Motorcycle Adventure Ride – Page 2 – The ExhaustNotes Blog

The Wayback Machine: Riding in High Temps

By Joe Berk

With the temps hitting over 100 degrees out here, I thought it might be a good idea to rerun a blog we ran a few years ago. Let’s stay cool out here, folks!

I visited Chiriaco Summit and the Patton Museum last week (we’ll have a blog on it soon) and it was awesome. But wow, was it ever hot. As in 111 degrees when we left, and that’s not an unusually warm day out there in the Sonoran Desert. The next town over is called Thermal, and a little further north there’s this place called Death Valley. Death Valley recorded a whopping 131 degrees three weeks ago. Sensing a pattern?

Looks like the Mojave, doesn’t it? Nope. That’s Joe Gresh in the Gobi Desert. Gresh and I rode across it after coming down off the Tibetan Plateau. It was a bit warm out there.

Yeah, it gets warm in these parts, and in other parts of the world as well. Hot weather is not ideal riding weather, to say the least, but sometimes we find ourselves riding in shake and bake conditions. I’ve done it. I rode a 150cc scooter all the way down to Cabo and back in Baja’s hottest month of the year (September, when it was well over a hundred degrees every day). It was humid down there, too, once we crossed over to the Sea of Cortez side of the peninsula. We were literally entering the tropics as we crossed the Tropic of Cancer. Whoa, that was rough riding!

Simon Gandolfi, suspenders flying in the breeze, riding my Mustang replica bike south of the Tropic of Cancer in Baja California Sur. It was one of the hottest rides I ever experienced.

When we did the Western America Adventure Ride with CSC and the guys from Zongshen, we rode through the same corridors described earlier above, riding across California and the Mojave Desert, through Joshua Tree, and on into Arizona with temps approaching 110 degrees. That was brutal riding.

King Kong and Mr. Zuo in Joshua Tree National Park. That was another brutally hot day. Higher higher temps were still in front of us when we later rolled through Amboy, California. This picture became the cover photo for 5000 Miles At 8000 RPM. You should buy a copy or three (they make great gifts).

The ride across China that Joe Gresh and I did had similar challenges. It started out hot, then it got cold as we rode into the Tibetan Plateau, and then it became brutally hot and humid as we descended into central China and rode east to Qingdao. That was a 38-day ride, and I’d guess it was well over 100 degrees for at least 30 of those 38 days.

The risk, of course, is heat stroke, and it’s often not the kind of thing you can feel coming on. You’ll think you’re okay one minute, and the next you’re waking up in an emergency room wondering what happened. If you start to feel a headache while riding in hot weather, you are already perilously close to heat stroke. You need to stop, drink copious amounts of water, and get some shade. The better approach, though, is to not let yourself get anywhere near that condition, and that’s what this article is all about.

It almost seems like heresy to say it, but my first bit of advice about riding in hot weather is: Don’t. Given the choice, postpone the ride. But let’s assume that this is not an option, as was the case for each of the rides mentioned above. Okay, then…here’s my guidance on the topic.

12 Hot Weather Riding Tips

One: Don’t ride naked. I’m not trying to be funny here, and I’m not implying you might be the kind of person who would go down the road wearing nothing at all (although there is that story about Gresh riding around with only a bathrobe). Nope, what I’m talking about is not shucking your safety gear. You have to wear it. All of it. ATGATT. All the gear, all the time. You can’t peel it off just because it’s hot. It’s saved my life.

My Viking Cycles mesh jacket and the mighty Enfield.

Two: Wear a good mesh jacket. These are available from several sources. I have a Viking Cycles jacket I’m wearing these days and it works well. I wore a Joe Rocket mesh jacket on the ride across China and it made a big difference. You can get them from Viking Cycles, CSC Motorcycles, British Motorcycle Gear, and other sources. Trust me on this…you need a ventilated jacket for riding in hot weather. EDIT: We’re getting interesting comments advising not wearing a mesh jacket in hot weather. Make sure you read the comments below, and for those of you who responded, thanks very much!

Three: Use a cooling vest. These things actually work, but they’re not as easy to use as it sounds. They don’t work for long, but they work. The idea is you soak them, and then wear them under a jacket. The airflow causes the water in the vest to evaporate and that cools the vest and you. I’ve found that on really hot days these vests need to be remoistened about every thirty minutes, but you should be stopping that often anyway (more on that later). It’s the remoistening part that I don’t like. It seems like they take forever to soak up water when you remoisten them. I’ve found it easer to just get my clothes wet (see the next point below).

Four: Go soak your head (and everything else). Don’t laugh; I’ve done this. On the Baja ride I mentioned above, it was so unbearably hot that we took to pouring water down the inside of our riding jackets and inside our helmets at every stop. We became rolling evaporative coolers. It helped.

Five: Change your riding hours. On the really hot days, I like to hit the road at 0:Dark:30. Get out and get a hundred or so miles in before it gets unbearably hot. You’d need good lighting on your bike to do this (I generally don’t like to ride at night, but I’ll make an exception when I know it’s going to be hot). This is difficult to do when riding in a group because it’s hard to get everybody moving that early. If it was just me and Gresh or Welker, we’d leave way early and get in a couple of hours of riding (or more) before the sun comes up.

We knew it was going to be brutally hot riding through Joshua Tree and the Mojave Desert, so we left just before sunup on the first day of the Western America Adventure Ride.

Six: Drink a lot of water. The problem with riding in high temperatures is you don’t realize how much water you lose through perspiration. My advice is to stop every 30 minutes and drink a bottled water. Like I said above, most of us ain’t spring chickens, and you might be wondering if this means you’re going to be stopping a lot to pee. Hey, it’s a common old guy problem, but it won’t be in hot weather. Drink a lot of water; you’ll lose it through perspiration as you ride.

Seven: Avoid alcoholic beverages. Alcohol will cause you to dehydrate more rapidly, and that’s the opposite of what we’re trying to do here. You shouldn’t be consuming alcohol on a motorcycle ride anyway. Drinking any kind of alcohol while riding in hot weather is just stupid. Where I found you really have to watch this is when riding in a large group (there will be one or two riders who have to have that beer or two at lunch).

Beer is good, especially when it’s a Tecate at the Old Mill in Baja overlooking Bahia San Quintin. But save it for the end of the day, when the bikes are parked for the night.

Eight: Stop regularly to cool off. Find a bit of shade or someplace air conditioned, and get off the bike to cool down. When I ride in hot weather, I usually stop to cool off and rehydrate every 30 minutes or so.

Stopping to cool off at the Tropic of Cancer. Wow, it was hot and humid down there! We were off standing in the shade, drinking bottled water.

Nine: Keep your tires at recommended pressures. Another thing you definitely don’t want on a hot day is underinflated tires. Tires flex with every rotation, and flexing causes the tires to heat. Throw in high road surface temperatures with underinflated tires, and you’re flirting with a blowout. This is especially important to remember if you’re one of those guys or gals who deflate their tires for dirt riding. Don’t forget to pump them back up when you get back on the asphalt.

Ten: Don’t speed. Tar melts on hot days, and melted tar is slick. Factor that into your riding when it gets toasty.

A meal fit for a king, but not for lunch. You wouldn’t want to ride in hot weather immediately after this Baja seafood extravaganza.

Eleven: Eat light. Don’t over indulge. Heavy meals put a strain on your digestive system and your heart, and that can elevate your body temperature. When I was involved in testing munitions out in the Mojave on hot days (where it was sometimes over 120 degrees), we always brought along melons for lunch and nothing else. We didn’t need to keep them cool. They were a great treat, they seemed to make it a little cooler on those horrifically hot days, and they help to keep you hydrated. Good buddy Sergeant Zuo seemed to know all about that in China, too. We were riding through Ledu in central China one ferociously hot day when our favorite Chinese NCO stopped the group, disappeared, and returned with a couple of watermelons. That was a welcome respite and a marvelous treat. We ate a lot of watermelon in China.

Gresh taking a break in Ledu, China. That’s the Yellow River (China’s Mother River) behind Uncle Joe.

Twelve: Lighten up on the low sodium schtick. A lot of us older guys try to watch our sodium intake. When I was in the Army, they actually gave us salt tabs on really hot days when we were in the field, the theory being that we needed the sodium because we were losing so much through perspiration. I later heard the Army reversed that practice, but the fact is you lose a lot of minerals through perspiration. I don’t worry about my sodium intake when riding on hot days.

So there you have it. You know, most folks who ride motorcycles these days…well, how can I say this delicately? We aren’t spring chickens anymore. Motorcycling tends to be a thing mostly enjoyed by full-figured senior citizens, and we have to take care of ourselves, especially when we venture out on hot days.

If you other ideas about hot weather riding, let us know in the Comments section. We love hearing from you.

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The Sopranos: Paterson Falls

By Joe Berk

Another one of the stops on my New Jersey Sopranos tour was Paterson Falls. Although only about 40 miles or so from where I grew up, I’d never been there.

I knew of the town, though. It’s an old industrial village with waterfalls, which meant that in the early days of our country it was perfect for industrial development. The falls provided hydraulic power, and that could be used to drive machinery. Indeed, it’s where Samuel Colt built his first run of revolvers, which are known (not surprisingly) as Paterson Colts. Paterson was established as the nation’s first planned industrial city in 1792, with its readily-available hydraulic power and close proximity to New York City and the Atlantic Ocean. Paterson manufactured silk cloth, steam locomotives, textiles, paper, firearms, and aircraft engines. It is centered on the Passaic River, which flows into Newark Bay and from there to the Atlantic Ocean.

The Passaic Falls are contained within the Paterson Great Falls National Historic Park, which is (as the name implies) part of the U.S. National Park system. All this was news to me, which is kind of amazing when you consider that I grew up a short 40 miles to the south. I’d never known any of this, and to learn about it at my age was surprising. I’ll give the credit for that to David Chase (the guy who created The Sopranos). Had that show not sparked my interest, I’d still be ignorant.

So, let’s move on to the scene in The Sopranos that caught my attention. It’s the episode in which Mikey Palmici (Uncle Junior’s driver and bodyguard) throws a drug dealer off the bridge over the Passaic Falls:

That episode you see above occurred later in The Sopranos. There was another scene in the very first Sopranos episode on the same bridge shown above in which Hesh Rabkin and Big Pussy Bompensiero (two of The Sopranos characters) threaten to throw a health insurance company executive (a guy named Alex Mahaffey, played by Michael Gaston) off the same bridge if he didn’t cooperate with a Sopranos scam to defraud the insurance company.

When threatened with a swan dive off the bridge, Mahaffey gave in to the Soprano family’s demands, but alas, his Sopranos career was over; Michael Gaston never appeared in another episode. But that didn’t mean Sue and I wouldn’t see him again. In one of our trips to New Jersey, we rode the Air Trans shuttle between the airport and the rental car facility. Just before we boarded the shuttle, Michael Gaston was leaving the car we entered. We didn’t bug him, but we made eye contact and he knew we knew who he was.

Michael Gaston, an actor we bumped into on the Newark Airport Air Trans.

There’s a lot more to Paterson, though, then simply having been a location for a couple of The Sopranos scenes. Here’s another video that describes Paterson’s history:

Today, Paterson is undergoing a renaissance, as the old factory buildings are being converted to loft apartments. Yup, Paterson is being yuppified. It looks like an interesting place to spend more time, but my schedule didn’t permit doing so on this visit. For us it was roll into town, grab a few photos, and bail.

A view of Passaic Falls. This is a beautiful area.

The wood-surfaced foot bridge featured in two different Sopranos episodes.

Another view of the bridge. It’s closed to the public. On the Internet, it says it’s for safety reasons. One of my police buddies told me it’s because there were too many suicides from this bridge.

Another view of the Passaic River and its Falls in Paterson.

While we were visiting the Paterson Great Falls National Historic Park, this rather plump groundhog was doing the same. My Dad used to hunt these in New Jersey with his .243 Model 70 Winchester and the farmers loved having him do so. These woodchucks may look cute, but they destroy a lot of crops.

One thing I know for sure: I’ll return to Paterson. I’d like to explore the city, its museums, and more in greater detail.

Want to see our other visits to The Sopranos locations? Here they are:

The Sopranos Mansion

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Inbound!

By Joe Berk

We’ve got a bunch of good stuff coming your way, my friends. I just finished a whirlwind week in New Jersey, we hit some of the Sopranos film locations, I grabbed a bunch of very cool Norton P11 photos, we saw where Bruce Springsteen was setting up for a concert in Asbury Park, I have a review on the new Garmin chronograph about to go live, Mike Huber (aka Mike Nelson) is down there in Indonesia and Thailand becoming one with the sea turtles, I’ve got a review on Ruger Customer Service and my revamped .357 Bisley, Joe Gresh has his Z1 Kawi all dressed up with lots of new places to go, and lots, lots more.

Andrew Capone, Isle of Man impresario and British Motocycle Gear CEO, with an unknown paparazzi reflected in a Norton Scrambler fender at an undisclosed location in New Jersey.

All dressed up with lots of places to go…Joe Gresh and the Z1…the gift that keeps on giving!

How fast is fast? Stay tuned, and we’ll tell you!

Bisley mania! Plinking at 100 yards with a handgun? You bet!

Andrew, Harry (aka “the Norton Whisperer”), and what is unquestionably one of the most beautiful motorcycles ever made!

There’s ink, and then there’s Sopranos ink. Oh, do we have a story for you!

You know, we blew right by 1500 blogs some time ago, and I started to wonder if we were going to run out of things to write about. Nope. Not gonna happen. It’s like when one of my geezer buddies told me he didn’t know what to say at a lunch gathering, and another of my geezer friends told him, “Don’t worry…you’ll keep talking until you think of something.”

Stay tuned, my Amigos…

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Tony Soprano’s Home

By Joe Berk

The scenes and the locations are iconic, and I take pride in recognizing every one of them in The Sopranos opening credits. The music, the New Jersey Turnpike toll booth, the aged industrial locations, Pizzaland, and motoring up that long driveway at 14 Aspen Drive in North Caldwell, New Jersey. Today’s topic is the home you see at the beginning of every episode in what is unquestionably the best television series that ever aired.

I had originally seen the series sometime after it first ran on HBO. I didn’t at first recognize how wonderful the show was and how it would come to be known throughout the world. It was so good that many people think Tony Soprano is real. I was in Scotland for a consulting gig when my driver, an elderly gentleman, recognized my American accent but told me I didn’t sound “like California.”

“I’m originally from New Jersey,” I explained.

My driver grew silent. He was thinking. Finally, the Question: “Do you know Tony Soprano?” He was dead serious. We were in Glasgow on a motorway taking me to my destination, and here was this Scot asking me about a fictional character. One who obviously seemed all too real to anyone who watched the show.

“I never actually met the man,” I truthfully answered, “But I know people who knew him.”

What I told the driver was true, sort of. James Gandolfini, one of Tony’s many aliases, was a Jersey boy like me. He graduated from my alma mater, Rutgers University. I could identify with The Sopranos and its New Jersey setting. I knew people who spoke with the same accent and who most likely knew the DeCavalcante crime family (the real-world gangsters The Sopranos modeled). Hell, I speak with the same accent, and that old Scot picked up on it in Glasgow. Did I know Tony? Hey, I could name names, but I don’t want to sleep with the fish. I’m no rat.

On a recent trip, I thought it might be fun to Waze my way to a few of The Sopranos locations. The list was long, as the show was mostly shot in New Jersey (as were most of the guys and a couple of gals who fell from Tony’s favor). The first location I would visit, of course, had to be Tony and Carmela’s mansion. Waze knew the way. The Garden State Parkway took me there, and that seemed fitting.

When we arrived, the cul-de-sac was way smaller than it had appeared each morning when a bathrobe-clad Tony waddled down the driveway to pick up his Newark Star Ledger (a paper I used to read, by the way). I couldn’t see too much of the mansion, the result of 25 years of landscaping doing what landscaping does. The trees and bushes had grown to obscure the view from the street. It’s what Tony (or any organized crime figure) would have wanted. Best to keep a low profile, free from Agent Harris’s probing eyes.

When a guy like Tony Soprano posts a sign like this, I pay attention. Nah, not really. What’s he gonna do? Coincidentally, we had that same mailbox in front of our house for years. It leaked and we grew tired of wet mail.

There it was, tucked away behind the vegetation, most definitely the mansion featured in so many episodes and, as mentioned above, in the opening at the start of every episode. Even though the current occupants obviously discouraged visitors, we still took our chances. As I was snapping photos midmorning on this New Jersey weekday, others appeared and did the same. Some of them might have been FBI agents. The fans of fame kept the flame burning bright, almost three decades after the music and the scenes first appeared. Note to self: Make the next visit in the dead of winter when the trees are bare, and do so late in the afternoon when the sun is in a better position. The lighting was not good when I gathered this evidence; a good lawyer could get the photos thrown out in court (a junior G-Man I’m not).

14 Aspen Drive. If you listen carefully, you can hear Carmela bitching.

The sign’s admonitions notwithstanding, I looked around and started working the Nikon’s shutter (I’m not gonna lay down for some mailbox sign). The neighborhood was befitting a kingpin like Tony Soprano. The home on the other side of the cul-de-sac was better lit by the sun’s mid-morning rays, so I had to shoot it, too. Collateral damage; couldn’t be helped. An impressive zip code, to be sure.

A home across the street from Tony’s place. This is an exclusive neighborhood.

I liked The Sopranos television series then and I like it now. I watch The Sopranos episodes on my cellphone (it’s running on Max) when I’m working out. I get through an episode or so each time I visit the gym. I’ve been through the entire series four times (and I’m into Season 5 for the fifth time now). I started binge watching The Sopranos 18 pounds ago. The Sopranos have been very good to me, my waistline, my cholesterol, and my A1C. I need to buy a new belt, and Tony is the guy who made that happen.

So what’s next? Paterson Falls, my friend. It’s where Mikey Palmici threw a drug dealer off the bridge. Stay tuned if you know what’s good for you.

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Scuba: Part 1

By Mike Huber

As I had begun to enter my 5^th month of travel, not knowing where I would be sleeping the next night became routine. My mentality was “Future Mike will figure this one out, he always does.” And I always did. That mindset isn’t wrong, as crazy as it felt. However, as time pushed on and the countries began to be more in my rearview mirror something was missing. A way to deeply experience a country, more than most experience it. Similar to my past life with living off the BMW GS1200. The bike added a much-needed color to my adventures whereas most were just doing these adventures in a van or car. The BMW gave me that extra level of depth that awakened my senses and really allowed me to meet some wonderful people I wouldn’t have otherwise.

Realizing I needed to experience something new (besides circling the globe solo). I needed something thrilling but something I had never done. I was two months into driving through Australia and about to board a flight from Sydney to Cairns. When I asked others in my hostel what was worth doing up there, one reply was always consistent: Scuba dive the Great Barrier Reef. That was it! I would become a certified scuba diver and head for the Great Barrier Reef.

I registered for the dates I would be in Northern Australia for a 5-day Open Water PADI Scuba Certification Class. This class would include two days of classroom/pool training and three days and two nights on a live-aboard boat in the Great Barrier Reef. Upon filling out the school course paperwork it seems that due to my ripe old age of 51 I would require a physical. Not a big deal; there was a clinic across the street from my hostel. I am sure they would rubber stamp me through this, so I booked an appointment. Upon being called into see the doctor I noticed his clothing apparel seemed a bit…off. It wasn’t until I went into his exam room I noticed posters of Elvis all over the walls. Now his butterfly collar, gold glasses, slicked back hair made sense. He was an Elvis impersonator, or a big fan at the least. Once reviewing the physical requirements with him he explained the physical entailed much more than I expected, including chest x-rays, hearing tests, vision test, drug test, etc.

So I am not saying I cheated on this physical, nor am I disclosing if I did cheat how I would complete such an act. What I am saying is I passed the physical with flying colors. Sweet. I sent the paperwork off to the diving school and was formally accepted into the program. I was still smiling as I boarded my flight from Sydney to Cairns in Australia (which was one of the northern-most points of this mind-blowing continent).

Arriving on time to class (15 minutes prior to its scheduled start) I learned the class would be small. Myself, a young man from France and an American female from San Diego. Our instructor was from Pittsburgh. Normally I would hold that against her, but she was beyond stunning so it was easy to let that go as we began our class instruction on the equipment and different emergency protocols, hand signals, and a tutorial of almost any underwater emergency we could possibly encounter. This was the first half of the day and post lunch it was time to put these lessons to use, using our scuba gear in an enclosed 12-foot deep pool.

The first thing in the pool we performed even before learning about our gear was a swim test. This consisted of treading water for 10 minutes in place and a 300-meter swim. Upon successfully passing this, it was time to learn about all our gear. This included the air tank, BCD, respirator, fins, mask and snorkel, and how to successfully connect it all together.

It was now time to put on the scuba gear and go underwater in the pool for the first time. I will admit this caused a bit of anxiety for the first few minutes, even though we were just a few feet under. It was a new experience for me and the others, so that was normal. In no time we were nailing the different drills, such as mask removal and replacement while underwater, and buoyancy control. We also performed drills in the event we ran out of air and how to signal and use your buddy’s secondary air supply (I of course made sure I was paired with the instructor). Little did I know at the time, but paying attention to this lesson would prove to be lifesaving in just a few weeks in Indonesia.

Upon successfully completing the classroom, pool sessions, and passing a written exam, we were ready to take our skills into the ocean. The next day we were scheduled to meet at 0700 at the boat launch where we would be on a live-aboard boat for the next three days. The remainder of our training and honing our skills would be performed in the open waters of The Great Barrier Reef in Australia. This is where we hopefully would pass and become Open Water Certified Divers. Bad ass!

More epic adventures are here!

Cambodia

By Mike Huber

Guys, I apologize (again) for the long gap without writing. I have a massive backlog that I am attempting to catch up on and really have just been constantly doing too much to complete even a short blog. It has been a busy but productive time for me. I’m currently in my 6^th country and I’m 8 months into a 1-year journey. I’m in Cambodia.

Cambodia is yet another country that wasn’t on my radar but having been semi-obsessed with experiencing all 7 Wonders of The World I really wanted to see Angkor Wat. I know, I know. It isn’t on the list of 7 Wonders now but that list seems to be ever changing and I didn’t want to miss out in the event it was added again. That, and the other reason is I was about to overstay my visa limit in Thailand (running my visas out seems to be a new talent of mine).

Originally, I booked a flight to Phnom Penh as a forward journey requirement for Thailand entry. As the time got closer to my travel I linked up with a driver in Cambodia who would take me around to see the many Temples. However, upon sending him my flight itinerary he quickly replied “Dude, you are flying into the other side of the Cambodia, Angkor Wat is 360 kilometers from that city.” After 8 months this was really my first error of any consequence. There were two options, a 6-hour bus ride, or just eat the $80 and book a new flight. I chose the latter to save time.

Upon arrival and a minor hiccup going through immigration (I didn’t bring $30 for a visa so I had to “borrow” it from an immigration officer who included a hefty “tip”). It was part of the game and another lesson learned from my poor planning. I can’t complain. Once through customs I met my driver, Kong, outside the airport. And we were off to my hotel in Seim Reap.

The first thing I noticed in Cambodia (beside the fact that they drive on the right side of the road…it has been 8 months since I have been in a country that drives on the right) was the heavy humidity. It was brutal, even though I was in high humidity places over the past three months. This was next level and there just was no reprieve, even in the early morning and evening. Along the drive we discussed my objectives while in Cambodia and the main one was to see Angkor Wat. With the heat and humidity being so oppressive, Kong recommended we start at 0430 the next morning in order to see sunrise at the Temple. This would provide for a magnificent way to begin the day and allow us to get a head start on the heat.

We arrived at Angkor Wat at around 0530 and walked through the darkness and over the moat that guards this UNESCO treasure. All the while the mountainous sandstone silhouette was gaining in color and depth as our path led toward a meeting point between us and the rising sun. Even during off season there was quite the crowd at the reflection pool, at sunrise, to try to get that perfect photo of this stunning homage to Hinduism. It didn’t take long for the heat to follow. This was our queue to seek out shade deep within the Temple to avoid more heat and more crowds, and begin exploring the hidden Temple chambers.

The depth and detail on the Temple was more than impressive. Even with the destruction from past wars and an occasional bullet hole in the sandstone, the overall structure hadn’t lost its mystical feeling. The mysticism was unavoidable as we walked through the Temple’s many chambers.

Of the many experiences along my journey, I think Angkor Wat is one of the best things worth seeing, touching, and experiencing. Whether included in the 7 Wonders of the World or not, it makes little difference in my appreciation of this stunning structure. Even as a massive tourist attraction, this Temple sets the criteria for what an ancient wonder should be. Experiencing it was well worth the trip to Cambodia.

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Evel Knievel’s Snake River Canyon Jump

By Joe Berk

I grew up up in the Evel Knievel era. It was a glorious time, the 1960s, and if you were a motorcycle freak (as I was and still am), there was no way you could not have heard of Evel Knievel, a man who jumped cars and buses (and ultimately, the Snake River Canyon) on a motorcycle. He was one hell of a showman.

In the summer of 1966 I was a skinny little 15-year-old kid, my Dad owned a new Triumph Bonneville, and I was in hog heaven for that reason. Then and now, there was and is nothing cooler than a Triumph Bonneville. We were going to the motorcycle races. A big night out in those days was the East Windsor Speedway, a half-mile dirt track oval where they raced everything. Stock cars, two-strokes, and the big bikes. Not just locals, either. Harley’s Bart Markel (National No. 1), Triumph’s Gary Nixon (National No. 9), and more. It was the 4th of July weekend and it was 58 years ago. I remember it like it was last week.

East Windsor Speedway is no more. It’s now tract homes. My loss; New Jersey’s property tax gain.

East Windsor Speedway put on quite a show. Dad and I rode there on the Bonneville. I fancied myself a motorcycle guy and it just didn’t get any better than the half-mile dirt oval at East Windsor. The fun started right in the parking lot with hundreds of fans’ motorcycles. Fins and twins (everything was an air-cooled twin in those days), carbs, chrome, custom paint, custom seats, and more. It was all England and America and a little bit of Japan: Triumph, BSA, Honda, Harley, Suzuki, Yamaha…you get the idea. Italy and Ducati were yet to be discovered, only weirdos rode BMWs (remember those strange sideways kick starters?), and weirdos definitely didn’t go to the races. A new Bonneville was $1320 and a Honda Super Hawk (electric start, no less) was only about $600. It all seemed so attainable.

The East Windsor Speedway is long gone now, shut down by noise complaints from the encroaching ‘burbs and then plowed over for more cookie cutter homes. It’s a pity, really.

East Windsor always put on quite a show, but that 4th of July evening was a six sigma outlier on the right side of the bell curve. Stock car racing was first, then the 250cc class (love that smell!), then the big boys (including Nixon and Markel), then the main event (Evel Knievel!)…and it was all washed down with a 4th of July fireworks display that was as good as I had ever seen. That warm New Jersey night out started before the sun went down and finished around midnight. I think the cost to get in was something like $2.50.

Evel Knievel was the highlight for me and I think for everyone else, too. Evel was just starting to get famous, and here he was in person. White leathers and a cape trimmed in red and blue on the 4th of July. (Gresh and I always wanted capes, but we had to wait 50 years and go to China to get ours.) A Harley V-twin, with monstrous ramps set up on the infield (one for liftoff and one for landing), with a couple of Greyhounds in between (buses, that is…not the dogs).

The crowd fell silent as Evel revved the 750 Harley and then accelerated. But it wasn’t up the ramp. Nope, Evel (ever the showman) accelerated alongside the ramps and the buses when we all expected him to jump. Faked us out, he did. Then he looped around to start again. Ah, I get it, we all thought. That was just to gage his acceleration before hitting the ramps for real. The anticipation built. Thousands held their breath as Evel accelerated again, but he faked us out with another run alongside the ramps. Okay, all part of the show. A third time….maybe this would be it…but no, it was yet another tease. Back to the start point, more revving, and by now we were wise to the ways of Evel. We all thought it would be another feint. But nope, this was the real deal…up the ramp rapidly and suddenly there he was: Airborne Evel, sailing up and over the buses, suspended high in the evening air, and then back down on the landing ramp. He hit the brakes hard, struggling to stop before running out of room, the Harley’s rear end sashaying around like an exotic dancer in a room full of big tippers. The crowd went nuts. A seismic cheer drowned out the mighty Milwaukee sound machine. We had seen Evel, the man and the motorcycle, airborne and in person, flying over the buses that would have you leave the driving to them. It was awesome.

It all happened 58 years ago. Evel, my Dad, and the East Windsor Speedway have gone on to their reward and I’m officially a geezer drawing Social Security. But that evening will live in my memory forever, which sort of brings us to the present. Sue and I were on a content safari in Idaho (you’ve seen several blogs from that trip, and I still have a few to go). When we visited Twin Falls, we were on the edge of the Snake River Canyon. That name stuck in my mind because it was where Evel went when the US Government said “no dice” when he asked for permission to jump the Grand Canyon.

Good buddies Velma and Orlando on the south Rim of the Grand Canyon. Evel asked, and the Feds said no.

The entire concept was preposterous on so many levels I can’t list them. But that was Evel Knievel. Before he did it, the idea of jumping over a car was preposterous, as was the idea of jumping over several cars, as was the idea of jumping over a bus, as was the idea of jumping over several buses, and…well, you get the idea. Evel had bumped up against the limits of preposterousness, and that’s when he floated the Grand Canyon idea. The Feds nixed that, but Evel wasn’t a man stopped by obstacles. He went for the next best thing, and that was the Snake River Canyon. It’s over a mile wide, and it’s a big drop to the bottom.

To get back to Idaho connection and this story, I looked on the map to see if it denoted where Evel did his thing and to my surprise, it did. And it wasn’t very far from Shoshone Falls. Sue and I did our thing at Shoshone Falls and as soon as we were back in the car, I plugged in “Evel Knievel Snake River Canyon Jump.” Waze didn’t know from Evel Knievel, but the regular iPhone mapping app did. We were only a few miles away, we were off to the races (so to speak).

On the way in, as we approached the road’s end (it ended at the Snake River Canyon), we saw no signs initially marking the spot where Evel made history. We did see a lot of tract homes, and a sign selling more.

Not bad for an entire acre by California standards, but that’s Idaho. Someday every square inch of America will be covered by tract homes or high-density housing, and our politicians will wonder why there’s so little water and so much traffic.

As we reached the end of the road, the Canyon came into view, as did the ramp you see in the photo at the top of this blog. Whoa! Can it be?

The Snake River Canyon, where Evel attempted his jump. It’s wider and deeper than it looks.

It was. On the other side of that dirt ramp, we saw our first indication that we were where we wanted to be. It was a good summary of Evel and the attempted jump that occurred decades ago.

Evel: The Man, the myth, and the motorcycle.

The deal on the Evel Knievel Snake River Canyon jump is this: Evel didn’t attempt it on a regular or even a modified motorcycle. He instead used a steam rocket-propelled aircraft of sorts that was mounted on a launch ramp. The dirt ramp you see in the photo at the top of this blog was not one that you would attempt to roll up and hit at high speed with a motorcycle to become airborne. The idea instead was that the rocket ship would launch off a launch rail, carry Evel across the Snake River canyon, and then Evel would deploy a parachute and he (and the rocket ship) would float back to Earth on the other side. That was the theory.

An excerpt from the above sign. Evel Knievel, motorcycle astronaut.

It didn’t work out that way, though. Evel and his rocket ship made it about halfway across the Snake River, the parachute deployed inadvertently and prematurely, and man and machine descended into the canyon and onto the Snake River’s banks. Miraculously, Evel walked away, never to attempt a canyon (any canyon) jump again.

Another excerpt from the photo above. There was no V-Twin hidden in the bowels of Evel’s rocket ship.

We climbed to the top of the ramp and gazed across the Snake River Canyon. I wondered: Will we ever see another man like Evel Knievel? I think it’s less likely, given our predilection with biological males competing in women’s sports, our insistence on listing our pronouns (you can just refer to me as “hey, you”), and everything else our society has degenerated into. But that borders on being political, and as you know, we don’t do that. That said, though, I think it’s a safe bet that Evel never worried about anyone using his preferred pronouns.

After our climb down, we wandered around the area a bit. Other than that sign above (which isn’t visible until you walked to the other side of the ramp) and a marker on the trail fence, you’d never know this was an historic spot.

Peering at the Evel Knievel sign on the canyon side of the historic launch site.

A tiny fencepost marker on the trail that runs along the Snake River Canyon.

A macro shot of the Evel fencepost marker. History happened here.

We had a marvelous trip through Idaho, and like I said above, I still have another two or three blogs to wrap up our Idaho expedition. I’ll tell you before I get there, though, that visiting this obscure (and rapidly fading into further obscurity) spot was the highlight of the trip for me.

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Shoshone Falls, Idaho

By Joe Berk

The question I found confusing when navigating my way to Twin Falls, Idaho, was this: Is Shoshone Falls the “twin falls” referred to in Twin Falls, or is there another set of falls somewhere along the Snake River? I never really had a satisfactory, definitive answer to that question (and I asked several people in Twin Falls). It’s further complicated by the fact that upstream of Shoshone Falls (at the eastern edge of the town of Twin Falls), there’s another park called Twin Falls Park. I think the answer is this: There are other falls along the Snake River in the area of Twin Falls, but the Shoshone Falls are the two falls that give the city its name. If you know different, please let me know.

The arrow on the left points to Shoshone Falls. You can see how close the Falls are to the city of Twin Falls. The arrow on the right points to Twin Falls Park, which is also on the Snake River.

I plugged Shoshone Falls into Waze, and the nav program took us east out of town through a bit of farm country and past a few housing developments. The ride down to Shoshone Falls Park was an interesting one. When we approached the entrance where you pay $5 to enter the park and I asked about handicapped parking (I had a bad motorcycle accident 15 years ago and my handicapped parking tag was that cloud’s silver lining). The nice lady in the ticket booth told me my handicapped parking tag meant free admission. The month I spent in the hospital had a return on investment.

The ride down to Shoshone Falls from the entrance demands attention. It winds down a narrow lane alongside the mountain with a steep dropoff on one side (and there was no guardrail). I realized it would be best to save the sightseeing until I got down there.

The sign upon entering the parking area.

Once we arrived at the Shoshone Falls viewing area, we could see there are indeed two separate falls. It’s very scenic.

I stopped on the stairs leading to the viewing area. Our visit was nice and it wasn’t crowded.

A photo of Shoshone Falls from the viewing platform.

I’ve read online that Shoshone Falls is the Niagara Falls of the West, and Shoshone Falls has more of a drop than does Niagara. Shoshone Falls is a beautiful thing to see, but trust me on this, it’s not Niagara Falls. I’ve been to Niagara Falls. Shoshone Falls is nice, but there’s no comparing it to Niagara Falls.

Niagara Falls, from the US side. That’s Canada in the distance. I could feel the ground shaking when I shot this photo.

I looked down the Snake River. It was nice. It was scenic. I was glad we made the trip to Idaho. We were covering a lot of ground. I was getting great photos. Sue and I were on a content safari and Idaho was a target-rich environment.

The Snake River below Shoshone Falls. Just around the bend in the river is where Evel Knievel attempted to jump the Snake River Canyon. That story is the next blog in our Idaho series.

While studying the map to get to Twin Falls’ Shoshone Falls, I noticed that a bit downstream of Shoshone Falls along the Snake River the map showed the Evel Knievel Snake River Canyon jump site. There was no mention of it anywhere else. I wondered: Was it still there?

Stay tuned, folks.

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Craters of the Moon National Monument

By Joe Berk

As mentioned in our introductory Idaho blog, I had briefly visited the Craters of the Moon National Monument on the 5,000-mile Western America Adventure Ride with the Chinese and other folks who owned RX3 motorcycles. Good buddy Baja John did all the navigating and planning on that ride; I just rode at the front of the pack and took all the credit.

Baja John posing at the Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserved entrance exactly 10 years ago. Tempus fugit, my friends.

We planned those early CSC trips as if it was just Baja John and me riding, and I figured on way too many miles each day. John and I can do 600-mile days easily. When we planned the larger Western America Adventure Ride, even 400-mile days were a huge challenge. A good rule of thumb on such larger group rides is to stick to a maximum of 200 to 250 miles each day. I didn’t know that then.

Anyway, on that first Craters of the Moon stop, we were on a big mileage day and we didn’t have too much time to spare. We pulled into the Craters entrance, grabbed a few photos, and continued our trek to Twin Falls. I recently wanted to do a Destinations piece on Craters for Motorcycle Classics magazine, and when I looked through my files, I found I only had a couple of Craters photos. That dearth of useable photos became part of the reason Susie and I visited Craters again.

The ride from Boise (where Susie and I started that morning) to Craters takes you east on I-84 and then east on US Highway 20. As an aside, Highway 20 runs across the entire United States, from Newport, Oregon to Boston, Massachusetts. Part of Highway 20 in Idaho was designated as the Medal of Honor Highway by Governor Brad Little in 2019, and Susie and I took it to Craters.

US Highway 20, Idaho’s Medal of Honor Highway. The photo ops through this part of the world are impressive. Bring a polarizer.

Idaho is justifiably proud of its Medal of Honor winners. That’s an M1 Abrams tank in the background, a turbine-powered, 70-ton beast that can hit 60 mph and fire on the move with great accuracy. Three Medal of Honor recipients currently live in Idaho; as many as 48 people awarded the Medal of Honor have an Idaho connection.

After Highway 20, it’s a left turn onto Highway 26 to get to Craters of the Moon. It’s more scenic riding, including the towns of Carey and Picabo. Carey is where we had a comical encounter on the Western America Adventure Tour when riding with our Chinese compañeros across Idaho. On that day 10 years ago, it happened to be Pioneer Day. We didn’t know that, nor did we know that there was a parade in Carey. I was in my usual spot (in front of the pack), Gresh was riding alongside me, and our group of a dozen RX3 riders were right behind us. As we approached Carey, local residents lined the streets. Many were holding American flags. They waved and cheered us as we rode into town. We had no idea what was going on. Gresh flipped his faceshield up and said, “Wow, a lot of people are following the blog” (I had been blogging our trip across the western US every day). We didn’t know it at the time, but we were only a few minutes ahead of the parade Carey was expecting, and those good Idahoans thought we were the advance guard. It was fun and it made for a great story (which I have told about a thousand times by now).

On US Highway 26 heading east into the Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve. Note the volcanic rock on either side of the road.

The good folks in Carey were not waiting for Susie and me on this trip, but we had a good time anyway. When we rolled into Picabo a little further down the road, we had an even better time when we topped off the Jeep and had lunch (which was excellent). I told you a bit about that (and the Ernest Hemingway connection) yesterday.

The volcanic flow in the Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve. That’s Echo Cone in the distance.

The National Park Service describes the landscape in and around Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve as “weird and scenic” and that’s an apt description. The landscape is almost lunar-like. Its alien features consist of mostly dark brown solidified lava surrounded and sometimes punctuated by patches of green vegetation. It makes for a dramatic landscape and awesome photo ops.

A walkway above the pahoehoe lave field.

Sue reading about the pahoehoe lava. The National Park Service does a great job making these kinds of places accessible and providing explanations telling the story at each location.

You can ride a designated, one-way, circular tarmac road through the Preserve, with paved offshoots for specific sights. One of the first stops is a pahoehoe lava field. The name is a particular type of lava, and it comes from the lava volcanoes and their flows in Hawaii. Pahoehoe lava is characterized by a rough and darkened surface. What made it even more interesting is the walkway above the lava. You can walk a loop of about a quarter of a mile and see what the hardened lava looks like. The walkway is a good thing; I don’t think it would be possible to navigate this terrain on foot.

Monolithic cinder cone fragments in one of the lava fields.

Another lava structure is called cinder cone. Sometimes these structures break apart and leave monolithic forms like those in the photograph above. One of the more dramatic areas in Craters of the Moon is the Inferno Cone. There’s a place to park near the base and you can climb to the peak.

The climb to the Inferno Cone peak. Sue did it. I watched.

Completing the circular ride through Craters of the Moon. The lava formations to the left are called cinder bombs.

There are several lava tubes (caves formed by lava flow) in Craters of the Moon, and if you wish, you can hike into them. We didn’t do that. There are also longer hikes throughout the Preserve if you want to explore more.

There’s much to see and do at Craters of the Moon. How long you stay and how much you see is up to you. We were there for about three hours and we had a great visit.

The next stop on our Idaho expedition would be Twin Falls. That’s coming up, so stay tuned.

If you would like to read about the Western America Adventure Ride and how CSC rewrote the motorcycle adventure touring book, the story is here:

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The Warhawk Air Museum

By Joe Berk

Sue and John Paul started the Warhawk Air Museum in 1989. It contains aircraft, automobiles, aircraft engines, automobiles, guns, and other things from World War II, Korea, and Vietnam. For us, it was our eighth Idaho stop and only our third day in Idaho. We were covering a lot of ground.

The entrance to the Warhawk Air Museum hangar and display area.

Aircraft

The Warhawk Museum had a bunch of aircraft both inside the hangar and parked outside on the tarmac. I love these kinds of places and I love these vintage airplanes, partly because they photograph so well but mostly because of what they represent. We were taking in military history and I was loving it.

“Parrot Head,” a Curtiss P-40N Warhawk dominating the Warhawk Museum display area.

“The Boise Bee,” a North American P-51C Mustang.

The Warhawk has a beautiful, jet black, Vietnam-era Huey helicopter. I spent some time when I was in the Army flying around on Hueys (not in Vietnam, though). My time in the service was fun. I enjoyed the Huey rides, especially when the doors were open and the pilots flew low level. Cue in Ride of the Valkyries.

A Bell UH-1C “Mike” gunship helicopter. The “Mike” had an upgraded 1400 shp turbine.

Nose art on the “Mike” Huey: The 68th Assault Helicopter Company (the “Mustangs”). This is cool stuff.

Engines

The Warhawk Museum displays an impressive collection of piston and jet engines. The old radials, in particular, were amazing. As an engineer and as a motorcycle guy, the radials spoke to me. But they were all nice to take in. Mechanical stuff is just so much more intuitive and easy to understand than electronics or software. I can look at mechanical things and comprehend how they work; I could never do that with electronics or software.

A Curtiss OX–5 airplane engine. It’s a 90-horsepower V8 made in 1917.

A macro shot of the Curtiss OX–5 engine’s rockers. These parts were cast and machined more than a century ago.

A Pratt and Whitney R-985-AN 14B air-cooled radial engine. It made 450 horsepower and was used in three aircraft, including the C-45.

A second R-985-AN14B display engine. As the designator implies, these 9-cylinder engines displaced 985 cubic inches.

An Allison V-1710-81 water-cooled engine. It was a V-12 that generated 1,425 horsepower. During World War II, these powered the Curtiss P-40 Warhawk, the Bell P-39 Airacobra and the twin-engined Lockheed P-38 Lightning.

A Ranger engine. These powered the Fairchild PT-19 aircraft.

Perhaps the most impressive radial engine in the world: The Pratt & Whitney 4360 radial engine.

Another view of the It’s a 28-cylinder four-row radial piston engine that powered the C-124 Globemaster, the KC-97 tanker, and the B-36 Peacemaker. The B-36 had six of these engines. That’s 168 cylinders! How’d you like to adjust the valves on a B-36?

Automobiles

Who doesn’t enjoy vintage automobiles? I’ve probably done a dozen or more blogs on vintage automobiles in various museums around the country and I never get tired of seeing them. The Warhawk Museum had several vintage cars, and several more military vehicles.

A little 1960 Nash Metropolitan. These were made in England. They had a 120cc engine and sold for $1,672. Beep beep!

A 1940 DeSoto Deluxe with a beautiful two-tone tan and cream paint theme. This car retailed for $905 when it was new.

The DeSoto’s hood ornament. Those were the days!

A 1930 Packard 8. It was powered by a torquey inline 8-cylinder engine, and sold for a princely $2,385 in 1930.

A 1927 Studebaker couple. These had 6-cylinder engines and sold for $1,575 (big bucks in 1927).

The Studebaker’s radiator-cover-mounted brand emblem.

A US Army halftrack with a quad .50 mount. These are interesting vehicles. Note the armor on the radiator. I’ve always wondered why car or accessory companies making big tough guy trucks never copied this design; I think it would look cool.

A 1955 Buick Century. This was the golden era of GM auto design. This car had a 236-horsepower V8 and it sold for $2,590 in 1955. These were fast cars in 1955. The California Highway Patrol used them.

Other Interesting Stuff

In between all the exhibits mentioned above (as well as many more Warhawk Museum exhibits that space precludes including), there wasn’t any wasted real estate. I’m only showing a couple of representative exhibits here on the blog, but there were many, many more.

Flight suits, a uniform, and other militaria make for a colorful photo.

An M1903 .32 ACP Colt. I had one of these years ago.

The Warhawk Museum is located at 201 Municipal Drive in Nampa, Idaho, about 15 minutes from downtown Boise. It costs $15 to get in (and it may well be the best $15 you’ll ever spend). Vets, Seniors, and active duty military get a discount.

You can rent the indoor Museum display area for weddings and other events. My youngest daughter had her wedding at the Chino Planes of Fame Museum (a vintage aircraft museum) and it was an awesome event. These places make for cool venues; if I was a young guy getting married I’d consider it.

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