Joe Berk

The Big Ride: 5 Factors Affecting Daily Mileage

How many miles can you ride in a day?

About 30 years ago I cranked 1070 miles in one day on a Harley Softail coming home from Mexico (and that was on an older Softail without the rubber mounted engine…it’s the one you see in the photo above). I was younger and I could ride, as they say, like the wind. A couple of weeks ago, I did a 250-mile day ride on my Enfield and it about wiped me out.

Gresh and I were talking about this recently, and I thought I would share my thoughts on how many miles you can plan on covering in a day. Maybe it will influence your planning. Maybe not. We get paid the same either way.

1: Age

Like I said above, big miles used to be no big deal for me. That’s not the case any more. After substantial scientific study and close observation of my geezer buddies over many decades, I developed a graph showing the relationship between age and how many miles you can reasonably ride in a day.

Like it or not, when we get older, it gets harder to rack up big miles. Serious scientific study went into the above, so if you want to debate our conclusions, bring facts. We want to hear them.

2: Weather

Weather plays a big role in how many miles you can ride in a single day, and here at ExNotes we rely heavily on our weather rock before leaving on any ride. You’ve probably heard about weather rocks. We sell weather rocks here on ExNotes and they are conveniently sized to fit into a tank bag. They work like this…you hang the rock from any available support (you have to supply your own string and support). Here’s how to interpret your weather rock:

- If the rock is wet, it means it’s raining and you should reduce however many miles you had planned to ride by half.
- If the rock is swinging, it means it’s windy that day, and you should reduce your miles by maybe a third.
- If the rock is hot to the touch, it means the temperature is elevated, and you should reduce your miles by maybe a third. Maybe even more.
- If the rock is cold, it means it’s cold, and you probably can ride as long as you dress appropriately. If the rock is really, really cold, though, maybe you should stay home. If there’s ice on the rock, you definitely should stay home.

ExNotes offers weather rocks in brand-specific models:

- If you ride a Harley, we offer chrome weather rocks for $395, chrome with conchos and black leather fringe weather rocks for $495, and chrome, conchos, fringe, and matching do rag weather rocks for $595 (freight and setup fees not included).
- If you ride a BMW, we offer the GS weather rock with an electronically adjustable center of gravity, BMW logos, and a one-year Starbucks gift certificate for $1995.
- If you ride a Ducati, you probably don’t need a weather rock (Ducati riders generally only ride their motorcycles short distances on clear days, anyway, although if you insist, we can provide a red rock for you personally autographed by the former famous racer of your choice, or we can put several rocks in a bag you can shake to sound like a Ducati clutch). Ducati rocks are free, or at least that’s what we tell you (we’ll recover the cost on your first valve adjustment and let you think you got the rock for free).
- If you ride a Chinese motorcycle, we sell an ExNotes weather rock decal for $2 and you can put it on your own rock.

3: Roads

The kind of roads you plan to ride make a huge difference. If it’s all freeway, you’ll be bored but you can rack up huge miles. If it’s surface streets (and a lot of us do everything we can to stay off the freeway), you won’t cover as many miles unless you’re riding in Baja, where you can run 140mph+ on the long straights south of Valle de Los Cirios. If it’s in the mountains, it will be less, unless you’re posting about your skills on Facebook, where the folks who post are world class riders (to hear them tell it). The same holds true for riding in the dirt. You just won’t cover as many miles.

4: Headcount

This is the big one, folks. Maybe I should have listed it first. If I’m riding by myself or with one of my motorcycle buddies in Baja, I can easily do over 500 miles a day. Throw in more people, and…well, read on, my friends.

The number of riders in your group has a profound impact on how many miles you can ride in a day. In the math world, we would say that the miles per day are inversely proportional to the number of riders in your group.

As a starting point (and after extensive research and mathematical modeling), the technical staff here at ExNotes developed Formula A:

A) Miles per Day = (M)/(N)

where:

M = Miles you want to ride
N = Number of riders in your group

What the above means is that as the number of riders in your group increases, the number of miles you can cover in a day decreases. That’s because with more riders you’ll start later in the morning, you’ll be stopping more often, and you’ll take more time at each stop. That is, unless you’re riding with me. Then Formula A reduces to Formula B:

B) Miles per Day = M

where:

M = Miles you want to ride

The B in Formula B stands for Berk because basically I’ll leave you behind if you’re not ready when I am. You can catch up with me later. You might think I’m joking. I’m not.

Formula A varies a little depending on what kind of riders you have in your group, and especially if you have a Rupert. Rupert is the guy who takes 20 minutes putting his motorcycle gear back on after every stop. I once rode with a Rupert who could take 20 minutes just putting his gloves on. He got better when we threatened to cut a few of his fingers off.

5: Your Motorcycle

There are several motorcycle factors that play a huge role in how many miles you can ride in a day. In the old days, a motorcycle was a motorcycle and we did it all with a single bike (touring, off-road, canyon carving, adventure riding, etc.). Today, you gotta get specific:

- ADV-style bikes are actually pretty comfortable and the ergonomics make sense. 500-mile days are easy. My KLR 650 was one of the best touring bikes I ever owned. It had phenomenal ergos.
- Standard motorcycles are also relatively comfortable and you can probably do 500 miles in a day, but you’ll feel it, especially if your bike does not have a windshield. My Enfield 650 Interceptor is a good bike, but it’s the one that wiped me out on that recent 250-mile ride.
- Cruisers look cool in motorcycle ads and they complement do rags and tattoos nicely, but they are less comfortable on long rides. I’ve found I can reasonably do 350-mile days on a cruiser without needing to see a chiropractor. Go much beyond that and you’ll feel it.
- Sportbikes generally cut into big miles, but a lot depends on your age. Good buddy Marty and I rode sportbikes on the 2005 Three Flags Classic (I was on a Triumph Daytona) and we did big mile days on that ride. But I was 20 years younger then and I bent a lot easier. I wouldn’t want to do it again.
- Classic bikes generally require shorter daily riding distances, particularly if they are British and equipped with electricals manufactured by Lucas (as in Lucas, the Prince of Darkness). I think a mid-’60s Triumph Bonneville is the most beautiful motorcycle ever created, but I wouldn’t want to ride Baja on one.

Beyond the style issues outlined above, there are other motorcycle factors to consider:

- Bigger motors generally mean more miles in a day, but bigger motorcycles can slow you down if they suck up too much fuel. One year at the International Motorcycle Show, Yamaha’s bikes all had labels that showed, among other things, fuel economy. The VMax, as noted by Yamaha, averaged 27 miles per gallon. You’d be making a lot more fuel stops on that one. 27 miles per gallon. I can’t make up stuff this good.
- Daily mileage is independent of displacement at 400cc and above (as long as fuel economy is not VMax nutty). Below 400cc, it gets harder (I think) to crank big miles. On my 250cc RX3, 500 miles is a big day for me. But my good buddy Rob once did a 1000-mile Baby Butt on his RX3, so I guess anything is possible.
- Seats can make a big difference. I’ve never found any motorcycle seat to be really comfortable, but I have found a few to be god-awful (my Enfield is working hard to earn that title). If you want to really improve a motorcycle seat so you can up your miles, get a sheepskin cover (I’ve found those to be quite comfortable). There are other options like inflatable seats or custom made seats, but my advice is don’t waste your money. A guy showed up with an inflatable seat cover on a group ride once and it slowed us considerably. It kept blowing off his bike and we had to stop and look for it each time that happened.
- Fuel tank capacity doesn’t make much difference. My KLR could go 250 miles on a tank; my TL1000S would start blinking at 105 miles. You’d think you could ride a lot further with a bigger tank, but I found I need to stop and stretch roughly every hour or two, and if I do that at gas stations, tank capacity doesn’t matter.

What do you think?

So there you have it: Our thoughts on a complex topic.

We know there are keyboard commandos out there who will take exception to our carefully constructed and presented thoughts. If you disagree, let’s hear it. We appreciate all comments, dumbass and otherwise. Please leave your thoughts here on the blog for others to see. Don’t waste your time leaving comments on Facebook (all the cool people leave their comments here…only losers post comments on Facebook). You’ll be a faster rider, you’ll be thinner, and you’ll look better if you post your comments here. And don’t worry about spelling, punctuation, grammar, or capitalization (believe it or not, it will help our readers assess the validity of your thinking).

Like they say, your mileage may vary, and we’re looking forward to your comments. If they’re particularly inane, so much the better. We await your inputs.

Some of our more interesting rides? Right here, folks!

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Reduced Loads: Less Wailin’ with the .35 Whelen

It’s the .35 Whelen (not “wailin'”), but with a name like that, I had to have a little fun. I also considered “Win Some, Lose Some” for the title of this blog, but I’ll get to that in a minute. What this blog is all about is the beginning work in finding a reduced velocity load for my .35 Whelen Ruger No. 1.

Photos from the Gunbroker auction for my rifle (yeah, I saved them). The big featured photo above shows the wood with an orange tint, but that’s because I used flash for that photo. The rifle’s colors are closer to what you see here. It’s a beautiful rifle.

My .35 Whelen is the one you see in the photos above. I have a thing, you see, for Ruger No. 1 rifles. The first rifle I ever bought was a Ruger No. 1 in .30 06 when I was in the Army back in the ‘70s. I initially thought I’d wear out the barrel on my .30 06 and have it recut to .35 Whelen, but that ain’t gonna happen (I’ll never shoot that rifle enough). I have shot it a lot, though. An infantry division of jackrabbits in west Texas met their maker on account of me and my .30 06 No. 1.

Me, half a century ago with a 30 06 Ruger No. 1 and a very dead jackrabbit (one of many) in the west Texas desert. That was a 400-yard offhand shot. The older I get, the better I was.

Okay, back to the .35 Whelen: The concept of a big bore .30 06 stuck in my mind. I’d wanted a Whelen ever since I read about the cartridge. It was created by Townsend Whelen in 1922 (there’s some disagreement about whether it was Whelen or a guy he worked with, but there’s disagreement about everything on the Internet, and Townsend Whelen is the story I’m going with). Old Colonel Whelen ran a .30 06 cartridge case over a .358 expander, plunked in a .358-caliber bullet, and voila, he had created the .35 Whelen.

The .35 Whelen was strictly a wildcat from 1922 to 1988; in 1988 Remington chambered their 700 Classic rifle for it (my good buddy Jason has one and he recently took a nice buck with it). Then Ruger manufactured a limited run of No. 1 rifles in .35 Whelen maybe 5 or 6 years ago (I got mine from that run). Most of these rifles had very plain wood (both the Remingtons and the Rugers); when I saw the one featured in this blog on GunBroker, I jumped on it. The gun looks even better in person that it does in the photos (and it looks great in the photos). My mantra for many years has been that you just can’t go wrong with a Ruger No. 1 and fancy walnut. I believe these to be some of the classiest rifles ever made.

Why a reduced load? Hey, why not? I’ve got other thumpers, and if I ever hunt dinosaur, I can take my .458 Win Mag. I thought finding a way to make the Whelen work with less energetic loads would be fun. Factory-level loads are tough at both ends, and I want to have fun with this rifle. Folks say the .35 Whelen is as good a game-dropper as a .375 H&H. That may be, but it’s irrelevant to me, and besides, those kinds of energy levels come with big recoil. Finding a load that makes a thumper less of a thumper is my idea of fun. I just think the cartridge looks cool, too.

So I’ve had the Whelen a few years now, but until recently, I had never fired it. Then, for reasons I won’t go into, I no longer have a .357 Magnum handgun but I have a couple thousand 200-grain cast .357 Mag bullets. Hey, I thought…let’s see if they’ll work in the .35 Whelen. I looked online and found that other guys are doing it, my 200-grain bullets are sized at .358, and I thought it ought to work.

The Lyman cast bullet data for this bullet in the .35 Whelen.

I looked in the Lyman cast bullet book and I think the bullets I bought are the very same 200-grain Lyman bullet their cast bullet manual shows for the .35 Whelen (the profile is exactly the same). Whoa, this just might work, and it would give me something to use those big pills in.

A big heavy 357 Mag/38 Special bullet. It does well in the .357 Magnum revolver (I’ve shot 3-inch groups with this bullet in my Ruger Blackhawk at 100 yards).

I actually have .35 Whelen brass, but I wanted to make some the old-fashioned way like Townsend Whelen did. I ran 20 new .30 06 cases through the .35 Whelen sizing die to open the case mouths to .35 (from .308), I flared the mouths slightly with the Lee case mouth flaring tool (that’s so the cast bullets will start into the case mouth without shaving lead), and then the brass cases went into the tumbler. They came out looking good.

.35 Whelen brass crafted from .30 06 cases.

A .30 06 case on the right, which is what the .35 Whelen cases are formed from.

I selected Unique as the propellant for this first load because I have some on hand, and because it shows the lowest velocities in the Lyman manual. I went with 15.0 grains as a starting point. My 200-grain .357 magnum cast bullets leaded the bore a little bit in my .357 Magnum Blackhawk revolver, so I was mildly concerned that they would lead the bore in my Ruger No. 1. Hold that thought, because we’re going to return to it in a second.

Seating the bullets in my RCBS Rockchucker press.

My .35 Whelen cartridges looked good, and they chambered with no issues in the No. 1. I was eager to get to the range to see how they would group.

A finished .35 Whelen cartridge. It’s a handsome cartridge, I think.

I loaded 20 rounds for a trial run. This is good-looking ammunition.

So how did it work? Well, that brings us to the “lose some” portion of the tentative title I mentioned at the start of this blog. You know, as in “Win Some, Lose Some,” although I don’t think any No. 1 with wood like the one you see here could be filed in the “lose some” column.

Bottom line? The cast bullet load didn’t perform well at all. The bullets didn’t tumble in flight (as would have been evidenced by their keyholing through the target), but they didn’t group worth a damn, either. I’m talking 12-inch groups at 50 yards. Hell, on a mediocre day I can shooter smaller groups at a hundred yards with a handgun. A quick look at the bore revealed the culprit: Leading. Lots and lots of leading.

A severely-leaded Ruger No. 1 barrel. The bullets I used are intended for handgun velocities. I was hoping for a miracle. It didn’t happen. Not surprisingly, accuracy was nonexistent. Good buddy Greg commented that there was probably enough lead in that barrel to cast another bullet or two.

Okay, it’s knowledge gained, and that’s not a bad thing. These handgun bullets won’t work in my No. 1. But there are cast bullets out there made specifically for rifles, and I knew where to go to get some. I like the cast bullets made by Montana Bullet Works. I called them when I got home, I had a nice conversation with Bruce (the owner), and a hundred of his bullets are on their way to me now. Bruce’s bullets are from an RCBS mold, they have a gas check, they’re hardened to 22 BHN, and they’re heat treated (to prevent breakup when hunting). Everything I’ve read about these bullets on the Internet indicates they are great, and I’ve had good experiences with Montana Bullet Works when using their bullets in a different big bore rifle. I’ll update you with a range report when I try them.

Montana Bullet Works 200-grain flatnose gas check bullets. It will be interesting to see how these perform in the .35 Whelen.

In the meantime (while I’m waiting for the Montana Bullet Works bullets), I explored the Internet and my loading manuals for more information on a reduced .35 Whelen load. I didn’t do well with the 200-grain cast .357 Mag bullets but in researching this more, I found that others have had decent results using jacketed .357 Mag bullets, and there are loads published for this in the Lyman manual. The .35 Whelen rifle bullet diameter is listed at .358 and the jacketed pistol bullets are listed at .357 (we’re talking inches here, folks), but guys on the Internet are saying they get good results with the pistol bullets. So I loaded 20 and made a quick run to the range.

Hornady 158-grain .357 Magnum jacketed flatnose pistol bullets. These grouped well in the Whelen.

The Lyman manual’s data for using 158-grain .357 Magnum pistol bullets in the .35 Whelen.

20 rounds of custom-made, good-looking .35 Whelen ammo.

I loaded at 24.0 grains of 5744 because I have that powder on hand and I didn’t want to dip into my stash of discontinued 4759. While I was loading these, I was a little leery about shooting .357-inch diameter bullets in a .358-inch bore. About 45 years ago in another life I tried loading .45 ACP bullets in a .458 Win Mag (I know, I was young and dumb). The difference there was too much (the pistol bullets were .451 inch and the bore diameter for a .458 Win Mag is .458). Those rounds fired okay, but accuracy was horrible. The bullet was a whopping 0.007 smaller than the bore. Here, with the .35 Whelen, I’m 0.001 smaller. Maybe it would work, I thought.

I arrived at the range in the late afternoon and set up a target at 50 yards. At the West End Gun Club, the rifle range points about 20-degrees north of due west, and what that means is that late afternoon shooting involves shooting into the sun (the sun is off to the left about 20 degrees). Everything I’ve read about the effects of lighting on bullet point of impact says that the point of impact moves in the opposite direction that light emanates from, but my experience has always been exactly the opposite. If the light is coming from the left, my point of impact is to the left, and that’s what I experienced with the Whelen.

My Ruger has a brass bead front sight (which I think is the worst kind of front sight), and it had a decided flare on the left side from the sinking sun. Sure enough, my first group was sharply offset to the left. Tight, but to the left. I shifted the sight over to the right, and my guesstimate put the point of impact dead even with the centerline of the target. I fired a 3-shot group, moved the front down a hair, and then fired a 5-shot group. All were gratifying small, given that I was shooting almost into the sun by then and using iron sights (well, brass and iron, but you know what I mean).

My 50-yard .35 Whelen target. The first group (a 0.795-inch group) was off to the left. I drifted the rear sight to the right and shot the 0.490-inch, 3-shot group. Then I moved the rear sight down a hair (or was it a hare?) and shot a 5-shot, 1.133-inch group. The top 3-shot, 2.037-inch group was with full power, 200-grain Hornady jacketed bullets.

This is looking good. I am very satisfied with the accuracy I’m getting with the reduced velocity jacketed pistol bullet groups. They’re maybe about 1500 feet per second, and that just feels right.

Then, just for giggles, I fired another 3-shot group with “real” .35 Whelen ammo, loaded with the 200-grain Hornady jacketed softpoint bullet and 52.0 grains of IMR 4320 ammo. That’s at the low end of the big bore loads in the Hornady manual, recoil was substantially higher, and as expected, the group was quite a bit higher (I had the rear sight all the way up for the reduced velocity loads). It wasn’t as tight as the pistol bullet reduced loads, but it’s the first load I tried in the big boy .35 Whelen load region. It was late in the afternoon and the sun was, by now, nearly directly even with my line of sight. I have a million excuses, folks.

The real deal…a big boy .35 Whelen load with a 200-grain Hornady bullet designed for big game rifle shooting. Recoil was more than with the reduced loads, but it was not overwhelming. I’d say it was about the same as a 30 06, but this was at the low end of the .35 Whelen propellant range. The reduced loads discussed above are more fun.

Overall, this is good stuff. At least it is to me. I’m sure there’s a clown or two on Facebook who shoots quarter-inch groups offhand in the rain at 500 yards with his .35 Whelen (it’s always a guy, never a gal, making those insane claims), but for a geezer like me shooting iron sights, this ain’t bad for the second time I’ve had this rifle on the range. You can bet there will be more.

You might be wondering: Why not just go with a full-bore, factory-equivalent load? I’m way ahead of you there. I’ve got a hundred rounds of factory-level .35 Whelen loads ready to go with 200-grain and 250-grain jacketed Hornady bullets (well, now it’s 97, as three of them went through that target you see above). Me? I’m on a quest to develop a decent reduced load for this rifle and I am making good progress. I can shoot the full bore stuff later; for now, the reduced load quest continues. I’ve got good results with the jacketed 158-grain Hornady pistol bullets; when the Montana 200-grain cast bullets arrive, I’ll let you know how they work.

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Star Primer Pickup Tubes: A Story Within A Story!

Like the title says, this is a story within a story. It’s about using primer pickup tubes with my resurrected Star reloader, and how Lady Luck smiled on me yet again.

First, a bit of background. There are a few approaches in the reloading world for transferring primers from the primer box into the reloader. In our general series on reloading, I showed how to use the Lee primer tool, which is what I generally use when I’m loading on a single stage press like my RCBS Rockchucker. Another approach is to use a primer pickup tube and a primer tray. See, the deal is that you don’t want to touch the primers with your bare fingers. You might get skin oils on the primer, and that could make the primer inert. As explained earlier, in this game, you want all the primers to be “ert.”

The first step is to transfer primers from the box they come in into a primer tray, like you see below.

That green circular deal on the left in the photo above is the primer tray. It consists of a base and a lid. You take the lid off and drop the primers into the base, like you see below.

When you do that, though, invariably some of the primers will face up and some will face down. We want them all facing down in the tray’s base, and we get that by jiggling the base. There are little circumferential ridges molded into the base, and when you jiggle the tray, it makes all the primers face down (see below).

Get ready for more cleverness here, folks. What we do next is put the lid back on the primer tray, invert it, and then remove the base from the lid. That leaves us with the lid, and all the primers in it are facing up (see below).

At this point, we pick up the primers from the tray using a primer pickup tube like you see in the photo below.

The tube you see in the photo above is an RCBS primer pickup tube. It’s a hollow tube with a spring catch on one end and a spring clip on the other. What you do is take that tube and push it down (spring end down) on top of each primer. That stacks the primers, one on top of the other, in the tube. Then you invert it over the primer magazine on the Star reloader, remove the spring clip, and all the primers in the pickup tube drop into the Star’s primer magazine.

Star reloaders originally had a brass primer pickup tube, but that didn’t come with the one I have. I’m not complaining; my Star reloader was free. And I figured I’d just use an RCBS primer pickup tube, because I knew had three or four of those stashed away somewhere. But I couldn’t find the things. Then I remembered I had put a bunch of reloading odds and ends in a 50 cal ammo can somewhere, and I went through maybe 10 ammo cans before I found it. I used the RCBS primer pickup tube and I had to hold it carefully in alignment with the Star’s primer magazine when transferring the primers from the inverted tube, pulling the pin, and letting the primers fall into the Star brass primer magazine. It worked just fine. It wasn’t the original Star gear, but hey, you go to war with the Army you have.

After I did that, I went on to other things. I thought I was doing pretty good, you know, finding those RCBS primer pickup tubes, but the box they were in kept playing over and over again in my mind. Something was tickling the neurons, but I didn’t know what it was. Then it hit me. I remembered earlier in the day when I took the RCBS primer pickup tube out of the box. I could see it clearly in my mind:

There were two other brass primer pickup tubes in that box. In my eagerness to get the RCBS primer pickup tubes (the ones I was looking for), I reached right over the brass tubes. Could it be? I put that stuff away a decade ago, way before I ever had the Star.

I went back to that box immediately, and son of a gun, there were not one, but two Star original brass primer pickup tubes. Two! I think they came from Sue’s Dad before he passed away more than 10 years ago (he was a reloader, too), and I got a lot of his old bits and pieces. He never had a Star reloader that I ever saw, but he must have latched onto these two primer pickup tubes somewhere along his journey through life. How about that?

So, back to the story du jour…and more of the Star folks’ cleverness. Star used a slightly different approach than did RCBS. For starters, they made a cross cut in the pickup end of their primer pickup tubes to give the spring tension needed to hold the primers in the tube.

I started picking up a batch of primers from the primer tray lid with my newly-discovered Star primer pickup tube.

When you get that last one, you push it the rest of the way in with a probe (not your finger). With apologies in advance for the inadequate photo depth-of-field, here’s what the last primer looks like in the Star tube.

Then you invert the tube, so all the primers are at the other end. The spring clip keeps them from falling out. There’s a flange on the end of the Star primer pickup tube. It interfaces with the Star reloader’s primer magazine to keep the primer pickup tube aligned with the primer magazine tube.

Here’s the top end of the Star reloader’s primer magazine, with the primer follower in place. I removed it and placed the primer pickup tube on top.

At this point, I then removed the spring clip, and all the primers that were in the primer pickup tube transferred (gravity feed!) into the primer magazine.

So there you have it. The Star is up and running, and I’ll post about cleaning up a few more details on this magnificent old machine in the next Star blog. Stay tuned!

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Read the rest of the Star reloader resurrection here!

Jeff’s Guest Blog

We love guest blogs. This is one from good buddy Jeff, who rides a BMW with his teddy bear Jay. It came about from a comment Jeff made on one of Gresh’s blogs, and in that comment he included his YouTube channel address. Being a curious sort, I went there and I was blown away by the content and the quality. One that caught my eye immediately was on Utah’s Highway 12, which runs from just east of Bryce Canyon National Park to Capitol Reef National Park. I’ve ridden it several times, and I believe it is perhaps the finest motorcycle road in America. The Highway 12 video is posted at the end of Jeff’s guest blog, along with a link for his YouTube channel. And with that, let’s get to the main attraction. Over to you, Jeff!

Jay is a teddy bear and my constant companion. I’m a guy. And 58 years old. How did this happen?!?

Usually this sort of personal revelation involves a phrase like “…Well, there was tequila involved, ok?” or something like that. For once in my life that was not the case.

I started riding motorcycles in college. I was born and raised Mennonite, so a red 1978 Yamaha XS 400 got me a lot of attention at a Mennonite school. I was hooked!

40 years later I’m riding more than ever. In 2011 I moved to Salt Lake City, UT and met the Lovely Laura the 4th day I was here. We’ve been together ever since.

Very early on in our relationship I gave Jay to Laura as a gift. Her family didn’t know about me yet. Her Mom was born and raised Mormon and dating a man with a MOTORCYCLE just wasn’t done in the 50’s and 60’s. Luckily I caught her daughter at a weak moment, so occasionally I’d steal Jay (we didn’t call it breaking and entering) and take him on adventures.

It would be 2 p.m. and Laura would be in a meeting somewhere and her phone would ding. There on her phone would be a picture of Jay having some grand adventure in Park City, UT, or having a beer at one of our favorite restaurants. Once he even went to Las Vegas! I loved making her smile like that.

When it came time to ride home to Indiana for my girls’ graduation from high school and college, one of my daughters asked, “Well, is Jay coming too?” – and so started Jay’s first Big Adventure.

Packing for 3 weeks on the road left no room for Jay in my luggage, so I strapped him to the side of the duffel bag I had strapped to the back seat. What I learned, was that when a motorcycle goes by a sleepy driver in a car at, say, something approaching triple digits, if I ran across them at a gas stop, they were rarely pleased. But with Jay along it always started a conversation instead. From that moment on, he always traveled with me and it got to be my ‘thing’.

I have been a driving instructor for BMW, Porsche, Ferrari, and a host of other groups for over 35 years with over 15,000 racetrack miles and a quarter million street miles. I joined a bunch of sport-bike groups to ride with here in Salt Lake City and invariably I’d get these strange looks showing up for a canyon ride.

“Dude! Who invited Grandpa on the touring bike? OMG he’s got a teddy bear with him!”

After blowing them all off in the twisties, I slowly earned their respect. In the pre-ride bench racing sessions, it would all go great until one of them would say, “Uh oh, Jay’s back!” For a fuzzy little bear, he has serious ‘street cred’.

Anyway, in 2017 the stars aligned, and I planned the trip of a lifetime. I decided to ride from Salt Lake City to Los Angeles, CA to dip my toes in the Pacific Ocean and then head east to repeat the toe-dip in Portsmouth, NH, not far from my twin sister. The ride was dedicated to raising awareness for the Alzheimer’s Association as by now Laura was the Director of Development for the State of Utah. Jay and I stopped at Alzheimer’s Association offices all across the USA. That trip is documented on our Instagram page #jaysbigadventure.

I’ve always enjoyed helping people with car and motorcycle maintenance and started our youtube.com channel to continue to teach people about cars, motorcycles and to raise awareness for the Alzheimer’s Association’s fight to cure this terrible disease. It is the only one of the top six killers in the USA that has no treatment, no cure, and no way to manage or control the symptoms.

Therefore, the end credits of every one of my videos has contact info to help people learn that there is help not only for the sufferers, but the supporting caregivers as well. 100% of their services are free.

Nine years ago, buying Laura a cute bear at a BMW dealership, I had no idea what a profound change he would bring to my life. I can’t wait to see what he comes up with over the next 9 years!

Jeff, that’s an awesome story. Our readers, Joe Gresh, and I thank you for sharing it with us.

Here’s the Highway 12 YouTube video I mentioned above:

Jeff and Jay’s YouTube channel is here. I subscribed to it; you might want to consider doing the same.

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A TJ Roscoe

Roscoe: It’s slang for a snubnose revolver. No one is really sure where the term originated. There are others…heater, rod, piece, burner, gat (that last one is easy, with me knowing a little bit about The Gatling Gun and all), but the origins of most of these terms are lost in the haze of handgun history. And on that Roscoe terminology, I recently tumbled onto a very cool website I’ll be talking about a bit more here on the ExNotes blog. But that’s for later. This blog is about my Roscoe.

It’s a Model 60 (no dash) stainless steel Smith and Wesson snubbie, to be specific. I mentioned it and the work my good buddy TJ was doing to it not too long ago, and it’s back. And it’s awesome. I had TJ do an action job, a little cosmetics work, and fix a problem or two.

First, the action work. TJ lightened both the double and single action trigger pull, and he did it the old-fashioned way…lots of hand work, polishing, and fitting. Here’s what the guts of my Model 60 look like after a TJ Level 1 action job:

I initially thought I’d have TJ put a high polish on the entire revolver (it would have been something north of $300 just for that work), but TJ was looking out for my best interests. “I can do the whole revolver,” TJ said, “but it will look a lot better if you just have me do the ejector rod, the cylinder, the trigger, the cylinder release, and the hammer.” He was right. It looks awesome.

Here are a few more shots of the high polish TJ put on these components.

The work on the trigger is lot more than just cosmetic. TJ recontoured the face of the trigger in addition to polishing it, and it really makes a difference in double action shooting. It’s much easier to find and control that precise instant when the hammer drops during double action shooting with the new trigger contour.

As part of the Level I action job, TJ also applied orange Day Glo to the front sight. It’s a small touch that works wonders. Finding and putting the front sight on target is much faster with this Day Glo treatment. It’s not just a cosmetic thing.

I mentioned in a previous blog that the revolver was hard to open, and TJ found and fixed the root causes of that problem. The ejector rod threads had stripped, the ejector rod’s axis wasn’t concentric to the bore, and the barrel underlug catch was not properly configured. My Model 60 opens and closes the way it should now. It’s slick.

Here’s another small detail I like…polishing the cylinder release and its slotted nut (it’s not a screw, even though it looks like one). This little bit adds a nice touch to the revolver.

The grips are smooth rosewood, and they work well with their S&W emblems against the stainless steel revolver. I like the look.

So, on to the main question: How did the TJ-customized Model 60 shoot? Superbly well, thank you. I tried two loads with the new-to-me Model 60. The first was the 148-grain wadcutter with 2.7 grains of Bullseye; the second was a 158-grain cast truncated flat point bullet with the same 2.7 grains of Bullseye. I loaded both on my new-to-me freebie Star progressive reloader. Yep, the Star is up and running now, and how it works will be a story for a future blog (in the meantime, you can read about the Star resurrection here).

I fired four targets at 50 feet and the results are interesting. The first two targets were with the 148-grain wadcutter load (I use an Alco silhouette that has four small silhouettes on a single target sheet).

I shot the target on the left with a 148-grain Missouri double-ended wadcutter bullet; the one on the right is with a Hornady swaged 148-grain hollow base wadcutter bullet. I’ll tell you more about those in a bit.

Before TJ did any work on my Model 60, the gun printed wadcutter groups a good 12 inches to the right (good if you want to hit your bad guy in the elbow, I suppose). After TJ fixed the ejector rod issue I described above, the wadcutter bullets still shot a little bit to the right, but much less than they had before. That rightward bias is a function of the load, not the gun (as you’ll see in the next set of targets).

The really good news is how the Model 60 performed with the 158-grain truncated flat point bullets. Those puppies shot exactly to point of aim, and after warming up with the first group on the left target below, I got serious about focusing on that beautiful Day Glo front sight and shot the group you see on the right target. Point of aim was at 6:00, and for a 2-inch barrel Roscoe, that ain’t bad shooting.

If you’re not familiar with all this wadcutter and truncated flat point bullet business, here’s your lesson for the day. Let’s call it Bulletology 101.

The brass cartridge on the left is loaded with a Missouri 148-grain DEWC (double ended wadcutter) cast bullet; the nickel-plated 38 Special cartridge to its right is loaded with a Hornady 148-grain swaged hollow base wadcutter (HBWC). The Missouri DEWC bullets are symmetrical (they’re the same top and bottom); the Hornady HBWC bullets have (as the name implies) a hollow base (you can see those bullets in the center of the photo above, one inverted and the other right side up). The idea behind a wadcutter bullet is that it punches a clean hole in the target (that makes it easier to score). The two bullets on the right side of the photo above are 158-grain cast truncated flat points. I have a local caster make these for me.

I am enjoying my Model 60 and the custom work TJ did on it, but I’ll tell you what…this puppy bites. The recoil is significant (even with the lighter 148-grain wadcutter loads), and I’m a guy used to shooting big bore handguns. That little .38 Special cartridge is nothing to sneeze at (Elmer Keith, Dirty Harry, and all the rest of the bigger-is-better gunsels notwithstanding).

For a defense gun, I can live with Roscoe’s recoil (it’s not a handgun I would put 100 rounds through during a range session, though). For all you keyboard commandos out there, I know, I know. You can do that all day long. I can, too, with a 1911. But this little Chiefs Special is a handful, and after firing 5 or 6 groups, I’ve had enough. Your mileage may vary. I know, too, that if I put the Pachmayr-style oversize rubber grips on it, it would be more manageable (and I own a pair of those). But then it wouldn’t look like it does now, and I love that look.

Hey, there’s more to this story…TJ also did a little work on my Compact 1911. The latest improvements on the Compact 1911 are coming up in a future blog, so stay tuned!

More Tales of the Gun are here!

Want silhouette targets for your next trip to the range? Don’t pay exorbitant range prices. Get them here.

Custom grips for a snubbie Smith and Wesson? Take a look here!
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Want to turn your handgun into a one-of-a-kind combat companion? You don’t need to live out here; TJ’s work is carried daily by law enforcement officers (and others whose lives depend on their sidearms) all over the world. Here’s where you need to go to get started:

Tuk Tuks for Troublemakers!

There’s something about 3-wheeled utility vehicles that interfere with our brainwaves. They’re cool and most of us want one. Let me give you few quick examples.

When Gresh and I rode across China on RX3 250cc motorcycles, we started with a tour of the Zongshen plant in Chongqing. It was just the beginning of what was one of the grandest adventures of my life, and we met a lot of great guys over there, including Sergeant Zuo, a retired Chinese Army NCO who was to be our ride captain. That’s Sergeant Zuo in the video below.

Chongqing is exotic in many ways (think foreign city, 34 million people living in 80-story apartment buildings spread across a rolling and lush green landscape, incredible dining experiences, and one of the largest motorcycle manufacturers on the planet). More exotica? A tour of the Zongshen R&D facilities and a sneak preview of what was in the works (I rode the RX4 while it was still a concept, and we saw the new 400cc twin mocked up in clay). The vehicle that really lit Gresh’s candle, though, was a three-wheel 500cc diesel trike utility truck (it’s the one you see in the large photo above). “I have to get me one of these,” Gresh said, in tones that intimated an impending orgasm (that’s inference on my part, as I’ve never actually heard Gresh in such a situation, at least that I know of, and I’d like to keep it that way).

I mean, that yellow trike was nice, but Gresh’s reaction to it floored me. While I was still at CSC Motorcycles, Gresh was relentless in his full-court press to get me to get CSC to import the things. Go figure.

Next up? That would be a very recent Facebook post by good buddy Jackie showing a new passenger three-wheeler, no doubt intended to meet the pressing demand for tuk tuks (that’s what they’re called in the third world). I immediately asked Jackie what the powerplant would be (it’s an internal combustion engine for now, with an electric one slated for a follow-on version).

I shared the Zongshen post on my Facebook feed, and it drew an immediate response from good buddy Colorado Dan. He wants one. Maybe I could have predicted that…Dan is a guy who has an Enfield Bullet, a Ural, and a couple of Zongs in his garage. And a friendly moose or two in his backyard. Like the cannibals say, there’s no accounting for some people’s tastes, I guess.

I’ve sort of been bit by the bug, too. When Juan, Carlos, and I were assaulting the Andes in Colombia a few years ago, we stayed in a very rustic hotel on the outskirts of beautiful downtown Barichara (it’s pronounced Bah-de-chah-da, with the accent on the first syllable). Juan called a taxi to take us to dinner (it had been a long day on the bikes). I suppose I was expecting some sort of bright yellow sedan to appear, but nope, it was a little tuk tuk. All four of us squeezed in, and we all laughed like madmen on the ride down. It was a downhill ride and that little one-lunger didn’t have to work very hard (gravity is your friend going downhill), but while we were laughing, I was wondering how the thing would do bringing us back up that steep mountain. A couple of hours and an outstanding Italian dinner later, I found out. We could feel every stroke of that little tuk tuk’s motor on the climb up, and we laughed even harder. It was a fun evening.

Then there was Bangkok. Ah, Bangkok. It’s unquestionably one of the most exotic cities in the world. I’d seen these tuk tuks all over Bangkok, but I’d never been in one. It was a character flaw I aimed to correct. The video is a bit long at 16 minutes, but hey, you won’t have to suffer the 17-hour flight in a middle seat to get there (like I did). Just imagine 100-degree temps and humidity that’s off the charts, and you’ll have the compleat Thai tuk tuk travel experience.

9mm Jacketed Bullet Comparo

Back in January I tested a bunch of 9mm cast bullet loads in the three handguns you see above: A SIG P226 Scorpion, a Smith and Wesson Model 659, and the Springfield Armory 1911 Target. For that test series (you can read it here), all the loads used the Missouri 125-grain cast roundnose bullet with different powders and different charge weights. My cast bullet testing showed the SIG to be the most accurate, followed by the Springfield and then the Smith and Wesson Model 659.

I promised an update with jacketed bullets to assess accuracy and functionality of all three handguns (and to find favored accuracy loads for each). It took a while, but I finally got around to making good on that promise this past week. The six different loads I tested for the jacketed 9mm test series are summarized below:

Actually, the term “jacketed” doesn’t really apply to the Xtreme bullets (they are copper plated, not copper jacketed). The Armscor bullets are brass jacketed. Both the Winchester and Speer bullets are copper jacketed bullets. As you can see from the table above and the photos below, the Xtreme, Armscor, and Winchester bullets were of the roundnose configuration. The Speer 147-grain bullets were jacketed flatnosed bullets. I didn’t try any hollow points in this test series; I prefer roundnose bullets in my 9mm handguns. They are reliable.

All groups were 5 shot groups. I shot a total of 360 rounds in the two test series (both the jacketed and cast bullet accuracy tests).

While I was shooting last week, I was a little disappointed. I thought I had done a lot better with the cast bullets back in January. I thought my jacketed groups were larger when I eyeballed the targets, but you never really know until you measure the groups.

9mm jacketed bullets on an Alco target. I like using the Alco target that has four mini-silhouettes on a single target. All testing was at 50 feet.

When I returned home, measured the group sizes, and tabulated the results, I was surprised. The results of the jacketed and plated bullets were not too different from what I had achieved with the cast bullets almost a year ago. Take a look:

The most surprising finding, for me, was that the average results with the jacketed bullets (versus the cast bullets) were almost identical. Here’s that data extracted from the above, shown in a table that makes it a little easier to make the comparison:

My testing showed essentially the same results for the three handguns I tested whether I used cast bullets or jacketed bullets: The SIG P226 Scorpion is the most accurate (it is a magnificent handgun), followed by the Springfield Armory 1911, followed by the Smith and Wesson 659. It doesn’t matter whether it’s with cast or jacketed bullets: The averages are eerily similar for each gun, with a very slight accuracy advantage going to the cast bullets for the SIG and the 1911, and a very slight accuracy advantage going to the jacketed bullets for the Smith 659. But the differences between jacketed and cast bullets are so small they can be ignored. Cast bullets are usually a lot less expensive than jacketed bullets, so this is good knowledge.

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More Tales of the Gun are here.

Pffffft…Bond…James Bond

Like everyone else on the planet except the nefarious bastards of SMERSH and SPECTRE, we mourn the passing of Sean Connery, the great talent who defined and was the ultimate Bond. James Bond. Checking out at age 90, Sir Sean lived a long life. With that many years and many wonderful roles under his belt, he got his money’s worth, I think. So did we, speaking as one among hundreds of millions of people lucky enough to enjoy his work. Still, it was tough to hear of his passing.

That poster of Sean Connery above? A lot of gunsels may not know this, but the iconic early James Bond movie posters showed Sean Connery armed with…a pellet gun. A Walther LP53, to be specific. Take a good look, and then look at this photo of my Walther.

I’ve owned my Walther for a lot of years (I wrote an ExNotes blog on it a year or two ago that tells a more complete story of the Bond connection, with a bit of pellet pistol bragging rights thrown in for good measure).

Rest in peace, Mr. Connery, and thanks for the many good stories you brought to us.

Comments, bitching, and more

Gresh’s most recent blog (The 5 Stupidest Ideas in Motorcycling) really lit up the blogosphere yesterday. It’s a piece that got thousands and thousands of pageviews and a ton of comments. Gresh, you see, likes to stir the pot. And he’s pretty good at kicking beehives. We motorcycle riders are opinionated folks with big egos and prominent buttons that Gresh knows how to push. It makes for an entertaining mix.

We share a lot of our stuff with targeted Facebook groups (Big Tech lets us do so as long as it’s not anything from that Vinnie Bobulinski guy about Hunter Biden), and the Facebook comments were, well…let’s just say they were entertaining. Here are a few (spelling, punctuation, capitalization, and other errors included so you get the full keyboard commando impact). With that as an intro, here we go.

Written by a Luddite

I agree with the one piece riding suites lol, but I like everything else

Damn, dude. Just ride your own ride. Who cares what others do to enjoy their ride?

This read is more like a crybaby session than a useful blog article lol

He ain’t wrong…….

Fine article written by the worlds last typewriter repair man…

Total angry old man afraid of tech?

I feel “stupider” for even trying to read this crying, bitching, moaning “article”….

My Harley has all the technology this guy hates except the info system and intercom, and I’m glad it does.. Really don’t care with this dbag thinks

The author of that article is full of it. Seriously, what’s wrong with him?

Sounds like someone is jealous that the world and technology have moved on without them.

A couple of possible solutions are:
1. Intensive training in technology and joining a Technophobic support group.
2. Sticking to 20 year old bikes.
3. Harley still makes quite a few models that are still technological dinosaurs… I think even Royal Enfield has ABS these days on all their current models.

Leather one-piece suits are the greatest thing the motorcycling world has adopted. If you stow your clothes in your saddlebags and leave the ankles unzipped, you can just pee while you ride and it’ll funnel everything to the road where it belongs. Unzip the neck for some airflow and you’ll be riding dry in less than an hour.

Good list.

i think he is right

There’s been more than one occasion where an idiot made a left in front of me, and only the locking of the tires and slewing the bike sideways saved me.
ABS would have had me t-boning the car…

Kind of agree woth #5 but everything else this guy says is BS

Very bored ,angry little man😂🤣

I said I’d never be old enough to need a fairing or a radio. Now I wouldn’t be without either one of them. My aftermarket TPMS is a great item, especially with saddlebags, wouldn’t be without that either now.
This guy left out the kickstand, his attitude eliminates the need for that stupid gadget. Real men know they can use their helmet and save all that weight and eliminate the possibility of it catching on a log when bouncing through the woods.

Sound like someone is jealous of my Goldwing.

A boomer wrote this list.

I agree on both the ABS and the keyless ignition. Especially when they only give you one key fob. 😖

Wow … my grandad has a moto page. Who knew?

I have no experience with the ABS systems, key thingy, or one piece suits. I disagree with the comm systems, mine has made my wife and I’s two- up experience tremendously more enjoyable. My peeves are underglow lighting, and stereos. Stereos don’t belong on bikes. I can see how someone might enjoy having one, but for God’s sake man, turn that shit off when group riding. I don’t want to hear your crappy music. I usually just quietly peel off the group and go away if someone is blasting thier latest Gwar song.

Thank goodness. Thought there was going to be a debate on oil again.

Old bloke moaning warning

Absolutely agree with you.

This article may be the stupidest thing I’ve seen in motorcycling

What an absolutely stupid list. Clearly written by a technophobic, Luddite, Boomer troll.

Get off my lawn!!

Wow whoever wrote that just dated themselves . Somebody got old and refused to go with the times . All these innovations made motorcycling better . And complaining about abs for off-road use is just lazy writing : a) modern bikes have off-road abs that work amazing in the dirt ! B) abs saved probably hundreds of thousands of life’s

And this last one, which is my favorite:

It’s Joe Gresh. Nuff said…

Want more Gresh? Hey, we’ve got it! Check out the Gresh articles, the Resurrections, and our Product Reviews pages!

A TJ tune for my Model 60

I had trouble selecting a title for this blog. The other contender was 50 Shades of Gray to go with the big photo you see above. I wish I could say I took that photo, but the credit goes to good buddy and master gunsmith TJ. TJ is the best pistolsmith there is, and one of the things that makes working with him so enjoyable is his photography. When TJ works a custom gun project, he photodocuments it to keep you appraised of what’s going on, and a couple of the photos you see here are the ones he sent to me on my Model 60 project. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me back up a bit.

If you follow the blog (and you all do, right?), you’ve been watching the Star reloader resurrection project I’m working. That’s coming along nicely, and I’m already making .38 Special ammo on my resurrected reloader. This story started with my noticing an ad in my gun club newsletter for a Model 60 at a killer price. I’m normally not a snubnose kind of guy, but hey, a deal’s a deal and I like the idea of a snubnose .38. Maybe I watched too many cop shows in the ’50s and ’60s. You know. Cannon, Kojak, Hawaii 5-0, 77 Sunset Strip, Dragnet…you get the idea. All those guys carried snubbies.

Anyway, the Model 60 was a good deal, but swinging the cylinder out to the side was a bit dicey…sometimes it wanted to stick. The seller told me about that but I didn’t see it as a problem. I saw it as an opportunity to do another project with good buddy TJ, and that’s what I’m doing. TJ is doing his Level 1 action job for me (polishing all the internals and lightening both the double and single action trigger pulls), and I’m having him also put a mirror finish on the cylinder, the ejector rod, the cylinder release, the trigger, and the hammer. It will make for a nice, subtle contrast with the brushed stainless finish on the rest of the gun. That leaves only the grips, and I’m doing something about those, too. TJ put into words what I was thinking, and that was that the stock grips (the ones you see above) are butt ugly (pardon the gun pun).

Back in the day Smith used to offer uncheckered rosewood grips, and that’s what I really wanted. They don’t sell those any more, though, and I mentioned to TJ that I should have bought a set back in the ’70s. You know, just in case. “Try E-Bay,” TJ said, and I did. I hit paydirt almost immediately, and the grips you see below are on their way to me now. Rosewood. Smooth. Just what I wanted.

The finish on my inbound grips may be a little funky, but that’s another opportunity, too. It’s TruOil time, folks. TruOil and a little patience will have these grips looking literally better than they did when they left the S&W factory in Springfield.

The Star reloader is operational now (I’ll show you more on the Star resurrection in upcoming blogs, and I’ll include a video that shows it making finished ammo). I’ll have the Model 60 back in a few days, so I went ahead and loaded a box of ammo with the outstandingly accurate 158-grain cast bullets I get from my good buddy Roy. It took only a few minutes on the Star (it would take closer to an hour on a single-stage press). For a machine that’s probably older than I am, the Star sure does a good job.

When I take my custom snubbie .38 to the range, I’ll grab a few photos and share a range report with you here on the ExNotes blog. Stay tuned, my friends, and keep your powder dry.

More Tales of the Gun!

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