Author: Joe Berk

My 3FC19 Scooter

Yep, it’s going to be the CSC RX4, and I’m pumped about the ride.  There’s not a lot of information out there on this bike yet other than here on the ExNotes site, and I’ll give you the link for that at the end of this post.

Steve Seidner (President and CEO of CSC Motorcycles) and good buddy Matt (motorcycle maestro extraordinaire), the two guys who are prepping my RX4 for the 3FC19 ride.

I’ll be the first guy to take the RX4 on a major road trip in the US, and I’ll be the first guy to ride it internationally on a single ride.  I think that’s pretty cool.

Steve and Matt prepped the bike for me by changing the oil, adjusting the valves, installing spotlights, installing the cell phone holder so I can use Waze to navigate, and more.  It was cool visit, and I enjoyed seeing the guys at CSC again.

Down to the frame, just to make sure everything is ready for my 4,500-mile epic international journey. It wasn’t necessary. The guys found nothing wrong.
These are going to turn night into day for me. I like them!
Check out the double disks, and hey, Orlando…look, it’s orange…the fastest color!
A subfender. Cool!
A new rear tire and chain lube. It’s going to be a great ride.
I spec’d out the Tourfella aluminum luggage on this bike…I’ll be carrying my laptop and all my camera gear, and like always, I’ll be blogging from the road every night. You’ll be able to follow the entire trip right here on the ExNotes blog. Hey, do you think the top dawgs at Harley or Honda personally prep bikes for their rally riders?

So, about that additional RX4 information…you can find it right here on our RX4 page!  And hey, check out the CSC Motorcycles site, too!

What?  You haven’t signed up for our automatic email blog updates yet?  Hey, you can do that right here!

Want to read about some of our other epic rides on CSC motorcycles, Royal Enfield motorcycles, Janus motorcycles, and the odd Harley or two?   Take a look at our Epic Rides page!

Loaded for bear…

Good buddy Jason, a Ruger No. 1 in .338 Win Mag, and a 400-lb, 7-ft Alaskan black bear.

As the title of this blog implies and in this case, my good buddy Jason was literally loaded for bear. For several years I had owned a Ruger No. 1 single-shot rifle in .338 Win Mag.  That’s a monster of a magnum.  I had never fired the rifle and I sold it to Jason. He told me he was going on a bear hunt in Alaska (something I’ve always wanted to do), and I was happy to the see the rifle go to a good home. Most recently, Jason sent the photo you see above and a recap of his hunt to me to share here on the ExNotes blog. Here you go, folks!

It all started in 2016 when I purchased my first Ruger No. 1 in 338 Win Mag from Joe.  I’ve always wanted a Ruger No. 1, but I already had a Winchester Model 70 in 338 Win Mag. I planned to go on a bear hunt in 2018, so what I did was sell my Winchester Model 70 to my best friend, who went on the bear hunt, too. I would be using my Ruger No. 1. So this is a story about me and my new rifle and our quest for a big Southeast Alaskan black bear. It was a guided hunt through Alaskan Coastal Outfitters.

Our base camp was on a boat and in the evening we would take a skiff and cruise around all the little islands and bays looking for the right bear. We saw lots of bears (a lot of sows with cubs). We also saw a lot of boars. On Day 4 of our hunt we saw a really nice bear. We got as close as we could without spooking him. My guide told me to get out of the boat and he held the boat still for me. Then, as I was pulling my leg over the side of the boat I got hooked on to the edge of the boat and I fell face down in 8 inches of water.

The bear ran off and my beautiful Ruger No.1 was laying in 8 inches of salt water, so we raced back to the boat, took the rifle apart, and cleaned it up so it was like new.

The next day we went out again and this time I was extra cautious not to fall in when we came across the bear you see in the picture. He was about 300 yards from the skiff when we spotted him. We got as close as we could without spooking him, which was about 140 yards, and my guide kept on asking me if I could make the shot. I always answered “yes, no problem.” I lay down and rested my rifle on my pack. Wouldn’t you know it, I had to lay down in a little creek so I got wet again. We lay there for what seemed to be an eternity. My guide made sure it was a boar and not a sow. Finally, he gave me the OK.

Just then, the bear turned so he had his back to me (so I couldn’t shoot). It gave me an opportunity to situate my follow-up shot. I decided the quickest way to get a follow-up shot (if I needed one) was to shoot with the next round in my hand.

The bear finally turned broadside and I dropped the hammer. I hit him just behind the shoulder and he dropped. My guide backed me up with a 375 H&H rifle, but he didn’t need to fire it. The bear went down, and when we reached him, we saw he was the monster he appeared to be from a distance. The bear measured 7 feet and weighed about 400 lbs.

Jason, that’s an awesome story and a magnificent photograph.  I was sorry to see that rifle go, but it obviously went to a good home and you sure put it to good use.  You know, it takes a real sportsman to do what you did…going after bear with a single-shot rifle.   Congratulations on a successful hunt, and thanks much for sharing your adventure with us here on the ExhaustNotes blog!

Read our other Tales of the Gun stories!

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Would you like to write a guest blog for ExNotes?  It could be a gun story, a hunting story, a motorcycle story, or any other idea you think might work for our audience.  If you have an idea, please let us know at info@exhaustnotes.us.   If we publish your story, you’ll get a signed copy of Destinations with our compliments and gratitude!

Back in the saddle again…

Yep, just like that song, we’re back in the saddle again.  We’ve got the email thing on the road to being fully squared away, and we’ve had a bunch of new folks sign up in the last day.   Things are looking good.

Automatic Email Notifications

If you haven’t heard the word already, we’re having a limited time contest for folks who sign up for our automatic email notifications.  Just add your email to the list, and for every 50 folks who sign up (even if you are already signed up), we’re going to give away a free copy of Destinations.  You can sign up here:

The CSC RX4

I’m stopping by CSC Motorcycles tomorrow to get a photo of the RX4 I’ll be riding in the SCMA Three Flags Classic.  Good buddy Steve asked how I wanted the bike configured and I told him what he already knew:  Spotlights, the big Tourfella luggage, a phone mount, and I’m good to go.  This is going to be one hell of a ride.  Mexico to Canada on a CSC RX4.  I’ll be the first to do this.  More good times.  I’m pumped and I’m eager to get on the road.

It’s going to be hot on the southern part of the ride, as the temps will be above 110 degrees.  But as they say, it’s a dry heat. I’ve ridden in that kind of heat before, and I have a few strategies for dealing with it.  I’ll be blogging the entire ride, so be sure to follow us right here on ExhaustNotes!  And hey, if there are questions you want me to answer or things you want my opinion on related to the RX4, please post your questions here in the blog’s comments section.

The Triple Deuce

Nope, it’s not a car and it’s not a US Army truck.  I’m talking about my .222 Remington Savage 340, a used rifle I picked up on the consignment gun rack at a local store 2 1/2 years ago for the whopping sum of $180.  The Triple Deuce (as the .222 Remington cartridge is known) is one of those inherently accurate cartridges that just groups great without a lot of work (three others are the .308 Winchester, the .375 H&H, and the relatively new 6.5 Creedmoor).   These are rounds that are just flat accurate.  My .222 certainly groups way better than any $180 rifle has a right to do.  I’m having a lot of fun with it.

I had the Savage out this past Sunday and it was shooting sub-minute-of-angle at 100 yards, and that’s close enough for government work.  The stock has a few surface finish scratches (but no gouges that reach into the wood) and I’m going to refinish it.  Before any of you get your shorts in a knot, the rifle is not an uber-collectible piece (so I’m not destroying its value with a refinish).  I’m going to do my TruOil-to-perfection number on it.  I may add a little stain to darken the walnut a bit.  Or not.  We’ll see.  All the metal work on this rifle is perfect and I want the lumber to match. I’ll be posting the step-by-step project here on the ExhaustNotes blog, and you’ll be able to follow along as this labor of love progresses.    And hey, if you want to read our other gun stories, take a look at our Tales of the Gun page!

Good times straight ahead, folks!

And yet more likes and dislikes…

We like seeing big numbers of folks on the ExhaustNotes site.  We can tell how many people are on the site at any given time, which pages they’re viewing, and where they’re located (to the city or town level).  We see folks from literally all over the world, and it’s cool seeing folks in really out of the way (for us, anyway) places.

Take a peek at the blog below about our email signup contest.   You could win a free copy of Destinations just by signing up, even if you are already on the list.  And yeah, we already had a healthy response, and yeah, we already randomly selected our first contest winner from the first group of 50.   That’s good buddy Colorado Dan, and Dan, your copy of Destinations is going in the mail today.  Sign up here, folks, and you might win a copy, too!

More likes and dislikes…

The good news is that it looks like we have this email thing fixed!  Whew, we’re software geniuses!  Who knew?

Okay, back to our likes and dislikes:  We like giving stuff away, and we need to get our email list updated again, so here’s what we’re going to do.   Whether you’re on the email list or not, sign up for our automatic email updates.   For every 50 signups, even if you are already signed up, we’re going to give away a copy of Destinations, our latest book, to one person drawn randomly from each group of 50.  Hey, that gives you a 2% chance of winning, and that’s damn near a sure thing!

Likes and dislikes…

I needed to do a blog to see if this nutty automatic email program is working again, and even though Joe G. and I have a rich repertoire to draw from as far as blog topics go, I thought I’d briefly hit a few likes and dislikes to check out the email notification system. We usually try to limit ourselves to one blog a day to keep your email inbox from getting overwhelmed, so bear with me while I test this system.

I’ll do two or three blogs today to see if I can get this thing sorted. Patience, my friends.

The first is a dislike. I dislike mindless software updates, as apparently occurred with the Icegram software (that’s the plug-in we use for the auto email update feature). Something updated, it stopped working, and then it dumped half the names on our list. I could tell you if you haven’t received an email from us and you should have to let us know, but that would be like asking all the kids who aren’t in class to raise their hands, and that would be about as mindless as a software update when everything was working fine before the update. Ah, here we go.

Hey, if you want to be on the list for automatic email updates, please add your email here:

Stand by, there’s more to follow in a subsequent blog or two.

Pioneer Day in Idaho…

Here’s another great day from the Western America Adventure Ride back in 2015 when we rode across the US with our guests from China and Colombia. It was an interesting day for many reasons, but what happened in Carey, Idaho, will stay with me for a long time.

Craters of the Moon

Baja John, our navigator and lodging consultant on the Western America Adventure Ride.

We had left the Craters of the Moon (a National Monument in the middle of nowhere in Idaho) earlier that morning and ridden another 50 miles or so (with literally nothing in between except open plains, rolling hills, and beautiful scenery) when we entered Carey. You have to understand that Carey is basically a wide spot in the road with maybe 40 or 50 buildings along the way. I was focused on getting there, filling the bikes, and getting back on the road.

Pioneer Day and a Parade

When we pulled into Carey, it was like my home town in the early afternoon on the 4th of July.  You know, everybody was sitting on lawn chairs, lining the street, waving American flags, and waiting for the parade.  That’s literally what we encountered.  The good citizens of Carey were waiting for the parade, except it wasn’t the 4th of July.

Gresh and I were leading the pack at about 15 miles an hour when we rode into town, and everybody starting cheering and waving when they saw us.  We didn’t know what was going on.   I had been blogging every night and Gresh had been kidding me about that.   Gresh lifted his face shield and looked at me while we were still rolling.   “Boy, a lot of people are following the blog,” he said.

Okay, so we rolled into town on our RX3s.  All of us, on RX3 motorcycles, with the town cheering.  You can guess where this is going…the good people of Carey thought we were the start of the parade.   The Carey people waved and welcomed us.  What the Chinese and the Colombian guys were thinking I can only guess.

The Pioneer Day Parade followed us into town.

We pulled into a Shell station (the only one in town).  I wanted to get gas and get going.   I went into the station and asked what was going on.  The girl behind the counter looked at me like I was crazy.  I didn’t know it, but it was Pioneer Day in Idaho.  It’s a holiday they take very seriously.  I imagine everybody in town was out there on both sides of the street.

A Pioneer Day parade pickup.
A lady driving a horse-drawn cart asked Hugo where he was from, and when he said China she told him, “Well, hop on up here with us, honey!”

Like I said, I wanted to get gas and get out of town before the parade hit.  The Chinese guys and the Colombians wanted to stay and watch the parade.
You can guess which way it went.

The Wild West, on the Western America Adventure Ride.

We had a pretty good time in Carey. Our Chinese and Colombian visitors were seeing a good old fashioned American parade, and the good folks in Carey met folks from the other side of the world.  I can only imagine the stories our visitors took home.  I sure landed a good story to share with you!

Want to read more about our Epic Rides?  Just click here!

Hi Joe

Wow, was I ever surprised when a young guy in a pickup truck held up this note as we rode south on Highway 101!

The photo you see above popped up in my Facebook feed this morning letting me know it was 4 years ago that I posted it, and that meant it was four years ago that we finished the 5000-mile Western America Adventure Ride.  Here’s what I originally posted on the CSC blog about that “Hi Joe” sign:

We are in Santa Maria tonight. It was an easy roll once we got past San Jose, but the traffic on the 101 leaving San Francisco and all the way down past San Jose was rough this morning. After that, we basically put the bikes on cruise control and ran 75 mph all the way down.

Here’s a cool thing…on the 101, just past San Luis Obispo, a couple of guys in a gray pickup truck pulled up alongside our convoy and starting beeping and waving at us. When they were alongside me, one held up a sign that said “Hi, Joe!” Cool stuff. I have no idea who those guys were, but it’s a safe bet they’ll read this. Guys, when you do, shoot me an email. It made my day seeing you today. I had a good laugh over it.

I mentioned the above in the CSC blog, and later that same day I received this email from my good buddy San Marino Bill:

Joe:

My son just called me (3 pm) from the Paso Robles area and wanted to know where the CSC group was riding today. He is up there picking up his son. He was following a group of good looking bikes (10 or 12). I told him to make a sign that said HI JOE and show it to the leader. I hope it was you.

Bill

That was a pretty cool experience, and it kind of wrapped up how well the ride was received and how much good it did for the RX3 motorcycle and our efforts to show the world it is a great motorcycle.  You can read more about that in 5000 Miles At 8000 RPM, the book about bringing the RX3 to America and the Western America Adventure Ride.

My 4-year-old RX3, with its Western America Adventure Ride decal. I still own the bike. It’s in my garage right now, just a few feet from where I sit typing this blog.

We sure had a blast on that ride, and people were following it on the CSC blog all over the world.  I remember Pioneer Day in Idaho on that ride, where we literally rode in a parade and people lined the streets awaiting our arrival on the CSC motorcycles.  I’ll post that story in another day or two.

Another grand adventure is a little less than a month away.  I’ll be riding the new RX4 from Mexico to Canada in the Southern California Motorcycle Association’s 2019 Three Flags Classic.  I last did that ride in 2005 (you can read the story about that here), and I’m looking forward to doing it again on the RX4.  I’ll be blogging the ride daily, I have a commission for two magazine articles on it, and I’m toying with the idea of a short book on the ride, the RX4 bike, the SCMA, CSC, and Zongshen.  That’s going to be good for CSC, Zongshen, the SCMA, and the Three Flags Classic event.  It will be another grand adventure.  Stay tuned, because I’ll be posting much more here on the ExNotes blog.

My 2019 3FC ride: The CSC RX4. You can read more about the bike here.

Bike Mags gone by…

Good buddy Buzz Kanter, publisher of American Iron magazine, posted an interesting list on Facebook yesterday.  It’s the motorcycle magazines that have folded their tents since 1998.   I asked Buzz if I could post it here and Buzz said it was okay:

American Rider
American Thunder
Big Twin
Biker
Biker Parties
Cycle News
Cycle World Buyers Guide
Dirt Bike Buyers Guide
Easyriders
Easyriders’ Buyers Guide
Hot Bike
Hot Bike Specials
Hot Rod Bikes
Indian Motorcycle Illustrated
In The Wind
Iron Horse
IronWorks
Motorcycle Cruiser
Motorcycle Performance
Motorcycle Price Guide
Motorcycle Shopper
Motorcycle Tour & Cruiser
Motorcyclist
Motorcyclist Buyers Guide
MX Racer
Old Bike Journal
On The Road
Outlaw Biker
Outlaw Biker Presents
Quick Throttle
Sport Rider
Twistgrip
V-Twin
VQ
Walnecks Classic Cycle Trader

Buzz’s magazine, American Iron, is still going strong and it is still published every 4 weeks (I can’t imagine publishing to that kind of schedule, but Buzz, Steve Lita, and the AIM crew somehow make it happen).  The focus at AIM is on U.S. motorcycles, great writing, and great photography, and it all works.  I don’t own a Harley or an Indian and I still enjoy reading American Iron.  If you want to subscribe to AIM (and I think you should), you can do so here.

Buzz is an interesting guy.  Like a lot of riders, he’s a shooter, too, and I enjoy seeing his shooting-related posts on Facebook.  A lot of folks who are into motorcycles often have similar other interests, including shooting, cameras and photography, watches, bicycles, travel, and more.  It’s what drives the kind of things we talk about here on ExhaustNotes.

So what’s coming up?   Good stuff, my friends.  Arjiu is headed to Bonneville in the near future.  I’m doing the 2019 Three Flags Classic on a CSC RX4.   Good buddy J and I just got back from a deer hunt scouting expedition (whoa, the mosquitoes sure got us good).  And more.  There’s always more, so stay tuned!

Do you have an interesting story you’d like to share here on ExNotes?  Send it to us (info@ExhaustNotes.us), and if it is right for the blog, we’ll post it here.  Don’t worry about typos or spelling errors…our editorial crew is standing by and if there are any mistakes, we’ll fix ’em!

Want to be taller, thinner, better looking, and a faster rider?  Hey, sign up for our automatic email blog update notifications here!

Check out the Sierra Mountain Passes website from our good buddies J and Val!

The Rimfire Series: ¡Siluetas Metálicas!

Metallic Silhouette Origins

The sport of metallic silhouette shooting came to us from Mexico, where it started roughly 80 years ago as a part of a culture of rural village celebrations. They used live animals in those days tethered to a stake, which made it a lot harder to hit them because after the first shot the animals tended to take evasive action. I guess it was considered politically correct in those earlier times because the match would be immediately followed by a rip-roaring barbeque (at which, of course, chicken, pig, turkey, and ram were on the menu).

I learned all of this from a world-class metallic silhouette shooter named Jose Porras in the 1970s. Jose used to drive up from Mexico to shoot with us at Fort Bliss when I first got into the metallic silhouette game. He was the guy to beat, and I never did. I didn’t care. I just liked hearing his stories about the old days and the origins of the sport.

Metallic Silhouette Targets and Distances

I had last shot in a metallic silhouette match about 45 years ago. By then, the sport had morphed into shooting at metallic silhouettes, like you see in the photo at the top of this blog. There were chickens at 50 meters, pigs at 100 meters, turkeys at 150 meters, and rams at 200 meters (this was for the handgun competition).  All of the silhouettes were life-sized.  For high power rifle (which we always shot with a scope back then) the targets were the same, but they were located at 200 meters (chickens), 300 meters (pigs), 385 meters (turkeys), and 500 meters (rams). Those are long distances, and all of the rifle shooting was offhand (no slings or shooting jackets). You could shoot from a sitting position in the handgun matches, but the rifle competition was all a stand up affair. It was challenging, and that’s what made it interesting. The winner usually connected with only about half the targets, and you either hit them or you didn’t.

Just hitting the targets didn’t count.  You had to hit them with enough energy to knock them over.  In the rifle competition, that alone ruled out the light cartridges.  And you couldn’t use magnums, either, because those cartridges would damage the targets.  Nope, in the rifle game, it was a Goldilocks affair.   The energy had to be just right.  7mm Mauser, 7mm-08, .308, and .30 06 were the favorites back then.

In the handgun competition, everyone either used a magnum cartridge (.44 Magnum was popular), .45 Colt loaded to the max, or a custom wildcat (I’ll say more about that below).   .45 ACP, .38 Special, and the standards of the day didn’t have enough energy to knock the targets over, and their rainbow-like trajectories meant there wasn’t enough adjustment in the sights.   9mm?  Fuhgeddaboutit.  The 9mm was woefully anemic for this game.

Metallic Silhouette Handguns

In the International Handgun Metallic Silhouette Association (IHMSA) national championships in 1976 in El Paso, I tied for 5th place and then lost a shootoff. I was out of the money in 6th, but I was still pretty pleased because I was using a bone-stock Smith and Wesson Model 27 .357 Magnum with my cast bullet reloads, while all of the guys who did better than me were shooting custom XP-100 Remingtons. The XP-100 was a single-shot pistol based on a rifle action, and in those days, guys would have them custom barreled in 30×223. The 30×223 was a wildcat based on the 5.56 NATO cartridge blown out to take a .30 caliber rifle bullet. It ultimately became known as the 300 Blackout cartridge. Jose used one of these 30×223 custom handguns for culling coyotes on his estate in Mexico during the week and for winning matches in El Paso on the weekends.  He was really, really good.  I imagine the coyotes hated him.

.22 Rifle Metallic Silhouette Shooting

Well, to make a long story slightly less long, I had been wanting to get back into metallic silhouette shooting for the last four and a half decades, and one day a year or so ago I did.  I broke the suction between my butt and the seat in front of this computer and I shot in the .22-caliber metallic silhouette rifle match at the West End Gun Club. I shot my Browning .22 A-bolt (a relatively rare and semi-collectible rifle).

I didn’t know it when I went out there, but they shoot two classes: One with scopes, and the other with open sights. The open sight targets are roughly four times the size of the scope targets, and for whatever reason, on the rams the targets for the scoped guns are set back an additional 10 yards (for the other three animals, the distances are the same). At all distances, though, the targets for the scoped guns are really, really small.  Take a look.

With apologies for the lack of focus, here’s a zoomed-in shot of the turkeys. The iron sight turkey targets are on the left; the scoped-rifle turkeys are on the right…

Like I said, the scoped-rifle targets are really tiny. You can see that in the photo above. They were maybe two inches tall. Shooting at these things offhand was a challenge, but I had a blast out there.  There were four guys shooting scoped rifles (I was one of them) and 14 guys (and gals) shooting iron-sighted rifles (mostly lever guns; all with expensive aftermarket aperture sights). It was a good crowd…mostly older guys (my age and up) with a few folks in their 20s and 30s. Everybody was friendly.

I could have started this blog by telling you I came in fourth in the scoped class and let it go at that, but the fact is I had the lowest score in the scoped class. I only got 14 out of 60 silhouettes, the next guy got 18, another guy got 20, and the highest guy got 22. It’s a tough game. I’m pretty happy with what I did, though. I had only zeroed my rifle at 50 yards (where I got about half the chickens). I got about a third of the pigs I shot at (these were the 65-yard targets, and every shot at them when I connected was at the low edge of the target). I only got one each of the rams and the turkeys (the turkeys are always the toughest), but like I said, I wasn’t zeroed and those were just lucky hits. Next time I’ll do better (and there will be a next time). This was all shooting offhand at teeny, tiny targets. I’d like to try the open sight class next time, too, just because the targets were a lot bigger. It all was a lot of fun.

The club also has a centerfire lever gun silhouette match, and I’m thinking I’ll try that, too. Those distances go out to about 140 yards, it’s all open sights, and it’s all lever guns. They told me they mostly shoot .357 Magnum (a handgun cartridge) and .30 30 for the centerfire metallic silhouette competition. The bug has bitten and I am enjoying being back in the game.

Good times, folks.  Life is good.

More Tales of the Gun stories are here!