Back In The Day – Page 20 – The ExhaustNotes Blog

Later, Gator

I had a tough time choosing a title for this blog. I went with what you see above because it reminds me of one of my favorite Dad jokes…you know, the one about how you tell the difference between a crocodile and an alligator. If you don’t see it for a while, it’s a crocodile. If you see it later, well, then it’s a gator. The other choice might have been the old United Negro College Fund pitch: A Mine is a Terrible Thing to Waste. But if I went with that one I might be called a racist, which seems to be the default response these days anytime anyone disagrees with me about anything.

Gresh likes hearing my war stories. Not combat stories, but stories about the defense industry. I never thought they were all that interesting, but Gresh is easily entertained and he’s a good traveling buddy, so I indulge him on occasion. Real war stories…you know how you can tell them from fairy tales? A fairy tale starts out with “once upon a time.” A war story starts out with “this is no shit, you guys…”

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So, this is a “no shit” story. It sounds incredible, but it’s all true. I was an engineer at Aerojet Ordnance, and I made my bones analyzing cluster bomb failures. They tell me I’m pretty good at it (I wrote a book about failure analysis, I still teach industry and gubmint guys how to analyze complex systems failures, and I sometimes work as an expert witness in this area). It pays the rent and then some.

So this deal was on the Gator mine system, which was a real camel (you know, a horse designed by a committee). The Gator mine system was a Tri-Service program (three services…the Army, the Navy, and the Air Force). It was officially known as the CBU-89/B cluster munition (CBU stands for Cluster Bomb Unit). The way it worked is instead of having to go out and place the mines manually, an airplane could fly in and drop a couple of these things, the bombs would open on the way down and dispense their mines (each cluster bomb contained 94 mines), the mines would arm, and voila, you had a minefield. Just like that.

It sounds cool, but the Gator was a 20-year-old turkey that couldn’t pass the first article test (you had to build two complete systems and the Air Force would drop them…if the mines worked at a satisfactory level, you could start production). The UNCF slogan notwithstanding, the folks who had tried to take this Tri-Service camel and build it to the government’s design wasted a lot of mines. In 20 years, several defense contractors had taken Gator production contracts, and every one of them failed the first article flight test. When my boss’s boss decided we would bid it at Aerojet, I knew two things: We, too, would fail the first article flight test, and it would end up in my lap. I was right on both counts. We built the flight test units per the government design and just like every one else, we failed with a disappointing 50% mine function rate. And I got the call to investigate why.

So, let’s back up a couple of centuries. You know, we in the US get a lot of credit for pioneering mass production. Rightly so, I think, but most folks are ignorant about what made it possible. Nope, it wasn’t Henry Ford and his Model T assembly line. It was something far more subtle, and that’s the concept of parts interchangeability. Until parts interchangeability came along (which happened about a hundred years before old Henry did his thing), you couldn’t mass produce anything. And to make parts interchangeable, you had to have two numbers for every part dimension: The nominal dimension, and a tolerance around that dimension. When we say we have a 19-inch wheel, for example, that’s the nominal dimension. There’s also a ± tolerance (that’s read plus or minus) associated with that 19-inch dimension. If the wheel diameter tolerance was ±0.005 inches, the wheel might be anywhere from 18.995 to 19.005 inches. Some tolerances are a simple ± number, others are a + something and a – something if the tolerance band is not uniform (like you see in the drawing below). But everything has a tolerance because you can’t always make parts exactly to the nominal dimension.

Where companies get sloppy is they do a lousy job assigning tolerances to nominal dimensions, and they do an even worse job analyzing the effects of the tolerances when parts are built at the tolerance extremes. Analyzing these effects is called tolerance analysis. Surprisingly, most engineering schools don’t teach it, and perhaps not so surprisingly, most companies don’t do it. All this has been a very good thing for me, because I get to make a lot of money analyzing the failures this kind of engineering negligence causes. In fact, the cover photo on my failure analysis book is an x-ray of an aircraft emergency egress system that failed because of negligent tolerancing (which killed two Navy pilots when their aircraft caught fire).

I don’t think people consciously think about this and decide they don’t need to do tolerance analysis. I think they don’t do it because it is expensive and in many cases their engineers do not have the necessary skills. At least, they don’t do it initially. In production, when they have failures some companies are smart enough to return to the tolerancing issue. That’s when they do the tolerance analysis they should have done during the design phase, and they find they have tolerance accumulations that can cause a problem.

Anyway, back to the Gator mine system. The Gator system had a dispenser (a canister) designed by the Air Force, the mines were designed by the Army, and the system had an interface kit designed by the Navy. Why they did it this way, I have no idea. It was about as dumb an approach for a development program as I have ever seen. Your tax dollars at work, I guess.

The Navy’s Gator interface kit positioned the mines within the dispenser and sent an electronic pulse from the dispenser to the mines when it was time to start the mine arming sequence. This signal went from coils in the interface kit to matching coils in each mine (there was no direct connection; the electric pulse passed from the interface kit coils to the mine coils). You can see these coils in the photo below (they are the copper things).

In our first article flight test at Eglin Air Force Base, only about 50% of the mines worked. That was weird, because when we tested the mines one at a time, they always worked. I had a pretty good feeling that the mines weren’t getting the arming signal. The Army liked that concept a lot (they had design responsibility for the mines), but the Air Force and the Navy were eyeing me the way a chicken might view Colonel Sanders.

I started asking questions about the tolerancing in the Navy’s part of the design, because I thought if the coils were not centered directly adjacent to the matching coils in each mine, the arming signal wouldn’t make it to the mine. The Navy, you see, had the responsibility for the stuffing that held the mines in place and for the coils that brought the arming signal to the mines.

At a big meeting with the engineering high rollers from all three services, I floated this idea of coil misalignment due to tolerance accumulation. The Navy guy basically went berserk and told me it could never happen. His reaction was so extreme I knew I had to be on to something (in a Shakespearian methinks the lady doth protest too much sort of way). At this point, both the Army and Air Force guys were smiling. The Navy guy was staring daggers at me. You could almost see smoke coming out his ears. He was a worm, I was the hook, and we were going fishing. And we both knew it.

I asked the Navy engineer directly how much misalignment would prevent signal transmission, he kept telling me it couldn’t happen, and I kept pressing for a number: How much coil misalignment would it take? Finally, the Navy dude told me there would have to be at least a quarter of an inch misalignment between the Navy coils and those in the mine. I don’t think he really knew, but he was throwing out a number to make it look like he did. At that point, I was pretty sure I had him. I looked at my engineering design manager and he left the room. Why? To do a tolerance analysis, of course. Ten minutes later he was back with the numbers that showed the Navy’s interface kit tolerances could allow way more than a quarter inch of misalignment.

When I shared that with the guys in our Tri-Service camel committee, the Navy guy visibly deflated. His 20-year secret was out. The Army and the Air Force loved it (they both hated the Navy, and they really hated the Navy engineer).

We tightened the tolerances in our production and built two more cluster bombs. I was at the load plant to oversee the load, assemble, and pack operation, and when we flight tested my two cluster bombs with live drops from an F-16 we had a 100% mine function rate (which had never been achieved before). That allowed us to go into production and we made a ton of money on the Gator program. I’m guessing that Navy weasel still hates me.

It’s hard to believe this kind of stuff goes on, but it does. I’ve got lots of stories with similar tolerance-induced recurring failures, and maybe I’ll share another one or two here at some point. Ask me about the Apache main rotor blade failures sometime…that’s another good one.

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How about a 30mm big bore rifle?

When I worked at Aerojet Ordnance, we made 30mm GAU-8/A ammo for the A-10 Warthog. The government originally planned to manufacture this ammunition in a government arsenal and the Army’s projected cost per round was $85 in mature production. The A-10 ammo had a warhead with a depleted uranium warhead and an aluminum sabot in one round (that was the armor piercing incendiary round), a high explosive incendiary in another (that was the “soft target” round), and a target practice tracer round. It was all potent stuff. Each had more muzzle energy than a World II 75mm Howitzer round.

Our president (Ed Elko, a wonderful man and brilliant business leader) tried to convince the Army to buy its 30mm ammo from a commercial outfit (that would be us, Aerojet Ordnance), but Ed couldn’t get past the stale minds in the Army (the Army buys munitions for all of the services). So he bypassed the Army’s civil service dinosaurs and went to the US Congress. Congress knew a good deal when they saw it and they directed the Army to buy the ammo from Aerojet. The Army didn’t like that, but they did what they were told. And that was a good thing. The last year I was at Aerojet we were selling 30mm ammo to the Army for $6.30 per round and making a 30% profit. This, on ammo the Army thought would cost $85 per round in mature production if it was made in a government load plant (your tax dollars at work). I can’t make this stuff up, folks. They really were (and their successors probably still are) that stupid.

Charlie Wilson with a Lee Enfield rifle.

That 30mm cartridge, incidentally, was one that we sanitized for an Afghan project back in the 1980s. “Sanitized” means it had no markings identifying it as being made in the US. We were doing this for a charismatic Congressman named Charlie Wilson. Old Charlie was sponsoring a deal that involved a shoulder-fired rifle chambered for the GAU-8/A cartridge. You backed the rifle up to a tree or a rock and got underneath the thing to fire it. Charlie and his Mujahideen amigos wanted to use it to take out the Soviet Hind helicopters, and here’s where the plot thickens. Our government didn’t want to sell the Afghan rebels Stinger anti-aircraft missiles because they had guys like Osama bin Laden in their ranks. But we wanted the Afghans to be able to take out the Hind helicopters. They needed something, and the thought was that maybe a 30mm elephant gun was the answer. And wow, did that effort ever go south.

The guy who led the 30mm rifle development effort here in the US somehow managed to fire a cartridge in a Washington, DC, gas station. Yes, folks, he had an accidental discharge of a 30mm rifle in a DC gas station. That event lit up the gas station and injured four people. It’s one of the first things I think of whenever I read comments about the inherent wisdom in carrying a concealed weapon with a round chambered. But I digress. To get back to the 30mm story, the GSI (that’s gubmint-speak for gas station incident) was hushed up by the folks in trench coats (you know, Boris and Natasha types), everyone recognized the innate and incredible dumbness of a shoulder-fired 30mm rifle, and a short while later President Reagan approved selling Stingers to the Afghans. And within weeks of that decision and the Stinger’s Afghan debut, the Soviets decided maybe Afghanistan wasn’t such a good idea after all. The movie “Charlie Wilson’s War” is based on those events, but it left out the 30mm rifle and the DC gas station debacle.

I met Charlie Wilson a couple of times (that’s Congressman Wilson in the photo above). He was a hell of a man and I’ve written about him before here on the ExNotes blog. But back to the 30mm accidental discharge event…that story is here:

Ex-Pilot’s Quest for Better Weapon Goes Awry – The Washington Post

As usual, the Washington Post got the story wrong. The guy who had the rifle in his pickup truck wasn’t “trying” to sell the rifle to the government; he was being paid to develop the weapon so it could be used by the Mujahideen, and he was doing quite well until the gas station incident. The thing about all of this that is interesting to me is that the real story never reached the public. You won’t find any photos of that rifle floating around on the Internet, or of the gas station fire (believe me, I tried). Imagine that. A guess station catches fire in Washington, DC, and there are no photos. My, my.

More about the A-10 and its 30mm Gatling gun? Hey, it’s all right here:

ExNotes Product Comparo: Mitsubishi Mirage versus the Milwaukee Eight

Have we finally lost our marbles? A Mitsubishi Mirage? I’m comparing it to a Harley Big Twin? No way!

One of the nice things about business travel is the opportunity to sample different cars. That’s something I like…extended test drives to find out if a car fits. I’ve rented cars I thought I would really like only to find out I hated them (saved a lot of money on a Jaguar doing that), and I fell in love with a few by accident…mostly because because they were the only thing available and they surprised me in a good way.

My first time for a rental car romance was in August 1972 when I rented a VW Beetle one weekend at the Benning School for Boys (jump school at Fort Benning, Georgia). (When I say a rental car romance, I’m referring to falling in love with the car, not any sort of an illicit parking lot relationship.) The Beetle was a blast and I bought one. I had a cool picture of it somewhere but it was taking too long to find, so you’ll have to trust me on this one.

The same thing happened again when I rented a Subaru (back when Subaru penetrated the US market with dirt cheap rental agency sales). I was blown away by the Subie’s overall quality and I’ve owned four since (including my dynamite WRX you see below).

A 2006 Subie WRX near the marigold fields above Santa Barbara. That was a fun car.

And then it happened again recently when the only thing left in the Atlanta Enterprise lot was a Mitsubishi Mirage.

Mitzi. More fun than any $14K car has a right to be.

The Mirage is a car that would have never been on my radar, but I liked it. Oh, it’s tiny and it didn’t have a lot of power, and it only has three cylinders, but somehow that made it even more appealing. The three-cylinder thing made me think of my old Triumph Speed Triple, but as soon as I stepped on the gas, it was all Harley. You know…open the throttle and there’s lots of noise and not much else. But I was in no hurry, and I kind of enjoyed hearing Mitzi’s howling protestations when I poured the coal to her. Harleys ain’t the only motor vehicles focused on converting gasoline to noise!

Three’s a crowd? Not with my old Speed Triple. Good lord, that was a good-looking motorcycle!

Mitzi. Yeah, I gave my rental car a name…and that’s a first.

A sparse interior, but the car had cruise control, air conditioning, a heater, a radio, Apple car play, and an automatic transmission. She drove like a comfortable go kart.

Mitzi’s road noise was a subdued sort of thing…not the screaming tire whine like the Chevy Traverse I rented earlier in Houston (I think a more apt name for the Chevy might have been the Travesty).

Mitzi’s ride was firm and the seats were a bit on the hard side, but I liked it. And Mitzi is most definitely not a lard butt. She weighs a scant 2,095 pounds, or just a little more than twice what a Harley Electra-Glide weighs. And you get air conditioning, power windows, Apple Car-Play, and a heater with the Mirage. The best part? I rolled all over Atlanta and the surrounding areas for the better part of a week, used nearly a full tank of gas, and when I filled up before turning her back in at the rental agency, she took just 7 gallons for a whopping total of $21. I like that.

7 gallons. $21. I could learn to live with this.

Mitzi kind of reminded me of a motorcycle, but better. I mean, think about it. The new Harley Icon, a beautiful motorcycle to be sure, but damn, it’s $30K and 863 pounds! Yeah, you get the Milwaukee Eight motor, but there’s no air conditioning, no heater (other than what rolls off the rear cylinder, as Harley riders know all too well), no spare tire, no windshield wipers, no rain protection, no automatic transmission, it only seats two, and the Harley gets lousy gas mileage compared to the Mitsubishi. And the Mitsubishi will clock an honest 100 mph (don’t ask how I know). Maybe the Milwaukee Eight will, too, with that 34-cubic-inch advantage it has over my old Harley’s 80-incher. My ’92 Softail wouldn’t hit 100 mph. Maybe this 114-cube Milwaukee monster will.

The Harley Icon. All $30K and 863 lbs of her. 863 lbs!

So I started researching Mitzi’s stats online, and our relationship deepened. Mine was a no frills model (she actually had hubcaps on her tiny wheels, not the cast wheels you see in the photos above). The base model I drove clocks in at a starting price of $14,625. That’s not even half what the new Harley costs. The Mitsubishi has a three-cylinder, 74-cubic inch engine (compared to Harley’s 114 cubic inch twin). The Harley is mostly made in ‘Murica; the Mitsubishi comes from Thailand.

More Mitzi magic? How’s a 10-year powertrain warranty sound? 10 years! That’s longer than most folks get for murder! As an aside, when I owned my Harley Softail, Harley wouldn’t even work on the bike when it hit the 10-year mark. The Mitsubishi would just be coming off its warranty!

I know I like a motor vehicle when I start thinking about what it would be like to take it through Baja, and that’s what I found myself doing as I was tooling around Georgia in my Mitsubishi. It’s most likely not going to happen, but it sure would be fun to get lost for a few weeks in Baja in an inexpensive, light, air conditioned car that gets 40 miles per gallon on regular fuel. With a price that starts under $15K, that leaves a lot of money for Tony’s fish tacos.

Tacos by Tony in Guerrero Negro…bring it on!

Don’t run out and buy a Mirage based on this ExNotes blog. To balance my rose-colored outlook on life in general and the Mirage in particular, consider this opening paragraph from Consumer Report’s review…

The Mitsubishi Mirage lives up to its name. While its low $16,000 sticker price and good fuel economy of 37 mpg overall may conjure up an inviting image of a good, economical runabout, that illusion quickly dissipates into the haze when you drive this tiny, regrettable car. The Mirage comes as a tiny hatchback or sedan, built in Thailand and powered by a small three-cylinder engine.

Eh, Consumer Reports. What do they know? I wonder how the CR folks would rate the Harley Icon. Funny how all this has come around…I used to refer to my ’79 Electra-Glide as my optical illusion. You know…it looked like a motorcycle. When it was running. Which wasn’t very often.

My take? The Mitsubishi Mirage is one of the least expensive cars out there, it has one of the best automobile warranties ever offered, and it was fun to drive. No frills here, folks. It’s just an honest car that’s not trying to pretend it’s something it is not. I like it. If I buy it instead of the Harley Icon I could pay cash and still have enough left over for a little more than 20,000 fish tacos!

More product reviews are here!

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Memorial Day

Today is a special day. Memorial Day is an official American holiday, always falling on the last Monday in May. The holiday was originally called Decoration Day, it started in the years after the Civil War, and it became an official Federal holiday in 1971. The concept was at first intended to honor those lost during the Civil War, but as our nation soldiered on, Memorial Day came to recognize and pay tribute to those lost in all our wars.

The Vietnam War dominated the news and our lives in my earlier years. I missed that one by a fluke of timing, but I knew three fine young men who made the ultimate sacrifice: Stephen Ponty (he was only 19 when he died in Vietnam), Timothy Ochs (who was 21 when he died over there), and Gary Buttenbaum (who was 23 when he was killed in action in Vietnam). All three were from my neighborhood in central Jersey, and they were just a bit older than me. I never met Colin MacManus (Captain MacManus was 25 when he was killed), but I feel like I know him and I think about him a lot, too. I think about all of them, and I wonder what they might have become had they returned from Vietnam. I’ve seen their names (along with more than 58,000 others) on the Wall in Washington, DC. Not that I need to. I know who they are.

You don’t thank veterans for their service on Memorial Day (that’s what Veteran’s Day is for); you remember and think about those who did not come home. I usually head to the range on Memorial Day with two of my favorite military weapons (the Garand and the 1911), and I think about Tim, Steve, Gary, and Colin. Rest in peace, my brothers. Your memories live on.

BMW’s R 18: The UberCycle

A colossal motorcycle, and I generally don’t like colossal motorcycles, but the BMW R 18 is somehow strangely appealing to me. It’s beautiful, actually. It’s the first one I’ve seen. Gresh did a Dream Bike piece on this bike when BMW first released the concept. Unlike most concept vehicles, the R 18 crossed the great divide and made it into production. This was the first one I’ve seen. I wouldn’t buy an R 18, but that doesn’t stop me from admiring it.

Did I mention this thing is colossal?

I recently stayed in Alpharetta, Georgia, while on my latest secret mission. While on the Alpharetta assignment, my digs were a fancy hotel called the Avalon. It’s in a high end mall with outdoor shops and a setup intended to evoke feelings of an earlier time. You know, Main Street USA, with downtown shops and apartments above the shops. It’s a trend in new shopping malls that I like and apparently so do a lot of other people.

In the evening the Avalon mall is a place to be seen with high end driveway jewelry, and the R 18 seemed right at home parked between a Mercedes UberWagen and a Rolls Royce SUV while Ferraris, Lambos, and McClarens growled by at 10 miles per hour. For you BMW types, not to worry: Avalon has the requisite Starbuck’s.

I did mention this motorcycle is huge, didn’t I? How’s a 68-inch wheelbase and a 761-pound weight sound?

The idea behind the R 18 was to create an obese cruiser evoking BMW’s earlier history. Not too far back, mind you. They didn’t want to put swastikas on the thing (something BMW doesn’t really mention in their history…I suppose it wouldn’t be “woke”), but the ’60s were safe and the R60 styling works. Take a look at this R60 I photographed at Bob Brown’s So Cal BMW shop and you’ll see what I mean.

BMW is obviously positioning the R 18 against Harley and other lardass cruisers, and they more than succeeded. In fact, I’d say they out-Harleyed Harley. To me, the last Big Twin Harley that had the right look was the Evo-engine Softails. Everything since from “The Motor Company” looks out of proportion to me. And for the uninitiated, “The Motor Company” is how rugged individualists who dress alike, have the same belt size and tattoos, and shop at the same do-rag supplier refer to Harley-Davidson. The implication, of course, is that there is only one company that matters manufacturing internal combustion engines. Ah, ignorance is so bliss. Anyway, the R 18 is kind of like the Evo Softails: It is colossal, but all the pieces seem to fit well with each other and it successfully chasm crosses to an earlier, presumably better, Horst-Wessel-free time. I like it.

A few more styling comparisons between the old and the new…

Like Harley and the whole Made in ‘Murica shtick, BMW is capitalizing on a “Berlin Built” mantra.

Berlin Built. Seriously?

Berlin Built. I can’t make this stuff up, folks.

I was getting into photographing the R 18, and as I was doing so, I hoped the owner would appear so I could ask him a few questions about the motorcycle (maybe that’s sexist; for all I knew, the owner might be a woman). That didn’t happen, but I sure had fun working my iPhone magic on this two ton Teutonic twin…

The R 18 styling works for me. I like the old-style BMW roundels, the steelhead trout mufflers (my term, not Berlin’s), the exposed shaft drive, and more. If it were me, I would have made the bike a bit smaller, I would have found a way to incorporate a finned version of the GS1250 engine, and maybe I would have used Earles forks rather the R 18’s telescoping front end. But hey, I don’t sell zillions of motorcycles a year and the Boys from Bavaria do. As UberCycles go, the R 18’s approximately $20K entry ticket doesn’t seem out of line. It’s not my cup of kartoffelsuppe, but I think the bike is beautiful.

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My 1st International Motorcycle Adventure, Eh?

Everybody has their preferred riding schtick and for me it’s international motorcycle travel. Anyone can ride their cruiser to a local hangout for a beer or their GS to Starbuck’s for a $6 cup of coffee. My riding is all about crossing international borders and collecting cool photos in places most two-legged mammals only dream about. Just to make a point, I once rode a 150cc scooter (my CSC Mustang) to Cabo San Lucas and back. The day after we returned, I needed something at Costco and I rode the little CSC there. When I parked it, a beer-bellied dude in a gigondo 4×4 pickup told me, “that’s a little cute bike.” He didn’t intend it to be a compliment.

“Thanks,” I said.

“I ride a (brand name deleted to protect the guilty),” he announced, his chest swelling with Made in ‘Merica pride to the point it almost equalled his waistline. “We ride all over.” He emphasized the “all” to make sure I got the point.

“Cool,” I said. “Where do you go?”

Cook’s Corner, the ultimate So Cal burger/biker stand.

“Last week,” he told me, “we rode to Cook’s Corner!”

Cook’s Corner is a southern California burger joint about 40 miles from where we were talking.

“Where do you all go on that little thang?” He actually said “you all” and “thang,” but he didn’t have the accent to match the colloquialisms. Okay, I had the guy dialed.

“Well, we rode to Cabo San Lucas and back last week.” I said.

Mr. 4×4’s jaw dropped. Literally. He looked at me, speechless, dumbfoundedly breathing through his open mouth. Without another word he climbed into his big truck and rode off. Our conversation was over. So much for the biker brotherhood, I guess.

My 150cc CSC Baja Blaster. I had a lot of fun and covered a lot of miles on that little Mustang.

The international motorcycle travel bug bit me when I was still in school. I had a ’71 Honda 750 Four back in the day (that’s me 50 years ago in the big photo up top). One of my Army ROTC buddies had the first-year Kawasaki 500cc triple. It was a hellaciously-fast two stroke with a white gas tank and blue competition stripes. We were in New Jersey and we wanted to do something different, so we dialed in Canada as our destination. They say it’s almost like going to another country.

And so we left. Our gear consisted of jeans, tennis shoes, windbreaker jackets, and in a nod toward safety, cheap helmets (ATGATT hadn’t been invented yet). We carried whatever else we needed in small gym bags bungied to our seats. Unfortunately, in those days “whatever else we needed” did not include cameras so I don’t have any photos from that trip. That’s okay, because all they would have shown was rain.

A 1969 Kawasaki 500cc, two-stroke triple. Widowmakers, they were called, in a nod to their often unpredictable handling.

As two Army guys about to become Second Louies, we joked about being draft dodgers in reverse. We were looking forward to active duty (me in Artillery and Keith in Infantry). We were going to Canada not to duck the draft, but as a fling before wearing fatigues full time. We didn’t really know what we were doing, so we took freeways all the way up to the border. It rained nearly the entire time. All the way up and all the way back. We bought sleeping bags because they looked cool on the bikes (it was a Then Came Bronson thing), but we stayed in hotels. It was raining too hard to camp, and besides, the sleeping bags were soaked through and we didn’t think to bring a tent. We got as far as Montreal, which seemed far enough to give us Canada bragging rights. We spent that single Montreal night in a cheap dive and pointed the bikes south the next day.

These days, I know to check the weather, bring rain gear (even if none is forecast), and study a map to find the most interesting roads (rather than the fastest). But hey, we were young and dumb, it was an adventure ride, it crossed an internationational border, and riding four days in a steady cold rain was a lot of fun. I didn’t think so at the time, but that’s how I remember it today. In fact, I remember that ride like it was last month. And it got me hooked on international motorcycle adventures. Canada was to be the first of many.

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More epic international rides? Right here, folks!

The 2021 MacManus 1911 Award

Earlier this month we had a quick trip back to New Jersey for the 2021 MacManus Award. You’ve read about the MacManus Award earlier on these pages. It’s the presentation of a 1911 .45 Auto to the outstanding Rutgers University Reserve Officers Training Corps graduating cadet.

US Army Captain Colin D. MacManus, Rutgers University ’63.

The award honors Captain Colin D. MacManus, a US Army Airborne Ranger who was killed in action in Vietnam in 1967. Good buddies Dennis, Tim, Javier, and I revived the MacManus Award, and it’s a tradition we will keep alive.

The 2021 MacManus Award, a Colt 1911 presented to Cadet Joseph Hom.

The 1973 Colin D. MacManus 1911 and a couple of 5-shot, 25-yard hand held groups I fired with it.

You know, I sometimes hear people my age talk about younger folks in a disparaging manner and lament a notion that young people today are somehow less motivated than we were. When I meet people like Joe Hom and his classmates, I know that’s not true. It’s reassuring and invigorating to meet these folks and when I do, I know our future is in good hands.

You can read more about the MacManus award and other Tales of the Gun here.

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Dad’s Bonneville

I was a 14-year-old kid in the 8th grade and I had just discovered motorcycles. A senior in our combined junior high and high school named Walt had a brand new 1964 Triumph Tiger back in the day when the Tiger was Triumph’s 500cc twin. It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen (with the possible exception of Raquel Welch and one or two young ladies in my class). But Raquel was beyond my reach, and come to think of, so were those other young ladies. The Tiger? It was right there. I could stare at it anytime I could get out in the parking and it wouldn’t care or complain. And stare I did; so much so I’m surprised I didn’t wear the paint off. White and gold with a cool parcel grid on the gas tank and perfect proportions, I knew that some day I’d own one. Ultimately I did, but I’m saving that one for another blog.

We didn’t have the Internet in those days. Come to think of it, we didn’t have cell phones or computers, either. We actually talked to people, and if we took pictures, we used this stuff called film that had to be sent off to be developed, but that’s a story for another blog, too.

My world revolved around glorious motorcycle magazines in the 1960s. Actual print magazines. It was a wonderful era.

What we did have were glorious motorcycle magazines with even more glorious ads. The BSA ads were the best, with scantily-clad women in an era when the term sexism implied a pervert of some sort and the phrase “politically correct” was decades into the future.

A BSA ad from around 1967. Life was good.

Their awesome ads notwithstanding, I didn’t want a BSA. I wanted a Triumph. It had to be like Walt’s, with those extravagant big chrome exhausts and Triumph’s perfectly-pinstriped paint. The magazine ads all had a snail mail address (that’s the only kind of address there was back then) and an invitation to write for more info, and write I did. It wasn’t long before I had amassed an impressive collection of colorful brochures from the likes of Triumph, BSA, Norton, Harley, Honda, and more.

The planets came into alignment for me as several things happened. Dad started reading the brochures and that piqued his interest. He wasn’t a motorcycle guy, but the ads worked their magic. It was an era where advertising worked, I guess. Then one of Dad’s buddies, another trapshooter named Cliff, stopped by with a new Honda Super Hawk. In those days, the Super Hawk was an electric-start, twin-carbed, 305cc twin. Cliff let Dad ride it in the field behind our house and praise the Lord, Dad was hooked. Between my enthusiasm and the motorcycle industry’s advertising experts, he never had a chance.

A restored mid-60s Honda 305cc Super Hawk. Twin carbs, electric start, twin leading shoe front brake, flawless paint, no oil leaks, and all for just over $600. Did I mention life was good?

Dad was a little intimidated by the idea of starting his motorcycling career with a monstrous 305cc machine (remember all those nicest people you met on a 50cc Honda Cub?). He found an ad for a slightly used 160cc baby Super Hawk and that was his first motorcycle. It lasted all of two months. Dad took it for a service to Sherm Cooper’s Cycle Ranch and he came home with a new Super Hawk. Wow. I thought that would last for a while, but between the brochures, my inputs about Triumph Bonnevilles, and apparently a bit of salesmanship by old Sherm, a year after that Dad traded the Super Hawk for a new ’66 Bonneville. Wow again!

That’s what they were back in the day, and every new Triumph had a decal to remind you (and others) of that fact.

The Bonneville was stunning. Triumph went to 12-volt electrics in ’66, a smaller gas tank in ivory white with a cool orange competition stripe, and stainless steel fenders. And, of course, that World Motorcycle Speed Record Holder decal that adorned the tank of every new Triumph (Triumph held the record in those days, prompting the decal and the name of their flagship motorcycle). I was too young to drive but not too young to ride, and on more than a few occasions if Dad noticed the Bonneville odometer showing more miles than when he last rode it, he didn’t say anything.

Dad was a craftsman and a perfectionist. An upholsterer by profession and a tinkerer by nature, he added custom touches to the Bonneville that took it from awesome to amazing. He had a polishing machine in the basement and after what seemed like days of buffing (and several cloth polishing wheels) the fenders went from brushed stainless to a mirrored glaze that completely transformed the Triumph. And the seat…he outdid himself on that one. Remember that orange competition stripe I mentioned above? Dad’s seat continued it. The stock seat went from gray and black to a tank-matching ivory white, pleated with a perfectly-matched orange stripe that ran the length of the seat. The tank’s stripes were bordered with gold pinstriping; Dad incorporated matching gold piping on the seat’s pleats. The overall effect just flat worked. It looked like the Triumph had gone under a set of sprayers with ivory white, orange, and gold paint. Between the seat and the polished fenders, the bike had a jewel-like finished appearance that made it look like Triumph’s stylists had finished what they started. It was stunning.

This was not Dad’s actual Bonneville nor is it mine (I can only wish), but it is a near perfect 1966 Triumph Bonneville photographed at the Hansen Dam Britbike meet. Dad’s had a seat that continued the tank colors. The bike above has the stock brushed stainless steel fenders; Dad’s were mirror polished. I don’t have a photo of Dad’s Bonneville; all this happened before my interest in photography.

Sherm Cooper saw the seat Dad had recovered and he was floored by it. “Where did you get that?” he asked, and when he learned that Dad stitched it himself (after all, he was an upholsterer), Dad’s business suddenly included Triumph and Honda seats in all manner of colors, including lots of metalflake naugahyde. Dad was making “glitter sitters” before they became well known back in the ’60s.

The Triumph was in many ways less sophisticated than the Honda, but it was infinitely cooler. The styling was way better in my 14-year-old mind. It didn’t have an electric starter, but that made it better to me. You had to tickle each of the Amal carbs with this little button on each of their float bowls until gasoline flowed out around the button, and then give it a kick. It usually started on the first kick. It was a form of intimacy with the machine, something the Honda neither needed nor wanted. The Triumph, though…it needed you. Marlon Brando, move over (Johny rode a Triumph in Rebel Without A Cause, you know). The sound of a Triumph Bonneville was beyond awesome. It was the perfect motorcycle, but alas, it was not to last. Dad lost interest in riding and sold the Bonneville. A few years later (when I was finally legal with an actual motorcycle driver’s license) I bought a 90cc Honda and then a CB 750 Four. It wouldn’t be until 1979 that I bought a new Triumph Bonneville, but that’s a story for another blog, too. Stay tuned, and you’ll get to read it here.

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Snakes Alive!

When I was a kid growing up in rural New Jersey, we convinced ourselves that the local lakes and streams were inhabited by water moccasins. All the books said cottonmouths didn’t live that far north, but we had seen them (or so we thought). I even caught one in a pond on a fishing lure…I saw it sitting on a rock, I dangled the lure in front of it, and the snake went for it. That scared the hell out of me: I was the classic case of the dog that finally caught the bus he always chased. What do I do now? I ended up cutting the line to let the snake (and my lure) get away. It was, after all, a water moccasin (or so I thought).

And then, of course, many years later there was that rather unsettling scene in my favorite movie, Lonesome Dove:

Last week Sue and I were back in Sopranoland for a wedding, and the next day we rode around so I could show her my old haunts. One was the Old Mill in Deans (not to be confused with the Old Mill Hotel in Baja). It was behind where my grandma lived and it was basically a dam that created a huge lake where we used to play back in the day. So we’re walking around and I snapped a photo or two when this woman said “there’s a snake down there!”

A panorama of the lake at the Old Mill…five photos stitched together in PhotoShop.

I checked and what do you know, she was right. The snake was on a log downstream of the dam where a bridge carried traffic over the spillway. The snake was almost directly beneath the bridge. As usual, I didn’t have the perfect lens on my Nikon (that would have been the 70-300 Nikkor), but what I had on the camera (Old Faithful, my 24-120 Nikon lens) worked a lot better than a cell phone. I zoomed all the way and grabbed some awesome photos. Then I looked around and I saw another snake on the same log. And then another slithering through the water. And then two more that might have been making even more snakes. Snakes alive, I was in the middle of a moccasin orgy!

This spot is at least a couple of hundred years ago. There used to be a mill located here, powered by the water held behind this dam. We played here as kids. It was a good time and a good place to grow up.

And another!. The lower snake is the same one you see in the big photo above. Then I spotted the one you see at the top of this photo!

This guy was next to the log, slithering around in the water.

I saw these two looking straight down from my vantage point on the bridge above the stream. I leaned waaaay over the bridge railing to get this shot. Water moccasins making whoopee?

I was so intrigued by the above photos that I Googled “water moccasin” to get photos of the real McCoy. After spending decades believing there were indeed moccasins in New Jersey, I convinced myself that what I was seeing in my photos were common New Jersey water snakes. Moccasins have a more triangular head and a slightly different pattern. Still, these snakes are pretty big (the big one on the log in the photo above was about 5 feet long) and I would not want to tangle with any of them. You never know…I might be wrong and maybe they are moccasins.

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The Springfield Mile

That photo above? It’s the Springfield mile, with riders exiting Turn 4 at over 100 mph on their way up to 140 or so. These boys are really flying. It is an incredible thing to see.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Two blogs back I wrote about the East Windsor half-mile dirt track, which has gone the way of the dodo bird. The Springfield Mile is bigger and better and last I checked it’s still with us. A dozen years ago I made the trek out to Illinois watch the big boys (and a lady or two) mix it up and it was awesome. I don’t know if this is accurate or if it’s more biker bullshit, but the guys claim the bikes hit 140 mph in the straights and maintain a cool 100 in the turns. And “straights” is a relative term. The track is basically a big oval, with the straights being less of a curve. What’s nice about oval track racing, though, is you usually can see all the action all the time. When you go to a grand prix type event, you get to see the bikes or the cars for just an instant when they scream past wherever you are. Oval tracks are a better deal, I think.

We planned to ride to Springfield from So Cal, but just before it was wheels-in-the-wells time my good buddy Larry passed and I stayed for his funeral. We flew instead and because that gave us a little bit more of our most precious commodity (time), we bopped around Springfield a bit more. We visited Springfield’s Lincoln Museum and had a lot of fun getting there. I drove our rental car and we promptly got lost (it was in the pre-GPS era). We pulled alongside a police officer and he gave us directions. As soon as I pulled away, I asked my buds which way to go. “I don’t know,” they answered, “we weren’t listening…” Neither was I. We all had a good laugh over that one.

An interesting Norton in the fairgrounds parking lot.

The Illinois State Fairgrounds has two tracks, on a quarter-mile dirt oval and the other the big mile. The quarter-mile races were awesome. This racing, all by itself, would have been worth the trip out there. I love watching the flat trackers.

These boys are kicking up some dirt coming out of Turn 4 on the Illinois State Fairgrounds quarter-mile track.

One of the riders lost it coming our of Turn 4 and he crashed hard directly in front of us.

I didn’t think he was going to get up, but he did. The next day, this guy won a heat on the 1-mile track. The announcer said he was “tougher than a $2 steak.” I believe it.

The next day, we went to the 1-mile track on the other side of the State Fairgrounds.

The field entering Turn 2 at over 100 mph on the Springfield 1-mile track. The noise is incredible and there’s nothing like it. These guys are drifting sideways at 100 mph, just a few inches apart!

The same shot as above, but with the two fastest riders at the Springfield Mile identified. The arrows point to Chris Carr (National No. 4 in the white and orange leathers) and Kenny Coolbeth (National No. 1 in the black leathers). Coolbeth won on Sunday and Carr won on Monday. This photo was just after the start.

One lap later: Coolbeth and Carr are riding as a closely-matched pair well ahead of the group.

I was really happy with these shots. I had my old Nikon D200 and a cheap lens (a 10-year old, mostly plastic, $139 Sigma 70-300). I zoomed out to 300 mm, set the ISO to 1000 for a very high shutter speed (even though it was a bright day), and the lens at f5.6 (the fastest the inexpensive Sigma would go at 300mm). The camera’s autofocus wouldn’t keep up with the motorcycles at this speed, so I manually focused on Turn 2 and waited (but not for long) for the motorcycles to enter the viewfinder. It was close enough for government work, freezing the 100 mph action for the photos you see above.

Kenny Coolbeth, after winning the Springfield Mile.

Nicole Cheza, a very fast rider. She won the “Dash for Cash” and the crowd loved it.

As you might expect, there were quite a few things happening off the track, too. Johnsonville Brats had a huge tractor trailer onsite equipped with grills, and they were serving free grilled brat sandwiches. It was a first for me, and it worked…I’ve been buying Johnsonville brats ever since. There were hundreds of interesting motorcycles on display and a vintage World War II bomber orbiting the area.

An old B-17 flying above the track…it made several appearances that weekend.

An old Ariel Square Four. The owner started it and it sounded like two Triumph 650s.

An old two-stroke Bridgestone, a marque that never quite made it in the US. Imagine the marketing discussions in Japan: “Let’s logo it the BS…that will work!”

So there you have it, along with a bit of advice from yours truly: If you ever have an opportunity to see the Springfield Mile, go for it. I had a great time and I would do it again in a heartbeat.

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