Category: Feel Good Stuff

A Tale of Two Two-Tone GMTs

By Joe Berk

Some time ago, we wrote a blog comparing the Casio Marlin and Rolex Sea Dweller dive watches.   This one is similar; it compares my nearly 40-year-old two-tone Rolex GMT II to a recently-released Seiko two-tone GMT.

Two GMT watches: The Rolex GMT Master II (left) and the Seiko two-tone GMT (right).  in the photos here, the Rolex has a much richer appearance; in real life, the Seiko looks just as good.
A close up of my Rolex GMT Master II, purchased new in 1986 when I was still a yuppie.  Note the cyclops lens over the date.  It really works.  The older I get, the better it works.
The Seiko two-tone GMT, purchased a few days ago.  The Seiko also has a cyclops lens over the date.  It’s a cool and useful touch.  This is a very nice watch.

I’m a sucker for a good-looking watch.  Many of my retired friends take pride in not wearing a watch, and many young people don’t wear watches (they’re glued to their cell phones all day; they can get the time there).  I always wear a watch.

The first watch I ever owned was a gift from my parents.  It was an inexpensive Timex that was completely unexpected, I loved it, and I wore it for years.  I first recognized watches as a status symbol and a cool thing to own when I was in the Army, and like all the other lieutenants overseas, I bought a Seiko chronograph at the Base Exchange.  After the Army came the aerospace industry where a Rolex was the status symbol, and when I was back in D.C. lobbying Congress to buy Aerojet cluster bombs instead of Brand X (Honeywell was Brand X for us), a jewelry store had the Rolex GMT Master II you see here.  I wore it full time for years after I first bought it, and then only intermittently after that.  I felt the Rolex was pretentious around clients, and I was afraid it would reinforce a feeling that they were paying me too much (which they were).  Now that I’m retired, the fear of being pretentious has been replaced by the fear of getting mugged, so I don’t wear it very often.

The hands of fate. The top arrow points to the bezel, which can be rotated in relation to the GMT hand (lower left arrow) to tell time on a 24-hour scale in a different time zone. The second-from-the-top red arrow points to the minute hand. The arrow on the right points to the conventional hour hand.  If you look closely at the inverted diamond at 12:00, you can see the bezel is slightly off.

So what is a GMT watch?  Basically, it is a watch that allows you to tell time in three time zones.   If you wanted to, one of the time zones could be Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), which is the time at the Greenwich Observatory in England.  Most of the time, I could care less what the time is in England, but that’s where the GMT descriptor originates.

Today, there are multiple approaches for time telling in different time zones, but the classic approach (and one followed by the Rolex and Seiko watches in this blog) is through the use of a third hand and a bezel with 24-hour numbering.  The way it works is this:

      • The standard hour and minute hands tell the local time.
      • The third hand can be shifted to tell the time in a different time zone.
      • The bezel can be rotated to tell the time in a third time zone.

There are variations on the above (like switching local time with destination time, etc.).  All of this may sound like a solution looking for a problem, but trust on this, when you travel to different time zones, it’s a very useful feature.

The Rolex GMT allows you to “step” the hour in one-hour increments by use of the winding knob when the knob is partially pulled out (some folks say this makes the Rolex a “true” GMT).  On the Seiko, it doesn’t have the “step” function; use of the winding knob advances either the third hand or the conventional hour hand without the one-hour clicks (depending on which click you bring the stem out to).   To me, either approach is acceptable.

The Rolex GMT Master II retails today for $14,050; the Seiko goes for $475.  There’s a lot more to the pricing story, though.  Prices on a Rolex are all over the map, and Rolexes sell for well above their suggested retail price.  Some, even used, sell for three or four times their suggested retail price.  I don’t know what my Rolex would sell for today as a used watch, and I’m not really interested because it’s not for sale.  The Rolex will eventually go to one of my grandsons.  I paid $3287 for it new in that Washington, D.C. jewelry store in 1986.  I could easily get my money out of it if I wanted to, but like I said, that’s not going to happen.

An all stainless (i.e., non-two-tone) Seiko GMT. These go for $317 on Amazon. It’s a good-looking watch.

Staying on pricing for a minute, the two-tone Seiko GMT is a relatively new model, so I couldn’t find it discounted on Amazon.  If the two-tone coloring is not important to you, you can get the all-stainless version on Amazon for $317, which is a smoking deal (it’s $158 less expensive than the two-tone version).

My Seiko GMT was an impulse buy.  Sue and I went out for lunch and there was a small watch shop a couple of doors down.  They had the two-tone model, which I had not seen before other than in online watch forums and Seiko’s website (I was in Tokyo last year, and I didn’t even see it there).  I asked the shop about a veteran’s discount, the guy said “you bet,” and mine set me back $402.  I like supporting local businesses, I like doing business with shops that offer a veteran’s discount, and I liked being able to see the watch in person before I pulled the trigger.

My Rolex runs fast, gaining about a minute a week.  That’s adjustable and would no doubt be corrected if I took the watch in for service, but I’m probably not going to do that.  I’ve had the Rolex serviced twice.  The last time was 25 years ago at the Rolex service center in Beverly Hills (where else could it possibly be?).  Rolex clipped me $1000 for the service.  I wasn’t happy at all.  After the servicing, the numbers on the click-detented bezel were offset from where they should have been, and when I bitched about that, they remounted the bezel.  It was better, but it is still offset a bit.  Within six months of that service (which included replacing the crystal), I noticed a gouge on the crystal.  I had worn the Rolex for 10 years before that and never had a scratch on the original crystal, so I have to wonder if I really received the sapphire crystal I paid for.  A servicing today will probably be about $1500 if I get the crystal replaced and the bezel numbers remounted.  It’s not likely I’ll spring for that.  Maybe I will.  I don’t know.  It’s something I think about now and then, but then I think about getting out on the range with a milsurp rifle or riding my motorcycle and I forget about it.  So far, the Seiko is keeping perfect time.  I’ll let you know if that changes.

The Seiko is a new watch, so I haven’t had it serviced yet.  Poking around a bit revealed that a typical mechanical watch servicing costs from $200 to $250. I think my local guy would probably be less than that.  It’s quite a bit lower than what a Rolex service costs.

Both the Seiko and the Rolex are automatics.  That means they are mechanical, selfwinding timepieces.  The good news is there are no batteries, and it doesn’t matter if I stay out in the sun long enough to charge the solar power source.  The bad news is that if I don’t wear an automatic watch for a few days, it stops.  When that happens, prior to the next time I wear it I need to wind it and set the time.  The Seiko, fully wound, has a 41-hour power reserve.  The Rolex has a 70-hour power reserve.  Rolex gets the nod here.

Regarding cosmetics, the “gold” bezel on the Seiko isn’t really gold; it’s plated.  The accents on the Seiko hands and the watchface are similarly gold colored (i.e., they are not real gold).  The Seiko’s jubilee bracelet links center areas are left a natural stainless steel finish.  On the Rolex, they are gold.  Another thing to note:  On any Rolex, wherever you see something gold, it’s real gold.  Nothing is plated on a Rolex.  The bezel, the watchface accents, the hands, the winder, and the jubilee bracelet are all solid gold.  Both watches look great, in my opinion.  The real gold obviously drives the cost of Rolex higher than a Seiko, but not enough to explain the $14,000 (or more) difference.  Most of the price difference is prestige pricing (Rolex gets away with it because some folks think they need such a thing).  I used to be one of them.  I’m not anymore.

About that jubilee bracelet:  What they refers to are the smaller links in the watchband’s center section.   Non-jubilee watches have bigger, single links instead of the jubilee bracelet’s three smaller links.  To me, the jubilee bracelet makes a real comfort difference.  The non-jubilee bracelet just doesn’t feel as good.

The Seiko is a much thicker case, and it sits higher on the wrist.  It’s enough to be noticeable.  The Rolex is thinner and I like the feel of it better for that reason.

Note the increased case thickness of the Seiko (on the right) compared to the downright thin Rolex. Rolex gets the nod here.

The Seiko’s stem winder is a push in/pull out affair.  The Rolex stem winder unscrews, which theoretically makes it more waterproof.   I don’t wear my watch in the shower any more (ever since I ruined a G-Shock by doing so), so the difference is meaningless to me.

One last area I’ll touch on is the clasp design.  Hands down (pardon the pun) the win here goes to Seiko.  The Seiko’s clasp has three retaining features compared to the Rolex clasp.  The fear, of course, is that the watch clasp comes undone and the watch slips off the wrist.  It could be damaged by a fall onto, say, concrete, or worse, go unnoticed.  The other fear is pickpockets.  I don’t know how difficult it would be for a pickpocket to lift your watch.  I once had a guy (a magician) remove a watch I was wearing without me noticing it.  That watch had a leather band and I later learned there’s a trick to it.  I don’t know if there’s a comparable trick for a metal bracelet, but if there is, I would think the Rolex would be more susceptible to such a thing.

The Seiko (on the left) clasp has three retaining features; the Rolex (on the right) has only one (which is a small dimensional difference between the outer clasp and the mating pin on the inner clasp). The Seiko design is better.

The bottom line to me is that the Seiko is a hell of a deal for under $500, and if you are looking for a watch that offers all the advantages of a GMT and is dressy, the Seiko is a good buy.  I own both, and I think Seiko hit a home run here.

There are other approaches to a GMT watch.  Citizen has a different dual time approach with their Nighthawk and Blue Angels models.  Many digital watches (some identified as GMT watches and some not) can display the time in different time zones at the touch of a button.  Casio has several cool models that do this.  The Citizen and the Casio watches are reviewed on our Product Reviews page.

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The Wayback Machine: Riding in High Temps

By Joe Berk

With the temps hitting over 100 degrees out here, I thought it might be a good idea to rerun a blog we ran a few years ago.  Let’s stay cool out here, folks!

I visited Chiriaco Summit and the Patton Museum last week (we’ll have a blog on it soon) and it was awesome.  But wow, was it ever hot.  As in 111 degrees when we left, and that’s not an unusually warm day out there in the Sonoran Desert.  The next town over is called Thermal, and a little further north there’s this place called Death Valley.  Death Valley recorded a whopping 131 degrees three weeks ago.  Sensing a pattern?

Looks like the Mojave, doesn’t it? Nope. That’s Joe Gresh in the Gobi Desert. Gresh and I rode across it after coming down off the Tibetan Plateau. It was a bit warm out there.

Yeah, it gets warm in these parts, and in other parts of the world as well.  Hot weather is not ideal riding weather, to say the least, but sometimes we find ourselves riding in shake and bake conditions. I’ve done it. I rode a 150cc scooter all the way down to Cabo and back in Baja’s hottest month of the year (September, when it was well over a hundred degrees every day).  It was humid down there, too, once we crossed over to the Sea of Cortez side of the peninsula.  We were literally entering the tropics as we crossed the Tropic of Cancer.  Whoa, that was rough riding!

Simon Gandolfi, suspenders flying in the breeze, riding my Mustang replica bike south of the Tropic of Cancer in Baja California Sur. It was one of the hottest rides I ever experienced.

When we did the Western America Adventure Ride with CSC and the guys from Zongshen, we rode through the same corridors described earlier above, riding across California and the Mojave Desert, through Joshua Tree, and on into Arizona with temps approaching 110 degrees.  That was brutal riding.

King Kong and Mr. Zuo in Joshua Tree National Park. That was another brutally hot day.  Higher higher temps were still in front of us when we later rolled through Amboy, California. This picture became the cover photo for 5000 Miles At 8000 RPM.  You should buy a copy or three (they make great gifts).

The ride across China that Joe Gresh and I did had similar challenges.  It started out hot, then it got cold as we rode into the Tibetan Plateau, and then it became brutally hot and humid as we descended into central China and rode east to Qingdao.  That was a 38-day ride, and I’d guess it was well over 100 degrees for at least 30 of those 38 days.

The risk, of course, is heat stroke, and it’s often not the kind of thing you can feel coming on.   You’ll think you’re okay one minute, and the next you’re waking up in an emergency room wondering what happened.  If you start to feel a headache while riding in hot weather, you are already perilously close to heat stroke.  You need to stop, drink copious amounts of water, and get some shade.   The better approach, though, is to not let yourself get anywhere near that condition, and that’s what this article is all about.

It almost seems like heresy to say it, but my first bit of advice about riding in hot weather is:  Don’t.  Given the choice, postpone the ride.  But let’s assume that this is not an option, as was the case for each of the rides mentioned above.  Okay, then…here’s my guidance on the topic.

12 Hot Weather Riding Tips

One: Don’t ride naked.  I’m not trying to be funny here, and I’m not implying you might be the kind of person who would go down the road wearing nothing at all (although there is that story about Gresh riding around with only a bathrobe).  Nope, what I’m talking about is not shucking your safety gear.  You have to wear it.  All of it.  ATGATT.  All the gear, all the time.  You can’t peel it off just because it’s hot.  It’s saved my life.

My Viking Cycles mesh jacket and the mighty Enfield.

Two: Wear a good mesh jacket.   These are available from several sources.  I have a Viking Cycles jacket I’m wearing these days and it works well.  I wore a Joe Rocket mesh jacket on the ride across China and it made a big difference.  You can get them from Viking Cycles, CSC Motorcycles, British Motorcycle Gear, and other sources.  Trust me on this…you need a ventilated jacket for riding in hot weather.  EDIT:  We’re getting interesting comments advising not wearing a mesh jacket in hot weather.  Make sure you read the comments below, and for those of you who responded, thanks very much!

Three: Use a cooling vest.  These things actually work, but they’re not as easy to use as it sounds.  They don’t work for long, but they work.  The idea is you soak them, and then wear them under a jacket.  The airflow causes the water in the vest to evaporate and that cools the vest and you.  I’ve found that on really hot days these vests need to be remoistened about every thirty minutes, but you should be stopping that often anyway (more on that later).  It’s the remoistening part that I don’t like.  It seems like they take forever to soak up water when you remoisten them.  I’ve found it easer to just get my clothes wet (see the next point below).

Four: Go soak your head (and everything else).  Don’t laugh; I’ve done this.  On the Baja ride I mentioned above, it was so unbearably hot that we took to pouring water down the inside of our riding jackets and inside our helmets at every stop.  We became rolling evaporative coolers.  It helped.

Five: Change your riding hours.  On the really hot days, I like to hit the road at 0:Dark:30.  Get out and get a hundred or so miles in before it gets unbearably hot.  You’d need good lighting on your bike to do this (I generally don’t like to ride at night, but I’ll make an exception when I know it’s going to be hot).   This is difficult to do when riding in a group because it’s hard to get everybody moving that early.  If it was just me and Gresh or Welker, we’d leave way early and get in a couple of hours of riding (or more) before the sun comes up.

We knew it was going to be brutally hot riding through Joshua Tree and the Mojave Desert, so we left just before sunup on the first day of the Western America Adventure Ride.

Six: Drink a lot of water.  The problem with riding in high temperatures is you don’t realize how much water you lose through perspiration.  My advice is to stop every 30 minutes and drink a bottled water.  Like I said above, most of us ain’t spring chickens, and you might be wondering if this means you’re going to be stopping a lot to pee.  Hey, it’s a common old guy problem, but it won’t be in hot weather.  Drink a lot of water; you’ll lose it through perspiration as you ride.

Seven: Avoid alcoholic beverages.  Alcohol will cause you to dehydrate more rapidly, and that’s the opposite of what we’re trying to do here.  You shouldn’t be consuming alcohol on a motorcycle ride anyway.  Drinking any kind of alcohol while riding in hot weather is just stupid.  Where I found you really have to watch this is when riding in a large group (there will be one or two riders who have to have that beer or two at lunch).

Beer is good, especially when it’s a Tecate at the Old Mill in Baja overlooking Bahia San Quintin. But save it for the end of the day, when the bikes are parked for the night.

Eight: Stop regularly to cool off.  Find a bit of shade or someplace air conditioned, and get off the bike to cool down.   When I ride in hot weather, I usually stop to cool off and rehydrate every 30 minutes or so.

Stopping to cool off at the Tropic of Cancer. Wow, it was hot and humid down there!  We were off standing in the shade, drinking bottled water.

Nine: Keep your tires at recommended pressures.  Another thing you definitely don’t want on a hot day is underinflated tires.  Tires flex with every rotation, and flexing causes the tires to heat.  Throw in high road surface temperatures with underinflated tires, and you’re flirting with a blowout.  This is especially important to remember if you’re one of those guys or gals who deflate their tires for dirt riding.  Don’t forget to pump them back up when you get back on the asphalt.

Ten: Don’t speed.  Tar melts on hot days, and melted tar is slick.  Factor that into your riding when it gets toasty.

A meal fit for a king, but not for lunch. You wouldn’t want to ride in hot weather immediately after this Baja seafood extravaganza.

Eleven: Eat light.  Don’t over indulge.  Heavy meals put a strain on your digestive system and your heart, and that can elevate your body temperature.  When I was involved in testing munitions out in the Mojave on hot days (where it was sometimes over 120 degrees), we always brought along melons for lunch and nothing else.  We didn’t need to keep them cool.  They were a great treat, they seemed to make it a little cooler on those horrifically hot days, and they help to keep you hydrated.  Good buddy Sergeant Zuo seemed to know all about that in China, too.  We were riding through Ledu in central China one ferociously hot day when our favorite Chinese NCO stopped the group, disappeared, and returned with a couple of watermelons.  That was a welcome respite and a marvelous treat.  We ate a lot of watermelon in China.

Gresh taking a break in Ledu, China. That’s the Yellow River (China’s Mother River) behind Uncle Joe.

Twelve:  Lighten up on the low sodium schtick.  A lot of us older guys try to watch our sodium intake.  When I was in the Army, they actually gave us salt tabs on really hot days when we were in the field, the theory being that we needed the sodium because we were losing so much through perspiration.  I later heard the Army reversed that practice, but the fact is you lose a lot of minerals through perspiration.  I don’t worry about my sodium intake when riding on hot days.

So there you have it.   You know, most folks who ride motorcycles these days…well, how can I say this delicately?  We aren’t spring chickens anymore.  Motorcycling tends to be a thing mostly enjoyed by full-figured senior citizens, and we have to take care of ourselves, especially when we venture out on hot days.

If you other ideas about hot weather riding, let us know in the Comments section.  We love hearing from you.

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The Sopranos: Paterson Falls

By Joe Berk

Another one of the stops on my New Jersey Sopranos tour was Paterson Falls.  Although only about 40 miles or so from where I grew up, I’d never been there.

I knew of the town, though.  It’s an old industrial village with waterfalls, which meant that in the early days of our country it was perfect for industrial development. The falls provided hydraulic power, and that could be used to drive machinery.  Indeed, it’s where Samuel Colt built his first run of revolvers, which are known (not surprisingly) as Paterson Colts.  Paterson was established as the nation’s first planned industrial city in 1792, with its readily-available hydraulic power and close proximity to New York City and the Atlantic Ocean.  Paterson manufactured silk cloth, steam locomotives, textiles, paper, firearms, and aircraft engines.    It is centered on the Passaic River, which flows into Newark Bay and from there to the Atlantic Ocean.

The Passaic Falls are contained within the Paterson Great Falls National Historic Park, which is (as the name implies) part of the U.S. National Park system.  All this was news to me, which is kind of amazing when you consider that I grew up a short 40 miles to the south.  I’d never known any of this, and to learn about it at my age was surprising.  I’ll give the credit for that to David Chase (the guy who created The Sopranos).  Had that show not sparked my interest, I’d still be ignorant.

So, let’s move on to the scene in The Sopranos that caught my attention.  It’s the episode in which Mikey Palmici (Uncle Junior’s driver and bodyguard) throws a drug dealer off the bridge over the Passaic Falls:

That episode you see above occurred later in The Sopranos.  There was another scene in the very first Sopranos episode on the same bridge shown above in which Hesh Rabkin and Big Pussy Bompensiero (two of The Sopranos characters) threaten to throw a health insurance company executive (a guy named Alex Mahaffey, played by Michael Gaston) off the same bridge if he didn’t cooperate with a Sopranos scam to defraud the insurance company.

When threatened with a swan dive off the bridge, Mahaffey gave in to the Soprano family’s demands, but alas, his Sopranos career was over; Michael Gaston never appeared in another episode.  But that didn’t mean Sue and I wouldn’t see him again.  In one of our trips to New Jersey, we rode the Air Trans shuttle between the airport and the rental car facility.  Just before we boarded the shuttle, Michael Gaston was leaving the car we entered.  We didn’t bug him, but we made eye contact and he knew we knew who he was.

Michael Gaston, an actor we bumped into on the Newark Airport Air Trans.

There’s a lot more to Paterson, though, then simply having been a location for a couple of The Sopranos scenes.  Here’s another video that describes Paterson’s history:

Today, Paterson is undergoing a renaissance, as the old factory buildings are being converted to loft apartments.  Yup, Paterson is being yuppified.  It looks like an interesting place to spend more time, but my schedule didn’t permit doing so on this visit.  For us it was roll into town, grab a few photos, and bail.

A view of Passaic Falls. This is a beautiful area.
The wood-surfaced foot bridge featured in two different Sopranos episodes.
Another view of the bridge. It’s closed to the public. On the Internet, it says it’s for safety reasons. One of my police buddies told me it’s because there were too many suicides from this bridge.
Another view of the Passaic River and its Falls in Paterson.
While we were visiting the Paterson Great Falls National Historic Park, this rather plump groundhog was doing the same. My Dad used to hunt these in New Jersey with his .243 Model 70 Winchester and the farmers loved having him do so. These woodchucks may look cute, but they destroy a lot of crops.

One thing I know for sure:   I’ll return to Paterson.  I’d like to explore the city, its museums, and more in greater detail.

Want to see our other visits to The Sopranos locations?  Here they are:

The Sopranos Mansion

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Koh Tao, Thailand

By Mike Huber

Having a new addiction to scuba diving, it didn’t take me long to learn that Koh Tao (an island in southern Thailand) was another mecca for my new hobby. Koh Tao wasn’t a very large island and I was a bit concerned I would succumb to island fever.  The big difference is now I would be spending much of my time underwater, thus making the island much larger and more exciting than previous islands I had visited.  This new hobby opened up a new world to me just as learning to off-road on the BMW GS1200 had done. They both were previously unexplored frontiers that drew me in and begged for more exploration after each experience.

Koh Tao isn’t exactly easy to travel to from anywhere as you need to fly or bus, and then take a 3-hour ferry out to the island.  This to me made it a great destination as I knew those that were there were far off the beaten path and would be well grounded (mentally, not geographically).  Although the island was touristy, it was small enough that it was easy to make friends quickly. Another draw to this isolated location was that almost anyone that was here long term had the same line “I came here to visit for two weeks and never left and that was X years ago.”  This clearly told me it was a great place to set up a home base for a while and improve on my diving skills.

Outside doing a short blast up to Cambodia and some rest time in Bangkok (yes, it is possible to rest in Bangkok), the past month has been spent in scuba classes (to include advanced diver and rescue diver certifications), fun dives, spending time on the beach, and really just taking a few moments to enjoy chatting with someone at a bar while being fully present in life. The laid back island vibe and hospitality was something that had been missing in my previous travels due to my constant moving.  Koh Tao is where I was learning to finally slow down and really embrace the moments without tripping myself up with the racing thoughts I previously had of “what’s next?”  This provided an important step into my new lifestyle.

The happiness of being in the moment with my focus on watching my dive log fatten and my circle of friends grow is all I need at this time.  As I wrap this article up while sitting at a beach bar with a cold Chang beer sweating next to my laptop, it has me thinking if one day I will tell others “Yeah, I just came here for two weeks but that was X years ago.”

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ExNotes Review: Doremi Kawasaki Z1 Body Set

By Joe Gresh

Zed has been dormant for a few years. The bike has a running issue that has eluded my best efforts to remedy. But this story isn’t about my mechanical incompetence. This story is about Zed’s gas tank.

Back in the Zed’s Not Dead series I cleaned the tank fairly well using the apple cider vinegar method. The cider/baking soda trick works well but Zed’s tank was looking a little crusty after sitting two years with alcohol laced fuel inside.

I decided to give the tank a second cider session. All went well and the tank was spotless inside. I installed the tank and filled it with fresh gas. Checking the tank for leaks revealed none so I closed up the shed and retired to dream big dreams of fun motorcycle rides to come.

The next morning when I opened the shed a strong odor of gasoline hit my nose. Fuel was everywhere under Zed. The right side tank bottom was soaking wet. Apparently only the paint was covering pinhole rust-through spots. After draining the remaining fuel I ran a wire brush over the bottom of the tank, which revealed a ton of tiny holes.

My initial plan, because I can’t let it go, was to cut out the bottom of the tank, fabricate a new sheet metal piece to fit and then braze the new bottom into the tank. It’s a good plan and it might have worked.

Instead, I went with Plan B: a new set of painted bodywork from Doremi (a Zed parts supplier out of Japan). Doremi is resold by several different companies in the US. I chose Cycles R Us, an eBay seller because they had the correct year and color in stock and their shipping was only $39. Prices for the body set are mostly the same (around $1500 with some outliers at $1700).

I know what you’re thinking: that’s a lot of money for a cheap bastard like me. It killed me to spend the money but used tanks are going for $500 and new, unpainted reproduction tanks are $400. Not to mention a professional paint job on my repaired stuff would probably exceed $1200.

One of the good things about the soaring value of Z1 Kawasaki’s is that you can spend money restoring them with a good chance of getting your investment back (minus your labor)

Enough of the rationalizations: let’s get into the product. Opening the well packaged box from Doremi was breathtaking. The paint is stunning. I cannot find a flaw anywhere and I don’t think the factory Kawasaki paint looked this good back when the bike was new on the showroom floor.

For 1975 Kawasaki’s Z1 had two color choices, a metallic aqua-blue that was pretty and my bike’s color, a dark burgundy that looks almost brown in low light. The color pops deep red metallic when a single photon from the sun strikes the paint surface. The stripes are perfectly applied and I cannot fault the quality of Doremi’s product.

My kit came with new tank badges and a new gas cap, some resellers break these parts out of the kit and sell them separately.

The tank badges are flat when you get them and require gentle bending by hand to fit the curvature of the gas tank. This is kind of a trial and error thing. I got the badges pretty close but they still need a little tweaking near the front. I stopped bending them mostly because I was worried about messing them up.

The gas cap comes loose in another bag. Putting the cap on was pretty easy once the roll pin was test fit into the tank.

The gas cap latch was a little harder to install. The instructions were oddly worded and there are some notches you are supposed to file into the underside of the latch. The photos aren’t super clear and I could find no reason to file notches so I ignored the instructions and did it the way I wanted.

The main issue with the gas cap latch is getting the little torsion spring inside the latch then holding it concentric while the pivot shaft is slid into place. The instructions recommended using a small, flat blade screwdriver, I tried that but it was fumbly and the spring never ended up in the correct location.

The method I settled on was to compress the torsion spring and capture the two ends with a small tube (the interior metal barrel of a wire crimp connector) once you have both ends of the spring under control it’s easy to insert the spring and line it up with the pivot shaft.

The latch’s pivot shaft is sort of a rivet. After it’s in place you have to peen over the end. This is a two-man job as you’ll need to hold a weight against the pivot head on one side while rolling the other end. I’ll get CT to help me with this step.

The new side covers arrived without badges so I used the original badges. The old badges were in fair condition but I suspect the reseller removed the new badges from the Doremi kit.

The new tail section was a bit fiddley in that the bolt holes didn’t quite line up perfectly like the original tail. You reuse the original Kawasaki grommets and spacers with the new tail. Maybe new grommets would be softer and have more give. It took a little aggressive tugging to get all four bolts lined up and in place. I imagine the plastic will take a set in its new position and future fitting will be easier.

Zed’s original paint was in horrible condition, the bike had sat outside for an indeterminate length of time. Talk about patina. I cleaned up the old paint as much as I could but it was tatty and dead. The Doremi body kit transformed the bike: it looks like a new, 1975 Kawasaki Z1-B. The bike is beautiful in the sunlight with the perfectly smooth surfaces changing color as you move about. Damn, this bike looks good.

Is the Doremi body set worth $1500? If your old stuff is rusted, yes. Even if your old stuff is in good shape you’d be hard pressed to find a painter who could lay down a beautiful job like Doremi for $1500. It’s like you’re paying for a paint job and the bodywork is free!

I recommend the Doremi highly. If we had a rating system at exhaustnotes it would get top marks. If you want your Z1 to look like a new bike get the Doremi.

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Indonesia: Part 4

By Mike Huber

It was a relief to be back on the boat and done diving for the day.  My anxiety level was still pretty high having run out of air 10 meters below the ocean’s surface on my second dive.  Nonetheless, I registered to dive the following day.  There was a sense of relief knowing that I would have the same diving partner.  He understood the emotions going through my head and he would be right at my side to help me through the next dive.

The remainder of the boat ride back to the dock consisted of me pulling sea urchin spines out from everywhere on my body with needle-nosed pliers. That’s one way to pass the time. The spines under my fingernail would need to be pulled out by a doctor at a medical clinic somewhere in Flores.  My biggest concern was that it might become infected. The closest clinic was a few kilometers outside of town so I would have to taxi to get there.

Then, upon disembarking from the boat I looked up and saw an Indonesian Naval Base.   Right behind the gate was a giant red cross. I decided to give it a try, not expecting any success.  The Military Police stopped me instantly ,asking what I was doing.  I showed them my finger and pointed to the red cross behind them.  They invited me in and within 5 minutes I had an Indonesian Naval Officer using a razor blade to pull the pines out from under my fingernail.  After about 45 minutes of him carefully removing all the spines, he gave me some antibiotics, he only charged me about $12 (US), and he sent me on my way.  During the whole ordeal he and I were chatting quite a bit over our past military experience and we even exchanged phone numbers.  We trade texts every few weeks.

With the sea urchin spines removed, the next day came and it was time to get over my anxiety from the previous dive. The first dive of the day proved to be challenging and my only motivation was to just survive it.  I wasn’t too concerned with the enjoyment or the wildlife. Fortunately, by the second dive I had regained my confidence and was back to enjoying this hobby again.  Swimming by seven manta rays changed my mind and helped me reprioritize my goals.

My 30-day Indonesian visa was nearing expiration.  Indonesia has around 7,000 islands and was much too large to cover in 30 days.  Even having experienced 10 of the islands felt rushed.  I knew I would need to slow my travel to more deeply absorb these countries. Having done SCUBA dives in two countries, racking up 19 dives, and overcoming adversity provided renewed confidence.  I was ready for the next country: Thailand.

Inbound!

By Joe Berk

We’ve got a bunch of good stuff coming your way, my friends.  I just finished a whirlwind week in New Jersey, we hit some of the Sopranos film locations, I grabbed a bunch of very cool Norton P11 photos, we saw where Bruce Springsteen was setting up for a concert in Asbury Park, I have a review on the new Garmin chronograph about to go live, Mike Huber (aka Mike Nelson) is down there in Indonesia and Thailand becoming one with the sea turtles, I’ve got a review on Ruger Customer Service and my revamped .357 Bisley, Joe Gresh has his Z1 Kawi all dressed up with lots of new places to go, and lots, lots more.

Andrew Capone, Isle of Man impresario and British Motocycle Gear CEO, with an unknown paparazzi reflected in a Norton Scrambler fender at an undisclosed location in New Jersey.
All dressed up with lots of places to go…Joe Gresh and the Z1…the gift that keeps on giving!
How fast is fast? Stay tuned, and we’ll tell you!
Scuba Southeast Asia with Mike Huber!
Bisley mania! Plinking at 100 yards with a handgun? You bet!
Andrew, Harry (aka “the Norton Whisperer”), and what is unquestionably one of the most beautiful motorcycles ever made!
There’s ink, and then there’s Sopranos ink. Oh, do we have a story for you!

You know, we blew right by 1500 blogs some time ago, and I started to wonder if we were going to run out of things to write about.  Nope.  Not gonna happen.  It’s like when one of my geezer buddies told me he didn’t know what to say at a lunch gathering, and another of my geezer friends told him, “Don’t worry…you’ll keep talking until you think of something.”

Stay tuned, my Amigos…

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Indonesia: Part 3

By Mike Huber

Having found myself in Flores, Indonesia (one of the scuba diving meccas of Southeast Asia) I took it upon myself to dive as much as I could.  On my second dive of the first day I saw some manta rays up close and personal and I managed to get a lot of sea urchin spines under my fingernails, hands, and pretty much everywhere. I was bleeding green as I was deep enough underwater that colors would change, and it looked like I had been rolling around in some saguaro cactus or been on the losing side of a fight with a porcupine. I had spines sticking out from every part of my wetsuit.

This was part of the adventure and part of the learning.  What I didn’t expect was upon our ascent my air ran out, even though moments earlier I had checked and confirmed I was at about 25%. This was another “So this is how it ends” moment.  There wasn’t much time to think about that as I was not prepared for running out of air.  I figured I just had moments before I would black out due to no oxygen.  Being about 10 meters deep I knew I could have just surfaced quickly to get air and many people probably would have done that.  Well, just as in jumping out of airplanes, you train for these type of scenarios.  Also, the approach is to take your time as you have the rest of your life to resolve the no air issues, just as you would with a parachute malfunction.  The problem with that mindset is that the end of your life is only seconds away.

Fortunately, my dive partner was only a short swim away.  I swam over to him as quickly as possible, signaled him I had no air, and calmly (I was actually panicking by this point) grabbed his secondary air hose, and took a much-needed breath in.

That first breath in was a relief on every level you can possibly imagine.  We then performed our 3-minute safety stop off using both of his air supplies before we surfaced. Even with my fingers still bleeding from the sea urchin spines and having run out of air, I managed to make a couple jokes as we swam back to the safety of the boat.  This is where we learned that my regulator was faulty and provided a false reading on the amount of air remaining.  That was a bit of a relief that it wasn’t some rookie mistake by me.

The joking ended on my next dive that day.  As soon as I hit the water I had some massive anxiety about the no air issues and going under.  It was so intense that everyone on the team had already submerged and I was just sitting there on the surface having fear to let the air out of my BCD to sink and join the rest.

After a few moments, it passed and I did join them.  I don’t think I have ever swam as close to a dive partner as I did on that dive.  My air barely lasted 32 minutes as my stress and anxiety were causing me to breathe faster, using up my air rather quickly.  This was fine with me, as I really had no interest in staying underwater.

Once back on the boat, I was seriously thinking that scuba diving wasn’t for me and would bow out of it using one excuse or another.  The lack of air experience was that traumatizing.  I began to think back to the Army and our jumps.  Whenever someone had a bad jump the best thing to overcome it was to put them on the very next jump ton regain their confidence so they could continue to be effective.  Since diving and jumping had so many parallels, I thought this would be the best way.  I booked three more dives the next day with the mindset if I didn’t overcome it I would quit diving.  I owed it to myself to give it one more try.

More epic adventures are here!

Tony Soprano’s Home

By Joe Berk

The scenes and the locations are iconic, and I take pride in recognizing every one of them in The Sopranos opening credits.  The music, the New Jersey Turnpike toll booth, the aged industrial locations, Pizzaland, and motoring up that long driveway at 14 Aspen Drive in North Caldwell, New Jersey. Today’s topic is the home you see at the beginning of every episode in what is unquestionably the best television series that ever aired.

I had originally seen the series sometime after it first ran on HBO.  I didn’t at first recognize how wonderful the show was and how it would come to be known throughout the world.  It was so good that many people think Tony Soprano is real.  I was in Scotland for a consulting gig when my driver, an elderly gentleman, recognized my American accent but told me I didn’t sound “like California.”

“I’m originally from New Jersey,” I explained.

My driver grew silent.  He was thinking.  Finally, the Question:  “Do you know Tony Soprano?”  He was dead serious.  We were in Glasgow on a motorway taking me to my destination, and here was this Scot asking me about a fictional character.  One who obviously seemed all too real to anyone who watched the show.

“I never actually met the man,” I truthfully answered, “But I know people who knew him.”

What I told the driver was true, sort of.  James Gandolfini, one of Tony’s many aliases, was a Jersey boy like me.  He graduated from my alma mater, Rutgers University. I could identify with The Sopranos and its New Jersey setting.  I knew people who spoke with the same accent and who most likely knew the DeCavalcante crime family (the real-world gangsters The Sopranos modeled).   Hell, I speak with the same accent, and that old Scot picked up on it in Glasgow.  Did I know Tony?  Hey, I could name names, but I don’t want to sleep with the fish.  I’m no rat.

On a recent trip, I thought it might be fun to Waze my way to a few of The Sopranos locations.  The list was long, as the show was mostly shot in New Jersey (as were most of the guys and a couple of gals who fell from Tony’s favor).  The first location I would visit, of course, had to be Tony and Carmela’s mansion. Waze knew the way.  The Garden State Parkway took me there, and that seemed fitting.

When we arrived, the cul-de-sac was way smaller than it had appeared each morning when a bathrobe-clad Tony waddled down the driveway to pick up his Newark Star Ledger (a paper I used to read, by the way). I couldn’t see too much of the mansion, the result of 25 years of landscaping doing what landscaping does. The trees and bushes had grown to obscure the view from the street.  It’s what Tony (or any organized crime figure) would have wanted.  Best to keep a low profile, free from Agent Harris’s probing eyes.

When a guy like Tony Soprano posts a sign like this, I pay attention. Nah, not really. What’s he gonna do? Coincidentally, we had that same mailbox in front of our house for years. It leaked and we grew tired of wet mail.

There it was, tucked away behind the vegetation, most definitely the mansion featured in so many episodes and, as mentioned above, in the opening at the start of every episode.  Even though the current occupants obviously discouraged visitors, we still took our chances.  As I was snapping photos midmorning on this New Jersey weekday, others appeared and did the same.  Some of them might have been FBI agents.  The fans of fame kept the flame burning bright, almost three decades after the music and the scenes first appeared.  Note to self:  Make the next visit in the dead of winter when the trees are bare, and do so late in the afternoon when the sun is in a better position.  The lighting was not good when I gathered this evidence; a good lawyer could get the photos thrown out in court (a junior G-Man I’m not).

14 Aspen Drive. If you listen carefully, you can hear Carmela bitching.

The sign’s admonitions notwithstanding, I looked around and started working the Nikon’s shutter (I’m not gonna lay down for some mailbox sign).  The neighborhood was befitting a kingpin like Tony Soprano.  The home on the other side of the cul-de-sac was better lit by the sun’s mid-morning rays, so I had to shoot it, too.  Collateral damage; couldn’t be helped.  An impressive zip code, to be sure.

A home across the street from Tony’s place. This is an exclusive neighborhood.

I liked The Sopranos television series then and I like it now.  I watch The Sopranos episodes on my cellphone (it’s running on Max) when I’m working out.  I get through an episode or so each time I visit the gym.  I’ve been through the entire series four times (and I’m into Season 5 for the fifth time now).  I started binge watching The Sopranos 18 pounds ago.  The Sopranos have been very good to me, my waistline, my cholesterol, and my A1C.  I need to buy a new belt, and Tony is the guy who made that happen.

So what’s next?  Paterson Falls, my friend.  It’s where Mikey Palmici threw a drug dealer off the bridge.  Stay tuned if you know what’s good for you.

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Indonesia: Part 2

By Mike Huber

It took about a week to get to Flores, Indonesia from Bali, as it is over 1,000 kilometers away. This was accomplished via three ferries and finally, a 4-day cruise.  The cruise was a blast, but once aboard I realized it was a one-way cruise and I would have to find a ferry back (which could take up to 36 hours) or book a return flight to Bali.  Normally this would alarm most people, but I had time to kill and quickly learned Flores was an Indonesian scuba diving mecca.  Some of the most beautiful wildlife could be seen diving here.  This was not a bad place to have a several-day layover.

It didn’t take long to find a scuba company.  It had only been a few days since my prior dive and I was already itching to get back underwater. I chose a dive center based on its three-dives-in-one-day regimen. Most the other dive centers only offered two dives in one day.  This would help rack up my dive numbers (and my experience, as I would soon learn).

Diving the Komodo Islands is just amazing on so many levels.  The biggest draw is the wildlife.  The second draw is the strength of the underwater currents.  On an average dive we would float with the current for close to an hour and travel several kilometers during the dive. The current was a constant underwater river that was at times overwhelming, depending on the direction it was taking you.

If you got caught in a side current it would feel like you were on the Space Station and someone just cut your tether and you were floating off into nothingness.  Feelings of anxiety emerged when this happened, and this caused me to go through more of my air and shorten my dive.  It was always important to remain calm, move slowly, and not over-react.  That’s easier said than done.

The cool part about these currents is when I was in a “controlled” area I could just watch the beautiful corals go by.  The downside was if I saw a turtle or another cool species of wildlife, I really couldn’t get to it as I was swept along with the current.  We were told, if possible, to get low to the ocean floor and grab a large rock as an anchor so we could enjoy the wildlife.

I took this rock grabbing suggestion as I happened upon three beautiful manta rays. They were huge, about 12 feet in width. While blowing by them in the current it was like they were in an underwater thermal hovering in place motionless unaffected by the strong currents. It was like watching a stealth fighter Jet hover. Meanwhile I was doing my best to slow down to try to remain close to them. As I descended to the ocean floor seeking refuge from the currents behind a large piece of coral, I grabbed a rock.   I instantly felt something sharp on my fingers.  I had accidently grabbed a sea urchin and the spines were in all my fingers to include deep under my fingernail. Almost instantly a large gushing of green fluid began pouring out of my fingers.  This is when I learned you bleed green when you are deep under water.

Realizing there was nothing I could do about the bleeding until I surfaced, my focus was on watching the manta rays flying by as the current pulled me just underneath them.  During this time, I religiously checked my air levels on my respirator.  Once I hit 60 bar (25%) it would be time to slowly return to the surface.

We began our ascent to a 3-minute safety stop at 5 meters below the surface to allow our bodies to adjust to the pressure.  At around 10 meters and still being abused by the strong currents I went to breathe in and there was nothing there. It was as though I was breathing through a straw and then suddenly someone put their finger over the end.  I was out of air. This was a good time to see how much of the training I actually retained and how much of I ignored while being distracted by the beautiful scuba instructor in Australia.

More epic adventures are here!