Motorcycle Adventure Ride – Page 30

Pollen, politics, pundits, pistols, pasta, pizza, and more…

This is going to be one of those rambling, topic-hopping blogs that flits like a butterfly in a bed of flowers. You know, touching lightly on a variety of topics and then flitting to the next one for a pollen fix.

First up: Do you have a favorite family restaurant? We’ve got two. One is Rancho Las Magueyes, a Mexican place right around the corner. I know everyone there by their first name, and they all know Susie and me. And my shooting buddies (we always have lunch there after a day on the range). The other is an Italian restaurant. It’s Di Pilla’s in Rosemead, and I’ve been going there for thirty years. Susie and I always get a small pizza and a pasta dish, we share some of both while we’re there, and we’ll bring the rest home (it’s good for another two meals for both of us). I was in Los Angeles last week to renew my passport and we stopped at Di Pilla’s for exactly what I described above (a small pizza with olives and mushrooms, and Dante’s angel hair pasta). It’s just wonderful…the closest you’ll ever get to Heaven without a one-way ticket. If you stop in there, tell Claudia Joe sent you.

Next topic…the Superbowl. I guess the game was okay. It used to be I would occasionally watch the Superbowl just for the halftime show and the commercials. I’m not much of a football fan (never have been), but the commercials and the halftime show used to make the 4-hour slog worthwhile. Not any more, though. At least not to me. I thought the halftime show was revolting, and if my kids were at home, I would have changed the channel. Is it me, or was it like going to a strip club? Maybe I’m just getting old. I don’t like twerking coming into my family room on a widescreen TV, and I didn’t understand a good 70% of the commercials. They weren’t clever or entertaining, and I wasn’t sure what most of them were advertising. The commercial would end and I’d wonder: What was the product? Ah, there’s no maybe about it…I am getting old. But hell, even old people still buy stuff. After four long hours of Superbowl LIV, there’s nothing I’m going to purchase as a result of watching any of those commercials. Color me cranky, but I thought the whole thing was a stupid waste of my time. That’s four hours I won’t get back. It won’t happen again.

I do buy stuff, though. Lots of it. In fact, my new goal as a senior citizen is to make sure my outgo equals my income (I keep telling the kids if there’s anything left after I’m gone, it’s strictly the result of an computational error). And to help me meet that goal, I think I’m buying a new motorcycle. One that has no fraud associated with freight and setup, as is typically encountered at most dealers. Maybe around the end of this month. Watch for more details. Before I do that, though, I want to get my TT250 running. I don’t ride as much as I should, and my TT250 carb gummed up from disuse. I’ll have to refer to my free CSC TT250 shop manual (why don’t all the manufacturers do that?) on how to clean the carburetor, but I’m not worried about the job. I hear the TT250 manual is pretty well written. I’m thinking I’ll get around to the TT250 this week or next.

More rambling, this time about Facebook and the endless supply of brainless memes that flow from its feed. I like Facebook and I like to keep up with my friends and my memories, like that photo above of good buddy Carl and me up on Glendora Ridge Road with the CSC 150 Baja Blaster I rode to Cabo and back. But the rest of the Facebook schtick…wow, it gets old fast. Is anyone else here tired of the mindless political ranting on Facebook? Look, who I vote for is a decision I’ll make without any help from CNN, MSNBC, the NY Times, the Russians, or you. It’s my vote, and all the breathless exhortations by Don Lemon, Anderson Cooper, and Sean Hannity will matter not one whit. It’s what happens in a free country. Mindlessly sharing memes on your Facebook feed (I know, there’s a lot of redundancy in that phrase) isn’t going to change a thing. Folks, get a life. Grow up. Vote, and then move on. It’s what we do in America.

On to a new topic…I’m afraid this coronavirus business is going to get a lot worse before it gets better. I have good friends in China from my Chongqing and Riding China adventures. I recently wrote to one of them to see how things were going over there. In a word, it’s bad. Real bad. The streets are deserted in China, no one is going out, companies are shutting down, travel is severely restricted, and the market is plummeting. Their economy is tanking. Approximately 2000 people a day are getting infected (and that number is likely going to increase). I loved my time in China and I love the Chinese people. I respect their engineering and manufacturing prowess. I hope things get better for them soon.

A happier topic…I’ve been spending more time on the range. If you didn’t see the 9mm cast bullet comparo, you might want to take a look at it. I’m going to start shooting the 9mm jacketed bullet series in another week or two. Jacketed bullets are frequently more accurate than cast bullets, so I’m excited about how that’s going to go. I was tremendously impressed with the Sig Scorpion and how it handled cast bullets. We’ll see if it brings home the bacon with jacketed bullets.

One of my shooting buddies is a California Corrections Officer, and he told me about their qualification course with the Mini 14 (the California Department of Corrections uses the Ruger Mini 14, one of my favorite rifles, as an issue weapon). They qualify with the B-21 target, and when I was at the target manufacturing operation where I buy all my targets I asked if they stocked that one. The guy behind the counter was surprised, and he told me the only folks who ever want that target are CDC officers. But they had it, and then it was my turn to be surprised. The B-21 target is huge. I’m going to have to make a bigger target stand for it. I’m thinking maybe our next informal milsurp match will be with it. My objective is to shoot a higher score than my CDC buddy, and he’s real good.

And on that subject, we’re still toying with the idea of a postal match. You know, one where we specify the course of fire and the target design, you mail your targets to us, we score them, and there’s some kind of a prize for first, second, and third place. We’d make it for handguns only and spec the distance at 50 feet, and we’d make the prizes significant enough to bump up participation. Like maybe a Gear’d Hardware watch for first place, with a book and a T-shirt for second and third place. Let us know…if we did that, would you participate?

Last topic for today, folks: Baja. Yes, Baja beckons. I aim to get down there sometime soon and then again later this year. Maybe stop in to see Baja John in Bahia de Los Angeles. See the whales in Scammon’s Lagoon. I’ll be on my motorcycle, and of course, I’ll be insured with BajaBound. Gresh will be along, maybe even on Zed now that his Kawi 900 resurrection has resumed. Whaddaya think?

A St. Francis Dam Followup

Susie and I were up in the Santa Clarita area last week and we thought we would attempt to find the St. Francis Dam site. A quick Google search brought us to a map, we took a right off I-5 at the 126, and we soon found ourselves on San Francisquito Canyon Road. Wow, after a bit of the burbs it grew rural real fast. I know great roads, and folks, this is one. San Francisquito Canyon Road is an awesome set of twisties, one I plan to return to soon on my motorcycle.

An amazing road, San Francisquito Canyon Road was, and there was a lot more of it. I’ll be back, and I’ll be back on two wheels.

We were only traveled a few miles when we came upon a large art deco building (an LA Department of Water and Power plant). We had arrived.

LA DWP’s Plant 2, an art deco hydroelectric generation facility on San Francisquito Road. The three huge pipes behind it carry water from the California aqueduct system.

The DWP building was magnificent, and when we parked, we found this plaque:

There you have it: The story, the plaque, and the location. We had arrived. Everything was behind a chain link fence, but it was still very cool. I’m going to guess the concrete behind the plaque is from the St. Francis dam. We were standing where the wall of water released by the dam had passed.

A timeline of events leading up to the St. Francis Dam disaster of 1928.

As the plaque said, we were a mile and a half from where the actual dam had stood, so we continued north on San Francisquito Canyon Road. The building (the one in the photo above) is a replacement…the original power plant was swept away when the dam collapsed. I would think so; when the dam collapsed it released a 10-story tall 12 1/2 billion gallons of water.

We didn’t see the actual dam; the Internet told us it was a 5-minute hike east of the road (you can’t drive to it), and according to what we read, there’s not much of the dam left. We drove north a little further and saw the dirt road leading to the site, but there was a gate and it was closed. Maybe next time.

I was very intrigued by San Francisquito Canyon Road, and I wanted to know where it went. I found this satellite photo map on Google:

The bottom arrow points to LA DWP Plant 2, the building you see in the photo at the top of this blog. The upper arrow points to our turnaround point. The site I found on the Internet said you can park there and hike to the actual dam site. The distance from one arrow to the other is about a mile and a half. The other roads shown in this photo are all dirt.

From the map, I could see that continuing north on San Francisquito Canyon Road would brings us to Elizabeth Lake Road, and from there it’s Lake Hughes Road south to get back to Interstate 5 near Castaic. The little bit we did on San Francisquito Canyon Road showed it to be a great road. I had ridden Elizabeth Lake Road on previous motorcycle rides (without realizing how close I was to the St. Francis Dam disaster site). On the map, Lake Hughes Road appears to be even twistier than San Francisquito Canyon Road, and it looks like it would be a great ride.

My planned motorcycle ride: East at CA 126 off I-5, northeast on San Francisquito road to Elizabeth Lake Road, and then south on Lake Hughes Road. It’s going to be a good one.

I’m going to return to this area on my motorcycle and do the ride you see above. It’s going to be great, and you’ll read about it right here.

Stay tuned!

Bahia de Los Angeles 2006

Yours truly with my Triumph Tiger in Palomar, about 200 miles south of the border along Baja’s Transpeninsular Highway. I had a little bit of hair back in the day, and it was still brown. What’s left now is mostly gray.

Wow, here’s a find…a bunch of older print photos from a Baja trip my old Baja buddy John Welker and I did back in 2006. Man, times were different back then. We both rode big road bikes and we were both working for a living. What a difference 14 years can make. It was a quick 1100-mile weekend ride to Bahia de Los Angeles in the Baja peninsula. John has a house on the Sea of Cortez down there. He still owns it, and he spends several months each year in Mexico. I took my Triumph Tiger for its first long ride, John took his Yamaha Virago, and we had a great time. I guess that goes without saying. Any motorcycle trip to Baja is going to be great.

A Mexican truck driver on the Transpeninsular Highway, who was actually pretty friendly.

We stayed in San Vincente on the way down. It’s a cool little agricultural town along the Transpeninsular Highway, one of many in the agricultural district north of El Rosario. We saw a guy trying to buy beer in the restaurant in San Vincente that Friday night. There was a BMW GS in the hotel parking lot and I asked if it was his. Yep, it was, and Peter introduced himself to me. The restaurant didn’t serve beer, but I went across the street to pick up a couple of sixpacks of Tecate. I asked Peter to join us for dinner, and he did. He’s from Canada (eh?), and he was touring Mexico and the US for a month or two.

Our new GS-mounted good buddy Peter in San Vincente, along with good buddy Annie. Peter said he was looking for a Starbuck’s and got lost. I think there may be a Starbuck’s down there now.

That’s Deema, Annie, John, and Peter. It was a grand dinner. Deema and Annie drove down in Annie’s car on this trip.

On Saturday, the next morning, John and I ran into a fog bank about 250 miles south of the border. Visibility was so bad I couldn’t see the ground beneath me, so I pulled over to wait it out.

I grabbed this shot of my Triumph in the fog.

And another. There was nothing else to do until the fog lifted. The Tiger was a very photogenic motorcycle.

Mexico’s Highway 1 (the Transpeninsular Highway) follows the Pacific coast and then turns inland at El Rosario. Mama Espinoza’s is a classic Mexican restaurant known for their lobster burritos. I had a chicken burrito for lunch and, as always, it was the best one I ever had. I made it a point to stop there on the way back the next day and I had the same thing.

We always feel welcome at Mama Espinoza’s.

South of El Rosario, it gets real desolate real fast. That’s the Valle de los Cirios, and it’s one of the prettiest spots on the peninsula. The roads are spectacular. Fast sweepers, long straights, and no traffic. There’s just the odd cow or wild burro in the road.

A typical view in the Valle de los Cirios.

Another stop along the Transpeninsular Highway. The Triumph Tiger was a great machine for this kind of riding, especially with its comfortable riding position and a range exceeding 200 miles.

After the Valle de Los Cirios, it was desert down to Catavina and beyond. There are remote truck stops, lots of desert, and just great riding. I’ve got to get back down there again sometime soon.

A truck stop out in the middle of nowhere.

We stopped briefly in Catavina, where John couldn’t tear himself away from this rather talkative guy. John and I have put a lot of miles on our motorcycles in Mexico. The scenery is great. The people you might are even more fun.

At Punta Prieta, after traveling on Highway 1 for about 360 miles, we made a left turn and headed east across the Baja peninsula.

This was our destination…Bahia de Los Angeles.

Triumph called the Tiger’s color Caspian Blue, presumably named after the Caspian Sea. This wasn’t the Caspian Sea (it’s the Sea of Cortez), but I’d say the color match is pretty good.

John’s house on the Sea of Cortez. John picked a moonless weekend so that we could take in the stars, and the night sky was awesome.

Every motorcycle trip needs an obligatory artsy fartsy shot. This was mine from our 2006 Bahia de Los Angeles ride.

John’s house is literally right on the Sea of Cortez. It’s a pretty cool place.

Casa de Welker, on Bahia de Los Angeles.

John telling a fish story in his front yard.

Our dinner choice that Saturday night. The fish tacos were impressive, as was the Tecate. Life is good down there in Baja.

John keeps an old VW microbus in Bahia de Los Angeles that came with the house when he bought it. The lights on the VW didn’t work back in 2006 (I imagine John has them working now). We had dinner in town and realized the sun had set. No lights. No moon. Dirt roads through the Baja desert. We realized we were in a pickle. But, John had an idea. And a flashlight. Annie hung out the window with that flashlight and sort of lit the way. It was an old flashlight with a limp battery, and it didn’t really light up anything. But we didn’t care. It was a fun evening.

The original Baja bug. LIghts? We don’t need no stinkin’ lights!

Candy, the Chihuaha from Peru. In Mexico. That little pup ran the show.

There’s no light pollution down there in Bahia de Los Angeles. I slept on the roof and it was magnificent. I’ve never seen stars as vivid nor as plentiful as they were that night. And the next morning, I was up before sunrise, so I was able to set up my camera and get a cool photo of the sun rising over the Sea of Cortez.

A shot from John’s roof looking east over the Sea of Cortez.

I rode back the next morning by myself…John was staying at his place a couple of extra days, but I had to get back for work. Work. Man, those days seem so far in the past now.

The ride back was a good one. It’s nice to ride with friends; it’s also nice to ride on your own. I do some of my best thinking when I’m riding by myself. I need to do more of it.

I grabbed this shot in one of the agricultural towns along Highway 1 on the way back to the US.

I shot all of the photos on this page with my F5 Nikon, and the 24-120 Nikon and 17-35 Sigma lenses. Back in the day, as film cameras went the Nikon F5 was a good as it ever got, and I got a lot of great shots with that camera. The thing was a tank and I don’t think I would want to lug it around today, but back then it was really something.

So there you have it. I’ve got a standing invitation from Baja John to ride down to Bahia de Los Angeles, and as I put this blog together and looked at these photos again, I think that’s what I’m going to do.

Want more Baja? Check out our Baja page!

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A Pair of Colts

The 1956 Mustang Colt. I had posted this on Facebook several years ago and forgot about it. Mr. Zuckerberg jogged my memory.

I’ll bet with that title you’re thinking I’m going to write about a couple of guns.

Nope. The subject is Colts, but these are Colts that were manufactured by the Mustang Motor Products Corporation. And the few of us who know what that means would just call the company “Mustang.”

The idea popped into my mind with one of those Facebook photos on my feed. You know, it’s one of the things Facebook does when they’re not spying on you…they suggest you repost a photo you posted in the past. They did, and that beautiful turquoise 1956 Colt you see above popped up on my Facebook account. I had posted it 6 or 7 years ago. Mark remembered.

Mustang is the company that made the hottest mini-motorcycles back in the 1950s. There were a lot of companies making small motorcycles in America back then, and then they all disappeared by the early 1960s. Mustang hung on into the 1960s, but they were done in by all those nice people you met on Hondas. And when Mustang went out of business, a young Ford exec named Lee Iacocca swept in to grab the Mustang name. A lot of folks thought that was weird in 1962. What was Ford going to do with a name like Mustang? What were they thinking?

The very first iteration of the Mustang…the 1946 Greeves-powered Colt.

There were actually two Mustang Colts. The first was the very first bike Mustang made in the late 1940s. It was a tiny little bike with a tiny little Greeves two-stroke motor, and that’s what did it in the first Colt. In those post-war years, Greeves needed every engine they could make for their own bikes in merry old England, and they cut Mustang off. Undeterred, Mustang bought the Busy Bee engine company in the US and they redesigned a new Mustang around the larger Busy Bee 322cc flathead 4-stroke single. The Busy Bee engine was actually used to power cement mixers before that, but Mustang wanted Busy Bee engines for their motorcycles, unaware of and uncaring about any future impact to Joe Gresh’s future concrete endeavors.

Another view of the ’46 Mustang Colt. It’s stunning, isn’t it?

Mustang revived the Colt moniker for the ’56 model (the one you see in the photo at the top of this blog and in the photo below), but it didn’t sell well and the folks who made Mustangs in California didn’t like the bike. The Mustang was a premium product, and the idea of a cheapened Mustang (no transmission, a centrifugal clutch, and no telescopic forks) didn’t set well with the customer base or the folks in the Mustang factory.

The ’56 Colt again. I love the colors and the look.

You might be wondering how I know the folks in the Mustang factory didn’t like the ’56 Colt. I heard it straight from the late Jim Cavanaugh, who was an advisor to CSC Motorcycles and the Production Superintendent at the original Mustang Motor Products Corporation.

A young Jim Cavanaugh in front of the Mustang factory.

Another view of Jim and his crew back in the day…Jim is on the left in the second row.

Jim Cavanaugh a few years before he passed away. Jim is on a custom CSC 150 Mustang replica, his personal bike.

Steve Seidner revived the Mustang concept with his line of CSC 150 and CSC 250 motorcycles. They were awesome. I rode mine along with a few of my friends (including Baja John) to Cabo San Lucas and back. Many of the CSC bikes were highly customized, including this 250 Steve thought was going to be his personal bike:

CSC called this one the P-51. It fit the motorcycle’s aviation motif and Mustang lineage.

World War nose art on the P-51’s fuel tank. This motorcycle was going to be Steve Seidner’s bike, but when we put this photo on the CSC blog a guy called within minutes and made Steve an offer he couldn’t refuse. The CSC Mustangs went for high dollars. Folks would point out you could buy a Harley for that kind of money, but they just didn’t get it.

So, back to the original Colt Mustangs…I think both Colts are stunning motorcycles. What do you think?

Want to read about our trip to Cabo and back and CSC 150 motorcycles? It’s right here. And would you like to read the article Jim Cavanaugh and I wrote for Motorcycle Classics magazine on the original Mustangs? You can get to that one here.

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?

2019: A Review and Wrap Up

This has been a fun year, and a fun year to be a blogger. When we started ExhaustNotes 18 months ago, we had no idea we’d get the loyal following we have, the number of hits we’re getting, and the number of comments we would receive from you, our amazing readers. In the past 18 months, we’ve published 572 blog posts (this is Blog No. 572), we’ve had something north of 200,000 page visits, and we’ve received 2,481 approved blog comments. We actually had quite a few more comments, but the spam comments are filtered out and we’re not counting those. And you spammers out there, thanks for all the biblical excerpts, the website optimization offers, the hairstyle stuff (seriously, you think Gresh or I need hairstyle products?), and the offers to manufacture stuff in and buy chotchkas from China. You guys keep it coming, and our filters will keep bouncing it. Hope springs eternal, I guess.

Our most commented upon post last year? It was Joe Gresh’s blog on Bonnier and the demise of Motorcyclist magazine, which really raked in some zingers. Nobody makes the written word come alive like Joe does, and that includes his opening line in that blog: The distance from being read in the crapper and actually being in the crapper is a short one. According to Dealer News, Motorcyclist magazine crossed that span this week.

Other ExNotes blogs that drew comments big time are our blogs on what constitutes the perfect bike, what the motorcycle industry needs to do to grow the market, dream bikes, and of course, the gun stuff. Keep your thoughts coming, folks. It’s what we enjoy the most.

Our most frequently visited blog post last year? Far and away, it was our piece on Mini 14 Marksmanship. Somehow that post got picked up by a service that suggests sites to people when they open their cell phones, and we were getting in excess of 10,000 hits a day for a few days on that one. Go figure. There must be a lot of people out there who want to shoot their Mini 14 rifles better. Glad to be of help, folks.

We’ve stepped on a few toes along the way. Some folks got their noses bent out of shape because we do gun stuff. Hey, let us know if you want your money back. One guy went away all butthurt because Google ads popped up mentioning President Trump and mortgage deals that I guess our President helped along. Hey, whatever. We don’t control the popups, and the Internet’s artificial intelligence does funny things with what it reads on the blog…I mentioned using my Casio’s backlight to help find my way to the latrine at night, and since that blog I’ve been getting an unending stream (no pun intended) of prostate treatment popups. I may click on a few of them. When you get your artificially-inseminated Google-driven popups, we’d like you to click on them, too. It makes money flow. To us. It’s what keeps us on the air, you know.

We did a lot of travel this year, but not as many motorcycle trips as we wanted. The Royal Enfields we took through Baja were fun, and we had a great story on that ride published in Motorcycle Classics. I really enjoyed riding and writing about the Genuine G400c. Joe did a great series on his Yamaha EnduroFest adventure, and he’s had articles published in Motorcycle.com. Joe did another series on motorized bicycles and it was a hoot.

Joe and I both did shorter moto trips this past year, and we both want to get more riding in next year. Gresh and I are going to do a moto trip to Baja in 2020, and we may get to visit with Baja John in Bahia de Los Angeles (that dude likes Baja so much he moved there). On any of the Mexico trips, we for sure will be insured with BajaBound Insurance, the best insurance there is for travel in Mexico. More good travel stuff? We published Destinations, a compendium of the travel stories appearing in Motorcycle Classics magazine, and it’s doing very well (thank you).

More plans? Gresh will be pouring more concrete, and I’ll be spending more time at the West End Gun Club. Joe is planning to maybe pick up the Zed resurrection again, and I’m pretty sure he’ll get that bike on the road within the next 12 months. We’ve got the upcoming 9mm comparo I mentioned yesterday, and for sure more gun articles. Good buddy Gonzo asked us to ride in the 2020 Three Flags Classic, and I’d like to make a go of that one this coming year (I was disappointed in myself for not riding that great event in 2019, but the circumstances just weren’t right). I think I’m going to write Tales of the Gun as a book and offer it for sale here on ExNotes, and maybe Joe Gresh will do the same with his collection of moto articles (and when he does, you can bet I’ll buy the first copy). We’ll be doing more product reviews, including movie and book reviews. I’m going to get on my bicycle more, and we may have some info on electric bicycles, too. You’ll read all about it right here.

So it’s a wrap for 2019. Susie bought a bottle of Gentleman Jack for me, and I’m going to pour a shot and watch 2020 roll in later tonight. To all of you, our best wishes for a happy and healthy 2020. Ride safe, ride often, and keep your powder dry.

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Dan does Tunisia…

Good buddy Dan is a young fellow I met when I was leading the CSC rides through Baja. He’s the real deal…a serious motorcyclist who enjoys getting out and seeing the world on two wheels. When I led the CSC rides, Dan was on every one of them, and we became good friends. Dan also rides Moto Guzzi motorcycles, and most recently, he rode with a Moto Guzzi tour in Tunisia. I was happy to receive this email from Dan yesterday about his north African excursion:

Joe:

Happy New Year – for me, the new year starts at the winter solstice. I hope you had a good year and will have a great holiday season.

I got my Christmas present early this year; a motorcycle trip in Tunisia. I flew to Milan and took trains to Mandello del Lario where the Moto Guzzi motorcycle factory is. I visited the Moto Guzzi Museum twice – it is only open one hour a day. A fantastic collection of motorcycles from their beginning in 1921. Then I took trains to Genoa where I met up with the tour group. The next day we took the overnight ferry to Tunis, and then the riding began. Seven days of riding, with lunch at the best restaurants and nights at the best hotel in town. Along the way we stopped and saw the sights – Roman ruins, an Ottoman fort, several oases, a famous mosque, salt flats, and a set from the first Star Wars movie, where I rode a camel. The trip was sponsored by Moto Guzzi; we were all riding Moto Guzzi motorcycles, and we had 26 motorcycles, several couples riding two up, two photographers, two mechanics, three guides, two support vans, and two spare Moto Guzzis. I may put together a trip report, meanwhile, this is a link to the Moto Guzzi report on the trip:

https://www.motoguzzi.com/us_EN/news/MG-Experience-Tunisia/

I did about ten thousand miles of motorcycle riding this year; my big trip in the US was home to Flagstaff to El Paso and home, with several stops along the way.

Dan

Dan, that’s an absolutely awesome report and a world class trip. Thanks so much for sending the note and for giving us permission to post it on the ExNotes blog. I’m reading the Moto Guzzi trip report now, savoring each photo and all of the descriptions. Wow, it sounds like a wonderful adventure!

Death Valley 2011: Hell Froze Over

This is the next installment of our series on Death Valley, and it’s about the Hell’s Loop Rally organized by Alan Spears and the Motor Scooter International Land Speed Federation. We rode it in November of 2011, and while it was sunny that day, it was plenty cold. It was a scooter endurance run of 400 miles in a single day. You might be thinking that’s not too many miles. Try it on a 150cc scooter and tell me if you still feel the same way.

I was working with CSC Motorcycles at the time and the thought was we could ride the event with our 150cc Mustang replicas. The team included good buddies TK, Arlene, and yours truly. It was grand fun and CSC garnered good exposure from that event. I had a blast, and for me, it nailed three birds with one stone: A great motorcycle ride, another chance for a ride through Death Valley, and a chance to get more cool stuff to write about (and photograph) for the CSC blog.

With that as a backdrop, here’s the story.

A Cold Day In Hell

Arlene B (of Go Go Gear fame, and a California Scooter rider) and TK. TK and I both worked at CSC Motorcycles. That’s my red CSC 150 motorcycle.

Hell’s Loop, that is…the Motor Scooter International Land Speed Federation (MSILSF) and Alan Spears’ latest event. You’d think an event named after a place known for warmer temperatures would offer toasty riding, but it sure was cold!

The Death Valley Loop

This event was all about endurance riding, and Alan and the MSILSF team sure outdid themselves on this one. The route took a big round trip from Barstow, California, east on the 15, north on the 127 along the eastern edge of Death Valley (think Ronald Reagan, the old Death Valley Days television show, and 20-mule teams hauling borax), west on 190 through Death Valley, a long loop down through Death Valley’s center to a delightful little town called Trona (just kidding about that one, folks), back to the 395 south, and then Highway 58 back to Barstow.

The Hell’s Loop event was billed as an endurance rally, but in actuality it was a race. You and I both know you’re not supposed to race on public highways, but on scooters and small motorcycles, “racing” is not what it would be on bigger bikes. We ran this event with our throttles wide open a good 95% of the time. No kidding. The twist grips were pegged. That doesn’t mean we were speeding, though. Sometimes a wide open throttle meant 65 miles per hour when we were on the flats with no headwinds, and sometimes it meant 35 mph when we were climbing a long grade. Another aside at this point…the bikes performed flawlessly. This was another event in which we beat the, uh, Hell’s Loop out of our California Scooters, and they ran great.

The guy who won the event, Tom Wheeler, won it on a 49cc Kymco motor scooter. Yep, you read that right. 49 cubic centimeters! We’re sure not in the business of publicizing other brands, but hey, we’re more than happy to give credit where credit is due. Tom drove out from Arkansas for this event and he finished first on his 49cc Kymco, beating machines with nearly 10 times the engine displacement.

The Ride

The weekend started with TK and I rolling into Barstow Friday afternoon for a great lunch at Del Taco. Those of you who know Del Taco might be tempted to laugh (it’s a fast food Mexican chain not usually known for their fine food), but the Del Taco restaurants in Barstow are different. Ed Hackbarth is the entrepreneur who started Del Taco, and he did so in Barstow. Ed sold the Del Taco chain to a conglomerate after building it up into a huge business, but he kept the original three Barstow restaurants. Here in southern California, we know that if you want good Mexican food, Barstow’s Del Tacos are unlike any others. Everything is fresh, everything is bigger, and it’s not unusual to see Ed himself working in the kitchen preparing your lunch. Trust me on this one, folks….if you’re ever passing through Barstow, you need to stop for a meal at Del Taco.

Our Motel 6 room…where old Tom Bodette left the light on for us…$35 a night, and it might have been the most expensive hotel in Barstow! It was raining and we didn’t want to leave the bikes out in the cold, wet weather. A lot of the Hell’s Loop riders slept with their bikes Friday night.

On Friday we had a bitter cold rain, but the forecast was for sunny warm weather on Saturday. Well, they got half of it right. I once heard one of those radio political talking heads say that the reason economists exist is to make weather forecasters look good. I think that guy might have had it backwards. It was sunny, but wow, was it cold when we woke up on Saturday morning. I wasn’t too worried…I had my California Scooter motorcycle jacket, a pair of warm motorcycle pants, and my Haix Goretex boots (they’re made in Austria and they’re great), but it was still cold. Really cold.

After a great 6:00 a.m. breakfast at IHOP Saturday morning, we rolled out onto Interstate 15 on our California Scooters and headed north. Wow, was it ever cold!

On California 127, headed into Death Valley. We rode under beautiful blue skies along Highway 127…it was a glorious day to be out on a motorcycle!

It sure was cold Saturday morning. As in maybe 40 degrees. Teeth chattering cold. I know all of our friends on the east coast would view this as something of a heat wave, but I gotta tell you, when you do 400 miles in one day through this kind of weather, it’s cold.

Before I get too much further, let me give you a warning about the photos. They’re not my best ever. We didn’t stop to smell the roses on this one, boys and girls, and most of these shots were from the saddle of my CSC motorcycle at high speed. That’s why a lot of the angles are off, and it’s why they might be a bit fuzzy. This ride was all about getting back to Barstow first. We stopped for fuel and restroom breaks, and that was it. We didn’t even eat. 400 miles on a motorcycle, in 40-degree weather, with no messing around. Riding…that’s what this run was all about. And in the cold weather, our CSC motorcycles were running strong. We thought we were gonna set the world on fire, until we heard about Tom Wheeler on that 49cc scooter. But I’ll come back to that. So after rolling along on Interstate 15 for about 60 miles, we took a left at Baker and headed toward Death Valley. The skies were clear, the riding was glorious, and we froze our tootsies off.

A 60-mph shot from the saddle…riding through the Mojave Desert!

We weren’t too sure about where we’d be able to buy gas, so we each carried a spare gallon or two. Turns out we didn’t need the extra gas, but we stopped nearly every place we saw a gas station just to make sure.

When we rolled into Shoshone, I was blown away by the gas prices. Believe it or not, these were not the highest gas prices we saw on this trip! I was sure glad I was riding a 100mpg California Scooter when I saw those prices. Ah, the glory of price gouging.

Every time I see something like what the photo above shows, I want to confront the owner and ask him if his mother knows what he does for a living, but I know it would be a futile gesture. And another 100 miles up the road, we paid prices that made what the photo above shows seem cheap.

Barney Fife

While we were topping off in Shoshone, I saw a National Park Service HumVee that I thought was pretty cool. I had never seen one of these in use by a law enforcement agency, so I snapped a quick photo of it while I was on my California Scooter. I guess the NPS ranger who was in it didn’t like that. As I kid, I always had a mental image of park rangers as pretty cool guys who took care of the bears and stuff like that. This guy was decidedly unfriendly…there’s no nice way to say it. Maybe it was a slow day for him and he wanted to harass some rough-looking bikers like me, Arlene, and TK. He wanted to know about Alan, who rolled through Shoshone earlier on his two-stroke Kymco burning “exotic fuels.” A park ranger. I chalked it up to another instance of our tax dollars at work. Go figure.

Continuing the Ride

After the fuel stop in Shoshone, we were on the road again. Here are a few more shots from the saddle.

On the floor of Death Valley, about 100 feet below sea level.

After we climbed out of Death Valley’s floor, it was a fast downill run west…you can see the flare from shooting into the sun

Heading west to Panamint on the western edge of Death Valley. The bikes were running just great in the cold weather. Here’s a quick shot of my speedometer as we rolled through Death Valley. Smoking right along on the Baja Blaster!

Arlene’s California Scooter ticked over the 9,000-mile mark on this ride, and we stopped for a quick photo.

9000 miles, including great California Scooter rides up and down the California Coast, the Sierra Nevadas, the entire length of Baja, and Death Valley! Arlene may well be our highest mileage California Scooter rider.

Our next stop was Panamint. There’s a gas station and a convenience store out there (but not much else). This place set a new record: $5.79 per gallon! It’s the most I’ve ever paid for gasoline in my life!

$5.79 a gallon….but what a cool photo op!

Wildrose Canyon Road and Trona

While we were stopped, I pulled out an extra T-shirt and added it to the several layers of clothing I already had on under my California Scooter motorcycle jacket. To my surprise, that one extra layer did the trick. I stayed relatively warm for the next 130 miles back to Barstow. After our Panamint gas gouging, we turned the bikes east for a quick three miles back down the road to Wildrose Canyon. That was our route out of Death Valley, and here’s a shot looking east across the valley floor.

Death Valley’s floor, as seen from the saddle, looking east from Panamint

We negotiated Wildrose Canyon Road, fought the wind downhill, and then we rolled into Trona. Trona is a mining town (they mine potash or some other such chemical), and there isn’t too much else out there. And I gotta tell ya, when they built “no place” they must have centered it around Trona (because that town sure is in the middle of no place). It’s an interesting place, though…a collection of white chemicals, brown hills in the distance, blue skies, and industrial processing equipment.

A late-in-the-day, shot-from-the-saddle photo of Trona. Some day, I’d like to ride out to Trona just to take photos.

Returning to Barstow

After Trona, we cranked the bikes wide open for the run home. It was a burst out to the 395, a speed run down to Highway 58, and then a left turn for the last 32 miles back to Barstow. We pulled in to the Motel 6 parking lot just after dark. And it was even colder. Did I mention earlier that it was cold?

Alan Spears, his friend Kathleen, and Dennis did a great job organizing this event.

When we returned to the Motel 6 rally headquarters, the good folks from MSILSF had good food and drinks waiting, and that was a good thing. We hadn’t eaten all day, and I was hungry. And cold. It sure was nice to return to a warm welcome. And it sure was interesting to learn about the winning bike and rider…that would be Tom Wheeler from Arkansas.

Tom Wheeler, a Kymco dealer from Arkansas, accepting one of his trophies for the Hell’s Loop Endurance Rally.

The Winner: A 49cc Kymco!

As I mentioned earlier, Tom won the event on a 49cc Kymco. Good Lord! A 49cc Kymco! My first thought was that the bike had to have had a couple of superchargers and maybe it was running on nitro, but no, that wasn’t it at all. Tom is obviously an experienced endurance rider, and he had the problem sorted. When I asked Tom about the top speed on his 49cc sizzler, he told me that it might see 45 mph on a flat road under ideal conditions. We sure didn’t have ideal conditions, and what that meant to me is that Tom ran a lot of the day’s 400 miles at something between 30 and 40 mph. The trick is to not have to stop. Tom had an auxiliary gas tank on his Kymco, and he only had to make one stop for gas.

Alan and crew sure did an outstanding job pulling this event together, which didn’t surprise me at all. MSILSF is the same outfit that organized the November 2009 Land Speed Record trials and last year’s Salton Sea Endurance Rally, and both of those events were wonderful.

I am more than a little intrigued by all of this, and by MSILSF. You might be, too, folks. Think about it. Motor competition. Real competition. Speed trials. Endurance rallies. All with scooters. You can get into it, real motor competition, for peanuts. And a California Scooter is a great way to do so.

Here’s a shot of Tom Wheeler’s winning 49cc scooter. 400 miles in one day on a 49cc motor scooter! Can you imagine!

So that was it, folks. 400 miles in one day, we won the 150cc class, and we had a great time.

We just returned from a trek through Death Valley a few days ago, which prompted our series of blogs about prior Death Valley trips. You can read the first two Death Valley blog installments here.

Death Valley: The Prelude
Death Valley 2008: My First Visit

And, oddly enough, the Los Angeles Times ran a story in 2017 about a trip that almost exactly described the ride you see in this blog. You can read that one here.

Read a few of our other great motorcycle rides here!

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Death Valley 2008: My first visit

A Trip To Death Valley!

Brown Motor Works in Pomona, California, hosted a chili cookoff in March 2008, which was immediately followed by a weekend trip to Death Valley. At the time, I’d been a California boy for 30 years, but I’d never been to Death Valley. I always wanted to go. And, I love chili. Free chili…lots of photo ops…good weather…and a motorcycle ride to a place I’d never been before. It seemed like a no-brainer to me. It was a ride I had to make.

Kawasaki’s KLR 650

I had purchased a 2006 KLR 650 a year or two earlier from my good buddy Art at the Montclair Kawasaki dealer, and something strange happened: I found I was enjoying the little KLR more than the other big roadburners I owned. At that time, I had gone way overboard in acquiring motorcycles. I had a TL1000S Suzuki, a Harley Softail, a Honda CBX, a Triumph Daytona 1200, and a Triumph Tiger 955 (and I think I owned them all at the same time). There was something about the KLR, though, that I liked, and I found myself riding it more often than not. All the guys I rode with either had BMWs, Harleys, or Triumphs, and my KLR was the smallbore of the bunch. I didn’t care. I liked riding it. To my surprise, I found that riding a smaller bike was more fun.

A lone KLR in a sea of BMWs. Nearly all of my friends rode BMW motorcycles in those days. I had a lot of fun with my KLR.

The Chili Cookoff

Good buddy Dennis, shown here immediately after taking top honors in the chili-eating contest. Dennis is an Iron Butt rider and he rides a BMW. The rules were different than what I expected. You weren’t allowed to lift the bowl off the table, so the serious competitors simply dove in. BMW riders are a particularly sophisticated bunch.

On To Mojave

The guys at Brown Motor Works planned to leave at the end of the day, but I didn’t want to hang around until then. Immediately after grabbing a few photos from the chili contest, I was on the KLR headed east and then north into the Mojave Desert.

I took my KLR and found my way along Old Route 66 into the Mojave Desert.

I took I-40 over to Kelbaker Road and then headed into the Mojave National Preserve. The group planned to meet in Baker, and I figured if I timed it right I would get there right about nightfall.

I grabbed this photo along the Kelbaker Road. I didn’t know too much about motorcycle photography. This is the shot magazine editors always hate…the motorcycle by the side of the road.

Baker and The Mad Greek

Baker is a wide spot in the road along the I-15, and it’s a jumping off point for Death Valley. It is a funky place with a couple of poorly-maintained and overpriced gas stations, the world’s tallest thermometer, and a cool restaurant called The Mad Greek. The Mad Greek is a place that seems to always show up in any movie about a road trip to Vegas. I have yet to find a Greek in the place, but the food is good and the staff is friendly.

We had dinner at the Mad Greek in Baker along the I-15. We spent the night in Baker, and then had breakfast at the Mad Greek the next morning, too.

Into the Valley of Death

After a breakfast at the Mad Greek the next morning, we road north toward Death Valley. There’s nothing out there but great roads and the Mojave for the 80 miles or so to the park entrance, and the Beemer boys were riding at speeds well in excess of 100 mph so I couldn’t keep up. The KLR might see 100 on a really good day, but I didn’t care. I wanted to stop, smell the roses, and get good photos. Riding by myself didn’t bother me at all. I preferred it.

My reaction was simple upon entering Death Valley: Wow! It was what I hoped it would be.

Artist’s Palette

One of the cool spots to stop in Death Valley is a hilly area called Artist’s Palette. Each hill has a different dominant mineral (and a different color), and the result is something that looks like an artist’s palette. It’s a very cool thing to see.

My friend Joseph and his Triumph Sprint.

High Prices and Photo Ops

Death Valley’s claim to fame is that it’s one of the lowest spots on the planet. It’s also in one of the more remote places on the planet, which meant that fuel costs were unusually high. All made for interesting photos.

This was a gas station in Furnace Creek. At the time (this was in 2008), the gasoline prices here were the highest I had ever seen.

An obligatory shot along the road in Death Valley.

Wildrose Road and the Charcoal Kilns

My friend Bob told me about Wildrose Road, a road that cut through some canyons on the way out of Death Valley.

It was a great ride. While I was on Wildrose Road, I saw signs for the Charcoal Kilns, so I took a short detour. On the way up to the Charcoal Kilns, I stopped to take the picture above. A guy and his wife were coming from the other direction and he asked if I wanted a picture of me with my KLR. Death Valley was cold. I had on every piece of clothing I brought with me.

The Charcoal kilns. These were built in the 1870s. They are 25 feet tall and 30 feet in diameter.

Wildrose Road. You could probably get through it on any motorcycle, but I was glad I had the KLR. Bob was right…Wildrose Road was a great ride.

The Gear

I had a Nikon D200 digital camera when I did this trip and the first-generation Nikon 24-120 lens with a polarizer, and it did a good job for me. I think it was a 10 megapixel deal and that seemed like a lot in those days. I kept the D200 for a long time and I had a lot of fun with it. I used it for all of the photos you see here. It was big and bulky, and as I recall, it took all of the space in one of the Kawasaki saddlebags I used with my KLR. It was only a weekend trip, and the other saddlebag was enough for my other stuff. I like to travel light and the arrangement worked fine for me.

Death Valley: The Bottom Line

If you’ve ever thought about taking a ride to Death Valley, do it. Take a camera, too. Trust me on this: You won’t be disappointed. As a rider and a photography enthusiast, I had a great time. The KLR 650 was more than enough motorcycle, I felt it was a good bike for a trip like this, and I concluded that Death Valley is doable on just about any motorcycle (especially if you mostly stick to Death Valley’s paved roads, as I did). The photo ops in Death Valley are stunning. If you live in southern California, it’s an easy weekend trip.

One day was not enough, though. There was a lot of Death Valley left to see, and I knew I’d be back.

There’s more coming on Death Valley and a bunch of other great rides. Sign up here and never miss an Exhaust Notes blog!

Death Valley: The Prelude

Leaving Death Valley headed to Shoshone, California.

I just returned from a road trip and our last day was in Death Valley, California. I’m embarrassed to admit that I had lived in California for more than 30 years before I ever made the trek to Death Valley (that first trip was on my KLR 650). I’ve been there five times now, traveling on different bikes and in different cars. Death Valley is probably my favorite California destination. I thought I would do a blog about this latest trip and then I realized: Death Valley is a story that takes more than a single blog. To get things started, here’s a link to a Destinations piece I did on Death Valley 11 years ago for Motorcycle Classics magazine. There’s lots more coming, folks, so stay tuned.

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