Joe Berk

Back in the USA

Another day, another 14-hour flight, and another week, another time zone reversal. I love traveling to Asia; I don’t relish the thought of taking a month to get back on US time. That’s what happens every time I travel to Asia. When I visit China, Singapore, Thailand, or any of the places I go to in Asia, I get adjusted to Asia time in one day. Then it takes a month when I get home to adjust to US time. It doesn’t matter if I’m in Asia for 2 days, 40 days, or 13 months (I’ve done all three); it always takes forever to get back on our time. I don’t think it has anything to do with direction; it has everything to do with what’s home. My Asian friends tell me they experience the same thing…when they come to America, they’re on our time in a day or two, and then it takes them weeks to get back on their home time once they’ve returned.

This adventure was two weeks for Susie and me. It started with 4 days in Singapore, where I taught a class to folks working in the Singaporean defense industry. I get invited to Singapore to do that a couple of times a year; the topic this time was Failure Mode and Effects Analysis.

Singapore defense industry engineers in an FMEA course. Good times!

It’s a 17-hour flight from Los Angeles to Singapore. You’d be surprised; it goes by quickly. The courses are fun to do, we always do them in 5-star hotels, and Singapore is a good place to have a good time. I watched Crazy Rich Asians on the way over during that 17-hour flight (it’s the first time I’d ever seen the movie). I was surprised at how many of the Singapore locations I recognized in the film. I like Singapore.

Next, it was a 5-hour flight to Perth, Australia. You’ve read the blogs about it and the reason we went (Susie met her pen pal Adrienne for the first time). We had a hoot. Gresh and Baja John both told me Australia was a lot like the US, and they were right. Still, they do have a few things we don’t…

Freemantle Prison in Western Australia. It’s a tourist attraction today. Back in the day, it was where the UK sent its convicts.

Pouring a gold bar in the Perth Mint. The Nikon showing off its low light level abilities here, in this case at ISO 2000.

G’day, Mate…a python in a Western Australia wildlife preserve…more low-light-level Nikon chicanery.

Tie me kangaroo down, Mate. At one of the restaurants in Sydney, I could have ordered a kangaroo burger, but I took a pass.

Kookaburra, sitting in an old gum tree. We finally met. He wasn’t laughing.

The morning we left Perth, there was a big hub-bub going on outside our hotel as we got into our Uber car, and to my astonishment, the fellow getting into the car in front of us was Scott Morrison, Australia’s Prime Minister. He had been staying in our hotel. There were a few security folks around him, but nothing like you’d see in the US. He looked right at Sue and me from just a few feet away as he passed. Nope, I didn’t get a photo. Maybe right now he’s telling people he met one of the two guys running the ExNotes blog. His friends are probably telling him it didn’t happen if he didn’t get a photo.

From there it was on to Sydney (a 4-hour flight), and we had another fabulous visit. We didn’t know anybody there yet, but we made new friends and we had a great time walking around in one of the world’s great cities. Sydney is a beautiful city and it should be on your list of places to visit.

An iconic Sydney photo…the Sydney Opera House.

I spotted this scooter, a new Lambretta, in downtown Sydney and I struck up a conversation with Barry, the guy you see here. This modern Lambretta is manufactured in Taiwan. Now I know two guys named Barry who ride Lambrettas. You see bikes and scooters in Australia at about the same frequency as you do in the US.

Our new friend Colin in Sydney’s Rocks shopping area.

And there you have it. It was another 14-hour flight to get from Sydney to Los Angeles and we landed at about 6:00 a.m. today. It’s good to be home again.

A 1917 Harley

Here’s another stunning motorcycle in the Motor Museum of Western Australia. It’s kind of wild that I am finding this exotic American iron on the other side of the planet (see our earlier blog on the 1920 Excelsior-Henderson), but hey, beauty knows no bounds!

The bike is beautiful, and the colors just flat work for me. I guess they worked for Harley-Davidson, too…in the mid-1980s they offered a Heritage model Shovelhead with the identical “pea green” color theme. I wish I had purchased one of those back in the day. Lord only knows what they are going for now.

Check out the exposed pushrods, rocker arms, valve stems, and fuel tank cutouts in the photo above. And then take a look at the leather work on the saddlebags below…

I’ll let the Motor Museum’s words do the talking here, folks…check out the distances covered on this bike, too!

Like what you see above? Check out our other Dream Bikes, and don’t forget to sign up for our automatic email blog updates. You’ll automatically be entered in our quarterly advbook giveway!

A 1950 BSA Bantam

I provided just a hint of the Motor Museum of Western Australia’s treasures so far, and a few days ago I started that with this teaser of a Beezer photo…

The bike you see above is a 1950 125cc two-stroke BSA Bantam, and it’s significant to me because in the late 1960s I actually owned one of those bikes. It was nowhere near as beautiful as the one you see here. My Bantam was painted kind of a rattlecan flat black, it had no muffler, and the lights didn’t work. I bought it for $30 with no title, I rode it in the fields behind our place for a month, and then I sold it for $50 after leaving it on the front lawn for a day with a For Sale sign. Grand times, those were. I didn’t even know the Bantam’s displacement back then, but I knew it was a Bantam, and the thing had a surprising amount of power. I guess that’s what two-strokes do, and it kind of explains good buddy Joe Gresh’s fascination with the oilers. It’s the only ring-a-ding-dinger I ever owned.

The Bantam at the Motor Museum of Western Australia is just flat stunning. I had no idea they came in living color, and I sure like the colors on this one.

Colors that would rival a modern Harley. This is a good looking motorcycle.

Check out the decal on the case behind the engine. I’m guessing it held tools or maybe electrical connections (one of the early Bantam models actually had a battery, but it was located in the headlight).

BSA stands for Birmingham Small Arms. Yep, they started as a gun company, kind of like Enfield. You gotta love the stacked rifles logo.

Everything was mechanical and simple back then. Take a look, for example, at the front brake and its adjustment mechanism. Simple. Cool. You could actually work on a motorcycle without an iPhone or a computer. Better times, I think.

Some of the old British motorcycles of the 1940s, 1950s, and even into the 1960s had magnificent mufflers. This one stood out.

This, my friends, is a motorcycle muffler!

In researching the Bantam, I found a few facts I did not previously know. For starters, the design was based on a German DKW, and it came to England, Russia, and the US (yep, Harley had a variant) as war reparations at the end of World War II. Incredibly, the British redesigned the engine as a mirror image of the German original to put the shifter on the right side (or, as they might say, the “correct” side). They did a few other things, too, such as converting everything to English units (from metric) and incorporating English electrics (think Lucas, the Prince of Darkness). The 1950 Bantam only had a three-speed gearbox, but it would hit 50 mph. Interesting stuff.

So there you have it. Classic bikes galore. And there’s more. Stay tuned to the ExNotes blog, as we have a few more photos from the Motor Museum of Western Australia to share with you. There’s good stuff coming and you’ll see it right here.

More Dream Bikes? You bet! Just click here!

A .300 Weatherby Vanguard

You know, there’s more to the American Pickers television show than just watching a couple of cool dudes and their delightful inked-up assistant traveling all over the world buying cool stuff. It’s really an education on how business works. Buy low, buy quality, rarity counts, treat everybody well, and sell at a profit. I love it, and I never miss an episode. And I’ve watched a lot of the reruns.

The other topic American Pickers handles well is negotiation. These guys view negotiation not as an adversarial endeavor, but rather, a situation in which the buyer and seller are working together to find common ground. Backing off when things aren’t moving forward, bundling things to reach agreement, gentle suggestions…it’s all there. The show could be titled Negotiation 101 (it wouldn’t be as catchy a title, but it sure would be accurate).

I love negotiating. It’s a grand game and I love playing it. Just the other day I took advantage of a negotiating opportunity. You know I’m a firearms enthusiast. I enjoy shooting and I enjoy reloading. I’m always on the lookout, too, for a few guns I still have on my wish list. One such firearm on the “someday” list has been a 300 Weatherby Magnum. I’ve been watching the Internet auction boards for 5 or 6 years now looking for one that was priced right, realizing I’d still have to pay the transfer fees, etc., to bring it in from wherever to California.

Why a Weatherby? Well, as you already know, I once met Roy Weatherby. He was a hell of man and a personal hero. He designed his own rifles and cartridges. The 300 Weatherby Magnum is his signature cartridge. It’s why I wanted one.

So one day a few years ago Susie and I had lunch in Pasadena with a fellow from India. That meeting may someday lead to another secret mission (this time to the subcontinent, which might be interesting as I’ve never been there).

But all that’s beside the point. On the way home, the traffic was terrible (it was the Friday before the Labor Day holiday). We diverted to surface streets on the way back and, what do you know, I spotted a little gun store (The Gunrunner in Duarte). We stopped in and they had a consignment rifle…and it was the one I’d been seeking for several years. A 300 Weatherby Magnum with a scope, a sling, and a case. It looked new to me, but it was used. Used, but in “as new” condition.

“How much?” I asked.

“$500,” the sales guy replied.

Hmmmmm. That was actually a great price. It was an especially great price considering I wouldn’t have to bring it in from out of state, there would be no freight or transfer fees, its condition was stellar, and it was what I had wanted for a long time. I didn’t answer, but I kept looking at the rifle. Susie just stared daggers at me. That’s another negotiating trick. Bring your significant other with you and have her pretend to be opposed to whatever it is you want to purchase. In this case, though, I’m not so sure she was pretending…

I was just about to say okay when the sales guy spoke up again.

“How about $500 and I’ll pick up the DROS fees,” he said (the DROS fees are the fees associated with the background checks, etc., so the State of California can be certain I won’t run out and hold up a gas station with the my rifle).

“Make it $475 and we’ve got a deal,” I said.

And that’s how you get ‘r done, folks, as another one of my heroes would say.

The test target provided with every new Weatherby…this one grouped 3 shots into an inch at 100 yards

So you can see that test target above. All new Weatherby rifles used to come with a test target like that (maybe they still do; it’s been awhile since I bought a new one). You might wonder if these targets are really representative of what the rifle can do, and I’m here to tell you they are indeed. Take a look…this is what I shot with one of the loads I developed for my .300 Weatherby Vanguard the week after I bought it…

An awesome rifle in every regard…awesome power, awesome accuracy, and awesome recoil. The load is the 165 gr Hornady jacketed boat tail softpoint, a CCI 250 primer, and 80 grains of IMR 7828 propellant. That’s a 3-shot, half-inch group at a 100 yards!

If you enjoyed this blog, make sure you check out our other Tales of the Gun stories!

Dream Bike: 1920 Excelsior-Henderson

A cool story, this is: An American (that would be me) goes to Western Australia to find vintage American motorcycles in a fabulous motor museum…or something along those lines.

I haven’t spotted any kangaroos yet (although eight of them did run across the front lawn of the Motor Museum of Western Australia while I was photographing this stunning 1920 Excelsior-Henderson). I missed my chance to photograph the ‘roos…but you can always get photos of kangaroos. How often do you encounter a 1920 Excelsior-Henderson?

The short story here is that Excelsior-Henderson made motorcycles from 1907 to 1931 in Chicago, they made the first motorcycle that could hit 100 mph, and they were done in by the Great Depression. Beyond that, I’ll let the photos of this magnificent motorcycle do my talking…

I am enjoying Australia immensely. Joe Gresh, you got it right…this is an awesome place. The western shore along the Indian Ocean, the food, the people, the scenery…it’s all amazing, and it’s not that different in feel, look, and climate than southern California. But the vintage motorcycles at the Motor Museum of Western Australia: Wowee!

ADVMoto’s Janus Baja story…

Well, actually, it’s my story and my photos, it’s in the current issue of Adventure Motorcycle magazine, and you should pick up a copy!

I know…you can’t really read the print in the photo above, and that’s by design. Pick yourself up a copy of ADVMoto (it’s on the stands now). And if you want to see the blog posts from the Janus adventure ride, you can find them here.

Beezer heaven…

Wow, was this ever fun! Folks, take a look at just a portion of the moto exotica at the Motor Museum of Western Australia…

Yep, I grabbed a bunch of photos today. Beezers, Harleys, Indians, Triumphs, Nortons, Velocettes, and more (much more, actually) to follow.

Stay tuned!

Pen Pals

Susy and Adrienne, then and now, meeting for the first time ever!

Everybody loves a good human interest story, and it’s hard to imagine one better than this. Sue and I are in Perth, Australia, and the specific reason we came here was for Sue to meet her lifelong pen pal Adrienne. Adrienne is from New Zealand, Sue is a California lady, and these two beautiful women have been pen pals for 56 years. Yesterday, they finally met in person for the first time. We had a great day, and I wanted to share it with you.

Big recoil, tiny groups: A Model 700 in 7mm Weatherby

The Remington Classic 700 in 7mm Weatherby Magnum: An unusual, collectible, and as it turns out, extremely accurate rifle.

A short while ago I wrote about my Dad’s left hand 7mm Weatherby Mk V, and how Roy Weatherby personally helped me select it. Well, here’s a story about another rifle chambered for the powerful 7mm Weatherby Magnum cartridge.

About a year ago, I saw something unusual on Gunbroker.com. It was an ad for a Remington 700 Classic rifle chambered in the venerable 7mm Weatherby Magnum cartridge. This rifle is quite a setup and, I think, quite a score for me personally. I’ve been a huge fan of Weatherby rifles ever since I was a little boy, when my father chased woodchucks in New Jersey with a .243 Winchester Model 70. Back in the day, woodchucks were about the only thing you could hunt with a rifle in New Jersey. I grew up in a farming community (there’s a reason New Jersey is called the Garden State), and the farmers in our area gave my Dad free rein to cull the chuck population. Those little woodchucks did a lot of crop damage, and the farmers were grateful that my Dad was able send those critters on to their reward. As a little kid tagging along with Dad, it was grand fun. It was not at all unusual for him to take (and make) 400-yard shots, with his rifle resting across the hood of his ’65 F-100 Ford (there were a lot of powder burns on that old pickup truck). Like I said, it was awesome.

Just before I went to Korea, my Dad bought a 7mm Weatherby rifle for me as a going-away gift, and I loved it. I shot the barrel out of that rifle (yep, I shot it so much I wore it out) and then I had it redone with a Douglas barrel in 300 H&H. But the 7mm Weatherby Mag cartridge had its hooks into me, and they never let go. The idea is that a 7mm projectile is aerodynamically more efficient than a .30 caliber bullet (the 7mm is 0.284 inches in diameter; a .30 caliber bullet is 0.308 inches in diameter). For the same weight, the 7mm cartridge has a lower drag coefficient, so it retains more velocity downrange and it has a flatter trajectory.

All of the above is probably more theoretical than real world, but I still like the idea of a streamlined, hard-hitting, flat-shooting, hot 7mm. And that’s what the 7mm Weatherby cartridge is. It was one of Roy Weatherby’s first magnum chamberings, and it has been the fastest 7mm cartridge ever for many decades.

The 7mm Weatherby cartridge. Note the classic Weatherby double radius shoulder…the theory is the double radii act as a venturi, providing higher projectile velocities. It’s probably more marketing magic than real world measurable results, but I’m a believer.

I’ve also always been a fan of the Remington 700 rifle. They are inherently accurate, and when I used to shoot high power metallic silhouette competition back in the ’70s and ’80s, it was rare to see anything other than a Model 700 in the winners’ circle. I’ve owned a few of these rifles, and they are indeed extremely accurate.

Remington had a run of Model 700 rifles they labeled the “Classic” for a little more than 20 years, with the idea being that each year they would do a rifle in one chambering only. Remington stopped making the Classic series more than 20 years ago, and I always wanted one.

Recently, I saw an ad on Gunbroker for one of the rarest of the Classic series, the single year they chambered these fine rifles in 7mm Weatherby Magnum. That was a “must have” rifle for me. A Model 700, chambered in 7mm Weatherby. Wow. The rifle was advertised as new in the box, the cartridge is an awesome one, and unlike most of the Classics I had previously seen, it had killer wood. Hey, what’s not to like? I bought the rifle from Heritage Shooting Academy in Triangle, Virginia, and it was a great deal. If anything, the rifle was better than advertised, and I sure couldn’t argue with the way it shot (more on that in a second).

When it arrived, I was more than impressed. It was indeed new in the box, it was flawless, the walnut was understatedly elegant, and as I was to learn, it shot very, very well. The only thing that initially concerned me was that these uber-velocity cartridges generally give up accuracy for what they gain in speed. But that sure isn’t the case with this rifle. I reloaded different cartridges trying various powder charges using two different bullets, and the groups that resulted (all at 100 yards) were fabulous.

My initial testing showed that the trick here was to load toward the higher end of the powder charge spectrum to more fully fill those big belted magnum cases. The theory is that doing so results in a more uniform pressure wave/flame front when the go-juice lights up, and I guess it worked that way for me. More powder results in more velocity and that meant more recoil, but wowee, the Model 700 provided great results! It shot phenomenally tight groups and the little bit of dispersion you see is undoubtedly more me than the rifle or the ammo. I am one happy camper!

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Singapore!

Exotic, beautiful, sultry, rich, 17 hours away via nonstop air, a shopper’s paradise, foodie heaven, and an unending stream of photo ops: Singapore is all this and more. I love this place. I’ve been here six or seven times, and I’ll keep coming back. I’ll let the photos do most of the talking this time. I shoot better than I write!

A typical scene along the river. All the brightly-colored buildings on the left are restaurants.

Tunnels along the river walk take you beneath streets. Artwork covers the tunnel walls on both sides.

There’s a small noodle shop just outside our hotel. This bowl of wonton soup is about a buck. It’s

An artist painting one of Singapore’s classic bridges along the river walk.

Amazing architecture along the bay. These three buildings include shopping, a hotel, a casino, and more. The upper deck is styled like a ship; the concept is that the buildings are the waves. All of this is built on reclaimed land. Singapore is a small nation; when they need more land, they create it in the ocean!

At a seafood restaurant along the riverwalk.

Lobsters along the riverwalk. I’m going to add this to the collection of ExNotes blog banner photos.

That’s one way to get old bikes off the road, I guess.

And there you have it. Fun times. Another secret mission in the bag.

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