Joe Berk

Misery on a Motorcycle

We’ve probably all felt it, and nowhere is misery more pronounced than on a long motorcycle trip where there is no end in sight. The rain, the cold, the heat…it all makes us wonder why we do it. Good buddy Juan Carlos said it best when we were riding through an extreme freezing rainstorm in Colombia’s Andes Mountains. “We sometimes wonder why we suffer through this kind of misery when we could be home with a warm cup of coffee,” or words to that effect, was his take on it all. Indeed, I’ve had the same thought many times myself. I’ll share a few of my most miserable moments with you and then I’ll provide my answer to why we do what we do. And there’s an invitation at the end of this blog…if you’d like to share the misery (misery loves company, you know), we’d love to hear from you.

Super Hawk, and Super Cold

My first ever memory of misery on a motorcycle was riding on the back of my Dad’s Honda Super Hawk back in the 1960s. It was a 305cc twin-carb black-and-chrome beauty, and Dad bought into the dream during a time when you really did meet the nicest people on a Honda. What the Japanese marketing gurus left out, though, is that you sometimes also met the coldest people on a Honda, and two of them would have been Dad and me that morning. It was early on a Saturday in September, I was 14 years old, and we were riding the Honda to Cooper’s Cycle Ranch in Ewing, New Jersey for its first service.

Yours truly in the Summer of 1966, when things had warmed up a bit. Dad would let me ride the Super Hawk in the land behind our house. When he wasn’t home, sometimes I rode it elsewhere, too.

It was really cold that morning, as only New Jersey can be that time of year. Really, really cold. We weren’t dressed for the weather, the bike had no windshield or fairing, full-faced helmets and good moto gear hadn’t been invented yet, and the cold was brutal. I remember we stopped at a diner somewhere on Route 130 and Dad bought two copies of the newspaper. After a hearty and hot breakfast, Dad stuffed one of the newspapers in the front of his jacket (not a motorcycle jacket, as that kind of gear didn’t exist yet), and I did the same with the newspaper he gave to me. The newspapers helped a bit, but not enough to really make a difference. But I remember that ride like it happened yesterday.

Canada: My First International Adventure

For me, this thing about international adventure riding started early, as in college. I was in my junior year at Rutgers when good buddy Keith Hediger and yours truly decided a motorcycle adventure from New Jersey to Quebec was just what the doctor ordered. It was Spring Break, our engineering courses were brutal, and we needed a respite from hitting the books.

Keith on my 750 back in the day. I didn’t get a photo of him on his Kawasaki 500cc Triple. He bought the jacket after our trip to Canada.

Canada. It would be great. As they say, it’s almost like going to another country. Both Keith and I were ROTC students, and we joked that we would be draft dodgers. The ride north was great, Canada was great, and then it rained the entire length of Vermont on the way home. I’m not exaggerating. It was raining when we crossed the border back into the US, and it rained all day long without a single break.

We didn’t have rain gear in those days. Keith was on a Kawasaki 500cc two-stroke triple and I was on my CB-750 Honda. For us it was bell-bottomed jeans, nylon windbreaker jackets, open face helmets, and tennis shoes. We were soaked to the gills and we were indeed miserable. And cold. But we had ridden to Canada and back on our motorcycles. I didn’t know anybody else who had ever done that. It was fun. The rain notwithstanding, it lit a fire in me for international motorcycles rides that burns to this day. And I remember it like it happened yesterday.

Mexico: Soaked Again!

Fast forward thirty years or so and good buddy John Welker and I were on our cruisers headed to Baja’s Cabo San Lucas, a ferry ride across the Sea of Cortez, and then Puerto Vallarta, Guadalajara, and other points in mainland Mexico. I had a ’92 Harley and John had a Yamaha Virago I called the Viagra. Most of the ride was in great weather. But that first day was terrible. It was raining I left the Los Angeles area, it was raining when I hooked up with John down in San Ysidro, and rained nearly the entire day. It rained when we blew through Tijuana and we rode through the rain to Ensenada. We were experiencing the tail end of the El Nino storms that hit our part of the world that year.

We didn’t let the rain stop us, though. We stopped at La Bufadora south of Ensenada, a spot where there’s a natural opening in the rocks, and when the waves from the Pacific come crashing in, it shoots a spout 150 feet in the air. That spray soaked us, too. But it had rained nearly all day, so the extra La Bufadora spray didn’t make us any wetter. We were already soaked.

John Welker, me, and our two V-twins during a very brief break in the weather on that brutally wet day in Baja.

We rode nearly 200 miles south into Baja the first day, and then I threw in the towel. I had to stop. I was soaked to the bone (we didn’t have rain gear, even though we started the ride in the rain…smart, huh?). I was so cold I couldn’t ride, so we stopped in a little hotel in Colonet. I remember feeling the water seeping through my leather jacket, and I remember shivering so badly I could hear my teeth clattering. The hotel had an old-fashioned register you had to sign when checking in, and I was shaking so badly I couldn’t sign my name. Even soaked and freezing, though, I couldn’t remember when I had ever felt better or more alive. And you know what? I remember that day like it happened yesterday.

Steamed Mustangs

When I was a consultant and I wrote the blog for CSC Motorcycles, in the early days the company made Mustang replicas. They were cool little bikes that looked like 1950s Mustang motorcycles, and I had this bright idea that we would make a splash if we rode the little 150cc Mustangs to Cabo San Lucas and back. You know, ride the length of Baja on little 150cc tiddlers. It was a story that guaranteed press coverage, and my idea worked. Half a dozen magazines picked up that story.

What I didn’t realize when I scheduled the ride was that September is the hottest month of the year in Baja. I mean, who know such a thing? I grew up in New Jersey, and in New Jersey, September means you’re rolling into winter. In my mind, September is not a month one associates with hot weather.

Simon Gandolfi, novelist, blogger, and motorcycle adventure rider on a CSC 150 somewhere on the road to Cabo San Lucas. Damn, it was hot that day!

But not in Baja. As soon as we crossed Parallelo 28 and Guerrero Negro, the heat went from bad to you’ve-gotta-be-kidding-me misery. And then as we rolled into Santa Rosalia and approached the Tropic of Cancer, the humidity hit us. We were riding in a crock pot, and the setting was on high. Those little bikes would barely make 50 mph the way we had them loaded, so we couldn’t make enough wind to stay cool. It was, without a doubt, the worst heat and the most physically-challenging ride I’ve ever experienced. But (and you can probably guess what I’m going to say next), I remember that ride like it happened yesterday.

Why We Do It

Guys, I ain’t the smartest person in the room, and I don’t have any great insights here. I can’t speak for everyone, but I can speak for myself. I ride because it’s fun. If a little rough weather comes along, hey, that’s part of the deal. It’s miserable when it happens, but it sure makes for some great memories, and oddly, the off-the-scale misery moments are the ones I remember best.

Do you have a particularly miserable motorcycle day, you know, a ride through rough weather, you’d like to share with us? Hey, leave a comment!

Want to read some of our epic rides? Check this out!

Ruger’s .357 Blackhawk

My stainless .357 Blackhawk, with a 25-yard target. It’s one of my favorite handguns. The loads you see here use WW 296 propellant and Hornady’s 158-grain jacketed h0llow point bullet.

One of my good buddies wrote to me over the weekend asking about the Ruger Blackhawk in .357 Magnum. He wanted to know if I felt they were good guns. In a word: Yes. My friend was specifically considering the .357 Blackhawk with the extra cylinder for 9mm ammo; I’m not a big fan of the combo Blackhawks (I think they’re a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist). But the basic .357 Blackhawk? It’s a winner, and I think it’s one of the world’s great handguns.

I’ve owned several .357 Blackhawks over the last 50 years, starting with a plain vanilla blue steel New Model I bought at a K-Mart when I lived in El Paso (yep, they used to sell handguns). I traded that one away, and then I bought an Old Model Blackhawk with the convertible 9mm cylinder. It was a pristine used gun, still in the original box, with the shorter 4 5/8-inch barrel. I never fired that gun and I only owned it for about a week. I paid something like $75 for it, and then I sold it to my boss at Fort Bliss a few days later because he wanted it. That Old Model with its convertible 9mm cylinder would be collectible today. Eh, live and learn, I guess.

There were two convertible Blackhawks back in the 1970s, and I guess there are still two available new today. One is the 9mm/.357 combo I described above; the other is the .45 ACP/.45 Colt deal. I had a New Model Blackhawk .45 ACP/.45 Colt around the same time as I bought that Old Model 9mm/.357. I only shot .45 ACP in it because I had a ready supply of .45 ACP ammo. Mine wasn’t very accurate. It might have been because the .45 ACP bullet had to make a big jump to the rifling (it’s a shorter cartridge), or it might have been that I just had the wrong .45 ACP load for that revolver. I think the same accuracy detractors exist with the 9mm/.357 arrangement. The accuracy challenge is perhaps even more significant for the 9mm Blackhawk because of the slight difference in bore diameters between the 9mm and the .357 (the barrel diameter is .357 inches; the 9mm bullets are .355 or .356 inches in diameter). If you have the .357 Blackhawk with the extra 9mm cylinder, you can actually shoot three cartridges in it (9mm from the one cylinder, and 38 Special and 357 Magnum from the other). But I don’t have an interest in any of that. I only shoot .357 Magnum in mine.

My .357 Blackhawk is the stainless model you see in the photo above. It’s accurate (I can usually hold all my shots in the 10-ring of a silhouette target at 25 yards). They are super strong and I think they are more rugged than a Smith and Wesson. I sold all my S&W 357s years ago. And on that subject, I owned a couple of Colt Pythons back in the 1970s and I sold them, too. I never understand all the excitement over the Pythons; their fit and finish was great, but they didn’t shoot any better than the Blackhawk (at least in my hands).

No targets? No problem. My Blackhawk is a shooter.

There are several variants of the Blackhawk; I have the full-sized Blackhawk with the 6½-inch barrel. I like the feel of it, I like the grip, and as a kid who grew up watching Westerns, I like the idea of a single-action sixgun. Today, Ruger makes several variants of their .357 Blackhawk. There are fixed-sight versions they call the Vaquero, smaller frame versions they call the flat top, different barrel lengths, stainless models, blue steel models, and more. I like the stainless version because the grip is made of steel; in the blue version it’s anodized aluminum. The stainless grip is a little heavier and the gun feels better to me. But there’s nothing wrong with the blued-steel Blackhawk. They are great guns.

My Blackhawk was manufactured in 1976, and like all Rugers built that year, it carries the “Made in the 200th Year of American Liberty” rollmark.

I like loading the .357 ammo, too, and I loaded a bunch this weekend. It’s a cool cartridge to reload. WW 296 is my preferred propellant. Unique does okay, too, but 296 is the cat’s meow for the .357 Magnum cartridge. It’s a flat-shooting cartridge, and I can hit consistently with it all the way out to 200 yards. I may set up a target or two at that distance the next time I’m on the range just to back up that statement.

Want more? Check out our other Tales of the Gun stories!

Product Review: Turmeric

Turmeric. The idea is that it reduces inflammation. Your mileage may vary, but it seems to be working for me.

I’ll start this blog by saying I’m not a believer in dietary supplements, but turmeric seems to be working for me. Here’s the deal: I had what most folks would agree is a fairly serious motorcycle accident 10 years ago. I was riding my Triumph Speed Triple on my way to teach a class at Cal Poly Pomona early in the morning when I exited the westbound freeway. It was a trip I had probably made a zillion times before, but this morning would be different. As I rode across the overpass, I saw a guy in a Camaro aggressively braking on the eastbound exit. That’s the last thing I remember, other than briefly waking up when they were loading me onto a helicopter, and then briefly waking up when the helicopter was landing, and then realizing: Man, I hurt all over. I wondered if I was dreaming. Was I still in the Army? Was I in Vietnam?

Nope, it was none of the above, and it wasn’t that guy in the Camaro that I hit. It was a woman in a Volvo one block further south, but I didn’t find that out until weeks later. What I did learn a few days later was that I had broken my back, and I had broken my femur in two places, and they needed to operate to put a plate in my leg. I didn’t remember anything about the accident because I landed on my head 50 feet from my motorcycle (the top of my helmet looked like a hard-boiled egg after it had been slammed against a countertop) and I had what they call traumatic amnesia.

My 2007 Speed Triple, unquestionably the most beautiful motorcycle I’ve ever owned. It was fast, buzzy, and twitchy, but it made me look good. Did I mention it was fast?

So there I was, in the hospital, in a drug-induced stupor. The doctors reduced the morphine drip enough for me to sign the waivers for my surgery (hey, what else was I going to do), and then they did the body-and-fender thing on my left leg. It was a week in the hospital, then a week in a skilled nursing facility (a misnamed place if ever there was one), and then three or four weeks in a rehab facility. That was followed by months in a wheel chair, then a walker, then crutches, and then a cane.

My “I got screwed” photo, showing the plate and screws in my left leg. That plate ultimately broke, and I needed a second surgery to remove every metal piece you see in this photo and replace it with a femoral nail. You can see the two fractures in this x-ray, one at the top of my femur and the other about 5 inches down. Ouch!

My leg hurt like hell for the next year and a half, and then one day it really started hurting. As in hurting Big Time. Back to the docs again, more x-rays, and more bad news: The plate had fractured. It was time for revision surgery. Trust me on this, “revision” and “surgery” are two words you never want to see together. It seems the top fracture (the really big one you see at the top of the above photo) had healed, but the bottom one had not. Maybe one out of two ain’t too bad in some things. This wasn’t one of them.

So the doctors removed the plate and all the screws, they surgically broke the unhealed fracture again and did bone grafts, and then they put in what they call a femoral nail (that’s a metal rod that extends nearly the entire length of the bone, from the hip to just above my knee). More time in a walker, then crutches, then a cane, and then I was on my own two legs again. My leg still gave me a lot of grief, and then it was yet another good news/bad news story. The remaining fracture finally healed after another year, but the femoral rod fractured. But it didn’t matter, they said, because the bone had healed, and in any event, removing the broken rod wasn’t an option because of the way it broke. That piece of metal in my thighbone would just be along for the ride for the duration. These guys were starting to sound like a few motorcycle mechanics I’ve known. You know, the kind who work in the big dealerships (that wire’s supposed to be hanging out below the headlight, Joe).

What about my left leg still hurting? Man up, they said. Well, they didn’t actually use those words, but it was clear to me these guys had done about all they could do. I couldn’t take the Oxy they offered because it made me hallucinate (why anyone would take that stuff recreationally is beyond my comprehension), and Tylenol/Ibuprofen/Alleve and all the other over-the-counter pain meds didn’t make a dent. Steroid injections and pills helped, but they came with their own set of problems, like terrible cramps and (don’t laugh) uncontrollable hiccups (I once had the hiccups for 4 days straight, day and night). About the only thing that gave me some relief was riding my bicycle, but you can’t live your life from the saddle of a road bike. I was doing a lot of overseas travel, and long airplane rides always aggravated the pain (especially those long flights to Asia flying coach). It felt like someone had stuck a hot knife in my thigh nearly all the time. Every once in a while the bastard would twist it, too.

The docs tell me what I have is traumatic sciatica, which is an injury to the sciatic nerve along my femur (rather than plain old vanilla sciatica, which is induced by compression of the sciatic nerve as it exits the spinal column). Okay, so it has a name. I quit bitching about it and basically, you know, manned up. There wasn’t anything they could do. That hot knife sticking in my leg became the new normal. I rode across the US with it, I covered a lot of miles in Baja with it, I rode through the Andes in Colombia with it, and I rode across China with it. I had, indeed, manned up. But it was a gold-plated bitch.

My good buddy TK, who is a little younger than me, has his own set of orthopedic challenges. We would sometimes compare notes on where it hurt the most. You know, two old guys complaining about the results of too many good times on motorcycles. It was kind of like that scene in Jaws when Quint and Richard Dreyfuss are comparing scars. And then what I consider a miracle occurred a few weeks ago. TK mentioned to me that turmeric was giving him a bit of relief, and hell, I thought I’d try that, too. I’d tried everything else. Like big city folks voting for a Republican, I had nothing to lose.

Much to my great surprise and relief, the turmeric seems to be working. The idea is that it reduces inflammation, I’ve read. That’s the same thing the steroids would do, but the turmeric doesn’t have the side effects that the steroids did. The acid test for me was my recent flight to and from Singapore, and I got through that just fine. My leg is feeling pretty close to normal these days. I’m not at 100%, but I’m way better than I have been. I even did a 7 1/2 mile walk while I was in Singapore with no pain. I hadn’t done that since before the accident.

I bought my turmeric from Costco, and I only started using it after I checked with my doctor to make sure I wouldn’t be screwing anything else up (like most guys my age, I take pills for two or three other old guy ailments). So here comes the disclaimer: I’m not a doctor and I’m not recommending you start taking turmeric. But if you have motorcycle-induced or other old age aches and pains that won’t go away, check with your doctor first and then consider trying turmeric. It’s working for me.

We want you! Sign up here:

Catching up and what’s coming up!

Snacks at an engineering seminar in Singapore. Those are hard-boiled quail eggs and they were good!

I’m back after a 3-day hop over to Singapore, and it’s good to be home. I thought I’d do sort of a catchall blog to mention a bunch of things. For starters, Singapore was fun (it always is), but that 15-hour time change is a bear. I was over there to teach a class, something I do two or three times a year. They treat me well in Singapore and I love traveling to Asia. I think I’m back on California time already, thanks to keeping an altered sleep schedule while I was in Asia and a good sleeping pill that let me sleep through the night last night. If you’ve never been to Singapore, you might want to add it to your bucket list. It’s one of the world’s great places.

I kept up (as many of you did) with Joe Gresh’s Endurofest fun in Flagstaff, and it looks like the only downside to that adventure was his good buddy Hunter crashed and cracked a bunch of ribs. Hunter, we’re thinking of you. Get well soon.

At the spot where Joe’s buddy Hunter crashed. He got through it with six broken ribs. Ouch!

And speaking of cracking things, you’ll remember the story on my .257 Weatherby Ruger No. 1 cracking its Circassian walnut stock and me shipping it back to the factory. I called Ruger, but I still don’t have an update on the fix. They were supposed to get back to me later today, but it’s already later today so I expect I won’t hear anything until tomorrow or Monday. I’ve got a bunch of .257 Weatherby brass polished and primed, and I’ve got the Barnes monolithic copper bullets my good buddy Mississippi Dave recommended. I’m eager to get that rifle back and continue the load development for it.

A 200th year Ruger 77 in 7×57. You’d think with all those 7s I’d get lucky, but I haven’t found a way to get tight groups yet. I’m working the problem.

In the meantime, I’ve been playing with a beautiful 43-year-old Ruger Model 77. It’s a 200th year Ruger in a very classy chambering, the 7×57, which is the old Spanish Mauser cartridge. I bought it used in 1977 and it is in pristine condition, and I think I know why the previous owner sold it. It doesn’t group worth a damn. But that makes it more fun (half the fun with these things is searching for a good load). Stay tuned, because if I ever find a decent load, you can be sure there will be a blog on this one.

The carb on my TT250 is gummed up and it won’t idle. That’s not the bike’s fault. It’s mine. I sometimes go months between rides on that bike, and that’s what happened here. I’ll take the carb apart to clean out the passageways, and when I do, I’ll photodocument the approach so you can see how I go about it. I’ll have to re-read the tutorial I did for CSC Motorcycles on the TT250 carb first. These bikes are super easy to maintain, and they have to be one of the best deals ever on a new motorcycle.

Hey, another cool motorcycle deal…my good buddy Ben recently published a book titled 21 Tips For Your First Ride South Of The Border (and it’s free). You can download it here.

Let’s see…what else? Oh yeah, we have a bunch of stuff in the blog pipeline for you. There’s the Yoo-Hoo product review (we haven’t forgotten about that one). There’s a very cool watch company (Gear’d Hardware) that follows the ExNotes blog, and they recently sent two watches to us for review. The review will appear here in the near future. That’s good; we’ve been meaning to start a watch review series and this will get the ball rolling.

A Gear’d Hardware watch, one of two Gresh and I will review for you here on the ExhaustNotes blog.

More good stuff: I’ve been playing with another Ruger No. 1 chambered in yet another Weatherby cartridge (the mighty .300 Weatherby), and I’ll be posting a blog about that soon. Another product review that’s coming up is one on turmeric, the dietary supplement that’s supposed to work wonders for arthritis. I don’t have arthritis, but that crash I had on my Speed Triple 10 years ago has bothered me mightily for the last decade, and taking turmeric is getting it done for me. I don’t normally believe in these supplement wonder pills, but folks, it’s working. Watch for the blog on this stuff. And we haven’t forgotten about a near-term ride up the Pacific Coast Highway (good buddy TK and I have been talking about that one).

California’s Pacific Coast Highway: It doesn’t get any better than this.

Stay tuned; there’s always good stuff coming your way here on the ExNotes blog!

Masks at the Gilcrease Museum

During a recent Oklahoma visit, one of our stops was at Tulsa’s Thomas Gilcrease Museum. Gilcrease (that’s him in the photo above) was an Oklahoma Native American who discovered oil on his property (Come and listen to my story about a man named Gil, sung to the tune of the Beverly Hillbillies theme song). Mr. Gilcrease collected artifacts of the Americas, western art, and more (cue in the Indiana Jones music), and he built the museum bearing his name. The Gilcrease Museum is an impressive place, and the collection of Native American masks is particularly impressive. Here are just a few, all shot at ISO 3200 on my Nikon. Enjoy, my friends.

The Oklahoma City National Memorial

When we were recently in Tulsa, one of the places we wanted to visit was the Oklahoma City National Memorial. Oklahoma had a design competition, much the same as occurred for the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, except for this monument the people most directly involved (family members of those lost, survivors, and rescue workers) selected the design.

Like 9-11 and the JFK assassination, most of us remember exactly where we were and what we were doing when we first learned of the Oklahoma City bombing. It happened at 9:02 a.m. on the 19th of April in 1995. I was on a business trip in Seattle, in a car talking to one of our marketing guys, when I heard about it. I remember the first day and the day after, when folks thought it might have been done by Islamic terrorists. But it was a homegrown crackpot, rapidly captured and ultimately executed for his crime. Another conspirator inexplicably drew multiple life sentences (he will die in prison), and a third testified against the first two, served a relatively short prison sentence, and is now in the witness protection program.

I knew the Oklahoma City National Memorial would be a moving experience; what I had not expected was just how emotional it would be. The gravity of the crime that killed 168 men, women, and children who were simply living their lives that morning is wrenching. That said, the National Memorial is well done, seeing it was time well spent, and it is something no one should miss.

The 2020 Corvette

I received an email last night from Chevy advising me I could configure my own new 2020 Corvette online with their website. Hmmmm, that sounded interesting. The new Corvettes are mid-engined, like a Ferrari and some of world’s other exotic sports cars. After doing as Chevy suggested, I’m mighty tempted. The new Corvette is stunning.

I guess I first got the Corvette bug back in the early 1960s, watching a couple of TV shows. One was Route 66, a story about a young Marty Milner and George Maharis (Todd and Buzz) bopping around the US in a Corvette solving the world’s problems. The other was Bonanza, the great western sponsored by Chevy. We watched it as much for the Corvette ads as we did for the show. Ben, Hoss, Adam, and Little Joe. They’re all dead now, I think, but I remember them well, and Adam (Pernell Roberts) even appeared in one of the Corvette ads.

I’d wanted a Corvette ever since I was a kid, and in 2004, as Chevy was transitioning from the C-whatever body style to the C+1 body style, they allowed the dealers to sell the ’04 models to GM employees at the GM employee discount. It’s a long story how I qualified for it, but the bottom line is the discount exceeded $17K on a Z06 (a car most folks pay over MSRP for), and I was in.

To make a long story a little less long, I kept the Z06 for 14 years, and when I sold it, the car had a whopping 40,000 miles on the clock. That’s about 2850 miles annually, and when you consider insurance and registration, that worked out to something slightly south of a dollar a mile just for insurance and registration. Throw in our California fuel costs (currently well over $4 a gallon), depreciation, and maintenance (surprisingly little on a car like the Z06), firing up that silver streak was expensive. I should have driven it more to get my money’s worth, but the Corvette was more of a toy for me than real transportation. I loved the thing, but it wasn’t a good daily driver. I didn’t regret seeing the Corvette go, but every once in awhile I think about another one. Like when I received the email from Chevy last night that led to me playing around with their online configurator. That pastel blue one you see above sure grabbed my attention. There’s no denying it: The new Corvette is an incredibly-beautiful car. And I still qualify for the employee discount. But nah, I don’t think I’ll be pulling the trigger on this one.

Best BBQ Brisket Ever!

The best barbeque in the world. Trust me on this. It’s in Spavinaw, Oklahoma.

There’s barbeque, there’s good barbeque, there’s Oklahoma barbeque, and then there’s barbequed brisket from the Bradford’s Barbeque in Spavinaw, Oklahoma. Simply put, it’s the best barbequed beef I’ve ever had, and I’ve been all over. Like that Johnny Cash song goes, I’ve been everywhere, man. You might want to argue the point about the best BBQ, but I’m not your guy. You won’t change my mind. I know. It’s Bradford’s.

So, to back up a bit, Sue and I spent a glorious week in Oklahoma, and part of the mission was to find exciting new places to visit and roads to ride. And boy oh boy, did we ever! On the advice of a good friend, we headed east out of Tulsa on Highway 412 and intentionally got lost in eastern Oklahoma’s lake country. It was north on the 82, and we let the meandering begin.

Tulsa is about 50 miles to the left on this map. The fun starts as soon as you turn north off Highway 412.

As we rode north along the eastern shore of Lake Hudson (formed by a dam on the Neosho River), we saw little towns with names like Locust Grove, Pump Back, and Hoot Owl (hey, I can’t make this up). The road was grand and the scenery and greenery were even better. It was a Friday, and there were literally hundreds of motorcycles on the road. I told Sue there had to be a motorcycle event somewhere to draw out crowds like this, but nope, it was the riding that draws the crowds. It’s like this all the time out there.

Then we hit a stretch of roller-coaster twisties in the hills, and a great road got even better. Think Glendora Ridge Road with extreme vertical undulations, except much greener and much more exciting. Take a peek at a satellite photo:

Yep, it was grand. The twisties and curves look gradual. They weren’t. It was fun.

The road was impressive, and it’s one I’ll visit again. We were enjoying it immensely when suddenly we found ourselves at a huge dam backed up by an even bigger lake. “Dayum!” I thought. We had to stop for a few photos.

Susie at the Spavinaw Dam. I know: I married way above my station in life.

We took a few photos, we walked around a bit, and then we were back on the road for the few hundred yards it took to get to Spavinaw. Spavinaw is a small town, and as we entered it we saw that sign at the top of this blog for Bradford’s Barbeque. It was noon, and I suddenly realized I was hungry. I looked at Sue and she nodded. Bradford’s Barbeque it was, and it was fantastic.

Actually, it’s pronounced “Jeet jet?” The answer when I shot this photo was no, but we would soon change that.

Buck Bradford, Proprietor and BBQ chef extraordinaire, and Amber, a lovely young lady who is also a photographer. I asked Amber if there was a motorcycle event nearby because of all the bikes we saw. “No, it’s always like this around here,” she said. I can see why.

Bradford’s beef brisket. Buck smokes the meet himself, and it was fantastic. That’s mustard cole slaw (delicious) and the best baked beans I ever had. It was a wonderful lunch, the stuff of legend.

I could have spent the entire day chatting with Buck and Amber, and it was like we had known them for years. Oklahoma is like that. It’s a fun place to visit, but as much as we were enjoying the conversation, it was time to get back on the road again. Amber suggested we stop at the Disney Dam, so that’s what we did.

A stitched-together, 180-degree view of the Grand Lake O’ the Cherokees, upstream of the Disney Dam.

The road across the top of the Disney Dam.

An abandoned motel in Langley, just south of the Disney Dam. There are lots of photo ops in Oklahoma.

We continued east on Highway 28 in Disney. Well, generally east…actually we continued east, north, south, east again…you get the idea. Eastern Oklahoma’s twisties were magnificent. Then it was Highway 20, then 59, and then we were back on the 412, and it was twisties and scenery the entire way. It was a perfect day with perfect weather, and it was a perfect road for a motorcycle ride. We were in a rental car. But there’s always tomorrow. And tomorrow for me means a return to Tulsa, on a motorcycle, to experience this part of the world the way it was meant to be experienced.

There’s more coming on Tulsa, and Seattle, and more. Sign up here and never miss an ExNotes blog!

Want to read about some of our other exciting motorcycle destinations? Check this out!

John Wayne’s Weatherby

We were in Oklahoma last week and it was awesome. It was an opportunity to visit with a wonderful friend and see the sights. And folks, Oklahoma has them. One of our stops was the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City. It’s an amazing place with a collection of Native American artifacts, rodeo trophies, art, sculpture, firearms, and more. The guns on display were impressive, and one of the firearms that caught my attention was John Wayne’s Weatherby.

I’ve always admired John Wayne, and I love Weatherby rifles. This particular rifle was of interest for several reasons, not the least of which was John Wayne’s connection to Weatherby. I remembered seeing John Wayne in Weatherby ads decades ago, and I knew he appeared in at least one of the magnificent Weatherby full color catalogs. I found the photo I remembered in my vintage Weatherby catalogs, but it didn’t show Mr. Wayne with this rifle. Then I did a search on “John Wayne’s Weatherby” hoping to find a photo showing him holding the rifle you see in the photo above, but I did not find it. Wayne appeared in several photos and advertisements, though, like the one you see here:

An early ad showing John Wayne with a Weatherby rifle. It’s not the rifle I saw in Oklahoma City.

The Weatherby in the Oklahoma City National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum was interesting from several perspectives beyond the fact that it belonged to John Wayne. Take a look:

This is very early Weatherby, built on a Mauser action. Weatherby used Mauser and other actions before he designed his proprietary Mark V action. Note the dark finish on this rifle.

Optional extrended checkering with a fleur de lis, skip line pattern. Note the scratches and dings; this rifle was not a safe queen. John Wayne rode this one hard!

Extra-cost fancier-than-stock checkering on the fore end. Some of the dark finish is worn away near the rosewood fore end tip. Did Wayne pay Weatherby to have a darker finish applied, did the rifle darken from too much oil over the years, or ???

A shot of the Mauser action and an early proprietary Weatherby four-power telescopic sight. Note that the windage and elevation turrets are in line on top of the scope, rather than today’s practice of placing elevation on the top and windage on the right of the scope barrel.

An ivory or maple stock inlay, darkened along with the rest of the stock. The inlay was almost certainly done in Weatherby’s custom rifle shop.

So there you have it: John Wayne’s Weatherby at the Oklahoma City National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum. We enjoyed our time there, and I’ll add more photos from the Museum in subsequent blogs. If you’re in the area, the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum is a spot you won’t want to miss.

Never miss an ExNotes blog! Sign up here:

Keep the content coming! Please click on our advertisers’ popup ads!

Check out our Tales of the Gun stories!

Join our Facebook ExNotes Group!

The Original Exhaust Notes

Churchill Clark in 1969. Our graduation yearbook was dedicated to him. I saw Mr. Clark again at our 20th reunion. He was one of the greats and the creator of the Exhaust Notes name. Sadly, he is no longer with us.

The year was 1968, I was a 17-year-old pup, and Churchill Clark approached me with an idea for the Viking Press. We were the Vikings (no one is quite sure how we got that name, as there were very few Scandinavians in South Brunswick), and the Viking Press, you see, was our high school newspaper. Mr. Clark was an English teacher (a great one), and he was the Viking Press faculty advisor.

A bit more background: There were several cliques in our high school (there were, are, and always will be in any high school, I guess), and I belonged to the greasers. You know, the gearheads. We lived and breathed GTOs, Camaros, Hemis, motorcycles, street racing, and anything that ingested fossil fuel. We were in the middle of the muscle car era, maybe one of the best times ever to be a teenager in America. Old Mr. Clark wanted to get our crowd reading the high school newspaper (he was a bit of a greaser himself), and as I was one of the more literate greasers, he asked me to write a column about cars.

“What do you want me to say?” I asked.

“Whatever you want,” Mr. Clark answered.

So I did, and I have to admit, it was a heady experience seeing something I wrote appear in print for the first time. My idea was to have a little fun with the war stories and poke at the ridiculousness of it all. Mr. Clark titled the column Exhaust Notes and he drew the little car that appeared at the top of every article. I liked both, and the Exhaust Notes name stuck. When Joe Gresh and I started the blog, there was no question about what it was going to be called.

A few months ago my high school class, South Brunswick’s Class of 1969, held its 50th reunion. My good buddy and friend since kindergarten, Kathy Leary, told me she had saved a few of the old Viking Press newspapers, and she scanned a couple of the articles for me.

Those were great times, folks, and great memories. I’m glad Kathy had the foresight to hang on to those old papers, and I’m grateful she scanned and sent a couple of the articles to me. And I’m glad old Mr. Clark trusted me to run with the idea.