Joe Berk

Baja 2009: The KLR Khronicles Part IV

The view, peeking out from the Mission San Velicata de Espana ruins.

Read Parts I, II, and III of the 2009 KLR Baja foray here!

When the Transpeninsular Highway continues south after leaving El Rosario, it crosses a long bridge across the dry Rio El Rosario and then winds into the mountains on the northern edge of the Valle de los Cirios. The wilderness starts here, and it is awesome. I love this area. It’s the first place you encounter cardon cactus and the cirios. These things grow only in Baja (you won’t find them anywhere else on the planet). The Cardon are the giant cactus that look something like the saguaro cactus in Arizona, but the cardon are much, much larger. The cirios are the weird-looking thin shoots that grow to heights of around 30 or 40 feet (maybe even more). Someone once wrote that they look like a plant that Dr. Suess would have designed, and I think that’s a good description. They have this kind of weird, whimsical, goofy look…the kind of thing one might create when under the influence of, well, whatever your preferred mind-altering substance is.

I grabbed a few shots of our KLRs a few miles into the mountains. You can see the cardon and the cirios in the background.

My KLR 650. I had the Kawi soft luggage on it and a Nelson-Rigg tank bag.

John’s KLR. These bikes just keep going and going. They’re perfect for this kind of ride.

Baja cacti. It’s one photo op after another in Baja.

A shot along the Transpeninsular Highway in the Valle de los Cirios.

Baja John standing by my KLR. The background almost looks like it’s been painted into this scene.

After rolling along the highway a few more miles, I saw something out of the corner of my eye on the road. At first I wasn’t sure, and then as I was playing back the image mentally, I decided I needed to turn around and take another look…

Yep, my eyes weren’t playing tricks. I had seen what I thought I saw. Is that correct grammatically? Whatever. The spider was huge.

Wow, that was one monstrous tarantula! We parked the bikes and started taking photos. This spider was easily double the size of the tarantulas I’ve seen in California.

John got down in front of the tarantula. He squatted to get a closer look, and then something wild happened. The spider ran straight at John. We were both shocked at its speed. They normally seem very deliberate and slow, but I have to tell you, that one moved terrifyingly fast.

John jumped up, screamed, and propelled himself backwards faster than a Democrat mistakenly wandering into a Trump rally. John was paddling backward so fast he looked like an old Warner Brothers roadrunner cartoon.

We both laughed after it happened. Here we were, two guys old enough to know better, screwing around with a ginormous tarantula in the middle of the Baja peninsula, laughing like a couple of kids. Baja does that to you.

Look at this fellow’s little beady eyes. And his hairy butt. That’s quite a hairdo. It kind of reminds me of Beavis and Butthead. Come to think of it, those might be appropriate names for John and me.

The tarantula crawled under a plant, I took a few more photos, and we were on our way.

I think I already mentioned that I had my Nikon D200 on this trip and an older (non-VR) 24-120 Nikon lens. I mostly shot at f/8 (the 24-120’s sweet spot) in the aperture mode, which is a mode that works well for me. I also had the 12-24 Tokina wide angle lens along for the ride, but I never even mounted it on the camera. The 24-120 is not a macro lens, but it did an acceptable job here. The Tokina lens does a good job, too, but the 24-120 Nikon was handling everything for me on this ride.

Our next planned stop was the Mission San Fernando Rey de Espana Velicata. We almost didn’t go. I had been spooked by the dogs, and I told John the night before that I wasn’t too keen on rolling through any more little villages with dogs. John waited awhile and casually mentioned that he really wanted to see some of the sights accessible only by dirt roads. I acquiesced and I’m glad I did. We saw some amazing things…things we wouldn’t have seen if we hadn’t wandered off road.

Further down the Transpeninsular Highway, we saw the sign for the Mission San Fernando Rey de Espana Velicata and a dirt road veering off to the west. I took the turn first, and son of a gun, a dog materialized out of nowhere and started chasing me. This time the dog was so small it was funny. It was a little Chihuahua, and he looked anything but threatening. The little guy was behind me yapping up a storm and I was enjoying the chase. Those little legs were pumping for all they were worth and he still couldn’t keep up. It was me, the Chihuahua, and John (in that order) rolling down this dirt road. The pup was struggling to keep up, barking all the while and trying his best to be intimidating. I could hear John laughing behind me. I should have grabbed a picture.

On the road to the Mission San Fernando Rey de Espana Velicata

The Mission San Fernando Rey de Espana Velicata was the only one in Baja founded by the Franciscans (the Jesuits did all the others). It only lasted from 1769 to 1818. It was built to convert the local Cochimi Indians to Catholicism (that was how it was advertised; basically, the missions were labor camps with a touch of that old time religion). Unfortunately, the Spaniards brought diseases for which the indigenous people had no immunity, and disease soon ravaged the area. The entire mission system in Mexico ended in the early 1800s, when Mexico gained its independence from Spain. It’s not a pretty story, but there’s a history here and it’s intriguing to visit these ancient places (especially when they are well off the beaten path).

The Mission San Fernando Rey de Espana Velicata. This is all that’s left of it.

Our KLRs parked in front of the mission ruins.

The place was amazing. I’d seen the sign and the dirt road to get to the mission on each of my prior Baja visits, but I had never been to see it. Getting there and taking it all in was fun.

After visiting the Mission San Fernando Rey de Espana Velicata, we rolled south along the Transpeninsular Highway a few more miles and took another dirt road (this time to the east) to see the ruins at El Marmol. El Marmol was a world-famous marble and onyx quarry 50 years ago. Like the mission, we’d seen the signs for it on our earlier travels through Baja, but we had never made the trip out there to see it. I always wanted to see what El Marmol was all about, especially after reading about it in several Baja references. Carole Lombard had a bathtub made from El Marmol marble, you know.

The ride out to El Marmol was exciting. The road was rough and had deep sand in several spots. My friend Bob had previously told me that the best way to take this stuff was at high speed, and that’s what we did. It made an enormous difference. I could see the rough road beneath me, but the KLR’s long-travel suspension let me fly over it. It was almost an out-of-body experience. I enjoyed it. I was in the zone, and suddenly, we were there.

El Marmol. There isn’t much to it, other than a pile of big rocks. Folks still come out here to get the marble. We saw a few Mexicans loading some into a tiny pickup truck.

I bottomed the suspension in a few spots on the ride out to El Marmol, and this is what it did to my KLR’s license plate. Many first-gen KLR owners relocate their license plate up on top of the rear fender. Now I know why.

Two KLRistas at El Marmol. That’s my yellow riding jacket on my KLR. It seemed to aggravate any dog who saw it.

We stopped for a break on the way out of El Marmol where the dirt road rejoined the Transpeninsular Highway. We had a good conversation with Jose, a police officer from Catavina who consented to a photo.

There were two dogs hanging around the place watching John, Jose, and me. They seemed friendly enough when John gave one of them a snack. Then we got on the motorcycles and it was as if someone had flipped a switch. The dogs instantly turned mean, snarling and going after John, who was accelerating sharply way (a relative term, to be sure, when you’re on a KLR). There’s a rule in Mexico, I guess. If you’re a dog and you see a guy on a motorcycle, you’ve got a reputation to maintain. This time, though, both dogs went after John and ignored me. They chased John all the way back to the highway, with me following. Hey, that’s was okay by me. I’d already earned my combat pay.

The dogs chasing John, though, didn’t seem to have their hearts in it. They were chasing John like it was part of their job description and the boss was watching. Going through the motions. Phoning it in. You know the drill.

I thought about that as we continued south. I reasoned and hoped that as went further into Mexico (and we were about 350 miles into Baja at this point), the dogs might be nicer. Our next destination was Guerrero Negro, 500 miles south of the border. We would soon find out.

Check out our other Epic Motorcycle Rides, and watch the ExNotes blog for the next installment of the Baja KLR Khronicles!

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Baja 2009: The KLR Khronicles Part III

When I left off with the last post about our 2009 KLR Baja trip, I had a dog hanging onto my leg on a dirt road just north of San Jacinto. It was terrifying, and what I was mostly scared of was that the thing might have managed to sink its teeth into me. If that had happened, there was no question but that I would have to undergo the rabies shots. In order to avoid doing that, I’d either have to know that it hadn’t penetrated my leg or I’d have to kill the dog and get its head to a lab to be tested for rabies (gruesome, I know, and don’t ask me how I know about such things). That second option wasn’t going to happen, and in any event, I had no idea where I could go in Baja to get the head tested. Nope, all my bets had to be on no penetration, or I’d have to go for the abdominal rabies shots.

When the dog finally released its grip, John and I slid to a stop a half mile further down the road and I frantically stopped to check my leg. I didn’t know if the thing had actually bitten me or if it had just got a mouth full of denim and boot leather. I didn’t feel the dog’s teeth penetrate me, but I was too adrenalized to feel anything.

It’s a good thing we were out in the boonies, and it’s a good thing no one was there to see what happened next. And what that was, well, let’s just say it was picturesque. It was me frantically undoing my motorcycle pants, and then my blue jeans, and dropping both, with John kneeling in front of me to look for bite marks. Anyone seeing this might get the wrong idea. I know, we’re close, but not that close.

I checked my leg and I didn’t see any bite marks. John examined me and it was official: I was unharmed. Had I not been wearing boots and my motorcycle pants, that probably would not have been the case. All the gear, all the time. It’s an adage that holds true. Dodged a bullet, I did.

So, toothmark-and-rabies-free, we rolled past another little cluster of dwellings, made a sweeping right turn as the dirt road followed the coast, and there it was…

The Isla Del Carmen, off the Pacific Coast near San Jacinto, after confirming I was not going to become a rabid motorcyclist.

We hung out by the Isla Del Carmen for a while and I took a bunch of photographs. The Isla Del Carmen sank right off the San Jacinto coast during a storm in 1984. I’d seen the wreck in another photograph, and now I was seeing it in person. It was awesome being there.

I like these photos, partly because of what we had gone through to get them (the rough roads and the canine assault), but mostly because it was a shot I had framed in my mind before we arrived and the actual photos turned out better than I had imagined. Indulge me. I’ll show you a few.

The KLRs in front of the Isla Del Carmen. That’s the Pacific in the background.

John’s is green. Mine was red. Loved those bikes. Simple, fast enough, and fun.

Baja John, at ease along the Pacific coast.

Leave something in salt water long enough…

After spending a while taking photos, we took the direct route out of San Jacinto heading east. It was another sandy dirt road, but it was hard packed and it ran relatively straight to the Transpeninsular Highway north of Camalu.

We stopped in Camalu for lunch. John and I opted for the chicken fajitas at the Las Brisas, a small restaurant, and our mid-day meal was amazing. Octavio, the owner and chef extraordinaire, took good care of us. We had a two-hour lunch, and we spent a lot of that time chatting with Octavio. It was fun.

John enjoying Octavio’s chicken fajitas.

This is Octavio, the propriet0r and Camalu’s philosopher-in-chief. He patiently explained to us that Camalu is the best place in the world. Who knew?

America and Palmyra, two young ladies in Camalu.

We got as far as El Rosario that second night, and we stayed in the El Sinahi hotel. It was an inexpensive, no-frills kind of place (exactly what I like in Baja).

We ate at a restaurant adjacent to the El Sinahi, and it was great. I don’t think it had a name, other than “Restaurant.” It didn’t need one. It was wonderful. You know, folks tell me I spend a lot of time talking about the cuisine in Baja. Guilty as charged. I love that aspect of exploring the peninsula. I guess there are bad restaurants in Baja. In 30 years of exploring the place, though, I haven’t found them.

Good food, good meat, good God, let’s eat!

John had fish tacos, the quintessential Baja dish. They look great, don’t they?

I didn’t know it yet, but the rear window to my El Sinahi hotel room faced a neighbor’s yard. A neighbor with roosters. Lots of roosters. The kind that start cock-a-doodle-doodling at 4:30 a.m. Right into my window.
I had visions of making rooster fajitas, but I decided not to. Truth is, those things sounded so strong I didn’t know if I could take them in a fight.

There’s another abandoned mission west of El Rosario about three miles down a dirt road that winds through more small villages. We tried to find it that next morning, but we couldn’t. While rolling down that road, we encountered more Mexican dogs, and sure enough, the dogs came after us again. We outran them that time. We could have poked around longer trying to find the mission, but the dogs unnerved me. I reckoned that we had gone far enough to pass where the mission should have been, we never saw it, and I turned around. On our return through the area where the dogs chased us, we blitzed by at 60 mph. No dogs, no bites, and no problems.

Ah, but the day was just starting. A little further down the Transpeninsular Highway, in Baja’s Valle de los Cirios, we would be chased yet again. But this time, it would be by a titanic tarantula. But that’s a story for the next installment of our Baja KLR Khronicles.

Stay tuned!

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Baja 2009: The KLR Khronicles Part II

This is a story about a 2009 Baja KLR ride. In Part I, we covered the ride from southern California to Rosarito Beach.

The breakfast at Velero’s in Ensenada was impressive (it always is), and it was a glorious morning as we rolled south.

Two KLRs headed south in Baja. John forgot his toothbrush, and I wasn’t going to let him use mine, so we stopped at a farmacia so he could buy a new one.

We had several offroad explorations in mind as we rode deeper into Baja that morning, but our first stop was at a farmacia. I like Mexican pharmacies. Here in the US in 2009, all the stories in the news media were about the drug wars in Mexico. Right church, wrong pew, as they say: The US news media had the wrong story. The real drug story in Mexico was (and still is) how cheap prescriptions are down there. You don’t need a prescription in Mexico for many of the drugs that require prescriptions in the US (like penicillin, and prednisone, and Lord knows what else), and meds are trivially inexpensive. The drugs are the same as what we get in the US (literally, the same, from the same US manufacturers in many cases). I wish our so-called “investigative journalists” would write an expose on that topic, but they were too focused in 2009 on killing the tourism industry in Mexico with distorted news about the drug wars. Go figure.

We continued south on the Transpeninsular Highway. There’s about a dozen miles of traffic leaving Ensenada, and then Baja switches suddenly from squalor to splendor as the road climbs into the mountains and descends into Baja’s wine country. It really is spectacular. If you’ve never made this ride, or if you’re idea of going into Mexico is TJ or Ensenada, you need to venture further south to start to get a feel for the real Baja. Trust me on this.

John and his KLR on the Transpeninsular Highway in Baja’s wine country. This is where the beauty of Baja begins to emerge.

Ah, Baja. It was beautiful. It always is.

Our first excursion in the dirt would be to the abandoned mission in San Vincente, well into the desert and well south of mountains. We saw a sign for the mission and took a dirt road heading west from the Transpeninsular Highway. As it turned out, there was a lot more out there than just an abandoned mission.

The sign pointing to the Camino Real mission ruins.

We first saw a building we initially mistook for the mission. It was a private home (one of several). We were stunned. The homes were magnificent, tucked away in the hills down a rough, soft sand road. I’d been by San Vincente on many prior Baja rides, but I had no idea the hills held such secrets.

We saw a young lady and asked her for directions to the mission. She pointed and told us to go over a hill. We did, and the first thing we found was a well-maintained rural cemetery.

I’m in no hurry to be buried, but when it’s time, this might be nice. If there’s such a thing as elegance in a graveyard, this place had it.

There was something about the cemetery that was simultaneously captivating and tranquil. It seemed to come from another era, and after reading the headstones we saw that it did. It was meticulously maintained. It’s always nice to see that.

Impressive. A family plot. The wife lived to be 100. Imagine that.

Magnificent. I shot all the photos in this series with my old Nikon D200 and the first-generation 24-120 lens. It was state-of-the-art in 2009. I took a lot of pictures with that camera.

After the cemetery, we found the San Vincente Mission. The local folks are restoring it. I’d seen signs for the mission on the Transpeninsular Highway, but this is the first time I’d ventured off the asphalt to see it. John and I were the only folks out there that day.

The San Vincente Mission was built about 300 years ago. It’s one of several that run the length of the Baja peninsula. I’ve been to several, and a few are still working churches. What’s left of the San Vincente Mission is not.

What’s left of the San Vincente Mission. The restoration was a labor of love. The mission’s adobe walls were being resurfaced. I need to get back there to see how it looks today.

The mission walls underneath the restoration.

We rode through the soft sand back toward the Transpeninsular Highway to the town of San Vincente’s contemporary church (which is visible from the highway). It offered great photo opportunities and we took a bunch. We wanted to enter the church, but it was locked.

John relaxing in front of the San Vincente church.

John yanked on the cord, and that bell was loud. We stopped. We didn’t want the San Vincente residents to think they were being summoned.

It was fun being out in these remote areas on the KLRs. The experience was a lot different than seeing Baja from pavement only, and John and I were enjoying it. I’m normally not a guy who likes riding dirt, but John had talked me into getting off the highway and I’m glad he did.

Shortly after leaving San Vincente, it was time to check off another item on our wish list, and that was seeing the Isla Del Carmen shipwreck. I wanted to see it, but I didn’t know exactly where the wreck was other than that it was somewhere off the coast near San Jacinto, so we took another dirt road due west for about 8 miles and hit the Pacific coast. Our plan was to intersect the coast several miles north of San Jacinto, follow it south, and find what was left of the Isla Del Carmen.

The dirt road along the coast was rough, and I’m being charitable when I call it a road. It was mostly soft sand. At one point the sand was so deep it was nearly impossible to control the KLR, so I wrestled the Kawasaki up into the weeds. It was a marginal improvement. I couldn’t see where the wheel was going, but at least the sand wasn’t calling the shots anymore. And before you tell me the trick is to get up to speed and float on top of the soft stuff, all I can say is hey, I was there. You weren’t.

Then we encountered something we hadn’t expected: Dogs. A pack of dogs, actually. And they were pissed. At us.

Well, that’s not quite accurate. Their anger was focused on me. Specifically, me. At least that’s how I felt.

In California, you almost never see a dog off a leash. In rural Mexico, you almost never see a dog on a leash. Those things are aggressive, too. We were chased by more dogs on this trip than I have been chased by in my entire life. They weren’t just interested in scaring us or getting a good laugh. Those things wanted us for dinner. Or rather, they wanted me for dinner. I’ll tell you more about the angry dogs of Baja as this story progresses, but one dog story at a time for now. And this one was enough.

I don’t like dogs. I was mauled pretty badly by one when I was kid, and I still have the scars to prove it. I know that those of you who have taken the Motorcycle Safety Foundation course or who have read about such things are thinking that being chased by a dog is no big deal. I know about slowing down, letting the dog calibrate his intercept based on your reduced speed, and then accelerating to confuse the cantankerous canine. That works on pavement if there is one dog. Try doing it in soft sand when there’s pack of four or five that are fanned out along your flank. In that situation, you are not just a motorcyclist. You are a potential meal. And that was the situation I found myself in that fine Baja afternoon.

A tranquil scene, don’t you think? It was right after I shot this photo that the dogs descended on us.

We were approaching a rinky-dink little fishing village, eyeballing the coast for the shipwreck, when the pack of dogs came after me. I think it might have been my green fluorescent riding jacket. Maybe they had an unhappy childhood. Maybe someone unfriended them on Facebook. Who knows. Whatever the reason, they were snarling and spitting and literally smacking their jaws as I tried to fool them with the slow-down-speed-up maneuver. In soft sand. Trying to keep the motorcycle vertical. Wondering what the hell I was doing down there.

Then it happened. One of the dogs got me.

I felt him crash into my right leg, and when I looked down, the thing had clamped down on my motorcycle pants just above my ankle. The dog was literally being dragged along for what seemed like an eternity. It locked eyes with me, and if there’s such a thing as telepathic communication, or maybe interspecies body language, the dog’s eyes said it all. It was not a pleasant message in either direction. The dog might have thought I was a sonofabitch; I had no doubts about him being one. I’ve known some SOBs in my life, but this bastard was the real deal. I didn’t feel any pain, but that’s normal in a traumatic situation. I didn’t know if the dog’s teeth broke the skin around my ankle, but I knew what it would portend if it had.

“Not good,” I thought.

I could see it all the while that miserable sonofabitch was clamped down on my leg, as he was being pulled along at 30 mph. What I saw was me making a beeline for the border to get medical treatment. Rabies shots, and who knows what else.

To be continued…

Hey, check out our other Epic Motorcycle Rides, and watch the ExNotes blog for the next installment of the Baja KLR Khronicles!

Baja 2009: The KLR Khronicles Part I

What this trip was all about. I grabbed this somewhere in the Vizcaino Desert. That’s my red KLR up front and John’s green one behind it. These are the perfect bikes in the perfect place.

In October 2009 it had been a year since my last motorcycle trip in Baja, and that was entirely too long. I was good to go, but most of the guys I hung out with here in So Cal were timid. They believed what they read in the LA Times. You know, about Mexico being dangerous. Me? I knew better. I needed to get my knees in the Baja breeze. My good buddy Baja John felt the same way.

My first journey into Baja was with John back in 1994, and it would be good to ride with him again. Our earlier trips were on cruisers…John on a Viagra (spelling intentional) and me on a Harley. We’d both be riding Kawasaki KLR 650s this time. I bought one, and after listening to me rave about it, so did John.

Don’t get me wrong. There’s nothing wrong with a Yamaha Virago, and if driveway jewelry is your thing, there’s nothing wrong with a Harley (Harleys are the world’s most efficient machines for converting gasoline to noise and self-perceived status upgrades, you know). But the KLR 650s…those were real motorcycles. No pretense, all business. I wish I had kept my KLR. I let the guy who bought it know that I’ll but it back. But that will be a story for another time.

The plan for this trip was to explore places off the Transpeninsular Highway. On previous trips, we’d seen signs pointing down rough dirt roads to the ruins of various abandoned Spanish missions, the marble quarry at El Marmol, and a few other places promising adventure. On those prior trips we quite appropriately opted not to take our cruisers down those gnarly dirt roads. This time, though, we had the right bikes and we would go wherever we wanted. Dirt? Soft sand? Mud? Banditos? Rabid dogs? Hey, bring it all on. We were ready.

So, here we go.

John rode south from Tehachapi to meet me near the Cal Poly campus, and we left late on a Thursday afternoon (John worked his job at Palmdale AFB, and I taught that day at Cal Poly).

We made it to Rosarito Beach Hotel that first night, my favorite hotel in that town. It’s a classy joint with a great restaurant, but the adverse publicity and overall economic climate in 2009 were killing the place. Think unending stories about drug wars and purported lawlessness in Mexico, and the worldwide Great Recession. My guess is that fewer than 10 rooms were occupied that evening.

The KLRs, rode hard and put away wet that night in the Rosarito Beach Hotel.

Our plans for this trip were purposely vague, other than to head south and consume large quantities of Tecate after the bikes had been put away. We briefly talked about doing a banzai run all the way to Cabo San Lucas, but that would have been a push. It was already dark when we passed through Tijuana, and south of TJ, the Pacific Ocean mist was fogging my faceshield. I thought about Susanna’s restaurant in Rosarito (more on that in a bit), and all thoughts of Cabo vanished. For that night, Rosarito Beach was it. And that was a good thing. I love having dinner in Susanna’s. Susanna’s is the best restaurant in town, and maybe the best in all of Mexico. A stay in Rosarito Beach without dinner at Susanna’s would be a crime against nature and good judgment.

Susanna, don’t you cry for me. I’ll be back.

Ah, yes. The perfect antidote for low cholesterol. The dining at Susanna’s is as close as you’ll get to Heaven without a one-way ticket.

After a five-star dinner, Baja John and I walked around downtown Rosarito Beach for a bit. It was deserted.

Rosarito Beach 2009. The LA Times was killing this place with its unending negative stories about Mexico. More than half the stores, restaurants, and other places were shuttered. Normally a hopping party town, in 2009 it was dead, and there was really no reason for it other than the US news media’s fixation on demonizing the place.

At a club in Rosarito Beach. We were the only two people there. That’s Baja John on the left.

The next morning we rolled south along the Pacific coast to a great breakfast in Ensenada. Good God, we were packing on the calories. My favorite breakfast spot in Ensenada is Velero’s, a place near the ocean just behind the Corona Hotel. The clientele is mostly local business folks, the breakfasts are great, and it’s the hot ticket. They bring a large plate of light, delicious pastries as soon as you sit down. The coffee and the orange juice are superior. That’s followed by a tortilla with melted cheese and salsa. I could have (and should have) stopped at the pastries and the cheese tortilla, but I went for my customary two eggs over hard with the fixings you see below. It was as good as it looks.

Simple, delicious, and filling. Velero’s is the breakfast spot in Ensenada.

Velero’s is on a side street that juts off the road along the coast. The Ensenada sign is gone. A pity, as it made for a great photo.

After a great breakfast, we were on the road again, headed south out of Ensenada toward points south, including the aforementioned abandoned missions, a shipwreck on the Pacific coast, and more.

To be continued…

Hey, we have a couple of pages you should check out. One is our Baja page, which includes great info on taking a motorcycle into Baja. The other is our new Epic Motorcycle Rides page. Take a look and let us know what you think!

Cool things are happening!

This has been a busy week, and lots of good things are happening. We’re having rain all over, and even thunder, lightning, and hail, but things are happening!

For starters, our good buddies at Janus Motorcycles made the New York Times in yesterday’s edition. You can read the story here. Folks, from a public relations perspective, it just doesn’t get any better than getting a story in the New York Times. It’s a tremendous accomplishment, especially when considered in light of the fact that the story spoke so very well of Janus and their team. I enjoyed the Baja ride with Devin and Jordan tremendously, and it’s good to see these guys doing well. Wow. The New York Times. I am impressed!

Devin Biek and Richard Worsham, the Janus founders. I rode Baja with Devin. Richard rode a Janus across the United States.

Next up: The CSC guys are in the middle of their Moab get-together, and following the photos on Facebook, it looks like they are having a hell of a good time. Good for them! CSC does more rides with their customers than any motorcycle company I know, and that’s a good thing. They’re out there offering test rides on the new San Gabriel and the RX4, too. Cool stuff.

The CSC RX4 in the San Gabriel Mountains.

And a few more developments…we’ve now got a page indexing our more memorable adventure rides, and it’s appropriately titled Epic Motorcycle Rides. Click on the link to take a look. We’ve covered past rides on the ExNotes blog, and this new page provides a convenient index to all our rides in one easy spot. The Janus run, the Enfield run, the Three Flags Classic, the 150cc Mustang run down to Cabo, motorcycle racing in Baja, videos from the different rides, and more. It’s all on Epic Motorcycle Rides!

Check out the new ExNotes Epic Motorcycle Rides page!

We’ve got a lot of new stuff coming your way, folks. I’ve been playing with some cast bullet loads in the 1903 Springfield and we’ll have a piece on it soon. We’ve got more motorcycle stories queued up, including one about running the KLRs through Baja. We’ve got two new Facebook groups launched…one is the Crappy Old Motorcycle Association (or COMA, for short), and the other is Guns and Ammo, each with a focus on just what their names imply. And of course, we have our Facebook ExhaustNotes page. We’d like you to sign up on all three…hey, we all could use more Facebook in our lives!

One more thing…please consider signing up for the blog’s email updates. You might win a copy of Destinations at the end of this quarter if you do!

Ride safe, my friends, and stay dry!

Another great blog: CSC Motorcycles

When I retired from CSC, I was a bit nervous about walking away from the CSC blog. I need not have been…the CSC blog is doing well and the writing in it is first class. I think it’s better than when I wrote it, and the credit for that goes to Randy Reek (the blog’s author) and Steve Seidner (CSC’s President and CEO). CSC has an owner’s group riding event this weekend in Moab, and I’m looking forward to reading the CSC blog posts about it.

There’s a lot going on at CSC, not the least of which is the new line of electric motorcycles, the upcoming release of the new RX4, and the continuing success of the TT250 and San Gabriel lines. The new San Gabriels have a new headlight and instrument pod, a rear disk brake, and new colors (the black is stunning).

At $2195 for either the TT250 or the San Gabriel (and CSC’s warranty and tech support), these are unquestionably the best motorcycle values in America. CSC is bringing a new electric scooter to America, too…the Wiz.

Cool stuff. Stop by their site (www.CSCMotorcycles.com) and check out what CSC has to offer. It’s a cool place and you’ll like it.

A blog about a blog about a blog….

Brrrrr. That’s Devin Biek on the left, one of the two Janus founders (Richard Worsham is the other one). The guy on the right is Jordan Swartzendruber, the Janus video and photo guy. — Brrrrr. It was cold that day! That’s Devin Biek on the left, one of the two Janus founders (Richard Worsham is the other one). The guy on the right is Jordan Swartzendruber, the Janus video and photo guy.

Yep, you read it right. This is a blog about a blog about a blog. The blog I’m referring to is this one, which is on the Janus Motorcycles site…

With my permission, the good guys at Janus Motorcycles reprinted one of the blogs I did on the Baja trip. It’s cool. I especially like the way they selected and highlighted quotes throughout the piece…

Cool. So this blog? It’s about the Janus blog, which is about the ExNotes blog. A blog about a blog about a blog. I love it! Incidentally, if you want to get to the Janus blog, it’s right here.

And check out this latest video from Janus…it has more than a few scenes from the Baja ride…

Living Legends…

I’ve got a few good buddies who are living legends, and you’ve heard me talk about some of them in the past: Guys like Jeff Beatty (US Army Ranger, Delta Force, FBI HRT, and CIA CTC), Steve Seidner (founder and president of CSC Motorcycles), and our very own Joe Gresh (purveyor of the human condition and writer extraordinaire). One of the guys you haven’t heard me mention yet is good buddy Chuck Johnson…

Good buddy Chuck Johnson, an all around great guy.

Chuck is a retired US Marine Corps senior NCO, and when he wrapped up his career with the Marines, he immediately joined the Sheriff’s Department and he had a stellar career there. I’ve known Chuck for a few years, but something I learned about him recently was a real surprise. Chuck and I were chatting at the rifle range a few weeks ago (he’s the Range Master there) and I commented that with the things he’s seen and done he could write a book.

“Well, I did write a book,” Chuck answered. You could have knocked me over with a feather. Folks who write books are not people I get to meet every day. Who knew? I immediately asked Chuck for the title and where I could buy a copy. Chuck told me, I ordered a copy that day, and I couldn’t put it down after Amazon delivered my copy of Target…Cop.

I enjoyed Target…Cop immensely. You will, too!

Another Tale of Two .45s…

We’ve done “A Tale of Two Guns” pieces before here on the ExNotes blog, and we’ve specifically done a “Tale of Two .45s.” That earlier piece was on the Rock Island Compact 1911 and a Smith and Wesson Model 625. The Rock Island Compact has become my favorite handgun and it’s the one I shoot most often. I wondered: How much accuracy am I giving up by shooting a snubbie 1911?

When I call the Compact a snubbie, I’m referring to the fact that it has a shorter barrel. You know, a standard Government Model 1911 has a 5-inch barrel, and the Rock Island Compact has a 3.5-inch barrel. There’s nothing inherently more or less accurate about a shorter versus longer barrel. What could make an accuracy difference, though, is the sight radius (the distance between the front and rear sights). The longer barrel 1911 has a longer sight radius, and that theoretically should make it more accurate.

A Colt bright stainless steel full-sized 1911 Government Model, along with a box of reloaded .45 ACP ammo. The standard 1911 barrel length is 5 inches, and that’s what this handgun has. This particular 1911 has been extensively customized, with a view toward extreme reliability.

The Rock Island Compact 1911. This inexpensive .45 auto has a 3.5-inch barrel. It’s become my favorite handgun.

I was taught to shoot the 1911 by one of the best. Command Sergeant Major Emory L. Hickman, a US Army Marksmanship Training Unit NCO, taught me the basics (you can read about that here). I’ve been shooting the .45 since 1973, and I’ve been reloading ammo for it about that long, too. I used to be pretty good, but I’ve slowed down a bit. Hey, speaking of that…here’s a video of me playing around at the range with the Colt bright stainless .45 auto…

The video above is real time…it’s not been modified from the video that came straight out of the camera. But I couldn’t leave it alone. My choices were to spend about a zillion hours on the range and maybe shoot up another zillion dollars of ammo to get really good, or to just use my video editing software to have a little fun. I went for Door No. 2…

Okay, enough goofing around. Let’s get serious, and get to the real topic of this blog. I went to the range with the two 1911s shown above with two objectives in mind. I wanted to test different loads to see which was the most accurate in each gun, and I wanted to see if there really was a difference in accuracy between a standard size 1911 and the Compact.

I brought along different loads with two different propellants (Unique and Bullseye) and several different bullets (a 230-grain moly-coated roundnose, a 230-grain plated roundnose, a 200-grain plated roundnose, and a 200-grain cast semi-wadcutter). I fired all groups at 50 feet from a two-hand-hold, bench-rest position. All groups were 5-shot groups. I then measured the groups and took the average group size for each load.

Different .45 ACP bullet configurations. From left to right: A 200-grain roundnose plated bullet, a 200-grain cast lead semi-wadcutter bullet, and a 230-grain moly coated cast bullet.

I know that using a hand-held approach as I did is not the way to eliminate all variability except that due to the gun and the load, and my inability to hold the gun completely steady was a significant contributor to the size of the groups I shot. A better approach would have been to use a machine rest (you know, the deal where you bolt the gun into a rigidly mounted support), but like my good buddy Rummy used to say, you go to war with the Army you have. I don’t have a machine rest, so all you get is me.

Because I introduced so much variability into this accuracy assessment, I thought I would throw out the largest group for each combination of load and gun, and take the average of the four best groups. I did that, and then I did it again by throwing out the two largest groups for each combination of load and gun. Doing so predictably made the averages smaller, but the relative ranking of the different loads from an accuracy perspective pretty much stayed the same. That’s good to know.

Before I get into the results, let me tell you a bit about the two handguns. The Compact 1911 is a stock handgun, as delivered from the factory, with the exception of a Klonimus extractor (which I installed because the factory extractor failed after about 1000 rounds). The Colt has been extensively customized by my gunsmith (TJ’s Custom Gunworks in Redondo Beach), with a view toward 100% reliability with any ammo. That handgun is probably worth $2500 as it sits now. The Compact 1911 can be had for a little over $400.

Okay, that’s enough background. Let’s get to the bottom line…

Interesting stuff, to be sure. Most of the variability you see in the above table (and you can see that there’s a lot) was me. A machine rest would have provided for better groups, but you get what you get, and what you get here is me.

As I expected, the 5-inch 1911 is a bit more accurate than the Compact. The best average group with the full size Colt 1911 was 2.018 inches. The best average group with the Compact was 2.851 inches. Okay, so at 50 feet that’s 8/10 of an inch difference, and as they say, that’s close enough for government work. What was surprising was how accurate the Compact is. You really don’t give up much in accuracy between the two guns. And, look at the last row of the above table. I fired one group with the Compact (and what is now my preferred load) that hung right in there with the Government Model. More on that in a second.

In the Rock Island 1911, the 230-grain moly bullet was the most accurate load I tested. After I did the five groups to get an average group size, I fired one more group with this load in the Compact and it was a scant 2.083 inches. Yeah, this gun is accurate enough.

In the Colt, the most accurate load was with the 200-grain semi-wadcutter bullets over 6.0 grains of Unique. This load fed flawlessly in both the Rock Island Compact and the Colt. My Colt has been throated to feed semi-wadcutter bullets; the Rock Island has not been (usually, a 1911 requires that the feed ramp be opened up and polished, or throated as we say, to feed semi-wadcutter bullets). But the 200-grain semi-wadcutter load failed to eject twice in the Compact. The Compact is fussy about ejection, and the two failures convinced me that this load won’t work reliably in the Rock Island without additional work. For now, I’m sticking with the 230-grain roundnose load. It’s completely reliable for both feeding and ejection.

You’ll notice that one of the Government Model five-shot groups with the 230-grain moly coated bullet and 5.8 grains of Unique was a tight 0.960 inches. The bottom line is that this load is a good one. Yeah, the other groups with that load were larger: It’s that shooter variability thing again. Both the Compact and the Colt are capable of greater accuracy than what I could do.

The moly-coated 230-grain bullets shot tighter groups in the Colt than did the plated 230-grain Extreme plated bullets. That’s consistent with my observations over the years. Cast bullets seem to be more accurate than plated bullets in any of the .45 autos I’ve shot. But, the 200-grain roundnose plated bullet did pretty well in the Government Model, too. I didn’t test that load in the Compact.

The bottom line to all of the above: My standard .45 Auto load is going to be 5.8 gr of Unique with the 230-grain moly coated cast roundnose bullet. It fired the best overall group (at 0.960 inches) in the Colt, and it was the best load for the Compact. This load functions well in both guns, with no anomalies in feed or ejection, and it’s accurate. The only problem I may have is that moly coating fell out of favor some time ago, and I don’t know if any one is still offering moly-coated bullets. I have a stash of the 230-grain moly bullets, so I’m good for a little while. After that, it’s back to the loading bench and the range to find the next favorite load.

Regarding the two handguns, I love them both. That bright stainless Colt Government Model has had a lot of work done to it (a Les Baer barrel, custom fitting, porting and polishing, engine turning, and Millet Hi-Viz sights). The Rock Island Compact can be had new for something a little north of $400. It’s a phenomenal value. The Compact is a lot more concealable, and surprisingly the recoil is only very slightly more than the bigger Colt. And, as I showed above, it’s accurate. The Rock Island is a hell of a 1911 at any price, but at it’s current price, the Rock Island is an absolute steal. I like the look of the Compact, too. The Parkerized finish, simple wood grips, and low profile fixed GI sights remind me a lot of the 1911s I carried when I was in the Army, and I like that.

Check out our other Tales of the Gun stories here!

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The plaintive wail of a high performance motorcycle…

As the title implies, there’s nothing quite like the plaintive wail of a high performance motorcycle. If you’re good enough, you can identify specific bikes just by (dare we say it) their ExhaustNotes. Harleys have their distinctive rumble, a ’60s Triumph Bonneville sounds like raw power, the Ducati dry clutch rattle, you get the idea. Do you think you know motors? Hey, see if you can identify this one before you see it…