Joe Berk

We’ve come a long way, baby…

By Joe Berk

Susie and I recently visited the Franklin Automobile Museum in Tucson, Arizona, and while we were there I photographed their 1913 Thor Model U motorcycle. It’s a fascinating machine from many perspectives, one of which is what those guys had to do back in the day to start their motorcycles. Today, we have electric starters and fuel injection…hit the ignition, touch the starter button, and go. Turn back the clock 15 years or so and it was open the fuel petcock, close the choke, turn on the ignition, and hit the starter button. Turn back the clock 50 or 70 years and you have to add kickstarting to the mix. Go back a century or more (for this 1913 Thor, it would be a cool 110 years), and wow, you practically had to go to Thor University to learn the drill.

The 1913 Thor as viewed from the left side. The large lever extending up from the crank is the clutch. The drive chain on the left is one of two chains on this motorcycle. The left handgrip operates the throttle and the clutch. Think about that: Your left hand operated the throttle and the clutch.

The 1913 Thor Model U on its centerstand. Note the rear wheel ground clearance, the bicycle pedals, and the chain on the right side. There’s no front brake; the bicycle pedals operate a rear wheel coaster brake, like you might have had on your Schwinn in the ’50s or ’60s.

Starting a Thor would keep a rider busy. The bike had to be on its rear wheel centerstand to get the rear wheel off the ground (why will become clear in a bit). Then you had to put the engine in gear by pushing the clutch lever forward. You might think that’s counter-intuitive. Read on, blog acficionados.

The clutch lever is on the left side of the motorcycle, and the “T” at the top operated the optional two speed transmission (as shown, the transmission is in first; turn the lever 90 degrees and it’s in second).

If your Thor had the the optional two speed rear hub transmission (a $40 option on top of the motorcycle’s $290 price in 1913), you would want to make sure it was in the high gear position. You do that by turning the T-handle on top of the clutch lever parallel to the motorcycle. Having the bike in second gear would make the engine easier to turn over; it would be like putting your bike in second for a run-and-bump start (and I realize as I type this how few readers will know what a run-and-bump start is). But we’re not going to run-and-bump this priceless 1913 Thor. Stay with me; this is going to get interesting.

Fuel petcocks under the left forward side of the fuel tank. The rear petcock allows fuel to flow to the carburetor. The forward petcock allows fuel to be removed for priming the cylinders or, as the owner’s manual states, “for any purpose.” It included a small cup for this purpose.

The right side of the mighty Thor 1000cc twin. Those little protuberances on the outboard side of the valve covers (bear with me; I’ve been looking for an excuse to use the word “protuberance” all day) are where you dump raw fuel to prime the engine. No kidding.

Another view of the priming port. The spring you see in this photo is the intake rocker return spring.

Next up: Prime the engine by taking a bit of fuel from the Thor’s fuel tank priming petcock and manually inject gasolina into the intake cups (the Thor has openings in its intake domes for this purpose…those Thor engineers thought of everything). Or, you could use the optional device on top of the fuel filler cap to extract a bit of fuel. Like I said, they thought of everything.

The right twist grip operates the ignition advance; the left twistgrip operates the throttle. The lever on the right handlebar is a compression release. It could be locked in the compression released position to hold the exhaust valves open.

You then retard the ignition timing via the right twistgrip (you read that right; the left twistgrip works the throttle) by twisting it clockwise. Having the ignition fire after top dead center, you see, makes it easier for the engine to catch a spark and continue running. So where’s the throttle? That’s on left handlebar. Open the left twistgrip a bit by turning it clockwise. It will stay where you leave it; there’s no return spring.

That funny little chrome lever on the right handlebar? It’s not a clutch (remember, that was ginormous lever to the left of the fuel tank). The little right-handlebar-mounted lever is a compression release. Pull it in, and it opens the exhaust valves to, well, release the compression. It makes it easier to pedal, and we’ll get to that momentarily. Maybe you didn’t believe me when I told you this was a complicated undertaking. Read on. It gets even more interesting.

Thor Plumbing 101: The “forward filling nipple” (Thor’s terminology; we’d call it a fuel filler cap) is where the gas goes. Thor recommended any “standard grade gasoline,” but advised straining it through a chamois first (things were different in 1913). The gizmo on top of the fuel filler cap extracts a bit of gas that can be transferred to the priming ports. The center cap is for oil; Thor also recommended straining the oil before pouring it into the oil tank. The third (and rearmost) device is a needle valve that should be left open to allow oil to flow into the reservoir immediately below the tank (and from there, to the engine).

The Thor oil reservoir, complete with sight glass. That little petcock halfway down the oil line? Make sure it’s open before you start the motorcycle!

The Thor has a total loss lubrication system. That term, total loss, doesn’t describe how your 401K account is doing these days; it refers to how the engine uses oil. It uses and consumes it (it’s not returned or recirculated). Think of it as Autolube for four strokes. Ah, shoot, I’ll bet a lot of you are too young to know what Autolube is, too. Gresh can explain it later. Back to the main attraction, that total loss lubrication system…there’s an oil petcock halfway down the oil line on the left side of the motorcycle, between the sight glass and the crankcase. It needs to be open (you may void your warranty if operate the motorcycle with it closed). The Thor would consume a quart of oil every 50 to 300 miles depending on conditions and your riding style, but the tank carried a gallon, and with a top speed somewhere between 50 and 65 mph (again, depending on conditions, the rider, and whether or not you had the optional two speed transmission), it’s not likely you would run out of oil. “They smoke a lot,” one Thor expert told me, “so as long as you see blue smoke behind you, you’re good.”

The last bit of preparation involved closing the choke on that big tomato can Thor carb nestled in the V between the cylinders, and that involved two actions: Closing a thumbscew on the carb’s rear and screwing down a tapered knob on top.

All right…now we’re ready to get to the good part. You may have noticed that the Thor has two chains (one on each side of the motorcycle) and a set of pedals (like a bicycle). Once you have completed all the actions described above, you can get on the Thor and start pedaling like Lance Armstrong charging up the Col du Tourmalet (I say that figuratively; the good guys at the Franklin Automobile Museum are not going to let you climb onto their 1913 Thor). Your pedaling is going to drive the rear wheel via the chain on the right side of the motorcycle from the pedals’ chainring to the rear wheel sprocket. That’s going to spin the rear wheel and tire (which is why we wanted the bike on its centerstand), transmit the rotational inertia you generated through the rear-hub-mounted transmission, turn the drive chain on the left side of motorcycle, transmit your torque through the clutch (which we engaged earlier) and spin the Thor’s 61-cubic-inch V-twin. As you ponder all of that, be thankful that you’re not trying to crank the 1914 Thor’s larger 74-cubic-inch engine, and be thankful that I clued you into actuating the compression release. And finally, be thankful that you’re adding the rear wheel and tire’s flywheel effect to what you (the motive force in this cacaphony of early American motorcycle starting activities) have set in motion.

Once you’ve attained sufficient rotational inertia, release the right handlebar compression release. If Thor and the other ancient Norse gods are smiling, the engine will catch, and you’ll hear the opening chords of that delightful “potato-potato-potato” V-twin symphony we Americans love. As soon as you are sure the music will continue, pull that large left clutch lever rearward to disengage the clutch and reverse direction on the pedals (like you would have on the Schwinn you rode as a kid). As mentioned earlier, there’s a coaster brake back there; in fact, it’s the only brake on this motorcycle. While the engine is warming up, advance the ignition (with the right twistgrip), open the carb choke (it involves two actions, as mentioned above), and then, as the owner’s manual explains with early American Aurora engineering precision, apply “a trifle” of throttle (with the left twistgrip). The owner’s manual authors’ descendants, I’m sure, went on to become writers for Saturday Night Live in the early days when that show was still funny. One more thing…if it’s a cold day, Thor recommended placing a rag soaked in warm water around the carburetor’s float chamber.

Once everything is percolating to your satisfaction, roll the motorcycle forward off the stand (Pro Tip: Remember to disengage the clutch first), and while adjusting the throttle, feather the clutch lever forward to start moving. As you read this, think about simultaneously feathering that clutch lever and working the throttle with both of your left hands. Whew!

After writing and then reading the above, I think I’m going to step out into my garage and start my Enfield 650. By pressing a button. Just because.

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Nobody needs an excuse…

By Joe Berk

…to go for a motorcycle ride. On the other hand, I’m always finding reasons not to go to the gym. But I think I found a solution. Lately, I’ve been riding the Enfield to the gym. I’m more interested in getting on the motorcycle than I am in going to the gym, but if I ride the Enfield to the gym…well, you get the idea.

There are usually two or three other guys who ride to the gym. Two have Harleys, another guy has a new Guzzi, and there’s even a Yamaha V-Max parked there on occasion. I’ve spoken with a few of those guys, and like me, they’re not spring chickens. I think they’re younger than me, but I suspect we’re all qualified for the Silver Sneakers subsidy. We’re old and we’re all trying to stay young. Such is the way of the world. The motorcycles help.

We’re lucky here in California; we can ride pretty much year round. I’m at about 1700 feet above sea level, right at the base of the San Gabriel Mountains, and even in the winter months it’s usually in the high 60s or low 70s during the day. That’s perfect riding weather. It can get cold at night, but who rides at night?

Well, I guess I do, sometimes. Always by myself, and if it’s a night ride, it’s always short. There’s something about a late night ride that’s simultaneously invigorating and relaxing. The last few nights, it’s been warm enough. Everything seems more focused on a motorcycle at night. I hear the engine more clearly, and I see what the Enfield’s headlight wants me to see. I love the Enfield’s instrumentation, especially at night. It’s a simple two cup cluster…a tach and a speedometer. Just like my Triumphs were in the 1960s and 1970s. I really don’t need anything more. I rode a new motorcycle for one of the manufacturers a couple of weeks ago and the instrument cluster was way too complex. It had a brilliant TFT display and computer game graphics, but overall it was distracting and actually took away from the riding experience. Just a tach and speedo is all I need or want. Even the tach is kind of silly (I never use a tach to shift). But it looks, you know, balanced with the matching speedometer.

Cute, but a bit much and a bit distracting. Way more than I want in an instrument panel.

When I lived in Fort Worth about 50 years ago, I rode a Harley Electra Glide. All that motorcycle had for instrumentation was a speedometer and I never felt an info deficit. Late night solo rides were my favorite rides. Fort Worth summers were brutal (well over 100 degrees during the day and very humid). At night it would drop into the high 90s (still with tons of humidity), but it felt way cooler. Sometimes I’d stop for a cup of coffee at a 24-hour donut shop on Camp Bowie Boulevard. Sometimes I’d just ride, heading west toward Weatherford and the great beyond (once you pass Weatherford, there’s pretty much nothing until you reach Midland/Odessa). One time I realized it was time to go home when I saw the sun coming up.

Back to the Enfield: It’s a much better motorcycle than the Electra Glide ever was and it’s a hoot to ride. Circling back to my opening line, riding to the gym makes for a good excuse to get on the bike. Not that anyone ever needed an excuse to go for a motorcycle ride. But it defeats the excuses I make for myself when I don’t feel like going to the gym.

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Three Rapid Fire .38 Loads

By Joe Berk

Today I took the Model 60 to the range. All shooting was at the standard full size B21 police target and the distance 7 yards. I shot double action as fast as I could to see if I could keep them on the target. I did, as you’ll see below.

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The first load was with the 158 grain Hursman cast bullet (a truncated conical bullet with a flat point) and 2.7 grains of Bullseye. I loaded this ammo on my Star reloader with the bullet seater backed out to account for the longer 158 grain bullet. The Star did a nice job on these cartridges.

Here’s 50 rounds, shooting double action rapid fire (really rapid fire, as fast as I could while still hanging on to the front sight).

I was pleased with that target and the load. The load was light and easy to shoot. The Star can’t easily be adjusted for powder charge and I have it set up for wadcutter ammo, so all I changed was the bullet seating die. I didn’t even adjust the crimp; I just backed out the seater.

Next up was the same bullet (the 158 grain Hursman cast bullet), loaded with 5.4 grains of Accurate No. 5. I loaded this with the single stage RCBS Rockchucker.

The load was noticeably hotter than the first load, but not so much that it became unmanageable. Here’s 50 rounds of the above ammo on the B21. The brown areas that appear to be bullet holes are not holes on this target; that’s the sun shining through previous holes behind the target.

One shot went out of the 5X ring at 11:00. Eh, you can’t win them all. The guy in that target wouldn’t know the difference.

Then I shot another 50 rounds, this time wadcutter ammo. This was with the Gardner 148 grain powder coated double ended wadcutter bullet and 2.7 grains of Bullseye. I loaded this ammo on the Star.

These had three shots out of the x-ring, but I was really flying, doing my best to imitiate Ed McGivern. You know, you can make a double action revolver cycle faster than a semi-auto pistol. Ed McGivern could, anyway.

I had a good day at the West End Gun Club, but that’s stating the obvious. I don’t think I’ve ever had a bad day at the West End Gun Club, and I’ve been going there for close to 40 years. Here are the take-aways from today’s range session:

- - I found it was easy to shoot really, really fast with the Model 60 and still keep all shots on the target.
  - At this distance, all of the loads grouped about the same. I’d have to go out to 50 feet, I think, to see an accuracy difference.
  - The one most pleasant to shoot was the 158 grain Hursman bullet with 2.7 grains of Bullseye, and at this distance, it was accurate. It’s a nice load. That load had less recoil than the same load with the 148 grain wadcutter bullet. I think that’s because the 148 grain wadcutter bullet has more bearing area so the pressure is probably higher. After returning from the range, I loaded the remainder of my Hursman cast bullets with this load.
  - The gun shoots to point of aim with all three loads.
  - The Model 60 is a wonderful handgun and shooting a snubnose .38 is fun. The keyboard commandos can wax eloquent about the need for 20-round magazines in the latest Wunder 9; five shots from a Model 60 does it for me.

As if the day weren’t perfect enough, someone left 250+ pieces of once-fired 9mm brass on the range. I ordinarily would not use range brass and Lord knows I have plenty of 9mm cases, but this was pristine stuff and I could see that it had never been reloaded. It’s in my blood, I guess; I can’t leave good brass laying on the ground (it was in my tumbler 10 minutes after I got home).

There are three outfits that I recommend you consider if you’re reloading .38 ammo and if you want your handgun to perform well. The first is TJ’s Custom Gunworks. TJ did the action job and polishing on my Model 60, and his work is beyond stellar. The next is Lance Shively’s TriggerShims.com. If you want to assure your cylinder gap is what it’s supposed to be to assure smooth cycling and minimize misfires, Lance’s shims will do the trick and they are inexpensive. The next is Lee Precision reloading gear. I am migrating to near-complete use of Lee equipment, and I used a Lee Deluxe 4-die set when loading the .38 ammo on a single stage press. I recently acquired a Lee four turret press as part of a Lee Precision package deal. I’ve always been completely satisfied with the gear I’m using from Lee. Watch for a near-term blog on the four turret press kit. I’m eager to get it into service, and when I do, you’ll read about it here.

Two more things: Here’s a link for the B21 targets you see above (they’re different and they’re fun to shoot). And, I frequently get compliments on the Altamont grips my Model 60 wears. They make the gun much more comfortable to shoot and they don’t print if you’re carrying concealed. If you want a set of Altamont grips, a good place to get them is on Amazon.

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Lee’s Modern Reloading Manual

By Joe Berk

Lee’s Classic Turret Press Kit includes their Modern Reloading manual. It’s written by the late Richard Lee (the founder of Lee Precision), it’s the second edition, and Lee’s retail price is $40.98. By way of comparison, on Hornady’s site their reloading manual is $59.99, on Sierra’s site their reloading manual is $39.99, on the Lyman site their reloading manual is $34.98, and on the Speer site you get the load data for free (it’s published on their site). You can also purchase the Lee manual on Amazon; oddly, the price on Amazon is higher than it is on the Lee website.

The Lee reloading manual is comparable in heft and contents to other big reloading manuals. It’s a hardcover book with 692 pages and several chapters on various reloading topics, including basic instructions and more in-depth discussions of advanced reloading topics. Richard Lee wrote the first parts covering various topics including the company’s history, Lee’s reloading equipment, primers and primer sensitivity (this was extremely interesting), how to reload, reloading for best accuracy, rifle reloading, handgun relaoding, measuring powder, powder safety, pressure issues, matching bullet metal to chamber pressure, hardness testing, bullet casting and sizing, shotgun reloading, and muzzle loading. I thoroughly enjoyed reading Lee’s articles. They are written in a folksy, technical, and easy to follow manner. It’s like having a conversation with one of my shooting buddies. That, all by itself, is a good reason to buy the Lee reloading manual.

A load table inside the Lee reloading manual showing some of the date it contains that other reloading manuals do not. This includes the starting charge volume, the Lee dipper number, the Lee Auto-Disk number, and the 1 Grain Factors.

The load data tables start on Page 161 and continue to Page 686 (the load tables comprise most of the book). These are interesting and they include several bits of data not found in other reloading manuals. There’s the usual dimensioned cartridge drawings, starting load and max loads, the pressure, and the velocities, and then there’s more. These additional pieces of information not usually found in other reloading manuals are:

- Useful Case Capacity. On each of the load table cartridge drawings, Lee includes the useful case volume in cubic centimeters. Why this is useful will be apparent when you read the next bulleted statement.
- Volume cc. This table entry, immediately to the right of the starting load, shows the volume occupied by the starting charge. You can compare this to the useful case capacity info (see above) included in the cartridge drawing to get an idea of how full the cartridge case will be at the starting charge. Usually, a cartridge will perform better if the case is full or nearly full. I’ve not seen this information in other reloading manuals. I think it’s a good thing to know when selecting which powder to use.
- Lee Dipper. Lee manufactures different size powder dippers. The powder dipper is basically a yellow plastic spoon used to scoop a known volume of powder. Some reloaders use this approach rather than using a powder dispenser or a scale, but others do. Dippers are included with Lee dies, and you can also buy a set of different sized dippers separately. It’s not the powder measurement and dispensing approach I used, but I found the data interesting. I’ve never seen this data in other load manuals.
- Auto-Disk. Lee makes an Auto-Disk Powder Measure. It’s a device that uses a sliding disk with different volume chambers (or cavities) in it to control the volume of powder dispensed by their Auto-Disk Powder Measure. These cavities are denoted by decimal numbers. The Lee reloading manual tables identify the appropriate Auto-Disk to use with charges included in the table. I’ve never seen this data in other manuals.
- 1 Grain Factor. This is another bit of data not included in any other reloading manual I’ve ever seen. The 1 Grain Factor can be used to show velocity reduction if the maximum powder charge is decreased by one grain. You take the maximum velocity, multiply it by the 1 Grain Factor, and it will show the decrease in velocity that will be realized by reducing the powder charge 1 grain. There’s a similar 1 Grain Factor included that can be used to calculate pressure reduction for a 1 grain powder reduction The 1 Grain Factors are not included for every cartridge (they are included for the hotter magnum cartridges such as .44 Magnum and 7mm Remington Magnum).

A Lee dipper included with a set of Lee reloading dies. The dipper is a powder scoop. You can also buy the dippers separately.

An earlier Lee Auto-Disk Powder dispenser. This powder dispensing approach used disks (see lower arrow) installed in the dispenser (see upper arrow). The disks contained different cavities that dispensed different powder volumes.

A Lee Auto-Disk powder disk, as seen from below. The cylindrical openings collect different volumes of powder from the Auto-Disk hopper. Selecting different openings will dispense different charges.

Lee Auto-Disk powder disk as seen from above. The volume designator for each cavity is identified on the disk top. The Lee reloading manual shows which opening to use for a selected powder charge. No other reloading manual contains this information.

The Lee manual breaks with typical reloading manuals on the order in which loads are shown. In other manuals, the cartridge sequence is organized by bullet diameter, and then within each bullet diameter category, by cartridge maximum velocity. There is a table of contents in the Lee manual (it’s on Pages 159-160) showing all the cartridges included in the Lee manual and where their load data appears.

If you are a reloader who enjoys getting into the more technical aspects of load development (and what reloader isn’t?) I believe you will thoroughly enjoy Lee’s Modern Reloading. I think it’s a first-class work as good as or better than the manuals from Lyman, Sierra, Hornady, and other reloading manual publishers. It’s money well spent, and when you purchase Lee’s Classic Turret Press Kit, you basically get it for free.

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The Wayback Machine: Why a 250?

By Joe Berk

This is a blog I wrote for CSC Motorcycles several years ago (time sure flies when you’re having fun). The topic was as timely then as it is today. I like big bikes, but I like small bikes more, and I’m convinced that a small bike makes way more sense than a big bike for real world adventure touring. I thought I would post the blog again, as we are having way too much fun with CSC, BMW, Janus, and other companies who have seen the light. Here’s the blog from way back.

A 250cc bike seems too small to many riders. Is it?

The motorcycle craze in the US really started in the mid-1960s. I know motorcycling goes back way before that, but motorcycling was essentially a fringe endeavor until Honda came on the scene. We met the nicest people on Hondas, if you remember, and that ad tagline was a winner (so is “Don’t Miss The Boat,” by the way). (Note: “Don’t Miss The Boat” was CSC’s tagline for the US RX3 introduction, and those who didn’t miss the boat participated in one of the best deals in the history of motorcycling.)

Honda’s sales model was a good one. They pulled us in with small bikes and then convinced us we needed larger and larger bikes. Many of us started with a Honda Cub (the 50cc step-through), we progressed to the Super 90 (that was my jump in), then the 160cc baby Super Hawk, then the 305cc Super Hawk, and at that point in about 1967 that was it for Honda. They didn’t have anything bigger (yet). After the 305cc Super Hawk, the next step for most folks was either a Harley or a Triumph.

Yours Truly, on a Honda Super 90 in the mid-’60s.

You know, back in those days, a 650cc motorcycle was a BIG motorcycle. And it was.

But Honda kept on trucking…they offered a 450 that sort of flopped, and then in 1969 they delivered the CB-750. That bike was so far out in front of everyone else it killed the British motorcycle industry and (with a lot of self-inflicted wounds) it almost killed Harley.

The Japanese manufacturers piled on. Kawasaki one-upped Honda with a 900. (Another note…it’s one of those early Kawi 900s that Gobi Gresh is restoring in the Zed’s Not Dead series.) Honda came back with a 1000cc Gold Wing (which subsequently grew to 1100cc, then 1500cc, and is now an 1800cc). Triumph has a 2300cc road bike. Harley gave up on cubic centimeters and now describes their bikes with cubic inches. And on and on it went. It seems to keep on going. The bikes keep on getting bigger. And bigger. And bigger. And taller. And heavier. And bigger. In a society where everything was being supersized (burgers, bikes, and unfortunately, our beltlines), bigger bikes have ruled the roost for a long time. Too long, in my opinion.

LBMC06-0 — Is this where it’s going? (Note: I shot this photo at the Long Beach International Motorcycle Show about 15 years ago.)

Weirdly, today many folks think of a 750 as a small bike. It’s a world gone nuts. But I digress…

I’ve done a lot of riding. Real riding. My bikes get used. A lot. I don’t much care for the idea of bikes as driveway jewelry, and on a lot of my rides in the US, Mexico, and Canada, I kind of realized that this “bigger is better” mentality is just flat wrong. It worked as a motorcycle marketing strategy for a while, but when you’re wrestling with a 700-lb bike in the soft stuff, you realize it doesn’t make any sense.

I’ve had some killer big bikes. A Triumph Daytona 1200. A Harley Softail. A TL1000S Suzuki. A Triumph Speed Triple (often called the Speed Cripple, which in my case sort of turned out to be true). All the while I was riding these monsters, I’d see guys on Gold Wings and other 2-liter leviathans and wonder…what are these folks thinking?

I’d always wanted a KLR-650 for a lot of reasons. The biggest reasons were the bikes were inexpensive back then and they were lighter than the armored vehicles I had been riding. I liked the idea of a bike I could travel on, take off road, and lift by myself if I dropped it. To make a long story short, I bought the KLR and I liked it. I still have it. But it’s tall, and it’s heavy (well over 500 lbs fully fueled). But it was a better deal than the bigger bikes for real world riding. Nobody buys a KLR to be a poser, nobody chromes out a KLR, and nobody buys leather fringe for a KLR, but if that’s what you want in a motorcycle, hey, more power to you.

More background…if you’ve been on this blog for more than 10 minutes you know I love riding in Baja. I talk about it all the time. My friends tell me I should be on the Baja Tourism Board. Whatever. It is some of the best riding in the world. I’ll get down there the first week I take delivery on my CSC Cyclone, and if you want to ride with me, you’re more than welcome. (Note: And I did. We did a lot of CSC Baja tours, and CSC introduced a lot of folks to riding and to Baja. That one innocent little sentence became a cornerstone of CSC’s marketing strategy.)

I was talking up Baja one day at the First Church of Bob (the BMW dealership where me and some of my buddies hang out on Saturday mornings). There I was, talking about the road to San Felipe through Tecate, when my good buddy Bob said “let’s do it.” Baja it was…the other guys were on their Harleys and uber-Beemers, and I was on my “small bore” KLR. The next weekend we pointed the bars south, wicked it up, and rode to San Felipe.

DSC_1629-650 — The Boys…bound for San Felipe with my KLR leading the pack

That was a fun trip. I took a lot of ribbing about the KLR, but the funny thing was I had no problem keeping up with the monster motos. In fact, most of the time, I was in the lead. And Bob? Well, he just kept studying the KLR. On Saturday night, he opened up a bit. Bob is the real deal…he rode the length of Baja before there was a road. That’s why he was enjoying this trip so much, and it’s why he was so interested in my smaller bike. In fact, he announced his intent to buy a smaller bike, which surprised everybody at the table.

Holding court on the Sea of Cortez. That’s Bob on the right.

Bob told us about a months-long moto trip he made to Alaska decades ago, and his dream about someday riding to Tierra del Fuego. That’s the southernmost tip of South America. He’d been to the Arctic Circle, and he wanted to be able to say that he’d been all the way south, too.

I thought all of this was incredibly interesting. Bob is usually a very quiet guy. He’s the best rider I’ve ever known, and I’ve watched him smoke Ricky Racers on the Angeles Crest Highway with what appeared to be no effort whatsoever. Sometimes he’d do it on a BMW trade-in police bike standing straight up on the pegs passing youngsters on Gixxers and Ducksters. Those kids had bikes with twice the horsepower and two-thirds the weight of Bob’s bike, and he could still out ride them. Awesome stuff. Anyway, Bob usually doesn’t talk much, but during dinner that night on the Sea of Cortez he was opening up about some of his epic rides. It was good stuff.

Finally, I asked: Bob, what bike would you use for a trip through South America?

Bob’s answer was immediate: A 250.

That surprised me, but only for an instant. I asked why and he told me, but I kind of knew the answer already. Bob’s take on why a 250: It’s light, it’s fast enough, it’s small enough that you can pick it up when it falls, you can change tires on it easily, you can take it off road, you can get across streams, and it gets good gas mileage.

Bob’s answer about a 250 really stuck in my mind. This guy knows more about motorcycles than I ever will, he is the best rider I’ve ever known, and he didn’t blink an eye before immediately answering that a 250 is the best bike for serious world travel.

It all made a lot of sense to me. I had ridden my liter-sized Triumph Tiger in Mexico, but when I took it off road the thing was terrifying. The bike weighed north of 600 lbs, it was way too tall, and I had nearly dropped it several times in soft sand. It was not fun. I remembered another ride with my friend Dave when he dropped his FJR in an ocean-sized puddle. It took three of us to get the thing upright, and we dropped it a couple of more times in our attempt to do so. John and I had taken my Harley and his Virago on some fun trips, but folks, those bikes made no sense at all for the kind of riding we did.

Upright in this photo, but it was like wrestling a pig in mud a few minutes earlier.

You might be wondering…what about the other so-called adventure bikes, like the BMW GS series, the Yamaha Tenere, or the Triumph Tiger? Good bikes, to be sure, but truth be told, they’re really street bikes dressed up like dirt bikes. Big street bikes dressed up like dirt bikes. Two things to keep in mind…seat height and weight. I can’t touch the ground when I get on a BMW GS, and as you’ve heard me say before, my days of spending $20K or $30K on a motorcycle are over. Nice bikes and super nice for freeway travel, but for around town or off road or long trips into unknown territory, these bikes are just too big, too heavy, and too tall.

There’s one other benefit to a small bike. Remember that stuff above about Honda’s 1960s marketing strategy? You know, starting on smaller bikes? Call me crazy, but when I get on bikes this size, I feel like a kid again. It’s fun.

I’ve thought about this long and hard. For my kind of riding, a 250 makes perfect sense. My invitation to you is to do the same kind of thinking.

So there you have it. That was the blog that helped to get the RX3 rolling, and CSC sold a lot of RX3 motorcycles. Back in the day, CSC was way out in front of everybody on the Internet publicizing the Zongshen 250cc ADV bikes, and other countries took notice. Colombia ordered several thousand RX3s based on what they saw CSC doing, other countries followed, and things just kept getting better and better. The central premise is still there, and it still makes sense. A 250 may well be the perfect motorcycle.

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TJ’s Latest Custom Handguns

By Joe Berk

I had lunch with good buddy TJ (of TJ’s Custom Gunworks) recently and he showed me an LAR Grizzly .45 Winchester Magnum handgun he recently completed. It’s wild. It’s the one you see in the photo above and in the additional photos below. Here’s TJ’s description:

The Path of Bushido, a custom L.A.R. Grizzly .45 Winchester Magnum (it’s a supersized 1911). This handgun is Duracoated with Skulls of Death and Kanji characters depicting the seven Samurai virtues of the Bushido. This magnum features the typical 1911 match action, trigger, and reliability work, as well as barrel and bushing clearance reduction. The gun also has melted edges, a speckled Duracoat finish, a Bullet-guide rod, and Millett target sights with orange DayGlo on the front.

The photos can only begin to the do justice to this stunning handgun (trust me, I’ve seen it in person). And that .45 Win Mag cartridge…think of it as the illegitimate offspring of the already-powerful .45 ACP cartridge (my favorite, by the way) and the .44 Magnum. It’s a very impressive hand cannon.

One of the things I like best about TJ’s latest creation is the Millett sights. In my opinion, there are none better. I have these on both my Rock Island Compact 1911 and my bright stainless Colt 1911, and TJ is the pistolsmith who installed them on both guns.

If you were wondering about the Bushido emblems on the Grizzly, here’s an explanation:

I asked TJ what the Grizzly looked like before he worked his magic, and TJ shared this photo with me:

At the end of our visit, I asked TJ what else he’s been up to lately. Take a look. These are magnificent. This first one is a SIG P239 with black camo treatment, a jeweled hammer, a rounded trigger, and lots of internal smoothing and reliability enhancement.

This next one is compact Colt Agent 1911 with Tiger Duracoat and a matching a matching TJ’s knife.

This is another compact 1911 (a Colt Defender) with a camo surface treatment and all the internal reliability action work. It’s not easy to get a compact 1911 to perform, but TJ sure did it on mine. I’ve put thousands of rounds through my TJ-customized Rock Island Compact. TJ took what was a relatively unreliable gun and turned it into a masterpiece.

Here’s a TJ-modded Ruger Match Champion revolver, with jeweled bits, recontoured trigger, and an action job.

One last photo…this is a SIG P220 grip in which TJ custom inlayed the US government insignia. TJ does a lot of work for senior government folks here and abroad. It’s cool stuff.

I’ve had six handguns and a rifle customized by TJ, and every one of them is a stellar example of his craftsmanship. These include my Model 59, a bright stainless Colt 1911, my MacManus Colt 1911, the Rock Island Compact, a Model 60 Smith and Wesson snubbie, a Ruger Mini 14, and my new Colt Python. In addition to my guns, folks who follow the ExNotes blog took my advice and had TJ work on their guns, like Marty with his custom Colt Combat Commander, Bob with his Beretta 92, and others who are not listed here. You might have noticed that TJ advertises here on ExNotes. If you want to reach the folks who follow the blog, you might consider doing so, too. You can contact us at info@ExhaustNotes.us and you can reach TJ by clicking on the link below.

Lee Classic Turret Press Kit Part 2: The Lee Safety Powder Scale

By Joe Berk

This is the next installment of our Lee Classic Turret Press Kit series, and this article focuses on Lee’s Safety Powder Scale. It’s the scale you see in the above photo and in the photos that follow. I haven’t assembled the turret press yet (that’s coming). Before I get to that, I’m doing this blog on the Lee scale, and then others on the Lee reloading manual and the Lee bench plate. These will be followed by blogs on the Lee turret press, the powder dispenser, the priming tool, and the 9mm dies I’ll use with this equipment.

My new Lee Safety Powder Scale. I used a .223 caliber 62-grain Hornady full metal jacket bullet to check my zero and the scale’s accuracy. Yep. It’s good.

Packaging

The box you see below was inside the Classic Turret Press Kit, and the Turret Press Kit’s box was inside a bigger box. It’s a box in a box (you know, Russian doll packaging, like I mentioned in the first blog on the Turret Press Kit). The Lee packaging is good. Everything arrived undamaged.

The Lee Safety Powder Scale box. It’s well packaged.

What’s inside the Lee Safety Powder Scale box. You get the scale base, the balance beam, and the pan.

Lee Safety Scale Components

As mentioned in the photo above, there are three components in the Lee Safety Scale. These are the scale base (that’s the cast red frame in the photo below), the beam (I call it a balance beam; it’s the black subassembly in the photo below), and the pan (that’s where the material to be weighed is placed). The pan has an attached hook on it (it’s the bar extending up in the photo below) that hooks onto the right end of the beam.

The red base has a machined groove on the piece that extends up on the right side. The beam is placed over this, and it balances on a knife edge in this groove. There are magnets in the base to dampen the beam’s movement as it balances. The photo below shows the scale with everything in place.

The assembled Lee Safety Powder scale. The left arrow points to the index mark (the beam should point to it when weighing), the bottom arrow points to the 10-grain poise (more on it below), the center top arrow points to the 10-grain increments and markings on the balance beam, and the right arrow points to the 1-grain/.01-grain poise.

The magnetic beam dampers in the scale base work. When weighing powder charges with the Lee scale, the beam balanced in just a couple of oscillations.

The Lee balance beam is a molded phenolic subassembly with two poises. “Poise” an engineering term for the movable weights that balance the beam. It’s a term Lee uses in their documentation.

When I was Director of Engineering at Aerojet (we designed and manufactured munitions…big stuff, 2000-pound bombs, anti-armor munitions, and other things I can’t tell you about), we used plastic on as many parts as possible (rather than metal) because plastic was less expensive, it does not not corrode, it can be molded to exact dimensions, and moving parts are less likely to jam. Lee makes some of these same points in their literature. My point here is this: Don’t dismiss the Lee balance beam because it is a phenolic part. From an engineering perspective, it is the right choice. As Richard Lee (Lee Precision Products founder) stated in his excellent reloading manual, Modern Reloading:

Lee Safety Scale has a phenolic beam. Like a glass thermometer, if it is not broken it is still accurate.

Incidentally, the next blog in this series will be on Lee’s Modern Reloading book. I’m reading it now and it’s good.

The Lee pan is a one-piece subassembly that consists of an arm (the pan hangs from it on the right side of the beam) and the pan. The pan can be a bit difficult to get under a powder dispenser because the arm gets in the way. That’s not a big deal, and when I was weighing .357 Magnum charges with the Lee scale (so I could adjust my powder dispenser to drop the correct charge), it didn’t affect my ability to catch and weigh the powder.

The arm on the Lee pan interfered with getting the pan directly underneath the powder dispenser, but it was a minor inconvenience. That’s 8.0 grains of Unique you see above.

Measurement Range

The Lee scale can measure up to 110 grains. That’s good news and bad news. Most of us use powder scales for measuring powder, and if that’s your purpose, the Lee scale is the right tool. The 110-grain measurement range gives superior sensitivity for detecting slight weight differences. Other balance beam reloading scales can weigh up to 510 grains, but they do so with the same range of motion as the Lee scale, and that means they don’t provide the same sensitivity.

Sometimes we wish to weigh bullets (competitive bench rest shooters and cast bullet shooters might want to sort bullets by weight). On the Lee scale, you can only weigh bullets that are 110 grains or less. I’m what I would call a serious reloader, and in the last 50 years, I might have weighed bullets maybe a half dozen times. I’m happy to lose the ability to weigh bullets in exhange for the increased sensitivity I’ll get when weighing powder charges with the Lee scale. Your mileage may vary.

The bottom line is this: For weighing powder, the Lee scale does a superior job within its measurement range, and that range is adequate for any thing I shoot (that includes .22 Hornet, .416 Rigby, .458 Win Mag, and many handgun and rifle cartridges in between). For weighing bullets over 110 grains, you would be better served with scales offering a greater range than the Lee scale, but you give up accuracy with those scales. Do you really need the increased weight range? Most of us do not.

Zeroing the Scale

Like all scales, the Lee Safety Scale requires zeroing before use. Lee incorporates a threaded brass weight (in the form of a wheel) in the balance beam to move the beam up or down on its pivot in the base.

The idea is you set the both poises to zero (see below). To set the 10-grain poise to zero, you roll it all the way to the right, and it comes to rest on the zero marker. The balance beam has ridges that will position the 10-grain poise ball bearing in 10-grain increments, starting at 0 and going up to 100 grains. To set the 1-grain poise to zero, you slide it all the way to the right, and lock the poise in the zero position with a little locking button on the bottom of the poise.

The 1-grain poise in the 0 position. The lower left red arrow points to the poise locking button (you push it in to lock the poise in place). The lower right arrow points to the 0 grains reading. The upper red arrow points to a protuberance that can be used as a little handle to move the poise. The “.1 grain” marking denotes the Vernier lines and windows used for reading tenths of a grain.

When the two poises are set to zero (as explained above), the brass wheel in the balance beam can be rotated to zero the scale. As the brass wheel is rotated, it moves to either the left or right along its threaded shaft depending on which way the wheel is turned. The idea is to turn the wheel until the balance beam is aligned with the index mark on the scale base as shown below.

The balance beam’s brass wheel. It’s used for zeroing the scale.

The lower black arrow points to the 10-grain poise. It’s a captured ball bearing that can be moved in 10-grain increments. In this photo, it’s in the 0 grains position. The right arrow points to the 1-grain poise. The left black arrow points to the balance beam aligned with the base index mark.

Using the Lee Safety Scale

Using the scale after it has been zeroed when setting up a powder dispenser involves setting the desired powder charge with the 10-grain and 1-grain poises, and then adjusting the dispenser to provide an amount of powder that matches the scale adjustment. It’s fairly straightforward, although using the 1-grain poise with its Vernier tenth-grain readings may be new to some people.

Or, you may have an item you wish to weigh. Reading the scale is the same in either case. It involves setting the 10-grain poise in the appropriate notch, and then moving the 1-grain poise to the appropriate place.

After I had zeroed the scale, I wanted to check its accuracy. I weighed a .224-inch diameter, 62-grain Hornady jacketed boattail bullet to do this. I put the bullet in the pan, moved the 10-grain poise to the 60-grain position, and then moved the 1-grain poise laterally along the balance beam until the beam was aligned with the base index mark.

A 62-grain Hornady bullet in the Lee scale pan.

The balance beam is balanced, with the pointed aligned to the base index marrk. The 10-grain poise is in the 60-grain notch.

Using the 1-grain poise is a bit tricky. In the photo below you can see that the poise shows 2 grains in the lower window. The Vernier windows on top of the 1-grain poise show that the 0 and .9 grain windows are aligned with visible lines, and a window is just a bit aligned with the .1 grain windows above and below the 0 and 9 windows. Like I said, interpreting the Vernier approach is a bit complicated, but the Lee instructions contain several photos explaining how to do it. What you see below for this measurement is interpreted to mean that the weight in tenths of a grain around the 2 grains in the lower window is somewhere between 1.9, 2.0, and 2.1 grains, and I interpolated that as 0.0 grains away from 2.0 grains. Stated differently, the measured bullet weight is 62.0 grains, which is exactly what it is supposed to be.

The Lee 1-grain poise. This sliding weight (or poise) is used for reading grains and tenths of a grain. Grains are read in the window denoted by the right arrow. Tenths of a grain are interpolated with a Vernier-based set of lines and windows denoted by the left arrow.

As a check, I also measured the bullet’s weight with the RCBS scale I’ve been using for the last 50 years, and it returned the same weight: 62.0 grains.

Cost

Lee did their usual outstanding job here: The Lee Safety Scale price is significantly lower than the competition. The Lee scale lists for $46.98 on the Lee website (interestingly, they also list factory second scales for $31.32). You can also purchase the Lee scale from Amazon and other retail outlets, and Lee tells you on their website that their retailers typically have lower prices than Lee advertises.

The nearest competitor to the Lee scale is the RCBS M500 mechanical scale, and that lists for $125.99 on the RCBS website. From a cost perspective, Lee is the clear winner here.

Documentation

The Lee scale includes a single-sheet, two-page instruction sheet. It’s good, and it provides all the information you need to set up and use the Lee scale. As mentioned above, the Lee instructions include information on using the Vernier feature on the 1-grain poise.

The Bottom Line

The Lee Safety Scale is accurate, inexpensive (less than half the cost of competitor products), and well built. Reading the Vernier scale to get tenths of a grain takes a little bit of study and practice, but once you get it, you’ll find it quick and easy to use. This is a good scale, it will serve any reloader well, and it should last a lifetime (and then some).

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Seiko and Honda: A Match Made In Takamanohara

By Joe Berk

The Honda Cub is the most-produced motor vehicle of any kind in the history of the world. Not just motorcycles, but motor vehicles. Honda passed the 100 million Cub mark years ago; today they still offer a Cub in the form of the 125cc Super Cub. That 100 million figure doesn’t count all the knockoffs by Yamaha and the Chinese marques. It’s a staggering number for a staggering vehicular concept. So, if you’re a watch company and you want to produce a watch honoring a motorcycle…well, you know where this is going.

Seiko is the company, and this year they introduced a limited edition of the Honda Super Cub watch. These watches have been nearly impossible to get, so I was astounded when on Christmas photog duty at the mall I wandered into a watch store and what do you know, there it was. It was the only Seiko Super Cub watch I’ve seen and I knew I had to have it. It’s self-winding and to watch weirdos like me it doesn’t get any better than a mechanical self-winding watch. The ticket in was $400, I asked if there was any room in the price, the store manager said no, and I pulled the trigger anyway. I bought it for list price and that was still a good deal.

Seiko is offering a limited run of the Super Cub watch in two colors. I’ve not seen the black one in person, but that’s okay. I like the green and white one better.

The Seiko Honda Super Cub watch has several cool details, including a NATO band, a rear cover intended to evoke a tail light, and a stem that looks like a Cub fuel gage.

Two of your blog boys (that would be Gresh and yours truly) both owned Honda Cubs back in the day (Huber didn’t, but he has an excuse…he wasn’t born yet). I guess that made Gresh and I two of the nicest people you’d ever meet.

To my great surprise, I found a couple of photos of my Honda Cub buried in an old photo album. The image quality is not up to my current standards, but hey, I took these photos with a Minolta C110 camera in the 1960s. With those little 110 film cassettes, these 60-year-old pics ain’t half bad.

I bought the Cub for $50 (a dollar per cubic centimeter) from Zeb Moser (a buddy in New Jersey; RIP, Zeb), rode around on it a little bit, and then sold it for $70 thinking I’d done well. There’s no need to say it, but I will anyway: I wish I still had my Cub.

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The Wayback Machine: Mike Huber, the real deal…

By Joe Berk

On my last trip through Baja while riding with a dozen guys on RX3s, we stopped for fuel in Catavina while headed south. That’s on the long stretch between El Rosario and Guerrero Negro, where the distance between Pemex stations is over 200 miles. Catavina is a tiny town in a beautiful boulder field (in fact, it’s the area depicted in the lead photo on the ExhaustNotes Baja page). The locals sell fuel out of gas cans in Catavina, and on a motorcycle, you have to stop here to top off. The boulder fields through this region are dramatic, almost other-worldly. You can get a bit of a feel for the area from this photo…

Baja’s Catavina boulder fields. This is some of the most dramatic scenery on the planet!

Anyway, we had stopped for fuel in Catavina when I noticed a guy on an adventure bike amongst our guys. What grabbed my attention is that I didn’t recognize him. It felt weird, because this was our second day on the road, and I thought I was losing it. Usually by the middle of the first day on these group rides I know everybody who’s riding with us. Incidentally, if you want to know what it’s like organizing one of those tours, there’s a story on that topic appearing in ADVMoto this week (you can read it here).

Anyway, I looked at this new guy and then I realized his bike wasn’t an RX3; it was a BMW GS1200. I was just about to razz him a bit about that, and then I saw the jump wings on his bike’s top case. You don’t get US Army jump wings out of a Cracker Jack box, so I knew right away this guy was not going to be your typical adventure rider. No one who rides a motorcycle in Baja is a “typical” anything, but I knew this gentleman was going to be something special.

I asked the guy if he was a paratrooper, the answer was yes, and over the next roughly thousand Baja miles I got to knew Mike Huber well. He rode with us for several days and all of us thoroughly enjoyed his company. As it turns out, Mike is not your everyday former US Army paratrooper (as if there ever could be such a thing); he’s a serious rider with a very cool lifestyle (more on that in a second).

Mike and I became good friends, and when he was in town a couple of weeks ago, Sue and I met him for lunch at La Casita Mexicana in Bell (just south of LA). If you’ve never dined there, trust me on this, you need to make the trip. It’s an award-winning restaurant with a unique cuisine that I learned about from Steve and Maureen at CSC, and to be blunt, it’s the finest Mexican food I’ve ever had. But I digress…back to Mike…

Lunch with Mike at La Casita Mexicana. Those enchiladas sure look good!

Mike is anything but a stereotypical guy. Nope, he’s the real deal. Mike’s has been living on his motorcycle and traveling North America (and a bit of Central America) for the last year, and he just published a story about his lifestyle in Intravel Magazine. It’s a great read, and you can see it here.

Well done, Mike! Ride safe and keep us posted on your travels!

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Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta

By Joe Berk

The turnaround point for our New Mexico trip was the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta. We had talked about it for years, and it combined nicely with our stops in Tucson and Alamogordo (and the visit to Tinfiny Ranch). I shot all the photos in this blog with my iPhone. I had the big Nikon D810 and its boat anchor 24-120 lens with me, but my leg was acting up (an old motorcycle accident injury) and I couldn’t lug that thing around any longer on this trip. I might have shot better photos with the Nikon, or I might not have shot any at all if I didn’t have my cell phone. Adapt, improvise, overcome.

The deal on our visit to the Balloon Fiesta was a tour group. It’s really the only practical way to get in to see the balloons. Here’s the deal: Albuquerque’s population is 550,000 people (it’s the biggest city in New Mexico). The Balloon Fiesta, however, draws a cool one million visitors. Just getting to the field where the balloons lift off would take an hour or more due to the crush, and if you did that, you’d have to park far away to find a parking spot. If you’re part of a tour group, however, you ride on the tour group’s buses from your hotel to the balloon field, and they take you right up to the gate. The City of Albuquerque has done this event for years and they have it dialed. They designate special bus lanes during Balloon Fiesta week. Logistically, it’s a much better approach.

What the City can’t control is the weather, and hot air balloons are sensitive to the weather. If there are electrical storms, low visibility, rain, or high winds, the balloon’s won’t lift off. And there were plenty of all these conditions that week. Our tour grip told us we’d be making three trips to the balloon field, but there were no guarantees we’d get to see the balloons lift off during any of our visits. Two of our visits were early morning affairs (we arrived at the field before sunup), and another one was in the late afternoon.

The Balloon Fiesta field periphery is lined with vendors.

During our first early morning arrival, it was cold and too windy for the balloons to lift off. The balloon fiesta had a backup plan, though, and in the distant skie we observed a light display. At first I thought there was a large board with lights, but then the display lifted into the pre-dawn sky. I learned it was all down with multiple computer-controlled drones. That was impressive.

Cell phone photography is like halitosis…it’s better than no breath at all. Each of these lights is carried by a single drone. They were probably a mile away when I took this photo.

The images changed. We couldn’t see or hear the drones, and there was nothing from our location that would indicate they were drones. It was impressive.

A Puebloe Native American symbol, commandeered as the image on the New Mexico flag. This is the area where we had breakfast. Breakfast was a part of the tour package.

During our second visit, which occurred in the afternoon, the wind conditions weren’t acceptable and there was a thunderstorm moving in, which prevented the balloons from ascending. But it allowed a parachute display, and I grabbed a few photos of it.

Evidently the smoke generators the parachutists used create debris. One particle hit me in the face. Fortunately, it caught me in the cheek and not in my eye. That would have made for an interesting lawsuit.

Even though it was too risky for the balloons to inflate and ascend, there was a lot going on. It was fun walking around and taking iPhone pictures.

A fire truck at the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta.

Our third and last visit to the balloon fiesta field was on a brisk Sunday morning and it was the charm. After being skunked on two prior visits, the word was out: The balloons had the okay to inflate and liftoff. The winds were suitably low, visibility was good, and there were no looming electrical storms. It was a go for a mass ascension, which kind of sounds like a religious experience. In a way, it almost was.

Balloons inflating after recieving the go ahead. You walk in amongst the balloons. It’s all very exciting.

In a strange kind of way, being in the middle of the mass ascension kind of reminded me of seeing the whales in Baja. You go out in a small boat and for a while, nothing happens. Then you see a lone whale spout in the distance (like that one balloon you see going up in the photo above). Then, suddenly, there are whales spouting all around you, and then they are right up close to the boat. The balloon fiesta is a lot like that. Nothing happens at first, then you get very excited when you see that single first balloon ascend. Then, suddenly, balloons are going up all around you.

Then, suddenly, there are balloons everywhere.

The cell phone was doing a decent job for me. I would have liked having the D810 with me, but it was not meant to be. Maybe next time.

The colors, and the vibrance, was off the charts. The balloon fiesta is a photographer’s paradise.

Approximately 650 balloons ascended within about 30 minutes. It was impressive.

Several of the balloons were more complex shapes, like this Felix the Cat version. There were turkeys and other shapes as well.

This last photo is a panoramic shot, in which you manually sweep the camera through an arc (in this case, about 180 degrees). The iPhone does a suprisingly good job. The actual image is a little over 16,000 pixels wide.

A question several of my friends asked is: Did we go up in a balloon? The answer to that is no. You have to make a reservation far in advance to get a seat in one of the balloons (we had not), it costs several hundred dollars, and truth be told, I wasn’t too sure about doing it. Joe Gresh, whom we visited on our trek to Albuquerque, had done it in the past and he told us he and Colleen enjoyed it. Maybe next time.

If you have any thoughts about visiting the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta, my advice is to go for it, and to do it through a tour agency for the reasons listed above. It’s a bucket list sort of thing to do. We went with the Road Scholars tour group, they did a great job for us, and they kept us busy for the three days we were in Albuquerque.

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