busy working and ate whatever I wanted. My dad would beam with pride as I polished off two helpings of stew beef washed down with a quart of sweet iced tea.
We made our iced tea so sweet the sugar would drop out of solution. The water simply couldn’t hold any more sugar. You had to stir it before taking a slug. The tea was at maximum saturation and by some mysterious combination of temperature and barometric pressure the sugar fell to the bottom like morning dew. And that banana pudding was divine, I tell you.
My weight stayed around 174 pounds for decades. It didn’t matter what or how much I ate and believe me, I wasn’t too discerning about what I shoved into my mouth. It was all just food. Some food-stuff tasted better than other food-stuff but never good enough to wash a dish for. I frequented fast food places because their offerings were paper wrapped, disposable and filled the void. I was just going to eat it, man, it’s not like I was going to put it on display in my trophy cabinet.
Things stayed that way until the last five or so years. My clothes started fitting tight. My stomach required copious quantities of Tums to keep the acid from gurgling into my throat and burning the back of my mouth. I kept eating like always even though my activity level went down. I was no longer working 6 days a week crawling in and out of boats.
My belly grew larger and larger until I hit 195 pounds. For a modern American male 195 pounds isn’t all that surprising but hang all that meat and blubber on a 5-foot, 6-inch frame and you’ve got a fat little bastard. My dad would have been proud. Nothing fit anymore. Even my shoes were tight. My riding gear became coat rack decorations. I puffed going uphill, my fiberglass filled, burnt out COPD lungs struggling to supply oxygen and my heart pounded to circulate blood through all that fat.
And I was fine with it.
CT is the one who decided it was time to slim down. She started watching her food intake and I began to follow along. We don’t really have a diet we just stopped eating food. I began to lose weight. Both of us urged the other on. Just how little food did it take to stay alive? Turns out, the answer is very little food. I probably eat about a quarter of the calories I used to eat. Some days we have only toast and unsalted peanuts.
I’m hungry and miserable but in a strange way I feel liberated. Eating is a trap; I had to get angry at food to break the eat-reward cycle. Now I despise food for what it did to me. I look at food as poison. This is probably not a healthy relationship with food either but I figure food needs me more than I need it.
I no longer care if it’s feeding time. I eat whenever I can’t stand the hunger. I never eat until I’m full because satisfaction is the opiate of the people. I don’t want to be full and I stay hungry because it’s righteous and I am striving to be a righteous man. CT and I recently went on a 1000-mile jaunt through Arizona and since neither of us eat much we never worried about stopping for lunch or going out to dinner. You can save a lot of money starving to death.
Beyond nutrition, food has always played an important social purpose. I imagine the earliest proto-humans gathered around the fire pit to grunt in a rudimentary language about their lives. Even hyenas share their kill, kind of. Social gatherings are tough but I get through them with a doggie bag and sparkling conversation. Hopefully no one notices I’m not eating much or that I pity their food-centric lives.
This dietary change made me aware of how much eating had become a part of motorcycle riding for me. In retrospect, all I ever did on a motorcycle was ride to restaurants and eat. The other day I rode down to my favorite taco place in Alamogordo and just kept riding past. I don’t need an excuse to ride. I carry a thermos of hot, robust Dancing Goats® coffee and stop my cycle to have a sip now and then.
I’m down to 172 pounds. I’m shooting for 170 but the ounces are coming off very slowly. My buddy Ren gave me the best advice on how to lose weight. He said, “It’s making 1000 small, right decisions each day.” I’d like to say I feel better but I really don’t. I can get up the hill a little better and I don’t eat tums like candy anymore. With my stomach empty the acid can stay put where it belongs, not sloshing over my back teeth. CT tells me I’m breathing easier at night. I can even wear my old leather motorcycle jacket; it’s been a few years since I could. But truthfully I’m not any happier. If I could eat all that junk food without gaining weight I would.
As a for-instance, this morning I ate tortilla chips with guacamole and a small container of Motts applesauce. For lunch I had some unsalted peanuts. I don’t know what I’ll have for dinner and I don’t care. I don’t want to anticipate food. Each meal must stand on its own. I’m kind of lucky that I was never a foodie-type person. I get no thrill from a well-prepared meal and just eat it for fuel. Exxon or Texaco, makes no difference to me, it’s all gasoline.
Anyway, being hungry isn’t the worst thing in the world. I guess a large percentage of humans on earth go through their entire lives like that. The longer I keep at this starvation diet the less desire I have to eat. Like right now as I type this I’m hungry but I’m making a small, right decision to ignore the feeling. Maybe after a while it will go away.
Two or three years ago Joe Gresh and I provided product reviews on our Viking motorcycle jackets. We like them a lot and you may have noticed that Viking advertises on our website. Both jackets have given us good service and I’ll provide links to those reviews at the end of this blog.
The topic today is the Viking Momentum small street and sportbike tail bag. I’ve found bags like this to be ideal for my travels through Baja and elsewhere. I used similar equipment on my KLR 650 and I found that I could carry more than I needed in Baja and elsewhere. Gresh suggested the Viking bag and I ordered one. It arrived quickly and it was well packaged.
The Viking Momentum bag arrived in a robust cardboard box.
After taking the Viking bag out of the box, I put it on my Royal Enfield. The size was about perfect. What I especially like is that I can swing my left over it when getting on and off the motorcycle. With larger tail bags, getting on and off the motorcycle becomes a problem, but not with the Viking bag.
The Viking Momentum tail bag.
The Viking bag has a hinged lid and lots of mounting points. I’ve not used the slotted deal on top of the lid yet. It looks cool. The bag also has a carrying handle. It’s a well-designed and well-built motorcycle accessory. I examined the bag closely and I am impressed with the build quality. I could not find any defects and no indications of sloppy workmanship.
The Momentum has a carrying handle and two zipper handles for opening an expanding the bag.
Before I installed the bag on my Royal Enfield, I opened it to see the interior. The Momentum comes with a rain liner, a set of straps, and spare nylon web bungee cord attach points. You can rivet these to the bag (in addition to the four already present) or you can use them as replacements if the ones on the bag detach.
Inside the Momentum I found a rain liner and extra straps. You can use the extra straps for additional tie down points. I think I could use the straps to turn the Momentum bag into a backpack.Extra straps and spare D-ring attachments.
The Viking Momentum bag has four Velcro straps on the bottom. These pass under the seat, stick to each other, and secure the bag to the seat.
The Momentum upside down. The Velcro straps pass under the motorcycle seat and attach to each other.
To mount the bag, I took the seat off the Enfield. The Enfield and Viking designs makes this easy. On the Enfield, the ignition key unlocks the right side panel, it comes off, and that reveals a cable pull button that unlocks the seat. Easy peasy.
Unlocking the Enfield side panel to gain access to the seat release.The Enfield’s seat release.The Enfield seat removed from the motorcycle.
Once the seat was off the bike, it was a simple matter to mate the Viking Momentum’s mounting straps underneath.
The Momentum tail bag strapped to the Enfield seat.
I first mounted the seat so its carrying handle faced forward, as shown below. Then I reversed it. I’ll say more about that in a bit.
The Momentum installed on the Enfield.
The Viking bag has two zippers around the exterior. The upper one is for the lid; it provides access to the bag’s interior. There’s another zipper around the bag’s base; unzipping it allows the bag to expand and approximately doubles its volume.
With the bottom seat unzipped, allowing the Momentum to expand.
I thought it would be cool if the expanded bag would hold a full-face helmet, but it did not. That’s okay. If I put my helmet inside, there wouldn’t be room for anything else.
There are a couple of zippers inside the Viking bag. One is on the bag’s inner walls. The other is on the underside of the lid. You can store things in the lid compartment like your phone, a map, a Baja tourist visa, your BajaBound insurance paperwork, and other stuff.
The Momentum interior.The underside of the Momentum lid. You can unzip the zipper and store small items inside the lid’s pocket.Like most motorcycle apparel and many luggage items, the Momentum is manufactured in Pakistan.
The Viking Momentum includes a rain liner. It packs up compactly. You can keep your stuff dry in the rain liner inside the Momentum bag. It’s a nice touch.
The Momentum rain liner.
With the Momentum bag’s handle facing forward, I didn’t like how the bag was positioned on the seat. It provided adequate room, but no extra room. The Enfield has a hard seat. I’m getting older and my butt is aging along with the rest of me. I need extra room to move around on a motorcycle seat, and with the bag mounted with the carrying handle forward I didn’t have any extra room. I also noticed that the base zipper (the one you unzip to expand the bag) pull was digging into the Enfield’s Naugahyde surface. I didn’t want to disrespect the Nauga that gave up its hyde for my seat, so I turned the bag around and moved it more toward the rear.
With the Momentum mounted with the handle facing forward, the expansion zipper toggle is against the seat surface. I turned the bag around to eliminate this issue.
When I did that, the Velcro straps are still captured by the seat’s base mounting points (the bag won’t slide off), and I eliminated the zipper-to-Naugahyde interference.
The Velcro straps secured on the motorcycle seat after reversing the bag.
Cosmetically, the seat looks great in either orientation.
The Momentum mounted in the reverse position. The expansion zipper handle is off the seat.
I once led a bunch of guys on a short Baja weekend ride about 15 years ago. One had a Harley, he was new to motorcycling, and he had never done an overnight ride. We met at a Denny’s before heading for Mexico, and when he rolled up on his Electra-Fried, he and that Harley looked like they escaped from the opening scene on the old Beverly Hillbillies show. The only thing missing was Granny in her rocking chair. He told me his saddlebags and his Tour Pak were stuffed, and he also had two or three gym bags bungied to the bike. This was a weekend trip to San Felipe, about 130 south of the border, and we were only staying two nights. My KLR had a medium tank bag and nothing else (and that tank bag also held a camera). “I’m ready for a week down there,” my friend announced from his adventure Glide.
“Well,” I said, “I’ve got my Nikon and a spare set of underwear, so I guess I’m good for a week, too.”
My boat anchor Nikon D810 and a Nikkor 24-120 lens in the Momentum. I really like this. The camera and the lens cost almost as much as the Enfield.
I guess I shouldn’t make fun of that guy. I get it; he was at the front end of the learning curve, and we’ve all been there. I once took an overpacked Harley into Baja, too. We were going to Cabo, taking the ferry to mainland Mexico, heading down to Guadalajara, and coming back through Sinaloa cartel country (you can read about that trip here). I did not yet know about the virtues of traveling light and good ballistic nylon gear like the Viking Momentum bag.
How not to pack a motorcycle. The Momentum tail bag is a much better approach.
The point is this: You don’t need to carry a lot on a motorcycle trip (even if you write a blog), and you can get a lot of stuff in the Viking Momentum. I like it. The Momentum tail bag is a good deal; on the Viking website it retails for $99.99.
So there you go: My take on the Viking Momentum tail bag. It’s a good thing to have for your motorcycle but don’t take my word for it. Listen to what Bernadette has to say.
I mentioned above I would provide links to the Viking motorcycle jacket reviews. Here’s mine, and here’s Joe Gresh’s.
A Tale of Two .22s (a CZ Model 452 and a Remington Model 504)
