Feel Good Stuff – The ExhaustNotes Blog

Cool Stuff Near Death Valley

By Joe Berk

I recently posted a couple of blogs about Death Valley, including a recap of my several visits over the last decade. This blog is a little bit different. it’s about some of the cool stuff near Death Valley. I didn’t have any hard rules about how close “near” means. I’m including the places I’ve visited and thought were worth a mention. If you think there should be more, leave a comment and tell us about it. We love hearing from you and we love when you click on the popup ads, so don’t forget to do so (and when you see that donate button at the bottom of this blog…well, you know what to do).

I shot most of the photos in this blog with my Nikon D810 and the 24-120 Nikon lens. A few were with the Nikon N70 film camera I recently wrote about, and where that is the case, I’ll say so in the photo caption.

Baker

When visiting Death Valley from the south (as in southern Calilfornia), it’s likely you’ll pick up Highway 127 in Baker, just off Interstate 15. There used to be a hotel in Baker, but it’s gone. There are a couple of gas stations a couple of tacky fast food franchises, but don’t waste your time eating in a fast food franchise. What you want is the Mad Greek.

I didn’t eat at the Mad Greek on this trip (either coming to or leaving Death Valley). Sue decided several trips ago she didn’t like the place, so I deferred to her wishes. I never know when I might want to buy more reloading components, another gun, another watch, or another motorcycle, so we took a pass on the Mad Greek (Sue is of Greek ancestry; maybe that has something to do with it). When I ever pass through Baker on my own, though, the Mad Greek is a sure thing.

The Baker thermometer. If you are going to visit Death Valley, the winter months are very comfortable (it was 68 degrees when I took this photo). It gets warmer in the summer.

The other thing Baker is famous for is its thermometer. It’s 134 feet tall, in honor of reaching that record temperature in 1913 (I guess we had global warming back then, too). If you go through Baker, you have to get a photo of the Baker thermometer. It’s a rite of passage.

Highway 127

The signs are new; the Old Spanish Trail is not.

The ride north through the California desert from Baker to Death Valley is both beautiful and historic. It follows the Old Spanish Trail, something I had never of until I saw the signs and did a little research. Established in 1829, the Spanish Trail is a 700-mile long road that runs from Santa Fe to southern California. It traverses New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, Arizona, Nevada, and California. John C. Fremont and Kit Carson used it. Serapes and other woven goods went to California from New Mexico; California’s horses and mules went to Santa Fe. Indian slaves, contraband, and more used this same route.

Looking north on California Highway 127 after leaving Baker. You probably think I cranked up the saturation on this photo, but I didn’t. The CalTrans folks had recently repainted the yellow and white lines. The dark blue skies are due to the polarizing filter I had on my 24-120 lens.

Shoshone

The first time I ever visited Shoshone was on the Destinations Deal ride. I remember well the terror I felt on that stretch of road, leading a group of other riders after a long day through Death Valley. We were heading south on Badwater Basin Road and I was relying on my cell phone and Waze to guide me. I was worried about running out of gas, keeping one eye on the gas gage and the other on the road. I should be okay, I kept thinking, but I’d never been this way before and I didn’t know. Then my Waze program quit. It had been running on stored info because I had no cell phone reception for the last 60 or 70 miles. The gas gage was nudging closer to the “no more” line and I was sweating bullets. It sure was remote out there.

Finally, Highway 178 ran into Highway 127 and a sign pointed to Shoshone. I felt better, and then I realized I didn’t have the Shoshone Inn’s address where we would spend the night. “How will I find it?” I wondered. It wouldn’t be easy leading other riders while looking for the place (I’ve had to do this on other rides). Then I was suddenly in Shoshone and I started to laugh. You can’t miss the Shoshone Inn. It’s one of only three or four buildings. I’d say Shoshone was a wide spot in the road, but California 127 was no wider there than it was anywhere else.

Shoshone was founded by Ralph Fairbanks in 1910; initially, it was primarily a mining town (old Ralph was a Death Valley prospector and entrepreneur). Charles Brown (yep, Charlie Brown) married Fairbanks’ daughter. Charlie and Stella moved away, but they returned in 1920 and further developed the town. Charlie became a California state senator and he turned ownership of Shoshone over to his son (who was also named Charles Brown). I guess you might say Shoshone is a Charlie Brown kind of place. I been there a few times, always looking for a girl named Lucy, but so far, I’ve had no luck.

As I mentioned in an earlier blog, the Population 31 sign lied. It’s only 13 people now. The lady who runs the hotel (Jennifer, not Lucy) commutes from Pahrump (Pahrump is about 45 minutes east on the other side of the Nevada state line). She told us about the sign lying. The rest of the people either died or moved away. None of them were named Lucy.

Shoshone is the last town before the southern entrance to Death Valley National Park. One woman, a Mrs. Sorrells, inherited the town. There’s a school that handles kids from K through 12th grade, some of whom commute from up to 120 miles away. There’s a general store (including a gas station), a museum, a restaurant (the Crowbar Cafe and Saloon), a nature trail, an RV park, and an unmanned airstrip. I guess if you are flying to Shoshone, you have to make a pass or two over the runway to make sure it’s clear.

The Shoshone Inn

A film photo taken with the Nikon N70 and tweaked in Photoshop.

The Shoshone Inn is surprisingly nice, although it’s probably time for it to be refurbished. There’s a gas-fired fire pit outside in the unpaved parking lot; when I rode into Shoshone with the Destinations Deal crew we spent a nice evening drinking Joe Gresh’s beer, which he bought from Shoshone’s next-door Charles Brown general store.

I got up early the next morning to take pictures with my film camera (the N70 my sister gave to me) and I saw that the fire pit was still going; I think the Shoshone Inn desk clerk may have forgotten to turn it off (they will be surprised when they get their gas bill).

The Charlie Brown Rocks

When I Googled what else was around Shoshone, the Charlie Brown rocks appeared. Highway 178 east intersects with Highway 127 right at the southern edge of Shoshone. When I saw the Charlie Brown rocks on Google, I wasn’t sure how far east on 178 I’d have to go, but when I approached Shoshone, I saw it was not far at all. The rocks are what appear to be sandstone formations and they are kind of in your face as you approach Shoshone. I could see the cave openings I’d read about, but there were signs to ward off trespassers and I didn’t want to wander in. A few photos were good enough.

The Crowbar Cafe and Saloon

Sue and I had two meals in the Crowbar. As I had experienced on previous visits (especially if you get there later in the day) it’s good to have three or four meal choices ready when the waitress takes your order. Hamburgers? No hamburgers, we had a busload of Chinese tourists come through and they ate all the hamburgers. Trout? No trout. Tacos? Yep, the Crowbar had tacos and they were surprisingly good.

The same restaurant, but with the D810 Nikon. Digital is superior to film. Duh.

When we left after lunch that first day, we spotted a small airplane on the runway at the town’s southern edge (the runway is tucked into the southeastern corner of the Highway 127/178 intersection). There’s no tower or buildings or anything else there, and you only see that it’s a paved runway when you look (you wouldn’t notice it otherwise). We think the four young guys who were sitting one table over from us at lunch flew in from somewhere to eat at the Crowbar.

We sat at the bar the next night and the one-man-band lady who handled everything (waitressing, barmaiding, dishwashing, etc.) asked if I wanted a beer. You bet, I answered. There were four taps, all unmarked. She didn’t know which tap had which beer, so she poured me a small sample of each and I opted for a craft-brewed dark beer. The bartender/waiter/dishwasher told me was made in nearby Tecopa. It was good, as were the chicken fajitas Sue and I shared for dinner.

The Shoshone Museum

An N70 photo of the Museum. Not too bad for an old film camera.

We didn’t go into the Shoshone museum because it was closed the two times we visited the Crowbar (it’s right next door). It didn’t look as if there was much there; it was all housed in a very small building. I took a picture of an old Chevy, an old fuel pump, and a bit of junk in front of the museum. I’m guessing the museum used to be a gas station. I’ll bet Charlie Brown owned it.

Tecopa Springs

Tecopa Springs is short drive east of Shoshone on Highway 178. We went there twice. We saw quite a few RVs but we only saw a few people in front of Tecopa’s two restaurants. A young fellow we spoke to at the Crowbar the previous night told us he lived in Tecopa for six months each year and worked remotely (he was a digital nomad like Mike Huber). I imagine he spent winters in Tecopa and found someplace cooler in the summer. He said he came into Shoshone once a week for dinner because he wanted fried food and he couldn’t make fried food in his RV.

The two restaurants in Tecopa are a barbeque place and a combined bar and pizza place. The digital nomad we spoke with in the Crowbar said Wednesday (the day we rolled into Tecopa for dinner) was the best night at the barbeque place, but that restaurant was closed when we rode by. We rode on to the beer and pizza palace. When we entered, I asked the guy at the bar about the dark beer I’d had the night before in Shoshone (which was made in Tecopa), but they didn’t serve that brew there. He gave me a small sample of their dark beer (also brewed in Tecopa). It had kind of a peanut flavor to it and I thought it was okay, but the beer the previous night was better. The bar only had two seats; there were other people drinking and smoking at tables outside the restaurant.

What can I say? Folks in Tecopa don’t have a lot to do, I guess. This is an N70 photo.

When I asked about their dark beer, the one guy who was seated at the bar told me,”it’s this one…the dick.” I wasn’t sure I heard him correctly until I looked at the tap (which I hadn’t noticed). It was, indeed, a dick. I had to grab a photo.

Tecopa pizza, via the N70. There’s a whole lotta PhotoShop tweakin’ goin’ on in this photo.

We ordered a pizza that seemed to take forever. When the guy finally brought it out, it was cold. It had probably sat for a while. Trust me on this: You wouldn’t want to make the trip to Tecopa for the pizza. Maybe the photo ops, but not the pizza.

There’s also a date farm somewhere beyond Tecopa. Sue and I rode out there after dinner, but it closed at 5:00 p.m. and we were too late. They had date shakes and I was looking forward to one, but that will have to wait until my next visit.

The Amargosa Opera House

After poking around a bit more on the Internet, I read about the Amargosa Opera House in Death Valley Junction. It was 50 miles north of Shoshone. The pictures on the Internet looked like the Opera House theatre’s interior would make for an interesting photo stop, so I called a couple of days before. I mentioned that I was doing this for the ExhaustNotes website and possibly, a travel article for Motorcycle Classics magazine.

My free photo. Saved $500 on that one, I did.

A young lady answered the phone and told me I needed to email their Director of Operations. She promised he would get back to me that day. That sounded like a plan and the Director of Operations did indeed get back to me with this message: I could take their daily tour (at a cost of $15 per person) or I could pay $500 for one hour to photograph the theatre. Gulp. I can’t remember ever paying anyone anything for something like this.

Sue and I rode to Death Valley Junction anyway, and I grabbed a few photos from the outside. When we first saw the place, it looked run down. It’s hard to believe anyone would stay their hotel, but I guess people do. A few photos and a $500 savings later, we were back on the road.

Pahrump

After spending another half day in Death Valley National Park, we decided to head over to Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area. That’s near Las Vegas. On the way over, we crossed into Nevada and entered Pahrump. Pahrump is a much bigger town than anything around Death Valley. It has been one of the fastest growing towns in the entire U.S., with 15% year-over-year population growth for each of the last several years. We thought Pahrump would be a good place to have lunch, and we were right.

Sue found a place called Mom’s on her cell phone, it had great reviews, and we had to wait a few minutes to get in (which is always a good sign). Trust me on this: If you ever find yourself in Pahrump, Mom’s is where you want to eat.

I had a corn beef hash omelet for lunch at Mom’s. It was magnificent.

As I mentioned above, we went through Pahrump on our way to the Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area. I was going to squeeze that in here, too, but this blog is getting a little long. I’ll save Red Rock for another blog.

On the ride out of town on our way back to Shoshone, we stopped for gas in Pahrump. It was $3.68 per gallon. That’s a good two bucks cheaper than what we pay in California. After filling up and on the way out of town, we saw a gun store creatively named Pahrump Guns and Ammo. Sue won’t let me drive past a gun store without stopping, so we did. It was a small place and we had a nice visit with the two guys who worked there. I told them we were from California and we were collecting campaign contributions for Hillary Clinton. We had a good laugh. People in Pahrump have a sense of humor.

Barstow’s Del Taco Restaurants

You probably think I’m crazy including the Barstow Del Taco restaurants in this blog. I’m listing it here because if you’re going to Death Valley from southern California, it’s a safe bet you’re going to pass through Barstow, and if you’re going to pass through Barstow, you need to stop at one of the three Del Tacos there.

There’s a story behind this. About 15 years ago I had a bad motorcycle crash and I had to spend a month in the hospital. One of the guys I shared a room with was the son of Ed Hackbarth, the entrepreneur who founded the Del Taco restaurant chain.

One of the three Barstow Del Taco restaurants. Trust me on this: You want to stop at Del Taco in Barstow.

Ed Hackbarth is a real prince of a guy. He started Del Taco in Barstow, the restaurant chain was riotously successful, and it spread all over the U.S. Ed sold the Del Taco chain way back in 1976 to a group of investors and it continues to thrive. But there’s a big difference between the rest of the Del Taco empire and the three Del Tacos in Barstow. When Ed sold Del Taco, part of the deal was that he kept the original three Barstow Del Tacos. Ed would continue to use the Del Taco name on those three restaurants, but he didn’t have to use the Del Taco menu and he could serve food the way he wanted. And that’s what Ed does. The portions are bigger (they’re huge, actually), everything is fresh (nothing is ever frozen), the restaurants are immaculate, and the staff is super friendly. The Barstow Del Tacos have some of the best tacos and burritos I’ve ever had. We won’t drive through Barstow without stopping at one of Ed’s three Del Tacos, and there’s been times we’ve made the 80-mile trek from my home to Barstow just for a taco. You should try one. You can thank me later.

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ExNotes Book Review: Finding Home

By Joe Berk

I’ll bet you never thought you’d find me reading (much less writing a review about) a romance novel. You might be thinking we’re getting desperate for ExNotes content. Nope, it’s not that at all. We’re into our sixth year publishing ExNotes, and somehow content just keeps jumping over the transom and into the boat. It’s been an enjoyable ride with no signs of slowing down.

So back to the main attraction and the topic of this blog: Finding Home. It’s a romance novel, and it’s the first book in this genre I’ve ever read. If you promise not to tell anyone, I’ll share with you that I enjoyed it. You might be thinking there’s no way in hell you’d ever read a romance novel, and that’s okay. But what about your significant other? Would she enjoy a good read?

Finding Home is a great story about a woman who finds a new life, a new location, and a new love. Discarded after a long marriage by a callous and selfish husband, Katherine (the main character) makes a somewhat impulsive decision to relocate to Rehoboth Beach during a 6-month sabbatical. She finds new friends (a group of successful businesswomen) and a new man in her life, and then faces a new set of challenges when her sabbatical ends. Building on the success and confidence Katherine gained in the Rehoboth Beach move, she is faced with another set of life altering decisions. I won’t reveal the ending (no spoilers in this review), but I will tell you that Katherine’s new circle of friends sets up a continuing line of novels from this new author (which I look forward to reading).

Deborah Smith Cook’s interests and expertise in several areas are skillfully woven into the novel, including bicycling, cooking, fine wines, fine dining, Nikon photography, creative writing, and more. This (along with a good story line, superb character development, and great writing) make Finding Home‘s substantive heft (380 pages!) move along quickly. The chapters are light and frequent, and for me that made reading several each evening a well-anticipated treat.

In the interests of full disclosure, you should know that I know the author. Deborah Smith Cook was one of just under 200 classmates with whom I graduated high school. I’ve seen Deborah every 10 or 30 years or so at high school reunions (the most recent being our 50th reunion). I bought Finding Home because I knew the author and I thought it would be cool to support another writer’s efforts (rather than always asking folks to support mine). Then I found I enjoyed the story. I think you will, too. And I know your wife, girlfriend, sister, mother, or daughter will.

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Death Valley 2024

By Joe Berk

I guess I like Death Valley, because when Sue and I learned we had to use or lose some of our airline miles (and that we could use them for a hotel stay), we opted for a couple of nights at the Shoshone Inn in Shoshone, California (Shoshone is a little town just below Death Valley’s southern edge). Plus, I wanted to play with the N70 Nikon (a film camera) a little more and compare some of its photos to the digital pics from my Nikon D810.

The 2024 Death Valley Adventure Run route. We took a couple of days to do this and more. You could cram it all into a single day, but what be the point?

The plan was to roll in to Shoshone through Baker, and hit Dante’s View, Zabriskie Point, Artist’s Palette, Badwater Basin, the Ashford Mill ruins, and then head back to Shoshone. If we had enough time, we wanted to explore other points of interest, too.

When we checked in to the Shoshone Hotel on this visit, I asked about the 31 people who lived there. The hotel clerk told me the sign lied. The current population was 13 (not 31) people.

Dante’s View

Our first stop the next morning was at Dante’s View. This spot gives a good overview of nearly the entire Death Valley basin and the surrounding mountains. Here’s the view looking northwest:

You can see that Death Valley was flooded, and that the floodwaters in the basin were receding. No kayaking allowed by the time we arrived.

The vantage point at Dante’s View is really a panorama from nearly due north to nearly due south. I took several photographs from that vantage point and stitched them together in Photoshop. The photo below is a link. If you click on it, it will open a larger version.

Go ahead and click on this photo…I dare you.

Zabriskie Point

From there, it was on to Zabriskie Point. We backtracked from Dante’s View back to Highway 190, turned left, and then headed to Zabriskie Point. The ride through the rolling desert was nice, and the views were spectacular.

A view of the different strata at Zabriskie Point.

Looking across Death Valley to the snow-capped mountains on the other side.

Zabriskie Point badlands. You can have a lot of fun with a camera at Death Valley. This was a good time of year to be there, too.

Artist’s Palette

From there it was on to Artist’s Palette and then Badwater Basin. Artist’s Palette is a on a road that cuts off of Badwater Basin Road. The name is based on the fact that the hills in that area are multicolored. I plan to do another blog in the near future just on Artist’s Palette and the geology that gives the place its many hues.

PhotoShop, artificial intelligence, fake lightning, and Artist’s Palette.

You might be wondering about the photo at the very top of this blog (I repeated here so you wouldn’t have to scroll up). No, I didn’t just happen to trip the D810 Nikon’s shutter when lightning struck. This is the same photograph of Artist’s Palette two pics up, but I had a little fun with a c0uple of PhotoShop features. I used the program’s artificial intelligence selection feature to select the sky (which, as you can see from the earlier photo was nice and sunny), and then I told PhotoShop to replace the sky with dark clouds and lightning. PhotoShop gave me three options; I selected the one you see here. What’s kind of cool is that it also shaded the mountains a bit, as they would appear under a dark and cloudy sky. I’m still on the fence on this topic of artificial intelligence and its uses. I’d prefer just plain old actual intelligence in more of my fellow mammals, but hey, I’m a grumpy old man who likes to shout at the clouds. What’s nice is now I can use AI to make the clouds appear whenever I want to.

Badwater Basin

After Artist’s Palette, we were back on Badwater Basin Road, headed south to Badwater Basin. Death Valley, as most folks know, is below sea level. As you ride through different parts of Death Valley, there are signs showing how far you are below sea level. It’s cool. Badwater Basin is the lowest of the low at 282 feet below sea level.

Fellow tourists walking out into Death Valley’s Badwater Basin.

We had a lot of rain in southern California this winter, and in Death Valley, that resulted Badwater Basin being submerged. There was enough a couple of weeks before our visit that the National Park Service allowed kayaking in Badwater Basin. By the time of our visit, though, the Park authorities had put a lid on that. There was still water present, but it had receded enough that people would have to walk through the muck at the edges, which would damage the area. It’s too bad; a photo of folks kayaking in Badwater Basin would have been cool.

One of the nice things about traveling to places like Death Valley is that you meet people from all over the world. We had a nice conversation with a young guy from Beijing who was an exchange student in the Cal State system. I asked where he was from and he was hesitant to tell me at first, which I chalked up to nervousness induced by the tense(r) situation between the US and Chinese governments. I told him about our travels through China and that broke the ice. He was impressed.

Sue and I hamming it up with the cameras. The guy next to her is the young man from China mentioned above.

When you stand at the edge of Badwater Basin, there are mountains to the left and mountains to the right. I took nine photos and stitched them together in PhotoShop, just like I did for the Dante’s View panorama above. If you click on the photo below, it will open a larger version, which gives a small hint at the grandeur of the Badwater Basin vantage point.

Go ahead…make my day: Click on this photo.

Ashford Mill Ruins

There’s not much to the Ashford Mill Ruins. It’s the shell of a building that processed gold prior to shipment out of Death Valley. It was on the road back to Shoshone, so we stopped to grab a few photos.

What’s left of the Ashford Mill. Working here in the summer must have been brutal.

We wrapped up our ride through Death Valley late in the day, continuing south on Badwater Basin Road and then east as it became Highway 178. It was back to Shoshone for us, with dinner that night in Tecopa Springs. I’ll tell you more about that hopping locale in the next blog.

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ExNotes Movie Reviews: Zone of Interest and The Assistant

By Joe Berk

From time to time, Gresh and I have posted movie reviews here on ExNotes. Working from an admittedly flaky memory, I think all our reviews have generally been positive. I remember the review on Operation Mincemeat, for example. That movie was one of the best I’ve ever seen (I liked it so much I watched it a third time this weekend). But not everything is golden. Susie and I watched two movies on MAX (one of our subscription services) this weekend and they were two of the worst movies I’ve ever seen. I thought maybe it was a guy thing, but Sue had the same opinion. The miscreant motion pictures are The Zone of Interest and The Assistant.

Both The Assistant and The Zone of Interest were terrible for the same reasons: They had no plot, no beginning, and no ending. Did you ever start to watch a movie and switch it off because nothing was happening in the first 15 minutes or so? In these movies, that continued for the duration of the entire show. Both were train wrecks, not in the sense that they had lots of action, but because we didn’t stop looking at them. We could have, but we hung in there waiting to see if anything would happen. There was this feeling that something has to happen soon, but it never did in either movie.

The Zone of Interest is a story about a Nazi concentration camp commandant and his family living the good life in a nice home just outside the camp walls. I suppose the contrast between how well they lived and what was going on inside the camp was supposed to heighten the dramatic effect, but you never saw what was happening on the other side. The cinematography (if that’s the right word) was off, too. The imagery mostly looked overexposed, and in a few instances, the film makers switch to images of people being portrayed as white empty spaces, almost as if they had just discovered the select-and-delete feature in their video editing software. It didn’t work for either Sue or me. The critics loved this movie (if you believe the advertisements), but take it from me, they’re lying. When the credits flashed on the screen at the end, we were both surprised. “That’s it?” Sue asked. Yep. There was no ending. It just stopped and the credits popped up. This porker of a motion picture would put the Hoover vacuum cleaner company to shame: It sucked big time.

The Assistant suffered from the same ills: No plot, no action, no ending, and bad exposure control. I think it was a cheap and hurried effort to cash in on the #Me, too movement, sort of depicting a young female assistant (played by Julia Garner) being humiliatingly treated by a Harvey Weinstein-like boss (who you never saw in the movie). It’s a pity, really. I wanted to like this movie when I saw that Julia Garner was in it. She was brilliant in Ozark and the Inventing Anna series. Garner’s acting was good in this one, too, but the lack of a beginning, an end, and any semblance of a plot were deficiencies even her considerable acting skills couldn’t overcome.

Unlike the exposure control failures in Zone of Interest, The Assistant erred in the other direction: Everything was underexposed. I’m guessing that was to emphasize the dark nature of the movie, but it didn’t work for me. Give us a good story line, a plot, and proper exposure. We’ll figure it out. I knew you people in movieland can afford a lightmeter or two.

There was one good scene in The Assistant. Matthew Macfadyen, who also starred in Operation Mincemeat and the Succession series, played a human resources executive. In this scene, Julia Garner attempted to complain about her invisible man boss (invisible at least to us viewers) and Macfadyen played a two-faced, deceptive HR executive perfectly. I thought his portrayal was brilliant. In more than 40 years of working in industry, I found all human resources executives to be two faced and deceptive (with one notable exception at Sargent-Fletcher Company). Macfadyen nailed it, but that one scene does not justify the time I wasted watching this dog of a movie.

We realized The Assistant had ended when the credits popped up. There was no other indication in the way the plot had been progressing, and that’s because there was no plot (as had been the case with The Zone of Interest). I give both movies two thumbs down, and that’s only because I only have two thumbs.

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It’s Always About The Motors

By Joe Berk

For me a motorcycle’s appearance, appeal, and personality are defined by its motor. I’m not a chopper guy, but I like the look of a chopper because the engine absolutely dominates the bike. I suppose to some people fully faired motorcycles are beautiful, but I’m not in that camp. The only somewhat fully faired bike I ever had was my 1995 Triumph Daytona 1200, but you could still see a lot of the engine on that machine. I once wrote a Destinations piece for Motorcycle Classics on the Solvang Vintage Motorcycle Museum and while doing so I called Virgil Elings, the wealthy entrepreneur who owned it. I asked Elings what drove his interest in collecting motorcycles. His answer? The motors. He spoke about the mechanical beauty of a motorcycle’s engine, and that prompted me to ask for his thoughts on fully faired bikes. “I suppose they’re beautiful to some,” he said, “but when you take the fairings off, they look like washing machines.” I had a good laugh. His observation was spot on.

A 1200cc Harley Panhead motor I photographed at the Rock Store in Malibu.

My earliest memory of drooling over a motorcycle occurred sometime in the 1950s when I was a little kid. My Mom was shopping with me somewhere in one of those unenclosed malls on Route 18 in New Jersey, and in those days, it was no big deal to let your kid wander off and explore while you shopped. I think it was some kind of a general store (I have no idea what Mom was looking for), and I wandered outside on the store’s sidewalk. There was a blue Harley Panhead parked out front, and it was the first time I ever had a close look at a motorcycle. It was beautiful, and the motor was especially beautiful. It had those early panhead corrugated exhaust headers, fins, cables, chrome, and more. I’ve always been fascinated by all things mechanical, and you just couldn’t find anything more mechanical than a Big Twin engine.

There have been a few Sportsters that do it for me, too, like Harley’s Cafe Racer from the late 1970s. That was a fine-looking machine dominated by its engine. I liked the Harley XR1000, too.

A 1000cc Harley Cafe Racer photographed at one of the Hansen Dam meets. When these were new, they sold for about $3,000.

I’ve previously mentioned my 7th grade fascination with Walt Skok’s Triumph Tiger. It had the same mesmerizing motorrific effect as the big twin Panhead described above. I could stare at that 500cc Triumph engine for hours (and I did). The 650 Triumphs were somehow even more appealing. The mid-’60s Triumphs are the most beautiful motorcycles in the world (you might think otherwise and that’s okay…you have my permission to be wrong).

A 1966 Triumph Bonneville and it’s 650cc twin-carb engine. My Dad rode a Bonneville just like this one.

BSA did a nice job with their engine design, too. Their 650 twins in the ’60s looked a lot like Triumph’s, and that’s a good thing. I see these bikes at the Hansen Dam Norton Owners Club meets. They photograph incredibly well, as do nearly all vintage British twins.

A late1960s BSA at Hansen Dam. These are beautiful motorcycles, too.

When we visited good buddy Andrew in New Jersey recently, he had several interesting machines, but the one that riveted my attention was his Norton P11. It’s 750cc air cooled engine is, well, just wonderful. If I owned that bike I’d probably stare at it for a few minutes every day. You know, just to keep my batteries charged.

Andrew Capone’s P-11 Norton. You can read about our visit with Andrew here.

You know, it’s kind of funny…back in the 1960s I thought Royal Enfield’s 750cc big twins were clunky looking. Then the new Royal Enfield 650 INT (aka the Interceptor to those of us unintimidated by liability issues) emerged. Its appearance was loosely based on those clunky old English Enfields, but the new twin’s Indian designers somehow made the engine look way better. It’s not clunky at all, and the boys from Mumbai made their interpretive copy of an old English twin look more British than the original. The new Enfield Interceptor is a unit construction engine, but the way the polished aluminum covers are designed it looks like a pre-unit construction engine. The guys from the subcontinent hit a home run with that one. I ought to know; after Gresh and I road tested one of these for Enfield North America on a Baja ride, I bought one.

The current iteration of Royal Enfield’s 650cc twin. I rode this bike through Baja and liked it so much I bought one when I returned from Mexico. Here’s more (a lot more) about that adventure.

Another motorcycle that let you see its glorious air-cooled magnificence was the CB750 Honda. It was awesome in every regard and presented well from any angle, including the rear (which is how most other riders saw it on the road). The engine was beyond impressive, and when it was introduced, I knew I would have one someday (I made that dream come true in 1971). I still can’t see one without taking my iPhone out to grab a photo.

A 1969 or 1970 Honda CB 750. This is the motorcycle that put the nail in the British motorcycle industry coffin. I had one just like it.

After Honda stunned the world with their 750 Four, the copycats piled on. Not to be outdone, Honda stunned the world again when they introduced their six-cylinder CBX. I had an ’82. It was awesome. It wasn’t the fastest motorcycle I ever owned, but it was one of the coolest (and what drove that coolness was its air-cooled straight six engine).

A Honda CBX engine photographed at the Del Mar fairgrounds near San Diego. The CBX was a motorcycle that added complexity where none was required. It was an impressive machine.

Like they did with the 750 Four, Kawasaki copied the Honda six cylinder, but the Kawasaki engine was water-cooled and from an aesthetics perspective, it was just a big lump. The Honda was a finely-finned work of art. I never wanted a Kawasaki Six; I still regret selling my Honda CBX. The CBX was an extremely good-looking motorcycle. It was all engine. What completed the look for me were the six chrome exhaust headers emerging from in front. I put 20,000 miles on mine and sold it for what it cost me, and now someone else is enjoying it. The CBX was stunning motorcycle, but you don’t need six cylinders to make a motorcycle beautiful. Some companies managed to do it with just two, and some with only one. Consider the engines mentioned at the start of this piece (Harley, Triumph, BSA, and Norton).

I shot this photo at Hansen Dam, too. I always wanted a mid-’60s Moto Guzzi. Never scratched that itch, though. They sound amazing. Imagine a refined Harley, and you’d have this.

Moto Guzzi’s air-cooled V-twins are in a class by themselves. I love the look and the sound of an air-cooled Guzzi V-twin. It’s classy. I like it.

Some motorcycle manufacturers made machines that were mesmerizing with but a single cylinder, so much so that they inspired modern reproductions, and then copies of those reproductions. Consider Honda’s GB500, and more than a few motorcycles from China and even here in the US that use variants of the GB500 engine.

The Honda GB500, Honda’s nod to earlier British singles. It’s another one I always wanted.

The GB500 is a water cooled bike, but Sochoiro’s boys did it right. The engine is perfect. Like I said above, variants of that engine are still made in China and Italy; one of those engines powers the new Janus 450 Halcyon.

The Janus 450 Halcyon I rode in Goshen. That resulted in a feature story in Motorcycle Classics. It’s engine is by SWM in Italy, which is a variant of the Chinese copy of the GB500 engine. I liked the Janus.

No discussion of mechanical magnificence would be complete without mentioning two of the most beautiful motorcycles ever made: The Brough Superior SS100 and the mighty Vincent. The Brits’ ability to design a visually arresting, aesthetically pleasing motorcycle engine must be a genetic trait. Take a look at these machines.

The Brough Superior SS100. Its engine had a constant loss lubrication system. This is the same motorcycle Lawrence of Arabia rode. One of my grandsons is named T.E. Lawrence.

The mighty Vincent. This and the Brough Superior above were both photographed at Hansen Dam.

Two additional bits of moto exotica are the early inline and air-cooled four-cylinder Henderson, and the Thor, one of the very first V-twin engine designs. Both of these boast American ancestry.

Jay Leno’s 1931 Henderson. He told me he bought it off a 92-year-old guy in Vegas who was getting a divorce and needed to raise cash, and I fell for it.

The Henderson you see above belongs to Jay Leno, who let me photograph it at one of the Hansen Dam Norton gatherings. Incidentally, if there’s a nicer guy than Jay Leno out there, I haven’t met him. The man is a prince. He’s always gracious, and he’s never too busy to talk motorcycles, sign autographs, or pose for photos. You can read about some of the times I’ve bumped into Jay Leno at the Rock Store or the Hansen Dam event right here on ExNotes.

A Thor V-twin photographed at the Franklin Auto Museum in Tucson, Arizona. You almost need a four-year mechanical engineering degree to start one of these. Thor made the first engines for Indian.

Very early vintage motorcycles’ mechanical complexity is almost puzzle-like…they are the Gordian knots of motorcycle mechanical engineering design. I photographed a 1913 Thor for Motorcycle Classics (that story is here), and as I was optimizing the photos I found myself wondering how guys back in the 1910s started the things. I was able to crack the code, but I had to concentrate so hard it reminded me of dear departed mentor Bob Haskell talking about the Ph.Ds and other wizards in the advanced design group when I worked in the bomb business: “Sometimes those guys think so hard they can’t think for months afterward,” Bob told me (both Bob and I thought the wizards had confused their compensation with their capability).

There’s no question in my mind that water cooling a motorcycle engine is a better way to go from an engineering perspective. Water cooling adds weight, cost, and complexity, but the fuel efficiency and power advantages of water cooling just can’t be ignored. I don’t like when manufacturers attempt to make a water-cooled engine look like an air-cooled engine with the addition of fake fins (it somehow conveys design dishonesty). But some marques make water cooled engines look good (Virgil Elings’ comments notwithstanding). My Triumph Speed Triple had a water-cooled engine. I think the Brits got it right on that one.

My 2007 Triumph Speed Triple. Good buddy Marty told me some folks called these the Speed Cripple. In my case, that turned out to be true, but that’s another story for another blog.

My 2015 CSC RX3. Before you go all nuts on me and start whining about Chinese motorcycle quality, I need to tell you I rode these across China, through the Andes Mountains in Colombia, up and down Baja a bunch of times, and all over the American west (you can read about those adventures here). It was one of the best and most comfortable bikes I ever owned.

Zongshen is another company that makes water-cooled engines look right. I thought my RX3 had a beautiful engine and I really loved that motorcycle. I sold it because I wasn’t riding it too much, but the tiny bump in my bank account that resulted from the sale, in retrospect, wasn’t worth it. I should have kept the RX3. When The Big Book Of Best Motorcycles In The History Of The World is written, I’m convinced there will be a chapter on the RX3.

The future of “motor” cycling? This is the CSC RX1E. I rode it and liked it. The silence takes some getting used to.

With the advent of electric motorcycles, I’ve ridden a few and they are okay, but I can’t see myself ever buying one. That’s because as I said at the beginning of this blog, for me a motorcycle is all about the motor. I realize that’s kind of weird, because on an electric motorcycle the power plant actually is a motor, not an internal combustion engine (like all the machines described above). What you mostly see on an electric motorcycle is the battery, which is the large featureless chingadera beneath the gas tank (which, now that I’m writing about it, isn’t a gas tank at all). I don’t like the silence of an electric motorcycle. They can be fast (the Zero I rode a few years ago accelerated so aggressively it scared the hell out of me), but I need some noise, I need to feel the power pulses and engine vibration, and I want other people to hear me. The other thing I don’t care for is that on an electric motorcycle, the power curve is upside down. They accelerate hardest off a dead stop and fade as the motor’s rpm increases; a motorcycle with an internal combustion engine accelerates harder as the revs come up.

Wow, this blog went on for longer than I thought it would. I had fun writing it and I had fun going through my photo library for the pics you see here. I hope you had fun reading it.

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Caught in the Snow

By Joe Berk

A few weeks ago I posted a blog about riding in the rain. With all the snow blanketing parts of the US this winter, I thought it fitting that I post a blog about getting caught in the snow. I’ve ridden in the snow four times and none of them were fun.

Crater Lake

On this ride, my buddy Marty and I were on our way home from Calgary to California after completing the 2005 Three Flags Classic rally. Marty was far more worldly than me and he knew all the good spots to stop. One was Crater Lake in Oregon. We rode in from the Oregon coast where the temperatures were cool but not unbearably so. We pointed our front wheels east and rode to Crater Lake. It was a brutally cold ride, and it grew even colder the further we climbed into the mountains.

We had an interesting encounter with a herd of elk on the way to Crater Lake. We had been seeing road signs warning of elk, but we hadn’t seen any until that day. A monstrous bull stepped out in front of my Triumph Daytona from the forest on the right side of the road. He stood broadside 50 yards in front of me, and he looked directly at me as if to say, “What’s your problem?” If he was attempting to intimidate me, it worked.

I stopped and Marty stopped on his BMW K1200RS behind me. My visor started to fog from my breath. It was just the three of us on that cold, cold morning: Me, Marty, and the Big Bull Elk. After what seemed like several minutes (during which I wondered how quickly I could execute a u-turn and accelerate away from those immense antlers), the elk turned his head and lazily sauntered across the road into the forest on the other side. Yeah, you’re bad, I thought.

I started to let out the clutch and moved forward a tiny bit when two more elk stepped out of the forest onto the highway. These were female elk following the alpha male who had successfully stared me down. So I pulled the clutch in again and waited. The ladies crossed the highway and I started to let the clutch out again. Then another lady elk appeared from the right. This went on for the next several minutes. Maybe as many as another 20 elk, all female, repeated the sequence, two or three at a time. I remember thinking the first one, that big bull, probably didn’t get much sleep with that harem to take care of. I wished I had grabbed a photo, but truth be told, I was too scared and shocked to react. I can still see it vividly in my mind, though.

The Daytona 1200 along Crater Lake in Oregon. A few miles earlier, we had a magical several minutes with a herd of elk.

After the elk episode, we continued our climb up to Crater Lake. The sun was getting higher, but we were climbing and instead of warming the temperatures continued to drop. There were bits of snow on both sides of the road, but the road was dry and we were doing okay. I used a Gerber electric vest in those days. It was a godsend.

Another view of Crater Lake. Note the snow in the foreground.

Crater Lake was interesting. I took a bunch of photos and checked that destination off my bucket list. Incidentally, on that trip I was still shooting with film. I had the N70 Nikon I blogged about earlier.

After taking in Crater Lake, Marty and I started our ride down off the mountain. The ride down was on the western side of the mountain, and the road was in the late morning shade. That section of the road had not warmed up. The snow was still there in two different forms…hard pack white snow in some places, and black ice where the snow had melted and frozen over. It was the first time I had ever ridden in such conditions on a big road bike, and I quickly realized my Daytona 1200 was way different than the Honda Super 90 I rode in the snow when I was a kid in New Jersey. Piloting that Triumph down off the mountain was an extremely demanding and mentally-draining 15-mph riding experience requiring intense concentration.

Fortunately, I remember thinking, Marty and I were the only two guys out there and I didn’t have to worry about anyone else on the road. Marty was in front and we both were taking things very easy. Then in my left peripheral vision I sensed a yellow vehicle starting to pass me. I was pissed and confused. Who the hell else is out here, I thought. Can’t they see I’m on a motorcycle, I’m on ice, and why the hell are they passing me?

Then I realized who it was. What I saw in my peripheral vision wasn’t another vehicle. It was my motorcycle in the rear view mirror. The big Triumph was sliding sideways. The yellow I had picked up peripherally was my rear tail light cowling. Damn, that was exciting! (And terrifying.)

Marty and I made it down off that mountain, but it was a religious experience for both of us.

The Sweetwater Rattlesnake Roundup

This was a ride coming h0me from the Annual Rattlesnake Roundup in Sweetwater, Texas (I wrote about the Roundup before and you can read that story here). We spent a half day at the Rattlesnake Roundup, another hour or so at the gun show in the hall next to the Rattlesnake Roundup, and then had a late afternoon departure headed home. The first portion of that ride was okay, but as the sun set the temperature dropped big time and the wind across Interstate 10 kicked up dramatically. We crossed into New Mexico and the wind was blowing so hard it felt like the bikes were leaned over 30 degrees just to keep going straight.

We pulled off the highway in Lordsburg, New Mexico, around 10:00 p.m. and stopped at the first hotel we saw. It was one of those small old Route 66 type motels (you know the type…a cheap single-story structure still advertising they had color TV). One of us (I can’t remember if it was Marty or me) decided we wanted to look for something nicer. We continued on into town and found a nicer hotel, but the desk clerk told us they had no rooms left. “With this wind, every trucker is off the run and in a hotel,” he said. The next town was 50 miles further down the road. I looked at Marty, he looked at me, and I made the case for doubling back to the Route 66 special.

We entered the lobby and two other people looking for a room followed us in. We were lucky. We nailed the last room in Lordsburg (which, I know, sounds like the title of a bad country western song). The folks behind us were out of luck. I have no idea what they did.

Most of the snow was gone after we returned from breakfast.

When we woke up the next morning, the bikes were covered in snow. There was no way we were going to ride in that, so we walked across the parking lot to a diner and had a leisurely breakfast. By 10:00 a.m. there was still snow on the ground, but the roads were slushy (not icy) and we could ride. When we were back on Interstate 10 the slush had disappeared and the road was dry. It was cold. I again enjoyed my Gerber vest. We made it back to southern California late that night. It was pouring rain (that’s the bad news), but it wasn’t nearly as cold as it had been and there was no snow (and that’s the good news).

The Angeles Crest Highway

I met my buddy Bryan at a water treatment company. Someday I’ll write a story about that company and the guy who started it. He was a crook (the company founder, not Bryan) and I’m not exaggerating just because I didn’t like the guy. He actually was a crook who was later charged with financial fraud and convicted. I know, I’m digressing again. Back to Bryan, me, motorcycles, and riding in the snow.

Good buddy Bryan and his VFR at warmer times in warmer climes.

Bryan was fascinated by my motorcycles (I owned four or five at the time), and within a few weeks he had purchased a Honda VFR. That VFR was a nice motorcycle (one I never owned but always wanted), and Bryan and I started doing a lot of rides together. We both live in southern California at an elevation of around 1700 feet above sea level, and it is rare to see snow here. I think in the 40+ years I’ve been in So Cal I’ve seen snow twice at my home, and it both cases it didn’t stick.

Bryan and I often rode the Angeles Crest Highway. We would take the 210 freeway to Glendale to pick it up, ride over the mountains on the Crest (the Angeles Crest Highway), stop for gas and sometimes a meal in Wrightwood on the other side of the San Gabriels, and then head home through the Cajon Pass on Interstate 15. It’s one of the best rides in the country.

A typical weekend parking lot scene at Newcomb’s on the ACH. Those were glorious days.

One day in the winter months, it was comfortable So Cal winter weather when Bryan and I decided to ride the ACH, but in the opposite direction. We rode up the 15 to the 138, we rolled through Wrightwood, and then we picked up the Crest heading over the mountains to Glendale. It got cold fast, and by the time we were on the Crest it was brutal. Then it started to snow. It didn’t seem that bad at first and we pushed on. I was on my Daytona 1200 again, and I could feel the bike moving around beneath me. I’d already ridden the Daytona on icy roads in Oregon (see above), so I thought I’d be okay. But this was worse. I could feel the big Daytona sashaying around like an exotic dancer in a room full of big tippers.

Bryan and I stopped. “Think we should turn around?” one or the other of us asked. “Nah, it probably won’t get worse and it’s shorter to keep going than it would be to turn around,” one or the other of us answered. We had that same conversation telepathically three or four more times. The weather was worsening and we hadn’t seen another vehicle on the road since we started. No motorcycles and no cars. It was just us.

Finally, we made it to Newcomb’s, a legendary Angeles Crest roadhouse that is no more (a pity, really…you’d see all kinds of moto exotica and sometimes Jay Leno up there on the weekends). We stopped for a cup of coffee and a bowl of chili. The parking lot was empty, but the place was open. The bartender was shocked when we entered. “How did you get up here?” he asked.

“We rode,” one or the other of us said.

“How did you do that? The road’s been closed because of the snow and ice.”

Well, what do you know? We had our coffee and chili and we warmed up. When it was time to leave, we kept going toward Glendale. No sense going back, we thought. We already knew the Crest behind us was bad. But we soon learned the road ahead wasn’t any better. It was a white knuckle, 15mph ride all the way down, and man, was it ever cold. But it made for a hell of story. I’ve ridden the ACH many, many times…but only once on snow and ice when the road was closed.

The “Build Character” Ride

In my opinion (and I’m the guy writing this blog, so it’s the one that counts) riding in the snow and ice is dumb raised to an exponent. If you’re already on a trip and you get caught in it, it’s sort of understandable. Making a decision to intentionally ride into the snow, though (at least to me), is a really dumb move. But yeah, I did it. Once. Peer pressure is a bitch, let me tell you.

The story goes like this: A bunch of us guys used to meet every Saturday morning at the local BMW dealer to listen to and tell tall tales (said tall tales usually involving motorcycles, women, or both). We did a lot of rides together, this group did. Baja. The American Southwest. The Three Flags Classic. Weekend rides up the Pacific Coast Highway to Pismo Beach for a barbeque dinner in nearby Nipomo at Jocko’s. And more. We were not spring chickens, either. I was in my late 50s and I was the youngest guy in the group. Most of the other guys were real deal geezers in their 70s. One guy was in his 80s.

Geezer riding buddies in the Jocko’s parking lot after coming down out of the mountains. Trust me on this: None of these guys needed to build any more character.

One day at one of our Saturday gatherings one of the guys had this brilliant idea that instead of simply getting caught in the rain, it would be a grand idea to start a two-or-three day ride in the rain when rain would be forecast for the entire ride. You know, a tough guy ride into bad weather. We would do the two-day run up to Pismo, through the mountains and along the coast, and do it on a weekend when it would rain all weekend. “It will build character,” said the geezer whose idea this was. Mom had warned me about guys like that. I should have listened.

Everybody was in. Like I said, peer pressure is a bitch. I had ridden plenty in the rain, and if you are properly attired, it’s not that bad. But snow and ice? Nope, that’s positively not for me. That’s what happened on this ride. Remember I said along the coast and in the mountains? Well, it was that mountain part that did us in. It was in the winter, we were at higher elevations, and sonuvabitch, all of a sudden that rain wasn’t rain any more. It was snow. The roads never froze over, but it was plenty slushy.

Somewhere along our descent, the snow reverted to plain old rain again, and we made it to Pismo without anyone dropping their bike. I noticed on the way home, though, we rode the coast (where it was modestly warmer) all the way back. I guess each of us felt we had built enough character to have banked a sufficient amount.

There you have it…my thoughts on riding in the snow. The bottom line from my perspective is that motorcycles and snow don’t mix. Your mileage may vary. If you think otherwise, let us know.

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Becoming Vulcan Part 3: Yeswelder Cut-55DS Pro Plasma Cutter Review

By Joe Gresh

Anyone who wants to become Vulcan must learn how to cut metal. There are many methods available like bandsaws, oxyacetylene torch, abrasive wheels, hacksaws and the old reliable, bend-it-back-and-forth-until-it-breaks. One of the relatively newer methods (in relation to the age of the Universe) is a machine called the plasma cutter.

Plasma cutters used to be very expensive. The plasma machine we use at school cost around 4000 dollars and is rated at 60 amps. The global economy (AKA China) has driven down the cost of plasma cutters dramatically. The Yeswelder cutter in this story cost me under 200 dollars and is rated 55 amps. Shipping was free.

In use, a plasma cutter works much like an oxyacetylene cutting torch. The big difference is that you don’t need any fuel: no acetylene gas to buy or bottles to rent. The only thing burning in a plasma cutting system is the material you are cutting through.

The plasma cutter uses regular compressed air and a bunch of ions and magical stuff inside the cutting head to create a super-hot, narrow stream of plasma. It’s sort of like having your own pocket-sized northern lights shooting out of the torch to cut material.

Unlike oxyacetylene, there is no waiting for the material to heat up. With a plasma cutter you set the torch near the material and pull the trigger. A jet of plasma shoots out of the torch and you can start cutting immediately. The plasma cutter cuts at about the same speed as an oxy cutter so you can move right along.

The 55 DS Pro Yeswelder plasma cutter will operate using 120 or 240 volts AC using the included adaptor. The machine auto selects for the voltage you are plugged into. At 120VAC input the machine will only go to 30 amps. You’ll need 240 VAC to access all 55 amps of metal slashing power

My air compressor is too small for the plasma cutter and is located too far away from where I cut so there’s a long air hose involved; with a long hose line pressure drops fast. I made a remote air tank out of a defunct water pump to give me a little more cut time and eliminate the line drop. I can cut 6 to 10 inches before I have to wait for the compressor to catch up. If you’re going to be doing a lot of continuous cutting with a plasma cutter you’ll need a decent sized air compressor.

With the compressor and the plasma cutter operating simultaneously, my smallish off-grid inverter struggles and spits out a low voltage alarm when the compressor starts. To get around this problem I use a fossil fuel powered 10KW Honda generator. The big V-twin Honda doesn’t even notice when I cut with the plasma torch and the air compressor kicks in.

Most everything you need to get started is included with the Yeswelder Cut-55. You’ll need to provide the air compressor and connect an air hose to the built in pressure regulator/filter on the back of the Yeswelder. Unless you cut through the torch hose or spill a Big Gulp container of Pepsi Cola inside the cutter, normal consumables are only the bits inside the torch that churn out ions.

The controls are pretty simple on the Yeswelder Cut-55. There is an amp setting, an air pressure setting, 2T or 4T trigger actuation (on-off with squeeze and release or squeeze on, release, torch stays on, second trigger pull turns off) an indicator for input voltage and not much else. It’s a simple machine to operate.

I haven’t used the machine very much; it cut through 1/8-inch steel like a hot jet of plasma through 1/8-inch steel. There’s not as much slag as with oxy cutting so clean up is easier. It should handle ¼-inch steel without a problem and I don’t work with anything thicker.

The prices on these Chinese plasma cutters are so much lower than the old line companies something must be sacrificed. I’m guessing in a full time metal shop the cheapo versions wouldn’t last long but for guys like me or you who just want to cut out a metal silhouette of a buffalo once in a while the Yeswelder looks like the goods. I give it a 5-star rating on the Hacksaw Chi-Com scale. That being said I have only one caveat: The thing may go up in a ball of exploding ions tomorrow. If it does quit I’ll be sure to report it in a follow up story.

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Zooming through New Zealand: Part 3

By Mike Huber

There are certainly worse places to wake up. I opened my eyes facing a beautiful mountain lake with loud wekas clumsily hunting for food in the brush next to my tent. Without my cooking gear it took me just about 20 minutes to pack up and load Massie, the BMW GS750 for what would be a full day of riding. As I was packing up I was already craving a coffee and a meat pie for breakfast. While stuffing my gear in the panniers I noticed how wet everything was from the dew and being so close to the lake. The sun was out though, so I thought after an hour or so of riding I would dry it out as I ate breakfast.

Riding to breakfast took a bit longer than expected and the one hour turned to three. Not that big of a deal as the sun was fully out now and would allow for my gear to dry while I researched my route and stops for the day. As I pulled into a coffee shop in a small town along my route the waitress stated how it would be a while for my food and coffee. This was my queue to unpack my wet gear and lay it out to dry while I was researching maps and things to do for the day.

During my wait several people introduced themselves and we had some fun conversations about my gear and riding. It was a great environment, or so I thought. After about 20 minutes my coffee and food arrived and I was told that maybe I should take it to go and it was time to pack up my gear. I guess they didn’t like the look of my tent and equipment drying and sprawled out all over their front porch. Which I sort of get, even though many of the clientele had been chatting me up. I apologized and, well, it took me about as long to pack up that gear as it did for them to bring my coffee (it happened to be fully dry by the time it was packed). I found it a bit rude, but I understood that having my gear everywhere could be viewed as a bit of a mess. It was time to get going, anyway, as I had a long day ahead.

During my minimal research and planning at the coffee shop I discovered this one hike that I continually heard about from others. It was the Mount Cook Hooker Trail. The hike wasn’t too long, and it had an incredible view at the end. This was only a couple hours off my planned route. Adding that hike meant I would have to have a long day and miss a lot of stops that tourists hit, such as the Franz and Fox Glaciers and hikes along that area. I decided to prioritize the Hooker Trail and skip the glaciers and other coastal hikes. Having made this decision meant a 350-mile day. Which to me didn’t seem like a lot, but the roads were tight and windy, which I thoroughly enjoyed, probably too much as I used the long day as a reason to really wear the edges of the tires in.

After close to 10 hours of aggressive riding through what I felt was like a mini version of the Western United States and British Columbia, I arrived where I thought would camp for the evening, just outside a city called Wanaka. However, the “campground” resembled something of a tent city I would expect to find under Interstate 5 in Seattle. That made it a hard pass for me. I did have a second option, but it was another 45 minutes north and if it didn’t work out, I would be in a tight position as the day was beginning to wear on me. I decided to shoot for it and hope for the best. What I found was far more than I expected and maybe one of the coolest places I ever moto camped.

Read the Mike Huber New Zealand posts here:

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The End Of An Era: RX3 Production Ends

By Joe Berk

Zongshen ended production of its iconic RX3 motorcycle and CSC sold the last of its RX3 inventory. I was tangentially involved in bringing the RX3 to America and I had a ton of fun on that motorcycle. Knowing that the RX3 is no longer in production is like hearing an old friend has passed away. In the end, the S-curve prevails for all of us, I guess. But it still hurts. The RX3 was and still is a great motorcycle.

An early clay mockup of what would become the RX3 in Zongshen’s Advanced Design center.

According to my sources in Chongqing, Zongshen first started thinking about a 250cc offroad and adventure touring motorcycle in 2010. Engineering development took about two years (excluding the engine). China’s initial and traditional 250cc was based on a Honda CG125 air-cooled engine, which evolved into 150cc, 200cc, and 250cc variants (the 250cc CG engine was actually 223cc; it is the engine that powers CSC’s current TT 250). The CG-based variants didn’t have the performance Zongshen wanted for its new adventure touring motorcycle, and that led Zongshen to develop a 250cc water-cooled, four-valve engine for Megelli in Italy. It went into the Zongshen NC250 motorcycle. This engine also went into the RX3.

Yours truly with former Sears president and CSC advisor Carl Mungenast on Glendora Ridge Road. I rode the CSC 150 Mustang replica in this photo to Cabo San Lucas and back.

For CSC, the Zongshen connection started with a search for a larger CSC 150 engine. The CSC 150 was the Mustang replica Steve Seidner designed and manufactured in 2009. I was already in China for another client, and it was only an hour flight from Guangzhou to Chonqging for the initial visit to Zongshen. To make a long story slightly less long, CSC started purchasing the Zongshen 250cc engines for the little Mustangs. I think most of the folks who bought those Mustangs really didn’t care if it was a 150 or a 250. Both were capable bikes; my friends and I rode the 150cc version to Cabo and back. It was the 250cc Mustang engine that established the relationship between CSC and Zongshen, though, and that was a good thing.

When CSC’s Steve Seidner noticed an illustration of the RX3 on the Zongshen website, he immediately recognized the RX3 sales potential in the United States. Steve ordered three bikes for evaluation and he started the U.S. certification process. Steve and I did a 350-mile ride on two of those bikes through the southern California desert and we both thought they were great.

Showing the Zongshen execs in Chongqing possibilities for a ride in America. The Chinese sponsored the Western America Adventure Ride as a result of that discussion. It was awesome and the bikes performed magnificently.

Zongshen was not targeting the U.S. market when they developed the RX3; they thought the U.S. market had different requirements and consumer preferences. The initial RX3 design did not meet U.S. Department of Transportation lighting and other requirements. It was back to China for me to help set up the specs for the CSC RX3 and the initial order.

On the Western America Adventure Ride, we rode from southern California to Mt. Rushmore, back to the Pacific across the top of America, and down the Pacific Coast to return to Azusa. Here King Kong, Leonard, Hugo, and Tso emulate the American presidents at Mt. Rushmore.

On that early visit, the Chinese told me they wanted to ride in America. They sent over a dozen bikes and as many riders, and we had an amazing 5,000-mile adventure we called the Western America Adventure Ride. Baja John planned the itinerary and mapped out the entire ride; we even had special decals with our route outlined made up for the bikes. We let the media know about it and it was on this ride that I first met Joe Gresh, who wrote the “Cranked” column for Motorcyclist magazine. I made a lot of good friends on that trip. After the trip through the American Southwest, Zongshen invited Gresh and me on a ride around China, and after that, I was invited by AKT on a ride through the Andes Mountains in Colombia.

In Medicine Bow, Wyoming, on the Western America Adventure Ride. Two Colombians also participated, which resulted in an invitation to ride in Colombia.

On the road in the Andes Mountains. The sign says the elevation is 3950 meters (that’s 13,000 feet above sea level).

Joe Gresh and I gladiating near Liqian, China. The China ride was the adventure of a lifetime.

At CSC, we had a lot of discussions on the initial marketing approach. We were looking at a $50,000 to $100,000 hit for an advertising campaign. Maureen Seidner, the chief marketing strategist for CSC and co-owner with Steve, had a better idea: Sell the bikes at a loss initially, get them out in the market, and let the word spread naturally. We knew the price would stabilize somewhere above $4K; Steve’s concept was to sell the bike for $2995. Maureen had an even better idea. $2995 sounded like we were just futzing the number to get it below $3K; Maureen said let’s make it $2895 for the first shipment instead. I wrote a CSC blog about the RX3 and CSC’s plans to import the bike. When I hit the Publish button on WordPress for that blog, the phone rang literally two minutes later and I took the first order from a guy in Alaska. Sales took off with CSC’s introductory “Don’t Miss The Boat” marketing program.

I wrote another CSC blog a week later saying that I was eager to get my RX3 and ride it through Baja. I thought then (and I still think now) that the RX3 is the perfect bike for Baja. The bike does 80mph, it gets 70mpg, it has a 4-gallon gas tank, and everything you needed on an ADV touring machine was already there: A skid plate, good range, good speeds, a six-speed gearbox, a comfortable ride, the ability to ride on dirt roads, panniers, a top case, and more. We started getting calls from folks wanting to ride with me in Baja, and the orders continued to pile in. That resulted in our doing an annual run through Baja for RX3 owners. We didn’t charge anything for the Baja trips. It was a hell of a deal that continued for the next four or five years. I had a lot of fun on those trips and we sold a lot of bikes as a result.

The Western America Adventure Riders in Arizona. This photo is prominently displayed in the Zongshen main office building lobby. That’s Baja John in front; he did nearly all the work organizing the ride.

CSC’s enthusiasm surrounding the RX3, the CSC company rides, and CSC’s online presence did a lot to promote the RX3 worldwide, and I know Zongshen recognized that. I visited the Zongshen campus in Chongqing several times. One of the best parts of any Zongshen visit for me was entering their headquarters, where a 10-foot-wide photo of the Western America Adventure Ride participants in Arizona’s red rock country dominated the lobby.

The RX3 was controversial for some. RX3 owners loved the bike. A few others found reasons to hate it, mostly centering around the engine size and the fact that the bike came from China. I spent a lot of time responding to negative Internet comments until I realized that the haters were broken people, there was no reasoning with them, and none were ever actually going to buy the motorcycle anyway. These were people who got their rocks off by throwing rocks at others.

When RX3 production ended recently, I contacted one of my friends at Zongshen and I thought you might enjoy some of what he told me. Zongshen sold 74,100 RX3 motorcycles (35,000 in China; the rest went to other countries including Mexico, Colombia, other South American countries, Singapore, Turkey, and the United States). Colombia alone purchased 6000 units in kit form and assembled their bikes in Medellin. I watched RX3 motorcycles being built in the Zongshen plant in Chongqing; I was also in the AKT factory in Colombia and I saw the RS3 (the carbureted version of the RX3) being built there. Ultimately, RX3 demand dropped off, but 74,100 motorcycles is not a number to sneeze at. The RX3 greatly exceeded Zongshen’s expectations and their initial marketing forecasts, especially in overseas markets. CSC had a lot to do with that success, and playing a minor role in that endeavor has been one of the high points of my life.

The CSC 650cc RX6 twin cylinder motorcycle. The Chinese motorcycle industry is moving to larger displacement bikes.

Chinese motorcycle companies today are emphasizing larger bikes. We’ve seen that here with the CSC RX4, the 400cc twins, and the 650cc RX6. I’ve ridden all those bikes and they are great. I like larger bikes, but I still think a 250cc motorcycle is the perfect size for real world adventure riding. I think the emphasis on larger bikes and the decision to drop the RX3 is a mistake, but I haven’t sold millions of motorcycles (and Zongshen, with CSC’s help, has).

That photo you see above at the top of this blog? It’s good buddy Orlando and his wife Velma riding their RX3 up to Dante’s View in Death Valley National Park. Orlando thinks blue is the fastest color, but I know orange is. Sue and I recently visited Death Valley again; watch for the ride reports here on the ExNotes blog.

Visit the CSC website here.

I’ve written several books about the adventures described above. You can order them here.

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A Visit With Andrew

By Joe Berk

This is another one of those blogs that almost had another title. I considered simply calling it The P11. Hey, if you know, you know. And I know. So does Andrew.

Sue and I were on the East Coast last week (as in literally on the East Coast when we stopped for lunch in Point Pleasant, New Jersey) when I gave my buddy Andrew a call. Andrew is the guy who runs British Motorcycle Gear, a company whose ads grace these pages. You’ve also read reviews by Joe Gresh on some of the top quality gear Andrew offers, including Rapido gloves, the Mercury jacket, and the BMG Adventure motorcycle pants.

Andrew is a true Anglophile (a lover of all things British), although like me, he grew up in the Garden State. We had a nice visit in Andrew’s beautiful home, and then he took us into his garage to see the toys. I was blown away, not just by the motorcycles Andrew parks in his garage, but at how closely they tracked with my list of highly desireable motorcycles.

No one has ever outdone Norton when it comes to fuel tank style. Triumph comes close. So did Harley in the ’30s, ’40s, and ’50s. This tank is perfect. And those exhaust pipes!

One that caught my eye instantly was a Norton P11. That was the ultimate hot rod motorcycle in the 1960s. Norton shoehorned their 750cc engine into a 500cc Matchless desert sled frame. When I was a teenager, the word on the street was that nothing was faster than a Norton P11. Norton only made a very few of these motorcycles (I think the production total was less than 2500). Truth be told, Andrew’s P11 is the first one I’ve ever seen in person, but I knew what it was as soon as I saw it. It’s parked on the other side of the garage, and my eye skimmed over a bunch of motoexotica when I saw the P11. Man, I would love to own that motorcycle. I don’t necessarily need to ride it; I would just look at it and keep it immaculate. Which, incidentally, is the condition in which I found all of Andrew’s motorcycles.

A late ’60s Triumph Bonneville. How could these guys have been overtaken by Japan?

There was a silver and burgundy 1968 Triumph Bonneville that looks like it rolled out of the Coventry plant yesterday morning. Andrew told me that the Bonneville is sold. Not to me, unfortunately. It’s another I’ve love to own.

Andrew with a few of his rides. Check out the Honda GB500 just behind the Daytona. Just 535 miles! That’s an MV Augusta behind it.

Andrew has a Triumph Daytona, and it’s the rare one…the 900cc triple with a bunch of goodies (think triple caliper disks up front, carbon fiber front fender, and other similar go fast and stop fast bits). It is bright yellow (Triumph called it Daytona yellow), just like the Daytona 1200 I owned about a decade ago. But my Daytona was but a mere commoner’s motorcycle. Andrew’s Daytona is the limited-edition version. Like the P11 Norton mentioned above, it’s the first one I’ve ever seen. I live in southern California; I’ve been to a bunch of moto hangouts (like the Rock Store in Malibu) and numerous Britbike events (for example, the Hansen Dam Norton get-togethers). I’ve seen Jay Leno, I’ve seen pristine vintage Indians (real ones, not the current production stuff), I’ve seen four-cylinder Hendersons, and I’ve laid these eyeballs on other similar exotics. But I’ve never seen a limited-edition Daytona Super III or a P11 in person until I visited Andrew.

Another one of Andrew’s bikes that caught my eye was a near-new-old-stock Honda GB500. It has to be one of the most beautiful motorcycles ever made. Honda offered these 500cc singles in the mid 1980s. It was a modern nod to (and refined version of) the British Velocette. They flopped from a sales perspective back then, but that’s only because of our unrefined palate and our then-fascination with conchos, wide whitewalls , and beer bellies (think potato-potato-potato exhaust notes and you’ll catch my drift). Like a lot of things, I should have bought a GB500 back then. Andrew’s GB500 is literally in like new condition. It has 535 original miles on the odometer.

There was more…a modern Triumph Thruxton, another modern Triumph, even a Lotus Elise sports car. My eye, though, kept returning to the Norton P11. It really is a visually arresting motorcycle.

At the conclusion of our visit, I asked Andrew if he would consider adopting me. Everyone enjoyed a good laugh about that. They all thought I was kidding. But I wasn’t.

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