So the price of the new Harley Livewire has been announced, and it’s just under $30K. With taxes, dealer setup, freight, etc., it’s a bike that will be somewhere around $35K. Every blog, motorcycle forum, and motorcycle news outlet on the planet is carrying the story, and I have little more to add. Everyone with an opinion is posting why this makes sense, or why it makes no sense.
When Harley came out with the V-Rod 15 or so years ago, I said it would flop, and I posted a comment to that effect on one of the forums:
Wow, a 600-lb motorcycle with 85 horsepower. Where does the line form?
That comment ultimately was proven correct, and it somehow seems Livewire-appropriate today. I’ll leave the Livewire pricing, marketing analysis, and deep thinking to the other online pundits. My prediction? It took the V-Rod more than a decade to die. The demise of the Livewire, at $35K, will be mercifully quick. I hope I’m wrong, but I suspect I am not.
Wow, it has been pouring here for the last week, with little respite other than this past Sunday. Sunday was nice. Every other day this week and the tail end of last week has been nonstop rain. Big time. Buckets full. And my iPhone just started buzzing with a flash flood warning for this area. Wow again.
So I’m sitting here at the computer, enjoying a hot cup of coffee, looking out the window, and I’m thinking about what it’s like to ride in the rain. We’ve all had those rides. Those memories stick in my mind. I remember every one of those rides like they happened yesterday.
The first was the return leg of my first international motorcycle foray, when good buddy Keith Hediger and I rode up to Montreal and back. That was in the early ‘70s, and we didn’t call them adventure rides back then. They were just motorcycle rides. I was on a ’71 CB750 and Keith was on a Kawi 500cc triple. It rained the entire length of Vermont at about the same intensity you see in the video above. We had no rain gear. It wasn’t cold, but it sure was wet. We were soaked the entire day. Wouldn’t trade a minute of it. It was a great ride.
Another time was on the second ride I ever did in Baja with good buddy Baja John. It was pouring when we left at 4:00 a.m., and it didn’t let up for the entire day. I was on a Harley then, and we finally stopped somewhere around Colonet to checked into a cheap Baja hotel (a somewhat redundant term, which is becoming less redundant as Baja’s march in to the 21st century unfortunately continues). Leather, I found out on that trip, makes for lousy rain gear. I went hypothermic, and I had the shakes until 4:00 the following morning. It made for a good story, and the rest of that trip was epic. Down to Cabo, back up to La Paz, on the overnight ferry over to Mazatlan, out to Puerto Vallarta and Guadalajara, back up to Nogales, and a thousand-mile one-day dash to make it home on New Year’s Eve. Wouldn’t trade a second of it.
Riding with Marty on the ’05 Three Flags Classic, we were caught in a downpour the second day out as we rode along the Dolores River in Colorado. It was a magnificent ride, with Marty on his K1200RS and me on my 1200cc Daytona. It wasn’t a drizzle. It was a downpour, just like you see in the video above. I remember it vividly, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything.
Colombia had lots of rain, but it only hit us hard on the very first day. It was raining hard that first morning as we rode out of Medellin and into the Andes early on that fine Colombian morning, but it lightened up by breakfast. I had real rain gear and the only issues were visibility and passing 22-wheelers on blind curves, as my Colombian riders did with gleeful abandon. Exciting times. But good times, and certainly ones I remember. Colombia was an adventure for the ages. I wouldn’t trade a second of it for anything else.
I’d have to say the heaviest rains I ever rode through were in China, where it rains a lot. It probably rained 25% of the time on that trip, and the first few days were the worst. Imagine riding up into the Tibetan Plateau, in the dark, on dirt roads, in rain way heavier than what you see in the video above. That’s what it was like, and I loved every mile of that ride. I wouldn’t trade it for anything else on the planet.
You might be wondering…why no photos? Well, the simple truth is that my cameras on each trip were tightly wrapped in plastic bags, and I wasn’t about to break them out in the rain. That’s something I guess I forgot to mention in my earlier blog about what to bring on a Baja trip: Garbage bags. They take up almost no space when you’re not using them, and they work great for keeping stuff dry when you ride in the rain.
Doug Turnbull’s personal 1886 Winchester. Note the color case hardening on the receiver and the ultra-high grade walnut. These are magnificent guns.
I’m bombarded with emails and phone calls every day. I haven’t answered a call on my home phone literally in years because of the marketing calls (anyone important calls me on my cell phone), and now I’m starting to get marketing calls on my cell phone, too. Sorry, folks…if I don’t recognize the number, you’re going to voicemail, and just so you know in advance, I don’t need any work done on my home and I’m not in the market for solar panels. And email, wow…delete, delete, delete, delete, and on and on it goes. Once in a great while my inbox will have a marketing email I’ll take a look at, though, and this morning was one of those times.
The email that caught my eye this morning was from Turnbull Restorations. A quick word about Turnbull…they are a company back east that restores firearms and they’re known for their color case hardening. That’s a process that adds magnificent colors to selected bits of a firearm to enrichen their appearance dramatically. It’s what you see on uber-expensive shotguns, Colt Single Action Army revolvers, and a few select lever guns. Turnbull has mastered the process, and Mr. Turnbull makes and restores some of the world’s finest firearms.
I’m surprised color case hardening hasn’t shown up on custom bikes. A few years ago, engraving on selected bike bits had a brief half life on custom Harleys and the like. I thought that was kind of stupid, actually, and it never got an “oooh” or an “ah” from me. But I could see it working with color case hardening. Say an all black bike with color case hardened clutch covers, handlebars, and a few other pieces. Just for accent.
Anyway, the email that caught my eye was about Doug Turnbull’s personal rifle, a restored and rechambered 1886 Winchester, and the scars it bore from the various hunts he’s taken. It referred me to the Turnbull blog, and I just spent the last few minutes reading that story. It’s a good one, and it’s one that hit home. I’ve got a few nicks and dings on my favorite rifle from its outings. You might enjoy the Turnbull story, too. You can read it here.
That got me to thinking about some of the scars on my motorcycle. I like a bike that has a few battle scars on it. Not the ones induced by careless motorcycle technicians during routine maintenance (don’t get me started on those), but the ones that come from real trips to real exotic places. Or the ones that occur naturally through aging. I’ve got more than a few of those on my personal RX3, and each one of them tells a story. That might be a topic for another blog. We’ll see. In the meantime, I’m going to poke around a bit on the Turnbull blog. I love looking at those color case hardened Turnbull guns.
Lester, one of our Chinese guests, drawing a bead with a Ruger Mini 14 at the West End Gun Club. Photo by Ying Liu.
If you do, sign up for our free email updates. You can do so with the widget to the right (if you’re on a computer) or at the bottom (if you’re reading this blog on a mobile phone). At the end of March, we’ll pick a name from the folks on our email list and that lucky person will get a free copy of one of our moto adventure books. In the meantime, here’s one of my favorite chapters from 5000 Miles At 8000 RPM, one of our best selling books. The background is this: We had a bunch of folks coming over from China and Colombia (huh, Colombia?) to ride with us from LA to Sturgis to Washington and Oregon and back to LA along the Pacific coast, stopping at every National Park and hitting the best roads along the way. It was a hell of a ride. But the events of a trip to the rifle range and a nearby Bass Pro store were equally as interesting.
The Chinese and the Colombians all arrived around the same time, and they all came in through Los Angeles International Airport. Steve and I met our six Chinese guests as they arrived. I’ll take a minute here to introduce everyone.
Hugo was the first to arrive. Hugo is a Zongshen employee, and he is the Zongshen representative and sales manager assigned to Colombia. Colombia is Zongshen’s largest export customer, and Zongshen keeps a full time representative in that country. Hugo came to us as a result of the US government denying entry visas to the original Zongshen people who planned to accompany us on the Western America Adventure Ride. I liked Hugo the instant I met him. He’s a good guy.
I should also tell you at this point that our Chinese guests’ names may be a little confusing. The Chinese use their family name first, and their given name second. Hugo’s real name is Ying Liu, so Ying is his family name and Liu is his given name. I read that and I called Hugo “Ying Lew.” He laughed at my pronunciation and told me how to say it correctly. I tried a couple of times and then dropped any pretense of being culturally sensitive. Hugo it would be.
A lot of the Chinese adopt an English name to make it easier for big dumb Americans like me to communicate with them. It’s a nice move on their part. I’m telling you all of this so you’ll realize that some of the guys have Anglicized names, and some have Chinese names. You’ll get the hang of it as the book progresses.
The next flight brought Lester, Tony, Tso, Kong, and Kyle to us.
Lester is a tall man who looks just like Yul Brynner in The King and I. He’s a physical fitness instructor in a primary school in China, and he also owns a very successful motorcycle and bicycle luggage manufacturing company in China. Lester spoke English well. He is a prominent blogger in China on their premier motorcycle forum. Lester blogged about our trip extensively while we were on the road.
Tony is a celebrity photographer. He owns several motorcycles and his photos are widely published in China and other parts of Asia. He’s an interesting man. You’ll see him holding a small stuffed dog in my photos. That’s MoMo, a mascot who has accompanied Tony to more than 20 countries.
Tso would emerge as the quiet one in our group. He stuck with his Chinese name (it’s pronounced “szo” with a hard “sz” sound). Tso is another industrialist; he owns a motorcycle clothing company in China. He was wearing his company’s motorcycle gear, as were several of the other Chinese riders.
When I met Kong, I immediately told him that from this point forward on our ride, he would be “King Kong.” The Chinese got a big laugh out of that. They all knew the movie and they all liked Kong’s new name. Kong is a prominent automotive journalist in China.
Kyle had an English name, but he didn’t speak much English. He is an advertising designer and executive, and his customers include the big oil companies in China. Kyle was a lot of fun, and he sure could work wonders with a video camera.
I asked Hugo how Zongshen selected these guys for the Western America Adventure Ride. I didn’t understand everything he told me, but I think it was based on their motorcycling experience and a contest of some sort Zongshen had held in China. Each of these guys has a huge media following in China. They were all what I would call high rollers. These folks owned their own companies and were well-known writers and bloggers in China.
The two Colombians also met us at the airport that night. Their participation in the ride was a last minute arrangement. I received a Skype message from Hugo about a week before the ride asking me if the Colombians could accompany us. It was a surprise to me, but I didn’t have a problem with it. I thought they would be AKT employees, but they weren’t.
Juan Carlos, one of the two Colombians, owns the only motorcycle magazine in Colombia. He’s a tall thin guy and an excellent rider. He once rode a KLR 650 to Tierra del Fuego, the southernmost tip of South America, and he had written a hell of a story about it.
Gabriel Abad was the other Colombian. He was instrumental in helping Juan Carlos start his motorcycle magazine. Although Gabriel is a Colombian, he lives in Canada. That certainly was in keeping with the international flavor of our team.
When our good buddies from China and Colombia arrived in the USA that evening, one of their first requests was for an In-N-Out Burger. We did that on the way home from LAX. Then it was on to the hotel in Duarte (the next town over from Azusa) and a good night’s sleep after their long journeys to America.
We had a spare 2 days before the ride. We rode around locally to get everybody used to their bikes on the first day, and on the morning of the second day I asked our guests what they would like to do.
Their answer was direct: We want to shoot a gun.
I was happy to oblige. I’m a firearms enthusiast and I’ve been a member of our local gun club for decades. I put my Ruger Mini 14 in the van and we were off to the West End Gun Club.
Our guests were fascinated with everything America has to offer, and the freedom guaranteed by our 2nd Amendment was obviously high on that list. After a brief lesson at the gun club on the rifle, the .223 cartridge, and firearms safety, we set up a target and took turns putting the Ruger through its paces. The guys loved it. The smiles were real, and I had brought along plenty of ammo. The Chinese and the Colombians did well. Literally every shot was on target. They told me I was a good teacher. I think they are just good shots.
Now before any of you get your shorts in a knot about guns and shooting, let me tell you that even though I am a strong 2nd Amendment supporter, I can understand why some of you might be opposed to the freedoms guaranteed by the US Constitution. When I go to a public range I sometimes see people who I wouldn’t allow to have oxygen (let alone firearms).
The problem, as I see it, is that if you restrict our rights in this area, it would be a government pinhead making the call on who gets to have guns and who doesn’t (and that scares me even more than some of the yahoos I see with guns). It’s a tough call, but I’ll come down on the side of the 2nd Amendment every time. The founding fathers knew what they were doing, and they did it before the pinheads permeated the government.
Ah, but I digress yet again. Back to the main attraction…my day at the range with our guests.
I didn’t get photos of that event. I was busy teaching, watching, and explaining, and I just didn’t have an opportunity. The Chinese and the Colombians did. They were having a blast (literally and figuratively), and they captured hundreds of photos. I didn’t realize just how special this would be to them when we first left Azusa for the gun club, but it became apparent as soon as we arrived at the range. They all ran up to the line and were fascinated by the spent brass lying on the ground. Several of our guests took pictures. Imagine that…taking pictures of empty shell casings!
When I took the rifle out of its case and opened the ammo box, there were even more oohs and aahhhs. And more photos. I guess I’m so used to being around this stuff I didn’t realize how special this day was for our guests. These guys had never held or fired a gun before. Ever. I was amazed by that. They were amazed that we have the freedom to own and shoot firearms. It was an interesting afternoon.
When we finished, all of our guests collected their targets. I had brought along enough targets to give each person their own. We had the range to ourselves that afternoon, so each of the guys would shoot a magazine full of 5.56 ammo, we made the rifle safe, we went downrange to see how each person did, and then we put up a new target for the next guy. Many of the guys repeated that cycle three or four times. It was fun. The guys were like kids in a candy store. I enjoyed being a part of it.
It was hot when we finished shooting at around 4:00 p.m. that day. We were due to meet for dinner at Pinnacle Peaks (a great barbeque place in San Dimas) at 6:00 p.m., and we had a couple of hours to kill. I asked our guests if there was anything else they wanted to do before we went for dinner. My thought was that they might want to go back to the hotel and freshen up. That’s not what they had on their minds. They had another request: Can we go to a gun store?
That sounded like a good idea to me. We have a Bass Pro near where we were, and it’s awesome. Okay, then. Our next stop would be Bass Pro.
I was already getting a sense of how much our guests liked taking pictures, so I told them when we entered the gun department at Bass Pro we should put the cameras away. Usually there are signs prohibiting photography in these kinds of places. We gun enthusiasts don’t like being photographed by people we don’t know when we are handling firearms (big brother, black helicopters, and all the rest of the unease that comes with a healthy case of paranoia and a deep distrust of the government). I told our guests I would ask if we could take photos, but until then, I asked them to please keep their cameras in their cases.
The guys were in awe when we entered Bass Pro, and then they were even more astounded when we reached the gun department. They were literally speechless. Open mouths. Wide eyes. Unabashed amazement. There isn’t anything like Bass Pro in China or Colombia. I’ve been to both countries and I know that to be the case. Hell, there wasn’t anything like Bass Pro in America until a few years ago. It’s a combination of a museum, a theme park, a gun store, an armory, and a shopping emporium. I love the place and all that it says about America.
Now, you have to picture this. The Bass Pro gun department. Hundreds of rifles and handguns on display. Targets. Ammo. Gun cases. Reloading gear. A bunch of guys from China talking excitedly a hundred miles an hour in Chinese. The rest of the customers watching, literally with dropped jaws, wondering what was going on. We were a sight.
The Colombians were talking excitedly the same way, but in Spanish.
I was the only guy who looked like he might be from America (my YouTubby belly probably gave me away). The gun department manager looked at me with a quizzical eye. I explained to him who we were and why these guys were so excited. He smiled. “Would they like to take pictures?” he asked. Hoo boy!
The guys loved it. So did the Bass Pro staff. They were handing the Chinese these monster Smith and Wesson .500 Magnums so they could pose for photos, ala Dirty Harry. It was quite a moment and it made quite an impression. One of the guys had his video camera out and he was recording one of the Chinese riders holding a huge Smith and Wesson revolver. The guy with the revolver did a pretty good impersonation of Clint Eastwood (albeit with a Chinese accent):
Do you feel lucky, punk? Well, do ya?
It was pretty funny. That Dirty Harry movie is 40 years old and it was made before most of our guests were born, but these guys knew that line. The Chinese would surprise me a number of times with their mastery of many American things from our movies and our music. All that’s coming up later in this story, folks.
The Chinese and the Colombians were absolutely fascinated with the whole guns and shooting thing and what it is like to live in America, and the Bass Pro staff were quite taken with them. I was pleased. Our guests were getting a first-hand look at American freedoms and American hospitality. It was a theme we would continue to see emerge throughout the Western America Adventure Ride.
For me, a crowning moment occurred on the way to dinner that night. One of the Chinese told me that all the time he was growing up he had been told that Americans were evil and we were their enemy. “That’s just not true,” he said.
I had a great lunch last week with Trevor Summons, the fellow who won our quarterly email drawing for a copy of Moto Colombia. Wow, was I ever surprised. When I met Trevor and gave him a copy of my book, he gave me a copy of his!
Good buddy, fellow traveler, and author Trevor Summons…and a copy of Trevor’s Travels.
Trevor writes a newspaper column appropriately titled, “Trevor’s Travels.” The columns feature cool places to visit, mostly here in the Southland. Well, Trevor combined some of his favorites into a book with the same title (Trevor’s Travels, of course) and it’s good. Really good. I enjoyed reading Trevor’s column and there are a few I’ve missed, but I’m busy catching up with the book.
Hey, don’t feel bad if you haven’t written your own book. You can still win a copy of one of mine when you add your name to our automatic email update list. Our next contest ends 31 March, so don’t wait…add your name now!
When you’re out here, you can’t call Triple A. Rural Baja is the great equalizer among motorcycle marques. You’ll see the same number of Honda, Kawasaki, Suzuki, Yamaha, BMW, Harley, Ducati, and CSC dealers: That number is zero. You need to be able to take care of your motorcycle.
One question I hear a lot from when I’m organizing a tour in Baja is: What spare parts should I bring? It can get desolate down there, and it makes sense to be prepared.
Well, that’s a great question. The idea is to bring enough things you might need so you don’t get stranded, but to also travel light. You don’t want to get weighed down carrying too much stuff, but you want to have the items you might need. The simple fact is that most motorcycles today are extremely reliable, so the likelihood of needing a spare part is remote. That said, there are a few things that I always bring.
I used to say getting a flat tire on a motorcycle trip is a relatively rare event. Unless you’re Joe Gresh. The first time I met Gresh, which was on the CSC Western America Adventure Ride, he told me that he’s “that guy” who usually gets a flat tire. I kind of blew off that thought when Joe said it, and it slipped further from my mind for most of our Western America adventure. We had covered roughly 4500 miles of a 5000-mile ride with nary a single flat, but sure enough, Joe got one just north of San Francisco on the way back to So Cal. We limped into an independent cycle shop, with me realizing that Gresh was right. He was “that guy.” Won’t happen to me, I thought. Then I got a flat on the ride across China. Hey, it happens.
So, the deal is this…if you’re running tubeless tires, you’ll need a patch kit and something to put air back in the tire. If you’re running tube tires it gets a bit more complicated: You’ll need an approach for getting the bike off the ground and you’ll need tools to get the deflated wheel and tire off the bike, and then you’ll need tire spoons to get the tire off the wheel. Since both of my current bikes run tube tires, I carry spare tubes and a tire pump. I have a small electric pump that runs off my bike’s battery (you need to start and run the engine while you’re pumping the tire up, or you’ll kill the battery). Since most of us ride bikes that have different front and rear wheels, when I’m traveling with others I’ll usually take the front tube, and one of my friends will take the rear tube.
A small tire pump that attaches to your motorcycle’s battery. You can get these at a lot of places; CSC Motorcycles sells them online and their customer service is the best in the business.
Next up…the spark plug. I’ve never replaced one on a trip, but I always carry a spare. They’re small. It makes me feel good.
I always carry a throttle cable and a clutch cable. Same deal…I’ve never needed to replace these on the road, but they don’t take up much space.
I bring chain lube with me, but if I forget to bring it, it’s not a big deal. Someone has always just put a quart of oil in their car at every gas station I’ve ever been in, and I can always find an “empty” quart container. Usually there’s enough residual oil in it that I can hold it upside down and get some oil on my chain. But it’s better just to bring along a spray can of chain lube, and you won’t get the back of your bike sprayed with motor oil if you rely on residual oil from someone’s empty oil can.
If I’m going to be out in the boonies (like on a trip through Baja), I’ll bring a spare quart of oil with me, especially if I’m on my TT250. CG clone motors use a little oil, especially if you push them hard. KLRs have a reputation for being oilers. You know your bike. If it uses oil, better to bring some along rather than having to go look for it. And on that topic, I check my oil every night when I’m on a long ride. You’d be surprised how many bikes come into dealers with seized engines and no oil in the crankcase.
I bring a spare headlight bulb and a spare taillight bulb. Baja and its topes usually induce a bulb failure about every third trip I make down there.
I bring Sea Foam with me. If my bike starts running rough after I put gas in it, a capful of Sea Foam is just what the doctor ordered. It takes care of any water that might have found its way from the gas pump into your tank.
If I’m riding my RX3, I bring along a spare countershaft sprocket nut. On my first ride in Baja with a bunch of other guys on RX3s, good buddy Justin lost his, and after screwing around for a day or two we ended up having to pay a machine shop to make a custom nut. If your bike has a part that it occasionally loses, bring a spare. You know your bike better than I do, so do your homework and decide what makes sense to bring along.
Adapt, overcome, improvise. That steel wire served as a countershaft sprocket nut for 70 miles until we found a replacement. Go Justin!
A spare master link is a good idea. I’ve never needed one, but I feel better knowing I have one with me. They take up almost no space.
I always bring an assortment of the small nuts, bolts, and screws that my bike uses. You never know what’s going to vibrate off. It happens on all bikes.
A tool kit with real tools is a good idea. Putting one together will help you get to know your bike.
I always bring a tool kit, but it’s never the tool kit that comes with the bike (if, indeed, your bike even has one). The tools that come with a bike are almost always cheaply made and they often don’t work well. Whenever I get a bike, I’ll put together a collection of sockets, a ratchet, the two or three box end wrenches the bike needs (including those for the axle nut and bolt), a screwdriver with Phillips and blade tips, a small crescent wrench, and whatever Allen wrenches the bike needs. Throw in a set of pliers, a small pair of vise-grips (which can be used as a shift lever in a pinch), a bit of steel wire, and I’m good to go.
Hey, there’s lots of good stuff coming up, folks. Our next Baja ride, how to pack for Baja, what kind of camera gear to bring with you on a Baja ride, and more. Lots more. We’ll continue to include links to our Baja stuff on our ExNotes Baja page, and you don’t want to miss any of it. Sign up for our automatic email updates every time we post a new blog, and you won’t miss a thing!
Gresh’s post yesterday reminded me of a gig I had when I was a youngster back on the East Coast. This is a blog I did for CSC about 10 years ago, and it seemed like a good follow-on to the Mr. Bray story. Here you go, folks…
I’m a workaholic. I’ve been that way ever since I was a teenager. It all started with one of the two best jobs I’ve ever had and a traffic citation (more on that in a minute), and somehow, even though I grew up in New Jersey, California already had its tentacles into me (more on that in a minute, too).
Let’s get this story started with a dynamite photo I found of Joe Barzda on the Internet a short bit ago…
Joe Barzda, my boss at the California Speed and Sport Shop…RIP, Joe, and thanks for all you’ve done for me!
So who’s Joe Barzda?
Joe Barzda and his brother Eddie were two of the coolest dudes I’ve ever known, and they both were strong positive influences in my life. The Barzdas ran the California Speed and Sport Shop in New Brunswick, New Jersey. This place was Mecca, the promised land, the holy of holies for teenagers like me back in those days. It was the premier speed shop in the northeastern United States. They were the east coast distributors for all of the big performance brands, and it was cool. Way cool.
You have to picture the times…the late 1960s. For many of us, those were our formative years. The muscle car craze in those days was in full tilt. GTOs. Chevelles. The Oldsmobile 442. Roadrunners. The GTX. It was a glorious era, a real hey day for Detroit, back when American automobiles were at the top of the food chain. The muscle car craze was the logical continuation of a hot rod boom that started after World War II, and all of it seemed to emanate from southern California. Anything that had wheels was magical, and anything having to do with California even more so. In my circle of friends from a half century ago (many of whom I still stay in touch with…guys like Pauly Berkuta, Richie Ernst, Bobby Beckley, Ernie Singer, Mike Beltranena, Ralph Voorhees, and more), it all revolved around cars.
Our lives revolved around cars even before we had cars. We grew up listening to AM radio, with groups like the Beach Boys, Jan and Dean, Ronny and the Daytonas, and others singing about little old ladies from Pasadena, Cobras, GTOs, and little deuce coupes. I’ll bet many of you did, too. Watch American Graffiti again. That was us. I feel sorry for kids growing up today…with what passes for music, the lowbrow nature of what’s on TV and in the movies, the abysmal jobs the public school systems are doing, the unhealthy fixation on cell phones and texting…we really had it good when we were kids. But I digress…back to the story…
The California Speed and Sport Shop in New Brunswick
So, one day, I stopped in the California Speed and Sport Shop. The place was beyond cool…mag wheels, big dual pumper Holley carbs, headers and aluminum manifolds, and cams…all with exotic names like Weiand, Iskenderian, Edelbrock, Hedman, Cragar…you get the idea. I’m not sure what got into me, but when one of the crusty old dudes behind the counter asked what I wanted, I asked if they had any openings. I had a dinky little job as a stockboy at W.T. Grant (a department store), and it was boring. I would have worked for free in a place like the California Speed and Sport Shop. The guy who asked if I needed help at the California Speed and Sport Shop? Well, I didn’t know I was talking to royalty, but that guy was none other than Joe Barzda. I filled out an application and left. And I forgot about it. I had no relevant experience, and I couldn’t imagine a place that cool wanting to hire a stockboy like me from a five-and-dime store.
A 1965 Pontiac GTO…Richie’s was the same color!
Okay, more background information and let me back up another three years….Paul Berkuta was my next door neighbor in those days. He’s a cool guy. You know the routine…we were always getting into some kind of trouble or another. It was a grand time and a great place to grow up. Pauly’s cousin Richie lived in New Brunswick, and he was way cooler than either of us. One day, Richie rolled up in a 1965 Pontiac GTO. GTOs were beyond cool back then (and now, too, in my opinion). The GTO was the original muscle car. Literally. When John DeLorean shoved a big block Pontiac motor into a Tempest back in 1964, he single-handedly started the muscle car era. The GTO was the original. It was awesome.
I was 14, and Richie’s GTO was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. He gave me a ride, and when he floored that thing, he floored me, too. I was hooked. If there was one thing I knew with certainty at the age of 14, it was that someday I was going to own a GTO.
For the next three years, I saved. I scrimped. I found every nickel I could. I spent nothing. I had a little less than half of what I needed when I was old enough to drive to buy a GTO, but that didn’t slow me down. I went to work on my parents, and being the persuasive and annoying little dude I was (some folks would say I still am), I talked my old man into springing for the rest. I bought a GTO. I had reached Nirvana.
Hmmm. 17 years old. A GTO. You can probably guess where this story is going…
So, late one night I ran my car through the gears on Route 130. I saw a set of headlights way in the background, but they were so far back I ignored them. For a while. A short while. Then I noticed the lights were bearing down on me. Hmmm…the guy probably wants to run me, I thought. No way he’s gonna beat my GTO. Then he pulled up alongside me and turned on his interior lights. A NJ State Trooper. Yikes. A speeding ticket. My first. Oh, man, I was in trouble. That ticket was tough to explain to my folks, but a 17-year-old kid in a GTO…what would you expect? To say my parents were upset would be an understatement. You’ve probably been through this…lots of promises…I’ll be a good boy…I’ll never speed again…
Right.
Exactly one week later, I was stopped at a light on Route 1. Late at night. A guy pulled up next to me in an SS 396 Chevelle. Oh boy. It’s funny how circumstances can focus the mind. I literally forgot everything else. The light changed and we were off. I was smoking that Chevelle, too, feeling like the 17-year-old badass I knew I was, right up until the moment I spotted the cop. He saw us about the same time we saw him. Uh, oh. Racing on the highway. That was a big one…an 8-point ticket with a mandatory court appearance. My folks were about as angry as I’d ever seen them. And right in the middle of one of the worst “counseling sessions” I’d ever experienced from my old man, the phone rang. It was Joe Barzda at the California Speed and Sport Shop, wanting to know when I could start.
Now, you gotta picture this. Here I am, one step away from a life of crime, holding a traffic ticket for racing on the highway. My folks were mad as hornets, giving me hell for what was an admittedly boneheaded move. I’m wondering if I should run away or maybe join the Army (which I eventually did a few years later, but that’s another story). My parents were upset with the whole hot rod/muscle car thing, they were mad at me, and at that precise moment, the phone rings with a job offer to work at a place that’s smack dab in the middle of the whole car craze and performance movement.
The man himself…
I took that job, and it was one of the best breaks I ever had in my life, even though it turned me into a workaholic. I routinely worked 70 hours a week. At first, I put in those hours mostly because I was afraid to go home (my folks stayed mad for a long time about that racing ticket), but I loved the work and the California Speed and Sport Shop experience. It was the coolest place. It was one of the main places in the country for anything having to do with high performance automobiles. One day I looked up and my boss was talking to a guy with an Italian accent who looked vaguely familiar. When I asked Joe who it was, he told me: Mario Andretti. It was just that kind of place.
All of my friends knew I fell into clover working at the California Speed and Sport Shop. I worked there all through college, and for many years I stopped in to visit whenever I was back in NJ. The Barzdas I worked for are all gone now, but the shop is still there. A very cool place and a very cool job. It was just one of those lucky breaks, and I’ll be the first to admit I’ve had way more than my fair share of those in my life.
So there you have it. Gresh wants us to do a series of stories on past jobs, and he keeps hitting me up for stories about the aerospace industry (that’s where I spent most of my working life). Interested? If so, let us know, and we’ll push ahead.
We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: If you’re headed to Baja, you have to have insurance for your auto or motorcycle, and there’s none better than BajaBound. Check out these awesome videos highlighting Baja from our good buddies at BajaBound!
BajaBound has several more videos on YouTube. Like the company and the insurance they offer, they’re great!
The .44 Special: It’s a classic cartridge, one that suggests sixguns, the Old West, and Dirty Harry. Elmer Keith, Remington, and Smith and Wesson created the .44 Magnum, but Clint Eastwood is the guy who put it on the map. Before Dirty Harry, gun dealers had to discount Model 29 Smith and Wessons to get them to move; after the movie, Model 29s were selling for three times MSRP. It was as good an example of product placement as ever existed, and it occurred before the concept of product placement was even created.
A Ruger Super Blackhawk up top, and a vintage, hard-to-find Smith and Wesson Model 24.
But this really isn’t a story on the .44 Magnum. Nope, this is about the cartridge that preceded the .44 Magnum, and that’s the .44 Special. If you were paying attention during the Dirty Harry series, that’s the cartridge ol’ Harry Callahan said he used in his .44 Magnum Model 29 Smith and Wesson. He explained to his sidekick (a wayward, perpetually-confused female detective) that the .44 Special had less recoil than the .44 Magnum (duh). To me, that was the best line in Dead Pool, arguably the worst of the Dirty Harry franchise. I think the producers tried to squeeze too much milk out of the Dirty Harry cow; they should have stopped at Magnum Force and called it a win.
The .44 story is a complicated one. There’s the .44 Russian (predecessor to and shorter yet than the .44 Special), the .44 Special (the topic here today), the .44 Magnum, and the old .44-40. To make matters even more confusing, the bullet is not really a .44 in any of these cartridges; it’s actually 0.429 inches in diameter. But cowboy songs about a .429 wouldn’t have the same ring as the ol’ .44 (think Marty Robbins and his Arizona Ranger ballad), so .44 it is.
The .44 Special and its big brother, the .44 Magnum, have a relationship similar to the .38 Special and the .357 Magnum. The .44 Mag is a longer version of the .44 Special (it has a longer brass cartridge case), just as the .357 Mag is a longer version of the .38 Special (it’s the same deal; the .357 has a longer case). The idea is the longer case holds more propellant, more propellant equals more pressure, and more pressure means more projectile velocity. Like Harry pointed out, you get a lot more recoil with a magnum cartridge (f still equals ma, as we are fond of saying in the engineering world), but real men ought to be able to handle it. Or so the thinking goes. Truth be told, the .44 Magnum is a bit much for me. I greatly prefer shooting the .44 Special (as did the fictional Harry Callahan). But I digress…let’s get back to the topic of this blog.
So Saturday was to be another day and another quest for a “secret sauce” recipe (this time for the .44 Special cartridge). The drill was to get out to the range before it started raining so I could test four different .44 Special loads in two different handguns: A 200th Year Super Blackhawk in .44 Magnum, and a Model 24 Smith and Wesson in .44 Special. I loaded 50 .44 Special rounds for this test; I just wanted to get a quick look near the top and bottom of the load range for two propellants (and those were Bullseye and Unique). The bullet du jour was a 240-grain cast Keith-type semi-wadcutter. I’ve been playing with .44s of one flavor or another since Dirty Harry first graced the silver screen, and the 240-grain cast Keith is as good as it gets. I have a bunch of them on my reloading bench.
I expected the Smith and Wesson Model 24 to do better than the Ruger, and it did. The Ruger can handle both .44 Special and .44 Magnum cartridges, as it is chambered for .44 Magnum. When you shoot .44 Specials (which are shorter than .44 Magnum cartridges) in a gun chambered for the .44 Magnum, the bullet has to jump another tenth of an inch or so to get to the rifling. The Smith Model 24 is chambered in .44 Special, so the barrel’s rifling starts closer to the cartridge than it would in a gun chambered for the longer .44 Magnum cartridge. But the Ruger is a .44 Magnum, and the .44 Special in the Ruger has to make that jump. It’s already smoking right along when it hits the rifling and it’s unsupported during that first bit of its flight. That induces some smearing and distortion when the bullet smacks into the rifling, and that hurts accuracy. The same thing occurs when shooting .38 Specials in a .357 Magnum revolver. It’s why I’ve never been a fan of .45 Colt handguns with the extra .45 ACP cylinder, or .357 Magnum handguns with the extra 9mm cylinder. Those auto cartridge bullets have an even bigger jump to the rifling, and I’ve never seen good accuracy in the shorter auto cartridges in these revolvers.
Anyway, to get back to the main attraction, as explained above I only loaded 50 cartridges for this test, so I couldn’t shoot three groups with each load. This was to be just a quick look, because I had another 250 .44 Special cases primed, flared, and ready to reload back at the ranch. I just needed to know how to load them.
Based on my testing, the near-max load of Bullseye is the cat’s meow. 4.7 grains of Bullseye with the 240-grain bullet was consistent and accurate in both handguns, and it was awesomely accurate in the Smith and Wesson. Here are my results. So you know, all groups were shot at 50 feet, and all were 3-shot groups.
Accuracy testing of the .44 Special in the Ruger and the Smith and Wesson. 4.7 grains of Bullseye is the secret sauce!
Like I said above, the Bullseye load (again, that’s 4.7 grains with the 240-grain SWC bullet) is great in the Model 24 Smith, and it’s good enough in the Ruger. I mostly shoot .44 Magnum in the Ruger, and I will get better accuracy in that gun firing magnum cartridges than I would with the .44 Special rounds for the reasons explained above. I’ve already got a few great .44 Magnum loads; at some point I’ll develop lighter magnum loads for the Ruger. But that’s a project for another day.
Both the Ruger and the Smith are fine firearms, built in an era when attention to detail mattered to the manufacturers. The Model 24 Smith and Wesson is a real honey of a handgun. I’ve owned it since Mr. Reagan was in the White House, but until this weekend I had not shot it in years. It’s nice to know I can still make it sing. And I love my Ruger, too. It’s a 200th year Ruger made in 1976, the 200th year of American liberty (and all Rugers manufactured in 1976 carry that inscription). I bought the Super Blackhawk Ruger when I was in the Army. Understandably but regrettably, my battery commander wouldn’t let me carry the Ruger in Korea (I had to carry a .45 ACP 1911, but that was a good deal, too).
I’ll have the Ruger out next weekend for our Motorcycles and Milsurps match (watch for the story here on the ExNotes blog). I have a good load for it now, and I should do well. We’ll see.
The very title conjures excitement. Whales! Big, giant monsters…the creatures of legend. Visions of Moby Dick. Herman Melville. Call me Ishmael, and all that…
Yep, this is a topic I’ve covered before, back in September, but I like whale watching in Baja so much I thought we’d cover it again. And yeah, Danny boy, you’re right…we’re inviting you to ride with us in March if you want to go. You have to pass the personality test (which basically means if you’re a jerk we’ll take a pass) and you’ll have to convince us you have a significant social media presence (we want you to help us spread the ExNotes word). Oh, yeah…one more thing…you’ll have to show up with a copy of Moto Baja! We’ll sign it for you, and we want you to read the book so you know a bit more about riding in Baja before we head out. We’ll be putting out more details on our March Baja ride in the near future, so keep an eye on the blog.
The best book on the best riding on the planet!
I’m convinced that the only reason the towns of Guerrero Negro and San Ignacio are not absolutely overrun with visitors during the months of January through March is that most folks just don’t know about the whale watching in Baja. To get to the point: It is the best in the world. That’s no idle overreach or hyperbole on my part. It is the best. It is the only place on the planet where you can get up close to the California grays and, in many cases, actually touch them. Go whale watching here in California and there will be maybe a hundred or more people on a large boat, and the closest you’ll get to a whale is maybe a hundred yards out in the open ocean. You might see one or more spout in the distance and it’s “mission accomplished.”
Not in Baja. It’s way better in Baja. You’ll get on a little boat carrying maybe 8 or 10 people, you’ll go out in Scammon’s Lagoon or San Ignacio Lagoon, and you’ll be in the middle of a pod of whales. Up close and personal. One will spout, then another, and then, suddenly, it’s like being caught in a lawn when the sprinklers go off. You’re surrounded, and they’re all close.
Mama and baby and me makes three. Baja whale watching. It’s the best in the world.
That’s when the fun starts. A whale or two, maybe twice the length of the little boat you’re bobbing around in, come right up to your boat. As in touching your boat. Then they exhale, or spout, and you’re covered in what you hope is sea water and not whale snot. Everybody laughs, including the whales. You realize there are literally thousands of whales in your lagoon. And then you see two whales, and you realize the larger one is the mom. She’s literally pushing the little one closer to your boat, training her calf not to be afraid of people.
Ewwwww!
You’re excited about seeing the whales. They’re excited about seeing the people. That’s when you feel it. There’s some kind of extra-sensory-perception thing happening between you and the whales. No one who ever does this goes away feeling the same. I’ve done it maybe 20 times now, and I can’t wait to get down there to do it again.
The story goes like this: More than a century ago, whalers wondered where the whales were going. You see, the California grays spend their lives on the longest migration of any mammal. They winter in Baja and summer in Alaska (which probably makes them smarter than us). But when the whalers were hunting them, the bad guys didn’t know this. They harvested (read: slaughtered) the whales they could catch out in the open ocean heading south in the months before that January-March window, or headed north after those three months, always wondering where they were headed. Then, in the 1800s, a whaling captain named Scammon discovered the lagoon that carries his name today and the word got out: These whales are all holed up in Scammon’s Lagoon. It was a blood bath and the herd of approximately 20,000 California gray whales nearly went extinct.
That’s when the Mexican government stepped in and protected the herd. It’s taken a while, but they’re back up to a population of 20,000 whales, which is what the ocean will support.
A few years ago when I was on one of my whale-watching Baja trips, there were half a dozen Mexican Navy gun boats out in the lagoon, something I had never seen before. I asked our boat captain about it, and he told me that none other than Vincente Fox, President of Mexico, was going whale watching that day. He had plans to develop the Guerrero Negro area into an industrial center, a home for manufacturers, a move opposed by Mexican environmentalists because they feared it might affect the whales, the ospreys, the sea lions, and the other protected critters in this corridor. They implored Mr. Fox to see the whales, knowing that ESP thing would kick in. The day I was there he was doing that. After his excursion, folks asked the President if he would pursue his vision of an industrial zone. “Leave it as is,” Mr. Fox answered. He knew.
Getting there takes a day or two, and taking two days is the better approach. Simply head south from California. Cross in Tijuana, stop to pick up a free Tourist Visa, and head south. I’ve made Guerrero Negro in a single day, but that required getting up at 4:00 a.m. here in Los Angeles and riding hard for the next 700 miles, much of it in the Valle de los Cirios twisties. No, it’s better to take an easy lope down, spend the evening in San Quintin, El Rosario, or Catavina, and then continue the trek south the next morning. Hotels abound in all locations, and the ride south is best savored like a fine wine. Make sure you have Mexican insurance (go with BajaBound; we always do), and bring your passport. You won’t need it to get into Mexico, but you will need it to get back into the US.
The options are to stay in Guerrero Negro and grab a whale watching tour there, or continue south for another 70 miles to San Ignacio. In my opinion, Guerrero Negro is the better option because the ride to the Scammon’s Lagoon takes only a few minutes. If you stay in San Ignacio (a beautiful little town in the center of the peninsula) getting to San Ignacio Lagoon is an hour ride on a rough dirt (read: soft sand) road.
Malarrimo’s in Guerrero Negro is a wonderful place to stay, but the other hotels in Guerrero Negro are also great.
There are hotel choices in both places. I like Malarrimo’s in Guerrero Negro, but they’re all good. Malarimmo’s is the original place for Baja whale watching, but there are others and they are all good. You may be able to call ahead and get reservations, but it helps if you speak Spanish. If it just me and one or two of my friends, we just go. If I’m bringing a group down, I call ahead for reservations.
The whale watching tours are $50 (that’s US dollars), but trust me on this: It’s the best $50 you’ll ever spend.
You can go out in the morning or the afternoon (I usually pick the morning tour), and like I said above, the whales are in town from January through March. I like March, because the weather is milder, and I think the whales are friendlier (they’ve had three months to get used to interacting with people). You’ll see whales, you’ll see baby whales, and you might even get to see whales mating. Actually, if that’s going on, all you’ll see is a lot of turbulence on the surface, but they tell me there’s a whole lotta shakin’ goin’ on down there.
Whale watching in Baja: It’s a hoot…and it’s still one of the best-kept secrets on the planet. You need to get down there and see it before the rest of the world finds out. You can thank me later.
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