Susie and I were up in the Santa Clarita area last week and we thought we would attempt to find the St. Francis Dam site. A quick Google search brought us to a map, we took a right off I-5 at the 126, and we soon found ourselves on San Francisquito Canyon Road. Wow, after a bit of the burbs it grew rural real fast. I know great roads, and folks, this is one. San Francisquito Canyon Road is an awesome set of twisties, one I plan to return to soon on my motorcycle.
An amazing road, San Francisquito Canyon Road was, and there was a lot more of it. I’ll be back, and I’ll be back on two wheels.
We were only traveled a few miles when we came upon a large art deco building (an LA Department of Water and Power plant). We had arrived.
LA DWP’s Plant 2, an art deco hydroelectric generation facility on San Francisquito Road. The three huge pipes behind it carry water from the California aqueduct system.
The DWP building was magnificent, and when we parked, we found this plaque:
There you have it: The story, the plaque, and the location. We had arrived. Everything was behind a chain link fence, but it was still very cool. I’m going to guess the concrete behind the plaque is from the St. Francis dam. We were standing where the wall of water released by the dam had passed.A timeline of events leading up to the St. Francis Dam disaster of 1928.
As the plaque said, we were a mile and a half from where the actual dam had stood, so we continued north on San Francisquito Canyon Road. The building (the one in the photo above) is a replacement…the original power plant was swept away when the dam collapsed. I would think so; when the dam collapsed it released a 10-story tall 12 1/2 billion gallons of water.
We didn’t see the actual dam; the Internet told us it was a 5-minute hike east of the road (you can’t drive to it), and according to what we read, there’s not much of the dam left. We drove north a little further and saw the dirt road leading to the site, but there was a gate and it was closed. Maybe next time.
I was very intrigued by San Francisquito Canyon Road, and I wanted to know where it went. I found this satellite photo map on Google:
The bottom arrow points to LA DWP Plant 2, the building you see in the photo at the top of this blog. The upper arrow points to our turnaround point. The site I found on the Internet said you can park there and hike to the actual dam site. The distance from one arrow to the other is about a mile and a half. The other roads shown in this photo are all dirt.
From the map, I could see that continuing north on San Francisquito Canyon Road would brings us to Elizabeth Lake Road, and from there it’s Lake Hughes Road south to get back to Interstate 5 near Castaic. The little bit we did on San Francisquito Canyon Road showed it to be a great road. I had ridden Elizabeth Lake Road on previous motorcycle rides (without realizing how close I was to the St. Francis Dam disaster site). On the map, Lake Hughes Road appears to be even twistier than San Francisquito Canyon Road, and it looks like it would be a great ride.
My planned motorcycle ride: East at CA 126 off I-5, northeast on San Francisquito road to Elizabeth Lake Road, and then south on Lake Hughes Road. It’s going to be a good one.
I’m going to return to this area on my motorcycle and do the ride you see above. It’s going to be great, and you’ll read about it right here.
Well, it’s over…the auction for the Mustang used in the Steve McQueen movie Bullitt, the very car used in what is unquestionably the greatest chase scene ever filmed. It set a new record for American muscle car sales. I saw both Mustangs used in Bullitt at a Warner Brothers event celebrating the life of Bud Ekins (that story is here), and they were undeniably cool.
The Bullitt Mustang. Yeah, it was cool. I shot this photo in 2007.
My good buddy and friend-since-grade-school Ralph predicted the Bullitt Mustang would go for over three million dollars, and he was right. Surprisingly, that’s not the highest price ever paid at auction for an American car. A Duesenberg sold for something around $22 million a while back. That’s a bit more than what Gresh and I make on the ExNotes blog. Quite a bit more, actually.
I saw Bullitt when it first played back in the day (it was released in 1968), and I’ve probably watched it a dozen times since. My good buddy Richie and I drove into New Brunswick to see it at the RKO State movie theatre and it was electrifying. The closest thing I’d ever seen to a chase scene that dramatic was the motorcycle chase in The Great Escape, and what do you know, Bud Ekins and Steve McQueen did the honors in that one, too.
Good buddy Kirk was at our favorite Mexican restaurant a few days ago and he graciously consented to a photo or two of his 1970 Corvette. It’s an awesome car.
I love old Vettes, and I think the C3 body style is one of the best. I also like the C1, the C2, the C4, the C5, and well, you get the idea. I like Corvettes.
Kirk’s Vette is from one of the lowest production years ever for the Corvette. Chevy went to the C3 body style in 1968, and Kirk told me that the ’68 and ’69 model years had so many problems that the car hit a sales trough in 1970. Today, that translates into increased rarity for the ’70 model and increased demand. Kirk’s car has the 350-cubic-inch motor and a three-speed Turbo Hydramatic transmission. It’s incredibly cool and I love the look of a silver Corvette.
The Corvette you see above is 50 years old this year. At that age, it could have its own midlife crisis, which is kind of funny as buying a Corvette is usually the result of guys having a midlife crisis. I had a silver Corvette that I kept for 14 years (I sold it a couple of years ago). It was a great car and I sometimes think about getting another one. Folks would always ask me if it was my midlife crisis car, and I always told them I sure hoped so. I bought it when I was 53 years old and I would like going for another 53 years.
Stainless steel barrel, Parkerized finish, fixed sights, checkered wood grips, arched mainspring housing…the Springfield Armory Mil Spec 1911 gets the nod for the 2020 Colin D. MacManus Award to be presented later this year to a graduating cadet in the Rutgers University Reserve Officers Training Corps. We reviewed the offerings from several 1911 manufacturers and I have personal experience with the .45 autos from many of them. The Springfield Armory Mil Spec 1911 is the clear winner from several perspectives, not the least of which are accuracy, reliability, and close adherence to the US Army 1911 configuration. I own a Springfield 1911, and three of my good buddies bought this exact model. One of them is my friend Greg, and I’ve seen his gun shoot one-hole, 5-shot groups at 50 feet. With any handgun, that’s as good as it gets.
The MacManus .45 shipped yesterday from the Springfield Armory factory, and it is on its way (through a New Jersey FFL, of course) to its new owner. We’ll write about that when it happens, so stay tuned!
Susie and I saw Jay Leno this weekend at the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts and he was great. The 90-minute show felt like it passed in a heartbeat, and I guess that’s the sign of greatness. I laughed so hard my sides hurt.
I’ve seen Jay Leno in person several times at motorcycle events over the last few years, and I was surprised when writing this blog at how many photos I had. He’s a regular at the Rock Store on Sunday mornings, and it was at the Rock Store where I first saw him in person. He had arrived on his Y2K Huey-helicopter-jet-engine motorcycle before I did, and I didn’t realize he was there until I heard the characteristic whine of the Huey engine when he fired up his bike to leave. It was pretty cool.
Jay Leno on his jet-powered Y2K motorcycle at the Rock Store.Another shot of Jay Leno on his Y2K. I didn’t realize it when I grabbed this quick photo, but I caught my own image in Jay’s faceshield.
On another occasion, good buddy Marty and I were at a Hansen Dam Britbike bike get-together. Most of the folks had already left for the classic bike run through the mountains when I saw this very classic vintage Excelsior enter the parking lot. I was focused on the bike, as I could see it was unrestored but still in very good condition.
An unrestored but pristine Excelsior Four. It was an impressive motorcycle.
I was snapping photos while the rider was still on the machine, with no idea who he was. When the helmet came off, though, there was Jay Leno. For a few minutes, it was just him and me. “Hi,” I said. I can be very articulate sometimes.
“Hi back,” Jay responded, and then the standup started, from a world famous comedian sitting on a nearly-80-year-old motorcycle. “It’s a ’36 Excelsior. I got a call from a 92-year-old guy in Vegas getting a divorce and he needed to raise cash,” Jay said.
“Really?” Like I said, I have a way with words. Leno just smiled and shook his head. It’s not often people can fool me, but if it’s going to happen, I guess if it’s Jay Leno it’s okay.
Jay Leno. Up close and personal at Hansen Dam. That motorcycle was unrestored.
On another occasion, good buddy Marty and I rode to an event celebrating the life of Bud Ekins, the guy who brought Steve McQueen into the motorcycle world and went on to become one of Hollywood’s greatest stunt drivers. Jay Leno was one of the speakers at this event (it was at Warner Brothers Studios), and I was able to get another photo.
Jay Leno speaking at Warner Brothers Studios. The guy on the left is Harvey Weinstein.
Here’s one last photo, and it’s another one at the Rock Store. When Jay Leno arrives, he’s always by himself and he’s immediately mobbed by folks wanting autographs and photos. That’s lasts for 15 minutes or so, Jay is always gracious, and then the crowd leaves to let him just poke around, looking at the bikes and making small talk like everyone else. What always impressed me was that Jay Leno is completely unpretentious. He’s just one of the guys. My good buddy Dave Walker and I had ridden to the Rock Store on our Harleys when Jay happened by, and I asked him if I could get a photo with Dave. Jay was on it in a New York minute, I probably took 20 photos, and Mr. Leno kept up a running banter the entire time.
After Jay left the Rock Store that day, I’m sure he spent the next several days telling folks he met Dave Walker.
I’ve seen Jay Leno a few other times when I didn’t grab photos, and he’s always the same nice guy, and he’s always good for a laugh. He is exactly the guy we used to see every night on the Tonight show. At the Love Run one year, he was the emcee and he asked if anyone had seen his buddy. “He’s wearing a Harley T-shirt, he has gray hair and a beard, and he’s got a pot belly…”
Jay is still out there and he’s still doing standup. And he’s still funny. If you ever get a chance to see him, take it. The guy does a great show, and it’s not an act. He’s the real deal.
Can you do that? Review a book that you wrote? Hey, Gresh and I write the blog. Why am I even asking?
The book is Unleashing Engineering Creativity, and it came about as the result of a course I teach on engineering creativity. The cover photo you see above popped up on my Facebook feed yesterday (there’s old Zuckerberg, thinking of me again). So I shared the picture, and somebody made a comment that they didn’t understand the photos.
Okay, here’s the deal. Paul Mauser is widely credited as the guy who invented the bolt action rifle, and as he told the story, the idea came to him when he observed a simple gate latch (like you see on the book cover above). That led to a long line of Mauser and other bolt action rifles (but Mauser was the first). The one in the photo above is a Modelo 1909 Argentino Mauser, arguably the best version ever of the famed Model 98 Mauser (I have one and it is phenomenally accurate). The gate latch? That came from Lowe’s. I bought it to shoot the above photo.
You might think that engineers sit around in white lab coats and think deep thoughts when they need to invent something. It actually doesn’t work that way. No engineer worth a damn sits around very much, and when we have to invent things on demand, we’re usually not very good at it. In most companies, engineers just spitball it. You know, what we euphemistically call brainstorming (it’s no accident that the initials are so appropriate; it’s not a very effective way to come up with new designs).
The bad news is that we (as human beings) are at our most creative when we’re about 5 years old, and we lose much of our natural creativity (over 90%, according to the experts) by the time we finish high school. More bad news is that our creativity continues to erode after that. Bad news indeed, but the good news is that there are a bunch of great techniques we can use to get our creativity back.
One such technique is called TRIZ. It’s an acronym for a bunch of Russian words I can’t pronounce, but basically it means we define the problem we are trying to solve and then we look into other areas in other fields to see how they solved the problem. Like Paul Mauser did when he invented the bolt action rifle. TRIZ is a little more complicated that, but you get the idea.
Unleashing Engineering Creativity has 17 different approaches for improving creativity. It’s an expensive book, but if you’re looking to make the next technological breakthrough, the book’s cost is trivial. Like I always tell people: Don’t wait for the movie. I suppose I could do a YouTube video on some of the concepts. Maybe later. That YooHoo review still needs doing.
Last year we wrote a blog about The Warning, a statue honoing two motor officers who came to be known as the Paul Reveres of Santa Paula. The statue was an unanticipated discovery on a motorcycle ride through Santa Paula, and it had my attention because it’s not the kind of monument you see every day.
The other night Sue and I were flipping through the movies on Amazon Prime, and to my great surprise one I had not seen before popped up: The Forgotten Tragedy: The Story of the St. Francis Dam.
You know, I’m embarrassed to admit that when I first saw that statue in Santa Paula 10 years ago, I had never heard of the St. Francis Dam and its collapse. I grew up on the east coast, and there’s a lot we never heard about back there. It took a little digging for me to learn about California’s second largest disaster ever (the only event involving greater loss of life in the Golden State was the San Francisco earthquake), so the idea of a movie on the St. Francis Dam and its collapse had my immediate attention. The Forgotten Tragedy is a documentary and it’s very well done. It even included a bit about the motorcycle officers in the above statue (although it only mentioned one).
Trust me on this, my friends. The Forgotten Tragedy: The Story of the St. Francis Dam is worth viewing.
It’s not every day you get to see a new 2020 Suzuki Katana for the first time, and it’s certainly not every day you get living legend and motojournalist extraordinaire Kevin Duke to take a photo of you standing next to it. Yesterday was that day for me, and the photo you see above was a shot Kevin grabbed of yours truly with the new Katana. I was visiting with the boys at CSC Motorcycles, Kevin was there, and he volunteered to let me take a ride on the Katana. I took a pass on that, but when he asked me to pose with the bike, hey, I figured Suzuki needs all the help they can get. Not that they need any from me. The new Katana is a stunning motorcycle. Visually arresting, I would call it.
We wrote about the 2020 Katana in our Dream Bikes series last year, and at that time, I mentioned that I owned one of the original Katanas in 1982. Mine was Serial Number 241 of the first batch of 500 Suzuki built.
There’s 38 years between those two photos. Wow, that’s a scary thought. I think me and my good buddy Jack Daniel’s will have a talk about that later tonight.
Yours truly with my Triumph Tiger in Palomar, about 200 miles south of the border along Baja’s Transpeninsular Highway. I had a little bit of hair back in the day, and it was still brown. What’s left now is mostly gray.
Wow, here’s a find…a bunch of older print photos from a Baja trip my old Baja buddy John Welker and I did back in 2006. Man, times were different back then. We both rode big road bikes and we were both working for a living. What a difference 14 years can make. It was a quick 1100-mile weekend ride to Bahia de Los Angeles in the Baja peninsula. John has a house on the Sea of Cortez down there. He still owns it, and he spends several months each year in Mexico. I took my Triumph Tiger for its first long ride, John took his Yamaha Virago, and we had a great time. I guess that goes without saying. Any motorcycle trip to Baja is going to be great.
A Mexican truck driver on the Transpeninsular Highway, who was actually pretty friendly.
We stayed in San Vincente on the way down. It’s a cool little agricultural town along the Transpeninsular Highway, one of many in the agricultural district north of El Rosario. We saw a guy trying to buy beer in the restaurant in San Vincente that Friday night. There was a BMW GS in the hotel parking lot and I asked if it was his. Yep, it was, and Peter introduced himself to me. The restaurant didn’t serve beer, but I went across the street to pick up a couple of sixpacks of Tecate. I asked Peter to join us for dinner, and he did. He’s from Canada (eh?), and he was touring Mexico and the US for a month or two.
Our new GS-mounted good buddy Peter in San Vincente, along with good buddy Annie. Peter said he was looking for a Starbuck’s and got lost. I think there may be a Starbuck’s down there now.That’s Deema, Annie, John, and Peter. It was a grand dinner. Deema and Annie drove down in Annie’s car on this trip.
On Saturday, the next morning, John and I ran into a fog bank about 250 miles south of the border. Visibility was so bad I couldn’t see the ground beneath me, so I pulled over to wait it out.
I grabbed this shot of my Triumph in the fog.And another. There was nothing else to do until the fog lifted. The Tiger was a very photogenic motorcycle.
Mexico’s Highway 1 (the Transpeninsular Highway) follows the Pacific coast and then turns inland at El Rosario. Mama Espinoza’s is a classic Mexican restaurant known for their lobster burritos. I had a chicken burrito for lunch and, as always, it was the best one I ever had. I made it a point to stop there on the way back the next day and I had the same thing.
We always feel welcome at Mama Espinoza’s.A sculpture outside Mama Espinoza’s.
South of El Rosario, it gets real desolate real fast. That’s the Valle de los Cirios, and it’s one of the prettiest spots on the peninsula. The roads are spectacular. Fast sweepers, long straights, and no traffic. There’s just the odd cow or wild burro in the road.
A typical view in the Valle de los Cirios.Another stop along the Transpeninsular Highway. The Triumph Tiger was a great machine for this kind of riding, especially with its comfortable riding position and a range exceeding 200 miles.
After the Valle de Los Cirios, it was desert down to Catavina and beyond. There are remote truck stops, lots of desert, and just great riding. I’ve got to get back down there again sometime soon.
A truck stop out in the middle of nowhere.We stopped briefly in Catavina, where John couldn’t tear himself away from this rather talkative guy. John and I have put a lot of miles on our motorcycles in Mexico. The scenery is great. The people you might are even more fun.
At Punta Prieta, after traveling on Highway 1 for about 360 miles, we made a left turn and headed east across the Baja peninsula.
This was our destination…Bahia de Los Angeles.Triumph called the Tiger’s color Caspian Blue, presumably named after the Caspian Sea. This wasn’t the Caspian Sea (it’s the Sea of Cortez), but I’d say the color match is pretty good.
John’s house on the Sea of Cortez. John picked a moonless weekend so that we could take in the stars, and the night sky was awesome.
Every motorcycle trip needs an obligatory artsy fartsy shot. This was mine from our 2006 Bahia de Los Angeles ride.
John’s house is literally right on the Sea of Cortez. It’s a pretty cool place.
Casa de Welker, on Bahia de Los Angeles.John telling a fish story in his front yard.Our dinner choice that Saturday night. The fish tacos were impressive, as was the Tecate. Life is good down there in Baja.
John keeps an old VW microbus in Bahia de Los Angeles that came with the house when he bought it. The lights on the VW didn’t work back in 2006 (I imagine John has them working now). We had dinner in town and realized the sun had set. No lights. No moon. Dirt roads through the Baja desert. We realized we were in a pickle. But, John had an idea. And a flashlight. Annie hung out the window with that flashlight and sort of lit the way. It was an old flashlight with a limp battery, and it didn’t really light up anything. But we didn’t care. It was a fun evening.
The original Baja bug. LIghts? We don’t need no stinkin’ lights!Candy, the Chihuaha from Peru. In Mexico. That little pup ran the show.A sculpture on John’s house.
There’s no light pollution down there in Bahia de Los Angeles. I slept on the roof and it was magnificent. I’ve never seen stars as vivid nor as plentiful as they were that night. And the next morning, I was up before sunrise, so I was able to set up my camera and get a cool photo of the sun rising over the Sea of Cortez.
A shot from John’s roof looking east over the Sea of Cortez.
I rode back the next morning by myself…John was staying at his place a couple of extra days, but I had to get back for work. Work. Man, those days seem so far in the past now.
The ride back was a good one. It’s nice to ride with friends; it’s also nice to ride on your own. I do some of my best thinking when I’m riding by myself. I need to do more of it.
I grabbed this shot in one of the agricultural towns along Highway 1 on the way back to the US.
I shot all of the photos on this page with my F5 Nikon, and the 24-120 Nikon and 17-35 Sigma lenses. Back in the day, as film cameras went the Nikon F5 was a good as it ever got, and I got a lot of great shots with that camera. The thing was a tank and I don’t think I would want to lug it around today, but back then it was really something.
So there you have it. I’ve got a standing invitation from Baja John to ride down to Bahia de Los Angeles, and as I put this blog together and looked at these photos again, I think that’s what I’m going to do.
Two 5-shot groups I shot with my Compact RIA 1911 at 50 feet this weekend. I love the load, I love the Rock 1911, and I love the Pachmayr grips. These little snubbie 1911s are surprisingly accurate.
It’s no secret I’ve become a big admirer of the .45 ACP Rock Island Compact 1911. I worked through literally thousands of rounds and a number of personal preferences on mine and about the only thing left to mess around with was the grips. The standard wood grips on the Compact are okay, but I wanted better. The best grips I’d ever tried on any 1911 are the ones made by Pachmayr, and that’s what I wanted for my Rock.
It had been quite a few years since I bought a set of Pachmayr grips, and when I searched for them online I found that they appeared under the Lyman site. So I called Lyman. I learned Lyman acquired Pachmayr about 20 years go (shows how much I know, I guess). The guy on the phone was nice and he was able to answer my question, which was would their shorter grips fit the Rock Island Armory Compact’s frame (and the answer was yes).
Good buddy Greg had also purchased a Rock Compact based on my raving about it, and after Greg shot mine, he immediately purchased one for himself. Greg’s 1911 is completely unaltered (it has not had the custom work I had done on mine by good buddy TJ), but it shoots just as well. I had a few issues on mine; Greg’s had no issues or failures of any kind with his Compact 1911.
I told Greg a couple of weeks ago that I had ordered a set of Pachmayr grips for my Rock, and he ordered a set, too. I was out of town, so Greg got to shoot his Pachmayr-equipped Compact first. One of the Pachmayr grip emblems fell off on Greg’s gun his first time at the range with the new grips. That was not a good start. Greg has another full-sized 1911 with Hogue grips and he likes those, so he ordered a set of Hogues for the Compact. The Hogue grips have finger grooves in them, and Greg likes that feature. I don’t, but hey, different strokes for different folks.
Greg’s RIA Compact with Pachmayr grips.On his first range session with the Pachmayr grips, one of Greg’s grip emblems popped out. Mine hasn’t done that.Greg’s Compact 1911 with Hogue grips. Note the finger grooves. Note also that there’s no emblem to fall out.
I’ve been shooting my Compact 1911 with the Pachmayr grips and I love them. They give me a better grip on the little 1911 and I think they make the gun easier to shoot. And wow, it sure shoots well, especially with that 185-grain SWC bullet and the Bullseye load. That’s my go to load for this gun.
Where I’m going with all this is that this weekend I was able to try both Compact 1911s; one with the Pachmayr grips (that’s my gun) and one with the Hogue grips (Greg’s gun). Both feel great, but for me, the Pachmayr grips get the nod. They’re what I’m used to, I don’t care for finger grooves, and I like the checkered texture of the Pachmayr style. My grip emblems are staying put, so I haven’t had the issue Greg (and others, if you poke around a bit on the Internet) have had with theirs.
I shot a few targets on this past cold and windy Sunday morning at 50 feet, and I continue to be amazed at just how accurate the Compact 1911 is with my newly-discovered accuracy load (and that’s a 185-grain cast semi-wadcutter bullet over 5.0 grains of Bullseye with a CCI 300 primer). Surprisingly, Greg’s Compact fed the SWC bullets just as well as mine (my gun is throated and polished; Greg’s is in “as delivered” factory condition).
The bottom line? Either set of aftermarket grips is good (both the Hogues and the Pachmayrs). You wouldn’t be making a mistake with either.
One more thought: I think it would be cool if Rock Island offered the Pachmayr grips as an option with an inlaid Rock Island Armory emblem. That would work for me, and I’d buy the first pair if they ever offered them.
Want to see more on the Rock Compact, reloading .45 ACP ammo, and other shooting topics? There’s more good stuff here: Tales of the Gun!
I love old Vettes, and I think the C3 body style is one of the best. I also like the C1, the C2, the C4, the C5, and well, you get the idea. I like Corvettes.
It’s not every day you get to see a new 2020 Suzuki Katana for the first time, and it’s certainly not every day you get living legend and motojournalist extraordinaire Kevin Duke to take a photo of you standing next to it. Yesterday was that day for me, and the photo you see above was a shot Kevin grabbed of yours truly with the new Katana. I was visiting with the boys at 
grips. These little snubbie 1911s are surprisingly accurate.
