Author: Joe Berk

Shoemaker Holsters

By Joe Berk

Back in the 1970s I was a falling plate competitor. That competition involved knocking over a set of steel plates at a relatively short distance, usually with something in .38 Special or .45 ACP.  In those days, nobody competed with a 9mm; the 9mm pistols had not made the inroads they enjoy today. A lot of guys competed with 1911s or modified K-frame S&Ws; I was a bit of an oddball and I used an N-frame Smith and Wesson .44 Magnum (with light .44 Specials, as the shot-to-shot recovery was faster and the .44 Special easily knocked the plates down). We shot from the ready position, with the gun held at an angle to the ground.  The video below gives you an idea what the falling plate game looks like:

There were variations of this competition. The most exciting one was a bowling pin competition, which involved clearing a half dozen bowling pins from a table. In that one, you needed a .44 or a .45; the .38 Special didn’t have the energy to clear a bowling pin off the table.  Both competitions were all about speed; whoever knocked all the plates over (or blew away all of the bowling pins) in the shortest time won.

Other similar competitions involved drawing the gun from a holster, and I wanted to shoot my AMT Long Slide Hardballer, a really cool 7-inch-barreled 1911. It’s the one Arnold Schwarzenegger used in Terminator.

An AMT (Arcadia Machine and Tool) Long Slide Hardballer. The story on it is here.

I needed a holster long enough to hold the Long Slide AMT 1911, and at that time there were none on the market. Other holsters could hold either 5-inch or 4 ¼-inch 1911s, but nobody had anything for the 7-inch AMT.  Hold that thought. I’ll come back to it shortly.

I’ve written about good buddy Mike here on the blog before. Mike and I have been buddies since junior high school. He went on to become Chief of the New Brunswick Police Department. We still talk every week. Mike deputized me a couple of times when he attended the International Association of Chiefs of Police conventions. I’d always ask for a gun, and the answer was always no.  But we had a lot of fun at those conventions.

The Director at the International Association of Chiefs of Police 2023 convention. I was his administrative assistant on that adventure. That story is here.

Mike called me last week. He was pumped up. He found his old New Brunswick Police Department duty holster from the days when they carried Heckler & Koch P7M8 9mm squeeze cocker semi-autos. That was the gun the New Jersey State Troopers adopted back in the ‘80s.

A New Jersey State Trooper Heckler & Koch P7M8 and its Tex Shoemaker holster.
The NJSP emblem embossed on the Tex Shoemaker holster.

The New Jersey State Police had custom holsters crafted for their handguns by the Tex Shoemaker company, a legend in the holster business. They also had Shoemaker emboss the NJSP emblem in the leather. Not to be outdone, the New Brunswick Police Department also adopted the Heckler & Koch P7M8 9mm semi-auto, and they, too went to Tex Shoemaker for holsters embossed with the NBPD emblem. Mike had one when he served, and it was this holster he recently found. The Tex Shoemaker H&K police duty holsters have become collectible items, with this particular model appearing on Ebay for $300. Mike is going to donate his to the New Brunswick Police Department Headquarters display case. I think that’s pretty cool.

Good buddy Mike’s Heckler & Koch P7M8 Tex Shoemaker holster.
The Heckler & Koch P7M8 holster with an embossed New Brunswick Police department emblem.

So I was thinking about this story and Mike’s holster and then I remembered: Hey, I have a Tex Shoemaker holster, and mine is brand new. The Tex Shoemaker company was located in San Dimas, which is not very far from my home. They closed up shop in 2019 (I’m assuming it fell victim to the pandemic, the move toward plastic holsters, and competition from the plastic holster manufacturers).  Whatever the reason, it’s a pity.  Shoemaker’s was an old line holster manufacturer started by Tex Shoemaker, a former lawman who started out making holsters in his garage.  Their quality was unsurpassed.

When I needed a quick draw holster for my anticipated pistol competition (as described at the beginning of this blog), I couldn’t find anyone in the ‘80s who was making a holster for the AMT Long Slide Hardballer. I searched the yellow pages for holster companies (this was all pre-Internet), and that’s when I learned that the Tex Shoemaker company was nearby. I called them and explained what I wanted. I spoke with a nice guy who told me he didn’t know of anybody making a holster for the Long Slide 1911, but Shoemaker was experimenting with a new break-front holster that would handle all 1911 barrel lengths. He explained that it wasn’t on the market yet, but I could swing by and take a look at it.

My AMT Long Slide in it’s Tex Shoemaker experimental holster.
The Tex Shoemaker logo.

Sue and I rode over to Shoemaker’s that day.  It was a factory and they didn’t have a retail facility, so I walked up to the loading dock, looked up at a guy standing above me, and explained why I was there. A minute later that same nice guy I had spoken with on the phone appeared with the holster he told me about on the phone. I had my Long Slide with me and we tried the big 1911 in it; the fit was perfect. He also had two magazine holders (together they could hold four magazines).  The holster was just what the doctor ordered, and I told him that even though it wasn’t commercially available yet, I’d like to buy it.  He smiled, gave all three items to me, and told me there was no charge.

The Tex Shoemaker holster is adjustable for draw angle. It’s a cool feature.
For normal carry, the pistol is secured with a cross strap.
For quick draw work, the cross strap is removed. The holster has a strong clamp spring inside the leather that secures the pistol. When drawn, the pistol can be snapped forward without withdrawing upward from the holster.
The Long Slide Hardballer, the Tex Shoemaker holster, and two Tex Shoemaker magazine holders.
The Tex Shoemaker logo on the back of a magazine holder.

I was shocked when that nice man told me there was no charge, and then I realized I didn’t even know who he was.  I introduced myself, and as we shook hands, he told me his name: Randy Shoemaker.  Randy Shoemaker was Tex Shoemaker’s son.

I never pursued quick draw competition.  I had visions of shooting myself in the foot, and it just wasn’t something I wanted to do.  But I sure enjoy owning my Tex Shoemaker leather.   Maybe someday, I’ll enter the Quick Draw McGraw games.   In the meantime, here’s an unashamedly doctored video of me playing around a few years ago at the West End Gun Club.

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Speaking of ExhaustNotes…

By Bob Orabona

Well….we’ve been having a little heat wave here in SoCal and I have been hanging around the house too much, so it was time to take the Harley Low Rider out for a little run.

My Low Rider when it was at the dealership in Minneapolis. I bought it about 4 years ago with 4,000 miles on the odometer.

I couldn’t do my usual run around the Palos Verdes peninsula due to the highway being closed to two-wheeled traffic. So I instead went the short way across the peninsula and then through the beach cities where it was nice and cool compared to the rest of Los Angeles.

I got through them all and was coming out of El Segundo and towards the airport and Westchester. On Sepulveda there’s a tunnel that goes under a runway at LAX and we call it, of course, the airport tunnel.

Some guys on bikes think of it as a tunnel and some think of it as a concert hall. Well, I kinda go both ways on that. But every time I get near it, I harken back to a memory of New Year’s Eve in 1972.  I was a teenager at the time and my best bud Dave Reimer called me at home and told me he was at a great party in El Segundo.  He offered to come by and pick me up (I had no wheels at that time). Dave showed up at my pad on a BSA 650 motorcycle he had borrowed from a friend. I jumped on and we headed out.

As we approached the tunnel from the Westchester side going to El Segundo Dave yelled back to me to hang on. He kicked it down a gear into 3rd and hit the throttle hard. We entered the tunnel going about 60mph and he banged 4th and hit the throttle hard and we were flying. The support columns just turned into a blur. There was a lot of great engine noise too. We came out the other end doing about 110mph!

What a kick! The things you do and get away with when you are young can be amazing. It was a great party and it is a favorite memory.

Today, in honor of my buddy Dave who left us about 15 years ago, I entered the tunnel in 3rd and laid down a little sweet Harley music with lots of throttle.   It was about as much as I could get away with considering traffic.

So, Dave, wherever you are just wanted to let you know I was thinking about you.

Thanks, Bob.  That’s a great story and we enjoyed reading it.  Remind me never to lend my motorcycle to any of your friends!

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Evel Knievel’s Snake River Canyon Jump

By Joe Berk

I grew up up in the Evel Knievel era.  It was a glorious time, the 1960s, and if you were a motorcycle freak (as I was and still am), there was no way you could not have heard of Evel Knievel, a man who jumped cars and buses (and ultimately, the Snake River Canyon) on a motorcycle.  He was one hell of a showman.

In the summer of 1966 I was a skinny little 15-year-old kid, my Dad owned a new Triumph Bonneville, and I was in hog heaven for that reason.   Then and now, there was and is nothing cooler than a Triumph Bonneville.  We were going to the motorcycle races.  A big night out in those days was the East Windsor Speedway, a half-mile dirt track oval where they raced everything.  Stock cars, two-strokes, and the big bikes.  Not just locals, either.  Harley’s Bart Markel (National No. 1), Triumph’s Gary Nixon (National No. 9), and more.  It was the 4th of July weekend and it was 58 years ago.  I remember it like it was last week.

East Windsor Speedway is no more. It’s now tract homes. My loss; New Jersey’s property tax gain.

East Windsor Speedway put on quite a show.  Dad and I rode there on the Bonneville.   I fancied myself a motorcycle guy and it just didn’t get any better than the half-mile dirt oval at East Windsor.  The fun started right in the parking lot with hundreds of fans’ motorcycles.  Fins and twins (everything was an air-cooled twin in those days), carbs, chrome, custom paint, custom seats, and more.  It was all England and America and a little bit of Japan:  Triumph, BSA, Honda, Harley, Suzuki, Yamaha…you get the idea.  Italy and Ducati were yet to be discovered, only weirdos rode BMWs (remember those strange sideways kick starters?), and weirdos definitely didn’t go to the races.  A new Bonneville was $1320 and a Honda Super Hawk (electric start, no less) was only about $600.  It all seemed so attainable.

The East Windsor Speedway is long gone now, shut down by noise complaints from the encroaching ‘burbs and then plowed over for more cookie cutter homes.  It’s a pity, really.

East Windsor always put on quite a show, but that 4th of July evening was a six sigma outlier on the right side of the bell curve.  Stock car racing was first, then the 250cc class (love that smell!), then the big boys (including Nixon and Markel), then the main event (Evel Knievel!)…and it was all washed down with a 4th of July fireworks display that was as good as I had ever seen.  That warm New Jersey night out started before the sun went down and finished around midnight. I think the cost to get in was something like $2.50.

Evel Knievel was the highlight for me and I think for everyone else, too.  Evel was just starting to get famous, and here he was in person.  White leathers and a cape trimmed in red and blue on the 4th of July.  (Gresh and I always wanted capes, but we had to wait 50 years and go to China to get ours.)  A Harley V-twin, with monstrous ramps set up on the infield (one for liftoff and one for landing), with a couple of Greyhounds in between (buses, that is…not the dogs).

Airborne Evel back in the day.

The crowd fell silent as Evel revved the 750 Harley and then accelerated.  But it wasn’t up the ramp.  Nope, Evel (ever the showman) accelerated alongside the ramps and the buses when we all expected him to jump. Faked us out, he did. Then he looped around to start again.  Ah, I get it, we all thought.  That was just to gage his acceleration before hitting the ramps for real.  The anticipation built.  Thousands held their breath as Evel accelerated again, but he faked us out with another run alongside the ramps.  Okay, all part of the show.  A third time….maybe this would be it…but no, it was yet another tease.  Back to the start point, more revving, and by now we were wise to the ways of Evel.  We all thought it would be another feint.  But nope, this was the real deal…up the ramp rapidly and suddenly there he was:  Airborne Evel, sailing up and over the buses, suspended high in the evening air, and then back down on the landing ramp.  He hit the brakes hard, struggling to stop before running out of room, the Harley’s rear end sashaying around like an exotic dancer in a room full of big tippers.  The crowd went nuts.  A seismic cheer drowned out the mighty Milwaukee sound machine.  We had seen Evel, the man and the motorcycle, airborne and in person, flying over the buses that would have you leave the driving to them.  It was awesome.

It all happened 58 years ago.  Evel, my Dad, and the East Windsor Speedway have gone on to their reward and I’m officially a geezer drawing Social Security.  But that evening will live in my memory forever, which sort of brings us to the present.  Sue and I were on a content safari in Idaho (you’ve seen several blogs from that trip, and I still have a few to go).   When we visited Twin Falls, we were on the edge of the Snake River Canyon.  That name stuck in my mind because it was where Evel went when the US Government said “no dice” when he asked for permission to jump the Grand Canyon.

Good buddies Velma and Orlando on the south Rim of the Grand Canyon. Evel asked, and the Feds said no.

The entire concept was preposterous on so many levels I can’t list them.  But that was Evel Knievel.  Before he did it, the idea of jumping over a car was preposterous, as was the idea of jumping over several cars, as was the idea of jumping over a bus, as was the idea of jumping over several buses, and…well, you get the idea.  Evel had bumped up against the limits of preposterousness, and that’s when he floated the Grand Canyon idea.  The Feds nixed that, but Evel wasn’t a man stopped by obstacles.  He went for the next best thing, and that was the Snake River Canyon.  It’s over a mile wide, and it’s a big drop to the bottom.

To get back to Idaho connection and this story, I looked on the map to see if it denoted where Evel did his thing and to my surprise, it did.  And it wasn’t very far from Shoshone Falls.  Sue and I did our thing at Shoshone Falls and as soon as we were back in the car, I plugged in “Evel Knievel Snake River Canyon Jump.”  Waze didn’t know from Evel Knievel, but the regular iPhone mapping app did.  We were only a few miles away, we were off to the races (so to speak).

On the way in, as we approached the road’s end (it ended at the Snake River Canyon), we saw no signs initially marking the spot where Evel made history.  We did see a lot of tract homes, and a sign selling more.

Not bad for an entire acre by California standards, but that’s Idaho. Someday every square inch of America will be covered by tract homes or high-density housing, and our politicians will wonder why there’s so little water and so much traffic.

As we reached the end of the road, the Canyon came into view, as did the ramp you see in the photo at the top of this blog.  Whoa!  Can it be?

The Snake River Canyon, where Evel attempted his jump. It’s wider and deeper than it looks.

It was.  On the other side of that dirt ramp, we saw our first indication that we were where we wanted to be.  It was a good summary of Evel and the attempted jump that occurred decades ago.

Evel: The Man, the myth, and the motorcycle.

The deal on the Evel Knievel Snake River Canyon jump is this:  Evel didn’t attempt it on a regular or even a modified motorcycle.  He instead used a steam rocket-propelled aircraft of sorts that was mounted on a launch ramp.  The dirt ramp you see in the photo at the top of this blog was not one that you would attempt to roll up and hit at high speed with a motorcycle to become airborne. The idea instead was that the rocket ship would launch off a launch rail, carry Evel across the Snake River canyon, and then Evel would deploy a parachute and he (and the rocket ship) would float back to Earth on the other side.  That was the theory.

An excerpt from the above sign. Evel Knievel, motorcycle astronaut.

It didn’t work out that way, though.  Evel and his rocket ship made it about halfway across the Snake River, the parachute deployed inadvertently and prematurely, and man and machine descended into the canyon and onto the Snake River’s banks.  Miraculously, Evel walked away, never to attempt a canyon (any canyon) jump again.

Another excerpt from the photo above. There was no V-Twin hidden in the bowels of Evel’s rocket ship.

We climbed to the top of the ramp and gazed across the Snake River Canyon.  I wondered:  Will we ever see another man like Evel Knievel?  I think it’s less likely, given our predilection with biological males competing in women’s sports, our insistence on listing our pronouns (you can just refer to me as “hey, you”), and everything else our society has degenerated into.  But that borders on being political, and as you know, we don’t do that.  That said, though, I think it’s a safe bet that Evel never worried about anyone using his preferred pronouns.

After our climb down, we wandered around the area a bit.  Other than that sign above (which isn’t visible until you walked to the other side of the ramp) and a marker on the trail fence, you’d never know this was an historic spot.

Peering at the Evel Knievel sign on the canyon side of the historic launch site.
A tiny fencepost marker on the trail that runs along the Snake River Canyon.
A macro shot of the Evel fencepost marker. History happened here.

We had a marvelous trip through Idaho, and like I said above, I still have another two or three blogs to wrap up our Idaho expedition.  I’ll tell you before I get there, though, that visiting this obscure (and rapidly fading into further obscurity) spot was the highlight of the trip for me.

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Mosins, Sewer Pipes, and Lunar Landscapes

By Joe Berk

I’ve joked around a bit about my 1940 Tula Mosin-Nagant’s bore by writing that it looks like a sewer pipe.  It turns out my description was closer than I realized.  I recently purchased a Teslong borescope (watch for an upcoming review here on ExNotes), and I took a look at what things looked like inside the Mosin.  Wow, was I ever shocked.  That photo above is my Mosin, from the inside.

My Tula Mosin and a 100-yard target shot with my reloaded ammo. The first five shots are at the bottom of the orange bullseye. As the barrel heated, the subsequent shots hit higher.

I shoot only jacketed bullets in the Mosin described above, and even with that funky bore it shoots them well.  This rifle is surprisingly accurate.   That’s amazing, particularly in light of the fact that the bore (while clean) is extremely pitted, and in some places, I couldn’t even see the rifling.  Still, it cuts a relatively tight group at 100 yards, especially considering that I shoot it only with its native iron sights.  On a good day, it will put five shots into a little over an inch before the barrel heats up, and then when it does heat up, it walks them up a line no wider than an inch due to the stock deflecting the barrel upwards.

The Izzy Mosin at the West End Gun Club. I shoot cast bullets in this rifle.
A 7.62x54R cartridge loaded with a cast bullet.
The above Mosin’s bore, as seen through the Teslong borescope. It is in much better shape than the rifle I use for shooting jacketed bullets.

I have another Mosin (a hex receiver 1935 Izhevsk) I use for cast bullets, and I thought it had a pristine barrel.  I was wrong about that, too.  The Teslong reveals all.  It’s way better than the Tula’s bore, but it also bears more than a passing resemblance to a lunar landscape.   But it, too, can cut a decent group at 100 yards.  What makes that amazing (at least to me) is that it does so with the same old prehistoric iron sights and cast bullets.

A 100-yard target shot with cast bullets. This rifle had been zeroed for 50 yards, which is why the shots are below the bullseye.

When these rifles were new back in the 1930s and 1940s, primers were corrosive, and corrode the bore they did.  And obviously the soldiers who carried them did little to clean them adequately.  I’m not faulting them; those troops had other things on their minds and I’m just making an observation.  I’ve been driving myself nuts using the new borescope when I clean my modern rifles trying to get every speck of copper and carbon out of the bore, and I’ve been living in anguish every time I see a machining defect or scratch in these firearms.  As the Mosins show, I’ve been worrying for nothing.  A bore that is in pretty rough condition can still be accurate.

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Shoshone Falls, Idaho

By Joe Berk

The question I found confusing when navigating my way to Twin Falls, Idaho, was this:  Is Shoshone Falls the “twin falls” referred to in Twin Falls, or is there another set of falls somewhere along the Snake River?  I never really had a satisfactory, definitive answer to that question (and I asked several people in Twin Falls).  It’s further complicated by the fact that upstream of Shoshone Falls (at the eastern edge of the town of Twin Falls), there’s another park called Twin Falls Park.  I think the answer is this:  There are other falls along the Snake River in the area of Twin Falls, but the Shoshone Falls are the two falls that give the city its name.  If you know different, please let me know.

The arrow on the left points to Shoshone Falls. You can see how close the Falls are to the city of Twin Falls. The arrow on the right points to Twin Falls Park, which is also on the Snake River.

I plugged Shoshone Falls into Waze, and the nav program took us east out of town through a bit of farm country and past a few housing developments.  The ride down to Shoshone Falls Park was an interesting one.  When we approached the entrance where you pay $5 to enter the park and I asked about handicapped parking (I had a bad motorcycle accident 15 years ago and my handicapped parking tag was that cloud’s silver lining).   The nice lady in the ticket booth told me my handicapped parking tag meant free admission.  The month I spent in the hospital had a return on investment.

The ride down to Shoshone Falls from the entrance demands attention.  It winds down a narrow lane alongside the mountain with a steep dropoff on one side (and there was no guardrail).  I realized it would be best to save the sightseeing until I got down there.

The sign upon entering the parking area.

Once we arrived at the Shoshone Falls viewing area, we could see there are indeed two separate falls.  It’s very scenic.

I stopped on the stairs leading to the viewing area. Our visit was nice and it wasn’t crowded.
A photo of Shoshone Falls from the viewing platform.

I’ve read online that Shoshone Falls is the Niagara Falls of the West, and Shoshone Falls has more of a drop than does Niagara.  Shoshone Falls is a beautiful thing to see, but trust me on this, it’s not Niagara Falls.  I’ve been to Niagara Falls.  Shoshone Falls is nice, but there’s no comparing it to Niagara Falls.

Niagara Falls, from the US side.  That’s Canada in the distance.  I could feel the ground shaking when I shot this photo.

I looked down the Snake River.  It was nice. It was scenic.  I was glad we made the trip to Idaho.   We were covering a lot of ground.  I was getting great photos.  Sue and I were on a content safari and Idaho was a target-rich environment.

The Snake River below Shoshone Falls. Just around the bend in the river is where Evel Knievel attempted to jump the Snake River Canyon. That story is the next blog in our Idaho series.

While studying the map to get to Twin Falls’ Shoshone Falls, I noticed that a bit downstream of Shoshone Falls along the Snake River the map showed the Evel Knievel Snake River Canyon jump site.  There was no mention of it anywhere else.  I wondered:  Was it still there?

Stay tuned, folks.

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Craters of the Moon National Monument

By Joe Berk

As mentioned in our introductory Idaho blog, I had briefly visited the Craters of the Moon National Monument on the 5,000-mile Western America Adventure Ride with the Chinese and other folks who owned RX3 motorcycles.  Good buddy Baja John did all the navigating and planning on that ride; I just rode at the front of the pack and took all the credit.

Baja John posing at the Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserved entrance exactly 10 years ago. Tempus fugit, my friends.

We planned those early CSC trips as if it was just Baja John and me riding, and I figured on way too many miles each day.  John and I can do 600-mile days easily.  When we planned the larger Western America Adventure Ride, even 400-mile days were a huge challenge.  A good rule of thumb on such larger group rides is to stick to a maximum of 200 to 250 miles each day.  I didn’t know that then.

Anyway, on that first Craters of the Moon stop, we were on a big mileage day and we didn’t have too much time to spare.   We pulled into the Craters entrance, grabbed a few photos, and continued our trek to Twin Falls.  I recently wanted to do a Destinations piece on Craters for Motorcycle Classics magazine, and when I looked through my files, I found I only had a couple of Craters photos.  That dearth of useable photos became part of the reason Susie and I visited Craters again.

The ride from Boise (where Susie and I started that morning) to Craters takes you east on I-84 and then east on US Highway 20.  As an aside, Highway 20 runs across the entire United States, from Newport, Oregon to Boston, Massachusetts.  Part of Highway 20 in Idaho was designated as the Medal of Honor Highway by Governor Brad Little in 2019, and Susie and I took it to Craters.

US Highway 20, Idaho’s Medal of Honor Highway. The photo ops through this part of the world are impressive. Bring a polarizer.
Idaho is justifiably proud of its Medal of Honor winners.  That’s an M1 Abrams tank in the background, a turbine-powered, 70-ton beast that can hit 60 mph and fire on the move with great accuracy.  Three Medal of Honor recipients currently live in Idaho; as many as 48 people awarded the Medal of Honor have an Idaho connection.

After Highway 20, it’s a left turn onto Highway 26 to get to Craters of the Moon.  It’s more scenic riding, including the towns of Carey and Picabo.  Carey is where we had a comical encounter on the Western America Adventure Tour when riding with our Chinese compañeros across Idaho.  On that day 10 years ago, it happened to be Pioneer Day.  We didn’t know that, nor did we know that there was a parade in Carey.  I was in my usual spot (in front of the pack), Gresh was riding alongside me, and our group of a dozen RX3 riders were right behind us.  As we approached Carey, local residents lined the streets.  Many were holding American flags.  They waved and cheered us as we rode into town.  We had no idea what was going on.  Gresh flipped his faceshield up and said, “Wow, a lot of people are following the blog” (I had been blogging our trip across the western US every day).   We didn’t know it at the time, but we were only a few minutes ahead of the parade Carey was expecting, and those good Idahoans thought we were the advance guard.  It was fun and it made for a great story (which I have told about a thousand times by now).

On US Highway 26 heading east into the Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve. Note the volcanic rock on either side of the road.

The good folks in Carey were not waiting for Susie and me on this trip, but we had a good time anyway.  When we rolled into Picabo a little further down the road, we had an even better time when we topped off the Jeep and had lunch (which was excellent).  I told you a bit about that (and the Ernest Hemingway connection) yesterday.

The volcanic flow in the Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve.   That’s Echo Cone in the distance.

The National Park Service describes the landscape in and around Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve as “weird and scenic” and that’s an apt description.  The landscape is almost lunar-like.  Its alien features consist of mostly dark brown solidified lava surrounded and sometimes punctuated by patches of green vegetation.  It makes for a dramatic landscape and awesome photo ops.

A walkway above the pahoehoe lave field.
Sue reading about the pahoehoe lava. The National Park Service does a great job making these kinds of places accessible and providing explanations telling the story at each location.

You can ride a designated, one-way, circular tarmac road through the Preserve, with paved offshoots for specific sights.   One of the first stops is a pahoehoe lava field.  The name is a particular type of lava, and it comes from the lava volcanoes and their flows in Hawaii.  Pahoehoe lava is characterized by a rough and darkened surface.   What made it even more interesting is the walkway above the lava.  You can walk a loop of about a quarter of a mile and see what the hardened lava looks like.  The walkway is a good thing; I don’t think it would be possible to navigate this terrain on foot.

Monolithic cinder cone fragments in one of the lava fields.

Another lava structure is called cinder cone.  Sometimes these structures break apart and leave monolithic forms like those in the photograph above.  One of the more dramatic areas in Craters of the Moon is the Inferno Cone.  There’s a place to park near the base and you can climb to the peak.

The climb to the Inferno Cone peak.  Sue did it.  I watched.
Completing the circular ride through Craters of the Moon. The lava formations to the left are called cinder bombs.

There are several lava tubes (caves formed by lava flow) in Craters of the Moon, and if you wish, you can hike into them.  We didn’t do that.  There are also longer hikes throughout the Preserve if you want to explore more.

There’s much to see and do at Craters of the Moon.  How long you stay and how much you see is up to you.  We were there for about three hours and we had a great visit.

The next stop on our Idaho expedition would be Twin Falls.   That’s coming up, so stay tuned.

If you would like to read about the Western America Adventure Ride and how CSC rewrote the motorcycle adventure touring book, the story is here:

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Ernest Hemingway In Idaho

By Joe Berk

1500:  Keep that number in mind.  I’ll tell you what it means at the end of this post.

As I mentioned in the introductory blog on our ExNotes Idaho expedition, I was surprised to learn of the apparently well-known strong connection between Idaho and Ernest Hemingway.  My previous ignorance of this connection made me feel kind of illiterate when I read about it at the Basque Museum, and then again in Picabo while we were driving to Craters of the Moon National Monument. I wouldn’t want any of our readers to feel my pain, so I thought I would offer a brief Hemingway biography and explain how the Idaho/Hemingway connection developed.

I previously wrote about the Basque Museum a blog or two back.  Our next adventure was Craters of the Moon, and on our way there as we passed through the small town of Picabo I thought I would top off the Jeep and grab a cup of coffee.  The gas station had a small general store and a restaurant, so Susie and I grabbed lunch.  The place had an interesting corner devoted to Ernest Hemingway and his Idaho adventures.

Firearms Hemingway gave to local rancher Bud Purdy in a Picabo restaurant display case.

Hemingway loved hunting and fishing in the Silver Creek area near Picabo with Bud Purdy, a local rancher and Idaho legend.  Purdy was an interesting man, too.  You can read about him here.

Ernest Miller Hemingway was born in Oak Park, Illinois (a small town near Chicago) on July 21, 1899. He was wounded in World War I, he went on to become one of the world’s great novelists, he married four times, and he died at age 61 in Ketchum, Idaho. But there’s a lot more to the Hemingway story than just those two short sentences.

As a young man growing up in what was then a predominately rural area, Hemingway’s father introduced him to hunting and fishing. He graduated from the Oak Park public school system in 1917 and went to work as a reporter at the Kansas City Star. It’s been said that’s where he developed his writing style, based on the newspaper’s guidelines emphasizing short sentences and paragraphs, writing in the active style, shortness, and clarity. Hemingway carried the style to his fiction, later explaining “Those were the best rules I ever learned for the business of writing. I’ve never forgotten them.”

When World War I started, Hemingway wanted to serve but poor eyesight prevented his enlisting. He instead volunteered to be a Red Cross ambulance driver in Italy. Hemingway was wounded only a month into this adventure by a mortar round, and then wounded again immediately after that by machine gun fire. All this occurred while carrying a wounded soldier to safety. The Italian government awarded Hemingway their Silver Medal for Valor.

Hemingway returned home and went to work for the Toronto Star Weekly, where he married his first of four wives in 1921. The Hemingways moved to Paris, where he met several of the great authors of the era while still working as a reporter covering such things as the Geneva Conference, bullfighting, and fishing. It was while Hemingway was in Paris that his first works of fiction were published, including Indian Camp and Cross Country Snow.

From 1925 to 1929, Hemingway wrote some of the world’s great literary masterpieces, including Our Time in 1925. It contained The Big Two-Hearted River, The Sun Also Rises, and Men Without Women. A Farewell to Arms followed in 1929, which was quickly recognized as a defining World War I masterpiece and earned Hemingway a reputation as a literary giant. Hemingway became a world traveler, visiting Key West for fishing, Africa for hunting, and Spain for bullfighting. He continued writing, creating For Whom the Bell Tolls, Death in the Afternoon, and The Green Hills of Africa.

For a time in the pre-Castro days, Hemingway lived in Cuba. Hemingway lost his home when Fidel Castro confiscated private property in 1958. He and his fourth wife bought a home in Ketchum, Idaho, where he would live out the rest of his life.

Hemingway had spent time in Idaho prior to purchasing his Ketchum home. Averill Harriman (an American entrepreneur who owned the Union Pacific Railroad and other businesses) was promoting a new resort in Sun Valley, Idaho.  In 1939 Harriman invited Hemingway to visit the Sun Valley Lodge and that set the hook. Hemingway hunted and fished Idaho, and he fell in love with the area.  Hemingway wrote For Whom the Bell Tolls in Room 206 of the Sun Valley Lodge (known today as the Hemingway Suite).  While a guest at the Sun Valley Lodge, Hemingway also wrote Islands in the Stream, The Garden of Eden, and A Moveable Feast.

Later in life, Hemingway struggled with poor health and depression. Some say he was an alcoholic. He had experienced numerous concussions, a couple of car accidents, and two airplane crashes. Hemingway committed suicide by shooting himself in his Ketchum home in July of 1961 at the age of 61.

Ernest Hemingway was an outdoorsman, a shooter, and a hunter.  In other words, he was my kind of guy, so it’s surprising that the only Hemingway novel I ever read was The Old Man and the Sea.   That’s a character defect I aim to correct in the near future.

It’s probably appropriate that this post is about Ernest Hemingway, as this is our 1500th literary endeavor on the ExhaustNotes blog.  Yep, 1500 posts!  We appreciate you reading our blog, we appreciate your comments, and we especially appreciate you clicking on those pesky popup ads!

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Quality Ain’t Job One At Winchester These Days

By Joe Berk

Notice anything flaky about the bullets above?  At first, I didn’t.  But it’s there.  Read on, my friends.

I confirmed a couple of good loads for the .30 06 Weatherby this morning and several months of trying different bullet weights, powders, powder charges, seating depths, and more.  In the past, one of my favorite bullets for both the .30 06 and .300 H&H cartridges has been the Winchester 150-grain jacketed softpoint so I wanted to try these again, but they have been unavailable for a long time.

When the Winchester bullets finally came back on the market again a few months ago, I bought 1000.  Sometimes they grouped well in my Weatherby, at other times they did not.  I got to where I worked up a load with 51.0 grains of IMR 4064 (a max load for this bullet) and that had shown promise, but I’d get a good group and then a bad one.  I was pretty sure it wasn’t me being flaky behind the gun; things looked good through the scope when I pulled the trigger.

My 40-year-old Weatherby Mk V, chambered in .30 06 Springfield. It’s a beautiful rifle.
That’s a 1980s-ish 12X Leupold Silhouette scope on the Weatherby.

I found that how I positioned the rifle in the Caldwell rest made a difference.  If I had the rifle positioned so that the rest was just forward of the rifle’s floorplate, it grouped well; if I had the rifle positioned further back, it did not group as well.   Even while taking care to appropriately position the rifle, though, the Winchester bullets grouped erratically.   I’d get good groups and then I’d get bad groups.

Then one day after another frustratingly inconsistent range session, I returned home, cleaned the rifle, resized the brass, threw the brass in the tumbler, and was reloading it with the above load when I noticed that the bullet cannelures were not at consistent heights above the case mouth after seating the bullets.  Hmmmm.

Winchester 150-gr JSP bullets.  Note the cannelure location inconsistences.

So I lined up some bullets on the bench, and son of a gun, the cannelures were all over the place on the bullets (with regard to height above the bullet base).  I bitched to Winchester about this through their website and they agreed to refund what I had paid for the bullets.  They even had a UPS guy stop by and give me a prepaid shipper to return them.  I didn’t want to, though, because the bullets had done well in the past, and I still wasn’t certain that the cannelure location issue was affecting accuracy.

So I reloaded another 12 rounds and before I did so, I sorted the Winchester bullets by cannelure height.  I loaded 6 cartridges with bullets that had cannelures at what appeared to be approximately the same location, and I took the bullets I had screened with what were obvious cannelure location differences and loaded 6 more rounds.  The next morning I got out early to beat the heat and set up a 100 yard target at the West End Gun Club.  I proved my hypothesis:  The cannelure height variability was degrading accuracy significantly.

The top two groups had bullets with inconsistent cannelure heights.  The bottom two groups had bullets with cannelure heights that were located in approximately the same spot, and the groups with those bullets were much smaller.

The group sizes for bullets with the same cannelure locations returned minute-of-angle groups; the group sizes for bullets with random cannelure height locations were more than twice the size of the consistent-cannelure-location bullets.  Duh.  I proved (at least to myself) that this cannelure height location issue is making a difference.  I can hypothesize that cannelure location can affect the bullet’s center of gravity, center of pressure, drag, and perhaps other aerodynamic and mass properties characteristics.   The bottom line to me is that cannelure location variability plays a big role.  Winchester screwed the pooch when they made these bullets, which is a shame.  I should also mention that these bullets were not sold as seconds.  They were supposed to be good bullets.  An old line company with a name like Winchester ought to be making a quality product, but they clearly are not.  That notwithstanding, I think I’ll keep the bullets and sort them.  I’ll use what I cull out for open sight rifles, or maybe I’ll sell them to a gas station and they can melt them down for wheel weights.

Yeah, I could just send the bullets back.  To Winchester’s credit, they were willing to refund what I had paid for the bullets.  But they disappointed me, and I have to tell you, I spent a lot of time and money in wasted components trying to shoot good groups with lousy bullets.  What I’d really like is a note from Winchester telling me they’ve fixed the problem, and then I’d buy another thousand bullets.

You might wonder:  Why not just use Hornady’s comparable 150-grain jacketed soft point bullet?  It’s a logical question.  I tried that with the same load, and it wasn’t as accurate as the screened Winchester bullets (even though the cannelure location was consistent on the Hornady bullets).

I did find a Hornady bullet and a load that worked well in this rifle, though, and that’s the 130-grain Hornady jacketed soft point bullet with 53.0 grains of IMR 4320 (a max load, so work up to it).  It shoots slightly high and to the right compared to the load above.  IMR 4320 is no longer in production, but I have a stash and I’ll continue to use it.  This load is also extremely accurate in my Ruger No. 1A.

Wondering about the chrono results for the loads described above?  Here they are, as shot from my 26-inch barreled Weatherby Mark V:

150-grain Winchester Loads

    • 150-grain Winchester jacketed soft point bullet, 51.0 grains of IMR 4064, no crimp, cartridge overall length 3.250 inches, Fiocchi large rifle primer, inconsistent bullet height cannelure
    • Min velocity: 2861.7 fps
    • Avg velocity: 2891.8 fps
    • Max velocity: 2909.8 fps
    • Extreme spread: 48.1 fps
    • Standard deviation:  15.9 fps
    • 150-grain Winchester jacketed soft point bullet, 51.0 grains of IMR 4064, no crimp, cartridge overall length 3.250 inches, Fiocchi large rifle primer, screened for consistent bullet height cannelure
    • Min velocity: 2902.9 fps
    • Avg velocity: 2912.5 fps
    • Max velocity: 2933.1 fps
    • Extreme spread: 30.2 fps
    • Standard deviation:  10.0 fps
  • 130-grain Hornady Load
    • Load:  130-grain Hornady jacketed soft point bullet, 53.0 grains of IMR 4320, no crimp, cartridge overall length 3.095 inches, Fiocchi large rifle primer
    • Min velocity: 3022.8 fps
    • Avg velocity: 3037.2 fps
    • Max velocity: 3063.8 fps
    • Extreme spread: 40.9 fps
    • Standard deviation:  10.9 fps

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The Warhawk Air Museum

By Joe Berk

Sue and John Paul started the Warhawk Air Museum in 1989.  It contains aircraft, automobiles, aircraft engines, automobiles, guns, and other things from World War II, Korea, and Vietnam.  For us, it was our eighth Idaho stop and only our third day in Idaho.  We were covering a lot of ground.

The entrance to the Warhawk Air Museum hangar and display area.

Aircraft

The Warhawk Museum had a bunch of aircraft both inside the hangar and parked outside on the tarmac.  I love these kinds of places and I love these vintage airplanes, partly because they photograph so well but mostly because of what they represent.  We were taking in military history and I was loving it.

“Parrot Head,” a Curtiss P-40N Warhawk dominating the Warhawk Museum display area.
“Yellow Peril,” a Navy N3N biplane.
“The Boise Bee,” a North American P-51C Mustang.
“Boise Bee” nose art.

The Warhawk has a beautiful, jet black, Vietnam-era Huey helicopter. I spent some time when I was in the Army flying around on Hueys (not in Vietnam, though). My time in the service was fun. I enjoyed the Huey rides, especially when the doors were open and the pilots flew low level.  Cue in Ride of the Valkyries.

A Bell UH-1C “Mike” gunship helicopter. The “Mike” had an upgraded 1400 shp turbine.
Nose art on the “Mike” Huey: The 68th Assault Helicopter Company (the “Mustangs”). This is cool stuff.

Engines

The Warhawk Museum displays an impressive collection of piston and jet engines.  The old radials, in particular, were amazing.  As an engineer and as a motorcycle guy, the radials spoke to me.  But they were all nice to take in.  Mechanical stuff is just so much more intuitive and easy to understand than electronics or software.  I can look at mechanical things and comprehend how they work; I could never do that with electronics or software.

A Curtiss OX–5 airplane engine. It’s a 90-horsepower V8 made in 1917.
A macro shot of the Curtiss OX–5 engine’s rockers. These parts were cast and machined more than a century ago.
A Pratt and Whitney R-985-AN 14B air-cooled radial engine. It made 450 horsepower and was used in three aircraft, including the C-45.
A second R-985-AN14B display engine. As the designator implies, these 9-cylinder engines displaced 985 cubic inches.
An Allison V-1710-81 water-cooled engine.  It was a V-12 that generated 1,425 horsepower.  During World War II, these powered the Curtiss P-40 Warhawk, the Bell P-39 Airacobra and the twin-engined Lockheed P-38 Lightning.
A Ranger engine. These powered the Fairchild PT-19 aircraft.
Perhaps the most impressive radial engine in the world:  The Pratt & Whitney 4360 radial engine.
Another view of the It’s a 28-cylinder four-row radial piston engine that powered the C-124 Globemaster, the KC-97 tanker, and the B-36 Peacemaker. The B-36 had six of these engines. That’s 168 cylinders! How’d you like to adjust the valves on a B-36?

Automobiles

Who doesn’t enjoy vintage automobiles?  I’ve probably done a dozen or more blogs on vintage automobiles in various museums around the country and I never get tired of seeing them.  The Warhawk Museum had several vintage cars, and several more military vehicles.

A little 1960 Nash Metropolitan. These were made in England.  They had a 120cc engine and sold for $1,672.  Beep beep!
A 1940 DeSoto Deluxe with a beautiful two-tone tan and cream paint theme. This car retailed for $905 when it was new.
The DeSoto’s hood ornament. Those were the days!
A 1930 Packard 8. It was powered by a torquey inline 8-cylinder engine, and sold for a princely $2,385 in 1930.
The Packard’s hood ornament.
A 1927 Studebaker couple. These had 6-cylinder engines and sold for $1,575 (big bucks in 1927).
The Studebaker’s radiator-cover-mounted brand emblem.
A US Army halftrack with a quad .50 mount. These are interesting vehicles. Note the armor on the radiator. I’ve always wondered why car or accessory companies making big tough guy trucks never copied this design; I think it would look cool.
A 1955 Buick Century. This was the golden era of GM auto design.  This car had a 236-horsepower V8 and it sold for $2,590 in 1955.  These were fast cars in 1955.  The California Highway Patrol used them.

Other Interesting Stuff

In between all the exhibits mentioned above (as well as many more Warhawk Museum exhibits that space precludes including), there wasn’t any wasted real estate.  I’m only showing a couple of representative exhibits here on the blog, but there were many, many more.

Flight suits, a uniform, and other militaria make for a colorful photo.
An M1903 .32 ACP Colt. I had one of these years ago.

The Warhawk Museum is located at 201 Municipal Drive in Nampa, Idaho, about 15 minutes from downtown Boise.  It costs $15 to get in (and it may well be the best $15 you’ll ever spend).  Vets, Seniors, and active duty military get a discount.

You can rent the indoor Museum display area for weddings and other events.  My youngest daughter had her wedding at the Chino Planes of Fame Museum (a vintage aircraft museum) and it was an awesome event.  These places make for cool venues; if I was a young guy getting married I’d consider it.

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Boise’s Basque Museum

By Joe Berk

The Basque Museum is a small museum in downtown Boise.  It covers the history of the Basque people in Idaho as well as other parts of the United States.  We enjoyed our visit.

When I first moved to southern California in 1979, the Inland Empire (the area that stretches from Pomona to San Bernardino and maybe a little beyond) still had large wide open areas.  You could still see shepherds with their multicolored coats, shepherd crooks, and sheep out in the fields that are now covered by cookie-cutter tract homes and shopping malls.  Who are these people, I asked.  Oh, those are the Basque shepherds, my coworkers at General Dynamics told me.  You have to go with us to lunch at the Basque restaurant in Chino, they told me.  I still had no idea or sense of who the Basque really were.

What I’ve since learned (amplified greatly by our visit to the Basque Museum in Boise) is that the Basque region includes several provinces in northern Spain and southwest France.  The Basque have their own language (known as Euskera or Basque), and for a number of reasons (primarily related to economics, persecution, and politics), a large Basque diaspora created Basque communities in other parts of the world.  One such community is here in southern California, another is in the Boise area.  In fact, the Boise area has the largest concentration of Basque people in the United States.  The Basque country in Europe has a coastline, fertile areas for farming, and good grazing lands for sheep.  This led to a unique Basque food culture.

The Basque in Idaho also enjoyed a connection to Ernest Hemingway.  Hemingway became aware of the Basque in 1923 while he was a Toronto Star reporter writing about the Festival of San Fermín in Pamplona (that’s the famed running of the bulls).  In his first novel, The Sun Also Rises, Hemingway also wrote about the festival.  It was one of Hemingway’s earliest writings showing an appreciation for the Basque culture, which emerged in his later writings in Cuba and Idaho.

The Basque Museum is a worthwhile stop.  It’s located at 611 West Grove Street in Boise, and it’s open Tuesday through Saturday.

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