About 10 years ago, maybe more, I had a gig in Houston to teach an FMEA course to a consulting company. This particular consulting outfit had a contract to teach Failure Modes and Effects Analysis to their customer, and they had taken the assignment without knowing anything about the topic. It happens more often than you might imagine. It was no big deal for me as I’d been teaching FMEA for years, I had a class ready to go, and I was in and out in a couple of days. There was a nice paycheck at the end, and it was all easy peasy.
While I was in Houston, I found a local gunstore. I stopped in to check out what they had. I do that pretty much every place I go and I’ve been doing it for nearly 50 years. You never know what you’re going to find. The Houston gunstore was a disappointment (like most have been in the last 20 years) because all they offered (rifles, handguns, and shotguns) were these black plastic abominations. Like the cannibals say, there’s no accounting for some people’s taste.
Anyway, the Houston gunshop had a junkbox/discount container holding all the gunshop detritus they were blowing out. You’ve seen that sort of bargain bin before, I’m sure…things that are one step away from the dumpster. In that box was a beat-up old Leupold 4X scope that was so severely worn there was almost no anodizing left, the lenses at both ends were scratched and chipped, and there were dents and dings along the scope’s length.
But, it was a Leupold. In the scope world, that’s as good as it gets. Leupold scopes are the best. I bought that scope for $20, figuring maybe I’d use it if Bass Pro ever ran another scope sale where they give you $40 on any trade-in scope. They used to run sales like that, and I’ve used decrepit scopes as trading fodder, but my trade-ins were always cheapie scopes that had failed and didn’t cost much more than $40 when new. That wasn’t the main reason I pulled the trigger, though. That scope was a Leupold. Even though it was trashed, it was still a Leupold.
The hoped-for future scope sale at Bass Pro never materialized (I guess they learned their lesson from guys like me on past sales). The Leupold went under a shelf on my reloading bench and I kept it for when I had to mount scopes with twist-in rings, figuring the clapped-out old Leupold 4X was good for that kind of abuse. With all the damage on the lenses you couldn’t hardly see through the thing. It became my scope mount installation assembly aid. Now it was in my junkpile instead of the one at that gunstore in Houston.
About a month ago good buddy Greg and I were on the range and a different Leupold scope (a 3×9) that I had on a .22 250 Ruger No. 1 wouldn’t adjust (it’s the scope on the No. 1 in the large photo above). That surprised me, as a Leupold scope had never failed on me before. The elevation dial was stuck. I wasn’t worried, though. Leupold scopes have a lifetime warranty, as mentioned in the video below:
When I got home I took the 3×9 scope off the No. 1 and sent a note to Leupold’s customer service. Then, just for grins, I told Leupold about the old 4X (the one I described above), and I asked if they could refurbish it. I didn’t know if Leupold offered that kind of service for old scopes. Within a day, I had an email from Leupold with a return material authorization for both scopes, and off they went. I didn’t think they’d be able to do anything with the 4X scope, and they didn’t tell me what they would charge to refurbish it. But I sent it in anyway.
The Leupold 3×9 came back a couple of weeks ago and it’s fixed, cleaned, and it looks great. Leupold somehow managed to refinish the minor marks in the anodizing (you know, what you get from the scope rings), and the scope could almost pass for new. I’m very satisfied with it.
And then, a week or two later, the 4X scope (the one I paid $20 for) arrived. Except it wasn’t the scope I had sent to Leupold. It was instead a brand new Leupold FXII 4×33 (they don’t even sell these anymore), but there it was, brand new and in a new shrink wrapped Leupold box. As a point of reference, when this scope was last offered by Leupold (I’m not sure when that was), they went for $389.
My charge? $0.
Yep, Leupold replaced that beat-up old scope with a brand new one at no charge. I wish I had taken a photo of the original scope. Trust me, it looked like a $20 bargain bin item with one leg in the trash and the other on a banana peel. In its place, I now have a brand new Leupold.
You might wonder: Why a straight 4X scope? Even though many scope companies don’t offer fixed power scopes in 4X these days, I think that a simple 4-power magnification is the best there is for hunting. The higher mags have too narrow a field of view, it takes too long to find the target, and the whole variable power thing, to me, is a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist. Nope, I’m perfectly happy with a straight 4X scope.
Leupold doesn’t offer the straight 4-power scope any more, but they have a wide variety of variable scopes. The most frequently seen variant is the 3×9 Leupold. This is the Leupold you see on that beautiful Ruger No. 1 you see at the top of this blog. I have the 3×9 Leupold on my Model 70, too…the same one I used on a successful wild pig hunt a couple of years ago.
Folks, trust me on this: When people say Leupold has fantastic customer service, they speak the truth. I can’t imagine ever buying another scope from any other company.
This MGB-GT is really a mess. Opening the door of the MGB is like opening a Hollywood style Egyptian tomb: a puff of cursed air escapes as soon as the handle button is pushed then all your relatives start dying under unusual circumstances. It’s ominous inside there, man. Great drifts of rat guano lie still on the floor. Seats, wiring, and vinyl panels: everything is chewed to bits. There’s cardboard and tinfoil, door gaskets hang from their sills and the cabin is littered with parts. It’s a frigging crime scene, man. What have I got myself into?
After clearing the needle bushes that had closed in on the MGB-GT, I poured a batch of 50/50 water and bleach into the Ryobi sprayer and doused the engine bay taking care to hit the voids between the inner fenders and bodywork. The rats have been nesting in there so I’ll have to dismantle the front clip to thoroughly clean it out. But that will come later, if the engine proves to be ok.
Working my way aft I sprayed the front seats, floors, dash, behind the dash, under the seats and the hatchback luggage area. The roof and windshield area was blasted. I even sprayed the exterior of the car with bleach. I’m not sure what is inside that steel ammunition box but it feels sort of heavy. One positive cleaning note is that I don’t have to worry about the bleach hurting anything, as the entire interior must go. Maybe I’ll strap a lawn chair to the floor when I drive the thing.
The extra cylinder head I found under a wheel in the trunk area is both frightening and reassuring. On the one hand it’s always nice to have a spare cylinder head. On the other hand it’s never a good thing to need an extra cylinder head. Hopefully the head in the trunk is the bad one because why else would you have two? I suppose we will find out which one is which soon enough.
Besides the junk inside the car my MGB came with scattered parts. Some parts were in the bushes and some were in boxes. I haven’t inventoried them yet but an un-chewed rear seat is a huge score. I bet the mandarin orange seats really spiced up the interior of the blue MGB. There’s a Weber carburetor in a bucket that may have been destined for the MGB. I’ll get the standard SU’s working before I attempt any carburation trickery. Besides, with 5000-foot elevation changes around here it might be better to run the constant velocity SU’s.
My MGB looks like it had air-conditioning at some point in its storied past. There’s a disconnected condenser in front of the radiator. My new best friends on the MGB owners Facebook page suggested it may be a gigantic oil cooler but I guess not because there is another small cooler (also disconnected) mounted in front of the condenser that looks more oil-ish.
Lending more credence to the air conditioner theory are two empty holes low on the passenger side firewall that may have been put there for liquid and low(er) pressure refrigerant lines. There are unconnected lines near those firewall holes that look a lot like air conditioning stuff. In addition there is an unused V-belt sheave between the fan blade and the alternator/water pump pulley. There is no compressor or smog pump. I see no evaporator or blower inside the cabin but I haven’t really cleared out the junk so it may be knocking around in there. These clues and the crudeness of the condenser installation make me think the MGB-GT had an aftermarket air conditioner before it came under my tutelage. Since my resurrections are done on a tight budget I won’t attempt to get the air conditioner back online. There’s not much of the system left anyway.
As we blog I’m letting the first bleaching soak in. The rat guano will need a second dose of bleach before I start scooping it out. I’ll be buying a Dupont protective suit to wear along with a N100 mask to filter out the smallest particles. Wetness is key to this mouse-capade. You don’t want to stir small bits into the air and if the poop is wet it won’t atomize. Hantavirus is a real thing in New Mexico and while Hanta is much harder to contract, (you have to breathe in contaminated rodent urine/feces and of course not all rodents have it) it’s much more deadly than Covid-19. How does a 36% death rate sound to you? You read that right: 1 out of 3 hanta cases results in death. At 36% there are no whiny, academic, constitutional mask-wearing debates. If you’re cleaning rat poop out west you wear the mask.
Cleaning this MGB-GT is going to be the hardest part of the whole project. Once I can move about the car without the threat of puss-filled-lung death lurking around every corner we will be able to make progress. To that end I’ve ordered a gas powered pressure washer. I know I always say electric is the way to go for infrequently used tools but the electric pressure washer draws so much juice long extension cords don’t work. For jobs far from power outlets I’d have to run a big generator to supply the electric washer and at that point you haven’t really gained anything. Here at ExhaustNotes we look for any excuse to buy new tools. Besides, it was so cheap!
Hopefully Part 3 of the MGB-GT resurrection will see the car fairly cleaned out but there are no guarantees in life so try to enjoy each day as it unfolds.
My first-edition Citizen Blue Angels watch, the one you see above, is one of my favorites. There’s a lot going on in what the watch displays, including the time of day in three time zones (local, any other location in the world, and Greenwich Mean Time). The Citizen has a stop watch, a countdown timer, a calendar, and the ability to set up to three alarms. It also has a 24-hour clock. Those two LCD displays at the bottom of the watch face? I haven’t figured those out yet. I guess I could read the Owner’s Manual. Some day, maybe. And that complicated bezel? That’s a slide rule. I’ll explain it in a bit.
I travel overseas frequently (or at least I used to, before this Covid 19 business hit), and knowing what time it is wherever I am and what time it is at home is a feature I like. The watch has a digital display for every time zone and the analog hands display the local time. Or, you can reverse the displays. Press two buttons simultaneously, and the displays switch (what was displayed digitally displays on the analog hands, and vice versa). It’s a cool feature and it’s fun watching the hour hand sweep around to a new time zone.
One feature I use a lot is the stop watch. It’s handy when I’m cooking, which I like to do.
Ravioli alfredo, with mushrooms, timed to perfection by the Blue Angels. Three minutes on the boil for the ravioli provides the al dente texture I prefer.
The slide rule is cool, too. It’s the complex blue bezel with all the numbers and graduations. Go back 50 years and every engineer on the planet had and used a slide rule (we had pocket protectors, too, but that’s a story for another blog). My engineering class was the last one that used slide rules. Calculators had just been invented, and in the early 1970s a basic Hewlett Packard or Texas Instruments calculator sold for something north of $600. That was a lot of money, and I remember thinking that calculators would never catch on. Who needs a $600 calculator when you have a slide rule?
A few years ago we road tested the early CSC 150 Mustangs, and we hired a couple of my Cal Poly engineering students (guys who weighed 130 pounds soaking wet) to ride the things. We wanted to check fuel economy, and flyweight riders would register the best possible miles per gallon. At our first fuel stop we noted miles and fuel. I used my Citizen’s slide rule bezel and calculated the fuel economy while our young engineers were still fumbling with their cell phone calculators. One of them asked how I knew so quickly, and when I told them I used a slide rule, I had their attention. These two young engineers had never seen a slide rule, much less one built into a watch bezel. I showed them how the slide rule worked, and they had a lesson right there at the gas pump from their old engineering professor.
Steve (CSC’s CEO), Peter, and Joel by a historic bridge in the San Gabriel Mountain foothills. The verdict was in and my Citizen watch made it official: 98.3 miles per gallon.Citizen Blue Angels slide rules can be amazingly accurate. The outer bezel is the numerator, and the inner bezel is the denominator. We went 116 miles and used 1.18 gallons of fuel, so the calculation for mpg is 116 miles/1.18 gallons, or 98.3 mpg (as represented by the two arrows on the right). You read the answer on the outer bezel over the 10 on the inner bezel (as represented by the two arrows on the left). It’s 98.3. Easy, isn’t it?
Citizen Blue Angels styling themes have been applied to several iterations and styles of their Blue Angels series since I bought my watch. There have been titanium versions, solar powered versions, leather strap versions, GMT versions, radio-synched-time versions, and more. I checked the Citizen official US website as I wrote this blog and they show nine different models in the Blue Angels watch collection. That’s not counting models that have been discontinued (like mine).
I don’t need or want one of the newer Blue Angels watches. Mine is the original version and I like it. Like most quartz-movement watches, it’s scary accurate. Yeah, it takes a battery, but a battery seems to last about three years and I can live with that (spending $3.25 every thousand days for a new battery is doable). I think I spent about $275 for my Blue Angels watch when I bought it 20 years ago. That was in the pre-Amazonic era (which came after the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous periods), when dinosaurs like me ruled the planet. New Blue Angels Citizen watches today range from the high $300s to just under a thousand bucks. They seem to last forever, so your money will be well spent.
The funny part, I guess, is that the real Blue Angels, the guys (and gals) who fly F-18s for the US Navy and the US Marines, don’t wear Citizen Blue Angel watches, and I don’t know if they ever did. In researching this topic, I found that the Blue Angels’ official watch is an IWC (they go for a cool $10,900), but I don’t care. I like my Citizen.
The IWC Blue Angels watch. Got a spare $10,900? And just look at it: For that kind of money, you’re not even getting a slide rule.
I’m not sure what the relationship is between the Blue Angels and the Citizen company these days. I tried to find out with several search phrases on Google, but I came up empty. My guess is that the Navy allows Citizen to use the name for a fee, but that’s just a guess on my part.
Citizen also offered a Thunderbirds version of my watch, something they no longer do (the Thunderbirds are the US Air Force flight demonstration team). The Thunderbirds watch is an even rarer animal. I don’t think the colors work as well as the Blue Angels watch (they look better on an F-16), but hey, different strokes for different folks.
A used Citizen Thunderbirds watch that sold in Singapore a couple of years ago for 50 Singaporean dollars (about $40 US). Nice, but not as nice as the Blue Angels version.
I used to have a bunch of cool Blue Angels photos I shot at the Reno Air Races (photos of the real Blue Angels flight team in action), but I guess I deleted them (I looked, but I could not find any). I had posted the photos way back when on the old MotoFoto site, and a law firm sent me a registered letter reminding me that my ticket to the Reno Air Races included a prohibition against displaying any photos from the event. It must have been a slow day for the lawyers. I imagine with Instagram and Facebook that would never fly today. If you ever had an opportunity to see a Blue Angels or Thunderbirds flight demonstration, you should go. I’ve seen both, and they are impressive.
It started for me when I was a kid and my parents bought me a Timex, and it’s never subsided. I can’t walk by a watch store or jewelry counter without stopping. Watch technology has jumped through several advances in my lifetime, and I’ve enjoyed them all. I like digital and I like analog watches, and I like that different watches work best for different applications (it gives me an excuse for buying one that, you know, I might need). I like the idea that I can order a watch from overseas that’s not marketed here in the US, and I like a lot of the watches that are marketed here. I travel overseas on a fairly regular basis, so I’m a sucker for a good-looking GMT watch (they’re the ones that allow you to see the time in two or three different places in the world simultaneously). I’ll do another blog about the GMTs at a later date. The focus of today’s blog is ride-specific watches. I tend to think of watches by major motorcycle adventures, and there are three I want to mention today.
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The first one I’ll mention is the green-faced, military-styled Seiko I wore on the Western America Adventure Ride. It’s a quartz watch and it’s not a model that was imported by Seiko’s US distributor (which doesn’t mean much these days; I ordered it new from a Hong Kong-based Ebay store and it was here in two days). But I like the fact that I’ve never seen anybody else wearing this model.
I bought the Seiko on an Ebay auction about 15 years ago, and I think I got it for something like $52 brand new. I like the style, I like its relative light weight, and I like the size (it’s the right size, not ridiculously-large like many watches today). The Seiko is impervious to wet weather and it has served me well. Just for grins, I tried to find it again on the Internet, and I only found one that was used in an Ebay auction, and it had already been bid up to over double what I paid for mine new. You might be wondering about the compass directions on the Seiko’s bezel. There’s a method of using those, the watch hands, and the sun to identify which way is north. I don’t need that feature, I don’t use it, and I’d have to read the directions to learn it again, but it’s cool to know it’s there. It’s kind of an Indiana Jones thing, I guess.
Next up is the safety-fluorescent-green Timex Ironman I wore on the ride across China. I’d seen one at a Target department store and for reasons it would probably take a behavioral psychologist to explain, I decided it was one I had to have on the China ride. Gresh arrived in California a few days before we left for the China adventure, and we spent a good chunk of our pre-departure time running around to several different stores trying to find that watch. Maybe I thought it would match my riding jacket. Maybe I thought it would be good because you can light up the face at night (a feature that is very useful for finding your way to the latrine at night). Like I said…who knows? The Timex did a good job for me. It was bitter cold up on the Tibetan Plateau, hot in the Gobi Desert, hot and humid everywhere else, and it rained so hard at times I swore I saw a guy leading animals two-by-two into a Chinese ark. My Ironman is still going strong on the original battery. Those Ironman watch batteries seem to last forever.
The last one is a Casio Marlin diver’s watch. It has to be one of the best watch deals ever. I’m not a diver, and there are really no features (beyond telling time, luminescent hands, a rotating bezel, and a waterproof case) that I need, but I just like the thing. You can get a brand new Casio Marlin for a scosh under $50, and folks, that’s a smoking good deal.
It rained like hell half the time we rode in Colombia, and the Casio never let me down. I vividly remember waiting for the ferry to arrive in Magangué for our cruise down the Magdelana River to Mompos when a Colombian boy came over to see what we were all about. He fixated on my Casio as we waited in sweltering heat under the shade of a very small tree. He finally touched the watch and simply said “good.” You know, I needed that watch on the trip (it was the only one I had with me), but if I had a spare, I would have given it to him. I still wear the Casio regularly. It’s just a good, basic, comfortable, and easy to read watch. It’s a favorite.
I saw this YouTube video a few days ago on the Royal Enfield 650 Interceptor, and I’ve been meaning to post it here on the ExNotes blog. I think YouTube motorcycle reviews are generally a time suck, but I enjoyed this one. The dude who made it (MotoSlug, a guy I never heard of before) nailed it, I think, with his description of the Enfield, its capabilities, and the riding experience. It’s no BSA, Senator, but it’s still a fun ride. Actually, it’s way better than any BSA I ever rode.
I’m inspired. It’s late afternoon here in So Cal, which is to say it’s hot. When things cool off in a couple of hours, I’m going to fire up my Enfield (that’s it in the photo above) and go for a ride.
Read our story about riding Enfields in Baja here.
I’ve dropped a lot of usable content on Facebook without thinking about it. Good stories that would have made excellent topics for an ExhaustNotes.us blog post and I’ve screwed around and published them on Facebook’s Anti-Social Network. To what end? All it does is supply the buoyant pontoons that support a miserable, never-ending political tussle on my Facebook feed. My Chase Harper magnetic tank bag is a perfect example. Why haven’t I written a product review on this thing?
Until John Burns over at Motorcycle.com brought up tank bags I had completely forgotten I had one. I bought the Chase Harper 650 the day Berk and I left for our 650/500 Royal Enfield Baja trip. Neither Royal Enfield was set up with luggage so we strapped our gear on the bikes as best we could. I started out on the 500cc Bullet and I had so much junk to carry I used a backpack to hold some of it.
I’m a proponent of letting the motorcycle carry as much weight as possible. Slinging 20 pounds of junk onto your back and then pounding on city streets is not smart or sexy. My back was already hurting. We were working our way south to pick up a freeway when I called out to Berk, “Is there a motorcycle shop around here? I need to get a tank bag.”
“Yeah, follow me.” I followed Berk through the nondescript Californian sprawl and we arrived at a motorcycle accessory shop that was not named CycleGear. The shop guys came out and ogled the (at the time a new model not yet sold) Royal Enfield 650. We shot the breeze for a bit and then went inside to look at tank bags. Which didn’t take long because they only had one in stock: the Chase Harper 650.
The Model 650 is as plain as you can make a tank bag. It has a few zipper compartments and four strong magnets to hold the thing to your tank. Nothing expands or is special. Chase Harper is proud of their motorcycle products and prices them accordingly. The thing was like 90 dollars! As it was the display model, kind of dusty and missing the box and paperwork I asked the guys for a discount. No deal.
Berk started telling them how we were famous motojournalists. The clerks shook their heads, neither having heard of or read our stuff. I showed them a few tired old Motorcyclist Magazine stories on my cell phone and they seemed really interested but would not budge on the price. “We’ve already reduced the price on that bag, we can’t go any lower.” I bet Peter Egan could have gotten the price down. The fastest way to end this ego shattering indignity was to fork over the money and haul ass as fast as we could.
The bag was a great relief for my back. It held my camera, wallet, phone and enough stuff that I could survive a day or two on the hoof. Whenever Berk and I went into a store or restaurant I took the bag with me. The magnets make that so easy. I didn’t like that the bag had no rain cover. Those soulless misers at the motorcycle shop not called CycleGear said it was rain resistant. Whenever a motorcycle gear manufacturer says a product is resistant to rain you can take that to mean the damn thing is a sponge. I mean, anything that doesn’t dissolve like sugar when it gets wet could be described as resistant to rain.
As it turns out we didn’t hit any rain on our ride through Baja and the tank bag worked out perfectly fine. I got the 650 Royal Enfield up to an indicated 115 miles per hour and it stayed put like it was made to do 115.
In all the time I have owned the C-H bag I never really looked it over too closely. I didn’t see any straps for using the bag like a backpack. This is a common feature on tank bags. It wasn’t until Burns’ brought up tank bags on Facebook that Steve, another C-H 650 user told me that the straps were hidden in a zipper compartment under the grab handle.
And they were! Well hidden, I wonder if I the shop not named CycleGear had given me the original paperwork for the 650 would I have found the straps sooner? Probably not: I would have tossed the paperwork anyway. I’m a rebel, man.
The interior of the C-H 650 is plush, deep red. I feel like I have a bordello between my legs whenever I open the lid. Well padded, my camera gear survived Baja’s bumpy roads unscathed.
The lid of the 650 has quite a few features. There’s a bungee cord crisscrossing the top to hold odd shaped bits. Behind the mesh map holder there is yet another zipper for papers and what not.
Finally, there is a front-opening pouch with a red plastic liner that might keep something dry depending on how much the zipper leaks. I haven’t used any of these little hidey-holes so I can’t say if they are worthwhile. I toss everything into the main compartment.
The backside of the C-H 650 is not covered in super soft material. It’s more like vinyl. I had no tank scratches using the 650. There is one clip on the front and two clips on the back that I imagine could be used for strapping the bag to non-metallic gas tanks. I did not get the parts that would affix the bag to a non-metallic tank. They might be an extra cost item or you-know-who lost them at that shop not named CycleGear.
Overall I’m happy if not ecstatic with the Chase Harper tank bag. Just remember to bring plastic bags to protect your stuff in the rain. It did the job I needed it to do for much more money than I thought it should. For only having one, dusty tank bag the shop not named CycleGear did ok. My last tank bag lasted 10 years. This one looks sturdy enough to go the same distance.
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.
Recently we added a paver patio to Tinfiny Ranch’s ever-growing suite of stone and concrete structure. The pavers we used weren’t exactly made for paving. They were that pressure molded, popcorn cement stuff, like a two-cell block but these were all solid. I have a great assortment of 4x8x16 blocks and less, but still plenty of 8x8x16 blocks. I got them at a surplus materials auction for only 20 dollars. No one else bid on them because they are kind of an odd block.
The only catch was you had to move them. The blocks are not that heavy individually but the repetition of loading several hundred of them into The Bomber, a 1990 4X4 GMC Suburban (last year of the solid front axle!) had me questioning the wisdom of bidding so high.
When I bought the blocks I had no immediate plans for them, it was just too good of a deal to pass up. It took three trips to load and move the blocks from the auction yard back home. I made a neat, orderly pile up in the higher reaches of Tinfiny Ranch. The blocks sat there a couple years, not bothering anyone.
During that time I built a retaining wall and leveled the back yard, then I poured a decorative concrete slab around the side and back of the little shack we call home. When I got to the section where the septic tank was buried I had to stop pouring concrete. At this stage of the construction process those $20, auction concrete blocks started to look like a canny deal. Unlike real pavers these blocks were 4 to 8 inches thick. That means I needed a way to cut the blocks to fit the odd shapes mandated by my out-of-square building techniques. I purposely make my home projects cockeyed. It makes them easy to identify if they are ever stolen, like the VIN number on your motorcycle.
Which is, even I have to admit, a really long introduction to this concrete saw review.
I didn’t plan to buy Xtreme Power’s 14-inch electric, concrete wet-saw because I already had a 12-inch Hitachi concrete saw. It’s kind of funny in a sad, losing-my-mind sort of way but it had been so long since I used the Hitachi I forgot what size it was and bought a new 14-inch, wet-cutting, diamond blade for it. Naturally the 14-inch blade wouldn’t fit into the 12-inch saw. Side by side the 14-inch saw is much larger than the 12-inch. It just goes to show you how a couple inches can make a big difference.
My wife CT, constantly bucking for wife of the century, suggested I check the prices on a new 14-inch saw to fit the blade I had instead of buying yet another 12-inch blade to fit the saw I had. There were other, mitigating circumstances that I didn’t let CT know about. One of them was the fact that the Hitachi was never made to be used wet. It was a dry saw. My Pop welded in a threaded bung for a garden hose and for years we used it plugged into 120 volts while standing in water. We did this because we were construction workers and simply not very bright.
It was only a hundred bucks more to buy a whole new saw rather than eat the sunk costs of the 14-inch diamond blade and buy another 12-inch diamond blade. A big plus is that the Xtreme Power saw is built from the factory to be used wet. All gripping surfaces are electrically isolated and the power cord has one of those super-sensitive GFI-type circuit breakers to prevent idiots like me from electrocuting themselves.
Spinning a 14-inch blade through concrete is not an easy thing to do. It takes lots of power and with a 15-amp rating the Extreme Power saw uses just about all the current your standard household receptacle will supply. You won’t be running this saw on a 100-foot extension cord.
Concrete saws rotate the opposite direction from wood cutting circular saws. Meaning if the saw binds it jumps forward instead of kicking back. Even if it doesn’t bind you have to restrain the saw rather than push it forwards. It’s a handful to keep the thing going in the direction you want.
Xtreme Power’s 14-inch saw was not without its faults. The saw came with a strange water connection than won’t fit any US-spec water hose. I had to replace the stock fitting but the step-down in size from garden hose to saw fitting was huge. I made a spooky looking plastic adaptor to accommodate the size issue.
Once connected to water I opened the hose bib and the small hoses promptly blew off and squirted water into the inner reaches my nice new 14-inch Xtreme Power saw. This didn’t bother me, as the manufacturer must have anticipated a wet saw getting wet. Xtreme Power uses water supply hoses that are a soft silicone type of material; so soft they won’t stay on the hose barbs. A few wraps of bailing wire around the hoses secured them and left a nice, sharp barb to cut my hand on should I ever relax my vigilance in the future.
My water supply problems were not over yet. In use those super soft hoses manage to kink easily, stopping the water flow to the blade. It’s easy to tell when the water stops because clouds of cement dust billow from the blade housing. There you are, trying to steer a heavy, bucking saw while holding the water supply hose in a position that won’t cause it to kink. I’m amazed I didn’t sever both my feet with the damn thing. New, stiffer hoses will be installed before I use the 14-incher again.
Ignoring the water hose problem for the moment this saw cuts concrete like butter. I can make a foot-long, 4-inch deep concrete cut in about a minute. There’s no dust but a slurry of concrete mud slinging out the back of the machine means you won’t be carving the Thanksgiving turkey with this thing.
Being a wet cutting saw the blade housing has to cover a large percentage of the blade to prevent the user from being splattered with mud. This housing makes seeing where the blade is cutting nearly impossible. You have to kind of wing it. There’s a notch on the shoe to use as a guide. I had good luck eyeballing the line using the edge of the shoe and the edge of the material as a guide.
Which brings us to another problem with using a 14-inch blade to cut 4-inches of concrete: You may luck out and make a straight cut from the side the saw is on but that big blade has other ideas and will wander outboard leaving behind a tapered cut as the blade flexes. A multitude of passes with shallower cuts would be a better idea but I needed to move on so I chopped the pavers in one pass. Precision is not my bag when it comes to stone work.
Out of the box, the Xtreme Power saw is not ready to work. You’ll need to redo the water hose system before attempting any cuts. I was cutting really thick blocks so for regular pavers the blade wandering issue probably won’t be a problem. This saw is big and heavy but it has to be because of the size blade it swings. Xtreme thoughtfully included a set of wheels that would come in handy if you were cutting many feet of expansion joints or grooving an area for non-skid. I’d like to rig a handlebar system so the saw could be used as a walk-behind unit.
I can’t comment on longevity. I’ve used the saw two days in total. Amazon has them for $200 with free shipping. That’s a little more expensive than renting a saw for two days but probably less than renting a saw for a week. The blade is not included. You’ll have to buy that separately, which is how I got into this mess in the first place.
The KLR250 refurbishment has been going slowly but in addition to that I’m not getting much done otherwise. It’s the heat. Temperatures at Tinfiny Ranch have been hovering around 100 degrees or more and under these conditions it’s all I can do to press paper firebricks.
I did manage to order a brake caliper kit from England. The Widow Maker’s front brake gave me lots of problems at Daytona this year. The caliper was mightily stuck and the master cylinder was odd feeling. I managed to get the brake working well enough for Bike Week and replaced the master cylinder in a previous R, R & R episode but I didn’t trust my half-assed Florida Man repairs on the caliper.
The Brakemasters rebuild kit was very complete and was inexpensive to boot. The Widowmaker’s original rubber parts lasted through 20 years of neglect so the new stuff has a steep hill to climb. The only part I didn’t care for was the new bleeder nipple. The replacement nipple did not want to thread in easily. I could have forced it and remolded the aluminum caliper threads but instead used the old nipple, which threaded in by hand.
As expected, the caliper job went well. Old motorcycles with single-piston calipers are a breeze to repair. The hardest part was fitting the dust seal into the caliper body and then fitting the piston. I didn’t remember how I did the trick last March and was getting frustrated. Thank goodness for YouTube; I pulled up a quick search on caliper dust boot installation and there was a guy showing me how to do the deal.
I think in March I used a beer can to make an expander sleeve for the piston and then slid the piston into the (already installed in the caliper) boot. It just wasn’t working this time. Maybe fresh rubber is stronger than 20-year-old rubber. YouTube man fitted the boot to the piston first (the opposite of what I was doing) and let a short length of rubber hang off the back. That hanging bit was then pushed and prodded into its groove on the caliper. Once the dust boot is in the groove the piston can be slid into the caliper all the way until the piston groove catches the other end of the boot. With all the talk of grooves this sounds confusing but that’s why YouTube videos are so nice. YouTube Man’s method worked great and the caliper is now ready for reinstallation.
If it cools off a little I’ll tackle the fork seals and re-grease the steering head bearings next. And keep making firebricks, of course.
More on the KLR250 and other moto-resurrection stuff is on the ExNotes Resurrections page!
You already read about Joe Gresh’s Viking Cycles jacket. I received my Viking jacket around the same time Gresh received his. Like Joe’s jacket, mine is vented, and that’s entirely appropriate for the extreme heat we are having here in So Cal. It flows a lot of air, and once moving, riding in hot weather is tolerable. And you have to love the orange on this jacket. Orange is the fastest color; if you don’t believe me, just ask good buddy Orlando. That’s Orlando and Velma in RAZ (you know, the Rachel Autonomous Zone, where ketchup bottles are assigned to specific tables). Those two never miss an opportunity to pose with an orange motorcycle.
The Viking is a good-looking jacket, with plenty of pockets. There are two chest pockets, two belly pockets, and a pocket suitable for cell phones or eyeglasses just inside the zipper.
The inside pocket…suitable for shades, or maybe a cell phone. The zippers all appear to be of good quality, too.
About those belly pockets…they are sized perfectly for holding a lot of different things. Baseball hats, cell phones, Yoo-Hoo boxes, and more.
My jacket came with a spec card, and rather than try to describe the specs myself, I’ll let the card do the talking.
The jacket had a desiccant pouch in one of the pockets. I always wonder what prompts warnings on things. Take a look:
Don’t eat the desiccant. Seriously? You know the good folks who make these things put that warning on the desiccant because somebody did. Even with warnings, though, people still do the things the warnings warn them not to do. You know, folks who urinate on the electric fence because they just have to find out for themselves. Some of those people vote, too. But I digress. Back to the main attraction, and that’s my review of the Viking Cycles jacket. It’s made in Pakistan. That’s okay by me.
Like most motorcycle jackets, the Viking Cycles jacket has a beltline adjustment strap and straps for adjusting sleeve flop. The jacket also has a removable liner, and mine has the pocket tether and hook Gresh already mentioned in his review, presumably for a spare key.
As Joe Gresh commented in his jacket review, the Viking jacket’s price is surprisingly low at $49.99. I’ve had lots of motorcycle jackets over the last few decades; this price is way lower than anything I’ve had before, even considering employee discounts and inflation. I believe the Viking Cycles jacket is of comparable quality to most other jackets I’ve had, and better than most. Time will tell, but so far, things are looking good.
The first one I’ll mention is the green-faced, military-styled Seiko I wore on the Western America Adventure Ride. It’s a quartz watch and it’s not a model that was imported by Seiko’s US distributor (which doesn’t mean much these days; I ordered it new from a Hong Kong-based Ebay store and it was here in two days). But I like the fact that I’ve never seen anybody else wearing this model.
Next up is the safety-fluorescent-green Timex 
The last one is a 
