Feel Good Stuff – The ExhaustNotes Blog

A Shift In Battery

By Joe Gresh

I was going to do a bunch of stories on my solar power system that powers my shed. I may still do that but this is more of an update on the batteries I use to store the solar power.

Small footprint means more energy density and hotter, more localized fires…

With solar, unless you plan on only having power in the daytime, you’ll need a way to store energy. The traditional way to accomplish this is with lead-acid batteries. I’m a lead-acid fan boy because they are so much cheaper than lithium batteries or a molten salt battery.

I should say, were cheaper…as of late lithium batteries have been dropping in price so much you can now get a 12-volt 100ah lithium battery for the same price as the cheapest Walmart lead-acid, deep cycle battery.

My solar system has been online since 2018 and in those years I’ve had to replace three Walmart batteries. The others are getting a bit long in the tooth, you know? Six years is a good service life for a lead-acid battery. Walking by the battery bank a few days ago I smelled the telltale odor of sulphur. This meant another battery had given up the ghost. It’s usually easy to find the bad battery in a bank. It will be hot to the touch, or in this case the filler caps had blown off. Kind of obvious.

The lithium batteries seem fairly even voltage wise at 100-amp load.

Looking at the average age of my battery bank I decided to bite the bullet and buy a new lithium set up. Getting in just under the tariff wire, so to speak.

My new bank will be 12, 12-volt, 100ah lithiums. Wired in series/parallel to produce a 24-volt, 600 amp hour storage capacity. That’s theoretically 14,400 watts of storage if you could squeeze every bit of juice out of the batteries.

By contrast, the existing 12, 12-volt 100ah battery bank only has 7200 watts of usable storage capacity due to lead -acid batteries dropping voltage below 50% capacity. The same total amount of juice is in the lead-acids but it’s at a voltage too low to operate equipment.

I use an old, analogue battery load tester to establish baseline numbers for future troubleshooting.

In addition, the lithium batteries have a smaller footprint so I’ll be able to rig the new bank on a single shelf instead of two shelves like the set up is now. This will cut down in battery cable length and by extension, voltage drop. Less cable is always good with electricity.

All in, I’ll nearly double my solar storage capacity in less square footage for less money than the old style lead-acids. This seems like a win-win.

Lots of important information that I will ignore is printed on the battery.

Now for the downside. These generic lithium batteries claim a 10-year life span but since the Chinese manufacturer’s keep changing brand names like I change underwear the likelihood of the same battery company being around a decade is slim. And then there’s that small detail of the fires.

Lithium batteries don’t like cold weather so that could be an issue. We do get some 20-degree nights at the ranch. I run pipe heaters at night so maybe that bit of drain will keep the batteries snug and warm.

Ah well, it’s not like lead-acid batteries don’t catch fire or explode occasionally.

I’ve had good luck with my Walmart lead-acids, no complaints, and I’m hoping these lithium replacements hold up at least 6 years. 10 years will be great and if they last look for an exhaustnotes long term review in 2035.

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Dos Ojos Cavern Dive – Mexico

By Mike Huber

Introductory Disclaimer: So as I have been writing these blogs the last few years it’s quite enjoyable and therapeutic to literally vomit out the stories without having pressure to place any bullshit spin or embellishments (they really don’t need any embellishing). I take pride in highlighting my successes, but also annotating my shortcomings and owning them through my writings. Enjoy!

My main purpose of traveling to Mexico was tacos, but diving was a close runner up as a reason to visit this incredible country again. Diving over the past six months has almost replaced my addiction to motorcycling, making it yet another bad decision as a hobby choice. For those of you that have read my previous diving adventures will fully understand this.

I am currently on the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico and much of this land was created from a giant asteroid. That would be THE giant asteroid that created the Ice Age and killed off the dinosaurs. With this massive disruption in this area, the ocean floor was lifted in a strange way that created cenotes. These essentially are old caves that are now flooded with fresh water. There are about 5,000 of these cenotes throughout the Yucatan Peninsula and they are quite magical. Having to mark my checklist off (I’m making this list up as I go, by the way, as a month ago I couldn’t tell you what a cenote was) scuba diving in one of these seemed like it would be incredible, and it was. Sorta.

In Thailand I had done a few swim throughs. Not even caves or caverns, but about 20 meters. It wasn’t something I ever enjoyed but it wasn’t the worst experience, either, so I wasn’t quite sure how I would feel during a 52-minute, ¼-mile dive through my first cenote. Upon arriving and seeing the other divers in the crystal clear water with the sunlight mysteriously peering through the overgrowth of old forest above the cave, I instantly was put into a state of awe based on how beautiful it was. After donning our scuba gear and jumping into the cenote, the cool water was quite refreshing from the heat and humidity in the jungle above us. After a few minutes of joking around and performing a buoyancy test, the five of us were ready to begin exploring this cenote underwater.

It didn’t take long before the beautiful glowing natural light was absorbed by darkness. We had nothing but our small flashlights and a string along the bottom to guide us for the next hour. As we swam along there were stalagmites and stalactites on either side of us. Some were so old they had formed natural columns in the still crystal clear and dark water we were slowly navigating through.

We were about 30 minutes or so into the dive when I noticed my heart began beating quite rapidly. It was beating at a rather uncomfortable rate. I tried to shake it off as mentally I felt great, but it seemed to be getting worse. With my heart now beating faster, my breathing also began to increase. I knew I had plenty of air as I am religious on checking my oxygen levels (see my previous diving blogs) so I did what I could to dismiss it, but my mind wouldn’t allow me to shake it off.

With all this going on I began to float to the surface. Normally this would just be frustrating and I would have to close my eyes, exhale and I would sink back to the level I wanted. The issue now, though, is there was no surface. There was only the cavern ceiling. If I hit the cavern roof, I would probably hit my head and it would possibly be a “lights out” situation. I did not want this. We were in a semi-single-file line (although I was a bit more elevated than the others, in several ways now that I think about it). There really was nothing or no one I could reach out to for help. What were they going to do? Give me a hug? I was on my own here and as with previous situations, I had the rest of my life to determine how to resolve this mess and get my head (and more importantly, my body) under control.

It took a couple of minutes to do just that, and a short while later I was enjoying the cave, being super calm and relaxed. It felt like coming out of an intense psychedelic trip and realizing that you are on the other side of it (and a stronger person for having undergone the experience). Then, it happened again. Not quite as intense but enough for me to mentally note that this sort of diving wasn’t for me, or at least it wasn’t for me at this particular time.

As we neared the entrance of the cavern where we started from the shimmering neon green light of the sun causing the water to glow and seeing the other divers floating gently above me was a beautiful sight. My first cavern dive had been logged and as I surfaced I looked to me new friends around me and simply said “Well, that was quite a trip.” I chose not to do the second cavern dive that day (for obvious reasons) but I am looking forward to my next dive in a few days. That dive will include close encounters with bull sharks. Until then I am long overdue for a couple of cold Tecates and some much-needed tacos.

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The Big Dig

By Joe Gresh

One of the reasons we got such a good deal on The Ranch©️ in New Mexico is its location. Perched on the side of the Sacramento Mountains, the land is steep. Any flat areas are man-made so when you want to build a greenhouse, you’ve got to move some earth.

I’m filling the area beyond the wall. It was a steep rocky place and now you can walk around without stumbling like an old man…which I am.

Terracing is much easier than removing the mountain so that’s what we’ve been doing. The little cabin we live in is on a terraced spot down by the arroyo. The shed is higher up on another terraced spot.

There’s a great location for a greenhouse behind our shack and down closer to the arroyo. The spot gets plenty of winter sun and it’s protected in most directions from wind. It’s so low I suspect it may flood in heavy rains.

It’s a little hard to get to but the location will be better when the high winds kick up.

Unfortunately, the location is hard to get to. A while back I made a set of stairs to access the location but there’s no way to get the Kubota tractor down the stairs. I actually could get it in position via another route but it would require cutting a bunch of trees. I don’t want to cut trees.

That leaves hand digging. The ground is not too bad to dig. It’s much easier than the front of the house where I put a driveway. Down in the arroyo the ground is a combination of hard topsoil, mid-sized rocks and some whitish, proto-rock stuff that crumbles with a sharp blow from a 2-pound sledgehammer.

The land tapers from level. At the highest about three feet must be removed.

The process is: I break up the top layer with an electric, 35-pound jackhammer (powered by the Harbor Freight Tailgator generator), then I use a round point shovel to move the loosened soil into a wheel-buggy. A little work with a pick dislodges the larger rocks. Aside from a few tree roots, it’s the best digging I’ve encountered on the property.

Since the area is so steep I’m bulkheading off lower regions with some old roll-up garage doors and using the removed earth to level a larger pad. It’s like getting free land. I plan to fill about two feet deep of as large an area as I have dirt for.

This sounds like a lot of work and it is. I take it slow and steady. It’s really no worse than going to a gym to work out and you get the added benefit of a flat spot on your ranch.

The greenhouse is a cheap Vevor 10-foot x 20-foot hoop style. The hoops are 1-inch tubing that are assembled like tent posts. A through bolt holds the pieces together. The cover is a greenish plastic material reinforced with what looks like thread. I think the cover will last a couple years if we don’t get a hailstorm. It’s not a heavy-duty unit.

It’s a happy worksite. I take frequent breaks and enjoy the smell of freshly turned earth.

The foundation will be heavy duty. I’m building a two-block high pony wall to set the greenhouse on. The blocks are dry stacked, poured solid, and they sit on a 4-inch-thick footer. The footer has rebar to keep it together when it cracks. I’ve set some 1/2-inch j-bolts into the block cavities to secure the wood sill that I will screw the greenhouse tubing into.

The foundation is overkill because I’m assuming the Vevor won’t last long and I’ll be scratch building anothergreen house one day. In the meantime, I’ll practice my green thumb.

As the project progresses, I’ll post updates. There will be solar power and a water catchment system making the greenhouse off-grid. For those of you wanting to build your own greenhouse my advice is to start with level ground.

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The Wayback Machine: A Call to Alms

This is a rerun of a blog Gresh wrote a couple of years ago. Yep, we’ve got our palms out. Help if you can; we’d sure appreciate it!

By Joe Gresh

Sponsored content is a way for publications to earn money. How it works is companies pay cold hard cash for bloggers to write a story about the products they’re selling. Most reputable websites and magazines print a notice letting you know the story is paid advertising. We’ll never have to worry about that because we don’t write sponsored content.

Not writing sponsored content is not the same as not having sponsors, though. Sponsors pay money for advertising on our website but don’t have any say about what we write. Sponsors support the website because they feel the content will attract the sort of people who they want to reach. For ExhaustNotes those people will be motorcyclists, shooters, travelers (especially Baja travelers), and concrete finishers. I know, it’s an odd mix of topics, but Berk, me, Huber, and our other contributors write about what we know.

So here’s the pitch: If you have been reading ExhaustNotes and think the eclectic collection of stories we create might appeal to your customers, by all means become one of our sponsors.

Or, if you just like reading the website and want to help support us, become a site sponsor even if you have nothing to sell. Maybe we’ll make a wall of names for people who sponsor the site. We want sponsors to support ExhaustNotes.us because they think that the writing we are doing is worthwhile.

So dig down into those dusty advertising budgets and drop an email to us (info@ExhaustNotes.us). Let us know how we can help you spend your money.

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The Norge

By Joe Gresh

Winter has finally arrived here at The Ranch. This year it seems like we got a late start to winter in New Mexico. I was riding my motorcycle in 70-degree weather just a few days ago. The avocado plants have been brought in to protect them from the 20-degree nights and I have installed insulated faucet covers over the outside plumbing fixtures so that we don’t burst a pipe.

Wintertime in New Mexico is beef stew time. The best way to make beef stew is with a crockpot and I couldn’t find our crockpot. Actually that’s not true, I know where the crockpot is: it’s buried under a giant mound of Amazon cardboard boxes I’m saving for my future eBay business.

Having no traditional kitchen stove at the ranch I decided to utilize the Isiler inductive hot plate as a heat source for the stew. The isiler is a sleek looking, single burner, and inductive-heat unit. It only works with magnetic-metal cookware meaning aluminum and stainless steel pots won’t get hot. I bought a whole set of inductive, stainless steel pots to use on the thing. These pots have iron or steel cast into the base so they will work with the Isiler.

The iSiler is only a couple years old. I cooked breakfast with the hot plate two or three times before, a cast iron skillet works great on the thing. The inductive heat is really efficient as no heat is wasted heating the cooktop or surrounding atmosphere. Only the metal pot gets hot and it will boil water in a few seconds on high settings. I like to cook my beef stew slowly. I toss in all the ingredients raw, meat included, and let it stew on low heat for half a day or more.

Apparently the iSiler doesn’t like being left on for long periods of time at a low (180 degrees) setting. The thing kept shutting itself off. I would come in from the Big Dig to check the stew and the iSiler was not heating. A red H was displayed on the digital control panel. Turning the unit off then on restored the iSiler and it would start cooking the stew. The shutdowns were random. If you watched the iSiler it never shut down. It was like trying to cook on Schrodinger’s hot plate: go outside to dig a foundation for a greenhouse and the unit would die but you would never know it until you observed.

Luckily, I was in the house when smoke started pouring out of the ventilation openings of the iSiler. The whole cooktop was hot and I needed a couple paper towels to pick it up without burning my hands. I unplugged the cooktop and took the stinking wreck outside. The house reeked of burnt electrical components.

And this isn’t unusual for modern appliances. In the last few years we’ve burned up three Krieg coffee makers. The fan went out on our refrigerator. Our washing machine started leaking water and then mysteriously stopped leaking. It’s hard to find new stuff that holds up over time.

Which brings us to the Norge. In the 1970’s I bought a little house on Chamoune Avenue in East San Diego. Back then funds were tight and East San Diego was a cheap place to buy a house. The house came with no appliances; I bought a used Norge refrigerator for 50 dollars. In my tatty old neighborhood there were appliance stores that sold nothing but used or repaired equipment. At least three vacuum cleaner repair shops were within walking distance of my house along with mattress rebuilders, typewriter repair shops, TV repair shops, radiator repair shops and at least 10 Chinese restaurants. You could buy cigarettes one at a time. East San Diego in the 1970s was a hive of industry captained by small e entrepreneurs.

The Norge had a thick, heavy, single door opened by a gigantic pull handle with a ruby red emblem that looked like a royal warrant. The handle would not look out of place drawing cold, foamy Bass Ale at your local pub. Unlike new idiot proof, safety-first refers the Norge door latched closed and if you found yourself stuffed inside of the thing you would surly die because from the inside the door would not open. Even with dynamite. And no one could hear you scream. It was a solid refrigerator, man.

There was no fan to circulate air inside the Norge. The top freezer section had a small, plastic interior door and uneven distribution was accomplished by cold air falling to the bottom of the fridge. You could turn the entire interior of the Norge into a freezer by cranking the temperature knob down to its lowest setting.

I don’t know the exact year the Norge was constructed but it looked just like the ones built in the 1940’s. The only thing I could complain about is that the Norge needed to be defrosted occasionally, failing to do so would trap frozen items in the freezer compartment like woolly mammoths were trapped in Siberian ice thousands of years ago.

I used the Norge for 10 years or so and it was running fine when I sold the house with the Norge still in it. Still keeping food fresh, still cold, still deadly to small children. It was probably 40 years old last time I saw it. And I can’t get a hot plate to last more than 4 meals.

Maybe I have a skewed view of the situation. Did the Norge represent standard 1940 quality or was it a one-off, Hyperon refrigerator? So much of our industrial energy today is expended on items that are junk. It seems like a waste of resources. Worthless and uneconomically fixable items clog our landfills, where the iSiler hot plate is heading. You may note we didn’t include the regulation Amazon link to the iSiler. That’s because we don’t want ExhaustNotes readers to buy the thing and set themselves on fire.

I bought a new, analog hot plate from Amazon, the kind with the resistance coil that will heat all types of cookware. Sometimes I can fix things because it’s cheaper than buying new. But that’s almost never the case if you include your time. No, I fix things just to stick a finger in the gears of our throwaway society. Sure, it’s painful. You rarely come out ahead and you can lose a finger. I won’t be tinkering with the iSiler hot plate, though. I don’t want to know if the cat is dead or alive if it means burning down the house.

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Green Bay’s National Rail Museum

By Joe Berk

That picture above? It’s a Big Boy steam locomotive cockpit! Look at all those valves!

Green Bay, Wisconsin. Say that name, and most people think of Vince Lombardi and the Green Bay Packers. And why not? It’s what the town is known for. But I’ll let you in on a secret: Green Bay has one of the best rail museums I’ve ever visited. I like rail museums, and if there’s one anywhere near where I’m traveling, I’ll stop. Susie and I wrapped up a trip to Georgia, Wisconsin, and Michigan, and the National Rail Museum made our list. It’s easy to find, and Green Bay is a fun little town.

The National Rail Museum has a bunch of small items on display after entering the first building (track maintenance hand tools and the like). Then it’s on to a hall where the big stuff is kept. One of the first trains is General Dwight D. Eisenhower’s European train, the one he used as the Supreme Allied Commander during World War II. It’s big, it’s impressive, and it’s fit for a 5-star general.

The Dwight D. Eisenhower train. It’s dark green and it’s imposing.

The Eisenhower train was built by the British with a number of features to keep it low key (or so some of the signage said). The name on the locomotive and the exotic paint theme indicated otherwise.

Not very subtle, I would say. General Eisenhower used this train for getting around the European Theatre of Operations.

The Eisenhower train was built by British Railways. That, my friends, is a cool logo.

A photo of General Eisenhower leaving his train.

The National Rail Museum has one of the very few surviving Big Boy locomotives. I’ve seen three (well, actually two, but I saw one of them twice). One was at the National Steam Locomotive Museum in Scranton, and another was parked at the Pomona Fairgrounds (it’s that one I saw twice). The first time was when it went from Ogden, Utah, to Pomona under its own power. It stopped in Pomona, and it was an amazing thing to see.

Big Boy No. 4017. I wish that Halloween decoration wasn’t there. I didn’t want to risk moving it.

It’s hard to put into words just how big a Big Boy is. Photos don’t really do its size justice.

Signs at the museum told us the temperature in the engineer’s compartment was typically 93 degrees even with the windows open.

A peek into the coal tender. Big Boy locomotives consumed so much coal that a man couldn’t keep up with it, so instead of shoveling coal into the engine, the tender had a worm gear that drove it in.

A locomotive that caught my attention was the Pennsylvania Railroad’s GG-1 electric locomotive. When I was a kid growing up in New Jersey, the Pennsylvania Railroad’s main tracks were only a half mile from my home. We loved watching those trains scream by, always pulled by a GG-1. They are gorgeous locomotives.

A magnificent Pennsylvania Railroad GG-1 locomotive. These are beautiful machines. The GG-1 was entirely electric. They drew power from high voltage overhead wires with their pantograph.

From the engineer’s position, the view forward is through one small window. You really can’t see much of what’s ahead. That would make me nervous.

By the 1950s, passenger rail travel was losing favor with the American public. Airplanes were faster, and with the advent of the Interstate Highway System, most people drove. The railroads wanted to turn that around. One attempt involved General Motors designing an aerodynamic locomotive and less expensive rail cars. GM designed the “Aerotrain” drawing on their styling talents, but the effort flopped. I’d seen pictures of that locomotive (there were only ever two made), but I’d never seen one in person until this visit.

The General Motors Aerotrain locomotive. It was a beautiful design but a commercial flop.

The Aerotrain story is a fascinating one. This video explains it.

There are plenty of great railroad stories and more than a few great movies. You might remember the Gene Wilder/Richard Pryor hit from the 1970s, Silver Streak. It you ever wondered where the last car of that famed train came to rest, wonder no more.

If you haven’t seen the Richard Pryor/Gene Wilder movie of the same name, you need to. You can thank me later.

I’ve been to the Steamtown National Historic Site in Scranton, Pennsylvania, the California State Railroad Museum in Sacramento, Golden Spike National Historic Park (where the Transcontinental Railroad was completed), and now, the National Rail Museum in Green Bay. All are great stops, and all have great storyies. I once did a story on Big Boy 4014 when it was in Pomona, California. Gresh has a couple of rail blogs, too, including the Nevada Northern and the Cumbres and Toltec lines. Rail stuff is cool.

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ExNotes Review: A Complete Unknown

By Joe Berk

I don’t go to the movies too much anymore, although the theatres have dramatically improved their seating and some even sell complete meals you can eat while watching the movie. We have Netflix, Prime, and Max at home, once in a while I’ll watch something on regular TV besides Fox News, and we pretty much have all the home entertainment needs covered with our TV and the aforementioned subscriptions. Susie wanted to see the new Bob Dylan show, though, and I thought it might be good to get out for a bit.

A fake Dylan filming a fake motorcycle scene.

As movies go, A Complete Unknown was not too bad. The Joan Baez sound tracks were great, as was Zimmerman’s music (I’ll bet you didn’t know Bobby Zimmerman was beatnikized into Bob Dylan, did you?).

I have to comment on the motorcycle scenes, though…after all, this is a motorcycle website.

In the very first Dylan motorcycle scene, he’s riding an early Norton Atlas. You don’t see too many of those with their black trapezoidal fuel tanks and huge chrome valanced fenders, so it had my attention. In all the remaining motorcycle scenes, Dylan is on a mid-’60s Triumph Tiger. He didn’t wear a helmet in any of those scenes, and the action was ostensibly set in New York City. Seeing a helmetless Dylan slicing through Manhattan traffic made me uneasy, even though I knew it was all Hollywood tomfoolery. The really goofy parts were the closeup riding scenes in which Dylan’s ample curls were unruffled by cruising speed winds, and the 500cc Triumph starting without Dylan using the Triumph’s sole wakeruppery mechanism (i.e., a kickstarter). Nope, the moto scenes were as fake as a Joe Biden promise, and that made me put A Complete Unknown in the Complete Fake column.

Like I said above, the music was good. Somewhere there’s a probably a Scriptwriting for Dummies guide that says a movie has to have conflict injected into the plot, so in this flick it was Dylan doing “his music” at the Newport Folk Festival instead of their desired folk music. Dylan and Pete Seeger almost started a fist fight over that (I know, it’s silly, but I’m just reporting here, folks). At the concert’s end Dylan sang one folk song, so all was forgiven.

I can’t leave out the best part: Johnny Cash (played by a real complete unknown, Boyd Holbrook) was in the movie and he was superb. If anyone ever does another Johnny Cash movie, casting anyone other than Holbrook in that role would be a crime against nature.

If you can ignore the motorcycle phoniness, A Complete Unknown is worth the price of admission. The motorcycle inaccuracies notwithstanding, I enjoyed it and I think you will, too.

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ADV Cannonball Press Release

By Joe Berk

This press release came in the mail a few days ago and I thought I would share it here.

ADV Cannonball Rally

A mix of curated motorcycle roads and a checkpoint rally for the ultimate cannonball rally, ADV moto style.

Port Angeles, WA — A new kind of annual adventure motorcycle event is in the works. It will take riders across the United States on amazing roads hand-selected specifically for riders. But this isn’t a tour – it’s a competitive GPS-based rally. Go for glory. Go for adventure.

The 2025 ADV Cannonball Rally will take place October 6-14, 2025. This year it will start in historic Kittyhawk, North Carolina on the Outer Banks and ends in Redondo Beach, California at the famous Portofino Hotel & Marina – a staple finish line for many cannonball rallies throughout history. This unique 3,550-mile experience is open to motorcycles of all types, will include nine days of riding, and has GPS-based checkpoint competitions located at epic places.

This coast-to-coast rally will have an emphasis on overland GPS navigation, endurance, preparedness, self-reliance, and rider skill. Aaron Pufal, the event’s organizer, says, “Each day, participants will leave the official hotel at specific times. Navigating by provided GPX tracks, competitors will ride on paved and optional unpaved roads to checkpoints, electronically earning points while experiencing a highly curated and painstakingly vetted motorcycle route.”

Pufal, an experienced rally planner and ADV moto enthusiast believes there’s a secret sauce to a good motorcycle road, and this route is carefully crafted by motorcycle enthusiasts for enthusiasts. The event will take riders through iconic, amazing locations—all with remarkable riding roads as the backbone. “This route isn’t for the faint of heart,” Pufal states, “but riders will appreciate the hundreds of hours of planning and prerunning.”

This isn’t a race; It’s a rally; and it’s self-supported. No team chase vehicles. No support crews. No whining. Riders must rely on themselves or any public resources available to any competitor to stay the course on the road to victory.

The ADV Cannonball Rally is a friendly competition. Here, riders are scored on their ability to reach specific checkpoints. Bonus points are awarded for the first rider to arrive at the next official hotel each day of the rally. Special achievements and separate extreme checkpoints revealed throughout the event will allow the chance to get a leg up on the competition with some extra points. The event is scored via a GPS app. The rider with the most points at the end is the winner.

Trophies will be awarded at the rally’s banquet for various achievements. The overall winner will have their name embossed on the ADV Cannonball perpetual trophy in perpetuity.

Entrants can be as competitive as they’d like—go for glory, adventure, or a bit of both. No rally experience? There will be opportunities for learning and guidance before the starting gun is fired, ensuring entrants understand how the competition aspect works.

Entries Are Limited: This event is open to the public. Anyone is welcome on any motorcycle. Current entries are exactly what you’d expect, big ADV bikes, but, we’d surely welcome the wacky, brave, or oddball entry!

Currently, we have enough paid signups to proceed with the event but we are limiting the entries to 30 hotel rooms for the 2025 rally.

Learn More: Complete info is available at the rally website, ADVCannonball.com. There, visitors will find the rules and regulations, interactive route map, FAQs, ADV Cannonball Podcast Links, and the official entry form. The ADV Cannonball Motorcycle Rally is sure to be an amazing journey. “Come have a good time,” says Pufal. “This is going to be for like-minded riders who are sick of sitting behind the computer and ordering accessories for their bikes—and definitely not for ADV Weenies.”

We’re seeking: Press interactions, sponsors, and partnerships in the ADV-Biz and motorcycle social media. We feel the inaugural running of the ADV Cannonball is a great story that deserves to be told.

It looks exciting. It’s worth considering. I checked out the website and it’s interesting reading.

Happy New Year, folks. I’m looking forward to a great 2025. We’ll keep the stories and the photos coming. You keep clicking on those popup ads and please consider making a donation via the Donate buttons below!

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ExNotes Review: Shooting Iron

By Joe Berk

Mike Venturino was one of the greatest gun writers who ever lived. Whenever I’d see his byline in a gun magazine, I would carefully read every word in the accompanying article. He was a guy who wrote about things that exactly matched my interests: Handguns, rifles, military surplus weaponry, reloading, reloading for accuracy, and more. His style was relaxed and friendly, and his writing was easy to follow and understand. I felt like I knew the guy, even though we had never met. His writing style, I’m sure, influenced mine.

Mike Venturino passed away recently, and FMG Publications assembled a collection of his articles originally published in American Handgunner magazine. As soon as I heard about Shooting Iron, I ordered a couple of copies on Amazon (one for me, and one for a good friend). If you like good writing, good storytelling, and all things firearms related, I think you should pick up a copy, too. You can order Shooting Iron here.

As I read through Shooting Iron, I came across two descriptions in which Venturino described blowing up a 9mm handgun. You may recall that I did the same, and I shared that experience with you here and here. Based on what Venturino wrote and what I experienced, I am rethinking my 9mm 1911 Springfield blow up. I previously concluded that I must have had a double charge in one of the cartridges (particularly because I was using a new turret press). Now I am thinking that wasn’t it at all, but it was instead the bullet being pushed back into the case. This is based on the following:

- I was using powder coated Gardner bullets, which are very slippery. It’s would have been easy to push one of them back into the case if the crimp was not strong. I don’t know if I had a really tight crimp when I loaded the round that burst. I use a very strong crimp now. Back then, I don’t know if I did.
- I checked about 1500 cartridges after that event (ones I had previously loaded but not fired) by pulling them apart and examining the charge. None were double charged. That doesn’t prove I didn’t double charge one, but it suggests it was unlikely.
- In reading the articles in Shooting Iron, I found where Venturino describes the 9mm bullet pushback phenomenon in two places (when you buy your copy, take a look at Pages 32 and 63). On Page 32, he describes this having occurred with a 9mm round, and he shows a burst case that looks just like mine. He further describes this episode with “…the escaping gas spitting (he probably meant splitting) the two grip panels and stinging my hand.” That’s precisely what I experienced. On Page 63, Venturino shows a burst case that looks like my case. I don’t know if the two instances described in the book are the same event. They both sound like what I experienced.

The bottom line is I don’t know exactly what happened when I blew up my 9mm 1911 and I never will. But after reading Mike Venturino’s Shooting Iron experiences, I am more convinced it was a bullet being pushed back into the case. In either event (bullet pushback or a double charge), I’m guilty of careless reloading, but somehow messing up on the crimp makes me feel less dumb than double charging a case. And I especially feel less dumb knowing that one of my literary heroes (Mike Venturino) did the same thing.

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Too Pretty To Fight?

By Joe Berk

The Harley WLA at the National Infantry Museum was a lot prettier than any other WLA I had ever seen, but I wasn’t impressed. It was way over-restored, finished in gloss OD green (something I had never seen on a WLA before). I couldn’t find anything in my research to show that any World War II Harleys might have had such a paint treatment. I found a reference that indicated Army administrative vehicles were sometimes painted gloss OD, but nothing about motorcycles.

Fancy leather. I doubt anyone ever sat in this saddle.

I once saw General William Westmoreland’s Cadillac Sedan de Ville in Washington, DC, and it was gloss OD. But WLAs had been out of service long before that, and in any event, when I spoke with General Westmoreland he didn’t mention anything about riding motorcycles. If anyone out there knows anything about WLAs with glossy paint, please leave a comment.

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