Category: Feel Good Stuff

The Browning Firearms Museum

Ogden’s Finest. It was a good morning to be a Harley, I think. A little wet, maybe, but still a good day to be out and about.

You know, you could do a pretty cool adventure ride lasting a couple of weeks without ever leaving Utah.  I know we’re stuck at home, self-isolating and all that, so it’s a good time to share past adventures and photos of great trips.  I’ve traveled a lot, and I think Utah is one of the best destinations on the planet.  It is probably the most scenic and interesting state in the country.

About that photo you see above…Susie and I rolled into Odgen one day back in 2015 to visit their museums, and these Ogden motor officers were parked out front. It was a great photo op, so I asked, they said okay, and the photo you see above is the result.  It was raining that morning, but that never stopped me from riding and it didn’t stop these motor officers, either!

Ogden has four museums and an art gallery in their old railroad station, and it’s one heck of a deal. For a very minimal entrance fee, you get to see the Browning antique car collection, the Browning firearms museum, the railroad museum, the cowboy museum, and an art gallery.  If you don’t have Ogden on your destinations list, maybe you need a new list!

Entering the Browning Firearms Museum. This museum alone makes Ogden a must-see destination.

Our focus in this blog is the Browning firearms museum.  John Moses Browning, who did much of his work in Ogden, was perhaps the world’s most prolific arms inventor.  This museum highlights his creations as well as many other interesting guns. I was in my element here!

Handguns, rifles, machine guns…Browning’s creations cover it all.
An 1886 Winchester. That buttplate is punishing with the 1886’s .45 70 cartridge.
The 1911 .45 ACP semi-auto handgun, one of Browning’s best-known inventions.
A few of Browning’s single-shot rifles.
More cool Browning single-shot rifles. The second one from the top is a Browning B78. I have one of those rifles.
A close up of the Browning 1878 stock.
A display of Winchester rifles.
An ornately-engraved Browning 9mm Hi-Power handgun. It was a later design than the 1911.

The lighting in the Browning museum was dim, and that’s why the photos you see in this blog are perhaps a bit below what I try to present on the blog. I was shooting at a very high ISO without flash, as most of the displays were behind glass.  The photos are not great, but they are pretty good considering the lighting.

There were a lot of interesting firearms on display, and then we migrated over to the car collection and the railroad museum. Those will be the subjects of subsequent blogs. Trust me on this…if you’re ever in Ogden, you don’t want to miss this place.

After a great lunch in downtown Ogden, we talked about where we’d go next, and Susie suggested Promontory Summit. We had learned a bit about it in the railroad museum, and we were only about 45 miles away. It’s where the railroad construction crews completed the railroad that reached across the United States. That’s coming up, so stay tuned!

The apple doesn’t fall far…

Years ago I wrote a book about police and military motorcycles, and while I was writing it, good buddy Mike found a photograph in the New Brunswick Police Department archives of Ralph Dowgin, a New Jersey State Trooper.  The photo is awesome, and Paladin Press (my publisher) instantly knew it would be the cover:

The Trooper on the cover of my book was Ralph Dowgin, who later rose to high rank in the New Jersey State Police.  Coincidentally, the Dowgin family lived one town over from us in New Jersey when I was a kid.   My Dad knew Ralph Dowgin and spoke of him in reverential tones, so when Mike found the Dowgin photo it was extra special to me.

Yesterday, while on Facebook, another photo popped up that had my immediate and complete attention.  Check this out, and then let me tell you the story behind it:

You might be thinking:  Okay, it’s a picture of a guy on a vintage Honda Scrambler, but what’s your point?

Let me tell you:  The man on that Honda Scrambler is Gerry Dowgin.  The photo on the top of this blog has Ralph Dowgin on the cover of my book, and the photo below it has Gerry Dowgin on the cover of Vintage Japanese Motorcycle Magazine.   Gerry is Ralph Dowgin’s son!

Gerry is about four years older than me, so we didn’t know each other growing up, but he knew my cousin Sandy and we knew a lot of the same people in central Jersey.  I just wrapped up a nice telephone conversation with Gerry.  He invited me to ride with him when I’m back in New Jersey, and I invited him to ride with me when he’s out in California.  What a small world we live in!

Good times, folks, and I’m really looking forward to meeting Gerry in person!

Locked out abroad: Mike in Baja

You guys and gals will remember my good buddy Mike, whom I met on one of the CSC Baja runs a couple of years ago.   It was a chance meeting…we stopped to buy bottled gas from one of the roadside entrepreneurs in Catavina and I noticed one of the bikes had a set of jump wings on the tail box.  We had been on the road a few days already and I wondered why I hadn’t noticed the Airborne insignia before, and then I realized it was because I hadn’t noticed the bike was a BMW GS, not a CSC RX3 (that’s how much the bikes look alike, I guess).  I looked around and there was Mike (a new face in the crowd), waiting for fuel just like the rest of us.  You meet the coolest people in Baja, and you meet the coolest people on motorcycles.  I liked Mike immediately.

Mike is a former US Army Paratrooper (my kind of Amigo), an adventure rider, a good friend, and one hell of a guy.  You’ve seen him here on the ExNotes blog before.  Mike lives on his motorcycle (a big BMW GS) and travels all over, working as an untethered project manager and writing regularly.  It’s a cool (and an enviable) lifestyle.

I received an email from Mike yesterday offering this guest blog, and I wanted to share it with you.

Joe,

Thought this would make for an interesting story for your blog. I know its been an interesting story for us! Let me know what ya think. Few colorful pics for it as well.

Hope you are doing well. I am sure you are fully prepared. 🙂

Mike

PS. Be cool if we could get Chris Hansen to read the blog “take a seat over there, would you like some lemonade” HAHAHA

Locked OUT Abroad- Mexico- Extended Stay

My girlfriend, Bobbie Surber and I both work remotely, so in late February we thought a 4-6 week adventure moto trip through Baja would be a great way to kick off spring. We could get some great riding in, explore camping along the beautiful beaches, and really just clear out the cobwebs from any winter blues and lack of activity we had been experiencing.

The trip started out great in San Felipe in a wonderful off grid solar AirBnb casita, with a lovely host (we only travel Saturday and Sunday as we are heads down working Mon-Fri in AirBnBs). We continued camping, riding, and staying in AirBnBs all through Guerro Negro, Muleje, La Ventana, Todo Santos, and Loreto. We were spending a week in each location to fully absorb the unique cities, people, and culture while soaking up the incredible desert roads, ocean views, and all while meeting new riders that will become lifelong friends along the way.

As we had just arrived in Loreto on March 15th we really began to notice the COVID-19 virus was really starting to ramp up in the United States to the point travel alerts were being issued globally and we began to see fellow travelers from Canada and the EU being requested to return home by their countries.

In Loreto, we were still a solid 3-day ride away from the US Border when on March 19th a Level 4 travel advisory was issued to either return to the United States or hunker in place for an indefinite period. At the same time people in America were hoarding toilet paper and individual states were beginning to “shut down” one by one. We took this quite seriously and given what information was being provided at the time a team decision had to be made by us. It was a long 2-3 days of going back and forth in open dialogue between both of us on different ideas, plans, and solutions. None of which either of us were thrilled with.

We both agreed returning to the United States was not a wise decision, however, we did not want to stay a 3 day drive away from a border crossing in the event there was a health emergency for either of us. We decided to reach out to our 1st Baja AirBnB host in San Felipe and she graciously offered her casita up for us to hunker down in which would place us within a 2 hour drive from the US Border should there be an emergency where one or both of us may need to return home. This seemed like a perfect staging area. The virus seemed to be less in the Baja, perhaps due to lack of testing, but nonetheless it was a peninsula so geographically it made sense that the impacts would be less. There was also an abundance of supplies (to include toilet paper, which I am still confused as hell on why there was a run on that particular item).

So now to our current state of affairs. We are in self-quarantine in San Felipe with our new AirBnB friend, Victoria and are continually evaluating the situation in the United States looking for a safe opportunity to return home, and are quite frightful for the new reality we are returning to. Confident in both our analytical and decision making abilities I am looking forward to writing Part II of this, hopefully sooner than later.

Mike, that’s an awesome input and we sure appreciate hearing from you.  Thanks very much.  Your photos and descriptions made me realize just how much I miss Baja.  Sue and I would have been down there this month had it not been for this CV19 business.  As soon as we return to normal, I’m headed south and we’ll be down there.  Ride safe, take care, and thanks again!

Book Review: Undaunted Courage

So we’re stuck at home by government direction, common sense, and maybe fear. Are you bored yet?  You need not be. We still have the Internet, we still have Amazon.com, and we can still read. Which I do. A lot.

The latest book for me was Undaunted Courage, by Stephen Ambrose, and it’s good. It was a little slow getting started (that’s the only criticism I have), but once the Lewis and Clark Corps of Discovery was underway, Undaunted Courage was a real page turner.

You know, my interest in the Lewis and Clark expedition (which is what Undaunted Courage is all about) was ignited on a visit to New Orleans 12 years ago.  Susie and I stayed in the French Quarter of that American jewel of a city, and we started each day with breakfast just across the street from  Jackson Square. There was a museum there and it focused on the Louisiana Purchase, something I had a very foggy memory of from maybe the fifth grade.

The Louisiana Purchase story basically goes like this: Thomas Jefferson wanted to buy New Orleans from Napolean Bonaparte because the US needed a port where the Mississippi met the ocean. Napolean needed cash for his war with the British and in response to Jefferson’s overture, he offered to sell us not just New Orleans, but the entire Louisiana Territory. Jefferson didn’t have the money, so he borrowed it from England so he could pay Napolean and then Napolean had the money he needed to fight England.  Who’s on first?

Think about what these men of the Lewis and Clark Expedition did and what they faced.  They entered and explored an unknown world with dangers beyond imagination: Indians, grizzlies, disease, weather, starvation, distance…you name it.  It is a hell of a story

Jackson Square in New Orleans’ French Quarter, looking across the square at the magnificent St. Louis Cathedral. The building on the left (as you face the church) is the Cabildo, where the Louisiana Purchase was signed. The building on the right is the Presbytere, a museum of the Mardi Gras. The statue in the center is Andrew Jackson.  This photo appeared in the Southwest Airlines inflight magazine; the good folks at Southwest gave me a T-shirt as payment.  I am a skilled negotiator.
Coffee and beignets in New Orlean’s magnificent Café du Monde. Sue and I started each morning with this breakfast. It was from this location that I shot the photo of Jackson Square above.
A stained glass window in the St. Louis Cathedral. We love New Orleans. It is an American treasure.

Anyway, once we owned the Louisiana Territory, Jefferson wondered: What’s out there? No one really knew. That was one of the key reasons Jefferson funded the Lewis and Clark expedition. That, and Jefferson wanted our boys to find a northwest passage (a way to get from the Atlantic to the Pacific by water). That waterway didn’t exist (and that’s what Lewis and Clark discovered), but their struggles and the story of the expedition is, like I said above, a real page turner. What made it even more interesting was that, like many of the good folks who read the ExhaustNotes blog, I’ve ridden my motorcycle through many of the regions Lewis and Clark explored. This is good reading, folks.

An interesting component to this story is that all of the enlisted men on the Lewis and Clark expedition contracted venereal disease (specifically, syphilis and gonorrhea). It seems the Native Americans had no qualms about sharing their wives as a form of bartering for trinkets and tools (hey, it is what it is), and that’s how these diseases were transmitted.  That touched a nerve with me.  As a young Army officer in Korea, venereal disease was a problem that plagued us constantly. The Army tracked this sort of thing and my artillery battery ran a VD rate over 100% (I think the exact number was something like 112%). When I first saw that statistic I knew it had to be wrong (I didn’t have VD), and I said so. The guy who presented the statistics patiently explained that some of the guys in our battery had more than one venereal disease in the 30-day reporting period, and that’s why the number exceeded 100%.  Wow.

Another interesting fact:  Lewis carried an air rifle on this trip, along with several other flintlock rifles and handguns.  I didn’t know air rifles even existed back then, but apparently they did, and Lewis used his to put meat on the table.

Trust me on this:  Undaunted Courage is a superbly written book.  I think you’ll enjoy it.

Interesting Times

I wish I had a few words of wisdom for everyone concerning this COVID 19 thing, but I do not, other than to say we’ll get through this, don’t hoard, and wash your hands.  That’s the extent of my advice, so let’s get on to lighter stuff, which I could sure use a good dose of these days.  Good buddy Duane sent a link for an Enfield story to me a day or two ago from Bloomberg news.  When I saw the source I thought perhaps Duane had gone over to the dark side (you know, Bloomberg and all), but I guess even egomaniacal billionaires like Mike (who obviously didn’t make it happen) find an acorn once in a while.  This is a story on the new Enfield, and they did a pretty good job with it.

Then another Enfield story popped up in my Facebook feed with a very cool Enfield video.  It’s light, I enjoyed it, and it pretty much sums up my feeling about motorcycles these days:

Enjoy, folks, and keep the faith.

Jay Leno and Janus

I received a cool press release from our good buddies at Janus Motorcycles this morning and I want to share it with you.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
February 17, 2020

Janus Motorcycles featured on Jay Leno’s Garage
Goshen, Indiana – On Sunday, February 16th, 2020, an extended feature on Janus Motorcycles was published on Jay Leno’s popular YouTube channel, “Jay Leno’s Garage.”

Janus co-founders Richard Worsham and Devin Biek were invited to visit Mr. Leno’s garage and film studio in Burbank, California in December 2019. Mr. Leno interviewed Biek and Worsham, filmed each of their three motorcycle models, and took an extended ride on their most popular model, the Halcyon 250.

Beyond his fame as a late-night TV show host, Mr. Leno is known for his extensive classic car and motorcycle collection and his knowledge of automobiles. His YouTube channel, “Jay Leno’s Garage”, has nearly 3 million subscribers and his show airs weekly on CNBC.

“Jay is an authority on classic motorcycles, so being featured by Jay Leno’s Garage has long been a dream of ours at Janus,” said Worsham.

Co-founder Biek was very pleased: “Jay’s collection was amazing to visit, and Mr. Leno asked great questions and seemed genuinely interested in our story and motorcycles. The entire experience was incredible.”

The segment is titled “Janus Motorcycles – Jay Leno’s Garage” and may be viewed on Jay Leno’s YouTube channel.

ABOUT JANUS MOTORCYCLES: Founded by Devin Biek and Richard Worsham in 2011, Janus Motorcycles builds made-to-order production motorcycles out of their Goshen, Indiana headquarters. Their classic designs have been featured in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Fox News, the Discovery Channel, and in multiple industry publications. Their motorcycles are designed to be enjoyed by riders of all experience levels.

Drawing on the rich pool of manufacturing and fabrication shops in northern Indiana, their three models of lightweight 229cc motorcycles feature hand-formed tanks, locally welded components such as frames, hand-bent stainless handlebars, hand-painted trim, and a proprietary anti-dive suspension developed by the Janus team.

They are fully registrable in all fifty states with EPA and California ARB certification. All three models start at $6995. They plan to produce 250 units out of their Goshen facility this year.

Janus makes cool motorcycles.  I know because I’ve ridden and written about their bikes, and I rode a Janus (along with good buddies Devin and Jordan) through Baja.  That’s the topic of another YouTube video that the Janus guys put together.

One more thing, and that’s the Jay Leno video referenced above.

If you would like more information about Janus, you’ll find it here!

Meow Wolf

West of downtown Santa Fe, New Mexico towards the strip malls, chain stores, and old neon-lit motels, is a thing called Meow Wolf. I call it a thing because I’m not quite sure what it is and that’s after crawling through refrigerators, blue time tunnels, and playing musical mastodons. The amount of ingenuity per square foot is astounding.

There’s a detective story loosely connected to Meow Wolf. Immerse-ants will find private correspondence referring to all kinds of mysterious events. Feel free to open drawers or snoop in cabinets, cues are scattered everywhere but with so many people wandering around gaping at the strangeness it’s hard to get a look at them all. I sort of tried to follow the story but it will take several visits to figure it out. If you want to solve the story go to Meow Wolf when nobody is blocking your progress.

Besides the back story, Meow Wolf can stand alone if you don’t want to tax your brain trying to slot Lex’s school reprimand letter into the narrative. Nothing is what it seems to be so just wander around opening portals and being amazed at the way normal life can be altered by slight shifts in reality. It reminds me of that Monkees movie, Head.

Be prepared to crawl around on your hands and knees and push or pull on everything. At least half the stuff leads to somewhere else. One second you’re in a traditional living room, the next a spacecraft. If you can fit inside it goes somewhere cool. I loved the place and it’s given me many ideas on how to make our house forever un-sellable with a few modifications.

The closest things to Meow Wolf in the real world are those McDonald land playhouses found at suburban McDonald’s restaurants, except that Meow Wolf is not as sticky. They must have a crack janitorial crew. After two and a half hours I had use one of the many exits to make sure I wasn’t stuck in there. It’s artwork that you enter and sign in please, then try to imagine why it exists.

Next time you visit Santa Fe, New Mexico, visit Meow Wolf. There is talk of replicating Meow Wolf in Las Vegas, Nevada. I’m sure the Vegas one will be overdone and flashy but I like the little mom and pop alternate realities better.

Pollen, politics, pundits, pistols, pasta, pizza, and more…

This is going to be one of those rambling, topic-hopping blogs that flits like a butterfly in a bed of flowers. You know, touching lightly on a variety of topics and then flitting to the next one for a pollen fix.

First up:  Do you have a favorite family restaurant?  We’ve got two.  One is Rancho Las Magueyes, a Mexican place right around the corner.  I know everyone there by their first name, and they all know Susie and me.  And my shooting buddies (we always have lunch there after a day on the range).  The other is an Italian restaurant.  It’s Di Pilla’s in Rosemead, and I’ve been going there for thirty years.  Susie and I always get a small pizza and a pasta dish, we share some of both while we’re there, and we’ll bring the rest home (it’s good for another two meals for both of us).  I was in Los Angeles last week to renew my passport and we stopped at Di Pilla’s for exactly what I described above (a small pizza with olives and mushrooms, and Dante’s angel hair pasta).  It’s just wonderful…the closest you’ll ever get to Heaven without a one-way ticket.  If you stop in there, tell Claudia Joe sent you.

Next topic…the Superbowl. I guess the game was okay. It used to be I would occasionally watch the Superbowl just for the halftime show and the commercials. I’m not much of a football fan (never have been), but the commercials and the halftime show used to make the 4-hour slog worthwhile. Not any more, though. At least not to me. I thought the halftime show was revolting, and if my kids were at home, I would have changed the channel. Is it me, or was it like going to a strip club? Maybe I’m just getting old. I don’t like twerking coming into my family room on a widescreen TV, and I didn’t understand a good 70% of the commercials. They weren’t clever or entertaining, and I wasn’t sure what most of them were advertising.  The commercial would end and I’d wonder: What was the product? Ah, there’s no maybe about it…I am getting old. But hell, even old people still buy stuff. After four long hours of Superbowl LIV, there’s nothing I’m going to purchase as a result of watching any of those commercials. Color me cranky, but I thought the whole thing was a stupid waste of my time.  That’s four hours I won’t get back.  It won’t happen again.

I do buy stuff, though. Lots of it. In fact, my new goal as a senior citizen is to make sure my outgo equals my income (I keep telling the kids if there’s anything left after I’m gone, it’s strictly the result of an computational error).  And to help me meet that goal, I think I’m buying a new motorcycle. One that has no fraud associated with freight and setup, as is typically encountered at most dealers. Maybe around the end of this month. Watch for more details. Before I do that, though, I want to get my TT250 running. I don’t ride as much as I should, and my TT250 carb gummed up from disuse. I’ll have to refer to my free CSC TT250 shop manual (why don’t all the manufacturers do that?) on how to clean the carburetor, but I’m not worried about the job. I hear the TT250 manual is pretty well written. I’m thinking I’ll get around to the TT250 this week or next.

More rambling, this time about Facebook and the endless supply of brainless memes that flow from its feed. I like Facebook and I like to keep up with my friends and my memories, like that photo above of good buddy Carl and me up on Glendora Ridge Road with the CSC 150 Baja Blaster I rode to Cabo and back. But the rest of the Facebook schtick…wow, it gets old fast. Is anyone else here tired of the mindless political ranting on Facebook?  Look, who I vote for is a decision I’ll make without any help from CNN, MSNBC, the NY Times, the Russians, or you.  It’s my vote, and all the breathless exhortations by Don Lemon, Anderson Cooper, and Sean Hannity will matter not one whit. It’s what happens in a free country. Mindlessly sharing memes on your Facebook feed (I know, there’s a lot of redundancy in that phrase) isn’t going to change a thing.  Folks, get a life. Grow up. Vote, and then move on. It’s what we do in America.

On to a new topic…I’m afraid this coronavirus business is going to get a lot worse before it gets better. I have good friends in China from my Chongqing and Riding China adventures. I recently wrote to one of them to see how things were going over there.  In a word, it’s bad. Real bad. The streets are deserted in China, no one is going out, companies are shutting down, travel is severely restricted, and the market is plummeting.  Their economy is tanking.  Approximately 2000 people a day are getting infected (and that number is likely going to increase).  I loved my time in China and I love the Chinese people.  I respect their engineering and manufacturing prowess. I hope things get better for them soon.

A happier topic…I’ve been spending more time on the range. If you didn’t see the 9mm cast bullet comparo, you might want to take a look at it. I’m going to start shooting the 9mm jacketed bullet series in another week or two. Jacketed bullets are frequently more accurate than cast bullets, so I’m excited about how that’s going to go. I was tremendously impressed with the Sig Scorpion and how it handled cast bullets. We’ll see if it brings home the bacon with jacketed bullets.

One of my shooting buddies is a California Corrections Officer, and he told me about their qualification course with the Mini 14 (the California Department of Corrections uses the Ruger Mini 14, one of my favorite rifles, as an issue weapon). They qualify with the B-21 target, and when I was at the target manufacturing operation where I buy all my targets I asked if they stocked that one. The guy behind the counter was surprised, and he told me the only folks who ever want that target are CDC officers. But they had it, and then it was my turn to be surprised. The B-21 target is huge. I’m going to have to make a bigger target stand for it. I’m thinking maybe our next informal milsurp match will be with it.  My objective is to shoot a higher score than my CDC buddy, and he’s real good.

And on that subject, we’re still toying with the idea of a postal match. You know, one where we specify the course of fire and the target design, you mail your targets to us, we score them, and there’s some kind of a prize for first, second, and third place. We’d make it for handguns only and spec the distance at 50 feet, and we’d make the prizes significant enough to bump up participation. Like maybe a Gear’d Hardware watch for first place, with a book and a T-shirt for second and third place. Let us know…if we did that, would you participate?

Last topic for today, folks:  Baja. Yes, Baja beckons. I aim to get down there sometime soon and then again later this year. Maybe stop in to see Baja John in Bahia de Los Angeles. See the whales in Scammon’s Lagoon. I’ll be on my motorcycle, and of course, I’ll be insured with BajaBound. Gresh will be along, maybe even on Zed now that his Kawi 900 resurrection has resumed. Whaddaya think?

RIP, Jim Lehrer

Jim Lehrer passed away yesterday.  He had a good run, I guess.  At 85, he got his money’s worth and he lived a full life.  But I still mourn his passing.  He came from a time when people served their country, and he was a real reporter…the kind that provided news, not propaganda.  There aren’t too many of those around any more.  Maybe none.

I heard Jim Lehrer speak at Harvard once.   He was the commencement speaker and his message struck a nerve with me.  There might have been 2000 people in the crowd.   At a time when we were fully committed in both Afghanistan and Iraq, he asked the crowd how many people knew someone who was actually serving in the military.   Maybe 100 hands went up.  Then Mr. Lehrer asked another question:  How many people had been personally affected by the war?   Not a single hand went up.   This was a rarified crowd.  Knowing more than a few of the folks in this group, I knew many of them perceived themselves to be foreign policy, military strategy, and political experts (you know, like everyone on Facebook these days).  But not a single one had any skin in the game.   Mr. Lehrer had just demonstrated that (very politely, of course).

Lehrer went on to speak about his service as a second lieutenant in the US Marine Corps.  This was a man with opinions I wanted to hear.  He had served, and he had my respect.   His recommendation?  That we all do some kind of national public service in our early years.  It need not be in the military.  It could be the Peace Corps, or maybe teaching in the public school system.  Or maybe public health.  But it should be something, some form of national service.  I could not agree more.

Lehrer said in the commencement address that he was a better man as a result of his Marine Corps service, and that some form of shared public service would make all of us better.   Jim Lehrer, we are a better people as a result of your presence among us.  Rest in peace, Sir.

The $3.4M Mustang…

Well, it’s over…the auction for the Mustang used in the Steve McQueen movie Bullitt, the very car used in what is unquestionably the greatest chase scene ever filmed.  It set a new record for American muscle car sales.  I saw both Mustangs used in Bullitt at a Warner Brothers event celebrating the life of Bud Ekins (that story is here), and they were undeniably cool.

The Bullitt Mustang. Yeah, it was cool.  I shot this photo in 2007.

My good buddy and friend-since-grade-school Ralph predicted the Bullitt Mustang would go for over three million dollars, and he was right.  Surprisingly, that’s not the highest price ever paid at auction for an American car.  A Duesenberg sold for something around $22 million a while back.  That’s a bit more than what Gresh and I make on the ExNotes blog.  Quite a bit more, actually.

I saw Bullitt when it first played back in the day (it was released in 1968), and I’ve probably watched it a dozen times since.   My good buddy Richie and I drove into New Brunswick to see it at the RKO State movie theatre and it was electrifying.  The closest thing I’d ever seen to a chase scene that dramatic was the motorcycle chase in The Great Escape, and what do you know, Bud Ekins and Steve McQueen did the honors in that one, too.