Joe Gresh

The Long Haul: Riding a Motorcycle All The Way

By Joe Gresh

In these Covid-aware times being a long hauler means suffering from the effects of contracting the virus that caused so many problems a few years ago. But “long hauler” used to have a different meaning in the motorcycle community. It meant a rider that rode long distances over relatively short periods of time. The Iron Butt group sprang up to create a framework of recognition and certification for the tough riders that did 1000 miles in 24 hours and the challenges escalated from there.

I’ve never felt the desire to ride 1000 miles in 24 hours although I would have loved to run that pace the time I raced the Baja 1000. No, I usually go a few hundred miles if I’m bopping around near the ranch on a day ride. If I’m traveling long distances I’ll shoot for 400 miles a day or a little more depending on the time of year. On motorcycle trips I try to take it easy and enjoy the countryside. I’ll stop often to read historical markers or pull off the road to sip a little piping hot Dancing Goats coffee from my Thermos. I might see a stream and wander over to look for gold nuggets or stick my feet in the cold water. To me, motorcycle rides should be fun, not an endurance test.

Sometimes I end up pushing it a bit like on the ride to Laguna Seca. I clocked 590 miles from Grand Junction, Colorado, to Tonopah, Nevada. I was riding the ZRX1100, it was hot, and I had plenty of daylight, so I just kept riding. I wasn’t in any great pain and there aren’t many places to get a motel room in the wilds of Nevada. That 590-mile run may not seem like much to an Iron Butt rider but I’ve done some other long distance rides on much less capable motorcycles.

The longest single-day ride I did on my 1971 Yamaha RT1-B, 360cc Enduro was from Cross City, Florida to Big Pine Key, Florida, a distance of 530 miles. The old two-stroke, single-cylinder dirt bike is a fairly comfortable place to sit and it will happily cruise along at 60-65 miles per hour so it’s not like I was doing something all that special. At the time a hurricane had blown through Big Pine and our house was a mess, so I was hustling to get back home and start cleaning up.

Another long day in the saddle was back in the 1970s riding my 1973 BMW R75/5. I was returning from a 41-state tour around America and the last leg was Cashiers, North Carolina to Miami, Florida. I racked up 750 miles in one, national-55-mph speed limited day. Back then you had to keep your eyes glued to the speedometer because it was nearly impossible to ride a 750cc motorcycle on a wide-open highway at 55 mph. You tended to creep up and all of a sudden you’re doing 70. The 55 mph speed limits stuck around a long time because it was a huge moneymaker for the Highway Patrol and local police forces.

I rode my Husqvarna 510cc Super Motard 500 miles from Window Rock, Arizona to Caliente, Nevada in one agonizing stint. This run was the most physically demanding and it demanded it all from my butt. The Husky’s seat is narrow for ease of mobility in the dirt. It has almost zero padding towards the rear and the front area was no wider than a pack of cigarettes. I did a lot of stand up riding and crossed leg riding that day.

The closest I got to an Iron butt ride was on a 1968 Sportster. This motorcycle is another poor choice for long distance riding. At least the seat wasn’t 4 inches wide on the Sporty. I started out from Van Horn, Texas. It was late March, so it was still pretty chilly in the pre-dawn hours. I rode all the way to Point Loma, California and it took around 18 hours. Of course, with an old Harley all that time wasn’t spent riding. You have to twirl wrenches a bit.

The Sportster’s charging system failed because the mechanical, coil and point type voltage regulator shook itself to pieces. Running a total loss ignition system I had to stop at gas statins and charge the battery every so often, kind of like a modern EV car. As the voltage would drop the bike would start missing due to the plugs whiskering.

Motorcycle plug whiskering isn’t common with today’s high powered ignitions and alternators but back then it was not out of the realm of possible failure modes. It happened when the plug shorted out from a tiny piece of metal stuck between the electrode and the body of the plug. The remedy was fairly easy: you had to remove the plug and clear off the bit of metal that was causing the short, then put the plug back in. Don’t ask me where the tiny pieces of metal came from; it’s best not to think about it.

At some point on the ride, I found a voltage regulator wire broken from vibration and figured out how to make the old, brush-type Harley-Davidson generator charge its battery. I made the last 200 miles at night without having to stop for a charge. All in, I rode the Sportster 854 miles and man, were my arms tired. It’s kind of funny that the long haul effects of Covid (foggy brain, tired feeling and dizziness) were the same symptoms I felt after riding that Sportster 854 miles.

I don’t think I’ll ever do a thousand miles in 24 hours. It’s just not important to me and defeats the purpose of riding a motorcycle in the first place. I guess if it was an emergency and I had to do it I could ride the Kawasaki ZRX a thousand miles in a day, but honestly, if that situation arose, I’d rather take the Toyota truck.

What about you? Are you a long hauler? How far have you ridden in a day? Does racking up mileage for mileage’s sake mean anything to you?

Another mileage story? You bet!

GRIN Times In Datil, New Mexico

By Joe Gresh

Among the many crazy conspiracy theories masquerading as knowledge today are the Walmart tunnels. These tunnels supposedly crisscross the nation for the usual nefarious reasons: FEMA camps, New World Order population control and extraterrestrial alien smuggling (to steal your jobs and women). When you stop to think about it, this whole insane, Walmart-tunnel thing is no wackier for Datil than the nearby Very Large Array radio-astronomy telescope.

The VLA was used in a movie about the search for alien radio transmissions. Or was it just a movie? If that doesn’t fire up our odd American mix of gullible/skeptical idiocy nothing will. Like all good conspiracy theories there is a grain of truth to the Walmart-tunnel thing that feeds the plot. New Mexico is full of old mining tunnels so if you look hard enough you’ll find one. Just not the ones owned by Walmart. Those ones are top secret.

Naturally with all the weirdness going on near Datil, GRIN chose to hold its Guzzi motorcycle rally directly over a tunnel leading to Lake Como in Italy. I could hear the water rushing through the tunnels if I put my ear to a Quattro valvole rocker cover.

Finding Moto Guzzis in New Mexico is much harder than finding Walmart tunnels. I can’t recall seeing one on the road or parked up at a Starbucks. My buddy Robert rode his 850 Guzzi out to New Mexico one time but that doesn’t count. Guzzis aren’t super popular anywhere so a rally with 25-ish bikes is something to see. I forgot to add that GRIN stands for Guzzi Riders In New Mexico, the club that put on the show and rally.

Datil consists of an expensive gas station, a motel, a campground and a pretty good restaurant. I’m not sure you could call it a town, it’s more of a traveler’s rest. Behind the motel and gas station you’ll find the campground, and this is where the wrong-way, Italian V-Twins were situated.

The gang of Gizzard riders was an easygoing bunch. It took no time at all before I felt like one of the boys and damned if I didn’t start wanting one of these goofy motorcycles. An unusually high number of rally attendees told me that they had once owned a Kawasaki ZRX like the one I rode to the event. I did 410 miles round trip but there were riders from Texas and Colorado who had traveled much further.

I’m a sucker for high pipes on a street bike so this Scrambler was my favorite of the bunch. Later in the day we went to the Datil restaurant and had a good lunch that totally blew my diet. I had the southwest turkey sandwich and it was smothered in Hatch green chili.

GRIN hosted several dinners for the 3-day rally and there was a Guzzi bike show. Attendees judged the bikes in a people’s choice sort of deal. It was kind of hard to see the entry numbers that were on tiny round stickers applied the Guzzi headlight glass. I didn’t get to vote because I wasn’t actually a member of GRIN. I feel this should invalidate the whole election process and make GRIN a dictatorship.

Late in the afternoon I had to head back to the ranch as I don’t like riding at night. My night vision is much improved since I had cataract surgery but an elk running across the road in front of your 70mph motorcycle takes a lot of seeing.

The seasons are slowly changing here in New Mexico, so it wasn’t unbearably hot on the ride home. Cool, dry air on top of the higher passes made me worry less as the sun set behind me. I pulled into the ranch in full darkness with the ZRX running on all four cylinders. It was like riding in a tunnel.

ExNotes Movie Review: Oppenheimer

By Joe Gresh

I don’t go to the movies very often because it seems like superhero stuff is all that plays at our local cineplex, so it’s unusual that I’ve gone to the talkies twice in the last couple weeks. After seeing the big movie of the summer, Barbie, CT and I decided to go to the second big movie of the summer: Oppenheimer. I’ll be dropping a few spoilers so click out of this blog if you plan on going to Oppenheimer.

I became interested in the United States atomic program about 15 years ago. It may seem gruesome to some, but the mechanics of the Manhattan Project intrigued me. Those old-timey scientists did some amazing stuff way back in the 1940s. Everything they were attempting to do was based on theory and done for the first time.

I went to New Mexico’s Los Alamos to tour that once forbidden city and visited Trinity Site, where the world’s first atomic bomb was exploded. For an insider’s perspective of the super-secret project the book, Surely You’re Joking Mr Feynman by Richard Feynman has a lot of Manhattan Project stuff along with other excitement from the anything-is-possible era. I liked the landforms in New Mexico so much we ended up moving here.

As it turns out I really didn’t know all that much about the dawn of the atomic age. Oppenheimer the movie is mostly about the adversarial relationship between Oppenheimer and Lewis Strauss, a man that I never saw name-checked in the information I had read. This kind of smoke-filled-room stuff doesn’t interest me although Strauss caused a lot of trouble for Oppenheimer after the war.

From my limited research I thought Oppenheimer was sort of a figurehead for the Manhattan Project but the movie portrays him as critical to the project’s success. Luckily for New Mexico (or unluckily if you were downwind of the blast) he loved the state and picked a site west of Santa Fe for the new atomic age.

CT and I drove down to El Paso, Texas, to see the movie in large format Imax. An old-style mall, set 25 feet lower in elevation than El Paso’s Montana Avenue, was the closest place we could find. The mall was interesting in that the entire commons area was filled with a flea market. You could find hand-made crucifixes or plastic crucifixes made in China. There were places to get your car key battery replaced and a bar of colorful, homemade soap. We had an hour or so before our show started so we went into a madhouse called Dave and Buster’s. Dave and Buster’s is a huge, chain gaming center with a restaurant attached. The place looked mostly like a Las Vegas casino except it’s ok for kids to go because you can only lose.

The restaurant was not too bad. CT and I split a turkey club sandwich. The racket was so loud I needed a gin and soda to calm my nerves. I can see a parent at the end of their rope taking the kids to Dave and Buster’s and turning them loose while mom or dad get plastered at the bar. Really a great business model if you think about it.

I don’t know if it’s due to the lack of employees or matinees are so sparsely populated that there is no need for employees, but we waltzed past the unmanned snack bar into the Imax theater unmolested. The Imax had very steep steps leading to steep seats with plenty of space for mid-aisle stragglers to wander in front of the punctual people. No need to worry about a lady with a fruit basket on her head sitting in front; you’ll be able to see the screen.

My ears were still smarting from Dave and Buster’s when the movie started with an ear-splitting explosion followed by thousands of random lights racing towards a center point roughly 3 feet in front of my head. The room thundered and shook. I thought the place was coming down but this was just the Imax theater showing us what it was capable of doing and had nothing to do with the Oppenheimer movie. I began to see the reason there were no ticket takers. The usual series of advertisements you see in a theater were not shown, maybe because there are so few Imax theaters it’s not worth shooting the ads in their large format.

Oppenheimer’s story is told out of sequence with scenes jumping forward and backward in time. Maybe this is a nod to quantum physics and the impossibility of knowing the true state of matter at any particular time? The jump scenes are mixed in with fantasy sequences that represent Oppenheimer daydreaming. The film switches between color and black and white. All this jumping to and fro, along with the deafening audio levels and rattling chairs, kept me disoriented. I’m mostly deaf in my left ear and still it was actually painful at times. CT wanted to stick wadded up tissue paper in my ears. I should have done it.

Actors playing famous physicists make cameo appearances throughout the movie. You never know who will pop up at a dinner party. Matt Damon plays a loud General Leslie Groves with a comical Jackie Gleason style. Robert Downey is Oppenheimer’s antagonist. He does a good job for most of the film even if he did fall into a paranoid Captain Queeg riff near the end.

The early, red-scare communists were the beautiful people in the movie and their party meetings were more like cocktail socials. Even though it appears he went to the meetings solely to pick up chicks, this dabbling in communism would prove to be a problem for Oppenheimer later in his career.

I like 40-foot tall ta-tas as much as the next guy, but the nude scenes in Oppenheimer seemed to be there to bump the rating and didn’t really contribute to the story in any meaningful way. Which is exactly what you want from gratuitous sex scenes. I feel the director went a little light in this area. There should have been 15 or 20 more. During the kangaroo court to take away Oppenheimer’s security clearance there was a creepy fantasy sequence with Oppenheimer’s dead lover staring at Oppenheimer’s wife while straddling him naked on the witness chair. She wasn’t decomposing with her nose falling off or anything, but it did seem weird.

The director had a tough job making Oppenheimer exciting enough for our 2-second attention span populace. It’s a story that wants to be told slowly and with great detail. I fear that movie will never be made and if it was would not earn much money for the studio. Instead, we get clip after clip that somehow are supposed to make sense at the end. Those Superhero movies have ruined us.

Oppenheimer was sort of a let down. I was expecting a more nuts and bolts experience, like I would be able to build my own small thermonuclear weapon after seeing the movie. Don’t let that deter you from seeing the film; it’s probably just me. I had a hard time following the story and it took 75% of the run time before I began to connect all the disjointed scenes. I think in a regular theater I would have done better. The Imax experience was too overwhelming for me. The constant shaking of seats and booming audio put me in a fight or flight mode. Picture reading a good book, and every few minutes a guy walks up, shakes your shoulders, and shouts “You’re reading a book!” in your ear. It’s that kind of annoying. Imax never lets you forget that you’re in a movie theater.

More ExNotes product reviews are here.

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Sponsors: A Call To Arms

By Joe Gresh

Sponsored content is a way for publications to earn money. How it works is companies pay cold hard cash for bloggers to write a story about the products they’re selling. Most reputable websites and magazines print a notice letting you know the story is paid advertising. We’ll never have to worry about that because we don’t write sponsored content.

Not writing sponsored content is not the same as not having sponsors, though. Sponsors pay money for advertising on our website but don’t have any say about what we write. Sponsors support the website because they feel the content will attract the sort of people who they want to reach. For ExhaustNotes those people will be motorcyclists, shooters, travelers (especially Baja travelers), and concrete finishers. I know, it’s an odd mix of topics, but both Berk, me, and our other contributors write about what we know.

So here’s the pitch: If you have been reading ExhaustNotes and think the eclectic collection of stories we create might appeal to your customers, by all means become one of our sponsors. If you just like reading the website and want to help support us, become a site sponsor even if you have nothing to sell. Maybe we’ll make a wall of names for people who sponsor the site. We want sponsors to support ExhaustNotes.us because they think that the writing we are doing is worthwhile.

So dig down into those dusty advertising budgets and drop an email to us (info@ExhaustNotes.us). Let us know how we can help you spend your money.

ExNotes Product Review: Vevor Welding Table

By Joe Gresh

I’ve gotten an undeserved reputation as a China booster. Some Internet wags think I work for China and must be getting a cut from the sales of products I test. Any time you guys want to get serious and ban all products from China let me know. I’m with you, man. I wish I got a cut from the sale of Chinese imports but the truth is, many times Chinese stuff is the only stuff I can afford. Take this Vevor welding table I bought on Amazon. At $62 including shipping it was even cheaper than the Harbor Freight welding table that looks like the exact same unit.

For fun I tried to find a similar sized, made-in-USA, welding table and the cheapest one I could find was from a company called Siegmund. The Siegmund table is way, way nicer than the Vevor and it comes with a bunch of clamping accessories included. The Siegmund costs $2569.00 plus shipping. For me, the choice isn’t made-in-USA vs made-in-China: the choice is a cheap welding table or no welding table at all.

Maybe if I ran a welding shop I’d bite the bullet and get the Siegmund, but that’s not exactly true. If I ran a welding shop I’d probably make my own welding table. It doesn’t matter for this product review because I don’t run a welding shop and I never will.

My previous welding table was a small, outdoor side table made from expanded metal mesh. It was too low and I was on my knees to do the welding. Everyone knows you have to be in a comfortable position to lay down a steady bead, more so when you can’t weld very well in the first place.

The Vevor welding table is one of those generic designs that are manufactured by many different factories in China. It has a tilting feature that I don’t foresee using but you never know. Out of the box the table comes complete with all the nuts, bolts, and screws needed for assembly. It’s easy to put together. It took me only 45 minutes and I’m a slow learner.

As delivered, the table worked fine, but there were several tiny modifications that made the thing much better. The tilting arc has two wing nuts and two plastic knobs on each side to lock the table in position. It’s almost impossible to get these fasteners tight enough to prevent the table from slipping when you push on the edge. It’s probably not a problem for welding but I replaced the factory hardware with acorn nuts. Once the acorn nuts are tightened with a wrench the table no longer slips.

I like my welding table high so that I have a better chance of seeing what I’m doing. The Vevor comes with two pins that allow height adjustability but even in the highest setting it was too low. If you weld from a chair it would be ok. I extended the table another inch and drilled the upright for a bolt/screw. To lower the table, I’ll have to remove the bolt but it will only take a moment.

I added two side braces to take a little side to side wobble out of the table. It’s relatively stable now.

The Vevor table folds for storage and came with wheels to roll the thing around. I didn’t use the wheels as the table is not very heavy and you can lift it easily.

The feet on the Vevor are an odd setup. Four plastic pieces fit into the ends of the legs and two crossbars with rubber tips snap into the plastic pieces. The crossbars fall out of the plastic easily so I drilled and added 4 screws to hold them in place.

Once I modded the Vevor welding table it felt sturdy. There are a few neat and not so neat features. The tabletop has slots for clamps but is not very thick metal (it’s about 2.4mm). It racks pretty easy until you flatten it out and tighten the tilt nuts. For electric welding it will probably be okay; gas welding may warp the top. On the sides are fences that you can raise beyond the tabletop to provide a handy place to clamp your work. Lowered, the fences are out of the way and razor sharp so watch your elbows. The lower cross brace on the Vevor comes with several size holes for tool/clamp storage and a couple loops to hang whatever you want to hang.

For a measly $62 you get a lot of welding table from Vevor. I’m satisfied with the thing and as soon as I clear out all the flammable stuff lying around the shed I’m going to test the table under real life conditions. Watch this space for a follow up report.

ExNotes Movie Review: Men Are From Mars, Barbie Is From Mattel

By Joe Gresh

I had no interest in seeing the new Barbie movie; after all, I’m a boy. Dolls are for girls. We boys don’t play with dolls, we play with Action Figures which are completely different things…entirely. I started reading about a backlash to the movie, how it was anti-male and subversive to the natural order of things. I read demons made Barbie and if your kid watched it they would be swapping genders faster than you can pop the plastic, unborn fetus from Pregnant Midge’s® removable belly.

Settle down now, as I have some mansplaining to do here. I’ll try my best not to reveal too much of the Barbie plot. I must warn you that spoilers lie ahead so stop reading now if you’re going to the movie.

In my mind a subversive thing acts in subtle ways to upset the status quo. Under that definition Barbie is not subversive: It’s a sledgehammer and telegraphs its intentions so that there’s no confusion where the movie stands on a women’s place in today’s society. The opening scene of Barbie mimics 2001 A Space Odyssey’s monolith/monkey bit but instead of sticks and a large, mysterious block it’s a 50-foot tall Barbie and baby dolls. I imagine people who prefer traditional male/female roles will never make it past this first sequence.

Barbie lives in Barbieland, a place inhabited by universally beautiful women named Barbie and universally handsome men. Except for Allen. Women run Barbieland and the men (all named Ken) are merely decorative accessories who spend their time at the beach flexing. The cast represents many races and body types (but mostly thin and fit) and I suspect this blatant, utopian dreamscape won’t go over well with the one-drop-of-blood, you-will-not-replace-us crowd.

Barbie’s perfection begins to crack as a result of events in the real world. Instead of frozen in the high-heel position, her feet go flat. She develops cellulite. She contemplates her own mortality. That chick from SNL sends her off to sort things out. Barbie and Ken end up in the real world where Ken realizes for the first time that men control most of the levers of power. This is reinforced when Barbie meets the all-male corporate officers at Mattel. Hilarity ensues as Ken becomes Alpha-Ken and Barbie tries to find her real-world owner (it’s a long story). Ken goes back to Barbieland and introduces the other Kens to horses, bandanas and giant trucks. Barbieland rapidly becomes a hyper-male version of the real world.

As usual, when men get involved, things get aggressive. There is a jealousy-war between two Ken factions fighting over the Barbies. In the end Barbie saves the day and Barbieland is restored. Barbie has to solve Ken’s mental issues as well (a woman’s work is never done). You’ll hear complaints about the emasculated men in Barbieland, but since neither Ken nor Barbie have sex organs it’s kind of moot.

I give kudos to the Mattel Corporation for having a sense of humor and allowing their name and corporate logos to be used in this movie. I’m sure there will be a backlash against Mattel as there is against any corporation that shows consideration towards others. The suits at Mattel made a shrewd move and are getting billions of dollars of free advertising from the Barbie media frenzy.

Look, at this politically polarized moment in time I can’t tell you how to feel about a woman-centric movie that has boy problems as one of its major themes. It may be that the patriarchy is so ingrained there is simply no way to avoid it. You’ll need to look inward to understand what triggers your feeling of lost or gained status. It’s just a movie.

Barbieland is painted in simple, bright pastels but real life is much more complicated and dull. There are many women who navigate the patriarchy with apparent ease, like my wife CT, although it may not be as easy as it looks for her. I’ll have to talk to her about her feelings on the subject one day. Maybe a day I’m not pouring concrete or looking at big tires for diesel trucks.

Some people might think the playing field is equal, that women have arrived and are treated as equals all the time. I’d say we’ve come a long way baby (stolen from Virginia Slims cigarettes), but being male, I would say that. Despite frequent setbacks, progress trends towards justice and this is where the Barbie movie succeeds. Barbie has even me talking about women and their lot in the world we have created. That’s progress. Does that make me Ken?

More product reviews are here.

ExNotes Event Review: AHRMA Motofest, Monterey, California

By Joe Gresh

After riding through the stifling heat of Utah, Nevada and central California the cold, foggy mists of the Monterey Peninsula penetrated my mesh jacket and I shivered. It was wonderful to be cold and it was wonderful to be at Laguna Seca’s Weather Tech Raceway. This wasn’t my first visit to Laguna Seca but it was my first time inside the track. Years ago I rode up from San Diego back when Laguna Seca was a date on the world championship calendar. Today, Austin’s COTA circuit has usurped that role in America but Laguna Seca is still way prettier.

Two strokes ruled Moto GP racing in that era and when I pulled up to the entrance gate the $50 ticket price almost gave me a stroke. I was earning $3.50 an hour working on boats and $50 was a ton of money. I figured the hell with it and went to the Monterey Bay Aquarium instead. Oddly enough, the entry fee for AHRMA’s Motofest vintage racing was still 50 dollars some 40 years on. This time I paid for a ticket because riding from La Luz, New Mexico is a long way to go for nothing.

Motels around Monterey are sort of expensive. Your best deal is the 4-day camping pass at the track. I bought a reserved campsite because I wasn’t sure how things worked inside. Turns out there were plenty of campsites available for this event. I had site 110A, which gave me a view of turn 5 in one direction and a view of the bikes going up Rahal hill to the Corkscrew in the other direction.

Site A-110: it’s a good place to spend the weekend.

Plenty of portable toilets were sprinkled around the venue and hot showers were available in the more substantial structures. All the faucets were marked non-potable so bring plenty of water. I had to buy those little bottled waters in the paddock at $3 a bottle. The ground at my site was pretty hard so I never got my flimsy aluminum tent pegs to penetrate. Luckily my site had an old steel spike that someone left behind. I drove the spike into the hard ground on the windward side, tied the tent to the spike and used my gear to hold the other three corners down. The hydraulic jack came in handy as a hammer.

I say the ground was hard but apparently the hundreds of ground squirrels had no problem burrowing holes every 15 feet. The squirrels are all over the place at Weather Tech. I’m surprised that an aged vintage motorcycle racer hasn’t fallen in a squirrel hole and broken a leg. I’ve heard that when they get up in years it’s best to shoot them rather than let them suffer.

Me and Milich, he’s tall with a lot of drag but still wins. You can visit Milich’s websites at http://guzzipower.com/ and https://www.ducpower.com/.

Thad Wolf’s Suzuki. I never did find Wolff, he must have known I was looking for him.

Thursday was practice all day. The bikes were sent out in groups with staggered starts. There are a lot of classes in AHRMA, like dozens, to keep track of but I mostly just listened for two-strokes. AHRMA’s Motofest had a sort of mini Motorcyclist magazine reunion vibe. The Kevin Hipp racing family was there along with Thad Wolff and Ed Milich. Go-Go Gulbransen, whose name the announcer never tired of uttering was there also. Go-Go was the guy who tested the upper limits of new sport bikes for Motorcyclist magazine. All these guys live and breathe motorcycles and it’s the passion you can’t fake that made them such good journalists.

This might be a real S2 Kawasaki production racer. Very few were built. You had to know somebody.

Vintage racing today looks a bit different from when the motorcycles were current models. Hondas seem to dominate. The 160cc slopers, 175 twins and 350 twins were much faster than I remember them. In fact, I don’t remember them racing at all. I assume it’s due to better oils and electronic ignition systems, because in the old days the small bore grids were mostly Yamahas with a few Suzukis and Kawasakis. If there was a Honda racing it was usually sputtering at the tail end of the pack and the rider was wearing construction boots and welding leathers. Of course, things were different at the GP/factory level where Honda did all right for itself considering the handicap it was working under. It helps to have Mike Hailwood and Freddie Spenser on your team.

A brace of H2s these sounded good when they pulled in.

Jewel-like T500cc twin Suzuki. This was a revolutionary bike when it came out. Some people thought you couldn’t go this big without heating problems. Another bike I want to own one day.

Zoomie RD 350 with DG sunburst heads. Going for that squish band action.

A pile of Ossas. These are Stilettos; I want a Pioneer.

Stretched Honda Mini Trail with custom Grom-based block. 350cc, tops out around 100 miles per hour. I asked the kid if it was dangerous. He said he lived in Oakland, so it was the least dangerous thing he did.

After setting up camp I walked all over Laguna Seca: I needed the exercise after sitting on the ZRX1100 for five long days. To get to Monterey I took the long way around, up through Colorado to Grand Junction then across Utah and Nevada to California. I tried to ride Highway 120 through Yosemite Park but the road was closed. I detoured north from Lee Vining to Highway 108 and was rewarded with one of the world’s great motorcycle roads. Anyway, from my campsite to the paddock was only a 15-minute walk. Less if you didn’t tangle with a ground squirrel.

Vintage racing is all about the paddock. The racing, while serious, is almost secondary to checking out the old race bikes. The paddock is where the food is, where the beer is and where the old motorcycles are. Most of the spectators hang out in the paddock area. I wandered around for hours looking at motorcycles. I ate a turkey sandwich and drank a beer that was like 28 dollars but we need to support the moneymaking aspect of Laguna Seca or it’ll become luxury housing.

Saturday and Sunday were race days. I hung out with Motorcyclist Magazine alumni Ed Milich for a bit. Ed has an admirable cost per win philosophy in that he expends just enough effort to get first place and no more. His bikes look like hell but they run great. Paint don’t win races, says Ed. On the track he never seems to be trying hard, the gap between him and second place grew larger as if by magic. Ed won every race he entered (four) I did some math and determined that Ed spends around $4.37 per win. Hipp won his races also. Hipp’s bikes are those fast Honda 350s and they look like show bikes. Hipp’s wins probably cost more than Milich’s, but they still count.

Sunday morning I went over to the trials section. Set in gullies and on the sides of hills, trials riding never looks too hard until you try it. Trials events at the level Laguna Seca puts on have the advantage of being relatively safe as the speeds are very low and you can’t fall very far. This isn’t the crazy stadium trials you watch on YouTube but it suits the old motorcycles participating. I might try the trials on Godzilla next time I go to Laguna.

The legend Dave Roper. I think he’s still the only American to win at the Isle of Man races.

With such wildly different motorcycles it’s hard to compare rider skill. Except when it comes to Dave Roper: Roper, who resembles a stick of beef jerky with a cotton ball stuck on one end, was smooth and fast on any bike he rode. Roper and Walt Fulton, with a combined 300 years of racing experience, put on quite a show with their matching H-D branded, Aermacchi Sprints. There was a vintage motocross at Laguna Seca but it ran concurrent with some other races so I missed it. You really need to be two people to see all the action at AHRMA’s Vintage Motofest.

Nice, tank shift flattie. This bike sounded good on the track, very low rpm drone.

It was nice to have the campsite for Sunday night; I didn’t have to rush to pack and head out into the unforgiving freeways of California in the late afternoon. Wherever I ride the ZRX1100 it attracts attention. I’ve had people take selfie photographs standing next to the bike, I get asked what year it is almost every ride. The thing is bone stock. Laguna Seca was no different, the bike garnered a steady stream of complements from my camp neighbors. I must look hard up because the guy camping across from me handed me 40 dollars and said I had dropped it. I think he was trying to be nice to a vagabond. Normally I would have taken it but I’m trying to become a better person and told the guy it wasn’t mine.

Californians and Ex-Californians like to bitch about their state, but the damn place is beautiful. California has it all from the beaches to the mountains to the desert and all types of terrain in between. With straight roads crowded by farm equipment, the central valley (also known as The Breadbasket of America) was like the Tail of the Dragon for my nose. Sweet manure, grassy hay, dust and soil, the smells kept swapping back and forth giving my nasal passages whiplash. If it wasn’t so expensive, I’d live in California again but my total running costs at Tinfiny Ranch are less than the annual taxes on any house I could afford there. The Californians I met were universally friendly and interesting to talk to, we would start up a conversation like we had known each other for years and had just spoken last Thursday.

I’ll go to AHRMA’s Monterey bash again. It’s closer than Daytona for me and with the camping, about the same cost. I give the event high marks for value. You really get your 50 dollars worth with AHRMA.

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A Man’s Got To Know His Limitations

By Joe Gresh

The famous line was from a Clint Eastwood movie, I think, but regardless it rings true for me as I ease into my salad years. Or is that my pabulum years? Recently I did a few simple mathematical equations and then ran the results through my life expectancy chart. The results were not encouraging. I would need to live another 124 years, 7 months to complete all the projects I’ve started. That’s if I didn’t gain any additional projects in the ensuing 124 years. Unfortunately, the projects still drift in by ones and twos. It’s time I got to know my limitations.

I was building the driveway retaining wall at The Ranch when the epiphany came. I looked around at the tools spread around the front yard, the stack of lumber and the pallets of concrete and decided that there was just no way to do it all and that I needed to shed a few projects. At least get them off my books. The low hanging fruit was first to go.

The 1974 MGB-GT was a candidate because I haven’t spent much money on it yet and it’s a huge, time consuming proposition. It needs many, many manhours and truthfully I never really wanted a MGB-GT anyway. It was just on the land when we bought the place and I thought it was a cool looking car. I bandied about about selling it but the prospect of wading through all the Internet scammers and tire kickers didn’t appeal to me. My buddy Mike from the Carrizozo Mud Chuckers expressed an interest in the car so I made him a deal he couldn’t refuse: I gave it to him.

Before you get all wound up and start telling me how you would have given me $500 for the car I have this to say: “No, you wouldn’t.” Just like you wouldn’t buy a Janus if it had an American made V-twin engine or an electric car if it went 100 miles further on a charge. Mike has a trailer that fit the MBG perfectly and we loaded it up using two come-alongs in series. With 3 flat tires it took about a half-hour to move the car 20 feet. Inches add up to miles and the blue, MGB is now residing 69 miles away at Mud Chuckers central. Seeing the car roll off the property gave me a real lift. It’s like I bought an extra year of my life.

The next thing to go was the KLR250. When I had the Love Shack in Florida the KLR was the bike I left in the shed. Whenever we were in residence the KLR faithfully dragged me around central Florida. It wasn’t fast but I could hold 70mph on the highway if there wasn’t a headwind. The KLR sat as we moved junk across the country and then sat in the shed here at The Ranch for a few years. You know how that goes. The carb gummed up and it wouldn’t start.

I decided to sell the bike but first I had to fix the front brake, fork seals and replace the front tire. After accomplishing those chores I wandered off to construction projects and the KLR languished. The final straw was when I skipped over the KLR250 to get the ZRX1100 running. I realized that the liquid-cooled 6-speed enduro bike had fallen completely off the to-do list.

Mike came to the rescue again and picked up the KLR250 for a cool 1000 dollars and dragged it back to his place. He has since replaced the stock constant velocity carb with a Mikuni clone off of Amazon and the bike starts and moves under its own power again. The new carb is jetted too rich so there’s a bit more fettling to be done but I won’t be doing it.

Having those two projects out of the way emboldened me to get rid of more junk. The Bomber is on the chopping block. I originally bought the Bomber for its running gear. I planned to put the Bomber’s small block Chevy and ½ ton running gear into Brumby (the Jeep). But the Bomber was so handy for hauling concrete the Jeep swap never took place. CT signed me up for a Lowes card and with the card Lowes will deliver anything to The Ranch for $20. This means no more concrete hauling and no need for the Bomber along with the Bomber’s tags and insurance.

I’ve got a few things to fix on the Bomber but I think I can get $1500 or so for the beast and that will be another project off my books and another year of my life back.

The trend line is clear to see: Stuff not getting used is going away. The 1975 Kawasaki 900 isn’t even safe now that the ZRX1100 is running. It has become too valuable and selling it would enable me to finish a few other projects, like my Honda 50 with a 140cc Lifan motor. Zed mostly sits because the purple Yamaha RD350 has taken over top spot in the vintage street bike category. I can only ride so many motorcycles at once.

You may say I’m getting lazy or maybe just old but I say I’m being realistic. There are still a few old motorcycles I’d like to own and clearing the decks is a time-honored tradition for normal people. Anyone need a Huffy beach cruiser with a 60cc two-stroke motor attached? It’s too fast downhill and too slow uphill. The thing is going to kill me if I don’t get rid of it.

ExNotes Review: Nine Years Among The Indians

By Joe Gresh

When I first met CT I used to read a lot of books. We didn’t have a television (by choice) and the Internet hadn’t been invented yet so reading a book was entertainment. I’ve slowly fallen out of the habit. Part of it was that my failing eyesight made it harder to read small print. My job was physically demanding and I had to work outside in the hot Florida sun. I ran my own business and I was always busy working, trying to pay off the American Dream. When I got home I was so washed out I just wanted to sit, drink beer and not think.

For some reason it seemed like the places we lived were always poorly lit. It’s hard to read in the dark. Later, bright computer screens made it easier to read but I consumed mostly junk. Ad copy, moto-journalism, poorly done Youtube videos: my mind had become a vast, featureless wasteland.

I had a couple cataracts replaced with new lenses a year ago and that operation made things a lot brighter. Maybe those places we lived weren’t all that dark after all. For kicks I had the eye surgeon install long-distance lenses and now I can see far away things pretty good. My up close vision isn’t the greatest and I’ve been too busy to get reading glasses. I started a few books but lost interest. Stupid memes and arguing with strangers on the Internet were more to my liking.

It’s been awhile since I’ve plowed through an entire book but I plowed through Nine Years Among The Indians in two short days. You know how they say you can’t put it down? I did put it down but only because my eyes were tired.

NYATI was first published in 1927 about events from 1870 to 1879, which places the language used in the book far from modern sensibilities. It’s the story of Herman Lehmann who was abducted by Apache Indians when he was 8 years old. Herman was raised by the Apaches and became an Apache. The Apaches were his family and Herman tells how the process was accomplished so thoroughly he forgot how to speak English and spoke only Apache.

One of the reasons I liked the book so much was that the area where the action happened (and there is plenty of action), New Mexico and west Texas, feature prominently. The Apaches at that time lived in nomadic bands and traveled to suit the seasons. River crossings serve as waypoints as you follow the tribe across the modern day southwest.

Lehmann writes in a matter-of-fact way and doesn’t sugar coat the things he did as an Apache warrior. Human life was not valued any higher than common animals in the wild west and a lot of people were killed. The Apaches were in an end-of-times war with the White Man and due to superior numbers and disease the White Man just kept coming and taking everything he saw before him. The Buffalo hunters were the worst. They killed and skinned buffalo, leaving the meat to rot and they killed buffalo in the millions. Buffalo were critical to the Apache. How would you feel if someone came along and destroyed your entire way of life? Bitter, I imagine.

Later Herman has a falling out with the Apaches and becomes a Comanche, and he remained Comanche the rest of his life. The Comanches were slightly less stern than the Apaches and Herman noted there was more joy and laughter as a Comanche. There are really no good guys in the book. The Whites are/were just as savage as the Indians and it’s sad how it ended for the Indians.

You know how it played out: eventually the White Man manages to subjugate the Indian tribes and force them to live on reservations. After reading NYATI I can’t imagine a worse fate for a free-roaming American Indian of the west. Herman is sent back to his family but now he is completely Indian-ized so it takes a while to relearn English and the White Man’s dull way of life.

Nine Years Among The Indians kept me reading when the other books didn’t. Each chapter is a story that stands alone once you know the background of the writer. The Apaches lived and continue to live such a different life from Europeans. Herman got to know both cultures and I think if he had his choice between the Apaches, the White man’s world, and the Comanches, he’d be back with the Comanches.

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ExNotes Review: Amazon Motorcycle Jack

By Joe Gresh

One of the many disadvantages of big, heavy motorcycles is the extra strain they place on your body doing routine maintenance. Oiling the chain, a simple task on a lightweight motorcycle (you just lean the bike onto its kickstand and spray away) becomes a chore lifting and spinning bit by bit. God help you if you get a flat or need to remove a wheel.

Motorcycles used to come with center stands (a few still do) and seeing how obese modern bikes have become I don’t know why manufacturers don’t tack on a bit more junk that would be actually useful. I’d rather have a center stand than a thin film instrument cluster, ride mode selector or ABS brakes. Here’s a link to the Amazon motorcycle jack.

This El Cheapo, Chinese 2-ton hydraulic Jack is slightly shorter than the other El Cheapo Chinese jacks and as such it is low enough to fit under your swing arm or front frame rail. Positioned correctly, you can rig a stable 3-point setup to lift either end of your portly motorcycle.

But the thing isn’t exactly travel friendly. Weighing in at a stout 4 pounds, 5.7 ounces it is not the sort of thing you want to carry around on your motorcycle unless you’re taking a long-ish trip. Of course I’m taking a long-ish trip so I decided to trim some excess weight off of the jack.

As delivered, the jack’s working end isn’t ideal for round tubes like a swing arm or frame so I chopped the sides off and ground a swale into the face in the hope of preventing the jack from slipping when in use. This worked pretty well it turns out, and while I wouldn’t jump up and down on the motorcycle while suspended it was fairly stable. Saving a few ounces was an added plus.

Since I’m using only a fraction of the jack’s 2-ton capacity I decided it was safe to Swiss cheese the extension lever and pivoting mechanism. This included drilling the pivot pins and connecting rod.

All this drilling removed a satisfying amount of weight and the jack was no worse for the damage. I know what you’re thinking: “Why stop there?” The base of the jack is a cast iron affair with plenty of ribbing and surface area. Again, I’ll only be lifting a few hundred pounds at most so I don’t need quite so much strength. I attacked the base with a 4-inch cutting wheel and removed everything that didn’t look like an elephant.

Trimming all that excess fat felt good and the resulting 3-pound, 15.5 ounce reading means I got rid of around a half-pound of useless weight and the jack looks better, has lower cholesterol, and can fit into its old high-school clothing again.

As far as the jack function, it works as you’d expect although it will slowly lose pressure overnight and lets the bike back down. Plan accordingly if you want the bike jacked up more than 5-6 hours. I see a few more places that I can trim but my recent experience grinding through a 200-dollar brake caliper gave me pause. I don’t want to hit an artery. I’ll need to look inside to determine how far I can go with the grinder but I believe I can thin the base at least 1/8 inch and cut a lot more metal around the pressure release valve. I’d like to get the jack down to 3-1/2 pounds just to see if I can. This will do for now, I’ll bring the jack along with me to Laguna Seca next week so if you’re in the area you can stop by and check it out.