The ExhaustNotes Blog

Salt 5

West Wendover, Nevada.

Where else can you find an old flathead Ford Hot Rod and a 27-foot long turbine powered Liner parked up at the cafe?

So many talented builders are in Bonneville. The trailers are works of art, their suspensions complex links and air bags. It’s like a superior race of mechanics from another planet has landed on Earth.

We can’t go a block in the mini-casino town of West Wendover without stumbling on something cool, something Rod-ish.

Right now, in this town, the combined brain power could accomplish any task. And it would be accomplished with glossy paint and many, many holes drilled for light weight.

Salt is everywhere. The cars are covered in it. It falls off in fist-sized chunks and then the salt chunks are pulverized by passing cars.

But back to camping: my tent has changed shape in the 6 years since I last propped the thing up. The poles are all the wrong length and I’m pretty sure you’re not supposed to cut large sections out of the walls to assemble the thing.

The tent is standing but it looks more like a pile of dirty laundry rather than a house. All these geniuses surrounding me. How do I tap into that knowledge?

The Husky is getting a bit cranky. At low speeds It’s stalling frequently. The clutch is dragging a bit and with no flywheel the thing will just pop and die. I think I’ll check the intake manifold rubber for tightness.

Had a great dinner at the Prospector Cafe: fried chicken with salad, bread and iced tea, cheeseburger and a Modelo dark beer totaled $20. A guy could get used to casino living.

Salt 4

Caliente, Nevada.

I moved my camping gear 510 miles today. The longest I’ve had to endure the Husqvarna’s ridiculous seat. I feel like the monk in that old joke.

This was the longest day. We covered a lot of miles so that tomorrow’s ride into camp will be short and sweet, leaving us plenty of time to ponder how the tent goes together.

Caliente is shut down. Nothing is open, the road into town is lined with old railroad cabins. The cabins are restored, Some people would call them cute. I see hard work. In a land of space, where the view goes on forever, the cabins are only feet apart. It must have felt safer together against the huge West. Tracks run behind the cabins rattling doors and windows. Man, I can sleep right through that sound.

So many elevation changes and temperature variations on the road. You can feel agriculture. The spot humidity rises, a quarter mile of cold runs alongside dark green crops, all alive against the tan dirt. And then you are back in the desert. Warm, dry air fills the road. I can look ahead and predict the local weather.

On the long days there’s not much human interaction. Ride, gas, ride, gas. Repeat over and over, each fill up is 150 miles of seat time. The long passages give you a lot of time to think great thoughts, maybe a new idea for land terracing or a way to move 60-lb bags of concrete more efficiently. I thought about the Husqvarna seat.

Did I mention the seat? Because it’s all I think about. It’s a major player in my dreams and nightmares. I imagine the seats in hell are shaped like the Husqvarna thing-between-the-frame-and-your-butt.

What are the odds? The guy running our motel wants to build one of those bicycle motor things. I kid you not. I whipped out cell phone photos of Huffenstein and we both got excited about the project, me for the second time. I’m sure he’s gonna buy a motor.

Bonneville tomorrow!

Gunstock Refinish: Part I

I’m refinishing the stock on my .222 Remington Savage 340 and as promised, here’s the beginning of the story on this project.

The Rifle: A Savage 340

This story goes back a few years when I spotted a Savage 340 on the used gun rack at a local gun store. Several thing about the rifle intrigued me…it was cheap (it was only $180), it was chambered for the 222 Remington (a very accurate cartridge), and the stock was scratched and worn (but the damage was superficial). I thought the little Savage would make for an interesting refinishing project. But I guess I’m like Gresh. Some things need to be put on simmer for a while.

The rifle shot well, I played around developing a load for it, and it was only after the thing sat around for a couple of years that I finally got on with my refinishing project. I’ve blogged about this rifle a couple of times before, and I’ll give you the links to those posts at the end of this blog.

The Original Finish

The Savage had some kind of a shellac or varnish finish that was flaking and scratched in a lot of places. The underlying wood was sound; there were just a lot of finish scratches all over.

Other light scratches. Like I said, the underlying walnut was sound.

The rifle had a black butt plate with a thin white plastic spacer, and the pistol grip catch had the same deal. I knew I was going to delete the white spacers because I like the look better without it.

I’ll show you what the butt plate and pistol grip look like without the white line spacers in a subsequent blog. Trust me; it’s way more elegant.

TruOil to the Rescue

Me? I’m a big fan of oil finishes, and my soup du jour is always TruOil for projects like this one. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

The best stuff ever invented, TruOil is.

Barreled Action Removal

The first step in any gunsmithing project is to make sure the rifle is unloaded, which I did, and then I remove the barreled action from the stock. That was easy peasy…the Savage has three screws securing the metalwork in the stock. It’s the rear trigger guard first (and unlike most rifles, on these old Savages all that rear most screw does is hold the rear of the trigger guard in the stock; it does go all the way through to the receiver). Then it’s the screw up front, which taps into a barrel retainer. And then it’s the main action screw, immediately under the forward portion of the receiver. It’s an unusual setup. Most rifles are secured by bolts through the trigger guard/floorplate that secure the receiver to the stock. Having only one attach point to the receiver and another on the barrel is supposed to hurt accuracy. No one told that to my Savage, though. It shoots into an inch at 100 yards all day long. After that it was the sling swivels, which unscrew from the stock.

Three screws release the barreled action from the stock (the barrel mount, the forward action, and the rear trigger guard screws). The sling loops unscrew, too.

The rear trigger guard screw and the action screw.

The next steps are to remove the butt plate and the stock’s pistol grip cap. Those are retained by Phillips head screws and they came off easily.

That’s it for now. The next steps will involve stripping the finish, and that’s a topic for the next blog in this series. Stay tuned. If you want to read the original blog we posted on the Savage 340, it’s here.

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Salt 3

Window Rock, Arizona.

I thought the guy behind us was yelling at the black SUV. The SUV drove on but the guy kept yelling. Strange garbled words, some Navajo, some English, it was difficult to say if he was angry. He was smiling all the time.

The words kept pouring out as he bumped into me, wanting to shake hands. He didn’t care for the standard handshake and performed a fist bump/hand wrestling sort of ritual. All the while speaking fast, using unrelated words to string together ideas in an almost-sentence way.

I started to pick up a few bits of the conversation: He called me the N word, but in a nice, brotherly way. At least I think it was brotherly. Then he said that I was in his town then some vague broken bits about cutting people with a knife. “What language are you speaking?” I asked him. “It doesn’t matter,” he said to me and then showed me his drivers license. He was from Arizona.

Tall and good-looking, the guy may have been a great warrior chief in an earlier time. Now, he wanders parking lots jabbering at people in a confused muddle, his skill set woefully out of sync with life in 2019 America.

The guy kept stumbling into me, by accident or by design. It was annoying but he seemed happy as he asked me if I’d like to be stabbed and thrown into a ditch. It was the most non-threatening threat ever. Was he serious? There were a lot of ditches around. I made a mental note to start looking down for bodies.

It dawned on me that the guy was completely bonkers and then he asked me for two dollars. “That’s F-ed up, man,” I told him “I don’t want to be cut and thrown into a ditch.” He didn’t seem surprised at my refusal; I’m guessing his unorthodox panhandling method turns off a lot of potential marks.

We went into the only place open in town, a Taco Bell, the glass door 0f the Taco Bell seemed to frighten him and he drifted away towards the street. Still happy and still wanting to kill someone.

The rain started around 3:00 p.m. and kept a steady pace. It was a cool, 54-degree August day in northern New Mexico. So much different than the hot, dry morning. Now we were marooned with just enough gas in the Husqvarna to make 10 miles. The next town was 20 miles away.

I was waiting at a liquor store/gas station that had no electricity for Mike to return with a can of gas. Mike’s BMW can go 200 miles on a tank. The Husky taps out at around 150 miles. From my perch under the store awning I saw 700 to 800 cans of beer get sold in a few hours. Skinny people, fat people, old people, young people, no one bought less than 48 cans. They carried the stuff out by the armload. Thank goodness the cash register was on battery backup.

The power would come on and I’d run out to the pump then the power would go off. This happened about 20 times. One of the liquor store staff was an adorable woman complaining about menopause: “You don’t know what it’s like, one minute you’re fine, the next you’re on fire!” The power sputtered. All of us, customers and staff, started yelling, “Lights on! Lights off!” in synchronization with the flickering power.

“Would you like a hotdog? Free, I won’t charge you for it. They’re still kind of warm but we have to throw out the hot foods after a few hours of no power.” What a nice bunch of people. Free hot dogs, all the beer you could fit in a trunk, we had a good time, you know?

“Your friend has a funny accent.” said Menopause Woman. “Where is he from?”

“New Jersey, or somewhere back east,” I told her.

“I suppose he thinks we sound funny too,” she said in that rising, musical New Mexican lilt I’ve come to love.

Mike came back with the gas, we dumped it into the Husqvarna and lit the bikes off. Into the rain we motored on. Gasoline is freedom, man. About 10 miles later we saw a lineman sitting in his truck, rain pouring down. For all I know the power never came back on back at the store. The lives we shared at that place didn’t matter to us anymore, we were back on the road.

Salt 2

I like going camping with a truck. You’ve got plenty of space to load your gear and when you get there you can set up a nice little spot. I guess I’ve already told you how much I hate carrying camping gear on a motorcycle and that motels near Bonneville, Utah are expensive. But it seems I can’t stop myself, I just keep complaining. I see those BMW earth-roamer types with all the gear piled up over their heads and I think, “Oh, Hell no! I’m cool as an ice cube, that’s not me.”

Yet here I am. Here I am piling camping junk over my head like a Starbucks-sipping, Hi-Vis wearing, midlevel manager-who-mistakenly-thinks-corporate-values-his-efforts, Beemer rider. The shame, it burns hot.

That’s not the worst of it. I just know the flimsy aluminum sub-frame on the Husqvarna is going to break. It has to. This bike was designed with two things in mind: to pop wheelies and flee from the Po-Po. Because I don’t have a running street bike I’ve turned the Husky into a single cylinder Gold Wing. It burns, man.

No way was I going to get all the camping stuff onto the Trophy Rack that the Husky was wearing. I had to dramatically expand capacity and the only way to do that was with saddlebags. To do bags I needed some infrastructure in place that would prevent the bags from tangling in the rear wheel and melting to the high mount, noisy, life saving, public opinion destroying, Arrow exhaust can.

I have no way to weld stainless steel but I have a lot of stainless tubing so I chopped it up and took the sticks to Roy’s welding (out by the mini goat farm) and the fine crew at Roy’s stuck it all together.

Next I needed a few plastic bits to fit the existing rack and give my U-bolts something to tighten against without bending the metal straps. I knocked these out of some thick plastic I had left over from a boat job 35 years ago.

My Safety Exhaust on the Husqvarna is high and tight so I riveted a metal heat shield on the left side of the Super MoTour bike. My buddy Mike loaned me the saddlebags, I don’t want them to catch fire in front of him. You’ll be hearing more about Mike, as this Bonneville ride is his idea. All told, I’ve probably doubled the poundage of the featherweight Husky with this jungle gym hanging off the back.

Unrelated to the luggage situation but still needing sorting was the Husky’s headlight. The normal bulb is an incandescent 35-watt, both high and low beam. The bulb works ok in the daytime but it casts a feeble light for night use. It’s like having a Black Hole on the front of your motorcycle. The pattern reaches only a few feet into the gloom. On moonless nights it struggles to illuminate the front fender. It’s so dim bugs fly away from it. Hey, I’m here all week, invite your friends.

The other problem with the stock bulb is that it constantly blows out. The tiny filament shatters and when that happens you get an intermittent headlight that turns on and off as the filament shakes around making contact now and then. Sometimes the bulb will self-heal, the wire re-welds itself and the light may stay on a few hundred miles. Despite all this, the inside of the bulb is usually broken into a million pieces by the time 1000 miles rolls past.

I tried a bunch of different bulbs. LED, Halogen, HID, and incandescent; most of them ran too hot for the Husqvarna’s plastic reflector. For this trip I’ve settled on a cheap LED bulb with no watt rating or any information stamped into the metal housing. It is a very crummy bulb, perhaps even weaker than the incandescent bulb but I’m hoping it stands up to vibration better. A strange side effect of the LED electronics is that the high beam indicator light stays on all the time. I’m sure the bulb won’t short out and fry my electrical system. What could go wrong?

That’s it. I’m leaving in a few days so I’ll be blogging from the road like Berk taught me to do. See you in Bonneville.

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Indiana Jones: Part II (The Mo Gao Grottos)

A few weeks ago, I wrote a blog about the Indiana Jones aspects of riding a motorcycle across China, and in that blog, I told you about the Roman Legions that had settled in Liqian two thousand years ago. I mentioned that there were other Indiana Jones experiences to be had in China and I said I would write about them. It’s time to keep that promise. This blog is about the abandoned Mo Gao Buddhist grottos in the Gobi Desert. It’s an excerpt from Riding China, and if you want to get the whole story, well, hey, buy the book!

Dun Huang

The day was to be a short one for riding (only a hundred kilometers), but it would be rich with sightseeing in and around Dun Huang. It started with a short ride to Dun Huang’s vendor stalls with all kinds of brightly-colored trinkets, lots of Chinese tourists, and around it all, huge sand dunes. We had arrived at what might possibly be the least known and most inaccessible tourist attraction in the world: The Gobi Desert, up close and personal.

The Lake of the Crescent Moon in the Gobi Desert.

The signs pointed to the Lake of the Crescent Moon (and if that doesn’t sound like an Indiana Jones movie title, I don’t know what does). It was a small bright green crescent lake surrounded by the Gobi’s massive pale white dunes. The city planners in Dun Huang were making good use of it as a tourist attraction. It was amazing. The lake was a bright green arc of still water perhaps 300 meters long, forming a natural arc in the dunes, surrounded by bright green vegetation. I can only imagine how a camel caravan would have felt coming upon this place a thousand or more years ago, slowly drifting through the oven that is the Gobi, long before Dun Huang built its five-star tourist hotels. They must have viewed it as a miracle. A true oasis in the desert. It seemed to be a miracle to me and I had it easy; I had ridden here on my RX3.

Gobi Camel Riding

What really interested me were the camels. I was still feeling smug about seeing camels in the desert the day before, and I had wondered what it would be like to ride one. This was to be my day. There was a large camel riding operation set up specifically for tourists, and I realized I might never have an opportunity like this again. I needed to ride a camel. Yep, I became Joe Tourist, and I’m glad I did. It was fun. The camels took us to the top of one of the dunes, and I loved every minute of it. I’ve heard camels described as ships of the desert, and I realized as I rode along on mine that it was an appropriate description. A camel kind of rocks back and forth as it walks, the same way a ship does as it sails the ocean. The sand dunes, devoid of any vegetation, could be rolling waves. It’s all very calming. The camel behind mine came closer, and closer, and closer until its face was literally right alongside me. Its nose was just an inch from my arm. I could feel its warm dry breath on my arm and my face. It sounds a bit on the strange side, I know, but it was all somehow very soothing, riding along in the hot dry air, gently rocking left and right, with a camel breathing in my ear.

Quite a sight. I enjoyed Dun Huang enormously. You may have seen this photo before. It’s the cover photo for the ExhaustNotes home page, and it as a two-page spread in RoadRUNNER magazine.

We spent the entire morning riding camels, taking photos, and being tourists. As much as I like riding my motorcycle, it was good to be off it for a day. We were all feeling great, even though it as incredibly hot. But it was dry, and that made it bearable.

A very attractive young woman who allowed a photo on our camel caravan. I told her I walked a mile for my camel. She smiled politely. I don’t think she spoke English.

The Mo Gao Grottos

That afternoon, we parked the bikes and rode in air-conditioned buses to the Mo Gao Buddhist grottos. This was more Indiana Jones stuff. It’s another incredible story, and it is one I had never heard until this trip. Listen to this: Ancient Buddhists created a massive temple complex in the grottos along a riverbed canyon wall in a location called Mo Gao. It’s in the desert outside of what is now Dun Huang. It was a thriving Buddhist center a thousand years ago, and then the people living there left. No one really knows why. Time and history forgot about the place. It was only recently rediscovered, and a few years after that, it opened to the public. The place was stunning. I can see it possibly being named the 9th Wonder of the Ancient World, just as Xi’an’s Terra Cotta soldiers (which I’ll describe in a later chapter) became the 8th Wonder of the Ancient World. It’s that wondrous.

The Mo Gao caves consisted of many smaller grottos that were apartments for ancient monks, and larger ones that held majestic statues and ornate decorations. I can only imagine what it must of have been like for the archeologists who uncovered these things. Today, it is all closely managed and Chinese police were there to enforce a photography prohibition.

A small portion of the Mo Gao Buddhist grotto.

A forbidden photo inside one the Mo Gao grottos. Once again, the Nikon D810’s low light level capabilities came through for me!

The sights and photo ops at Mo Gao were well worth the trip. There were many, many more, but I called it quits after grabbing these photos.

There are two reasons for a photography prohibition in these kinds of places. The first is that flash photography could degrade the statues and artwork. A natural light photo (one shot without flash) would prevent that kind of degradation, but most people wouldn’t understand the distinction and a “natural light only” photo policy would be too hard to enforce. The other reason is that the owner of the place (I assume it would be the Chinese government) probably wants to sell its photos. Allowing people to grab their own pictures would interfere.

The bottom line to all of the above is that the no photography policy only slowed me a little. I waited until somebody else took a photo and the picture police started yelling at them, and then I would discreetly do my natural light thing. I got some good shots, too.

Let me go tangential here for a moment and tell you a quick story about Joe Gresh. He is a great guy to travel with and I’d go anywhere with him. We both have a twisted, extremely wry, and very corny sense of humor. He cringed every time I said something I thought was clever, and I did the same with him. I enjoyed being with him on this trip immensely. The guy just has a way with words, which is readily apparent in his columns for Motorcyclist magazine. Anyway, as we walked along one of the landscaped Mo Gao pathways, I noticed a ground-mounted speaker that was in a plastic case designed to look like one of the naturally-occurring rocks. It blended in well with other real rocks along the path. I pointed to it and said to Joe, “Look at that…even a thousand years ago, these Buddhist monks had electric speakers…”

Gresh, without missing a beat, responded with, “Yeah, they loved their grotto blasters…”

I slept well that night in our unusually upscale hotel. I probably had dreams along the lines of an Indiana Jones movie plot, but I didn’t remember any of them. I was tired when I called it a night and I felt refreshed the next morning. This was the trip of a lifetime, and I was enjoying the hell out of it.

So there you have it. The Mo Gao Grottos. Lost in time nearly a thousand years, only to be discovered again a few years ago. And we were there. Indiana Jones? You bet! And if you want to read the earlier Indy in China blog about the Romans, it’s right here!

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My 3FC19 Scooter

Yep, it’s going to be the CSC RX4, and I’m pumped about the ride. There’s not a lot of information out there on this bike yet other than here on the ExNotes site, and I’ll give you the link for that at the end of this post.

Steve Seidner (President and CEO of CSC Motorcycles) and good buddy Matt (motorcycle maestro extraordinaire), the two guys who are prepping my RX4 for the 3FC19 ride.

I’ll be the first guy to take the RX4 on a major road trip in the US, and I’ll be the first guy to ride it internationally on a single ride. I think that’s pretty cool.

Steve and Matt prepped the bike for me by changing the oil, adjusting the valves, installing spotlights, installing the cell phone holder so I can use Waze to navigate, and more. It was cool visit, and I enjoyed seeing the guys at CSC again.

Down to the frame, just to make sure everything is ready for my 4,500-mile epic international journey. It wasn’t necessary. The guys found nothing wrong.

These are going to turn night into day for me. I like them!

Check out the double disks, and hey, Orlando…look, it’s orange…the fastest color!

A new rear tire and chain lube. It’s going to be a great ride.

I spec’d out the Tourfella aluminum luggage on this bike…I’ll be carrying my laptop and all my camera gear, and like always, I’ll be blogging from the road every night. You’ll be able to follow the entire trip right here on the ExNotes blog. Hey, do you think the top dawgs at Harley or Honda personally prep bikes for their rally riders?

So, about that additional RX4 information…you can find it right here on our RX4 page! And hey, check out the CSC Motorcycles site, too!

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Want to read about some of our other epic rides on CSC motorcycles, Royal Enfield motorcycles, Janus motorcycles, and the odd Harley or two? Take a look at our Epic Rides page!

Loaded for bear…

Good buddy Jason, a Ruger No. 1 in .338 Win Mag, and a 400-lb, 7-ft Alaskan black bear.

As the title of this blog implies and in this case, my good buddy Jason was literally loaded for bear. For several years I had owned a Ruger No. 1 single-shot rifle in .338 Win Mag. That’s a monster of a magnum. I had never fired the rifle and I sold it to Jason. He told me he was going on a bear hunt in Alaska (something I’ve always wanted to do), and I was happy to the see the rifle go to a good home. Most recently, Jason sent the photo you see above and a recap of his hunt to me to share here on the ExNotes blog. Here you go, folks!

It all started in 2016 when I purchased my first Ruger No. 1 in 338 Win Mag from Joe. I’ve always wanted a Ruger No. 1, but I already had a Winchester Model 70 in 338 Win Mag. I planned to go on a bear hunt in 2018, so what I did was sell my Winchester Model 70 to my best friend, who went on the bear hunt, too. I would be using my Ruger No. 1. So this is a story about me and my new rifle and our quest for a big Southeast Alaskan black bear. It was a guided hunt through Alaskan Coastal Outfitters.

Our base camp was on a boat and in the evening we would take a skiff and cruise around all the little islands and bays looking for the right bear. We saw lots of bears (a lot of sows with cubs). We also saw a lot of boars. On Day 4 of our hunt we saw a really nice bear. We got as close as we could without spooking him. My guide told me to get out of the boat and he held the boat still for me. Then, as I was pulling my leg over the side of the boat I got hooked on to the edge of the boat and I fell face down in 8 inches of water.

The bear ran off and my beautiful Ruger No.1 was laying in 8 inches of salt water, so we raced back to the boat, took the rifle apart, and cleaned it up so it was like new.

The next day we went out again and this time I was extra cautious not to fall in when we came across the bear you see in the picture. He was about 300 yards from the skiff when we spotted him. We got as close as we could without spooking him, which was about 140 yards, and my guide kept on asking me if I could make the shot. I always answered “yes, no problem.” I lay down and rested my rifle on my pack. Wouldn’t you know it, I had to lay down in a little creek so I got wet again. We lay there for what seemed to be an eternity. My guide made sure it was a boar and not a sow. Finally, he gave me the OK.

Just then, the bear turned so he had his back to me (so I couldn’t shoot). It gave me an opportunity to situate my follow-up shot. I decided the quickest way to get a follow-up shot (if I needed one) was to shoot with the next round in my hand.

The bear finally turned broadside and I dropped the hammer. I hit him just behind the shoulder and he dropped. My guide backed me up with a 375 H&H rifle, but he didn’t need to fire it. The bear went down, and when we reached him, we saw he was the monster he appeared to be from a distance. The bear measured 7 feet and weighed about 400 lbs.

Jason, that’s an awesome story and a magnificent photograph. I was sorry to see that rifle go, but it obviously went to a good home and you sure put it to good use. You know, it takes a real sportsman to do what you did…going after bear with a single-shot rifle. Congratulations on a successful hunt, and thanks much for sharing your adventure with us here on the ExhaustNotes blog!

Read our other Tales of the Gun stories!

Would you like to write a guest blog for ExNotes? It could be a gun story, a hunting story, a motorcycle story, or any other idea you think might work for our audience. If you have an idea, please let us know at info@exhaustnotes.us. If we publish your story, you’ll get a signed copy of Destinations with our compliments and gratitude!

Back in the saddle again…

Yep, just like that song, we’re back in the saddle again. We’ve got the email thing on the road to being fully squared away, and we’ve had a bunch of new folks sign up in the last day. Things are looking good.

Automatic Email Notifications

If you haven’t heard the word already, we’re having a limited time contest for folks who sign up for our automatic email notifications. Just add your email to the list, and for every 50 folks who sign up (even if you are already signed up), we’re going to give away a free copy of Destinations. You can sign up here:

The CSC RX4

I’m stopping by CSC Motorcycles tomorrow to get a photo of the RX4 I’ll be riding in the SCMA Three Flags Classic. Good buddy Steve asked how I wanted the bike configured and I told him what he already knew: Spotlights, the big Tourfella luggage, a phone mount, and I’m good to go. This is going to be one hell of a ride. Mexico to Canada on a CSC RX4. I’ll be the first to do this. More good times. I’m pumped and I’m eager to get on the road.

It’s going to be hot on the southern part of the ride, as the temps will be above 110 degrees. But as they say, it’s a dry heat. I’ve ridden in that kind of heat before, and I have a few strategies for dealing with it. I’ll be blogging the entire ride, so be sure to follow us right here on ExhaustNotes! And hey, if there are questions you want me to answer or things you want my opinion on related to the RX4, please post your questions here in the blog’s comments section.

The Triple Deuce

Nope, it’s not a car and it’s not a US Army truck. I’m talking about my .222 Remington Savage 340, a used rifle I picked up on the consignment gun rack at a local store 2 1/2 years ago for the whopping sum of $180. The Triple Deuce (as the .222 Remington cartridge is known) is one of those inherently accurate cartridges that just groups great without a lot of work (three others are the .308 Winchester, the .375 H&H, and the relatively new 6.5 Creedmoor). These are rounds that are just flat accurate. My .222 certainly groups way better than any $180 rifle has a right to do. I’m having a lot of fun with it.

I had the Savage out this past Sunday and it was shooting sub-minute-of-angle at 100 yards, and that’s close enough for government work. The stock has a few surface finish scratches (but no gouges that reach into the wood) and I’m going to refinish it. Before any of you get your shorts in a knot, the rifle is not an uber-collectible piece (so I’m not destroying its value with a refinish). I’m going to do my TruOil-to-perfection number on it. I may add a little stain to darken the walnut a bit. Or not. We’ll see. All the metal work on this rifle is perfect and I want the lumber to match. I’ll be posting the step-by-step project here on the ExhaustNotes blog, and you’ll be able to follow along as this labor of love progresses. And hey, if you want to read our other gun stories, take a look at our Tales of the Gun page!

Good times straight ahead, folks!

And yet more likes and dislikes…

We like seeing big numbers of folks on the ExhaustNotes site. We can tell how many people are on the site at any given time, which pages they’re viewing, and where they’re located (to the city or town level). We see folks from literally all over the world, and it’s cool seeing folks in really out of the way (for us, anyway) places.

Take a peek at the blog below about our email signup contest. You could win a free copy of Destinations just by signing up, even if you are already on the list. And yeah, we already had a healthy response, and yeah, we already randomly selected our first contest winner from the first group of 50. That’s good buddy Colorado Dan, and Dan, your copy of Destinations is going in the mail today. Sign up here, folks, and you might win a copy, too!