Author: Joe Berk

ExNotes Product Review: 4×12 Bushnell Banner Scope

By Joe Berk

Bushnell scopes have been around forever and they are kind of a generic scope…just as effective as the name brand medication but at a fraction of the cost.  I’ve had several that came with rifles I bought, but I never bought a new one until recently.  I’m glad I did.  I bought the Bushnell Banner 4×12 and it’s a great scope.

The 4×12 Bushnell Banner scope. It’s a surprisingly good scope for well under $100.

The story goes like this:  I won a Ruger No. 1 in 243 Winchester in an online auction about 15 years ago.  The rifle was a 200th year Liberty model, it looked good, and I stashed it in the safe.  I shot it for the first time a month ago, and that’s when I learned I had an accuracy issue.  The Ruger came with a period-correct 4×12 Weaver (long since discontinued), which provided plenty of magnification but my groups were embarrassing.

The .243 Ruger No. 1 on the range. The rifle is wearing the new Bushnell Banner 4×12 scope in this photo.

Let’s go tangential for a second or two:  The “4×12” I use above refers to the scope’s variable magnification, which ranges from 4 times actual size to 12 times actual size.  With a good scope (one offering optical clarity), you can see the bullet holes in the target at 100 yards when the scope is zoomed up to 12 times actual size.

The Ruger American Bicentennial inscription. It’s on all Rugers made in 1976.

For hunting, I always prefer a straight 4-power scope (i.e., a nonvariable) because of its wider field of view and the fact that I can still hold a pretty tight group with a 4-power scope.  Magnifying the target four times is good enough for hunting.  That’s especially true on a deer-sized target, but it’s good enough even on rabbits.  I’ve sent a lot of Texas jacks to the promised land with a simple 4-power Redfield on my .30 06 Ruger No. 1.

The scope companies pretty much all say that you should keep a variable scope at low magnification to acquire the target, and then zoom it up for a more precise aim.  But I’ll tell you that’s just marketing hype, it’s laughable, and it’s a lot of baloney.  When I’m hunting and I see a game animal, the adrenal glands go into overdrive.  It’s all I can do to remember to take the safety off, and I can remember a few times when I forgot to do that.  The thought of seeing a target, acquiring it in the scope at low magnification, taking the safety off, lowering the rifle, increasing the zoom, raising the rifle again, reacquiring the target, and then squeezing the trigger is ludicrous.  Nope, for hunting purposes, a straight 4-power scope is the way to go for me.  On the other hand, when I’m on the range, I just leave the variable scopes at their highest magnification.  In short, I don’t need a zoomable scope.  But the marketing guys know better, I guess, and that means they weather vane to variable scopes.  That’s pretty much all you see these days.

But I digress.  Let’s get back to the main attraction, and that’s the new Bushnell Banner 4×12 scope on my .243 No. 1 rifle.  This all started when I loaded some brass good buddy Johnnie G sent my way.  The rifle would not consistently hold a zero, and even when it did, it shot grapefruit-sized groups.  My thought was that the old 4×12 Weaver scope that came with the rifle had conked out, so I replaced it with another inexpensive scope I had laying around (an older Bushnell Banner 3×9 scope that is probably 50 years old).  While mounting the older 3×9 Bushnell, I checked both Ruger rings (front and rear) to make sure they were secure.  They seemed to be, but they were not (more on that below).  I took the No. 1 (now wearing the older model Bushnell Banner) to the range.  The accuracy situation did not improve.

The 4-12X Weaver scope that came with the 200th year .243 Ruger No. 1. That scope may still be good; I’ll have to mount it on another rifle to confirm that.

So I removed the older 3×9 Bushnell and the Ruger rings.  That’s when I discovered that the front ring was not secure.  It had felt like it was, but it fooled me (which is not too hard to do).  Ruger provides rings with their centerfire rifles and they are good, but the rings on this rifle were muey screwed up.  The clamp (the bolt with the angled head) on the front ring was mangled, and both the nut and the clamp were gunked up with some sort of adhesive (probably Loctite, but who knows).   I think what had happened was the clamp could be tightened on the mangled part of the clamp’s angled surface.  The buggered-up clamp was not properly positioned in the mounting surface and the caked-on adhesive compounded the felony.  Under recoil, the forward ring was moving around.

A Ruger scope ring. Ruger provides two of these with each of their centerfire rifles.
The Ruger scope ring clamp. It’s a bolt with an angled surface (denoted by the right arrow) that clamps onto a machined crescent on the rifle’s scope mounting surface. The threads on mine were caked with an adhesive.
The Ruger scope ring nut. It’s what threads on to the clamp shaft in the photo above.

 

The Ruger No. 1’s forward scope ring. This was not firmly mounted because the clamp had been damaged by Bubba gunsmithing.  God must love Bubbas; He sure made a lot of them.

I recut the clamp ‘s angled surface with a file to eliminate the mangled portion and reblued the clamp using Birchwood Casey Cold Blue, and I wire-brushed as much of the adhesive as I could from the clamp’s threaded shaft with a bore brush.  I then worked the clamp into the nut until I cleaned out the remaining adhesive on the nut.  I reinstalled the ring and satisfied myself that this time it was secure.

The Bushnell Banner box. The scope was nicely packaged.
The Bushnell Banner’s parallax adjustment ring. These really work.
The Bushnell Banner’s quick adjust focusing rear ring. It’s a nice feature.
The Bushnell Banner’s adjustment knobs after their covers had been removed. These have a nice feel, with a distinct tactile click for each 1/4-inch adjustment. You don’t need any tools to make these adjustments. It’s first class.

When my new 4×12 Bushnell Banner scope arrived a few days after I ordered it on Amazon, I was impressed with its appearance.  I even liked the box.  I looked through the scope and was impressed with its optical clarity.  These inexpensive Banner scopes have continued to improve over the years, and this one looks great.

The Bushnell Banner’s operator’s manual. It contains basic information about mounting and boresighting the scope.

The Bushnell scope has a lifetime warranty and it came with what I thought was an impressively thick operating manual.  The manual is printed in five languages (English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish), so it was only one fifth as thick as it first appeared to be.  But it was still a good manual.  The scope also came with lens covers, which is a nice touch.

The Bushnell has other features that are important to me.  It has a quick focus ring at the rear to focus the reticle, and it has a parallax adjustment feature on the objective end (the front of the scope).   Parallax adjustment has become increasingly important to me; it minimizes the scope’s susceptibility to slightly different eye positions.   You adjust for parallax by moving your eye around and making sure the reticle stays centered on the target.

The Bushnell has removable windage and elevation adjustment dial covers, and windage and elevation adjustment can be made by hand (no special tools are required).  Each click represents 1/4-inch of movement on a 100-yard target, which is pretty much the standard on scopes.

The Bushnell has a 40mm objective lens, which I think is about right.  It looks right and still allows the scope to be mounted low on the rifle.  Some scopes go bigger with 50mm objectives, but I think they look silly.  These bugeye scopes have to sit higher on the rifle (which makes sighting through them difficult).   Nope, for me a 40mm objective is as big as I care or need to go.

Although I own a boresigting device that mounts on the barrel, I prefer not to use it.  The thought of potentially damaging a rifle’s crown, which a boresighting device can do, is not something I want to entertain.  I boresight the old-fashioned way:  I’ll set the rifle up in a rest, look through the bore (from the breech end) and move the rifle around until a 50-yard target is centered in the bore.  Then, without moving the rifle, I’ll adjust the scope’s windage and elevation until the reticle is approximately centered on the target.  Once I’ve done that, I’ll fire one shot and see where it hits.  I’ve actually done this and had the impact be on the target with that first shot, but it took four shots this time.  After each shot, I adjusted the windage and elevation to get the next shot two inches below my point of aim at 50 yards, and then switch to a target at 100 yards to finalize the adjustment.

On the range at the West End Gun Club. The first target is at 50 yards; the second set of targets is at 100 yards. I used the first target for boresighting and initial scope adjustment.
To boresight the scope, you look for the target through the rifle’s bore. It appears to be a little offset in this photo because it was difficult to get the camera aligned with the bore, but you get the idea. You want the target centered when looking through the barrel.
I used PPU (PRVI Partizan) 100-grain jacketed soft point bullets for this round of load development. The Ruger has a 1 twist in 10 inches rate. A 100-grain bullet is right at the edge of stability with this twist rate; lighter bullets should be more accurate.
Another shot of the PPU 100-grain bullets.  There’s a long bearing area on that bullet.
I used two propellants for this test series: IMR 7828 and IMR 4166. The IMR 4166 performed better than the IMR 7828 load and it reduced the copper fouling in the bore.

For this outing, I had loaded two groups of .243 ammo, both using PRVI Partizan 100-grain jacketed soft point bullets.  One load had 43.0 grains of IMR 7828 propellant; the other group had 34.5 grains of IMR 4166 propellant.  I used the IMR 4166 ammo last.  IMR 4166 was one of those new powders that is supposed to not leave copper deposited in the rifling (I’ll explain why I used the past tense in a second).  I wanted to use it to minimize the cleaning after shooting the rifle.

So how did it all work?  The IMR 7828 load didn’t perform well as the IMR 4166 load.  The IMR 7828 load was shooting 2 1/2 to 4-inch groups.  Part of that was due to the Ruger’s twist rate (1 in 10), which is marginal for a heavy (for the .243) 100-grain bullet.  But I was surprised with the last group of the day, which was with IMR 4166 powder.

The last shots of the day, and the last of the loads with IMR 4166 propellant.

Four of the five shots went into 0.889 inch; the fifth shot opened the group up to 1.635 inches.  That fact that the IMR 4166 grouped much better might be due to the fact the propellant may have removed some of the copper fouling (it appeared to have a lot less copper fouling when I cleaned the rifle later), it might be due to the fact that IMR 4166 is a faster powder compared to IMR 7828, it might have been me, or it might be a statistical fluke.  You might think this would push me to develop a load with IMR 4166, but unfortunately the powder has been discontinued (I’m on my last bottle).  Future load development work for this rifle will be with lighter bullets and other powders with burn rates similar to IMR 4166.  Varget comes to mind. I’ll keep you posted.

I know, I’m digressing again.  I started out with the intent to do a product review on the Bushnell Banner 4×12 scope, which I think I did, but I morphed into a bit of load development work for the .243 Ruger No. 1.  On my intended topic:  The Bushnell Banner is a great scope, and it performs way beyond what it’s sub-$100 price would indicate (I paid $72 for mine on Amazon).  If you’re looking for a good low-priced scope, the Bushnell is hard to beat.  I like it so much I’m going to by another one for another Ruger, but that’s a story for another time.

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ExNotes Book Review: MC’s Street Bikes of the ’60s

By Joe Berk

Full disclosure up front:  I’m a longtime contributor to Motorcycle Classics magazine, and I love reading every issue.  Every time I read the latest edition I think they’ve outdone themselves (both with the writing and the photography) and I wonder how they are going to top it in the next edition.  And then they do.  Full color, full page, lots of pages, and high-quality paper.  About the only other magazine that has managed to keep the doors open and continue to do a similar high-quality job is RoadRUNNER.  I’ve written for RoadRUNNER in the past, too, and you might be wondering if maybe I am a little bit biased.  I am not a little biased; I am a lot biased.  I love both these magazines.

Every so often Motorcycle Classics will publish a compendium of stories from past issues on a specific topic.  I’d never purchased any of these until recently, and then I picked up two of them:  Classic Bikes of the ’60s, and Classic Road Trips.  This review is focused on Classic Bikes of the ’60s.  We’ll publish a separate review on Classic Road Trips in the near future.

About now you might be wondering:  Why buy the special editions?  If you have been buying the magazine all along, wouldn’t you have each of the stories in those back issues?  The answer, of course, is yes.  But for just a few bucks, I’ve got all the stories concentrated in one place, and I don’t have to go digging through 6 feet of shelf space and a couple of hundred issues to find a particular story.

Classic Road Bikes of the ’60s is, for me, indeed a special edition.  I came of age in the ’60s, and the stories in this issue are on the bikes I lusted for when I was a teenager.  Every bike is one I dreamed about, and wow, they’ve got some great stories in this edition.  It has feature pieces on these motorcycles:

    • 1967 BSA Spitfire (one of the most beautiful motorcycles ever made, in my opinion…like the one Tommy Smothers rode back in the day)
    • 1966 Honda Dream (I recently wrote about the Dream, too, in this same magazine…Gresh owned three of them).
    • Velocette Thruxton (the stuff of dreams, truly one of the world’s stunning motorcycles)
    • 1969 Ducati 350 (I confess…I never quite got the fascination with Ducati, but hey, there’s no accounting so for some folks’ tastes)
    • 1962 BMW R60/2 (in creamy white with black pinstripes, which is magnificent)
    • 1963 Royal Enfield Interceptor (the grand-daddy of my current bike…a kid I knew in high school had one of these).
    • 1961 Harley Duo Glide (the look that inspired a generation of Harley designs, and one that has never been matched)
    • 1966 Honda CB450 (the black bomber; great technology, atrocious styling)
    • 1967 Triumph Bonneville (absolutely the most beautiful bike in the world, with a sound to match)
    • 1965 Bultaco Metralla (I once had a friend who though a Bultaco was something you eat)
    • 1966 Norton P11 (also commonly referred to as the Norton Scrambler, it was the 750cc Atlas engine in a Matchless 500cc frame)
    • 1969 Kawasaki 500cc Triple (ah, an awesome machine…I rode alongside a guy who had one of these on my first international motorcycle ride back in 1969)
    • 1973 Moto Guzzi V700 (close enough to the ’60s to be included here…I always wanted one…they sound more like a Harley than a Harley does)
    • 1968 Yamaha Big Bear Scrambler (this one is so beautiful it graces the cover of the special edition magazine)
    • 1968 Triumph Trident T150 (too little too late…it couldn’t compete with Honda’s CB750, but it was nice)
    • 1969 Norton Commando (a “Parting Shots” story about a ride on the famed commando)

Classic Road Bikes of the ’60s is a great read and a worthwhile reference.  Like I said above, you’re getting great photos, great writing, and great entertainment.  When you buy your copy, I’m certain you’ll agree.

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ExNotes Book Review: Lone Rider by Elspeth Beard

By Joe Berk

I recently purchased a copy of Elspeth Beard’s Lone Rider, the story of a woman riding her BMW around the world in the early 1980s.  To give you the bottom line up front:  You need to buy and read this book.  It’s that good.

I first became a fan of around the world motorcycle stories back in the early 1990s when I read Dave Barr’s Riding the Edge (another excellent read).  I think I’ve read all or nearly all of the books in this genre, and I’ve written reviews on several (I’ll provide a set of links at the end of this blog).  Some are these books are outstanding, others are truly terrible, and most are somewhere in between.  Lone Rider firmly belongs in the outstanding category.

Picture this:  A young British woman in her early 20s decides to ride her 600cc BMW around the world, and with no sponsors and nothing in the way of a support network, she does so.   By herself.  On some of the worst roads, most hostile regions, and least friendly environments on the planet.  On a street bike, for which she fashioned her own panniers and top case.  This was before you could buy a ready-made ADV bike.

It took Ms. Beard a couple of years to complete the journey, partly because she had to stop and work to fund the trip.   I was captivated by her story, appalled by the way she was treated in a couple of places, and saddened by what I would describe as a surprise discovery decades after the ride ended.

Lone Rider is well written and well organized.  The chapters are about the right length (I read one or two chapters each night before lights out), the photos are good, and the writing is superior. Prior to reading Lone Rider, I always thought I wanted to visit and photograph India; the book disabused me of that notion.  I never had any desire to own a BMW motorcycle; the book convinced me that I had that one right.

At 336 pages, Lone Rider is substantive and I found it hard to put down.  It really is a masterpiece of motoliterature.  If you’re looking for your next good motorcycle book, Lone Rider is it.  Trust me on this one.

Here’s that set of links I promised:

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This just in: Janus Announces Origin Line!

By Joe Berk

This just came in:  A press release from Janus Motorcycles!   Janus has a special place in my heart.  I rode with those guys in Baja on Janus Motorcycles and I visited the plant (and wrote about their new 450 in Motorcycle Classics magazine) a year or so ago.  They’re good folks and they make great motorcycles.  The latest Janus press release follows.

Happy New Year!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Janus Motorcycles announces new “Origins” line with lower entry price

We are pleased to announce the launch of a new edition of both the 250 and 450 Janus models: the Janus “Origin” model line. The basic idea of the “Origin” line is to provide a blank slate version of our existing models paired down to the essence of what defines each model. This serves to provide both a more affordable option AND the opportunity to build your own Janus just as you would like. To this end, we have removed all but the most vital elements of each model.

For example, the Halcyon 250 Origin edition includes everything that you need to be initiated into the Janus experience: a beautiful handmade motorcycle ready to ride, but without many of the options and upgrades that have always been standard on our production models such as fender pinstripe, air box graphics, and number plate (Origin edition Halcyons come with fenders pr-drilled and capped should you wish to add a number plate), a limited palette of available options for primary color, a single gold option for pinstriping, a standard seat, limited leather color options, a 1-year warranty, and no polished options.

By reducing the number of features and options, this helps us to hold appropriate stock and streamline production efficiency all of which allows us to offer the Origin line at a significantly lower entry price. Should you wish to add additional options or upgrades, these are all available for an additional cost. Add-ons will be shipped separately with instructions for installation by the customer. Get in on the Janus rambling experience and add almost any of our upgrades or extended warranties down the road! Book racks, fishtail exhausts, saddlebags, or headlight visors also make great birthday or Christmas gifts!

The details
Get the Halcyon 250 Origin for a $6995 base price. That includes choice of two colors, gold tank pinstripe, and 1 year warranty. Build one here.

Get the Gryffin 250 Origin for a $7495 base price. That includes choice of two colors, gold tank pinstripe, and 1 year warranty. Build one here.

Get the Halcyon 450 Origin for a $13,495 base price. That includes choice of two colors, gold tank pinstripe, simplified feather graphic/emblem, and 1 year warranty. Build one here.

How? 
So much of what we do is hands on. By giving you control over how much of that “hands on” you start with on your bike, we can help reduce the upfront price for these packages.

The value of our main model lines and their THOUSANDS of configurations, handcrafted quality, industry-leading warranties, and show-stopping looks doesn’t change. If you still want to “choose everything” it’s still the best value to go with the fully-customizable standard build up front (you can do the math on the website).

Background

At Janus, we pride ourselves on our design, hand-craftsmanship, and hyper-local supply chain—all things that also contribute to the higher cost of our models compared to the mass-produced offerings from the mainstream motorcycle industry. Especially over the past three years material costs, and inflation have meant that our prices have had to climb to stay abreast of our costs. Our goal with the Origin line is to find a way to offer an introductory option to the Janus experience with the potential to add options and upgrades over time.

One of the highest costs we face is also one of our greatest benefits: the numerous and complex menu of potential finishes and upgrades. By reducing these and standardizing the process, we have been able to find just the right balance that allows us to offer the Origin line. We chose to offer a “line” of existing models because, although paired down, the Halcyon “Origin” is still completely a Halcyon. What it lacks in options and upgrades, it makes up for in potential! We have never offered a “kit” bike, but this might be the closest we will ever come…

We chose the name Origin for its associations with just this idea of potential and beginnings (a big theme here with Janus the god who presides over them!) and because it conveys the idea that these are not so much different from the stock models in nature as in degree.

Please contact us with any questions you may have about the new Janus “Origin” line, what is or is not included, and how you can build it out over time!

Richard discusses the Origin line:

Thanks,

Grant

Grant Longenbaugh

President
Janus Motorcycles

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A .357 Magnum Ruger Bisley

In a prior blog I described bidding on a Ruger .357 Blackhawk that had been owned by Hank Williams, Jr.  The Rock Island Auction folks predicted the gun would sell for between $900 and $1,600, and I wanted it so I put in a bid at $2,000 (which I thought was ridiculously high).  That gun sold for $5,000.  There are evidently guys out there who have the disease worse than me.

The Hank Williams, Jr., Ruger .357 Magnum Blackhawk. It sold for $5,000. The buyer’s premium on top of that would have been nearly a thousand bucks!

Then last month another Rock Island auction rolled around, and this one had a Ruger .357 Bisley.   The concept and history of the Bisley is interesting.  Bisley is the name of a target range in England, and when Colt introduced a target variant of its famed Single Action Army revolver in 1894, they named it the Colt Bisley.  The most obvious differences between the Bisley and a standard Single Action Army is the Bisley’s longer grip with a more pronounced hump.  Colt’s Bisley also had a rear sight that is adjustable for windage and interchangeable front sight posts for elevation adjustment.

Ruger introduced a modern Bisley version of its Blackhawk revolver line in 1985 (with revolvers chambered in .357 Magnum, .41 Magnum, .44 Magnum, and .45 Colt).  I always thought the Ruger Bisley was a marketing thing and I thought the Bisley’s odd-shaped handle was visually unappealing, so I never felt the need for one.  But needs and wants can change.   A friend of mine let me try his .357 Magnum Ruger Bisley a few years ago.  I liked its heft and slightly longer barrel (7 1/2 inches versus the standard Blackhawk’s 6 1/2 inches).  Ruger stopped making the .357 Magnum Bisley a few years after it was introduced, and they are hard to find now.

A sense of scale: Ruger .357 Bisley, Ruger .357 Blackhawk, Ruger .44 Super Blackhawk, and Uberti Colt Walker.  They are all big guns.

The modern Ruger Bisley has a massive appearance, and that’s kind of cool.  At 7 1/2 inches, the barrel is an inch longer than the .357 Blackhawk and the Bisley has the larger grip frame.  The Bisley grip frame feels awkward to me, but it is easier on the hand under heavy recoil. I’m probably just used to the standard Blackhawk grip frame.  For me, the larger Super Blackhawk grip frame is the best of all.

Some might call these big guns horse pistols, which have been defined as handguns usually carried in a holster while riding a horse.  The Bisley is smaller than a Colt Walker (a monster of a handgun), but by any other measure the Bisley is a huge revolver.  It is heavier than the regular .357 Magnum Blackhawk for four reasons:  The unfluted cylinder, the longer barrel, the grip is larger, and the gripframe is made of steel instead of aluminum.

Ruger’s .357 Magnum Blackhawk (on the left) and their .357 Bisley (on the right). Note the difference in the grip shape and length.

The Rock Island folks guessed that the Ruger Bisley would go for between $600 and $900 on their website before the auction.  I bid $600.  I wanted it, but not so badly that I was willing to go crazy, which is kind of what my previous results told me you had to be to win in the Rock Island crazy competition.  To my great surprise, I won the Bisley with my $600 bid.  Then I received the emailed invoice and I was even more surprised.  There was a 17.5% buyer premium, which tacked another $105 to the price.  There was a 3.5% credit card fee, so that was $21.  The gun had to ship 2nd day air to my FFL, and that was $46.  There was insurance, and that added $7.05.  And of course, the Peoples Republik of Kalifornia sales tax for another $60.39.  My $600 Bisley suddenly became an $839.44 toy and it hadn’t even arrived.  When it did, there was the California DOJ fee and the FFL transfer fee ($74.90).  My $600 Bisley was now up to $914.34.  I guess that’s okay, though.  If I had seen a .357 Ruger Bisley in new condition for a thousand bucks, I would have pulled the trigger (literally and figuratively) and felt good about it.  In that sense, I was $85.66 ahead of the game.

Another difference between Ruger’s standard .357 Magnum Blackhawk and the Bisley is the cylinder. The standard Blackhawk has a fluted cylinder; the Bisley has an unfluted and roll-engraved cylinder.

When I saw the gun in person (the day I started my 1o-day waiting period), I was blown away (figuratively speaking, of course).  I could see that it was in excellent condition.  The quality, fit, and finish are light years ahead of what Ruger is producing these days.  You’ll recall that when I lost the Hank Williams Auction I bought a new Ruger .357 Blackhawk and its quality was terrible.  The Ruger Bisley’s quality appears to be much better in both fit and finish.  I looked up the Bisley’s serial number on Ruger’s website and learned that my gun was manufactured in 1986; I guess Ruger cared more about what was leaving the factory back then.

I’ve been to the range a couple of times with my Bisley.  On my first day out with the new-to-me Ruger, one of my friends (a bench rest shooter) came over to watch.  There was an old bowling pin laying on its side on the 100-yard line. You know the situation…like the bad guy in an old western movie, it was just begging to be shot. I asked my friend to spot for me.  The first shot went high, kicking up a dust cloud about three feet above the pin.  I held lower and my second shot sent up another dust cloud two feet below the pin.  Okay, I had the elevation dialed in (I wasn’t actually adjusting the Bisley’s sights; I was just holding the front post at different heights).  My third shot hit just to the right.  On my fourth shot I nailed it, sharply kicking the bowling pin back 10 yards and spinning it violently.  Now, just the pin base was facing me, presenting a 3-inch diameter circle.  “Okay, let’s see you make that shot,” my friend said.  I did, and the pin was kicked back another 10 yards.  I looked back and smiled.  “Piece of cake,” I said, and we both had a good laugh.

25-yard targets shot with the .357 Magnum Ruger Blackhawk (left) and the .357 Magnum Ruger Bisley (right).

On a subsequent range outing I compared the Bisley’s accuracy to the regular Blackhawk using the same heavy .357 Magnum load in both revolvers (8.0 grains of Unique and the Hornady 158-grain XTP jacketed hollow point bullet).  They both shoot groups that were about the same size, and both are biased with the sights adjusted as far as they will go.  The regular Blackhawk shoots high at 25 yards with the rear sight all the way down (the front sight is not tall enough).  The Blackhawk prints about 3 inches high at 25 yards with the rear sight adjusted as low as it will go.  I’ve contacted Ruger and they sent me their shortest rear sight blade for the Blackhawk, but that’s the one the revolver already had in it.  Custom gunsmiths offer a taller front sight (Fermin Garza comes to mind), but I don’t know if I want to do that.  It’s custom work I shouldn’t have to pay for.

The Bisley’s elevation is okay at 25 yards, but it shoots to about one inch to the left at 25 yards.  When I received the revolver from Rock Island Auctions, the rear sight had been cranked almost all the way to the right by the former owner.   He ran out of adjustment range and the gun still shoots to the left of my aim point.  I thought that the leftward bias could be due to a poor ejector rod shroud fit, or it may just be due to the fact that I was shooting max loads and it’s how the gun reacts in my hand.  I fired a few rounds of .38 Special wadcutters and the gun still shot to the left, so I don’t think it is a function of how hot a load I’m shooting or how it reacts to my grip.  Then I took the ejector rod shroud off to see if that would make a difference.  The ejector rod shroud was very poorly fit to the Bisley and it was pulling the barrel to the right, but when I took it off, the point of impact did not change.  You would think the manufacturer would deliver a gun that shot to a point that was within the gun’s adjustable sight range.  I’ve been inside a revolver manufacturing facility (not Ruger), and all they do is proof each gun with a high pressure load; that other manufacturer did not check where the gun printed.  Ruger evidently does not, either.

The regular Ruger Blackhawk ejects all cases easily (even with the max loads I was using).   The Bisley does not.  With the max loads I shot in the Bisley, one chamber wants to hang on to the cartridge case.   Less than max loads (38 Special and mid-range .357 mag loads) eject satisfactorily from the Bisley.   The Bisley has a sloppy surface finish inside its chambers (there are machine marks from the chamber reaming operation).  It shouldn’t have left the factory back in 1986 like that, but it did.

There’s one other quality-related observation on the Bisley I should mention.  The Bisley makes a firing pin primer indentation in the primer that is bigger and deeper than any I have ever seen.  Looking at the firing pin after it has been hit by the hammer, it looks bigger and sticks out of the breech face more than I am used to seeing.  I had a bunch of max load .357 rounds with Aventuras primers I had assembled earlier, and Bisley pierced the primers on the first five (so I didn’t shoot any more of those).  The firing pin is smooth and round (there are no sharp edges on it); it’s just taking the primer cup material near enough to its yield point that the pressure takes it the rest of the way.   These same cartridges worked fine in my regular (i.e., non-Bisley) Blackhawk with no pierced primers, and the same .357 load with CCI primers and Winchester primers worked fine in the Bisley.  Note to self:  Don’t use Aventuras primers for hot .357 loads in the Bisley.

The Bisley’s firing pin in the extended position. It’s smooth, but big.
Pierced primers on .357 Magnum cartridges loaded with 8.0 grains of Unique, the 158-grain Hornady XTP jacketed hollow point bullet, and Aventuras primers.

So there you have it.  My knowledge base on the Ruger .357 revolvers continues to grow (and yours does, too, if you’re reading this).  I’m still looking for that perfect .357 Magnum revolver.   I’ve owned a bunch over the last 50+ years, and I’ll keep looking.  I still dream about wandering into a rural pawnshop somewhere and finding a brass grip Blackhawk like that Hank Williams, Jr., Ruger for $200.  You never know.

More Tales of the Gun!

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Bugeyed in Beijing

By Joe Berk

That’s me that I’m talking about in the title of this blog and the story is a Riding China excerpt.  Joe Gresh and I rode with a group of Chinese riders on a 38-day motorcycle ride around China. This is a small part of it describing the ride into Beijing.

Gresh, King Kong, and yours truly in China. I’m the bugeyed old bastard on the right (after the swelling subsided).

Traffic was moving but it was heavy, and Chinese drivers in cars do not respect motorcycles.  If they want to occupy your spot on the road, they just move over.  It’s not that they don’t see you; they just don’t care.  You’re a motorcycle.  They’re a car.  They know who’s going to win.  At very low speeds in city traffic, you can scream at them or maneuver away or stop.  At freeway speeds if you don’t get out of the way, you’re a hood ornament or a big wet spot on the asphalt.  Our Chinese riders’ propensity to ride on the shoulder all the time suddenly made sense to me.

On a quiet road in China. China has delightful country roads and modern freeways. We weren’t supposed to take our motorcycles on the freeways, but we didn’t do too well with rules.  We literally rode thousands of miles, all of it illegal, on Chinese freeways.

It was dark well before we reached our hotel that night and we had to ride about 45 minutes or so after the sun set.  The Asian-configuration RX3 headlight is not very bright (our US bikes are much better), and to make a bad situation worse, as I have mentioned before I don’t see too well in the dark.  To see a little better that night, I lifted my visor.  Even though it was a clear visor it still has a slight tint to it and when I lift it at night I can see better.

In the motorcycle world, there’s another term that’s similar to ATGATT (you know, all the gear, all the time).  It’s “visor down.”   What it means is that you should keep your helmet visor down all the time.  The reason is obvious:  You don’t want to get whacked in the eye with whatever is floating in the air.  That night, I proved that “visor down” makes sense.  I caught a bug smack in my right eyeball.  It hurt immediately, but I could still see.  At that point, I put the visor down, but it was a classic case of closing the barn door after the horse got away.

We arrived at the hotel about 20 minutes later.  I was tired and cranky.  I went to my hotel room in a blue funk.  Gresh tried to calm me down, but he was fighting a losing battle.  “We have a couple of good rolls of toilet paper in this room,” he said.  That was a good point and it was definitely something to be happy about, but it didn’t help me feel any better.

I really didn’t want to eat dinner that night, but I decided that bagging dinner would be too rude.  So I went and I sat next to Sean.  After some small talk, he noticed my eye.  He was shocked.  I had not seen myself in the mirror and I guess it looked pretty bad.  My eye wasn’t white anymore; it was mostly red and swollen.  Okay, I’ve been whacked in the eye by bugs before.  I knew it would be red and it would bug me (pardon the pun) for a couple of days, and then it would be okay.

Yep, that Great Wall.

We rode through the countryside the next day to see the Great Wall at another location, but I still wasn’t over being upset and cranky from the night before.  When I lead rides in the US or in Mexico that last for more than a weekend, there’s usually one guy in the group that will get cranky at some point.  I had thought about that before this ride and I realized that on a ride lasting over five weeks someone would get to that point.  I just didn’t think that guy would be me.  But it was. I was tired, my eye was jacked up, and the stress of watching out for Chinese drivers was getting to me.

Dong drifting toward Beijing.

The next morning, I missed grabbing a good photo because of that.  We were riding to see the Great Wall at a different location.  On a lightly-traveled mountain road on a curve, we all stopped and Dong intentionally laid his RX1 on its side in the middle of the lane.  He got on the bike with his knee out and had one of the other guys photograph him from the front (to make it look like the bike was leaned way over in the corner and he was dragging his knee).  I think nearly everyone got their photo on the bike, but I declined.  I just wasn’t in the mood.  I think Dong knew I wanted that photo, though, and after I had returned to the US, he emailed a copy to me.  (It’s the photo you see above.)

When we got to the Great Wall that morning it involved a considerable hike up a steep hill to get close enough to touch it.  I’ve done that on prior visits, so I didn’t want to do it that day.  Four of us opted to wait while the rest of the guys made the hike.  It was relaxing.  Wong, Zuo, Furem, and I shared a bag of peanuts Sean had left in his car while we waited for the others to return.

As we were riding back to the hotel from that location, heading downhill through the mountains the same way we had ridden in, I started slowing down.  I didn’t realize it at first, but eventually I was the last guy in our formation.  Then I started riding even more slowly, until the rest of the guys were so far ahead of me I couldn’t see them.  My eye was still bothering me and by now I was having some problems seeing well.  To add fuel to that fire, my left shoulder was hurting (I have a pinched nerve somewhere in there and it bothers me on long motorcycle rides).

But there was more to what I was feeling than just what I described above.  Something was going on.  I suppose a shrink would call it an anxiety attack.  I was driving around every twist in the road expecting to see a truck stopped in my lane, an oncoming truck passing another vehicle in my lane, a person sweeping the street in the middle of the turn in my lane, a guy pulling out right in front of me, a bus making a U-turn in front of me, a car cornering too hard drifting into my lane, someone going the wrong way in my lane, someone pulling into my lane without looking, an old woman walking directly in front of me, people stopping to have a conversation in the middle of the street, or someone squatting down to take a dump (in my lane, of course).  On this trip, I had seen all of what I just described and more.  What was happening that morning was the enormity of the insanity that is riding a motorcycle in China caught up with me.  Yeah, it was an anxiety attack.  The nuttiness of it all, my vulnerability being on a motorcycle, and my inability to do anything about it was suddenly overwhelming.

The guys were waiting for me at the next intersection, and from there we went to a Sinopec gas station to refuel the bikes.  It was hotter than hell.  I guess it was fair to say I was miserable.  I was still feeling all of this accumulated anxiety when a guy in a black Mercedes starting blasting his horn at me in that gas station parking lot.  He didn’t want to drive around me; he wanted me to move even though there was plenty of room for him to go around.  It was more of the “I’m a car, you’re a motorcycle” bullshit that is pervasive in China.

I don’t know what came over me, but I think I just got supremely tired of being the vulnerable victim.  I looked directly at that Mercedes driver.  I made eye contact.  He looked at me, not realizing I was here with eight other guys on motorcycles.  I eased the clutch out until my bike was directly alongside his window (which was open).  I then leaned on my horn and let it rip for a good solid 20 seconds.  Then one of the other Chinese riders watching me did the same, and yet another yelled a really bad word at the Mercedes (which he probably learned from either Gresh or me).  It was pretty funny, especially hearing that kind of profanity with a Chinese accent.  The guy in the Mercedes had screwed with the wrong Marine on the wrong day.  Without realizing it, he took on the Wild Angels that hot afternoon just outside of Beijing.  He suddenly and fully realized what might happen as a result of his boorishness.  He rolled up his window, he averted his eyes, and he backed his big black Mercedes respectfully away from us.  That broke the spell.  I wasn’t helpless any more.  I felt amazingly better.

Okay, enough about me being a butthead:  On to Beijing proper.  We stopped at the Beijing Zongshen dealer that afternoon (where they were expecting us) and it was the Dajiu and Arjiu show all over again.

Gresh presenting a vest to a Zongshen rider. They thought we were celebrities.

There were the usual tons of photos with Gresh and me.  Hey, how often do Dajiu and Arjiu show up in your neighborhood?  Tracy told us the dealer had just sold five new RX1s.  He wanted to have a ceremony in which we gave the keys and Zongshen fluorescent vests to the five lucky guys who had purchased the bikes.  I was feeling my old self again.  I saw an opportunity and I took it.

“We’ll do it this time, Tracy,” I said, “but if you don’t start doing a better job getting these dealers prepped it will be the last time.”  Tracy doesn’t always know when I’m teasing him.  I could tell that this was going to be one of those times.  Gresh picked up on it, too.

“Yeah!” Gresh said.  Joe sometimes has a way with words.

“What is wrong, Dajiu?” Tracy asked, concern and maybe a little fear showing in his eyes.

“Where’s the watermelon?” I said.  “We’re supposed to have watermelon waiting for us at each dealer visit,” I said.

Joe Gresh on a Zongshen motorcycle and his contractually-mandated chilled watermelon.

“Yeah,” Gresh added, “and it’s supposed to be chilled, too.”

“It’s right there in Section 6, Paragraph 3.2 of the Dajiu and Arjiu contract,” I said, “and there’s no cold watermelon here, Tracy!”  (I don’t think I need to mention this for my readers, but I will just in case you were wondering, there is no such thing as a Dajiu and Arjiu contract, let alone any paragraphs about cold watermelon.)

“Ah, I am so sorry,” Tracy said.  “It is my bad, Dajiu.  I am so sorry.”  Then he turned to Gresh, and addressing him as Arjiu, he said the same thing.

“Tracy, relax,” I said.  “I’m just screwing with you.”  But it was too late.  Tracy heard me tell him I was joking, but it didn’t register.

We had a great ceremony and we had fun taking photos and giving those five proud new RX1 owners oversized Styrofoam keys and then their real keys.  It was one of the most fun things I did on this entire trip.  As we were doing so, I could see Tracy (who had left and returned) slicing several large (and delightfully cold) watermelons on a table in front of the showroom.  Hey, a contract’s a contract.

The Beijing dealer had an RZ3, Zongshen’s naked sportbike, parked in front.  Gresh was really impressed.  I took photos of it and put them on the CSC blog that night, but I couldn’t tell you then what you now know to be the case:  CSC is going to bring the RZ3 to North America.  I like the RZ3 a lot.  It’s essentially the RC3 with a normal seating position and upright bars without the RC3’s bodywork.  We’re going to sell a lot of RZ3s.  The RZ3 has the RX3 powertrain, and that’s both bulletproof and fast.  I already have ideas on how I’m going to customize mine.

When we got off the subway after visiting The Forbidden City, we waited on a street corner for our Uber ride back to the hotel.  I watched the scooters and small utility vehicles rolling by, and I realized that nearly every one of them was electric.   I must have seen 200 scooters during the 20 minutes we waited, and perhaps 2 had gasoline engines.   This wholesale adaption of electric scooters and small utility vehicles in China is nothing short of amazing.

An electric scooter in China.

Sean explained to me that the transition to electric vehicles started about 15 years ago, and the government has done a number of things to encourage people to convert to electricity.  For starters (once again, pardon my pun), many of the larger cities in China now prohibit motorcycles and scooters unless the vehicle is electric.  Electric scooters are allowed where gasoline-powered bikes are not.  That alone is an enormous incentive.  The next incentive is that you don’t need a driver’s license to take an electric vehicle on the street.  You just buy one and go.  And finally, as I’ve mentioned before, electricity is cheap in China.  There are windfarms, solar panel farms, coal plants, nuclear power plants, and hydroelectric power plants all over the country.  We saw scooters parked on the sidewalk and plugged into extension cords running into small stores everywhere.  People charge them like iPhones; they didn’t miss any opportunity to top off the batteries on these things.

That night was a great night.  The Zongshen dealer took us to a restaurant that specialized in Peking duck. The guys were excited about this development, but I was initially leery.  I thought I didn’t like Peking duck.  Boy, was I ever wrong!

I tried Peking duck 25 years ago when I visited Beijing with Sue.  We both thought the duck was awful.  That’s because we went to a restaurant that served tourists.  The food at that place didn’t have to be good.  They knew they would never see us again, and Yelp hadn’t been invented yet.

This night in Beijing with the Zongshen dealer and the RX3 owners club was different.  The Peking duck was incredible.  The chef sliced it paper thin right at our table.  They had thin tofu (almost like a crepe), and the guys taught me how to eat duck properly.  The deal is you put a few fresh vegetables on the tofu, you add a slice or two of duck, you add this amazing brown gravy, and then you roll the affair up like a burrito.  Wow, it was delicious!

Peking Duck, done the way it is supposed to be done, in a Beijing restaurant.  It was exquisite.  Photo by King Kong.

We had several rounds of toasts at dinner that night and the liquor flowed freely.  I got lucky.  Kong sat next to me and he schooled me in the proper way to make a Chinese toast.  To show respect, you clink your glass against the other guy’s glass, but you hold your glass at a lower level so that when the two glasses meet, the rim of yours is lower than the other person’s.  When the Zongshen dealer toasted me, I followed Kong’s advice, and the Chinese riders all nodded approvingly.  Ah, Dajiu knows.

It was funny.  Sergeant Zuo and I had made several toasts to each other, and when we touched glasses, we both tried frantically to get our glasses lower than the other, so much so that we usually crashed the bottoms of both on the table (to a hearty laugh and round of applause from everyone).  Zuo was being polite; I was being completely serious (I have enormous respect for him).

The next day we took the subway into Beijing.  We already were in Beijing when we got on the subway, but Beijing is a megacity and you can’t simply drive into the center of it.  We rode the subway for a good 45 minutes, and when we emerged, we visited the Forbidden City and Tien An Men Square.  It was all grand.  It was touristy, but it’s something that should be on any China visitor’s bucket list.

After seeing the Forbidden City, we walked around downtown Beijing for a while.  I told Tracy my eye was getting worse and I wanted to get antibiotic eye drops for it.  It was Sunday afternoon, but there was a large pharmacy right in front of us and it was open.  Tracy went in with me and he told one of the young pharmacists what I wanted.  She responded and it didn’t sound good.

“She cannot sell it to you without a prescription,” he told me.

“Well, shoot, Tracy, it’s Sunday afternoon,” I said.  “We’re not going to find a doctor.  I’ll be okay.  Let’s just go.”

“No, it is okay, Dajiu,” he said.  “We are China and we have a bureaucracy.  It is my bad.”

Good old Tracy, I thought.  The guy felt responsible for everything.  I was resigned to the fact that my eye was going to take a while to get better.  Tracy, in the meantime, had walked not more than 8 feet away to an elderly woman sitting at a wooden table.  He spoke to her in Chinese and pointed to me.  She never looked at me, nor did she look up.  She simply pulled out a white pad with a big “R” at the top.  Nah, this can’t be, I thought.  She wrote something in Chinese characters and handed the slip to Tracy.

“Our prescription,” Tracy said.  “Such a bureaucracy.”  He walked the three steps back to the pharmacist, Tracy handed her the prescription, and 30 seconds (and 24 yuan, or about $4) later, I had my antibiotic eye drops.  I put two drops in my eye.  When we rode out of Beijing the next morning, my eye was good as new.

Like the above story?  Want more?  Pick up your copy of Riding China!

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My 2024 Resolutions

By Joe Berk

The New Year hits tonight.  The years keep rolling by and it’s time for my 2024 resolutions.  I’ve made a few, and with your indulgence, I’ll share them here.

I’m going to continue to hold my tongue (and my keyboard) on all things political.  I’ve never seen anyone read a social media post or a blog or listen to someone with an opposing viewpoint and suddenly exclaim, “ah, now I understand…of course you’re right, and I was wrong all along…”  Nope, the era of intelligent political discourse ended in the 1960s with the Vietnam War protests.  Back then, and now, everyone is convinced their opinion is the only true path.  I’m never going to call anyone ever again a leftwing idiot or a rightwing idiot, partly because of this resolution and partly because I hate being redundant.

I’m going to stop getting upset with people at the gym tying up machines while screwing around on their cell phones.  Nope, you can sit on a machine and text to your heart’s content.  I’ll just move on to another piece of equipment.  Someday, though, when you’re standing in front of the Pearly Gates, you’ll have to answer.  And I’ll be there.  Just in case there are any questions.

I’m going to lose weight.  The answer is to use that calorie tracker on my cell phone and exercise.  Really.  This time I mean it.  I want to be skinny like Gresh.

I’m going to cook more, but in line with the resolution above I’ll eat less.  I do a great barbequed salmon, a marvelous Italian meat sauce, delicious stuffed shells, a wonderful chili, incredible stuffed peppers, a great wild pork sausage and mushrooms casserole, tasty chicken tostadas, and a few others.  I want to try making my own chile rellenos this year and find at least three more dishes to add to my repertoire.

I’m going to sell a few guns.  I own too many to enjoy and more than a few that I don’t shoot.  It’s time to convert these investments into cash and let others have some fun.

I’m going to ride my motorcycle and my bicycle more.  I’ve slowed down on my riding quite a bit in the last three years.  Part of it is the pandemic…law enforcement on our public roads has dropped to nearly nothing, and there are too many people driving like maniacs out there…speeding, weaving in and out of traffic, and screwing around on their cell phones.  I’ve been hit by cars twice in my life while on two wheels (once on a motorcycle and once on a bicycle), and I don’t care to add a third bone-breaking event to my resume.   But I haven’t been riding enough and I want to get out and ride.  Get my knees in the breeze.   You know the feeling.

It’s time to put more pork on the table.  I’m going to do at least two hunts in 2024.  One will be a varmint hunt for coyotes in Arizona with Baja John; the other will be a pig hunt with my 6.5 Creedmoor (location to be determined).  If you’re a vegetarian or fundamentally opposed to hunting, you have my permission to skip any blogs I write about these events.

I’m not going to buy any more watches.  I came across Segal’s Law last year, which holds that a man with a watch knows what time it is, but a man with many watches is never sure.  I’m the guy who’s never sure, raised to an exponent.

I’m going to do Baja again, most likely in March so I can see the whales, eat a chile relleno in San Ignacio, and visit Javier at the La Casitas in Mulegé.  I think Gresh wants to go, too.  Maybe we’ll get our other ExNotes writers in on the action.  You’ll read all about it here on ExNotes.

I’m retiring, for real this time.   I’ll still write for the ExNotes blog and Motorcycle Classics magazine (I enjoy writing for both and I never viewed either as work), but I’m done with everything else.  It’s time.

There you go…my 2024 resolutions.  How about yours?

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Bangkok Part 7: Thai moto taxis

By Joe Berk

I mentioned Thai motorcycle taxis in an earlier blog, and on the way back from Wat Arun today, Sue and I grabbed a few photos just outside our hotel of young ladies riding moto taxis sidesaddle to points unknown (points unknown to me; they knew where they were going).   It’s an interesting take on Thai life in the big city.  I’d seen this moto taxi business in China 30 years ago, but not anymore.   In China today, you just don’t see motorcycles in the big cities.  And you sure don’t see anything like this in America.

The photography challenges were interesting.  I couldn’t get close to the bikes (it was a wide and busy avenue in downtown Bangkok), the bikes were moving, and the lens didn’t have a lot of reach (it was the 18-55mm Nikon kit lens, an inexpensive lens not nearly as sharp as Nikon’s pricier offerings).  I cranked the D3300 camera’s ISO up to 800 (even though I was shooting  during the day) to get the shutter speed up (to freeze the action), and then I relied on Photoshop to do the rest (the rest being cropping, adjusting the levels and the curves, adjusting for shadows, adjusting vibrance and saturation, and finally after sizing the photo to the sizes you see here, adding a touch of sharpness.  I think they came out well.  Consider this photo from the above collection:

Here’s the original photo it came from before all the above adjustments:

If I had a bigger lens (say, a 300mm), I would have had a larger and sharper original photo, but as Donald Rumsfeld liked to say, you go to war with the Army you have.  I had my 18-55mm lens with me.  And I have Photoshop on my laptop.

I shot all of the photos above and a bunch more in the space of maybe five minutes (Bangkok’s Asok Street is a very busy street), and then I spent maybe another hour selecting the ones I wanted to use in this blog and Photoshopping them.  You can have a lot of fun with a camera in Bangkok.

Regarding the safety implications of what you see above, what can I say?  The riders had helmets.  The passengers?  Not so much.  We weren’t not in Kansas anymore, Toto.

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Merry Christmas…

By Joe Berk

…and Happy Hanukkah, too.  Man, it’s hard to believe the ExhaustNotes blog is 5½ years old.  We started in July 2018, and here we are, the day before Christmas, in 2023.  Where does the time go?

This is a short blog, and its purpose is simply to wish everyone a happy holiday season.  I hope 2023 was a good year for you and that you have a great holiday tomorrow.  Keep the comments coming, keep clicking on those popup ads, if you need moto clothes click on over to British Motorcycle Gear, and if you’re headed into Mexico next year, be sure to insure with BajaBound (Gresh and I are talking about another Baja trip in March, and you can be sure that’s who we’ll use).

There won’t be a blog on Christmas day…we’ll be too busy unwrapping presents.  From all of us (Joe, Mike, Bobbie, Rob, and yours truly):  Enjoy the day.

That photo above?  I shot it in La Playa de Belem, Colombia, on Christmas Eve, using my D3300 Nikon, the 18-55mm Nikon lens, and available light.  The Moto Colombia ride was one of the best ever.  You can get the whole story of our adventure in the Andes here:

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Bangkok Part 6: Bangkok bikes

By Joe Berk

So what’s today’s blog all about?   I promised I would tell you a bit about the different kinds of motorcycles and motor scooters in Bangkok, and this is that story.

Scooters, Cubs, motorcycles…they are everywhere. Every traffic light is the start of a drag race to the next light by all the bikes.

Bikes dominate Bangkok’s urban landscape.  I know that sounds like a catchy thing to say (snappy writing, perhaps), but it wasn’t intended to be literary lavishness.  It’s just the way it is.  Two-wheeled transportation is everywhere.  In traffic, the bikes filter by on the left and on the right.  In front of any business or in any parking area, there are hundreds of bikes.  And at every stop light, dozens of bikes filter to the head of the line.  The excitement builds as the countdown stop light nears green (they tell you how many seconds until the light changes over here), and in the last few seconds before the red goes away, a zillion motorcycle engines start revving.  The word “glorious” seems appropriate.

Filter to the front of the line, start revving as the lights nears turning green. The pink autos are taxis (taxis are either pink or metallic green in Bangkok).

There are few big bikes in Bangkok.  Oh, you’ll see one now and then, but they are a rarity.  Over here anything over 200cc or 250cc is just wasted displacement.   I’ve been to Bangkok several times and of the tens of thousands of motorcycles I’ve seen (and those are not exaggerated figures), there were exactly two big bikes.  One was a Harley Sportster and the other was a Triumph Bonneville.  There’s just no need for more displacement.

A lone Triumph Bonneville, tucked away in a Bangkok parking spot.
A Ninja.   Honda, Kawasaki, and Yamaha are popular over here.  Surprisingly, I didn’t see too many Suzuki motorcycles.  We did see more than a few Suzuki automobiles, though.

One moto thing that’s noticeable right away are the orange vests.   When you see a rider with an orange vest, that means they are using their bike as a taxi.  They give short rides (the folks here tell me typically under 2 kilometers).  The riders have to wear the government-sanctioned orange vests and a helmet; passengers don’t wear any safety gear.   A lot of the female passengers wear skirts and ride side-saddle (I’ll show more of that in the next blog).  I’d say roughly 10 percent of all the bikes are being used as taxis.  Most of the drivers are men, but you do see women riders occasionally.

Thai taxi men, and one woman.
A mototaxi, a rider, and a food delivery bike.

Surprisingly, it’s rare to see more than two people on a bike.   You do see it, but not like I have seen in China or Colombia (I once grabbed a photo in Colombia of a motorcycle carrying six people).

A Thai Freightliner.

Bikes are working vehicles over here.   I mentioned the taxi thing; it’s also very common to see bikes weighed down with all kinds of freight.

There are scooters (you know, the things that are styled like Vespas), step-through motorcycles (like the old Honda Cub), small sport bikes (small displacement CBR or Ninja type bikes), plain old motorcycles, and (surprisingly) a lot of Grom-styled bikes.

Another rare sighting…a Vespa in Bangkok. Most of the scooters are of Chinese origin. But this Vespa?  If you’re thinking it’s from Italy, you’d probably be wrong.  Zongshen (in China) produces these for Vespa.
Here’s a guy on one that looks a little like a Ducati.   I’m pretty sure these are made in China, as Gresh and I also saw them for sale on our ride across China.  If you were wondering, the clutches don’t rattle on these.

When I was last in Bangkok 6 or 7 years ago, I saw a few Kawasaki motorcycles that looked a little like the Honda Grom.   Today, the Grom style is very popular in Thailand, with motorcycles of this style from several manufacturers.

I’ll close this blog with a three photos of a bike I spotted yesterday that I thought was pretty cool.  It’s a CG-clone-based motorcycle, and its owner has a sense of humor.

A little Beemer. Well, a Beemer wannabe. Unlike modern Beemers, this one has a rational seat height.
I wonder if the Cafe Racer decals are factory original, or if the owner added them.
It looks good. I like it.

We are enjoying our last full day in Bangkok.   We’re up early tomorrow for the flight back to California.  It’s been grand.  We’re staying in the top floor of a 5-star hotel in downtown Bangkok (the Pullman Grand Sukhumvit) and we’re living in the lap of luxury.  The room is awesome, there’s a pool and a gym, there’s a free tuk tuk ride wherever we want to go, there’s free booze and breakfasts and dinners, and it’s costing less than what a Holiday Inn might cost in the United States.   We’re going for a dinner cruise up the Chao Phraya River tonight with our good friends Kevin and Nan, and we’re going to hit another one of the temples later today.   We took a grand long boat ride on the Chao Phraya yesterday and it was awesome.

There’s one more in this series of Bangkok blogs, and it will feature a set of photos showing Thai women passengers on moto taxis.  Stay tuned.  I think you’ll like it.

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