Good buddy King Kong in Luo Yang, central China. Kong is a hard-riding moto maestro who wears a G-Shock wristwatch. Based on his advice, so do I.
Up until last few years, I ignored the Casio G-Shock watches. I didn’t think they were particularly good looking, and I didn’t need a watch that was protected against high g forces any more than I needed a summer cold. Then something happened. I met King Kong. Seriously. King Kong on a motorcycle. Kong rode with us on the Western America Adventure Ride here in the US and he’s done several rides (some solo) across China. On my ride across China, my good buddy King Kong wore a G-Shock and he loved the thing.
Kong’s Casio was living a tough life. The fact that Kong liked the G-Shock got my attention, and a short time later I purchased my first one. Then came another, and now, a third.
This third one is the Carbon Core Guard GA2000, which is a mouthful. It was a gift to me from my sister Eileen, which made it even more special. It is even more resistant to shock than a regular Casio G watch as a result of its carbon fiber reinforced structure and a new design monolithic band, which further encapsulates the movement. Okay, I get it, but the regular G-Shock timepieces are already pretty tough. The added protection might be meaningless from my personal survivability perspective, considering that if it gets subjected to g forces it’s going to happen while I’m wearing it, and the old design would probably survive those kind of shocks better than yours truly. My guess is that if this one ever gets close to feeling shock levels that threaten its existence I would be toast, and if that’s the case, hey, who cares if the watch is still ticking? No, the features that endear this one to me are much more practical, and truth be told, I don’t fully understand all of them yet. There’s more to the show than I can talk about, but I can talk about the ones that matter to me.
For starters, the Casio Carbon Core GA 2000 is a good-looking watch. I like the colors and the style, I like the analog hands and digital display, and I like the skeletonized minute and hour hands. The yellow accents on a black watch work for me. I just think it looks good. If yellow doesn’t float your boat, though, Casio offers this watch in several other color themes.
The folks who tell you size doesn’t matter? Don’t listen to them. I need to be able to read the thing, and with a watch this size, that’s no problem. The G-Shock is a big watch, but it’s not too big.
Next up is the world time capability. I travel overseas from time to time and it’s nice to be able to check the current time in Singapore or Chongqing by clicking a button on my watch without having to try to remember the time difference. To me, this is an important feature.
This G-Shock has timer and stopwatch features. These were important to me when I was a jogger and a serious bicycle rider; today, not so much. For you younger guys, if you need these capabilities, they’re there. My watch is also equipped with an alarm feature. I’m sort of retired now and it doesn’t matter when I get up in the morning, but old habits die hard and I’m usually making coffee by 5:00 a.m. every day. I don’t need an alarm to tell me to get up at that time; I just do. For you poor guys who still work for a living, if you need an alarm, you get it with this watch.
This G-Shock is comfortable and it’s waterproof. I wear a watch 24/7, and this one is so comfortable I forget I have it on. I wear my watch in the shower just because I don’t want to bother with taking it off. Sometimes on a motorcycle I get caught in the rain. None of that’s a problem for this watch; it’s good to go underwater at depths way deeper than I ever will find myself.
There’s another feature that’s a very big deal to me, and that’s the light. This watch doesn’t have luminous hands, but it has a light that let’s you see the time in the dark. That light is good enough that when I need to get up in the middle of the night (you older guys will understand what I’m talking about), it’s sufficient to illuminate the path to el cuarto de baño. (It’s funny how what’s important changes when you get older.)
Oh, and one more thing: My watch keeps perfect time. I checked it against the www.time.gov website (the official US timekeeping site) when I got the watch, and I checked it again several weeks later. It’s perfect. Right to the second.
The Casio Carbon Core Guard watch carries an MSRP of $130, but the street price is usually under a hundred bucks, and that’s a good deal.
I don’t know if it’s true (and in today’s environment I don’t even care if it’s true) but I read somewhere that ATVs are outselling motorcycles. This makes sense as ATVs or Quads or whatever you want to call the things are low-skill devices that anyone can ride off road.
Back in the early 1970’s the big boom in motorcycling was started in the dirt. Kids like you and me bought mini bikes and enduros by the zillions. An entire industry sprang to life and that industry supported all levels of riding. Collectively, we learned the difficult art of steering a wiggling motorcycle across sand and mud and rocks. It wasn’t easy. It took a lot of talent to keep from crashing and we lost a lot of good people to concentration lapses or simple bad luck.
The first ATVs were 3-wheeled contraptions that took even more skill than motorcycles to ride in the dirt. It didn’t take long for manufacturers to figure out 4 wheels were a lot more stable than 3 and that was the beginning of the end for motorcycles in America.
Since children cannot operate motorcycles on the street, dirt bikes were like a Pop Warner league feeding well-trained riders into the Bigs: The Pavement. Harried on all sides by nearly unconscious automobile drivers our generation’s ability to ride a motorcycle in that buoyant area beyond the limits of traction became a right handy survival skill. And so a huge bubble of capable motorcycle riders surged through the land buying motorcycles at a clip never before seen.
Meanwhile, the Quads kept getting bigger and safer while dirt bikes were safety-limited by their very design: They fell over. Anyone can steer a quad. It takes no skill whatsoever to trundle along following the huge ruts made by thousands of other quads. Trails were ruined by the excessive width and sheer quantity of idiots driving their miniature cars. Dirt bikes were hard to ride and safety concerns overtook the nation’s parents. As ATV’s filled the forests the available pool of motorcycle riders dwindled. The farm system began to dry up.
Now, Quads cost $25,000 and are the size of Jeeps. Four people fit comfortably strapped into a steel cage, safe from the environment they go about destroying. ATVs can go almost anywhere their bubblegum tires will support the vehicle’s weight and the weight of their passengers. Automatic transmissions erased the last vestige of talent needed to explore off road. On the trails I ride kids on motorcycles are the exception not the rule. Sometimes I can go all day and see nothing but quads. How many kids raised in a cocoon of steel bars would be crazy enough to start riding a motorcycle on the street? We know the answer: Very few.
It’s not the cost of new motorcycles; there are plenty of cheap bikes available. It’s not Gen X, Y, or Z being too chicken or into their cell phones. It’s not branding. It’s not lack of riding areas. None of these things killed motorcycles.
A safer, easier to operate dirt machine was built and human nature did the rest. ATV’s are capturing the kids at their most impressionable age. Motorcycles are not. Nothing we can do will reverse that trend.
Brown Motor Works in Pomona, California, hosted a chili cookoff in March 2008, which was immediately followed by a weekend trip to Death Valley. At the time, I’d been a California boy for 30 years, but I’d never been to Death Valley. I always wanted to go. And, I love chili. Free chili…lots of photo ops…good weather…and a motorcycle ride to a place I’d never been before. It seemed like a no-brainer to me. It was a ride I had to make.
Kawasaki’s KLR 650
I had purchased a 2006 KLR 650 a year or two earlier from my good buddy Art at the Montclair Kawasaki dealer, and something strange happened: I found I was enjoying the little KLR more than the other big roadburners I owned. At that time, I had gone way overboard in acquiring motorcycles. I had a TL1000S Suzuki, a Harley Softail, a Honda CBX, a Triumph Daytona 1200, and a Triumph Tiger 955 (and I think I owned them all at the same time). There was something about the KLR, though, that I liked, and I found myself riding it more often than not. All the guys I rode with either had BMWs, Harleys, or Triumphs, and my KLR was the smallbore of the bunch. I didn’t care. I liked riding it. To my surprise, I found that riding a smaller bike was more fun.
A lone KLR in a sea of BMWs. Nearly all of my friends rode BMW motorcycles in those days. I had a lot of fun with my KLR.
The Chili Cookoff
Good buddy Dennis, shown here immediately after taking top honors in the chili-eating contest. Dennis is an Iron Butt rider and he rides a BMW. The rules were different than what I expected. You weren’t allowed to lift the bowl off the table, so the serious competitors simply dove in. BMW riders are a particularly sophisticated bunch.
On To Mojave
The guys at Brown Motor Works planned to leave at the end of the day, but I didn’t want to hang around until then. Immediately after grabbing a few photos from the chili contest, I was on the KLR headed east and then north into the Mojave Desert.
I took my KLR and found my way along Old Route 66 into the Mojave Desert.I took I-40 over to Kelbaker Road and then headed into the Mojave National Preserve. The group planned to meet in Baker, and I figured if I timed it right I would get there right about nightfall.I grabbed this photo along the Kelbaker Road. I didn’t know too much about motorcycle photography. This is the shot magazine editors always hate…the motorcycle by the side of the road.
Baker and The Mad Greek
Baker is a wide spot in the road along the I-15, and it’s a jumping off point for Death Valley. It is a funky place with a couple of poorly-maintained and overpriced gas stations, the world’s tallest thermometer, and a cool restaurant called The Mad Greek. The Mad Greek is a place that seems to always show up in any movie about a road trip to Vegas. I have yet to find a Greek in the place, but the food is good and the staff is friendly.
We had dinner at the Mad Greek in Baker along the I-15. We spent the night in Baker, and then had breakfast at the Mad Greek the next morning, too.
Into the Valley of Death
After a breakfast at the Mad Greek the next morning, we road north toward Death Valley. There’s nothing out there but great roads and the Mojave for the 80 miles or so to the park entrance, and the Beemer boys were riding at speeds well in excess of 100 mph so I couldn’t keep up. The KLR might see 100 on a really good day, but I didn’t care. I wanted to stop, smell the roses, and get good photos. Riding by myself didn’t bother me at all. I preferred it.
Entering Death Valley the next morning.My reaction was simple upon entering Death Valley: Wow! It was what I hoped it would be.Another shot of my KLR.At some ruins in Death Valley.My friend Eddie and his GS.
Artist’s Palette
One of the cool spots to stop in Death Valley is a hilly area called Artist’s Palette. Each hill has a different dominant mineral (and a different color), and the result is something that looks like an artist’s palette. It’s a very cool thing to see.
Artist’s Palette in Death Valley.My friend Joseph and his Triumph Sprint.
High Prices and Photo Ops
Death Valley’s claim to fame is that it’s one of the lowest spots on the planet. It’s also in one of the more remote places on the planet, which meant that fuel costs were unusually high. All made for interesting photos.
This was a gas station in Furnace Creek. At the time (this was in 2008), the gasoline prices here were the highest I had ever seen.An obligatory shot along the road in Death Valley.
Wildrose Road and the Charcoal Kilns
My friend Bob told me about Wildrose Road, a road that cut through some canyons on the way out of Death Valley.It was a great ride. While I was on Wildrose Road, I saw signs for the Charcoal Kilns, so I took a short detour. On the way up to the Charcoal Kilns, I stopped to take the picture above. A guy and his wife were coming from the other direction and he asked if I wanted a picture of me with my KLR. Death Valley was cold. I had on every piece of clothing I brought with me.The Charcoal kilns. These were built in the 1870s. They are 25 feet tall and 30 feet in diameter.Wildrose Road. You could probably get through it on any motorcycle, but I was glad I had the KLR. Bob was right…Wildrose Road was a great ride.
The Gear
I had a Nikon D200 digital camera when I did this trip and the first-generation Nikon 24-120 lens with a polarizer, and it did a good job for me. I think it was a 10 megapixel deal and that seemed like a lot in those days. I kept the D200 for a long time and I had a lot of fun with it. I used it for all of the photos you see here. It was big and bulky, and as I recall, it took all of the space in one of the Kawasaki saddlebags I used with my KLR. It was only a weekend trip, and the other saddlebag was enough for my other stuff. I like to travel light and the arrangement worked fine for me.
Death Valley: The Bottom Line
If you’ve ever thought about taking a ride to Death Valley, do it. Take a camera, too. Trust me on this: You won’t be disappointed. As a rider and a photography enthusiast, I had a great time. The KLR 650 was more than enough motorcycle, I felt it was a good bike for a trip like this, and I concluded that Death Valley is doable on just about any motorcycle (especially if you mostly stick to Death Valley’s paved roads, as I did). The photo ops in Death Valley are stunning. If you live in southern California, it’s an easy weekend trip.
One day was not enough, though. There was a lot of Death Valley left to see, and I knew I’d be back.
There’s more coming on Death Valley and a bunch of other great rides. Sign up here and never miss an Exhaust Notes blog!
We ducked into a candy store in Sonora while exploring a very wet Highway 49, and I thought of you, Fred. The YooHoo review is in the queue, my friend.
It was not intended to be an inclement weather Subie road test, but that’s what our Bay Area/Yosemite/Tahoe/Bishop trek has become. Talk about weather…wow! It’s either been rain or snow with only one day of sunshine, but it was sunshine below freezing at high altitudes on Highway 88 into Lake Tahoe. The rules said I was supposed to have tire chains or 4WD with snow tires, but hell, I’ve never been too good with rules. I’m talking slick roads with walls of snow taller than the top of my Subie Outback. We rode the ice nearly all the way. It was grand fun, and the Subaru hasn’t missed a beat. Chains? We don’t need no stinking chains!
We only ventured about 10 miles into Yosemite when discretion won out over valor. The visibility was low and the snow was high, so we called it a day and turned around. We stayed in Groveland at a grand old hotel and had dinner in the oldest bar in California (the Iron Door Grill). It used to be a sporting palace back in the day (I asked, but all the sports ladies had long since retired). The Gold Rush Highway the next day was grand even in the rain, but the ride up to Lake Tahoe was a bit on the scary side. And then the ride down the Kingsbury Grade from Tahoe down to Highway 395 was just flat terrifying…it was 20 miles per hour all the way down in a heavy snowfall. The 395 was daunting, too, with most of it in the snow. But hey, we’re here in Bishop, we’re warm, and we’re ready to continue in the morning.
Tomorrow it’s Death Valley and then home. The weather is supposed to be nice and that almost seems like a letdown after what we’ve driven through. The Subie is a star in the snow and we’re loving it.
A swing and a miss is the way I’d describe it. Formulaic. I know what the Italian quattro (Scorcese, Pacino, DeNiro, and Pesci) were thinking: Hey, it worked before; maybe it will work again. The mob. The Kennedys and Castro. DeNiro as an Irish hit man. Hoffa. Music from the 1950s. Voiced-in explanations from the main characters giving the lowdown on each mob dude. Over-restored ‘50s and ‘60s cars. Let’s throw it all against the silver screen for 3½ hours and maybe something will stick (yeah, you read that right: 3½ hours). I know what they were thinking: Goodfellas, The Godfather (and all of its Roman-numeraled follow-ons), and Casino. Yeah, it worked before, so maybe it will work again. Except it doesn’t. Those earlier mob flicks were great. The Irishman is not.
Guys, at some point you have to realize there’s not any milk left in the cow. Even with your digital filtering to make old guys look young, all you gave us were weird, slitty-eyed visions of a younger DeNiro with the body and gait of a senior citizen (where’s Fredo when you need him?). And Pacino playing Hoffa? Another swing and a miss (you should have let the ump call a strike). Jack Nicholson will forever be Jimmy Hoffa; Pacino just wasn’t believable in this role. If you can see it, then hey, I’m the Pope. Al, go back to threatening Mr. Trump. You’re not believable in that role, either, but you apparently know what they say about bad publicity.
Save your money, folks, and hang on to that 3½ hours of your life I’ll never get back. The Irishman is one that should sleep with the fish.
I’ve been a Mac fanboy since I bought my first Mac laptop computer. Coming from the industry standard PC/Windows environment the Mac was a revelation in simplicity. I had no routine tasks to perform, no re-stacking those little blocks, no blue screen freeze ups, no re-booting, no unplugging the power, no internet viruses and the thing worked for 10 years before it was too slow and space-limited to run a film editing program. My old Mac still works fine but it’s been softwared into obsolescence. Once I got the hang of never needing to do anything and learned the Mac Way of doing tasks I never looked back.
Mac users used to laugh about the bloatware that came standard with each new iteration of Windows. PC users had to upgrade their computers to fit all the useless junk that Microsoft stuffed into their multi-level marketing system masquerading as an operating system. Macs were clean machines: If you wanted extra programs you went out and got them.
With Apple fandom comes an Apple phone and I’ve had the 3, 4 and 6 models. For the most part the phones have been okay. The 6 I’ve been using for a long time was getting glitchy. I suspect the glitches are pre-programmed into the phone to drive sales of newer phones. The thing needed re-booting everyday. It was almost like Windows software had infected the thing. Web sites stopped displaying properly and the newer iPhone software versions (free!) were not compatible with the old 6. My wife decided that I needed a new phone and with Black Friday deals flying around on the Internet she secured a new phone at somewhat of a good price.
The biggest reason for choosing the 11 Pro over the other iPhone models is the camera. Or cameras. There are 3 separate focal length lenses built into the back of the phone: A super wide 13mm, a wide 26mm and a standard 52mm (all view angles 35mm equivalent). Note: These ranges are optical so you are not just zooming into an ever-decreasing pool of data. I don’t know if the three lenses share a sensor or if each lens has its own sensor. If you do digitally zoom there are a lot of pixels. I don’t know how many. You can look that stuff up online. Anyway, I don’t care about file sizes as long as they don’t get too big.
The new 11 Pro is supposed to be water resistant. I’m not going to test it out but that is a big improvement for motorcycle riders. No more digging around for a plastic grocery bag or a ziplock when it starts to rain.
Once you get past the great camera and the improved water resistance Apple has become Microsoft. This phone is full of bloatware and programs that I will never use. It’s the most intrusive thing you can buy. Everything you do or say is tracked. I spend my free time looking for ways to shut the junk off. If it’s not facial recognition it’s Siri butting onto the screen trying her best to seem relevant. The overly sensitive touch screen keeps taking me places I don’t want to go. Maybe there is a way to deaden the touch response.
The home button is gone so you have to tap out, but that motion sometimes takes you to another screen. I’ve yet to figure out how to stop the first open-screen from displaying my messages. Anyone can pick up my phone, tap the screen and see my latest communications. The home screen is two pages of junk I will never use. Maybe I’m not typical.
Everything seems to take an extra step or two. To screen shot I have to choose where to save the image; with the old 6 it went to photos automatically. The button functions are relocated for no good reason. I’m sure there is a way to work around this stuff. The thing is, I shouldn’t have to opt out of all this junk. I shouldn’t have to search through the extensive menu layout to find intrusive software and shut it off. I couldn’t even activate the phone without signing into iTunes. Apple isn’t selling you a phone any more; it’s selling a tracking device for advertisers. They should pay me to carry the thing. If someone invented a lead-lined, soundproof pouch to slip your iPhone into when you want to be alone they could make billions. Maybe print happy pictures of cats on the dead-zone pouch and call the thing “Garbo.”
“The best camera is the one you have with you.” It’s an old photographer’s cliché but so true. Get the iPhone 11 pro for the cameras. There is no other reason to subject yourself to the bloatware. And the cameras are enough reason for me to put up with Apple’s nosy corporate attitude. With this phone I’ll be able to rely even less on a real camera when I travel on a motorcycle. I’ve just got to watch what I say around the thing.
This puppy rocks! A 40-year-old Model 659 S&W that I picked up for a song!
I’ve been wearing my Gear’d Hardware ZX2 watch for a few weeks now and I’m enjoying it. The watch has stood up well after being subjected to lots of miles on the motorcycle and repeated poundings from the recoil of my .45 Compact, my custom Colt 1911 bright stainless, a .30 06 M1 Garand, a Marlin 336 Texan, a Ruger No. 1 in .257 Weatherby Magnum (finally got that one back from Ruger), and about a thousand rounds of hot 9mm ammo through a new-to-me Model 659 Smith and Wesson. I’ll have stories on each of these here on the blog in the near future, but I digress. In this blog, I want to give an update on the Gear’d Hardware watch and its features.
For starters, the Gear’d timepiece includes both digital and analog displays, which you can see in the photo below. The analog display is consists of standard analog watch hour, minute, and second hands. The digital display shows the date (day and month), the day, and the time in hours, minutes, and seconds.
The ZX2’s hands display the time in analog fashion, while the LCDs display the time digitally. You can set the digital time to use a 12-hour or 24-hour clock.
When you press the upper left button, the digital display illuminates. It’s bright enough to see easily in the dark, but not so bright that it lights up the entire area. That’s cool, because I remember from my Army days that some watches can actually reveal your position if you light them up at night. This is just right, in my opinion.
Pressing the upper left button illuminates the digital display.
There’s a mode button on the watch’s lower left, and that steps you through the stopwatch, the alarm, and the time setting functions.
The Gear’d’s stopwatch mode. The time starts and stops with the upper right button, and resets with the lower right button.The alarm mode. You can set the watch to start beeping at a time you select.
One thing I noticed on the Gear’d watch is that you can set two different time zones, one on the analog display and another on the digital display. This in effect makes the Gear’d watch a GMT watch (at least by my definition of a GMT watch). I didn’t realize that at first and it’s not mentioned in the Gear’d literature, but it’s a powerful feature. I travel a lot internationally, and it’s important to me that I know what time it is where I am as well as the time back in the United States. I don’t want to call a client in the middle of the day when I’m in China and wake them up at 2:00 in the morning back in the world. In fact, about the only kind of new watch I’ll buy these days is a GMT watch (that’s how important that GMT feature is to me).
Just to make the point, I set two different time zones on my Gear’d watch. In this case, the analog time displays 2:06, and the digital time displays 15:06. Being able to show two different time zones is a cool feature.
My Gear’d watch is running just fine, and it’s keeping what appears to be perfect time. It hasn’t gained or lost anything since I first set it. And it just soaks up the abuse I’ve been throwing at it. I like this watch a lot.
That’s it for today. I’m headed to the range. As always, more to follow, and you’ll see it right here on the ExNotes blog. Stay tuned.
The Kubota tractor is a little too large for Tinfiny’s expansive back yard. Long and narrow, the yard requires a multi point turn to get the tractor aimed in the correct direction for filling the side yard. Once there, it’s another 20-point turn to get the bucket dumped where I need it.
I was using the flat point shovel to load droppings into the wheel-buggy. It’s not hard digging and it’s actually faster than maneuvering the machine. I lean the shovel on the tractor between loads.
After the buggy is full I can wheel it to the side yard and place the dirt right where it needs to go. It’s a slow process but I’m at that stage in life, the hobbling stage, where I just enjoy being able to move.
The pile at the end of the yard was getting low and I needed to scrape another few inches off the back yard. I’m trying to slope the yard away from the house.
The Kubota runs great (thanks Hunter!) and as I pulled forward I heard a gunshot. The shovel. The thing was and busted in two pieces. Heavy equipment is called that for a reason. I never felt a thing.
Internet searches turned up shovel handles for $13 to $15 dollars. The big rivet that holds the shovel head in was another couple bucks. I went to the local Home Depot and they had a new shovel for $10. It doesn’t take a brain surgeon to figure out the situation and I’d have to be really attached to a particular shovel head to pay more for the honor of fixing it. Maybe a shovel handed down for generations or something.
They wear out, you know. Shovel heads get ground away in use. The center part eats away leaving the sides protruding. I guess what I’m trying to say is, in life, don’t lean your shovel on the tractor.
Gear’d Hardware sent ExhaustNotes.us a couple of their watches to review. Like guns, I’m not really into watches. I mean, if they keep time and have old-fashioned hour/minute hands I’m good. I told Berk that I’d review the watch and send it back to him since I already have two watches and didn’t need another one cluttering up my junk drawer.
Now that I’ve opened the Gear’d Hardware box, though, Berk is not getting this thing back. The ZX1 is huge and heavy. The numbers are gigantic. I can see the damn thing without having to hold my arm inches from my face. It’s a really nice piece of gear.
The watchband is a metal link type and it comes adjusted for George Foreman’s wrist size. I have skinny little wrists; I’m surprised I haven’t managed to break one or both of them yet so I’ll have to adjust the thing. There are two options that I can see: Reset the pins on the flip-close buckle or remove one link from the band. I’m going to take the thing up to the shed and sort it out today. I prefer a leather, belt, buckle-type watchband but the link band looks nice so I’ll keep it on there unless it starts grabbing my arm hair.
The ZX1 is easy to tell time on. The time is set by pulling out the big red, knurled aluminum knob. I love the hell out of that friggin’ knob. There’s no mincing around with tiny crap on this monster. There are four, small, blackish LCD displays for day-date, stopwatch function, 24-hour clock and alarm. Those are visible from some angles and just black dots from other angles. As you tilt the watch the reflection angle changes and the numbers will pop out making them easy to see. There is another button that energizes a cold, blue light on the LCDs. The four LCDs are actually easier to see at night than in the daytime. I’ll need to read the manual to learn how to reset all the digital stuff. Or maybe I’ll just ignore it.
There are four buttons besides that red knob, one for the light, a couple for the stopwatch and I don’t know what the other is for. The back side of the watch has more information: 3 atmosphere water resistant which is about 100 feet deep by my math, movement made in Japan, stainless steel case and sapphire glass. It’s all good stuff. Battery access is via a snap-type cover, there are a couple slits for inserting a pry bar to open the thing. I have a watch with a screw back that jewelers cannot open for some reason so I bought a watch vise and the adjustable watch wrench to do it myself. The snap off back will be a new experience for me.
The corporate attitude of Gear’d Hardware seems to be, “We are not messing around. We make a big ass watch that’s built like a tank.” I’m going to be testing the ZX1’s tank-like abilities in the next few weeks. There’s concrete that needs pouring and I’m not stopping to baby this watch.
Photography is a big part of a motorcycle trip for me. I’ve been riding motorcycles on long rides for a long time, and capturing the memories adds immensely to the enjoyment. I relive and remember each of my adventures though the photos. The photo quality standards for online stuff are not that high (it’s all 72 dpi and small photos); the requirements for print publication are significantly more stringent (that’s all 300 dpi and big picture stuff). The gear I carry meets both standards well. From time to time people ask me about the camera gear I use on my motorcycle adventures, so I thought I would take a few minutes to describe the toys I bring along.
Motorcycle Travel Photography Gear
Here’s the photo gear I bring on a motorcycle trip:
Nikon D3300 digital single lens reflex (DSLR) camera.
Nikon 18-55mm VR general duty lens.
Nikon 70-300mm VR telephoto lens.
Tokina 12-24mm wide angle lens.
Circular polarizers for all of the above lenses.
Extra camera battery.
Battery charger.
Extra SD card.
Tamrac Velocity 7X camera bag.
I know that sounds like a lot, but it’s really not that much, it gives great capability on the road, and it all fits into my CSC RX3 motorcycle’s topcase.
My camera gear, including the Nikon D3300 DSLR, the 18-55mm lens (mounted on the camera in this photo), the 12-24mm Tokina wide-angle lens, the 70-300mm Nikon telephoto lens, and polarizers for all three lenses. It all fits in the Tamrac Velocity 7X camera bag.
I’m a Nikon guy, but any of the current crop of DSLR cameras has capabilities way beyond the abilities of most photographers (including me). Gresh prefers Canon. Here’s your shovel, take you pick. Six to one, half a dozen to the other. All the manufacturers offer good cameras. My D3300 is a 24-megapixel camera, which means I can crop the photo significantly and still have sufficient resolution. It’s a good size for a digital image.
DSLR Advantages
I use a DSLR camera because when I press the shutter button, I want the shutter to trip instantly. The point-and-shoot cameras usually have ½-second or so lag after depressing the shutter button, and that’s unnerving if you’re shooting anything other than landscapes. Maybe the technology has advanced to where that’s no longer a point-and-shoot issue, but I’ll still stick with my DSLR because a DSLR gives me creative control. I usually shoot in the Program Mode, but if I’m not happy with that, or I want greater depth of field, I can make the camera do pretty much anything I want it to.
One of the things that is so appealing to me about the D3300 is its light weight. I often ride with the camera hanging from my neck so I can snap shots from the saddle while on the move, and the D3300’s light weight makes this easy. Several of the photographs I’ve had published were taken while I was riding the motorcycle. It’s way better than the standard motorcycle-parked-by-the-side-of-the-road stuff you see most of the time. I think shots from the saddle bring readers into the ride. One thought I want to interject about this shooting-from-the-saddle business: When I take photos while riding my motorcycle, I never use the camera’s viewfinder or rear LCD screen. Trying to look at the camera (or worse, trying to look through the viewfinder) while riding is dangerous and I don’t do it. I use the camera’s 18-55mm lens and I leave it at about the 24mm mark. I’ll point the camera in the general direction of what I want to photograph, and I take a lot of photos knowing that one or more of them will be good. Digital film is cheap.
The last thing I’ll mention is the histogram. It’s the display you can see on the camera back that tells you instantly if the exposure is correct. All DSLRs have a histogram capability. This x-y plot lets you know if the photo is under or over exposed, allowing you to dial in exposure compensation to adjust for it.
The D3300’s histogram. The histogram, to me, is one of digital photography’s major advantages.
DSLR Cost
The D3300 used to be Nikon’s lowest-cost DSLR camera. I think they’re up to the D3500 now. I like the D3300 for the motorcycle and overseas trips because it’s light, it’s small, it’s capabilities are amazing, and it’s inexpensive. I think I paid $499 for my D3300 a few years ago; I’ve recently seen the current D3500 on sale for something like $399, including the 18-55mm lens. Sometimes Costco has a package deal on the camera, two lenses, a carrying case, the SD card, and more. It’s a phenomenal deal.
Making Movies
The D3300 also has a video mode. I thought that was kind of silly at first, but I changed my mind the first time I used the video feature. The video is superb, and Nikon’s vibration reduction (VR) feature makes the video rock steady. On our second day in Mexico on the first CSC Baja ride, I rode ahead of the group and filmed all of the riders as they came around a bend. When I viewed the video on my laptop later that night, I was blown away by how good it was. The video looked as if the camera had been tripod mounted. When I saw the video, I knew I had purchased the right camera.
Moto Photography Travel Lenses
Moving on to the lenses for the D3300, I travel with three. I use the camera’s 18-55mm lens for the majority of my photos, I use the Tokina 12-24mm lens for the wide-angle panoramic shots, and I use the Nikon 70-300mm telephoto for the long-distance stuff. The 18-55mm is my default lens, and it stays on the camera most of the time. It used to be that the standard low-cost zoom lenses that camera manufacturers provided with their low-end cameras were mediocre. That’s not the case with Nikon’s 18-55mm lens. It does an excellent job, returning high contrast and sharp images. The other thing I like about the 18-55mm Nikon lens is that it has Nikon’s VR feature. It works and I like it. It delivers significantly sharper hand-held photos.
Sometimes you see something that screams out for a wide angle lens, and on the Colombia trip I brought my Tokina 12-24mm lens with me for those occasions. I like that lens a lot because of its sharpness, high contrast, and overall construction quality. The photo magazines rated the Tokina 12-24mm as sharper than Nikon’s 12-24mm lens, which costs more than twice the Tokina lens. I’ve had a lot of photos published using this lens in the “Destinations” pieces I write for Motorcycle Classics.
Two RS3 motorcycles (the carbureted version of the CSC RX3) at the edge of a Colombian cliff. I used a manually-focused Tokina 12-24 lens, a circular polarizer, and the Nikon D3300 camera.
I shot the photo on the cover of Moto Colombia with the Tokina wide angle lens at the edge of a cliff in Barichara. It was great place and a great moment, and I preserved it with a great photo.
I brought my 70-300mm Nikon lens with me on the Colombia trip, too. It’s a big, heavy, and clunky lens and it goes against what I always tell people, and that is to travel light. I only used the 70-300mm on the camera twice while I was in Colombia, and on one of those two occasions, my subject got away before I could get a good photo. That was when I tried to photograph an iguana while having lunch in Magangué. On the other occasion, though, I was quicker (actually, my subjects were slower). That’s when I photographed the vultures outside of Guane. I captured some amazing shots of those big old Colombian vultures.
Hey, you talking to me? A shot of a Colombian vulture with the Nikon 70-300mm telephoto lens, handheld, showcasing Nikon’s vibration reduction technology.
I had circular polarizers with me for all three lenses. A circular polarizer filters out the white light and that makes the colors much more vibrant in outdoor shots. I left the polarizers on the lens, and I would remove them when I shot indoors, or at night, or when I used flash. They don’t take up much room, and they make a real difference on outdoor shots.
A Good Camera Bag
I carried all of the above in a Tamrac Velocity 7X camera bag. The Tamrac bag has a sling that makes it easy to carry, but I didn’t carry the bag much. I’d just throw the whole enchilada (the Tamrac bag with the camera, the lenses, a spare battery, and the battery charger) in the topcase.
And folks, that’s it. If you have any thoughts on moto photography travel gear, we’d love to hear them. Just leave a comment below and share your thoughts with us.
