Author: Joe Berk

China’s Shaolin Temple

By Joe Berk

I posted a blog yesterday about Chinese pocketknives and drew a few comments (as I knew I would).  One of them mentioned Shaolin martial arts, and that prompted a response from me about the Shaolin Temple in China.  Not a lot of folks here in the US have been to the Shaolin Temple.  I know of two who rode there on motorcycles (that would be Joe Gresh and yours truly).   I covered that visit in Riding China, and I thought it would be good to share a part of that chapter with you today.  Who knows…I might even sell a few books by doing so.  You know, so you can read the rest of the story about our ride through China.

We continued riding and entered a mountainous region. I liked that a lot. The roads were nice, there wasn’t much traffic, and because we were both moving and climbing, the heat abated a bit. We stopped for a break, and a fellow came along on a 250cc Yamaha that was configured for touring. He stopped and chatted with us and we took turns taking pictures of each other. His bike looked good. We only saw a few other Chinese on our trip who were touring on motorcycles.

A Chinese motorcyclist on a 250cc Yamaha. His luggage is from Lester Peng’s motorcycle luggage company. Lester rode with us last year on the 5000-mile Western America Adventure Ride.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but we were very close to the Shaolin Temple when we stopped to talk to the Yamaha rider. That would be our next destination this day. Another fellow then came by and he had an animated conversation with Sean (our guide). It turns out he was selling, Sean was his mark, and the guy was working Sean hard. This guy owned a restaurant and he wanted us to eat there. He was successful; we did.

We didn’t pause for naps after this lunch, but Sean was soon having another excited conversation with folks outside the restaurant. I didn’t know what they were discussing, but I later realized it was about transportation and how we would get into the Shaolin Temple. The bottom line to this conversation was that we all piled into three small gray minivans that took us about two miles down the road, back the way we had ridden to get to the restaurant.

What I learned later was that there were two ways to get into the Shaolin Temple complex. One was through the main gate, and apparently that cost more. The other was a woodsy trail through the mountains that required a climb over two or three mountains on a slippery muddy trail. If you did that, you could sneak into the Shaolin Temple complex for free. That’s what we did, and that climb was rough. The trail was slippery, and by now the temperature and humidity were up again. Had I known what was going on I would have gladly paid to go in through the front door, but I didn’t realize what we were doing until I was doing my best impersonation of a mountain goat in the hills behind Shaolin.

So here’s the deal on the Shaolin Temple: It’s famous as the home of Chinese Kung Fu. No kidding; it’s both a Buddhist Temple and a world-renown Kung Fu school (the original Kung Fu school, actually). It’s where Bruce Lee learned his craft, and if you’ve ever seen a martial arts movie with scenes that have large numbers of young Chinese guys learning the martial arts, it was almost certainly filmed here.

The Shaolin Temple was beautiful. As we walked along its well-manicured paths, a young guy went into a martial arts routine that was mesmerizing. It was something right out of a movie. The guy was executing all of these snappy martial arts stances (one seemed to flow into the next) in a manner that almost made the display a dance routine. It probably only lasted a minute or two, but when it ended, a large crowd had already gathered and everyone applauded. I enjoyed seeing it, even though I know nothing about any of this stuff.

A martial artist demonstrating his moves at the Shaolin Temple.
More moves. I told the guys I could do this, but I don’t think they believed me.

The Buddhist Temple was beautiful, but by then it was so miserably hot and humid we weren’t enjoying anything. We were in a walled courtyard that allowed no airflow, and I couldn’t seem to get my body temperature down. I was still perspiring from climbing over the mountains.

I shot a few photos of some of the figures inside the temple (yet again, the D810 Nikon’s incredible low light level capabilities came through).

A figure inside the Shaolin Temple. It’s likely Bruce Lee saw these things when he studied here.
Another huge and menacing figure inside the Shaolin Temple.  These statues were about 15 feet tall.

On our walk out (we left through the main gate), it mercifully started raining again. The rain finally helped me cool off. So far, this day was the hottest and most humid day of our ride (and I found I was saying that nearly every day for the last several days).

At dinner that night, I thought I would have a little fun with the guys. One of the dishes that evening had black fungus mixed in with the vegetables, and I loved that stuff. As I mentioned earlier, what the Chinese call black fungus is a mushroom of some sort, and I loved the taste of it. A small speck of one of the mushrooms, a black piece about a quarter of an inch long, was on the edge of my dinner bowl. I managed to pick up that tiny piece of mushroom with my chopsticks in preparation for solidifying my reputation as a chopstick martial arts master.

I told Tracy, who was sitting next to me, that I wanted him translate exactly what I was about to tell the Chinese guys in our group. He said okay, but went back to his meal. “No, Tracy,” I said. “I want you to tell the guys to stop eating and listen to what I have to say.”

Tracy looked at me for second, and then he spoke to the group in Chinese. The others stopped eating, looking at Tracy and then at me.

“We all visited the Shaolin Temple today and we saw the birthplace of Kung Fu,” I began. I paused, nodded at Tracy, and he started speaking to the group in Chinese.

“You may not know this, but like Mr. Bruce Lee, I, too, am a martial arts expert,” I said. Tracy looked at me and translated what I just said. The others stared at me, taken in by my serious demeanor.

“You know that I am an expert with chopsticks, as I demonstrated on our second night in the peanut contest,” I said. Tracy diligently continued to translate. “You may not know that I am a master at using chopsticks in the martial arts. In fact, I created a branch of Kung Fu that relies entirely on chopsticks.” As I said that, I motioned with my left hand as if I was shooing a fly away from the food on our table. It was a motion all of us had used across China at all of our dinners to get rid of the flies.

As Tracy continued to translate, and when I saw everybody look at my left hand shooing the imaginary flies away, I lunged out into the space over our table with my right hand, still holding my chopsticks. As I did so, I emitted a piercing “eeeee yah!” (my best rendition of a martial arts cry, worthy of no less a master than Bruce Lee himself). I held up my chopsticks, which still held that small morsel of black mushroom. No one could have confused that speck of mushroom for anything other than a fly captured in mid-air by a martial arts master (with his chopsticks, of course).

A loud gasp of astonishment and admiration went up from all of the Chinese riders. Before they could get a closer look, I plopped the tiny piece of mushroom into my mouth and exaggeratedly swallowed. There was a second of stunned silence at our table, followed by another gasp and heavy applause. Gresh was the only one who rolled his eyes. A legend was born that evening, my friends, and he be me.

We had a great dinner that night (I know, I’ve been saying that about every meal on this trip). Eeeeeeyah! The fly-impersonating black fungus. The chopsticks. The applause. It was wonderful.

After dinner, all I wanted to do was get back to the hotel, take a cool shower, crank the air conditioner all the way down, and get some sleep. I posted a blog that night, I went to bed, and I probably dreamed about being a chopstick martial artist.

They’re still talking about me over there, you know.

The ride across China was amazing, the adventure of a lifetime.  You can read about the adventures of dos Joes on the entire trip here:

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A Tale of Two Pocketknives

By Joe Berk

My collecting bug has taken a turn.  Instead of guns, motorcycles, bicycles, or watches, the latest craze is pocketknives.  I’m not sure what drives the collecting bug (that is to say, what the underlying psychology is); that’s a topic for further research and when I feel like I can explain it, maybe a future blog.

I’ve been using pocketknives and inexpensive hunting knives as a filler/fulfiller on the reloading sites.  I buy a lot of reloading components online from the big reloading supply stores (Natchez Shooters Supply, Midsouth, Midway, Powder Vally, and one or two others), and they all run frequent sales where shipping is free if the order crosses a $100 or $150 threshold.  There are times when I’m under that threshold (sometimes by a lot) and that bothers me.  I can’t pass up a bargain and I want that free shipping.  I’ll use a knife to get me over the magic number.  Most lately it was a Case large Stockman pocketknife.

The Case large Stockman with polished stainless steel blades. The blade on the left is the Spey blade. The other two are for whittling, cutting twine, or whatever suits your fancy.

I’m not sure why I wanted the Case, but as I started poking around on the Midway site for things to get me over $100, the Stockman popped up.  And then it kept popping up.  If I look at something once, I’ll start getting all kinds of emails offering it.  Sometimes, I swear I can just talk about something and I’ll start getting emails with deals on that item.  Siri is a nasty and nosy bitch who seems to hear everything.

The Stockman knife looked interesting.  I knew I didn’t want plastic handles (they’re called “scales” by the knife people), and the Case knife had jigged bone.  I didn’t even know what jigged bone was (other than that it was bone of some sort).  I thought I wanted something made in America (Hack has influenced my thinking on such things, I suppose, unless something that’s made in China is a really good deal, and I’ll get to one a little lower in this blog).  The Case Stockman is American made, and they offer it in two sizes. I didn’t know what a Stockman was, either, but the name sounded kind of John Waynish and I used to live in Texas.  I saw that the knife was available in either a satin or high polish finish.  I opted for the large Stockman with a high polish finish.  It was $82, which took my $45 reloading supplies order handily over the $100 free shipping hurdle.  Yep, they got me again with that free shipping gimmick.

The Stockman knife arrived a few days later along with the $45 of cartridge case corn cob polishing media (I like my ammo shiny).  The knife is beautiful.

All the above got me to wondering:  What is exactly is Stockman, and what is its history?

The story goes like this:   Pocketknives are thought to have originally been invented five or six hundred years before the Christian era (that’s mind boggling, but I read it on the Internet, so it must be true).  The Stockman style of pocketknife is thought to have originated around 1880 in the American West as a cowboy tool.  I watched a lot of Westerns as a kid, so I feel pretty good about that.  The Stockman has three blades, with one (the large one) having its own spring and two sharing a spring (the spring is the leaf spring thingamabobber that assists the blade going into its closed position and then holds it there).  The long Stockman blade is for whittling.  I’m an old guy with a penchant for the American West, so maybe I’ll take up whittling after I finish leaning how to play “Buffalo Gal” on the harmonica.  One of the other two blades is a backup to the long one, and from what I’ve read it is the preferred blade for cutting twine.  (I’ll pick up some twine on the next Walmart visit to check this out).  And finally, the third blade, the so called “Spey” blade (spelled here as they spell it in the knife community) is for castrating young male bull calves.  You know, spaying them.  Ouch.   I read this on the Internet, too (see above regarding veracity).  I’m not going to touch this intended use.  If you’re a rancher who needs help in this area, don’t call me.

I like my Case Stockman.  I haven’t done anything other than look at it so far, but maybe I’ll whittle something later.  As mentioned above, the Stockman is made in America, although truth be told, other made-in-China knives I’ve seen look just as good (Hack, that’s your cue for a comment or two).  That brings me to the second pocketknife I recently purchased.

My new Marbles Scout King knife. I think it’s bigger than what I had when I was a Cub Scout. The uppermost blade is a screwdriver and bottle opener. The next one down is an all-purpose awl. The blade one up from the bottom is a can opener (think P38, and if you’re old enough to remember what that is, my compliments and thanks for your service to you). The bottom blade is for carving, cutting, and any of the other things you can do with a knife. It is a handsome knife.

It’s the Marbles (no, I haven’t lost mine) Scout King, and I came across it while I was reminiscing about the first pocketknife I ever owned.  That knife was a Cub Scout knife.  I have no idea who made it or where it went after I left the Cub Scouts, but I know I liked it.  I played with it constantly.  The first time I ever cut myself badly, it was with that knife despite all the admonitions from Mom and Dad (yes, I’m the guy who has to urinate on the electric fence…you know, just to see).  While writing this blog, I looked for the scar from my Cub Scout knife (I thought it might add context), but the years have obliterated it.

When looking for a replacement Cub Scout knife, I found that I could buy an original on Ebay, but they all looked pretty rough and they were all expensive.  Then I found there are a few companies out there still offering Scout knives.  The Marbles knife was the only one offering polished stainless steel (I like shiny things) and genuine jigged bone scales (instead of plastic), and it had the added advantages of a stunningly low price ($15 and change) and free shipping.  The decision was easy:  Add to cart, buy now, and it was on its way from Chicago (by way of China).  It arrived a few days later, and it’s beautiful.  I’m a happy camper.

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The Wayback Machine: Aging Out

By Joe Berk

A wise man once said there comes a time in every man’s life when he decides to hang it up…his riding days are over.  I guess the follow-on comment has to be:  Is that true?

I turned 71 a few months ago (note that this blog originally published three years ago; I’m 74 today and I’m still riding).  To a lot of folks, that’s old.  The funny part of it is, though, I don’t feel old.  A little earlier today I was putzing around in the garage and my Royal Enfield was making me feel guilty.  I hadn’t had the 650 twin out on the road in the last few weeks, a character deficiency I promptly corrected.  The old girl and I had a nice ride around the neighborhood, I got the oil circulating again (in the Enfield and in yours truly), and I snapped that great photo you see at the top of this blog.   That’s snow-covered San Gorgonio Mountain you see off in the distance, a destination I’ve visited many times on a motorcycle.

But to get back on topic:  At what age should we think about hanging up our riding gear?   Now that I’m a septuagenarian (I had to look it up, so you can, too) I’m wondering about things like that.   But then I think about the guys I’ve ridden with and maybe I’ll continue riding for another 20 years or so.  Take a look.

Simon Gandolfi, who just turned 90 and is arguably the most interesting man in the world, is a novelist and moto adventurer extraordinaire. He’s ridden around the world on small displacement bikes.
Colorado Dan, the man. He cuts a dashing figure and is a great traveling companion.  He’s a year or two older than me.
Another most interesting man in the world…good buddy Willie. He’s usually riding when he’s not pitching Dos Equis.
James, our Texas Ranger and a serious traveler, is in my cohort and he rode Baja with us.

You know, the funny thing is the tone of the conversations during and after a good ride hasn’t changed at all over the nearly six decades I’ve been riding.  The topics have changed a bit, but not really that much.  We still mostly talk bikes and good roads.  But instead of bragging how drunk we were the previous night and who we spent the night with (which was mostly bullshit, anyway) the topics today address different specs.   Instead of 0 to 60 times, quarter mile performance, and top ends, now it’s things like our A1C, PSA, and HDL numbers.  You fellow geezers know what I’m talking about.  But the discussions are just as lively, I think a little more interesting, and probably a bit more truthful.  We’ll touch on politics on occasion, but if the conversation gets too heated or goes too far in that direction, I can always get us back on track (and get a good laugh) when I weigh in with a single question:

You guys know what the problem is in politics today?   All the guys who really know how to run the country are out screwing around riding their motorcycles.

So, at what age should you hang it up?  I’m finding that’s hard to say and most guys my age and older seem to just keep on going.  I’ve ridden with guys well into their 70s, 80s, and sometimes even more.   Good buddy Dan is heading down to Baja next month to camp on the beach near Gonzaga Bay, and he’s a little older than me.  Sim0n Gandolfi, the British novelist and adventure travel writer, rode to Cabo San Lucas and back with us on 150cc CSC Mustangs about a dozen years ago, and he’s about to leave on another epic moto trip at age 90.   James from Texas bought a new motorcycle and rode one of the Baja trips with us.  He spun off somewhere about halfway down the length of the Baja peninsula to take the ferry across to mainland Mexico, and he was going to ride home to Texas through Mexico.  And Willie, another most interesting man in the world, rides every chance he gets when he’s not doing Dos Equis commercials.  Like me, all of these guys qualify for that 89-cent cup of coffee at McDonald’s.

Yeah, I think I’m going to stay at it for a while.  I think you should, too.

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The best riding in the world?   In my opinion, it’s unquestionably Baja.  Take a look!

Ray Price and the Legends of Harley Drag Racing Museum

By Joe Berk

What I knew about motorcycle drag racing up until a few weeks ago you could fit on the head of a pin and have room left over for the Gettysburg Address.  After a visit to Tobacco Road Harley-Davidson in Raleigh, North Carolina, I can’t say that anymore.  I’m still no expert, but I learned a little more about Ray Price and the motorcycle drag racing game.

A Top Fuel engine. They sort of look like a Harley engine, but there’s very little in the way of shared parts. These engines displace 170 cubic inches and produce about 1500 hp. They launch at about 4400 rpm and are hitting about 5500 rpm at the traps.

I was in Raleigh for a consulting gig, and while I was there Susie and I stopped by the Tobacco Road Harley dealership to visit their motorcycle drag racing museum.   Tobacco Road HD is one of the world’s largest Harley dealers, and Ray Price (the guy who started it all) was a world-renown Harley drag racer.

Looking over the Tobacco Road Harley-Davidson dealership. The floor was crammed with new bikes; like most dealers today, sales have been slow for the last several months. The Museum’s drag bike displays are directly across my vantage point at mezzanine-level. There are several Harley drag racing displays around the mezzanine’s periphery.

Tobacco Road Harley Davidson is home to the Legends of Harley Drag Racing Museum.  For me, it was an eye opener, with six drag bikes and a mezzanine full of drag racing memorabilia.  I met with Bruce Downs, one of the key guys who worked with Ray Price.  Bruce is the Museum’s curator.  He’s been with Tobacco Road Harley for more than 40 years.

A top fuel Harley. The disk brakes are supplemented by a parachute.
The funny bike. This motorcycle power wheelied for the entire quarter-mile run.

In the drag racing game, funny cars are essentially AA Fuel dragsters designed to look sort of like regular cars.  The same is true for funny bikes; if you don’t look too closely, they sort of look like a regular motorcycle.  There’s one funny bike in the Museum; it’s the one with the Sportster gas tank.   It’s the oldest of the Ray Price bikes on display.

A view of the Ray Price funny bike most competitors saw.

Top fuel and funny bikes are custom made, purpose-built machines from the ground up.   Although the top fuel bikes’ engines look like they came from Harley-Davidson, they use few Harley parts.  The engine and its components are mostly machined from billet (the funny bike has some Harley parts, but most of its parts are custom-machined, too).  The engines use solid roller lifters (not hydraulic lifters like a street-going big twin Harley).  There’s no oil circulating through the heads; the cylinder heads are lubricated with grease only.  The engines use a special 50W Lucas oil that absorbs nitromethane, and the engine oil is changed after every pass.  The engines have a 5-inch to 5 3/8-inch stroke.  They use about two gallons of nitromethane on each run, and fuel is pumped to the engine by a cam-driven pump (bikes like these can’t rely on gravity feed to get the fuel to the carburetors).  The engines are normally aspirated; there’s no supercharger.  The engines produce something in the neighborhood of 1500 horsepower.  (Note to self: Yikes!)  The drag team sometimes rebuilds the engine after every pass; a decision is made after each run based on a compression test.  The bikes are started with an external starter that has three car batteries wired in series.

Top fuel bikes don’t have a clutch lever (the left lever is the rear brake; the right lever is the front brake).  The bikes have a custom-built two-speed transmission and what is essentially a centrifugal clutch.  They launch at 4400 rpm and go through the traps at 5300 rpm.  Wow.  Think about that: There’s less than a thousand rpm increase in engine speed over the quarter mile.   Shifting is accomplished pneumatically by pressing a button.  Ray Price experimented with three-speed transmissions, but he decided the two-speed transmission was best.  More gears weren’t necessary.

The M&H rear tires on the bikes are M&H car slicks; they are not designed as motorcycle-specific tires.  The rear tire pressures can range from 4 psi up into the low teens.  The guys who race drag bikes adjust tire pressure to get the hookup they want depending on track conditions and weather.  The front tires are motorcycle-specific tires.  Ray Price ran with tires made by Goodyear and M&H.

Monster chains and wheelie bars.  The chains on a Harley drag bike are immense. They look like something you’d see on earth moving equipment.

Running the quarter mile on one of these machines must have been a very sporting proposition.  I thought about that and I wondered what it would be like.  I tried to see myself on it as the bike launched, accelerated, and then hit the traps.  I imagined the steps I’d have to execute as I went through the traps.  I asked Bruce what came first:  Shutting off the fuel?  Deploying the parachute?  Hitting the brakes?  Bruce told me that at the end of a run the drill is to roll off the throttle, deploy the parachute, apply the brakes, and shut the fuel off (all accomplished at something north of 200mph after six-seconds experiencing what an artillery round feels like during a cannon launch).

The funny bike and a top fuel bike.  Ray Price is credited with inventing the motorcycle wheelie bar.  All the bikes in the Museum have one.  Parachutes on drag bikes became prevalent around 2020.

Ray Price’s best elapsed times were set on the white bike in the center of the Museum’s display area.  It ran in the low 6.20s (once as low as 6.16), with speeds of 225 mph and sometimes 230 mph.

The Tobacco Road Museum’s funny bike, the one with the Sportster tank, is displayed with the front end off the ground.  I asked about that and Bruce told me that when it ran the quarter, the front end was in the air for the length of the quarter mile run (it ran a power wheelie the entire distance).  People would wait at the end of the track just to see it.

The funny bike and its quarter-mile-long wheelie had me thinking about steering. I asked Bruce about how Mr. Price did it.  Ray steered the bikes with his body and by pushing on the footpegs (note that a top fuel bike weighs between 850 and 1000 pounds). I could see Bruce fondly remembering Ray explaining it all.  “Ray said he had to be focused 1000 feet downrange, and that he was already correcting for direction the instant he launched,” Bruce said.  It was a cool moment in what was already a very cool interview, seeing Bruce remembering Ray like that.  My guess is there was a lot of respect and love there.  (If my words convey to you that I enjoyed the Tobacco Road visit, I’ve done my job.)

Bruce went on to explain that Ray ran the bikes himself until he a bad crash at the end of a Las Vegas run.  Ray landed hard on this shoulder, Bruce said, and he suffered a lot of nerve damage.  After the Las Vegas accident, Ray couldn’t run the bikes himself.  He hired riders.  Bruce told me the crash wasn’t because Ray lost control; he was simply going too fast and the engine overpowered the brakes.  Ray and the bike went through the first safety net together.  The second safety net stopped the bike, but not Ray.

The Harley drag racing fraternity is small.  There are about 20 Harley drag racers nationally and they all know each other.  I asked Bruce if Harley had an official drag team, and he told me they do not.  Several years, ago, you could buy a far less ferocious drag bike from any Harley dealer, complete with wheelie bar.  That was a model based on the V-Rod engine called the Destroyer.  It’s no longer available.

20+ years back, motorcycle top fuel quarter-mile times and speeds had already made it into the stratosphere.  Elapsed times were just over 6 seconds with trap speeds exceeding 220 miles per hour.  Today, motorcycle top fuel runs are typically done on a 1000-foot track instead of the earlier 1320-foot quarter mile (the times and trap speeds were just getting too wild).    Times for the shorter distance runs are in the low 5-second range, and speeds are approximately 300 mph.  The numbers are astounding.

A view from the left front of a top fuel Harley.

Tobacco Road Harley, the Legends of Harley Drag Racing Museum, and my visit with Bruce made for a quite a story and quite a visit.  Ray Price was one hell of a man.  I found a video about him on YouTube.  I’ll think you’ll enjoy it.

If you ever find yourself in the Raleigh area (and you should, as Raleigh is a great town), Tobacco Road Harley is a “must-see” destination.  And if you’re looking for a great dinner, Raleigh’s The Pit restaurant is the best barbeque I’ve ever had.  Both times I’ve been there I had the brisket meat loaf and it was beyond superb (I’m told everything on the menu is great).  In fact, I’d say a trip to Raleigh could be justified just to visit Tobacco Road Harley, see their Legends of Harley Drag Racing Museum, and have dinner at The Pit.  Trust me on this; you can thank me later.

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It’s Miller Time

By Joe Berk

On our recent visit to Milwaukee, we visited the Miller brewery.  It’s in the center of the city, right on West State Street, nestled in the town’s hills.  Those hills will become significant in a moment when I tell you about the caves.

Our tour guide was a very energized guy.  I can’t remember his name, but I can tell you he made the tour come alive for us.  It was fun.

One of the first things our tour guide covered was the girl.  She was present in several stained glass windows and a few other places.

Our guide, that interesting guy a few photos up, explained her history to us.  The story goes like this:  A.C. Paul, Miller’s advertising guy, got lost in the Wisconsin woods (as in good and lost, at night, in freezing temperatures).  He had a vision of the Miller High Life girl you see above, perched on a crescent moon, pointing the way back to civilization.  That vision (in various forms) has been in Miller’s advertising and branding pretty much ever since.  Is it true?  Hey, it’s a good story and it’s got something to do with beer, so who cares?

The Miller company goes back a long way, and in the old days, they used to store newly-made beer in the caves adjacent to the plant in the hills on West State Street.  The advent of refrigeration made that unnecessary, but Miller still owns the caves.  They’re part of the tour, and if you have an event (a wedding, a party, a Bar Mitzvah, whatever) they make a hell of a venue.

The photos you see here didn’t use any flash.  I bumped the ISO up to 800.  That, along with my 24-120’s vibration reduction capabilities and a bit of post processing in PhotoShop created the images you see here.

Miller has also has a cool party place (you can also rent this as a venue) in the main building.   You can see that in the photo below.

Those glasses you see above were samples provided to us during the tour.  The ones you see above were Miller’s Killian Red label.   Folks, there were a lot of beer samples on this tour, starting with the very beginning of the tour in the Miller Visitor Center (it’s where I snapped that photo of the custom chopper at the top of this blog).  The samples weren’t small, either.  If you weren’t watching what you consumed, I imagine you could get a pretty good buzz on this tour.  Me, I was watching what I drank, and I didn’t finish any of the samples.  They sure were good, though.  Miller beer is awesome.

After the stop above, we entered the actual beer factory.  Our guide explained that folks are usually amazed when they see this part of the operation.  There were hardly any people working in the plant.

I wasn’t surprised at the lack of people; in fact, I would have been surprised if there were people there.  Beer production is a process-based industry, and most process-based industries are automated.  The days of the LaVerne and Shirley show are long gone in the beer business (that show featured two women who worked in a Milwaukee beer factory).

Back in the LaVerne and Shirley days, they could have been employed by any of several beer companies in Milwaukee.  Automation and consolidation changed all that.  Today, pretty much all the Milwaukee beer companies are part of the Miller empire.  Miller has something like 11 breweries across the country.  There’s one not too far from me here in southern California.  The regions they cover are divided geographically.  Our tour guide told us that the plant we were in covers the Midwest.  It produces 10 million barrels of beer annually, and 40% of the beer manufactured in the Milwaukee plant goes to just one city (and that’s Chicago).  Those Chicago boys like their beer, I guess.

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The Wayback Machine: A Call to Alms

This is a rerun of a blog Gresh wrote a couple of years ago.  Yep, we’ve got our palms out.   Help if you can; we’d sure appreciate it!

By Joe Gresh

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

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

So here’s the pitch: If you have been reading ExhaustNotes and think the eclectic collection of stories we create might appeal to your customers, by all means become one of our sponsors.

Or, if you just like reading the website and want to help support us, become a site sponsor even if you have nothing to sell. Maybe we’ll make a wall of names for people who sponsor the site. We want sponsors to support ExhaustNotes.us because they think that the writing we are doing is worthwhile.

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

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ARX Bullets In Two 9mm Pistols

By Joe Berk

About three years ago I had dinner with good buddy Robby at a Mexican restaurant outside of Atlanta.  Robby bought some sample bullets for me and one of the flavors was a 65-grain 9mm ARX bullet.  It was something I had not seen or heard of before.

These are frangible lightweight bullets designed to inflict a lot of damage without penetrating walls.  The bullets are called a fluted design, and they are a composite copper/polymer material.  They are a very high velocity bullet.  There are a number of reloading admonitions with these, including not to overcrimp because doing so will break up the bullet.  I’m talking like I’m an expert on these; I am not.  This is the first time I’ve played with them.

I loaded these with 5.2 grains of Winchester 231.  That powder is the same as HP 38, and I found a load for HP 38.   I’m thought I would get something like 1400 fps with this load based on what I saw on the Hodgdon site.  Other powders provide more velocity, but I loaded with what I had on hand (and that was Winchester 231).

I loaded on Thursday and fired these the next day, testing for velocity, reliability, and accuracy in two 9mm handguns.  Those were a 1911 (with a 5-inch barrel) and a Smith and Wesson Shield (with a 3.1-inch barrel).  From what I had read in online reviews, the ARX bullets are supposed to be relatively accurate.  I expected them to shoot way low (as lighter bullets in handguns generally do).  The loaded ammo looks cool, and the ARX bullets are relatively inexpensive at $39/500.

At the range, I set up a couple of targets at 25 yards.  I had only loaded 25 rounds, so I shot the first 10 in the Shield.  The Shield functioned perfectly with all 10 rounds (I shot two magazines with 5 rounds each).  There were no failures to feed or eject.  As I had read, the load was accurate (in fact, it was more accurate than anything else I’ve shot before in the Shield).  Recoil was very light.  I held at 6:00 on a standard 25-yard pistol target; the rounds hit low left (but not as low as I expected).  This ain’t half bad with a little belly gun like the Shield.  If I needed to, I could slide the Shield’s rear sight to the right to correct for the bias you see below.

The Shield’s velocities were high, and the standard deviation was low.  I am impressed.  There are better results than I had previously seen in the Shield.

I next fired my remaining 15 rounds in the Springfield 1911.  The load was at the top end of what Hodgdon lists for these bullets using HP38 powder (which is the same propellant as Winchester 231).

In the 1911, I had one failure to eject.  You can see that below.

Also, on the last round for each of the three mags I fired in the Springfield 1911, the pistol did not hold the slide back (it functioned okay for the first four shots).  This load apparently has just enough energy to cycle the 1911 slide, but not enough to drive it all the way back.   I could probably address this with a lighter recoil spring.  Subsequent testing proved to me that the above-described failures were related to how I was holding the 1911 during this test.  I used a two-hand hold and I bench rested the pistol on a rest.  When I fired with a two-hand hold without bench resting the pistol, it functioned flawlessly.

Here are the chrono results in the 1911.  As expected, velocities were higher due to the 1911’s 5-inch barrel.  There are other powders will give more velocity with the ARX bullets, but I loaded with what I had on hand.  Like Donald Rumsfeld used to say, you go to war with the Army you have.

Like I found with the Shield, the 1911’s accuracy was similarly good at 25 yards (again, with a 6:00 hold on the target).  I could probably do better.  I didn’t make any sight adjustments, so I was surprised that the gun was pretty much on target.

Another pleasant finding was that the both the Shield and the 1911 dropped the brass right next to the gun.  With the 1911, the brass just plopped out and came to rest on the table next to the gun.  The Shield dropped most of the brass on the table; three pieces fell off the bench.  Where you see the brass in the photo below is where it landed; I didn’t scoop it up and put it there.

The ARX bullets are a little trickier to reload than regular 9mm bullets.  Inceptor, the manufacturer, advises against a heavy crimp as it will crush the bullet.  The one time I blew up a gun two or three years ago I’m now convinced was the result of bullet setback when feeding due to a light crimp and a slippery powder coated bullet.  Setback would be more of a concern here with the light crimp.

I could probably load these bullets a bit hotter to get them to hold the slide back after the last round in the 1911 (or, as mentioned above, go to a lighter spring).   I don’t think I want to go above the 5.2 grains of Winchester 231. Also, as noted above, the issue disappeared when I fired normally without bench resting the pistol.  This was intended to be a quick look.  I learned what I wanted to.  The ARX bullets are very good. I ordered a thousand of them, which should last for a while.

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Apocalypse Now

By Joe Berk

No, it’s not another movie review.  It’s what’s been occurring here in the Southland since Wednesday night.

We’ve had our share of forest fires in the 50 years I’ve been living in this part of the world, but nothing like this.  Apocalyptic is not too strong a word.  I think everyone who lives in southern California knows someone who lost their home.

This all started on Wednesday evening with the Santa Ana winds.  We get them every year.  They are usually strong, but this year they were something out of a disaster movie.  In southern California, our normal daily winds predictably blow from west to east starting around 2:00 p.m. and going to approximately sundown.   There’s an atmospheric/geologic reason for it I won’t pretend to understand or explain.  The Santa Ana winds do just the opposite; they below from east to west, and they blow hard.  Throw a fire into the mix, and you get what we have been experiencing for the last few days.

I can see the smokey skies from my house.  The Eaton fire (the closest one to us) is about 30 miles to the west, but other than that, we were lucky.  We’ve had lots of forest fires before in the 50 years I’ve lived here and we could see the flames on many of those fires, but they were always up in the mountains.  This time, the fires jumped into residential neighborhoods.

I appreciate all the texts, emails, and phone calls from people checking in on us.  We’re fine.  The air quality is poor, but that’s trivial compared to what the other people in southern California have suffered. I feel for them, and I hope their situations get resolved quickly.

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Green Bay’s National Rail Museum

By Joe Berk

That picture above?  It’s a Big Boy steam locomotive cockpit!  Look at all those valves!

Green Bay, Wisconsin.  Say that name, and most people think of Vince Lombardi and the Green Bay Packers.  And why not?  It’s what the town is known for.  But I’ll let you in on a secret:  Green Bay has one of the best rail museums I’ve ever visited.  I like rail museums, and if there’s one anywhere near where I’m traveling, I’ll stop.  Susie and I wrapped up a trip to Georgia, Wisconsin, and Michigan, and the National Rail Museum made our list. It’s easy to find, and Green Bay is a fun little town.

The National Rail Museum has a bunch of small items on display after entering the first building (track maintenance hand tools and the like).  Then it’s on to a hall where the big stuff is kept.  One of the first trains is General Dwight D. Eisenhower’s European train, the one he used as the Supreme Allied Commander during World War II.  It’s big, it’s impressive, and it’s fit for a 5-star general.

The Dwight D. Eisenhower train. It’s dark green and it’s imposing.

The Eisenhower train was built by the British with a number of features to keep it low key (or so some of the signage said).  The name on the locomotive and the exotic paint theme indicated otherwise.

Not very subtle, I would say. General Eisenhower used this train for getting around the European Theatre of Operations.
The Eisenhower train was built by British Railways. That, my friends, is a cool logo.
A photo of General Eisenhower leaving his train.
A meeting room on the Eisenhower train.

The National Rail Museum has one of the very few surviving Big Boy locomotives.  I’ve seen three (well, actually two, but I saw one of them twice).   One was at the National Steam Locomotive Museum in Scranton, and another was parked at the Pomona Fairgrounds (it’s that one I saw twice).   The first time was when it went from Ogden, Utah, to Pomona under its own power.  It stopped in Pomona, and it was an amazing thing to see.

Big Boy No. 4017. I wish that Halloween decoration wasn’t there. I didn’t want to risk moving it.

It’s hard to put into words just how big a Big Boy is.  Photos don’t really do its size justice.

Signs at the museum told us the temperature in the engineer’s compartment was typically 93 degrees even with the windows open.
A peek into the coal tender. Big Boy locomotives consumed so much coal that a man couldn’t keep up with it, so instead of shoveling coal into the engine, the tender had a worm gear that drove it in.

A locomotive that caught my attention was the Pennsylvania Railroad’s GG-1 electric locomotive.  When I was a kid growing up in New Jersey, the Pennsylvania Railroad’s main tracks were only a half mile from my home.  We loved watching those trains scream by, always pulled by a GG-1.  They are gorgeous locomotives.

A magnificent Pennsylvania Railroad GG-1 locomotive. These are beautiful machines. The GG-1 was entirely electric. They drew power from high voltage overhead wires with their pantograph.

From the engineer’s position, the view forward is through one small window.  You really can’t see much of what’s ahead.  That would make me nervous.

By the 1950s, passenger rail travel was losing favor with the American public.  Airplanes were faster, and with the advent of the Interstate Highway System, most people drove.   The railroads wanted to turn that around.  One attempt involved General Motors designing an aerodynamic locomotive and less expensive rail cars.  GM designed the “Aerotrain” drawing on their styling talents, but the effort flopped.   I’d seen pictures of that locomotive (there were only ever two made), but I’d never seen one in person until this visit.

The General Motors Aerotrain locomotive. It was a beautiful design but a commercial flop.

The Aerotrain story is a fascinating one.  This video explains it.

There are plenty of great railroad stories and more than a few great movies.  You might remember the Gene Wilder/Richard Pryor hit from the 1970s, Silver Streak.  It you ever wondered where the last car of that famed train came to rest, wonder no more.

If you haven’t seen the Richard Pryor/Gene Wilder movie of the same name, you need to. You can thank me later.

I’ve been to the Steamtown National Historic Site in Scranton, Pennsylvania, the California State Railroad Museum in Sacramento, Golden Spike National Historic Park (where the Transcontinental Railroad was completed), and now, the National Rail Museum in Green Bay.    All are great stops, and all have great storyies.  I once did a story on Big Boy 4014 when it was in Pomona, California.  Gresh has a couple of rail blogs, too, including the Nevada Northern and the Cumbres and Toltec lines.  Rail stuff is cool.

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ExNotes Review: A Complete Unknown

By Joe Berk

I don’t go to the movies too much anymore, although the theatres have dramatically improved their seating and some even sell complete meals you can eat while watching the movie.  We have Netflix, Prime, and Max at home, once in a while I’ll watch something on regular TV besides Fox News, and we pretty much have all the home entertainment needs covered with our TV and the aforementioned subscriptions.  Susie wanted to see the new Bob Dylan show, though, and I thought it might be good to get out for a bit.

A fake Dylan filming a fake motorcycle scene.

As movies go, A Complete Unknown was not too bad.  The Joan Baez sound tracks were great, as was Zimmerman’s music (I’ll bet you didn’t know Bobby Zimmerman was beatnikized into Bob Dylan, did you?).

I have to comment on the motorcycle scenes, though…after all, this is a motorcycle website.

In the very first Dylan motorcycle scene, he’s riding an early Norton Atlas.  You don’t see too many of those with their black trapezoidal fuel tanks and huge chrome valanced fenders, so it had my attention.  In all the remaining motorcycle scenes, Dylan is on a mid-’60s Triumph Tiger.   He didn’t wear a helmet in any of those scenes, and the action was ostensibly set in New York City.  Seeing a helmetless Dylan slicing through Manhattan traffic made me uneasy, even though I knew it was all Hollywood tomfoolery.  The really goofy parts were the closeup riding scenes in which Dylan’s ample curls were unruffled by cruising speed winds, and the 500cc Triumph starting without Dylan using the Triumph’s sole wakeruppery mechanism (i.e., a kickstarter).  Nope, the moto scenes were as fake as a Joe Biden promise, and that made me put A Complete Unknown in the Complete Fake column.

Like I said above, the music was good.  Somewhere there’s a probably a Scriptwriting for Dummies guide that says a movie has to have conflict injected into the plot, so in this flick it was Dylan doing “his music” at the Newport Folk Festival instead of their desired folk music.  Dylan and Pete Seeger almost started a fist fight over that (I know, it’s silly, but I’m just reporting here, folks).  At the concert’s end Dylan sang one folk song, so all was forgiven.

I can’t leave out the best part:  Johnny Cash (played by a real complete unknown, Boyd Holbrook) was in the movie and he was superb.  If anyone ever does another Johnny Cash movie, casting anyone other than Holbrook in that role would be a crime against nature.

If you can ignore the motorcycle phoniness, A Complete Unknown is worth the price of admission.  The motorcycle inaccuracies notwithstanding, I enjoyed it and I think you will, too.

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