Joe Berk

To Hammock or not to Hammock…

You guys remember our good buddy Mike Huber, whom we met on one of the Baja rides. Mike is a former US Army paratrooper, a GS rider, and a great guy. It was good to get an email from Mike a couple of days ago, along with the following guest blog…

Combining my two favorite passions in life of motorcycle and camping is new to me, but I quickly fell in love with the lifestyle and have grown to embrace moto camping so much that over the past two years I make it a point to moto camp at least once a month.

As I developed my passion for moto camping I began following blogs and Facebook groups to seek out tips and tricks that can make my moto camping experiences more exciting and comfortable. I began to notice that some moto campers on these pages camped in their hammocks full time and didn’t even own a tent. This awoke my curiosity since I always travel with an ENO double nest nylon hammock. On most nights when I camp I usually hang the hammock when I have a few hours to kill where I can get comfortable and read a book or just gaze into the campfire after a long day of riding. Even though I travel and use a hammock frequently I never thought of sleeping in my hammock while camping prior to reading these blogs.

A short time later I was traveling from Arizona to Colorado and I found myself in a beautiful state park camping where I had spent over an hour or so sitting in my hammock next to the fire. I decided to give this hammock camping thing a try. It was a clear night and the moon and stars were really popping so I threw a few logs on the fire, loaded my sleeping bag into the hammock ad settled in for a restful night’s sleep.
Below are a few pros and cons I have found with my limited hammocking experience:

Pros:

• Able to see the stars the entire night without having to leave your bed
• Lightweight and compact
• No pressure points in a hammock so it can be much more comfortable and warmer being off the ground
• A level area is not required so at times you can be closer to bodies of water

Cons:

• Some parks do not allow hammocks to be hung on any park property or trees (see photo)
• If you are in an area with no trees (EX: deserts of the southwestern United States (and using a cactus is a really bad idea)) there may not be a place to safely hang your hammock
• Without a properly equipped hammock facing bad weather can be a challenge

I enjoy the unique experience of hammock camping and whenever conditions are right have continued to camp in my hammock. I am now in the habit of setting up both my tent and hammock at my campsites and go with how I feel, the weather, and my surroundings. Hammock camping is another option to have, and with moto camping having more options is never a bad thing.

Mike, that’s an awesome blog. Thanks for taking the time to think of us. Your photos are outstanding. Let’s get together for a taco or two the next time you’re in town. Gresh says he’s buying!

Punny stuff…

Hey, Gresh started it with that “assault and battery” blog title. We post our blog notifications on Facebook, too, and a bunch of guys weighed in. With shocking puns. I won’t spoil it. Read for yourself, folks…

And there you have it. No doubt there are more highly-charged comments posted by the time you read this. I stopped reading them and posting responses because I thought I might offend someone, or maybe even be offended myself. But then, I always have had a short fuse…

It’s like the time a neutron walked into a bar and asked “How much for a beer?”

The bartender, a proton, said “For you, no charge.”

“You sure?” asked the neutron.

“I’m positive,” answered the proton.

And with that, my friends, it’s time to, you know, pull the plug. Unless you have more. Well, do you?

Baldy on Mt. Baldy…

My mighty CSC TT250 posing in a turnout on the way up to Mt. Baldy. These are great motorcycles.

We had a short break in the near-nonstop rains here in So Cal, and that meant two things to me: Get out for a motorcycle ride, and get to the rifle range. That’s two separate things (it’s a bit of a challenge to carry a rifle on a motorcycle), so let me just post a photo or two from my motorcycle ride.

When it rains in So Cal in the winter time, it’s snowing in the mountains, and the San Gabriels looked mighty inviting. I needed to get my knees in the breeze and I recently had good buddy Joey D put new tires on my TT250. I wanted to see how the new tires felt, and a quick run up to Mt. Baldy would be the perfect way to do that. I’m here to tell you I really like the TT’s new treads. A lot.

Yeah, I know. It’s the title of this blog.

While I was taking photos with my cellphone, a young lady pulled into the turnout in a 3-Series BMW M car. She asked if I wanted her to take my picture with the bike. Hey, why not? I probably should have grabbed a photo of her with the BMW, but I always seem to think of these things too late.

I stayed nice and warm on my ride up to Mt. Baldy, as I was wearing my R Heroes USA workshirt under my moto jacket. It felt great to get on the bike again, and the ride was made all the better by the crisp mountain air. Good times.

Regarding time on the rifle range, that’s a topic for another blog. Stay tuned!

R Heroes USA!

I’ll get to R Heroes USA, the title of this blog, in just a bit. There’s a story behind today’s title and it goes like this: About 10 years ago, CSC donated a Mustang replica to the Firefighters Cancer Support Network (the FCSN), a charity of firefighters focused on helping firefighters and EMS workers with the disease. The motorcycle CSC built for the FCSN was a great-looking bike, and when I picked the colors for my CSC 150 I had it built exactly like the Firefighter model…

A Mt. Baldy firefighter checking out my CSC 150 several years ago.

When Steve and Maureen donated the bike, the FCSN gave Steve and me each a sweatshirt. I liked mine immensely, and in fact, for the last 10 years it has been my “go to” shirt for knocking around, or whenever it gets really cold out here, or whenever I’m riding in cold weather. Yeah, I’ve got a heated vest and all the right motorcycle gear, but when it’s seriously cold and I want to layer up, nothing beats that sweatshirt. It’s warm and it’s incredibly comfortable. When we did the recent Janus Motorcycles Baja ride, I knew it was going to be a cold expedition and I knew I’d be wearing my blue pullover sweatshirt.

My 10-year-old R Heroes shirt. This is my favorite shirt. It’s still in great shape. R Heroes makes them right here in California.

Most recently, we’ve been in a cold snap here in So Cal, and I’ve been wearing my FCSN shirt pretty much every day. It made me think: I’ve been wearing that sweatshirt for nearly 10 years. That’s phenomenal. I thought about that a bit, and I realized: I need to get me another one of these.

I looked online, and I couldn’t find anything of the same style. You see, it’s not just a sweatshirt. It’s got pockets, it’s got a YKK zipper (the best there is), it’s fleece-lined,and like I said, it’s warm. It’s also just long enough to cover anything you might have strapped on your hip (even a big old .45). It’s perfect. I usually don’t get excited about clothes, but I fell in love with that pullover.

With no initial luck on the Internet, I looked inside the shirt. I couldn’t find a label that indicated any of the sweatshirt companies I thought I knew, so I looked a little harder. There was a tiny label that said “R Heroes USA.” What’s that? I thought, so I did a search on that name, and oila!

It turns out that there’s an apparel company called R Heroes USA, it was founded by a firefighter, they manufacture here in America, and they focus on gear for firefighters (that explains the great pockets and the uber-high quality). I sent an email to R Heroes USA, one thing led to another, and my new good buddy (and R Heroes USA founder) Chuck took my order for a new shirt just like the old one. It’s their Model 505 workshirt. It should arrive about the same time you are reading this blog.

I’m pumped, and I know I’ve got another good 10 years in front of me with this new shirt. You can do the same, you know. You can’t order directly off the R Heroes USA site, but you can get to a list of their dealers and if there are none nearby, you can send R Heroes an email just like I did.

Like I said, I had a nice conversation with Chuck (the R Heroes USA owner and founder). One thing led to another, and what do you know, R Heroes USA is looking to reach beyond the firefighter market. The Model 505 (and probably other R Heroes USA shirts) are perfect for riding, and ExhaustNotes has a new advertiser. It’s a win-win-win all the way around, folks. Click on the R Heroes USA logo below (or right here), give the site a visit, and get yourself what I’m here to tell you is the best and longest-wearing shirt on the planet!

New deals from Janus and CSC

Our good buddies at Janus Motorcycles have a special deal for ExhaustNotes readers…if you mention ExhaustNotes when ordering a new motorcycle, Janus will give you a free polished stainless steel exhaust upgrade (or anything else of equivalent value). Just click here to get to the Janus order page.

I had a grand time on the Janus Baja adventure ride, and these are unique motorcycles. Janus motorcycles are handcrafted gems with an exquisite fit and finish, and they gather crowds wherever they go.

Devin Biek, one of the Janus co-founders, putting a Gryffin through its paces on our Baja adventure ride.

Here’s more news, this time from CSC Motorcycles. CSC has announced new colors for their 2019 TT250 motorcycle, which include subtle letter decal color changes on the white and black versions of the bike, and an all new blue color (a first on the TT250).

The 2019 TT250 colors. The 2019 bikes should be in the US in a couple of weeks.

These are cool colors on the new TT250s, and at $2,195, this motorcycle has to be one of the best deals on the planet. I have a black one and I love the bike. To get to the CSC order page, you can click here.

The Motley Fool weighs in…

The Motley Fool is an investment advisory service newsletter I’ve been following since the 1990s, and my take on things is they generally have good advice and make predictions that have proven to be sound. Most recently, The Motley Fool published an article (Harley-Davidson Really Misjudged the Electric Motorcycle Market) about Harley’s Livewire electric motorcycle. Their take on the new Harley is the same as ours…Harley’s marketing muscle and distribution channels will help, but the idea of a $35K+ electric motorcycle nearly guarantees a dead-on-arrival introduction. The Motley Fool piece is well reasoned and mirrors our earlier prediction. Let’s hope both we and The Motley Fool are wrong.

Rob’s project bike…

I received an interesting email from my good buddy Rob a couple of nights ago. Rob is an interesting guy…I rode with him on the 5000-mile Western America Adventure Ride described in 5000 Miles at 8000 RPM, and then again on one of the Baja trips.

Rob’s mascot on a bike he calls “Donkey Hoty.”

Here’s Rob’s note to me, along with some very interesting photos…

Hi Joe,

Hope your living life to the fullest. I really enjoy you and Gresh’s ExhaustNotes and keeping up with you.

Anyways its very cold up here and to kill time I’ve been looking at Ball and Cap pistols and wondered if you had any experience shooting, loading, etc. with them? Any further plans on an east coast RX3 trip or Alaska?

If your ever up here in the Pacific Northwest area , give me a shout. Maybe I can meet up with you somewhere.

Not sure this year where all my bikes will take me. My favorite rally in Hells Canyon is done and over with and she’s looking for another venue place to host it. I may try and get to the beater bike rally in Hood River. I’m working on a Kawasaki KZ440 that I took the motor out of and put in a Harbor Freight 212cc lawn mower motor in it with a cheap torque converter so its an centrifugal clutch auto like a big mini bike. If I can get it to go fast enough (45-55mph) I may try and ride down to rally from Walla Walla.

Hope all is well with you and yours Joe.

Take care,

Rob

Rob calls his new bike Einstein, and like Donkey Hoty, he has a hood ornament to match.

Rob, your project bike is fascinating. Please keep us posted on how it progresses. The centrifugal clutch concept on a full-figured motorcycle is interesting. Mustang (i.e., the original California-manufactured Mustang of the 1950s) offered a centrifugal clutch bike in the 1950s they named after their original offering (the Colt), and the one I saw owned by Al Simmons and later Steve Seidner was a real beauty.

A ’56 Mustang Colt. It had a centrifugal clutch. The Mustang Motor Products Corporation positioned this bike as a lower-priced Mustang, but it was a commercial flop.

Mustang’s intent was not to offer a bike with an “automatic” transmission; what they were really after was a value-engineered version of the Mustang. It had the standard Mustang 322cc flathead engine, but a centrifugal clutch replaced the Berman transmission and the bike had Earles-type forks instead of the Mustang’s telescopic forks. The factory workers didn’t like it and there was some talk of efforts to sabotage the ones leaving the plant. The one I saw was beautiful. It flopped in the market, which was unfortunate. When I worked at CSC, we’d routinely get calls from folks asking if we had any bikes that had an automatic transmission. The answer, of course, was no. But I think this sort of thing could work on a small displacement bike for folks who don’t know how to (or don’t want to) shift. I know you do and I know you are doing this just to have fun. But I think you are on to something here.

To answer your other questions….I have zero experience with black powder guns, other than to watch my good buddy Paul build custom black powder rifles and play with them. I once bought a Uberti .44 Model 1858 sixgun and it looked to be very well built, but a friend of mine wanted one and I sold it to him without ever having fired it.

I don’t have any east coast RX3 or other plans at this time. I’m too busy planning for the next Baja trip, I guess.

The beater rally you mention sounds pretty cool, and I love the Hood River area of the Columbia River Gorge. That sounds like it might be fun!

How did we miss this?

Boy oh boy am I embarrassed! Good buddy John Burns listed Moto Baja as one of the 10 Best Books for Motorcyclists for 2018 a month or so ago and it went right by me!

John, thanks very much!

Want to see all our books? Take a look right here.

Want to know a secret? Gresh and I have a couple of new books in the works. You’ll read about them right here on the ExhaustNotes blog!

Would you like to be entered in our quarterly contest for a free moto adventure book? Just sign up for our automatic email updates!

Another cool watch…

Here’s another blog I posted a couple of years ago on the CSC blog, and this one is about a watch. Yeah, I make no excuses…I’m a watch guy. This one is one of my favorites.

img_2749-650 — My self-winding Orient watch. It’s a classy dress piece, and it’s one of my favorites.

Okay, it’s time for another watch story, and this one goes like this: 40+ years ago when I was a young Army officer in Korea, some of my guys purchased Japanese Orient watches (Orient was the brand name; it had nothing to do with our location in Asia). That was in the mid-1970s, I was just a young pup, and those were the good old days when you could buy a Rolex at the Post Exchange for $300.

Rolex, Schmolex. Who in their right mind, I remember thinking back then, would spend $300 for a watch? $300 for a Rolex. Ah, if I only knew. But that’s a tangential story. Back to the main attraction…

Anyway, I never heard of the Orient brand again until somebody posted a photo of a really cool Orient diver’s watch on the ADVRider.com “Shiny Things” thread. That lit up a long-lost memory neuron or two and I looked for Orient watches on Google. I didn’t want another diver’s watch, but I saw a really cool Orient watch on the OrientUSA website. It was a moonwatch (not like the Bulova Apollo 15 watch I posted about a week or so ago, but a watch that had a complication showing whether it was day or night). I know, the whole thing is kind of silly…I mean, other than the guy who sang Love Potion No. 9, who doesn’t know if it’s day or night? It was a men’s dress watch in rose gold (that’s a kind of pink-looking gold) with a brown leather alligator band. (At least, I think it’s alligator. Maybe it’s crocodile. Never could tell those two lizards apart, except if you see one later it’s most likely an alligator, and if you don’t see one again for a while, well, it’s probably a crocodile. Or so I’ve been told.)

I liked the looks of the Orient Moon Watch. A lot. I sent an email to Orient, they responded to my question and included a discount code in case I decided to order a watch. One thing led to another, and my new Orient arrived via UPS a few days later. I really like it. It’s a self-winding mechanical watch (as a mechanical engineer, that appeals greatly to me), like I said above it’s rose gold (which I like a lot), and it’s just cool. It’s beautiful, actually. When I shot the above photo, it told me the sun was out (it’s wasn’t, because it had been raining bigly out here, but you get the idea).

So the Orient watch proved to be a great buy. It’s very accurate, and it’s completely mechanical. No batteries, no solar gizmos, no hookup to an iPhone, and it works the way it is supposed to. A year or two ago on one of the CSC Baja trips, one of the guys on that ride (good buddy Patrick) made a point of showing me his self-winding mechanical Orient watch, which he purchased after I wrote about mine on the CSC blog. I guess the old adage is true…if you have a great product (and I think Orient does), the word gets around.

Good buddy Patrick, a fellow Orient watch guy, in Guerrero Negro on the Baja 2017 ride.

So that’s it for now. I’ve got to hit up Orient for my commission on Patrick’s watch, and I’m ready for the sunshine. Yesterday was supposed to be the last day of our So Cal rainstorm saga, and I’m hoping that’s going to be the case. I want to get out and ride. My motorcycles have been sitting in the garage for too long. It’s time to get some motorcycle stuff back up on the ExNotes blog!

Precipitation, polarities, headgear, and gobble gobble…

The rain has been nonstop here for the last several days, and for the last couple of nights it’s rained so hard that it woke me up a few times. I guess nearly all of California is getting drenched. It’s too wet to ride and it’s too wet to shoot, so I’ve been catching up on other stuff.

On that shooting bit…to get to my gun club you have to drive down a dirt road for a couple of miles, and at one point the road actually crosses a stream. Usually it’s only a couple of inches deep and sometimes it’s even dry, but that sure isn’t the case right now. The gun club sent out an email yesterday afternoon with a video warning folks not to try to drive across the stream (which is now a little river)…

So, with all this rain (and some hail) I’ve been attending to other things…catching up on writing a couple of articles, doing a bit of reloading, and I even put a new battery in my TT250.

Reloading is a good thing to do on a rainy day, and the menu today included .44 Magnum and .45 AutoRim, two of my all-time favorite cartridges.

.44 Mag loads for more accuracy testing in the new Ruger Turnbull Super Blackhawk. These loads have a 240 grain cast bullet with Unique loaded at 9.0 grains, 10.0 grains, and 11.0 grains. We’ll see which load the Turnbull prefers.

.45 AutoRim ammo. This cartridge is just like the .45 ACP, except the rim allows shooting it in revolvers chambered for the .45 ACP without the use of metal clips. This is a 200 grain moly-coated cast bullet with 6.0 grains of Unique, and it is a shooter!

Shooting the .45 AutoRim cartridge in a Model 625 Smith and Wesson last week before the rains started. That’s 100 rounds at 25 yards. The two outside the black happened when a fly landed on my front sight. Or maybe it was a sudden gust of wind. Or maybe I sneezed. Yeah, that was it.

Back to the battery for my TT250…I’ve owned my TT250 for close to three years now and the battery finally gave up the ghost. I stopped in at CSC and told Steve I wanted a new one on the warranty, and we both had a good laugh about that. Steve told me I was the only guy he knew who could get that kind of life out of a Chinese battery. I thought that was kind of funny because all the batteries are Chinese now.

Seriously, though, I think the reason my batteries last so long is that I usually keep them on a Battery Tender. Those things work gangbusters for me, the bikes run better when the batteries are kept fully charged, and the batteries seem to last a good long time. You can buy a Battery Tender most anywhere; my advice would be to get one (or more) from CSC. They come with a little pigtail you can permanently install on your battery, which makes connecting the Battery Tender a snap. I have one on both my RX3 and my TT250.

I rotate the battery between my RX3 and my TT250, and the batteries seem to last a lot longer. I don’t know why anyone who owns any motorcycle wouldn’t have one of these.

The Battery Tender pigtail on my RX3. You can’t get the polarity wrong on these if you’ve connected the pigtail to the battery correctly. You get a pigtail for free when you buy a Battery Tender.

Another bit of a commercial for CSC…the mailman dropped off a box on Saturday, and it was one of the new CSC hats. I’m a hat guy. I like wearing a hat. My favorite kind of hat is a free one. The CSC hat I received was free (thanks, Steve), but unless you wrote a blog for CSC for 10 years, it’s not likely you’d get yours for free. I think they sell for $19.95, which is a bit above what hats normally go for, but this one is more than worth it. It’s got cool embossed stitching and it looks good. I like it and I think it will make me a better man. Like I said, $19.95 ain’t bad, but maybe you could get one for free as part of the deal when you buy a new CSC motorcycle. I’d at least ask the question. The worst that could happen is Steve will say no. But if he does that, ask for a free copy of 5000 Miles At 8000 RPM when you buy your new motorcycle. You never know.

I got a free hat from CSC. Gresh didn’t. At least not yet, he didn’t. Seriously, these are nice hats.

Hey, here’s one more cool photo. I’ve been spending a bit of time up in northern California. I have a new grandson up there who I think is going to be a rider, a shooter, and a blog writer. On that blog writing thing, I told him it’s a great foundation for any “get rich slow” scheme, and I think he gets it. Anyway, my wife Sue is still up there, and she saw the neighborhood brood of wild turkeys this morning walking around like they own the place…

Genuine Screaming Turkey performance parts? It could work…

You know, there was some talk of making the turkey our national bird instead of the bald eagle when our country first formed (Ben Franklin was pushing for the turkey, but I guess the rest of the founding fathers told him to go fly a kite). As an aside, when I ride up to northern California, I take Highway 152 across from Interstate 5 to the 101, and there’s a tree where I always see one or two bald eagles. Bald eagles are majestic raptors. I can see the logic behind the turkey, though. But wow, would it ever take a rethink of a lot of marketing stuff, and in particular, it would make for a major revamp of one particular Motor Company’s marketing and branding efforts (you know, the guys from Milwaukee). Seriously, their performance parts would all have to be marketed under a new Screaming Turkey brand. You could bask in the assumed glory of your motorcycle’s heritage as you rode like, well, a real turkey. Perhaps the Company could get a patent on a new exhaust note….one that would have to change from “potato potato” to “gobble gobble.” There would have to be new logos, tattoos, T-shirts…the list just doesn’t end. But I guess I had better. You know, before I offend anyone.

Stay tuned, folks. Like always, there’s more good ExNotes stuff coming your way. Gobble gobble.