Category: Joe Gresh

Dream Bike: Triumph T160

The mid-1970’s Triumph T160 is one of the best looking motorcycles ever. The swoopy tank, the perfect stance, the soft-edged thrum of its exhaust. I’ve wanted a T160 since I first saw one. They weren’t popular where I grew up so I didn’t get to see a real live 750 until they were already out of production.

The T160’s engine is actually a BSA engine. But then again the BSA engine was a 500cc Triumph engine with an extra cylinder grafted on so who stole what? Not that it matters because the only real difference between BSA and Triumph’s versions of the 750cc three-banger was a slight forward slope to the BSA cylinder bank.

The older BSA triples are cool in a Jetsons kind of way. The square tank and the ray gun silencers didn’t sell well in the USA so BSA chromed the heck out of the thing and made it into a fire breathing hot rod. I’ve never seen one on the road, only in museums.

Triumph had the same problem with its modern-looking but slow selling triple. If I understand history correctly Triumph sent bodywork beauty kits to the USA to fix slow sales. These kits made the Triumph Trident look pretty much like any other Triumph made in the last 60 years.

The triple engine design consisted of typical British engineering: Why use one part when 32 parts will do the job just as well? The top deck of the crankcase had a gaping opening that the cylinder spigots fitted into. It looks weak to me. I’m surprised the crankcase doesn’t oil can at high compression levels. The center main bearing bolted in from the top, which is pretty strange. The sum of the triple’s complicated, ancient collection of parts worked amazingly well together, winning many road races against more advanced designs.

I would take any of the triples if you gave me one but the only one I would buy is the final Triumph T160 version. The T160 has an electric starter and the thing actually works on the few I’ve seen. Disc brakes front and rear means you don’t have to sacrifice stopping power to revel in the past. The styling of the T160 looks fresh 45 years after it rolled off of the assembly line. I like it better than the Vetter version.

Beginning with the 1970’s Japanese Superbikes steamrolled everything in their path. When it comes to big bike, high horsepower nostalgia most American motorcyclists of a certain age go for a Kawasaki or Honda. Today, the relatively cheap price of a T160 reflects the lower esteem British bikes were held in at the time. If you want one like I do, Triumph/BSA triples are within reach of the average person. $5000 should get one in ridable condition with not-embarrassing cosmetics. $10,000 will buy a show bike. The T160 pushes all the right buttons for me and if I didn’t already have 47 projects lined up I would have grabbed this recent listing. Let me know if you need me to go pick it up for you.

What’s On Your Shelf?

Before the Internet I used to read books. Not just motorcycle magazines, although they were a great source of ideas, but real books. I shot a close-up photo of our bookshelf the other day for a Wastebook post. It was just for fun but looking at the photo I realized the impact some of the titles had on my typing. I never started out to write. I never dreamed of writing the Great American Novel. I fell into typing by osmosis and now I can’t stop. Once I was roped in I mostly tried to emulate my favorites. Find a writer you like and think like them. I don’t try to copy or mimic my favorites, I channel them as I type.

First up is A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole. Mr. Toole killed himself long before ACOD was published. It pisses me off that he chose that path for strictly selfish reasons: I wanted to read more of his stuff. ACOD is a huge, rambling thing full of recognizable personalities, disgusting situations and incredibly funny passages. The Levy pants story will be pleasing to anyone who has held a job (no matter how briefly) and the hot dog cart bit is familiar to anyone who ever tried to sell Christmas cards door to door.

The Best of S. J. Perelman is a collection of essays from The New Yorker. This is a guy you will want to steal from after the first verb. People will look at you like you’re crazy when reading this book on an airplane because you really will be laughing out loud. (Not to be confused with the nearly meaningless LOL, which is often used on the web for things that aren’t actually all that funny.) Perelman’s short bits cover a wide range of topics but always end up absurd. If I could write as well as him in today’s media environment I still wouldn’t be making any money but at least I’d have cigarettes.

The Portable Dorothy Parker is another collection of stories written for The New Yorker. That mag must have been something. At a time when women were routinely named Dorothy she did play reviews, poems, screenwriting and managed to get herself blacklisted. Less bitter than H. L. Mencken, Dorothy’s stories can be safely read both by people with suicidal tendencies and regular folks.

It seems like there are a lot of collected works on this shelf. CT organized it. The unseen hand of her masterful brain is behind the curtain. Anyway, don’t blame me. The Best of Robert Benchley is another collection in the smart, funny but down to earth mold. Benchley also wrote for The New Yorker (what a murderer’s row!) and he dabbled in Vanity Fair during slack times. When these stories were originally written the intention was to parcel them out slowly. Each issue of The New Yorker was an event. Best-Of collections hit you with a fire hose of quality that overwhelms your brain and maybe numbs your senses a bit.

The Commitments, The Snapper and The Van are three full-length books crammed into one small space. I’ve read The Commitments and The Van for sure. I can’t remember if I read The Snapper so I’ll have to get my magnifying glass out and check. If you only have time to read one of these stories by Roddy Doyle make sure it’s The Van. The Van is like Trainspotting except with food trucks instead of heroin.

The Best Short stories of O. Henry should be required reading for anyone thinking of writing for fun or…fun. O. Henry invented the ending-with-a-twist that featured large in last century’s story telling. We seem to have gotten away from these surprising finishes like, “Darn! She shouldn’t have cut her hair!” Now stories just kind of fade out with a pale, rictus arm reaching out of a lake or it’s revealed that the two main characters are father and son.

Finally, we come to Hunger by Knut Hamsun. This book was published in 1890 yet the ensuing 130 years have not dulled the edge of the humor in this book. Fittingly for this blog, the protagonist is a failed writer and we follow his slow starvation and descent into a delirium world. It’s funnier than it sounds. If you want to be a successful writer, learn a trade is what I took away from reading Hunger.

These are some of the books I use as inspiration when I’m faced with replacing a transmission in a Jeep or trying to work the self-checkout in Wal-Mart. At the emotional level, living in today’s world is no different than when these authors were writing. Life still becomes more ridiculous the deeper you dig into the thing and all we can do is shake our heads and crack wise. Wait here while I go sell my pocket watch.

The 100-Mile Loop

If I had to guess, and I really can’t imagine why I’d ever have to, I would say New Mexico has two or three times as many dirt roads as paved roads. I’m not getting on those trails at anywhere near the frequency I should be so I called up my moto-buddy Mike and asked him to show me the volcanoes. With the morning temperature hovering around 30 degrees Fahrenheit it didn’t take much convincing to get Mike to ride along in Brumby, the 1992 YJ Jeep.

There is a huge expanse of territory encircled by Highway 380 to the south, Interstate 25 on the western edge, Highway 60 up north and Highway 54 marks the eastern edge. Roughly 50 miles square, this land has hundreds of miles of dirt roads crisscrossing in all directions. These roads lead to huge cattle ranches and as such are kept in pretty decent condition. In dry weather you could run most of them in a two-wheel drive sedan. In wet weather they become much more challenging.

With the Jeep heater on high, we turned north off 380 and headed 25 miles into the outback to find the volcanoes. I didn’t really see a traditional cone-shaped volcano; at the volcanoes it’s more a lava field with an impressive variety of colorful minerals scattered about. Rust reds, crumbling ochers, and black lava dominate. The area is pockmarked with sinkholes several feet deep. What looks like broken beer bottles is actually exposed glass fused between layers of lava. I need to quick-learn geology because this spot is interesting and needs further exploration.

Forty miles from the volcanoes are the Gran Quivira ruins. The Spanish have a long history in the area. If you are a Native American you probably don’t think highly of the Spanish. The ruins of three large churches with pueblos built around them are thirty to forty miles apart. The southernmost one, Gran Quivira dips into our loop and it’s worth taking a trip just to see the masterful stonework.

The ranches out here have a loosey-goosey cow containment policy. Since the land is so dry it takes many acres to support one cow. Fencing huge amounts of land is not cheap so you get just a bit of fence near the road and the cows wander around doing cow-like things. It’s best to drive past slowly. If a cow hits your truck at 30 MPH things will get compressed rapidly.

After the ruins we ran for many miles on a slippery mud road that seemed to be the final drainage point for 50,000 acres. I put Brumby in 4WD because the little Jeep wanted to spinout when we sunk into the really muddy bits. Having the front wheels pulling seemed to make the truck go straighter.

In Corona we pulled up to the only good Mexican restaurant in town, also the only restaurant in town. As soon as I managed to unfurl my body and escape the Jeep’s door the neon “Open” sign went dark. I looked inside and the chairs were leg-high on the tables and staff was cleaning up.

I cracked the door and stuck my head inside, “Are you guys really closed?” The Senorita in charge said, “Yes, but it will take us a while to clean up, come in.” Not wanting to create more trouble, Mike had a burger with un-sweet tea and I seconded the order.

After a late lunch we ran the county-maintained dirt roads all the way back to Carrizozo. With the setting sun illuminating Brumby’s bug and mud splattered windshield I nearly overcooked a few turns, but only because I couldn’t see them.

All told we did over a hundred miles of off road exploring and we only scratched the surface of this one tiny section of New Mexico. It will take many lifetimes to see all this state has to offer and next time I’m bringing a metal detector.

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AMA Pro Racing Dismembers The Golden Goose

Fresh off a couple years of record attendance and wild popularity for flat track racing the AMA has decided to destroy the successful formula that has created all that positive buzz. Whenever a race series becomes popular the AMA cannot stop itself from diluting and dividing it into numerically more, yet overall weaker championships. They are doing just that in flat track with the new Supertwins class.

The historic, fabulous, drama-filled heat race format is no more. You’ll not see a lightly sponsored privateer like No. 23 Carver on an obsolete XR750 whip the asses of the best factory riders and teams like he did a few years ago. You’ll not see it because the AMA has limited entries to 18 pre-approved teams. No more heat races, no more last chance qualifiers, no more excitement.

The AMA hopes that we won’t notice that the game is rigged but flat track fans know a setup when we see one. To get in the Elite 18 it will take lots of money along with co-branding with the AMA and your chances of getting picked are much better if you have a really nice race transport semi-truck and branded pit barriers. Rider talent only comes into play after all the other barriers have been surmounted.

The chosen few will run two semis and if I know the AMA and the power of money I’m guessing the first nine places of each semi will make the main. It’s NASCAR thinking run amok. The AMA wants a more professional product to sell to television audiences. They want recognizable teams and popular riders spoon fed to an audience they feel are too stupid to appreciate a couple of privateers pitching a heated battle for 8th place. They want us to be like NASCAR fans cheering on personalities and products rather than effort. To achieve this end they are tossing out the very things that have made AMA flat track the premier motorcycle race series in America.

The AMA has it backwards. Fancy transporters and branded awnings don’t mean shit to flat track fans when the flag drops. AMA flat track is popular because of the unpredictable rough and tumble racing, not in spite of it. It’s popular because of the lone wolf in his van taking on the biggest motorcycle manufacturers in spite of the fact that it seems hopeless. It’s popular because no matter how out-gunned any expert rider on any night can ride his ass off and make the main event or even win the whole shebang. It has happened more than once.

You haven’t heard a crowd roar like the throat-rattling cheer flat track fans make when an underdog rider beats the big guns in a main event. It restores your faith in hard work, man. I hear you when you tell me the same guys win all the races anyway. That’s because they are the best riders on the best bikes. It’s always been that way in motorcycle racing, but flat track fans still hope to see the improbable and we don’t need to dumb down flat track to make our hopes impossible.

The legalese mumbo-jumbo in the document above is the rider’s path to the Main Event now. Replace grit, determination and talent with money and you have the new rules pretty well down. Teams will need to be partners with the AMA, it’s so not like it used to be and frustrating as hell. What utter and complete bullshit.

The list of eligible engines for Supertwins is longer than the number of eligible teams!

Ah well, it was an exciting, if short-lived resurgence in American Flat Track racing. At least we still have the singles class and an interesting, if sporadic, ATF Production Twins class (the true Class C Championship). The powers that be cannot leave well enough alone. Success is not enough for today’s bottom-line economy. Branding, sponsorship and tight control of the final product are paramount. It won’t be long before the AMA sells the racing rights to an engine manufacturer and Supertwins becomes a one-design spec class. I guess nothing ever stays the same and we all get sold out in the end. Welcome to AMA Flat track 2020.

Spaceport America

Fifty or so miles north of Las Cruces, New Mexico and just over the mountains from White Sands Missile Range lies a huge bet on the future. The bet was placed almost 20 years ago and it’s been a 200 million-dollar, back and forth political football game to get to where we are today: Spaceport America, New Mexico.

Depending on which major party was in charge of New Mexico’s state government Spaceport has been alternately starved, funded or sabotaged. Some politicians hoped the thing would fail and worked towards that goal. Other politicians hoped it would put New Mexico on the front row of the commercial space race and threw taxpayer money at the project. If that wasn’t enough a well-publicized disaster with major tenant Virgin Galactic’s space plane and the collapse of oil prices (New Mexico gets huge sums of tax money from the oil industry) only increased the headwind.

The very access road to Spaceport is an example. Paved only in 2018, 10 years after construction began. Before that, heavy equipment and materials had to be hauled to the job site 50 extra miles via the town of Truth or Consequences or attempt a direct route from Las Cruces over a rough dirt road impassable during the wet. As usual, political gamesmanship made the project harder, costlier and take longer.

Hopefully all that is behind us. Virgin Galactic plans on moving its headquarters to Spaceport in 2020. The White Knight, first stage of Galatic’s commercial flight system, rests snugly in Sir Richard Branson’s curvy-sexy Spaceport hanger. Boeing, UP Aerospace, EXOS Aerospace, HyperSciences and SpinLaunch have become tenants. At least 20 successful launches have flown from Spaceport. These enthusiastic space pioneers are basically wealthy kids, the same as we were with our Estes model rockets except they are using real rockets.

While the site is “substantially complete” at this time and ready for business you get the feeling there are a lot of loose ends to tie. The public has access to Spaceport but you’ve got to be with a tour group as they don’t want idiots wandering around falling into drainage ditches or accidentally pushing flashing red buttons and causing rockets to launch. Tours start from Las Cruces or Truth or Consequences. We took the Las Cruces tour because we were going to Deming’s Tractor Supply for a 3-point box blade. I like to mix cutting-edge Aerospace facilities with dirt moving equipment whenever I can.

Once past the security gate you wonder where that 200 million dollars went as there are only two buildings of any size on the property. My guess is the lion’s share went into the 2-mile-long, 200-foot-wide, 42-inch-thick, multilayer runway. This thing has crushed rock, several courses of varying density concrete, a layer of asphalt and a thick topcoat of concrete. It looks like you could land a battleship on Spaceport’s runway.

The first building we visited was the main office and flight control tower. This domed structure was constructed using an inflated bladder, which was then shot with sprayed concrete material. After the dome mud set up the bladder was deflated and the interior shot with more sticky goo. You can build a high ceiling without internal supports using this method but the ones I’ve seen in the past all cracked.

The entrance area shows signs of deterioration already. High overhead, ill fitting, water damaged sections of patched drywall look like a buttery layer cake that has slipped a layer. Gaping holes on the exterior of the building reveal wires and skeletal metal studs. It’s sloppy work that people like me notice. I mean, this is the very first place visitors to Spaceport see. I’d appreciate it if management pulled the maintenance crew off of life support projects and tidied up the front door.

The flight control room is a fairly simple set up. It’s nothing like Mission Control in Houston. One 3-dimensional curved desk with computer monitors spanning the width of the desk sits a few feet back from a large window. I find it amazing that there is no radar but the restricted airspace over Spaceport America means there are no obstacles to hit until you smack into the Andromeda Galaxy. Launches are easy here; no need to re-route airplanes or alert the local populace. They tell me flights can be scheduled in a couple days rather than months. That’s a big window of opportunity and one of the selling points of the joint.

We like to say you get the first mile free when you launch your spacecraft from New Mexico. At 4500 feet Spaceport is close enough and it’s a real fuel savings when you consider gravity is stronger the closer you get to the concrete I’ve poured in my backyard. There’s also a zillion acres of vacant land surrounding Spaceport so collateral damage from explosions and failures to launch will be limited to sagebrush and bunnies.

Behind the visitor center and incorporated into the same concrete dome is a 24-hour-a-day, 7-days-a-week fire-rescue operation. There are a lot of things that can go wrong with space travel before you even leave the ground so these guys are on call even when no flights are scheduled. The fire guys gave a great talk on their various duties and let us sit in the Big Mama fire truck. All their gear was spotless and ready to go. Full EMS capability with a beautiful 2-bay ambulance is on site. If I ever sever a limb during a routine training mission I want these guys taking care of me.

Sir Richard Branson’s space tourism company takes up most of Spaceport’s futuristic, crawling-out-from-the-earth hangar structure. We couldn’t see inside because the electrically controlled windows were set to opaque and our guide didn’t have access to the switch that makes them clear. Blurry photos of the Mothership were all I could get. A secret panel blended into the steel-walled entrance walk opened, leading us to a kind of waiting lounge/museum. It was real James Bond super-villain stuff. Here was the G-force spinner that takes potential astronauts up to 6 Gs in preparation for their flight. Passengers who fail the spin test can’t fly.

I didn’t take the spin test because I wanted to digest my breakfast in peace. At 2 Gs older folks crawled out of the machine slowly and appeared a little disoriented. A tall, skinny 14-year-old was having a ball in the machine wanting more speed all the time. You could have taken that kid to 12 Gs no problem.

Listen, lots of people think space flight is a waste of money. They believe that all earthbound problems should be solved before we wander off into space. Complaining about the government or rich folks spending their money on space adventures instead of those less fortunate is a popular pastime. I’m not one of them. I figure the rich can spend their money however they want. Helping the unfortunate is what taxes are for. Whatever is left over is yours to invest in cocaine, prostitutes or space travel.

By now you know I dig all things space related and believe the faster we blow this joint the better off the Earth will be. 2020 should be an exciting year at Spaceport because Virgin Galactic claims they will be firing some spacecraft high into the sky.

Anyone have a spare $250,000 to send me up?

What Really Killed The Motorcycle Industry

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.

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Indian Wars

Click the comments section of any post regarding the Indian Motorcycle Company and someone will be bitching that Polaris Indians are not real Indians. Within the first three or four replies you’ll see an outraged commenter laying out the perjury case on Indian. “It’s a lie!” they stammer. “Indian went out of business in 1953!” Along with constitutional scholars and threats of civil war Polaris Haters infest the Internet. Their selective-amnesia purity code and compulsion to complain loudly every time Indian tries to sell a motorcycle borders on fanatical. You couldn’t pay enough to get people so determined.

Clymer’s Enfield Indian from the 1960’s. One of the best-looking Indians ever.

Since it is presently impossible to go back in time to right all wrongs the Indian Haters would rather see Indian go out of business. Again. If the Haters are in a generous mood they may offer renaming the company as a way back into their good graces. Mind you, they still wouldn’t buy anything from parent company Polaris because they hate them too. I don’t see why Indian should give a rat’s ass about what these goofy product-junkies think. Indian is busy building motorcycles, not engaging in petty, low-effort Internet attempts to tear down other people’s hard work.

The thing that really riles the troops is when Indian puts 100-year badges on their bikes. The loonies go apoplectic. To them, an unbroken corporate line from 1903 to the present is the only acceptable scenario for Indian to exist. With the old brands like Norton, Triumph, Ossa and Benelli being bought up the Haters will have plenty of companies to be angry with for a long, long time.

Mid-1970’s Italian made Indian dirt bike.

The Haters aren’t solely responsible for the black hole at the center of their hearts. Vast quantities of intellectual capital have been expended on brand building in this country and in some cases it worked too well. We have created a monstrous humanity more concerned with defending brand-authenticity at the expense of reality. Haters have been sold to for so long that they actually care about the logo on a gas tank. It’s misplaced consumer loyalty created by Ned in the advertising department and it’s sad to see in action.

A Velocette-engined Indian that should drive the purists crazy.

Who cares what happened to Indian 70 years ago? Who cares how many times the company has passed through shifty hands? Who cares if clone engines were used or Italians made Harleys or if Clymer used Royal Enfields? Who cares about any of it? It’s a friggin’ motorcycle company, not a pledge of allegiance. When the history of the world is finally written the trinkets we bought to amuse ourselves will not even warrant a footnote. All you need to concern yourself with is that the Indian brand started in 1903 and here it is nearly 2020 and you can still buy a damn good American-made motorcycle with Indian written on the side of the gas tank. There’s your continuity, Bub.

Georgia O’Keeffe

I’m not a huge fan of Georgia O’Keeffe artwork. Her realistic paintings are well done but the fluffy subjects and flower erotica don’t appeal to my mechanical mind. The bright colors and simple shapes of her later work seem too easy, like anyone could do it. Except anyone didn’t. I suspect art is more complex than a watery brushstroke or an eye for color. It takes a lived life to steer that brush and experience to make the strokes tell meaningful stories. Art matters if people believe it matters and O’Keeffe’s stuff mattered to a lot of people.

Tradesmen like me are work-blind to creation. Wiping a solder joint to leave a clean copper pipe, or combing a bundle of wire so that each conductor peels off in the correct order is as close to art as we get. It’s a tunnel vision that divides hours into effort, a relentless pursuit of money and the next job and then the next. Until you either break down or die.

You can train a tradesman, repetition is the secret to success, but an artist must be born. O’Keeffe was an artist and the way she lived her life was a sort of performance art. She moved to New Mexico in 1949 at the then ripe old age of 62 and spent the next 36 years doing just what she wanted to do. Abiquiu, her home west of Santa Fe was a crumbling wreck when she bought it. The places she stayed became famous simply because she stayed there. She bequeathed to New Mexico a bounty of tourism and spawned museums and visitor centers all around the Santa Fe area.

Her place in Abiquiu is a traditional New Mexico adobe house. It has no interior hallways. To get from one room to the next you have to go through another room. Or maybe 4 other rooms depending on how far you are going. It’s not unusual to go through a bedroom, a kitchen and a pantry to get to a main salon. Every room has a door that exits to the outside: You never get trapped in an adobe. A central courtyard open to the sky lies in the middle of the house and the roof slopes towards this courtyard.

The houses were built this way in stages. Maybe one or two rooms to start off with then tacking on extra rooms as money and demand became available. The oldest section of O’Keeffe’s place is from the mid-1800s and the newest probably the 1970s. That’s over 100 years of creeping progress. The flooring transitions from from original smooth dirt soaked with egg yolks to bind the granules all the way to concrete with rug.

In the recent past people started restoring adobe houses with wire mesh and a Portland cement based plaster. It turns out this is the worse thing to do to adobe. The concrete pulls away from the adobe taking the wall with it. Then moisture and mineral salts wick up into the wall because the concrete doesn’t breathe like mud or lime. It turns into a crumbling mess. If you don’t want the expense of lime plaster, the only way to restore adobe is with more adobe. You slather fresh mud onto the exterior walls on a regular schedule to replace the mud that was ablated during wind or rainstorms. It’s a never ending process but if you stay on top of it your adobe house can last thousands of years. O’Keeffe’s place was concreted at some point. I fear the walls will turn to mush and salts will bleed through the interior walls.

Nothing lasts forever and one day Abiquiu will melt back into the same earth it came from but I hope the artwork created there leaves behind traces, a slight disturbance, a vibration that makes some future traveler pause and wonder what grand endeavors took place way out here in the New Mexico desert.

Product Review: iPhone 11 Pro

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.

The Three Rivers Petroglyphs

It’s mid-November here in southern New Mexico, nights are cold but our mid-day temperatures are still in the 70’s. That will change soon. I needed a break from concrete so I texted Mike and asked him if he wanted to take a little ride before it got cold. Mike always wants to ride.

Mike lives in Carrizozo about 50 miles north from Tinfiny Ranch. 50 miles is not a lot of distance but the weather is much wilder up at his place. Located at the crossroads of Highways 380 and 54 right between a dip in the Sacramento Mountains the landform, there funnels a steady stream of wind across the strange little town. Even though it sits at a lower elevation than Tinfiny, Carrizozo is colder in winter. Hollywood has found the old buildings of Carrizozo picturesque and it seems like there’s always a crew shooting a funky scene whenever I go through.

“Can we get a couple coffees?” The lady working at the Three Rivers trinket shop says she will have to make some. Mike tells her that’s okay, we’ll wait. The coffee making process is interrupted by two black dogs coming in the front door. The dogs seem really glad to see us. They fall to the ground and beg to be petted. The smaller dog wants to kiss, needs to kiss, will die if he doesn’t get a kiss. That coffee pot is taking forever so I grab a cold drink. Mike is eating a bag of chips. When the coffee is finally ready and the dogs are thoroughly petted, we’ve killed an hour.

The road to the petroglyphs heads east towards the mountains, if you keep going it turns into dirt and ends at the beautiful Three Rivers campground. From that point Ruidoso is only a 20-mile hike: uphill all the way. You should go camp there.

The rocks here have some kind of iron oxide-like coating and the petroglyphs are kind of pecked into the rock. Dimpled could be used to describe it. The dimple knocks off a small chunk of the oxide revealing the stone beneath. There are thousands of them along a three-mile round trip path at Petroglyphs State Park. The images are still very clear with lots of contrast. You can mostly tell what the artist was representing with maybe 25% of the artwork being symbolic of something that made sense thousands of years ago.

These pictures from the past aren’t fragile cave paintings or fading lines scraped into soft sandstone. These suckers are exposed to the elements and some look like they were made last week. We don’t know a lot about the Mogollon People who made the petroglyphs but I can tell you they built their artwork to last. These stone images will go another 10 thousand years no problem.

It’s late afternoon by the time we get back to the trinket shop for more coffee. “There’s only enough for one cup and it’s gotten cold, I’ll have to make another pot.” The dogs can’t be bothered to lift their heads and acknowledge our existence. We are old news. The coffee brews its slow drip. A BMW rider sees our bikes out front and stops in to chat.

Conversation is easy.  The trinket lady joins in with strong opinions on which Medicare plan is best (Plan F). I snack on a bag of dry-aged peanuts and some hard candy. The BMW guy is staying at the Three Rivers campground. He trailers his motorcycle around the country stopping in different areas to ride. His wife got all the money and the 80-acre farm back in Wisconsin. We pay the trinket lady; she made 9 dollars from us today and it only took her 2 hours to do it.

It’s starting to cool down now. In a few weeks we will be getting started with winter here in Southern New Mexico. I don’t like riding at night so I say goodbye to the boys. We start our bikes and three motorcyclists go their separate ways: Mike to the north, me to the south and BMW guy to the east.