Back In The Day – Page 20 – The ExhaustNotes Blog

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.

Never miss an ExNotes blog! Sign up here for free!

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.

Never miss an ExNotes blog. Sign up here for free, unless you have a .ru in your email address!

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.

Never miss a thing…sign up here for free!

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.

Never miss an ExNotes blog!

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.

Creeped out by this blog, or were you intrigued by it and other similar war stories? Never miss an ExNotes blog: Sign up here for a free subscription!

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.

More epic rides are here!

We want you! Sign up here for a free subscription!

Evel Knievel and East Windsor

It was the summer of 1966, I was a skinny little 15-year-old kid, my Dad owned a new Triumph Bonneville, and I was in hog heaven. We were going to the motorcycle races. A big night out in those days was the East Windsor Speedway, a half-mile dirt track oval where they raced everything. Stock cars, two-strokes, and the big bikes. Not just locals, either. Harley’s Bart Markel (National No. 1), Triumph’s Gary Nixon (National No. 9), and more. It was the 4th of July weekend and it was 55 years ago. I remember it like it was last week.

East Windsor Speedway put on quite a show. Dad and I rode there on the Bonneville. I fancied myself a motorcycle guy and it just didn’t get any better than the half-mile dirt oval at East Windsor. The fun started right in the parking lot with hundreds of fans’ motorcycles. Fins and twins (everything was an air-cooled twin in those days), carbs, chrome, custom paint, custom seats, and more. It was all England and America and a little bit of Japan: Triumph, BSA, Honda, Harley, Suzuki, Yamaha…you get the idea. Italy and Ducati were yet to be discovered, only weirdos rode BMWs (remember those strange sideways kick starters?), and weirdos definitely didn’t go to the races. A new Bonneville was $1320 and a Honda Super Hawk (electric start, no less) was only about $600. It all seemed so attainable.

The East Windsor Speedway’s stands, abandoned and overgrown several years ago, are no more.

The infield, now covered with tract homes.

The East Windsor Speedway is long gone now, shut down by noise complaints from the encroaching ‘burbs and then plowed over for more cookie cutter homes. It’s a pity, really.

East Windsor always put on quite a show, but that 4th of July evening was a six sigma outlier on the right side of the bell curve. Stock car racing was first, then the 250cc class (love that smell!), then the big boys (including Nixon and Markel), then the main event (Evel Knievel!)…and it was all washed down with a 4th of July fireworks display that was as good as I had ever seen. That warm New Jersey night out started before the sun went down and finished around midnight. I think the cost to get in was something like $2.50.

Evel Knievel was the highlight for me and I think for everyone else, too. Evel was just starting to get famous, and here he was in person. White leathers and a cape trimmed in red and blue on the 4th of July. (Gresh and I always wanted capes, but we had to wait 50 years and go to China to get ours.) A Harley V-twin, with monstrous ramps set up on the infield (one for liftoff and one for landing), with a couple of Greyhounds in between (buses, that is…not the dogs).

The Evel show…multiple passes and then he was up in the air.

The crowd fell silent as Evel revved the 750 Harley and then accelerated. But it wasn’t up the ramp. Nope, Evel (ever the showman) accelerated alongside the ramps and the buses when we all expected him to jump. Faked us out, he did. Then he looped around to start again. Ah, I get it, we all thought. That was just to gage his acceleration before hitting the ramps for real. The anticipation built. Thousands held their breath as Evel accelerated again, but he faked us out with another run alongside the ramps. Okay, all part of the show. A third time….maybe this would be it…but no, it was yet another tease. Back to the start point, more revving, and by now we were wise to the ways of Evel. We all thought it would be another feint. But nope, this was the real deal…up the ramp rapidly and suddenly there he was: Airborne Evel, sailing up and over the buses, suspended high in the evening air, and then back down on the landing ramp. He hit the brakes hard, struggling to stop before running out of room, the Harley’s rear end sashaying around like an exotic dancer in a room full of big tippers.

The crowd went nuts. A seismic cheer drowned out the mighty Milwaukee sound machine. We had seen Evel, the man and the motorcycle. Airborne and in person, flying over the buses that would have you leave the driving to them. It was awesome.

It all happened 55 years ago. Evel, my Dad, and the East Windsor Speedway have gone on to their reward and I’m officially a geezer drawing Social Security. But that evening? It will live in my memory forever.

Never miss an ExNotes blog…sign up for a free subscription here!

Book and Movie Review: Charlie Wilson’s War

I met Charlie Wilson a couple of times when I was an engineer in the munitions business, so Charlie Wilson’s War had a special attraction for me when it was first published. Charlie Wilson was a US Congressman from Texas, and to say he was larger than life would be a huge understatement. Tall, good-looking, a booming voice, a warm personality, and his trademark navy blue suits, white shirts, and suspenders made Mr. Wilson both awe-inspiring and approachable. Larger than life, as I’ve already said. Charlie Wilson was someone who was instantly likeable. I’ve never met anyone like him.

We made ammunition, mines, and cluster bombs in those days, and in the 1980s our business was (if you’ll pardon the pun) booming. My specialties were cluster bombs and mines; we had a sister division that designed and manufactured 30mm A-10 and 25mm Bushmaster ammo. Congressman Wilson’s interest in us was in the ammo side of the business, and as a relatively high-rolling young dude I was able to attend the meetings when he was in town. Charlie’s efforts were focused on arming the Afghan rebels trying to kick the Russians out of Afghanistan and back to the Motherland, and what they desparately needed was something that could knock down the Hind helicopter. That’s where we came in. The Hind was an armored helicopter (a flying tank, essentially), and we made 30mm ammo that could knock out Soviet tanks (which it did in droves during Operation Desert Storm, our war that would follow a decade later).

President Reagan didn’t want to give the Afghan rebels the shoulder-fired anti-aircraft Stinger missile, as he was concerned about those weapons falling into the wrong hands. But he was okay with providing purpose-built, shoulder-fired weapons that would use A-10 ammo. Now, I know what you are probably thinking: The A-10 30mm round has more muzzle energy than a World War II 75mm Howitzer round, and there’s no way anyone could fire one of those from the shoulder.

Well, hold that thought. The 30mm anti-Hind rifle was shoulder fired, but not in the sense we would ordinarily think of a shoulder-fired weapon. The deal was you backed up to a rock or a tree, put the butt of the rifle against it, and then sort of got underneath it. Like I said above, that’s where we came in. We provided the ammo.

Ultimately, the program outlined above was cancelled and President Reagan okayed selling Stingers to the Afghan rebels. Before the Russian chopper pilots could learn (but instantly and intrinsically came to understand) the words to Patsy Cline’s hit tune, Stingers were doing what they were designed to do. The Stingers were astonishingly effective, and within a few days of their arrival, the Soviets realized they were in Deep Geshitski (as they say back in Mother Russia). It wasn’t too long before they rolled back across the bridge to the Soviet Union. Come to think of it, not too long after that the entire Evil Empire collapsed. Charlie Wilson was one of the guys who made it happen.

I don’t mind telling you that I was in awe of Charlie Wilson, and when the book (Charlie Wilson’s War) came out, I bought and read it immediately. Then it was made into a movie with the same name (Charlie Wilson’s War), and we similarly saw it immediately. Tom Hanks (one of the all time greats, in my opinion) was good in the lead role, but as Lloyd Benson might say, he was no Charlie Wilson. Mr. Wilson could have played himself. He had the right kind of personality and magnetism for it.

The good news is that Charlie Wilson’s War is still in print (it’s one of the best books I’ve ever read), and the even better news is that if you’re an Amazon Prime subscriber, Charlie Wilson’s War is running on that platform right now. Trust me on this: It’s one you want to see.

Want to see our blog on the might A-10 Warthog? You can do so here.

Learn about The Gatling Gun, from its civil war inception right through to current applications in modern weapon systems!

Never miss an ExNotes blog! Subscribe for free!

More gun stuff? Hey, it’s right here!

Getting to One

Joe Gresh raised an interesting topic with his recent blog on motorcycle quantity. You know, how many motorcycles are too many? That blog got a lot of hits and tons of comments on Facebook. It seems like he struck a nerve.

The most motorcycles I ever owned at one time was five, which pales in comparison to Gresh’s shop full of motos and maybe the collections of a few other people I know. When my collection hit that peak, I had a Triumph Daytona 1200, a Harley Heritage Softail, a Suzuki TL1000S, a Honda CBX, and a KLR 650. That was about 20 years ago. There was no rhyme or reason to my collection and no central theme guiding the contents of my fleet. I just bought what I liked. In those days I had more money than brains, but don’t interpret that to mean I was rich. I just never had a lot of brains. Most folks who know me recognize that pretty quickly.

My Harley Softail in the muddy plains outside Guerrero Negro, Baja California Sur. There’s a kitchen sink in there somewhere.

The Triumph Tiger. Good, but tall and very heavy. It was essentially a sport bike with excess suspension travel and ADV cosmetics.

Me with a buddy currently in the witness protection program, and my Honda CBX. It was a surprisingly competent touring motorcycle.

The Triumph Speed Triple. One of my buddies nicknamed it the Speed Cripple, which became true for me.

Ah, the yellow locomotive. My Triumph Daytona 1200. Delightfully crude and fast. I loved this bike and I rode the 2005 Three Flags Classic on it.

Turning sportbikes into touring machines…my TL1000S somewhere in Baja. This was a seriously fast motorcycle.

I seemed to hover around that number (five, that is) for a while. Other bikes moved in to displace one or more of the above, most notably a Triumph Tiger and then a Triumph Speed Triple. Those were fun, but they’ve gone down the road, too.

One of my favorite former motorcycles for real world adventure riding…the Kawasaki KLR 650 in its natural surroundings (Valle de los Cirios in Baja).

Which one did I enjoy riding most? That’s easy. It was the KLR 650. The KLR 650 was the bike that led me on an arc toward smaller motorcycles, like the CSC RX3 and then a TT250. I was a bit player implementing Steve Seidner’s decision to bring those motorcycles to America. The 250s were a lot of fun. I sold off all the big bikes and only rode 250s for a few years, then I fell in love with the new Royal Enfield 650 Interceptor when it hit the market, and suddenly I was back up to three.

But three, for me, was too many. I haven’t been riding much in the last few years for a lot of reasons. The pandemic put a dent in any big travel plans (YMMV, and that’s okay), and constantly moving the battery tender around and cleaning the TT250’s jets was getting old. I couldn’t move anything in my garage because there was so much stuff crammed in there, and I had to park the TT250 under the rear porch awning. I don’t have a separate workshop area and I don’t pour concrete (I don’t have Mr. Gresh’s talents, but even if I did, it looks like too much work to me), so hanging on to a big motorcycle fleet was not in the cards.

My TT250. I’ve ridden it in Baja, too. It sold the day after I placed an ad for it a couple of weeks ago, and at the asking price. This bike held its value well.

Badmouthing Facebook has become trendy, but I’ll tell you that Facebook Marketplace came to the rescue. I already had a ton of photos of my motorcycles and whipping up ads for the TT250 and the RX3 literally took only seconds. I checked Kelly Blue Book values, picked prices only marginally below what a dealer would charge, and both bikes sold quickly. The TT250 sold the day after I listed it; the RX3 took one additional day.

All the China haterbator keyboard commandos said Chinese bikes had no resale value. Like everything else they posted, they were wrong. The haters said Chinese bikes were unreliable (they were wrong), the haters said you couldn’t get parts for them (they were wrong), the haters said they were built with slave labor (I’ve been in the factories, and they were wrong), and they said they had no resale value (and they were wrong about that, too). My 6-year-old RX3 with 20,000 miles on the clock went for 69% of its original MSRP, and my 5-year-old TT250 with 3,000 miles went for 74% of its original MSRP. That’s pretty good, I think. And both sold right away. Not that I was in a hurry to sell. I probably could have held out for more.

My current sole ride (or is that soul ride?), the Royal Enfield Interceptor 650 on Baja’s Highway 1 south of Ensenada. At this point in my life, one motorcycle is enough. Your mileage may vary.

So I’m down to one motorcycle, and that’s the Enfield. For me, at this point in my life, one motorcycle is the right number (your mileage may vary). I’m on to other “how many” questions now, like how many guns are too many, and how many bicycles are too many. The answer to both of those questions is something south of my current number, but those are topics for future blogs.

Never miss an ExNotes blog! Did you know you can subscribe for free?

There’s lots of Baja photos in this blog, and for good reason. Baja is one of the best places on the planet for poking around on a motorcyle. Check out our updated Baja page, and pick up your copy of Moto Baja!

The Five Best New Ideas In Motorcycling

I may seem like a cranky old man but I’m not that old. I admit I don’t like many of the useless widgets and features coming out on new motorcycles. As a rule they do nothing to enhance the feel of the wind or the joy of riding. Oh sure, they may make motorcycling safer and protect riders from themselves but the additional weight, more frequent breakdowns, and costly repairs (due to excessive complications) hardly seems worth it to me. I would go as far as to say a 1985 Japanese bike is more reliable than most any 2021 motorcycle.

You know what to do…please click on the popup ads!

Listen, I’m a booster for motorcycling. I know manufacturers need to sell new bikes and new bikes need to appear improved over older models. I don’t want you to think of me as a negative person and a killjoy about your fancy-pants electronic-nanny bike. If you imagine you’ve found something you like and feel happy about I’m good with it. And there have been a few improvements to motorcycles since I started messing with them. Keep in mind that I’ve been riding since the late 1960’s so some of the things I think of as new are not actually all that new.

Modern disc brakes are the biggest improvement to motorcycles. I rode for many years on bikes that would not lock the front wheel no matter how hard you squeezed the lever. Not only were the old drum brakes weak, they faded so badly going downhill that often the rider was left with no brakes at all. The first mass produced disc brakes in the 1970’s were a huge leap but nothing like the new multi-piston, multi-disc brakes on modern bikes. Motorcycle brakes became so good manufacturers had to hobble them with anti-lock systems to keep riders from crashing in a panic situation. You really can flip over frontwards on some bikes. My Husky 510 has a dinner plate sized disc that is a miracle of stopping power and it doesn’t come with a safety net. In the dirt I use one, very light finger. On pavement two fingers will stand the bike on its nose. I like having that power even though I’ll probably wipe out using it.

Fuel injection is the second best idea but you have to make compromises with complexity. Carburetors are relatively easy to adjust and owners can screw them up with just a few simple tools. Fuel injection requires some type of reader or display to tune. Aftermarket companies sell all manner of work-around black boxes and mapping programs. I’d say tune-ability is a toss up between the two fuel/air mixing systems.

At a fixed altitude, humidity, temperature and barometric pressure a carbed bike can run just as well as any injected bike. My token modern bike, the Husky 510, has FI but the rest of my bikes have carburetors and I manage to get from Point A to Point B just fine. I accept FI’s extra complexity because fuel injection works great. Over extreme altitude variations fuel injected motorcycles run so much better than carbed bikes you could almost miss their biggest advantage: less clogging. In a perfect world, a world without alcohol blended in, our gasoline carburetors do an acceptable job. The problem is modern fuel has such a short shelf life that, left to absorb moisture and drop out of suspension alcohol fuel can clog up carbs in just a few months of storage. Draining the carbs before parking the bike more than a month is mandatory.

Once past the fuel pump a fuel injection system is sealed off from oxygen and the elements, drastically improving gasoline’s shelf life. Even if the fuel does goes off in the tank the high fuel pressures of fuel injection tend to pump the crud on through. It’s still possible to gum up a fuel-injected bike sitting long periods of time but much less likely.

O-ring chains are not really new but the most recent versions are incredibly good. My early experience with O-ring chains saw the little o-rings go missing and the chain ended up no better than a plain old chain. After that I stopped using them for 30 years. Skip forward a few decades and it’s not unusual to get 20,000 miles or more out of a brand name O-ring chain. Give an O-ring chain a shot of 90–weight oil every 400 miles or so and you’ll be riding carefree minus the heavy parts of a shaft-driven motorcycle. Belt-drives are good, too, but every time I’ve taken a belt driven bike scrambling the belt starts squeaking and it takes a thousand miles for the noise to go away. On small displacement motorcycles O-ring chains do add a bit of drag but don’t trouble yourself over those things.

Tubeless, spoke rims are a recent development and they are a great new idea. Besides looking cool as hell, tubeless, spoke rims combine the easy hole patching ability of tubeless tires with the light, strong construction of spokes. I don’t know what took so long but I’m all for it, brother. One place I see a potential problem is running low pressures off-road but that has nothing to do with the wheel. If you’re trail riding at 15psi I suggest you stick a tube in your tubeless spoke wheel. I like the looks of spoke rims on a motorcycle but I also like being able to stab a tire plug in a flat tire and be on my way in 5 minutes. Tubeless spoke rims are a win-win idea. One day maybe I’ll have a bike with them fitted.

Liquid cooling has been around since gasoline engines were invented but I still think of the application in motorcycles as modern and one of the best ideas. Besides a few odd bikes like Scott and Suzuki most bikes were air-cooled until the mid 1980’s, and 1980 seems like yesterday to me. The big advantage to liquid cooling is the ability to tune the bike with one less variable to worry about: you know within a few degrees what temperature the engine will be 98% of the time. There’s also a sound deadening benefit that has become more important as we move forward into an eerily silent, clean world.

I own two liquid-cooled motorcycles and the extra complexity of the cooling system has not caused a problem on either one. I forget they are liquid cooled. My old Yamaha V-Max developed a leaky water pump at 80,000 miles but once fixed it rolled on to 112,000 miles without a hitch. Unfortunately, that bike was sunk in one of the many hurricanes that struck the Florida Keys during my time there.

These advancements in motorcycling have made bikes safer, quieter and more reliable, but not any more fun. I enjoy riding my old air-cooled, drum braked, carbureted, tube-tired, non-O-ring chained, Yamaha two-stroke best of all. It goes to show that as we move into the silent, safe, modern world the biggest and best ideas in motorcycling are still inside your mind.

Subscribe to the ExhaustNotes blog for free!