Feel Good Stuff – Page 2 – The ExhaustNotes Blog

The Wayback Machine: CHiPs!

By Joe Berk

In the 1960s and 70s, you couldn’t turn on a TV and flip through the channels without encountering a cop show. Hawaii Five O, Kojak, and more. TV series had shifted from westerns to police drama, and TV was what many of us did in the evening. Basically, we watched what the entertainment industry brainwashed us into watching. It’s no small wonder a lot of guys my age wanted to be cops when they grew up. Rick Rosner (a TV producer and one of the certifiably-smartest guys on the planet…Google him and you’ll see) was also an LA County Reserve Sheriff’s deputy. One night while on duty during a coffee break (a donut may have been involved), he saw two CHP motor officers roll by. That’s how and where the idea for CHiPs was born: Motorcycles. Southern California. Police. All the right pieces fell into place.

I had just returned from a year overseas (where I enjoyed nonstop good times during a 13-month party, courtesy of Uncle Sam) when CHiPs first aired in 1977. It was hokey…the music, the scenes, the premise of nearly every episode, but it was motorcycles, and I never missed an episode. The series ran for five or six years, and it featured two main characters: Ponch Poncharello (played by Eric Estrada) and Jon (played by Larry Wilcox). Their sergeant, Joe Getraer (played by Robert Pine) was also a regular on the show.

Guys like Gresh and me know that running a Z-1 Kawasaki through soft sand, up and down stairs, and other motoshenanigans doesn’t make a lot of sense (EDIT: Maybe I’m wrong about this…see the video at the end of this blog). But we’re mere mortals. Ponch and Jon made the big Kawis behave in every episode. It was all part of the story, and it was all set in and around Los Angeles. That’s one of the reasons, I think, many of my early experiences in So Cal were like deja vu all over again when I moved here. I’d seen all these places in CHiPs before I left Texas and came to California: Angeles Crest Highway, Malibu, downtown LA, the Pacific Coast Highway…the locations and the motorcycle scenes were burned into my brain.

Susie was putzing around on Facebook the other day when she found a local community bulletin board that said the CHiPs stars would be here for autographs and photos. Did I want to go? Hell, yeah!

Larry Wilcox, aka Jon Baker, signing a photo for me. He seemed like a genuine nice guy. In real life, Wilcox was a Marine in Vietnam who served in an artillery unit. Wilcox is a year or two older than me.

The CHiPs show had a motor sergeant (Sergeant Joe Getraer) who was played by Robert Pine. Pine was there as well, and he was happy to pose for a photograph. Mr. Pine is 80 years old now.

Sergeant Joe Getraer, played by Robert Pine, who had a full time job keeping Ponch and Jon in line. Pine, like Estrada and Wilcox, had a welcoming personality. It was a fun day.

Erik Estrada was a central character in the show, the one who was always in some kind of trouble with Sergeant Getraer. Ponch (his nickname, as in Ponch Poncharello) and Jon no doubt influenced a lot of guys to apply for jobs in the real California Highway Patrol. The real California Highway Patrol had a real motor officer and a real CHP BMW at this event, along with a couple of patrol cars.

Susie and Erik Estrada. All three of the CHiPs stars allowed everyone to take as many photos as they wanted. There’s nothing pretentious about these guys.

There were a lot of things I enjoyed about this event. We had to wait in line to get up to the table for autographs, but the wait wasn’t too bad and the event wasn’t rushed at all. The weather was nice and it was a fun way to spend a Saturday morning. Pine, Wilcox, and Estrada chatted with everybody, and Mr. Estrada walked the length of the line several times apologizing for the wait and telling us they were going as fast as they could. There were a few people in line who were disabled, and Ponch helped them maneuver up to the picture-posing area (he was very friendly). All three of the TV CHiPs seemed to have the same personalities as the characters they played 50 years ago, with Estrada being the most mischievous (and, where the ladies were involved, the most flirtatious).

I asked Estrada if he still rode and what kind of motorcycle he had. It was a topic he wanted to talk about. “Ponch” told me he sold his Harley Softail 20 years ago, and that he now owned one of the six Kawasaki police motors used on the show. “The Teamsters gave it to me,” he said. I thought that was pretty cool.

The other stars in the show were southern California, the California Highway Patrol, and the Kawasaki Police 1000 motorcycle. I imagine CHiPs did a lot for CHP recruitment, and the Kawasaki police motorcycles did a lot for Kawasaki (in both the police and civilian markets). It was a brilliant bit of product placement before product placement became a thing, and it led to a nearly complete bifurcation of the police motorcycle market. Departments east of the Mississippi River stuck with Harley-Davidson, and departments west of the Mississippi went with Kawasaki (although that has changed in recent years). If you are wondering how I know that, I did a fair amount of research for The Complete Book of Police and Military Motorcycles when I wrote it 20 years ago.

The Complete Book of Police and Military Motorcycles is back in print and you can purchase a copy for a low, low $9.95.

Whoa…check this out…it just happened yesterday right here in LA. Who’d a thought? The CHP on full dress Harleys chasing down a guy on a Kawasaki KLR 650, and staying with him on the freeways, splitting lanes, on surface streets, and off road. These are CHiPs legends being created as this blog was being written!

Whatever the two CHP officers’ names are, you can bet they’re being called Ponch and Jon now!

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Tokyo Road: Part 3

By Mike Huber

I slowly awoke to a sunny Tokyo October morning. It obviously took me a bit to realize it was sunny as I was inside a windowless pod. Once I was out and about into the busy streets of Tokyo, I could actually embrace the sun’s warmth. It was time to enjoy a coffee and ensure my head was clear from the previous night’s adventure in Akihabara. Today was the day I was to begin an 8-day motorcycle adventure through Japan.

The caffeine kicked in as I boarded the Tokyo train to Rental819 in Odaiba, where I had reserved a motorcycle 2 weeks prior. Throughout my world travels I have found renting a smaller displacement on a motorcycle when outside the United States is the way to go. The larger heavier bikes just can’t compete in terms of agility in most other countries. For Japan I chose a displacement more in the middle as there are expansive highways in Japan where having some more pick up would be required. A Suzuki V-Strom 500cc would be my chosen steed for this journey through the land of the rising sun.

You never realize the expansiveness and density of Tokyo until you motorcycle through it. I was familiar with driving on the left side of the road as I have been flip flopping directional driving over the past 2 years month to month and country to country. With this level of comfort, I could fully absorb the awesomeness and size of Tokyo in its entirety. With no highway speed cameras it didn’t take long before I was out of the city and on my way towards Mount Fuji, but before that there was one place I wanted to experience.

I was on the outskirts of the Aokigahara Forest as mist and clouds began to surround me while the trees grew denser. This forest is also known as the suicide forest. This location is one of the most used places for suicides on earth. I parked the motorcycle next to a small sedan and decided to do a short hike to stretch out from the 3-hour ride. As I began hiking it hit me that maybe that sedan belonged to someone that came here with a purpose. The atmosphere was already very heavy and not wanting to see a body swinging from a tree I opted to end the hike and briskly return to the motorcycle and leave the forest.

A downside of riding this time of year in Japan was that Mount Fuji was hidden behind a wall of clouds. It reminded me of my home from a previous life near Mount Rainier, which would only show its ghostly glowing during the summer months. It seemed as though today would not be the day I would get my first glimpse of Mount Fuji, so as the sun began to dip into the clouds I opted to find a hotel for the evening, have dinner and prepare a direction for tomorrow’s adventure.

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Aldo: An ExNotes Renaissance Man

By Joe Berk

Last year I started a Facebook group focused on Uberti firearms (and that’s the name I gave it). I saw a note on Facebook that if you didn’t see a group you wanted, you could create your own group, and I did. I created the group because I’ll sometimes post firearms-related blogs there. It was trivially easy to do, and within weeks, membership had grown to 13,500 members. I like Uberti guns, I’ve written about them before here on ExNotes, and it just sort of seemed like a good thing to do.

Last week, a fellow named Aldo Venturini posted some intriguing pictures of cap and ball revolvers he had engraved, along with a few knives he had made. One thing led to another, and with the help from Translate.Google.com we had an interesting conversation. Here’s what Aldo told me:

I’m a passionate engraver. I’ve been engraving for 15 years. I’m experienced in various engraving techniques. I also work with leather, which allows me to make sheaths for both the guns I engrave and the knives. With engraving, I do what inspires me…I don’t have any established subjects.

I’m a lover of weapons as objects and believe that weapons are the best canvas for engraving.

For variety, I make knives, mainly Bowie knives. I own a fair number of my own.

All work is done in-house by hand. The knives are made entirely, complete with sheaths. The Colt sheaths are also handmade. For my personal satisfaction…I do engravings upon request, after agreeing on the work and cost. I don’t do it for the money.

I’m self-taught, and I learned because I wanted to engrave my motorcycle the way I liked it. Then, once I finished, I continued with other engravings. I have 10 motorcycles….😄I’ll give you one that’s a bison…1700 cc twin-cylinder.

I’ll be 80 this year. I have no problems and can still afford to ride my 10 motorcycles (all large-displacement bikes). I’m also an inventor…with several patents filed, including one in the United States in the medical field. Check my name. Others are filed in the European Patent Office in Munich.

I asked Aldo if I could post some of his photos here on the ExNotes blog and he said okay. This is beautiful work and I’m happy to share it with you. First, a few of the guns and their holsters…

Next are a few of Aldo’s knives…

And here are photos of some of Aldo’s motorcycles…

Aldo is an interesting man. I wish he lived closer than Torino (in Italy). He’d fit right in with the ExhaustNotes crowd.

Aldo, grazie mille per aver condiviso la tua arte con noi. Guida con prudenza e restiamo in contatto, amico mio!

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Antoni Gaudí

By Joe Berk

About two years ago Sue and I visited Spain and Portugal. I posted more than a few blogs during that trip, but not enough on Antoni Gaudí. Gaudí was a Spanish architect who lived from 1852 to 1926. He was clearly a genius. I wish I had known more about him before we went to Barcelona; I would have appreciated what I was seeing more. Better late than never, and after our trip I started reading and studying his life. This was an amazing man.

We visited three of Gaudí’s works in Barcelona: The Park Güell, the Casa Milà apartment building, and the Sagrada Familia.

Park Güell

One of our first stops in Barcelona was the Park Güell. Park Güell was commissioned by Eusebi Güell in 1900, a Catalonian businessman, when he enlisted Gaudí to incorporate several properties he already owned into the park. The photo ops were everywhere we turned, from the sculpted tunnels to the paths to the buildings and the sculptures.

When wandering Park Güell, I noticed that we could overlook the city of Barcelona and see all the way to the Mediterranean. I snapped a photo or two, without realizing that my photo included the Sagrada Familia (it’s in a photo below, identified by a large red arrow). I’ll talk about that more in the next part of this blog.

If you look closely, you can see the Sagrada Familia from Park Güell.

Casa Milà

Casa Milà is another famous Gaudi work. Completed in 1912, it was initially an apartment building. Today it is a UNESCO World Heritage site. Like Park Güell, Casa Milà suggests a Dr. Suess-like whimsiness in its design. The structure is a giant loop, with an opening surrounded by the apartments. The roof contains many sculptures, with some that double as chimneys. When we visited Casa Milà, our guide asked if one reminded us of anything. It did. You’ll see it one of the photos below. George Lucas saw it, and it became the inspiration for Star Wars storm troopers. Another one of the photos below shows a model. Gaudi preferred to design with models and use these as the basis for the larger work.

The Sagrada Familia

Talk about a long-running construction project: Barcelona’s Sagrada Familia temple has been under construction for 140 years, and it’s not finished yet. We heard that it would be finished in another 15 years, but who knows?

The construction schedule notwithstanding, the Sagrada Familia is an active church, and if entering it does not make you a believer, nothing ever will. To say it is impressive would be a massive understatement. You have to see the Sagrada Familia to understand the excitement, the grandeur, and the genius of its design. The exterior has that same Dr. Suess/Harry Potter mystique. Once you are inside, the feeling is not one of being in a building; it is more like being in a well-illuminated and immense living creature. The illumination comes from the building’s stunning stained glass, designed with colors tuned to the light from Barcelona’s sunrise and sunset.

Words like those you are reading here don’t do justice to the Sagrada Familia. It is a place that has to be personally experienced to get a feel for its magnificence. I’ll return to Barcelona someday, and you can bet that I’ll visit the Sagrada Familia again.

Antoni Gaudí was a bit of a dandy in his younger days. In his later years, he stopped taking care of himself and basically dressed like a homeless person. He died as a result of being struck by a Barcelona streetcar. When he was injured, people did not realize who he was (they thought he was a vagrant). Antoni Gaudí’s remains are entombed in the Sagrada Familia, perhaps his greatest and certainly his most widely-known work. The Park Güell, the Casa Milà apartment building, and the Sagrada Familia are not the only projects Antoni Gaudí created. I’d like to search for and visit more of Gaudí’s works when I return to Spain.

When Sue and I visited Spain and Portugal, I didn’t take my Nikon D810 and it’s 24-120mm lens (as I usually do). The weight of that camera and lens has become too much for me to carry around. I won’t bore you with the specifics of my age-related infirmities; I’ll simply share that I’m not what I used to be. But I’m still kicking and typing, and for this trip, it was my much smaller and lighter Nikon D3300 and its smaller 18-55mm lens. I also had a lightweight, non-zoom, non-metering Rokinon 8mm fisheye lens, which I used more than I expected to (it proved to be a very capable lens). The D3300 and these two lenses (along with a bit of post-production PhotoShop tweaking) created the photos above. The interior photos were all shot at high ISO (in the range of 800 to 3200), which accounts for the graininess in some. Mea culpa.

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Barbequed Salmon

By Joe Berk

Few dinners are as easy to make and ritzy as barbequed salmon. It’s one of my favorites, and it came about as a result of dinner several decades ago at the now-defunct California Lawry’s restaurant out near Griffith Park. Lawry’s is a company that makes spices, one of which is their 17 Seasonings. I’m not sure why I ordered salmon that night (it might have been a first for me), but it was delicious. So much so, in fact, that I asked our waiter how it was prepared. He smiled. That was the whole point of Lawry’s having a restaurant: To get you to like their meals and buy their spices.

“It’s easy,” he said. “Drizzle a little olive oil on the fish, put some of our Lawry’s 17 Seasonings on top of it, throw it on the grill, and you’re there.”

The guy was right, and I’ve been making my barbequed salmon that way ever since. It’s a favorite if it’s just Sue and I having dinner, and it’s a favorite when we’re having folks over for company.

With that as an intro, let’s get into it.

Ingredients

- - Salmon. Duh. Yep. You can get a big container at Costco (although lately their salmon hasn’t been that good), or you can buy a couple of cutlets packaged like you see below. When you open the salmon, if it smells fishy or it has an ammonia aroma, bring it back to the store. It’s been on the shelf too long. Good fish will have no smell.
  - Seasonings. I think you can still get Lawry’s 17 Seasonings. These days, we just buy Costco’s bigger bottle of seasoning, which they call their organic no salt seasoning. A bottle of that lasts us a year or two. It’s just as good as the Lawry’s, but way less expensive.
  - Olive Oil. Get the extra virgin stuff. If you see anything labeled extra extra virgin, steer around it. It only goes up to extra virgin. I know people in the olive oil business. Trust me on this.
  - Charcoal Briquets. I like to barbeque the old-fashioned way, with a barbeque and charcoal.
  - A Charcoal Grill. Nothing fancy here. I use the cheapest charcoal grill I can find at Walmart. Every decade or so I’ll need to replace it. I like the taste of charcoal grilled stuff better than a gas grill.

Once you have everything, you’d good to go. This takes about 45 minutes to prepare, with a good half hour being necessary just to get the charcoal going.

Get the charcoal grill started and put the wire grill on top of the glowing briquets. Scrub the grill clean after it’s hot and spray the grill with a nonstick spray.

Steelhead, Atlantic salmon, Coho salmon…it’s all good. We prefer steelhead trout. Salmon is in the trout family, hence the name.

While the grill is heating, open the salmon container, rinse the cutlets (or the filets with tap water).

Rinsed and ready for the oil and the seasonings.

We do a lot of shopping at Costco. Their Organic No-Salt Seasoning is just like Lawry’s 17 Seasonings.

Drizzle a little oil over the top of the cutlets, and then sprinkle the seasonings on top of the oil.

Drizzled, sprinkled, and ready to grill.

Place the salmon skin side down on the grill for 14 minutes. After 14 minutes, flip the cutlets and grill for an additional 3 to 4 minutes.

Having a decent chronograph helps here (my preferred watch is either a Casio G-Shock or my Bulova Lunar Pilot). Any watch will do. But I’m not going to let a chance to show a watch slip by. If want to read our watch reviews (and other equipment reviews, too), they are right here.

There’s a hell of a story behind this Bulova.

Remove the salmon from the grill; it’s ready to serve. Just about any veggie goes well with salmon. We like steamed carrots, asparagus, a salad, maybe some citrus as sides (as you see in the photo at the top of this blog), and others.

So there you have it. Barbequed salmon, à la ExhaustNotes. Don’t thank us now; just click on those pop-up ads or maybe click and leave a donation to support your favorite blog writers.

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Buell Fever Part 7: Lean On Me

By Joe Gresh

Tidying up where we left off in Part 6, the new front brake pads arrived and everything wheel-wise went together. Bleeding the front caliper was uneventful and the brake stopped the wheel which is all you can ask in today’s crazy world.

It was time to tackle the Buell’s kickstand issue. If you’re keeping count, that’s three motorcycles I have had to modify the kickstand on.

Kickstand things are precarious and resulted in a crash.

The Buell’s kick stand was an odd duck. It had the typical Harley locking style but where Harley used heavy, hard-wearing steel the Buell used soft, easy to consume aluminum.

The material change is important because with only 13,000 miles my Buell kickstand locking groove was completely worn out. The notch the kickstand flopped into was gone and with the poor angles involved the bike was ready to fall over any minute. And it did.

The notch area, eaten away in the pursuit of light weight.

I was going to take a stab at welding a notch in place but I couldn’t get the TIG torch in the narrow kickstand mounting boss. This was a job better left to the pros at Roy’s Welding. I took the aluminum side plate down to Roy’s and dropped it off.

Access is limited, so I gave up and took the kickstand plate to a welder.

A few days later I called Roy’s to see how things were going and I guess they couldn’t get their torch in between the kickstand mount either. Back I went to retrieve the still-boogered kickstand mount. I searched online for a few days but a left-side mounting plate was not available when I needed it.

Left with no option I tried some of Harbor Freight’s ersatz aluminum welding rod. This material is kind of an aluminum solder. To weld with it you use an Oxy-acetylene torch and it kind of works.

A nice flood of ersatz aluminum filled the void.

You’ll need to clean the aluminum well and then using the torch to heat the work you sort of rub the rod into the metal. Take care not to overheat the work. It’s an easy process that you can stop anytime by removing the heat source.

I welded (if you can call it that) the original pivot holes closed then filled the worn spot inside the kickstand mount. It worked ok and I managed to get the filler pretty level inside the mount.

The original pivot holes stopped the stand at a 90-degree angle. This was fine and dandy when the stand had a notch to fall into. My new plan was to make the kickstand more like every other kickstand in the world instead of Harley style.

The relocated pivot hole allowed more stand arc.

I re-redrilled the holes and a position that allowed the stand to swing forward and over center the return spring. This set up is pretty normal even in later Buells. I ground the stand a bit thinner to make room for a steel washer in the hope of protecting the soft aluminum filler material.

To allow movement for the old stand design the hole in the kickstand was oval shaped. This made for quite a bit of lean when deployed. My new design didn’t need the oval hole so I drilled it out and fitted a steel bushing. Now things were snug.

Steel bushing to fill the wongo-wongo, pivoting angle.

With the relocated pivot holes the end of the kickstand hit the swing arm in the up position. I used a piece of Starboard (plastic used in boat building) to make a new stop for the stand.

New stops keep the kickstand from hitting the swing arm.

It all worked. The Buell stand is still in an odd, dirt-bike like location but it operates normally and the bike doesn’t fall over. So that’s a good thing.

No more rolling off the stand and hitting the ground for me.

More Gresh Buellishness!

Buell 1: More Cowbell
Buell 2: The Reckoning
Buell 3: An Own Goal
Buell 4: Striking Oil
Buell 5: Carb Blues
Buell 6: Oingo-Boingo

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Tokyo Road: Part 2

By Mike Huber

I still had two days to kill prior to picking up my motorcycle to begin exploring Japan. I found a great pod hotel next to a major hub and subway route, which made getting around Tokyo very easy.

A pod hotel is just that. It was a giant room filled with about 50 or so small containers like sleeping pods that are stacked two high. It is absolutely like sleeping in something you’d see in an 1980s sci-fi movie. This particular pod hotel had three floors of pods, and then on the top floor, an onsen (Japanese hot springs), a cold bath, showers, sauna, and a large dayroom for hanging out. For the price (approximately 40 USD) it was perfect for my 4-day stay in Tokyo.

The following night I listened to my friend’s advice and took the train three stops to Akihabara Electric Town. Akihabara Electric Town is a neighborhood in Tokyo that is pretty much a futuristic sensory overload chamber. It was just becoming dusk as I left the train and entered into this neighborhood of Tokyo. It didn’t take me long to feel overwhelmed by the sights and sounds which now fully engulfed me. Quite honestly, out of every country and location I’d have ever visited this was by far the most culture shock I think I have ever felt. It was like I had just been blasted into the future mixed with an anime theme. After a few minutes regaining my composure, I decided I needed a short break for a drink. Within a few blocks, I found one of the recommended experiences. The name of this place was The Maid Café.

The Maid Café is difficult to describe. I think the best description I can come up with is to take Hooters and put it in a blender with a futuristic anime environment. In order to request a menu or a beer you have to do this happy dance thing with your waitress and it involves all these intricate hand signals and gestures, which they sorta teach you. Sorta. The Maid Café along with the entire night was quite an overwhelming experience. I am sure that if one had consumed any type of mind-altering substance the evening would have been insanely colorful. Insanely colorful and I am sure you would end up at some arcade fishing a Monchichi out of a machine. That is if you had you consumed anything.

The remainder of the evening was spent in and out of uniquely themed bars and arcades. In one particular arcade I ended up losing all my subway money attempting to pull a Monchichi from one of those claw machines. My love of the Monchichi (they are such a peaceful, loving people) made it well worth the time and money to finally win one, which is now attached to my backpack as a reminder of my evening exploring Tokyo’s colorful nightlife.

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Bond. James Bond.

By Joe Berk

You know, you’d think the folks who produce James Bond movies would have their act (pardon the pun) together, but evidently that’s not so. I’ve already written about the iconic early James Bond movie flyer that shows Sean Connery standing provocatively with what appears to be a very menacing handgun. It wasn’t. It turns out that what old Bond, James Bond posed with was a .177-caliber pellet pistol (a BB gun, to use a looser term), and that was because they forgot to bring the real gun for the photo shoot. The photographer, a target shooter, just happened to have his BB gun in the trunk of his car. I wrote about my identical pellet pistol a few years ago.

But all’s fair in love, war, and spy movies, and when I get a chance to watch a Bond movie (no matter how many times I’ve seen it), I’m in. That’s what happened the other day when I was channel surfing and Goldfinger popped up. I started the movie and in the opening scenes I noticed something I had previously missed. When Bond is doing his Navy Seal routine, getting ready to blow up a waterfront drug lab disguised as an oil tank, I caught a glimpse of his watch.

A poor image, taken from my TV screen with my iPhone.

I stopped the movie and went back a bit to get a better look at the watch. Wow, it was a Rolex dive watch (another topic we’ve covered here on ExNotes), and wow again, it had a military style band. The image quality you see above is awful, partly due to it being an evening scene and partly due to the above image being a cell phone capture of my television screen. It’s too bluish, I know. But that watch strap…wow! Was it a coincidence? I had just received an email from a company called BluShark offering an identical watch strap!

I went to Google and searched for a better image of the Goldfinger scene. Sure enough, I found it:

Note the watch strap’s colors (or should I say colours?) and poor fit on the Rolex Submariner.

Several thoughts emerged:

- - I’m not and never have been a military watch strap fan.
  - The above notwithstanding, I liked the colors in the Bond strap.
  - I have a Casio Marlin, which is kind of a poor man’s Rolex, and those Bond watch strap colors looked good against a black dive watch.
  - The watch strap in the Goldfinger scene didn’t fit the watch at all. It was a couple of sizes too narrow compared the Rolex’s lug width.

My Casio Marlin and its original watch strap. I’ve owned this watch for close to 20 years. It’s the best watch buy on the planet.

So I went back to the BluShark email. Buy two and get one free. They sent me a code for another 10% off my first order. Free shipping. How could I say no? I knew what I would order, too. I wanted two of the Bond watch straps in the appropriate size, one for my Casio and another identical one for good buddy Paul’s new Casio (he bought a Marlin, too; he’s always giving me free stuff, and it was time for me to reciprocate). And I wanted another military style strap in OD green for my Citizen Eco-Drive chronograph, a watch I’ve owned and enjoyed wearing for 30 years. The Citizen originally came with an OD green cloth strap, and a similar military strap for it would be perfect.

A few days later the BluShark bands arrived. Wow. It took only minutes to fit my two to their respective watches, and as you can see from the photo atop this blog, the Casio looks great.

That had me wondering: What is the significance of the colors on the Bond watch strap, and in Goldfinger, why did the strap fit his Rolex so poorly?

As to the fit (and as much as you can trust anything you read on the Internet), Sean Connery didn’t own a Rolex. Albert Broccoli, the producer, did, and he leant his watch to Connery. But it didn’t fit Connery’s wrist. A crew member had the watch strap you see in Goldfinger, so it was quickly swapped onto Bond’s watch, and voilà, the Bond watch strap was born. Like I said near the beginning of this blog, you’d think a Bond movie prop department would be better organized, but there you have it.

As to the colors, well, that story is all over the map, too. The one I like is that the colors in the Bond strap are the British military intelligence regimental colors (red, green, and black). That leads to the next logical question: Do spies wear colors to advertise their spy backgrounds? I think the answer is probably no, but it makes for an interesting explanation and an intriguing story. I found more on this poking around a bit, including a blazer patch for members of the British Intelligence Corps (you know, just in case Boris and Natasha needed to confirm their suspicions).

This is all interesting stuff and it makes for interesting conversation. If you’d like to see more about BluShark and their straps, you can do so here.

That Citizen Eco-Drive I mentioned above? I’m wearing it now and I love it. Here’s what it looks like:

The Citizen Eco-Drive watch mentioned above. It’s another favorite.

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Pizza!

By Joe Berk

I love pizza. It’s not healthy, but the way Sue and I make it it’s probably healthier than the stuff you get in a restaurant, and it’s definitely way better (and way healthier) than any frozen pizza. Any recipe should start with the ingredients list, so here goes:

- - Pizza dough. We buy ours from a local Italian deli, Claros, and it makes the best pizzas. If you don’t have an Italian deli in your area, Trader Joe’s has good pizza dough. And if you don’t have a Trader Joe’s nearby, you’re on your own. Don’t give up; pizza dough is not always easy to find. But look around for it. Don’t go with prepared pizza crusts; your pizza won’t be nearly as good.
  - Olive oil. Don’t cheap out here. Get the extra virgin stuff. Costco has good olive oil.
  - Garlic. Get fresh garlic and squeeze it with a garlic squeezer. Don’t use the pre-diced garlic. Squeeze it fresh.
  - Shredded mozzarella cheese.
  - Shredded parmesan cheese.
  - Ricotta cheese.
  - Green onions (also known as scallions).
  - Kalamata olives. Some people like to use black olives instead of Kalamata olives. There’s no accounting for some people’s tastes, I guess.
  - Large mushrooms (I use 6 or 8, depending on the size of the mushrooms).
  - Sun-dried tomatoes. Get the kind that are bottled in oil; don’t get the dried kind. We prefer the sun-dried sold by Costco, but our local Costco doesn’t always have them.
  - Corn flour.

Preheat oven to 475 degrees.

Spread the corn flour on the pizza pan (the idea here is to prevent the pizza from sticking to the pan).

Flatten and spread the pizza dough on a large pizza pan. I like a thin crust, so we make it as thin as we can. It’s probably about 1/8-inch after we do this.

Pour a puddle of olive oil onto the pizza dough so that it forms about a 4-inch circle.

Separate one large garlic clove and use the garlic mincer to mince it over the olive oil. Spread the olive oil and the minced garlic over the entire top of the crust.

Spinkle a handful of shredded mozzarella cheese over the pizza. Don’t get carried away here; less is more. You want the cheese to come close to the outer diameter of the crust.

Dice three or found green scallions and sprinkle on top or the mozzarella cheese.

Chop up 15 or 20 Kalamata olives and sprinkle on top of the mozzarella cheese.

Slice the mushrooms into thin pieces and arrange these on top of the mozzarella cheese.

Sprinkle about 15 or 20 pieces of sun-dried tomatoes on the pizza.

Sprinkle another handful of shredded mozzarella cheese on top of the pizza. Again, less is more. Don’t try to cover the entire pizza with cheese.

Sprinkle about a half a handful of shredded parmesan cheese over the top of the pizza.

Dab about 20 quarter-to-half teaspoonfulls of Ricotta cheese on top of the pizza.

Place the pizza in the preheated oven. In our oven, it seems to heat more evenly with the pizza on the bottom rack.

We bake our pizza for 14 to 15 minutes. This cooks everything through and lightly toasts the cheese.

Remove the pizza from the oven and allow it to cool for a few minutes. Slice it with a pizza slicer and serve.

It seems like a lot of work, but making a pizza like the one you see above only takes about 30 minutes, and the pizza is outstanding. It goes good with a salad, a glass or red one, or maybe a Peroni. Try it. You can thank me later.

Other ExNotes Recipes

Yep, we’ve got a few, and we’ll have a few more in coming weeks.

Vegetarian Chili
Italian Meat Sauce and Lasagne
Norge Beef Stew

We have several recipes planned, too. These include grilled salmon, Italian stuffed shells, bacon-wrapped filet mignon, chile relleno, fish tacos, stuffed orange roughy, and more.

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Phavorite Photos: The CSC Sarge

By Joe Berk

Back in the day when Steve Seidner and CSC Motorcycles were running full tilt on building replica Mustangs, the custom bikes were rolling off the production line fast and furious. Most buyers were in love with the little repliStangs, and most accessorized their bikes heavily. The bike’s list price was something like $3,995 or $4,995 (I forget which), but it wasn’t unusual for buyers to run the price up to $10,000 with accessories, extra chrome, and more. The typical buyer was 70- or 80-year-old person who had wanted a Mustang as a teenager back in the ’50s but Dad said no. It was time to get even with Dad, and get even they did.

We also did a few custom bikes on spec and it was great for me. I wrote the CSC blog back in the days, and with the constant stream of customs there was always plenty to photograph and blog about. One of my favorites, and one of my favorite photos, is a bike Steve built for himself. He christened it “The Sarge” for obvious reasons.

The Sarge had a lot of custom touches, including .50-cal ammo cans as saddlebags, a near complete dechroming, lovely OD green paint, brown leather seat, and more. It was a stunning motorcycle. My El Cheapo Bell helmet and its Army Air Corps livery completed the package. I found a stone wall somewhere in the hills above the CSC plant when the plant was at the La Verne airport, and that made for a nice backdrop. The Sarge photo at the top of this blog has always been one of my favorites.

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Would you like to know more about CSC’s early days, the evolution of the Mustang replicas, and what it was like importing the Chinese RX3 to America? Read 5000 Miles At 8000 RPM!