Joe Berk

An Aussie Salsbury

In the post-War years of the late 1940s and early 1950s, a number of scooter manufacturers emerged in the United States. Cushman was probably the biggest one. Mustang was the exotic one, and it was arguably the coolest bike of the bunch. Salsbury was yet another. Salsbury scooters were made right here in California (as was Mustang), but Salsbury production numbers were much smaller. I’ve only ever seen three…one was at the Motor Scooter International Land Speed Trials about 10 years ago, another was at the Peterson Museum, and much to my great surprise, the third was just last month at the Motor Museum of Western Australia…

It was cool seeing a Salsbury, and doubly-cool seeing it in Australia. Imagine that…a product made in my own back yard, and seeing it on the other side of the world in Australia.

Bike won’t start?

Ever have one of those mornings where your bike kicks over, but it just won’t start?

Me? I just want to get a set of the shades and the hat that dude was wearing.

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.