Category: Joe Gresh

18 again!

Gresh left New Mexico headed for Los Angeles early this morning. What’s that white stuff?

Imagine you’re an old fart like Gresh and suddenly you could be again 18 years old again.  That’s kind of what happened to me just a short while ago.  Now, old Joe Gresh, he’s inbound from the Sacramento Mountains (don’t let the name fool you) in New Mexico, the Tinfiny Ranch, headed here.   The guy wanted to make the drive in one day in order to be staged for our run into Baja tomorrow.  Hey, that’s okay.  It’s going to be warmer where we’re going.

Anyway, back to that 18-years-old-thing again.   That’s what I want to be.  18 years old.  And while I’m dreaming, throw in a new 1966 650cc, made-in-England, Triumph Bonneville, but let’s add electric start, six speeds, disc brakes, and a flawless finish.  That’s my dream.

Only it’s not a dream. That’s where I am right now.

The bike is a new Royal Enfield Interceptor.  It’s a 650.  The styling is perfect, right down to the big tach and speedo that almost say “Smiths” (if I have to explain that, you wouldn’t understand).  It’s made in India instead of England (hey, the current Triumph Bonnevilles are made in Thailand).   My take?  This new motorcycle has out-Triumphed Triumph in being more faithful to the original layout, displacement, and feel of the ’66 Bonneville I’ve lusted after for years.   But with lots more refinement.

A brand new Royal Enfield 650 Interceptor in my driveway. It’s my ride for the next 10 days or so.
For my good buddy Orlando: See, it’s orange…the fastest color!
You can almost see where it says Smiths.  This, folks, is what motorcycle instruments should look like!

Want to read another strong statement?  On my 25-mile ride home from So Cal Moto in Brea, where I picked up the Royal Enfield, I decided I’m going to buy one.   Oh, I’ll find some nits to pick over the next 2000 BajaBound miles and I’ll share them with you here, but this bike answers the mail.   And the price?  Well, a new Triumph Bonneville cost $1320 in 1966.  I know, because my Dad bought one.  A new Royal Enfield is $5799, I think.  If you take that 1966 $1320 figure and adjust it for inflation to 2019, it comes out to $10,298.   Buy a new Enfield 650 and you’ve already saved $4500.  That’s the argument I’m going to use with She Who Must Be Obeyed.  I think it will work, too.

I’m going to break our rule and post more than one blog today.  We are living in exciting times, my friends, and I can’t wait to share the excitement with you.   The 500cc Bullet is about 45 minutes out (it’s being delivered from the RE dealer in Glendale) and I’ll post an update about that later today, too!

I can’t wait to get on the road tomorrow.

Stay tuned, and hey, sign up for our automatic email blog updates!

Daytona’s Flat Track Gets Stranger

The Bike Week flat track has another, even stranger configuration this year. Before I get onto that a brief history is in order. The Bike Week AMA points-paying races were held at Memorial Stadium on 11th Street for many, many years. It’s a good venue with lots of seating, parking and being a real stadium it’s perfect for flat track.

About 7 years ago (I’m too lazy to Google it) the races were moved behind Home Depot at the west end of the Daytona Speedway parking lot. It was a small track with funky stands and the first year was very slippery. Over the next few years the surface improved until it was an ok place to hold a race but the big V-twin bikes were useless on the tiny circuit.

Recently, the races have been held on a TT track that is located directly under the Supercross track on the front straight of the Speedway infield. The Super cross jumps are removed and an odd, tight cornered TT course emerges a day or two later. This track proved too point and shoot so the turns were widened a bit last year but it was still not flat track as we know it.

This year the track has been reconfigured yet again into a Superbikers type course using the paved section near the start-finish line combined with a dirt section. It goes like this: The start is on dirt and turn one is dirt, mid corner it transitions to pavement and the back stretch is paved, turn three transitions from pavement back to dirt.

It should make for some dramatic grip changes as turn two dirt spills out onto the paved section. Look for a few highsides as the rear tire hooks up onto the grippy pavement. Also chattering may be a problem as the riders dive into turn three. The track at Daytona has been an odd duck for a while now so I guess we should be used to it. The place is so strange results here will have little bearing on the rest of the season’s races held on real flat tracks.

All this weirdness may change if the promoters decide to slather some dirt on the back straight so we will have to wait and see.

Tractor Supply

It seems like I’m always working a pick and a shovel at Tinfiny Ranch. Situated at 6000 feet in the foothills of the Sacramento Mountains the place is steep with many elevation changes. An arroyo runs past the house so that when it rains (and it rains a lot in New Mexico) my driveway becomes a short-lived trout stream.

Water, being the universal solvent, plays havoc with Tinfiny Ranch and most of my time is spent trying to bend it to my will. Armed with hand tools and 50-pound bags of concrete I’ve managed to carve out a dry spot to sleep. The landforms here are fleeting, changing and slowly make their way 1500 feet down to the Tularosa Valley where huge dust storms blow the accumulated material back up onto the mountain sides. You don’t own real estate here: you trap it.

When Hunter called me to tell me he had found a Kubota tractor for me my first thoughts were about water. Like a slightly soft football a front loader tractor would give me a leg up on erosion. I was on my way to Stillwater a few days later.

Hunter is my riding buddy. We both like crappy old two-strokes and we’ve run them clear across country following the Trans-America Trail. We’ve passed some impassable routes and had bikes lay down on us in the middle of the desert. I know him as Vinnie The Snake from the dirt and only the dirt but it turns out there’s more to Hunter than a beat up old DT400 Yamaha.

We had a day to kill before I picked up the tractor so we went to Hunter’s Skybox at OSU and watched the OSU women’s basketball team dismantle a team from Kansas. The governor of Oklahoma has a suite two doors down and there was unlimited free food along with all the ice cream you could eat. The suite had a commanding view of both the football field and the indoor arena.

When we walked in the coach shook Hunter’s hand and then he shook my hand like I might also be somebody important. Then the TV and radio guys chatted up Hunter including me in the conversation. It was weird: nobody ever cares about what I have to say but my proximity to Hunter earned a listen. Everyone knew and loved Hunter and they loved me too. Nobody called him The Snake. It’s like there are two Hunters, one that lives in a world unlike any I’ve seen. I’ll remember that other, respectable Hunter when he’s tipped over in a mud hole cussing his two stroke.

The Tractor was a beauty with tires so new they still had rubber bar codes visible. Kubota’s have earned a good name in the heavy equipment arena and this L2850 sported a diesel engine that fired right up.

Underneath the driven front end you’ll find a portal-type axle to give the tractor plenty of ground clearance. Everything is leaking a bit but oil is cheap and Tinfiny can use a little dust control. The steering felt tight and Woody, the guy I bought the tractor from takes good care of his stuff.

When I worked construction in Miami it was rare to see a dashboard unbroken. Vandalism was a constant problem. Lights, tires and hoses were routinely damaged by bored kids. The L580 dash was clean and everything works except the tach needle fell off.

At the rear of the Kubota has a two-speed PTO drive that I will be using as soon as CT buys me a backhoe attachment. Amazon has some cool 3-point hoes costing around $3600. You don’t want to do a lot of side digging with a 3-point hoe because the hitch wasn’t meant for big side loads but as long as you are crabbing in a straight line they will work well.

The transmission has high and low range with low range, first gear being super slow. Top end of the tractor in high range-high gear is around 12 miles per hour. With zero suspension 12 MPH is plenty over Tinfiny’s rough grounds.

This lever engages the front wheels. This is pretty important because the front end loader combined with nothing attached to the hitch means the big rear wheels have little traction.

The Kubota’s grille was bent a bit but Woody had a new grille that he hadn’t gotten around to installing. The rest of the tractor is pretty straight. The side lights need new lenses and the back lights could use some love but all in all I’m thrilled with the tractor. How could I not be? Every boy loves a tractor.

The Ruta del Vino

The Ruta del Vino, heading south out of Tecate.

This post will wrap up our Tecate visit, and the focus of today’s blog is the road south out of Tecate.  The Ruta del Vino is a magnificent road that runs through the northern Baja countryside to Ensenada, passing directly through one of Baja’s wine growing regions.

If you missed the earlier Tecate posts, here are the links:

Tecate
Malinalli Sabores Autóctonos!
A Tecate Sunrise

Getting to the Ruta del Vino is easy.  After entering Baja through Tecate, just continue south.   You’ll pass under the Tecate sign shown in yesterday’s blog, hang a left on Avenida Revolución, and then turn right on Boulevard Universidad (which becomes the Ruta del Vino and Mexico Highway 3).

Welcome to Tecate!

You’ll pass through the center of Tecate and climb a hill as you leave Tecate.  You’ll see a bunch of pottery stories selling clay bowls of all kinds.  A little further south is a monastery on your left, and a little beyond that is a sign over the road welcoming you to the Ruta del Vino.

The Ruta del Vino has several things to offer.  The first is magnificent scenery through Mexican countryside.   Then there are the vineyards.  They are on both sides of the road.  The third are the restaurants and hotels.  And I guess the fourth is the destination, as the Ruta del Vino runs all the way to El Sauzal, a tiny community on Ensenada’s northern edge.   That’s where the Ruta del Vino intersects with Baja’s Transpeninsular Highway.  Turn left and the Transpeninsular Highway will take you through Ensenada and all the way to Cabo San Lucas.  Turn north and you’re on your way to Tijuana and San Diego.

Along the Ruta del Vino, which is Mexico’s Highway 3.
Another view along the Ruta del Vino.

Northern Baja wines are surprisingly good.  I’m not a wine connoisseur; I just think they are good and they are certainly reasonably priced.  My favorite vineyard is the L.A. Cetto vineyard, which is roughly 45 miles or so south of Tecate.  As you’re traveling south on the Ruta del Vino, the L.A. Cetto vineyard is on your left.  The road to it used to be dirt, but it was recently paved and it’s an easy ride now.  The L.A. Cetto vineyard usually has a fair crowd and on our last visit, there was a general feeling of excitement in anticipation of a visit by senior members of the Catholic clergy.  As we were leaving, an entourage of several priests and the region’s Cardinal were arriving.

The now-paved road leading to the L.A. Cetto Vineyard.   That’s my Subie Outback, which is a grand automobile for these kinds of tours.
A Mexican motorcyclist on the road to the L.A. Cetto vineyard. All the gear, all the time.  The motorcycle is a Zongshen, marketed in Mexico under the Italika name.
The L.A. Cetto grapes. This is a composite photo showing a 180-degree view from the south (on the left) to the north (on the right).  It’s stitched together from three photos. Photoshop does a great job at these kinds of things.

The L.A. Cetto vineyard offers wine tasting, and they sell wines, vinegars, olive oil, olives, cheeses, nuts, and more.   When I’m on the motorcycle, my friends and I will usually stop to buy some cheese and olives for a snack.   The vineyard has outdoor tables in front of the wine tasting areas.   The vineyard also offers factory tours, but they were only in Spanish on the day of my most recent visit.   You can buy and get back across the border with any amount of olives and olive oil you wish to take, but there’s a one bottle limit on wine.  I picked up an L.A. Cetto Malbec on this visit, which I’ll try later this month.  If you’d like to read more about the L.A. Cetto vineyard, here’s an excellent article in the BajaBound.com newsletter.

The L.A. Cetto tasting room and store.

We had a great lunch at Los Naranjos, which is just a short jaunt further south on the Ruta del Vino.  It’s about a half mile down the road on the right.  The cuisine there is impressive, and nothing wraps up a great meal at Los Naranjos better than their apple pie.  Make sure you try a glass of their namesake orange juice, too.  They grow their own oranges and squeeze their own juice.  It’s superb.  One more thing:  The salsas at Los Naranjos are the best I’ve ever had.  One in particular was a darker salsa with crushed almonds.  I asked if I could buy a bottle of it, but Los Naranjos doesn’t sell this one other than as a serving with each meal.   They saw how much I liked this particular salsa, though, and the chef made up a couple of plastic containers for me to take home.

Inside Los Naranjos. It’s rare to see it this empty. On Sundays, it’s a favored destination for Mexican riders and it’s packed.
Susie and I split a shrimp omelet for lunch.  This was just half of the normal serving.

Los Naranjos is part of a larger country estate.  You can walk around the grounds and take in the interesting sculptures, birds, tilework, and more.  I also found out that there’s a 30-room hotel on the premises, something I did not know before this trip.  I think a stay there will find its way into a future Baja itinerary.

The grounds around Los Naranjos.
A Los Naranjos turkey.
Los Naranjos wall sculpture.

To put all this in perspective, all the recent blog posts about Tecate and the Ruta del Vino described what Susie and I did in less than 24 hours.  We rode down from the Los Angeles area in the afternoon on a Thursday, crossed the border into Tecate around 4:00 p.m, had our great dinner at Amores that night, we enjoyed a wonderful breakfast in Malinalli Sabores Autóctonos the next morning, we explored downtown Tecate later that morning, and did our trip along the Ruta del Vino in the afternoon.  Then it was back up to the border to get back into the US that afternoon.

Waiting in line to cross the border. The Wall already exists. That’s the US on the other side. It would have been a lot quicker getting through on the motorcycles.
Wall art as we waited to cross the border. Photo by Susie.

Getting back to the border is not too hard to do, and the lines to get back into the US are generally better than they would be in Tijuana.   Just follow the Ruta del Vino back into Tecate, and as you near the center of town, watch for the Garita (border) signs.  You have to turn off to the right and parallel the US border for a mile or so, and then make a U-turn to get in line.  On this last visit, because we were in the Subie, we had to get in the car line, and our wait was about an hour (you’ll want to take a restroom break before you get in line).    If you’re on a motorcycle, though, you can get through a lot easier.  Just find your way through Tecate to the point where the line of cars approaches the US border crossing, squirt through an opening in the K-barriers, and cut the line.  We do this all the time on the bikes.

And folks, that was our whirlwind one-day Tecate junket.  I liked this approach where instead of zooming up and down the peninsula, we selected a particular place and explored it in some detail.  I’d like to do that in the San Quintin area on a future trip…there are some cool things down there.  Anyway, Joe G and I are headed to Baja later this month on the motorcycles.  Stay tuned; it’s going to be another grand trip!

Swag

I didn’t start out in the typing business looking for swag. I was more interested in seeing my byline on a real, printed object. Being published meant at least one person in the world thought my stuff wasn’t terrible. No, it was like more swag found me. Slowly at first, then faster as the typing game became less and less lucrative, swag has grown ever larger in importance.

Today all I write for is swag. I pay the electric company with logoed T-shirts and swap brake manufacturer stickers for groceries. Swag has completely replaced the United States Dollar in my financial transactions. My wallet looks like an overstuffed armoire and I fill those Leave-a-Penny convenience store change holders with plumbing company plastic key fobs.

More than money, swag fills the void: I insulate walls with swag and burn it to make a fine garden fertilizer. When cooking, I substitute swag in all recipes that call for newt. I mark time by measuring the half-life of a rubber USB drive shaped like a Harley-Davidson motorcycle. I have over 1000 tiny jars of lemon sage Best Western hair conditioner that I plan on converting into diesel fuel someday.

CSC sent me a flat-brimmed swag cap. They didn’t need to: I love those guys and how their business plan is a fantastic experiment in mail order motorcycling. I like that the customer needs to be a bit more self sufficient to operate their motorcycles. And I like the hat. With most products becoming sealed off to us regulars, CSC bikes actually require you to dig in. Since I own mostly weird motorcycles that have no dealer support I relate to the pride a CSC owner feels when he sets his own valves or replaces the chain and sprockets on his motorcycle.

Swag works. The preceding paragraph should be all the proof you need. Swag turns customers into advocates and a scuba suit beer cooler celebrating Pandya’s 50th birthday will always come in handy. Come to think of it, Exhaustnotes.us has no swag that I’m aware of. I’ll have to get to work on that.

Assault on Batteries

Unlike motorcycles, I’m not fixated on doing things the old way for electrical energy storage. I run a lithium-polymer battery in the Husqvarna that has exceeded all my expectations. The thing never goes dead (no trickle charger needed) it has tons of cranking amps (no need to use the compression release to start the bike) and it weighs nothing. You can install the thing in any position and nothing will leak out. The only drawback to the lithium-polymer battery is cost.

Battery technology is advancing rapidly with so many new combinations of lithium with something else, molten salt or rare elements only found in war torn areas. It’s hard to know which technology will win out in the end but for now, in my solar-powered shed system, lead-acid still offers the best electron storage option.

Lead-acid batteries are messy, inefficient and half their capacity comes at a voltage too low to run your equipment correctly. They are heavy as hell and the cable connections are always corroding from the acid fog and hydrogen fumes escaping from the fill caps. You’re lucky to get 5 years service out of a lead-acid battery. The things are problematic in most every way.

But not in all ways: lead-acid is a completely mature technology. We’ve been building them since 1860 and there is a cradle-to-grave recycling system in place right now. Any auto store or Wal-Mart has the ability to take your old lead-acid batteries and deal with them responsibly. Unlike the new battery elements there are no ecological surprises with lead-acid: We know all.

Lead-acid batteries are available everywhere. Go to any town in the world with at least one gas station and you can buy a lead-acid battery. You don’t have to deal with Tesla or any of the high-tech battery startups that don’t actually have product. Your battery isn’t tracked online, the software will never need to be updated and your battery bank will never be monitored by anyone but you. Unlike most e-car and e-bike batteries, lead-acid batteries come in standard sizes (24, 27, 31, 4-D, 8-D) and for the most part are interchangeable unless you have a restrictive battery box or short cables.

Lead-acid batteries are tough. It’s hard to damage a clean lead-acid battery with tight connections. They put out gobs of amps on demand and as long as there is electrolyte in the cells they stand up to overcharging well. They’re even somewhat repairable: Go on YouTube and look up battery repair for ways to flush out debris from old lead-acid batteries to gain new life.

Lead-acid batteries are easily scalable and nearly any voltage or amperage desired can be achieved with large, simple jumper cables. I’m running 4, group 31, 12-volt batteries in my 24-volt system. My future plans are for 16 batteries total but there’s no rush. I can take as long as I want to get there or 8 batteries might prove to be enough for my usage level.

Most important for me: They are cheap! The four deep cycle marine batteries in my off-grid system @100 amp/hour each give me a total of 2400 watts of storage (@ 50% capacity) for 400 dollars. If I ever get to 16 batteries I’ll have 9600 watts of storage for around 1600 dollars. Compare that to 7000 dollars for 7000 watts of storage from Tesla’s Powerwall.

The newer Powerwall is AC-in, AC-out and comes with a built-in AC inverter which is a savings if you’re charging from the grid but you’ll need a solar AC inverter to charge the Powerwall from the sun so it’s kind of a wash for my set up. The lifespan/charge cycle of lead-acid batteries is supposed to be less, judging from the two-year lifespan of the lithium ion batteries used in my cordless tools, maybe not.

I’m not a Luddite when it comes to battery technology on motorcycles or power tools but for me the new designs and materials haven’t yet made sense for large, stationary storage banks at low cost. I’ll revisit the topic if Tesla reduces the price of their Powerwall by half or some new manufacturer comes up with a wiz bang combination of chemicals that outdoes ancient lead acid technology.

To Serve Road Racing

Motorcycle road racing has taken quite a beating in America. The biggest stars are overseas and the entire series (whoever runs it) has become sort of a Triple A, minor league pastime. There are some really great riders in our pavement series but none of it seems to translate to The Bigs.

What if we combined road racing with a homegrown series featuring riders that are already the best in the world? Flat track racing has factory involvement, the best riders, a full-figured schedule and reliable fan participation. What if we went back to the past and named an overall Number 1 rider using the total points scored from each series? Road racing and flat track points were scored this way back in the 1970’s before the AMA debased the value of the #1 plate by splitting the championship into two. American road race wins need to become more valuable, more meaningful and with a tight overall championship on the line the top flat trackers would no longer be able to ignore asphalt. With so many more dirt events the best road racers would have to dabble in the dirt.

Would we see Mees on a factory Indian road race bike scoring a few pavement points to keep his dominant championship streak going? Would JD Beach win the #1 plate several times in a row, as he seems the most multi-talented? Would a dark horse, semi-privateer like Carver show a natural talent on the asphalt and go on to win at Moto GP? What if Shayna Texter turned out to be a beast on the twisting streets of COTA and showed a wheel to Marquez? This mixing of talent and styles gave the US years of GP dominance in the past and it will do it again.

I know the existing sanctioning bodies would never come together on this series. It requires compromise and a desire to put the common good above fractured fiefdoms battling for fans. That’s why we need a third, Rotisserie League type Series that sponsors the new championship without actually being involved in sanctioning races.

This piggy backed, Lamprey League would tabulate the scores from both road racing and flat track events and award prize money accordingly. (Like the old Camel Pro championships) Freed from having any association with either of the race promoters or even needing their blessing, anyone with deep enough pockets could be a sponsor. Red Bull, Booze sellers, and cigarette makers even the web site Vice could jump on board. An entire Virtual Championship Series with its own advertising, racer interviews and social media platforms would run parallel and concurrent with the physical races.

With True #1 championship money on the line racers would switch back and forth between the two racing disciplines, all the while improving their ability on both surfaces and scoring virtual points. It’s a win for everybody involved and it’s a big win for whoever gets that unified #1 plate.

Zed’s Not Dead: Part 15

Zed’s forward progress has come to a temporary halt. Not due to any complications on the Kawasaki’s part, although the project has exceeded my initial estimate by double and I’m not done yet. No, Pitiful Man has to strike a balance between work and play. He must strive to appease the gods and their fickle ways while angering none. It’s a fine line we walk and sometimes we have to dance atop a vibrating string.

A quick trip to Florida was in order as the Love Shack, our singlewide trailer in the Ocala Forest, was showing signs of neglect. CT and I freshened the grey floor paint and installed new back porch pavers, eliminating the sad little stoop that had served us poorly for 14 years. While we were at it some new window shades, new screen doors and a lick of paint on the Lido Deck were in the cards. Another project I started 14 years ago, installing sliding closet doors, was finally brought to a conclusion. When we were finished the place looked like a hundred bucks.

Back at Tinfiny Ranch in New Mexico another, larger project had to be tackled: a twenty-foot by thirty-foot concrete floor in the tin shed. I’ve decided to tackle the shed floor in stages, like the International Six Days Trial. Stage one will be Bay Number 1 (a little confusing because an additional bay, Bay Zero, was added to the shed after the other three bays had been named). This stage consists of 16 individually poured slabs of which I have 9 complete as of this writing. After the slabs are in place a shear wall will be built to add strength to the flimsy metal shed and also divide the space into a Bay 2 and 3 dirt floor, rat-accessible side, and a Bay 1 concrete, non-rat accessible side.

Those faithful Zed’s Not Dead readers that have not deserted me will recall Part One where I describe Zed’s crooked path back and home. After we bought Tinfiny Ranch I discovered a trove of paperwork from Zed’s previous owner. Several motorcycle magazines from the era featuring Zed were in a box along with a possible explanation for the Zed’s wiring issues described elsewhere in this series.

This letter dated August 3rd 1994 from Ken Rogers representing Dyna III ignitions (I’m guessing not the singer) explains to the previous owner how they have thoroughly tested the electronic ignition he sent back and have proclaimed it fit as a fiddle. Zed’s burned-up wiring harness may have been due to a faulty Dyna ignition installation. This would also account for the wiring to the coils being cut as those short bits were spliced into the Dyna module. I never found any of the Dyna stuff in my initial clean up but I haven’t gone through all the old guy’s junk.

Along with the Dyna stuff there was a lot of Yoshimura brochures and price lists. After seeing the damage to the wiring harness on Zed I’m torn between hoping my bike has some nice performance parts installed and fearing that my bike has some nice performance parts installed. I should be able to measure the cams to see if they have additional lift but I’m not sure how to check displacement without winning an AMA national road race. I suspect the Yoshi stuff was bench dreaming because the bike runs too well to be hot rodded.

Finally here’s a nice photo from Dale-Starr of David Aldana winning the Daytona superbike race with a half-lap lead over the guy in second place. Apparently this caused protests that required Aldana’s bike to be disassembled twice! The bike was found legal and Aldana’s win stood. I met Aldana at Barberville one year. I was so excited to meet him I started doing the “We’re not worthy!” Wayne’s World bowing thing and Aldena told me to knock it off.

While no real work has been done to Zed in Part 15 I’ve enjoyed digging through Zed’s past. Reading the old magazine reviews reinforces just how spectacular the Kawasaki Z1 900 was when it came out in 1973.  And how spectacular a motorcycle it still is.

Want to catch the rest of the Zed story?   Hey, just click right here!

The Rimfire Series: First Person Shooter

The odds are infinitesimally small that I will ever be called upon to overthrow a tyrant. I’m much more likely to be part of the brainwashed mob chasing down the righteous and the truth-tellers. I haven’t bought any guns lately because I don’t want to fit out my broken moral compass with the tools to get the job done. I get the public’s fascination with guns, though, the solid, no rattle feel, the precision machine work, and the black menace that radiates from a well-oiled rod. With a slight nudge to the right I could have become one of those guys that owns 43 guns. Who needs so many guns you say? I would have.

I bought my first gun when I was 20 years old. It was a Ruger bull-barrel .22 caliber target pistol. The thing was a load of fun out on San Diego’s Kitchen Creek road where a self-policed gun range glistened with glass shards in the late 1970s. You could buy milk cartons full of ammunition for the Ruger at department stores or sporting goods retailers. Nine dollars equaled 500 rounds and it made for a cheap, fun day blowing up bottles and cans.

The Ruger would rust if you didn’t keep it clean and the bottles weren’t shattering enough to suit me so the next gun I bought was a stainless steel Smith and Wesson .357 revolver with a 4-inch barrel. When you pulled the trigger you could see the drum turn, the hammer draw back and flames shoot out the sides of the weapon. It was like a miniature cannon. You got dirty shooting the thing. The whole process of firing the S&W revolver satisfied me on so many levels that at this point I was perilously close to becoming a gun nut.

For some reason, maybe it was God’s Hand, I didn’t become a gun nut. The trips out to Kitchen Creek became fewer. The ammunition got more expensive and the two pistols were packed away. It was only a few years ago that I dug the guns out. The Ruger was a mess. Rust had scarred its smooth gun-black finish and the mechanism was stuck. It took hours to get the thing cleaned up and the rest of the day to figure out how the various parts fit back into the handgrip. Being stainless, The Smith was fine, only needing a bit of oil to loosen things up.

My wife, CT, and I took the guns out to our local range to relearn how they operated. It was kind of fun and it really helped CT to see the difference between an automatic and a revolver. Like me, she prefers the revolver because the works are out in the open. Just by looking you can see the status of a revolver. With an automatic it’s anyone’s guess if the thing is ready to go off or it’s empty.

This Christmas CT gave me one of those heavy steel spinner targets, the kind with a large round target on the bottom and a smaller one on the top. When you manage to hit the thing the target spins around like a kinetic lawn ornament. I guess CT enjoyed our day at the range more than I did. Now she wants a Mosberg pump shotgun and one of those scary looking assault style rifles. You know, for home protection. It seems like we might end up with a gun nut in the family after all.

Like our gun stuff?   Check out Tales of the Gun, our gun page.

Is Digital Photography Art?

I log into several online groups as a way of avoiding doing something constructive. One of the groups features photos of New Mexico. Some of the photos are spectacular, some are way over-processed. One guy started labeling his photos as “No Filter New Mexico.” This means the photo has not been doctored beyond the camera’s initial setting. A long-winded argument ensued pitting photographers (the guys who watermark their embarrassing, Willie-Wonka-colored Martin-landscape shots in an attempt to retain rights) and snap-shooters.

If I shoot a scene and then push the photo edit sliders to their limits did I create art or am I just working within an algorithm provided by the software manufacturer? Is the coder who designed the software the real artist? If I successfully dial a number on my cell phone is that art? No way! Now say I invite 500 people to a theater and I go on stage and successfully dial a phone number on that exact same phone. Is that art?

Maybe art is made when its creator declares it as art. Even bad art like those over-processed photos are art if Slider-Man says so. The watermark guys proclaim their saturated images as art, who am I to deny them their petition?

My biased opinion is that everything we do in life is art. Of course there are differing degrees of artiness. Photo shop doctoring is art on the level of a child playing with the classic stick-on toy Colorform. With Colorform you apply provided objects and characters onto a smooth vinyl background scene. The sticky bits are reusable so you can change the image to suit your taste. Colorform is a lot like Photoshop in that rearranging premade objects becomes an act of art.

In the days of film, and before that when oil painting was the best way to record a scene, a modest-to-hard level of difficulty was involved. Cameras have become so good that nearly anyone can take a technically decent photo. Selecting the best angle and framing the photo are artistic things but they pale in comparison to carving a block of marble or tossing feces onto a canvas.

Each artwork has its own built-in level of difficulty and because art is defined by one man’s opinion the whole world blasts open to artistic endeavors. Eating lunch, mindful of our ways, becomes art. Driving to work with an emphasis on the driving is much harder than pushing a shutter release so it too becomes art. My Facebook buddy Ren has turned coffee making into art because he cares so much about the process and the resulting drink.

So click that shutter my fellow Da Vinci’s, slide that saturation bar to the max and marvel at the purple skies you have created. Use the render bar to mimic that hyper-realistic, Steam-punk thing used in tough-guy motorcycle advertisements. We are artists with a lower case “a!”