The ExhaustNotes Blog

Seven Favorite Baja Destinations

Baja is a motorcycling paradise and I have a bunch of favorite destinations there. Seven of them, to be precise, although truth be told, I like everything in Baja except for Tijuana and maybe La Paz and Loreto. That said, my favorites are:

- - Tecate
  - San Quintin
  - Cataviña
  - Guerrero Negro
  - San Ignacio
  - Santa Rosalia
  - Concepcion Bay

Here’s where they are on a map:

So what’s so great about these places? Read on, my friends.

Tecate

Tecate is the gateway to the middle of northern Baja, and it’s the easiest point of entry. Both Tijuana and Mexicali are too big and too complicated, and the Mexican Customs guys are too official in those bigger cities. Tecate is a friendly place. The last time I picked up a tourist visa in Tecate, the Customs officer tried to sell me salsa he and his family made as a side gig. That’s what the place is like. I love it.

If you’re into fine dining (not as in expensive dining, but just great food), it’s hard to go wrong anywhere in Baja. Tecate has some of the best, from street taco vendors to Malinalli’s to Amore’s. I could spend a week just in Tecate. It’s that good.

Uncle Joe Gresh with street tacos in Tecate. Wow, were they ever good.

The buffet at Malinalli’s is regional, awesome, and inexpensive. It’s a hidden treasure.

Dos Joes’ motos on an Enfield expedition that took us through Tecate.

The Tecate brewery dominate the Tecate skyline and is visible from just about anywhere in town. A can of ice cold Tecate with sea salt around the rim and a bit of lime juice…life doesn’t get any better.

San Quintin

San Quintin is 186.4 miles south of the border on Baja’s Pacific coast. It’s usually a quiet ag town that has a lot of things going for it, including interesting hotels, good food, and Bahia San Quintin. The Old Mill hotel and its associated restaurant, Eucalipto, is my personal favorite. The hotel is about 4 miles west of the Transpeninsular Highway, and what used to be a harrowing soft sand ride to it is now easy peasy…the road is paved and riding there is no longer a test of your soft sand riding skills. The Eucalipto restaurant is second to none.

What could be better than an ice cold Tecate overlooking Bahia San Quintin after a day’s riding in Baja? We once saw a California gray whale from this very spot.

A man, a motorcycle, and Mexico….the sign on the Transpenisular Highway pointing toward Bahia San Quintin and the Old Mill Hotel. The bike? That’s the 650cc Royal Enfield, perfect for riding Baja. But then just about any motorcycle is perfect for riding Baja.

Bahia San Quintin at dawn. It’s an awesome spot.

Uncle Joe enjoying breakfast in the Old Mill’s Eucalipto. It is an exquisite restaurant.

You’ll notice at the top of my scribblings about San Quintin I said it is usually a quiet town. The one exception for us was when there was a labor riot and we were caught in it. The Mexican infantryman about 80 miles north of San Quintin told me the road was closed, but his English matched my Spanish (neither are worth a caca), and without me understanding what I was riding into, he let me proceed. It’s not an experience I would care to repeat. But it’s the only event of its type I ever experienced in Old Mexico, and I’d go back in a heartbeat.

The Cataviña Boulder Fields

Ah, Cataviña. Rolling down the Transpeninsular Highway, about 15 miles before you hit the wide spot in the road that is Cataviña you enter the boulder fields. Other-worldly is not too strong a description, and if the place wasn’t so far south of the border it would probably be used more often by Hollywood in visits to other planets. The boulders are nearly white, they are huge, and the juxtaposition of their bulk with the bright blue sky punctuated by Cardon cactus.

Pastel geology. The area really is as beautiful as the photos depict it to be.

I get a funny feeling every time I enter this part of Baja. Not funny as in bad, but funny as in I feel like I’m where I belong. I once rolled through this region in the early morning hours with my daughter and she told me “you know, it’s weird, Dad. I feel like I’m home.” She understood (as in completely understood) the magic that is Baja.

I like the area and its stark scenery so much that one of my photos became the cover of Moto Baja! I grabbed that shot from the saddle at about 30 mph on a CSC 150 Mustang replica, which I subsequently rode all the way down to Cabo San Lucas (that story is here).

You should buy a copy or three. They make great gifts.

Every time I roll through Cataviña with other riders, the dinner conversation invariably turns to how the boulders formed. When I was teaching at Cal Poly Pomona, I asked one of my colleagues in the Geology Department. He know the area as soon as I mentioned it. The answer? Wind erosion.

Guerrero Negro

The Black Warrior. The town is named after a ship that went down just off its coast. It’s a salt mining town exactly halfway down the peninsula, and it’s your ticket in for whale watching and the best fish tacos in Baja (and that’s saying something). I’ve had a lot of great times in Guerrero Negro. It’s about 500 miles south of the border. You can see the giant steel eagle marking the 28th Parallel (the line separating Baja from Baja Sur) a good 20 miles out, and from there, it’s a right turn for the three mile ride west into town. Malarrimo’s is the best known hotel and whale watching tour, but there are several are they are all equally good. It you can’t get a room at Malarrimo’s, try the Hotel Don Gus.

CSC RX3 motorcycles at the Hotel Don Gus. We used to do annual Baja tours with CSC…those were fun times and great trips, and introduced a lot of folks to the beauty of Baja.

What it’s all about…getting up close and personal with the California gray whales. They are in town from January through March.

Tony, taco chef extraordinaire. You might think I’m exaggerating. I’m not.

It’s worth the 500-miles trek to Guerrero Negro just to savor Tony’s fish tacos. You might think I’m exaggerating. But like I said above…I’m not.

Man does not live by fish tacos alone, so for breakfast or dinner, it’s either the restaurant at Malaririmo’s or the San Remedio, a block north of the main drag into town. You won’t be disappointed at either.

Sue’s photo of a Guerrero Negro osprey enjoying some sushi.

After you leave Guerrero Negro and continue south, the Transpeninsular Highway turns southeast to take you diagonally across the Baja peninsula. About 70 miles down the road (which is about half the distance to the eastern shores of Baja and the Sea of Cortez along Mexico Highway 1) you’ll see the turn for San Ignacio. It’s another one of Baja’s gems.

San Ignacio

San Ignacio is an oasis in the middle of the desert that forms much of Baja. The Jesuits introduced date farming to the region hundreds of years ago, and it’s still here in a big way. Leave Guerrero Negro, head southeast on Mexico Highway 1, and 70 miles later you run into a Mexican Army checkpoint, a series of switchbacks through a lava field, and when you see the date palms, turn right.

The San Ignacio church, built as a mission in the 1700s, dominates the center of San Ignacio. It’s a beautiful spot, one of the most photogenic in all of Baja.

Another photo of the San Ignacio Mission. You’ll want to grab some photos in San Ignacio.

Dates? Nope, not on that trip, but dates are one of the things San Ignacio is known for. I’ll bet they are delicious.

San Ignacio has a town square that’s right out of central casting, there’s a little restaurant that serves the best chile rellenos in all of Mexico (I’m not exaggerating), and the place just has a laid back, relaxing feel about it.

Santa Rosalia

You know, this town is another one of Baja’s best kept secrets. As you travel south on Highway 1, San Ignacio is the first town you encounter after traveling diagonally across the peninsula. Folks dismiss it because it’s an industrial town, but they do so in ignorance. There’s a lot of cool stuff in this place.

One of the things that’s unique about Santa Rosalia is the all-wooden architecture. The town was originally built by a French mining company (Boleo) and they built it they way they did in France. Like the Hotel Frances, which sits high on a mesa overlooking the town and the Sea of Cortez. I love staying there.

The Hotel Frances. It used to be a brothel.

There’s a cool mining musuem a block or two away from the Frances, and it’s worth a visit, too.

There are many cool things in Santa Rosalia, and one of the best is the Georg Eiffel church. It was designed by the same guy guy who did the Eiffel town.

Santa Rosalia’s church. It’s an unexpected delight. And I’m not even Catholic.

Inside Santa Rosalia’s Georg Eiffel church.

Stained glass. Photos ops abound in Santa Rosalia.

I’ve heard people dismiss Santa Rosalia as a gritty, industrial place not worth a stop. Trust me on this: They’re wrong. It’s one of my favorite Baja spots.

Bahía Concepción

Concepción Bay is easily the most scenic spot in Baja. It’s just south of Mulege (another delightful little town, and the subject of an upcoming ExNotes blog). Bahía Concepción runs for maybe 20 miles along the eastern edge of the Baja peninsula. I’ve seen whales from the highway while riding along its edge, the beaches are magnificent, and the photo ops just don’t stop. The contrast between the mountains and Cardon cactus on one side and the pelicans diving into bright green water is view from the saddle you won’t soon forget.

World-famous novelist and motorcycle adventurer Simon Gandolfi andn yours truly on 150cc scooters. We were on our way back from Cabo San Lucas when we stopped for this Bahía Concepción photo. Hardtail 150cc scooters. Up and down the length of Baja. I think about that ride every time I see a GS parked at a Starbuck’s.

So there you have it: My take on seven favorite spots in Baja? How about you? Do you have any favorite Baja destinations? Let us know here in the comments sction!

A 458 Ruger M77

The year was 1974. I had just finished grad school and I was at Fort Bliss, Texas, for the Basic Course and the Chaparral/Vulcan Course, which is to say I was there for another five months of school before heading overseas. There was no such thing as Gunbroker.com yet…in fact, there wasn’t a dotcom anything yet…this was all well before the Internet. But we had The Shotgun News, a print publication that served much the same purpose. I studied that newspaper like a Democrat looking for something new to tax.

Ruger did a very limited run of their Model 77 in .458 Winchester Magnum back in the early 1970s, and within that limited run, they did a few with Circassian walnut. I might be wrong, but I think this was the first limited production anything Ruger did with Circassian walnut. I read the ad and I immediately knew I had to have one.

Man, I was hooked. I needed a .458 Mag elephant gun. My Army gun was a 20mm Vulcan, and by comparison, the .458 didn’t seem so big. The rifle was $340 from J&G Rifles in Prescott, Arizona (an outfit that I think still exists), and in those days it was as easy as picking up the phone, sending a check, and having them ship the rifle to a local dealer. The amount seems laughably low today, but $340 was a big nut back in 1974. I borrowed the money from my sister and the rifle was on its way to Barney’s Guns out in the west Texas town of El Paso. God bless Marty Robbins and all that is west Texas. I loved it out there.

Not knowing too much about hunting elephants, I bought three boxes of .458 factory ammo with predictable results: Today, nearly 50 years later, I still have most of that factory ammo in its original yellow Winchester boxes. You see, there weren’t too many elephants in El Paso, and that ammo redefined recoil for me. Just a few rounds of the 500-grain, 2100 feet per second factory fodder convinced me there had to be a better way, and there was. I’ve loaded literally thousands of rounds in .458 Win Mag over the last 50 years, virtually all of it at .45-70 levels. It’s actually a nice shooting rifle when you drop it from “elephant” to “buffalo” on the energy meter. And that’s still plenty potent. People used to kill buffalo with 400-grain pills at 1200 feet per second (they killed nearly all of them, actually).

I picked up a Redfield straight 4-power scope that is still putting the crosshairs where I want the bullets go (I think it was something like $30 at one of the K-Marts in El Paso). Not surprisingly, the Circassian .458 is very accurate with both jacketed and cast bullets. It can easily put five rounds into an inch at 100 yards.

Every once in a while I’ll go on a tear experimenting with new loads, and I suppose when I exhaust my supply of 405-grain Remington jacketed softpoint bullets and SR 4759 propellant I’ll get serious about that, but for now I have a good stash of the Remington bullets and SR 4759. I’ll probably still be working my way through that stash when I ride off into the sunset. And when I enter the Happy Hunting Grounds, I’ll rub elbows with Karamojo Bell, Frederick Courtney Selous, Peter Capstick, and others who chased elephants in Africa and we can compare notes.

My buddies and I hunted jack rabbits out in the desert east of El Paso near Fabens, and I had a lot of fun with the .458. Yeah, it was massive overkill. But some of those jacks were big, man. Not that I needed a .458 Winchester Magnum elephant gun. But who buys these things because they need them?

More Tales of the Gun!

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ExhaustNotes Travel: The North Rim

Berk recently did a story on the Grand Canyon and I have visited the park many times. I’ve never made it to the North Rim however, and a trip to Las Vegas, Nevada was a wonderful opportunity to check out the other side of that great big hole in the ground as it was practically on the way. If you plan on going know that the North Rim closes around the end of November. When we arrived a few days before Thanksgiving the ranger station, restaurant, gift shop and lodge were all closed. The park was still open but the place was deserted. Only us and a few other cars were at the park that day.

National Park fees are getting kind of pricey. 35 dollars was the day pass fee except there was no one to collect the money. There was an electronic-pay box near the Ranger Station. Several of the other visitors were poking and prodding at the box but no one was having any success actually paying. Payees would stab their card in and look to the waiting customers as if to say, “What do I do now?” Someone else would try to help the lost soul but we were getting nowhere. I never got a chance at the box because we decided it must be out of service and besides we were just taking a drive through.

The North Rim is quite a bit different than the South Rim. For one, it’s about 1000 feet higher in elevation. The slope is different also: rain water on the North Rim flows into the canyon while rain water flows away from the canyon on the South Rim. What this means is that the South Rim is relatively straight along the edge with many places to pull over and gaze at the canyon, The North Rim has fjord-like canyons that intersect the Colorado River gorge at right angles so getting to view points means longer drives and some backtracking to get to the next one. There are fewer car-accessible spots on the North Rim and in fact most of it is hiking material. I don’t hike.

There are supposed to be bison running around but except for chipmunks we saw very little wildlife mostly due to the onset of winter. The critters were probably settling in snug somewhere we couldn’t see. The view points may be fewer but the views are still spectacular at the North Rim. My cell phone camera was dwarfed by the immensity of the scene and the photos you see in this story reflect that tiny little sensor.

The North Rim is kind of far from anywhere; the closest lodging we could find was at the Jacob Lake Lodge. The Jacob Lake Lodge is an all-in-one resort with rooms, a gift shop, a nice place to eat and a gas station. The staff was made up of bright young college students who work several-month shifts then go back to school. There are staff accommodations on site. CT and I were amazed at how smart, kind and genuinely good people these kids were. The entire place was run by 20 year-olds, not an adult in sight.

Jacob Lake Lodge is open year around and is worth a visit even if the North Rim is closed. There is a big fireplace and comfy seats to sit in as you pen manifestos or just check your email. The logs are 3 feet long and the fire is tended to by the 20-somethings. The drive up on 89A takes you from mostly desert to pine forests in a few miles. I’ll be going back again because I missed Jacob Lake’s famous pie due to eating so much food. You should go, too.

Here’s a link to our earlier Grand Canyon story, and here’s a link to our Reviews page (it has other National Parks).

Steamtown National Historic Site

Folks my age love steam locomotives. I think it’s because they were still pulling trains and generating revenue when I was a kid. The Lionel thing probably figures into the equation, too. Most guys my age had a Lionel train set when they were boys. I did, and I loved it. Some guys are still into it, like good buddy Steve. Anyway, the point is when I’m traveling, I never miss an opportunity to visit a railroad museum.

A few months ago when we were back east, our travels allowed us to swing by Scranton, Pennsylvania, and visit the Steamtown National Historic Site. It’s part of the US National Park network, but if you don’t have the senior discount card, don’t worry about it. Admission is free.

The tour started with a movie, and it was great. It told a lot about the early days of railroad travel in America, and it had an interesting section on mail cars. I’ll get to that in a second.

The free movie that starts every tour of the Steamtown National Historic Site.

After the movie, you follow the marked path and see several locomotives and a mail car. Some of those photos are coming up (I used my Nikon D810 and the 24-120 Nikon lens for all the photos you see here). After that, the path takes you outside again to see the roundtable. That’s what locomotive repair facilities used to rotate locomotives and put them on the right tracks. Here’s a photo of the roundtable.

A locomotive maintenance yard roundtable.

It might seem mundane, but the movie told an interesting story about this aspect of railroad history and seeing an actual mail car immediately after was a nice touch.

Another mail car photo. The trains didn’t stop to pick up the mail. Mail bags were hung in each small town, and the mail cars snatched them as the train rolled across America. Interesting stuff.

The locomotives in the maintenance shop were interesting. Photographing these would ordinarily be a challenge because of the dimly-lit buildings and the black locomotives, but the Nikon 810 and the 24-120 lens vibration reduction technology handled it well. That combo has superior low-light capabilities. All of these photos are hand-held shots with no flash.

The locomotives were huge. As a mechanical engineer, it was a real treat to see what the state of the art was a century ago.

The displays included a cutaway locomotive that showed a steam locomotive’s innards. I had studied steam generation as an undergraduate engineering student and like I said, I was a Lionel guy when I was a kid, but I had no idea. This stuff is fascinating.

There was a lot going on inside these things.

We walked around outside and I grabbed photos of some of the locomotives in the yard. This one was obviously unrestored. It was pretty cool.

The rail yard had a Reading Lines diesel electric locomotive on display, too. Most folks just call these diesels, but propulsion was actually via electric motors in the trucks (a truck is the subchassis that carries the wheels, the axles, and the electric motors). The diesel engine is used to turn a generator that provides electricity to the motors. If this sounds suspiciously like a modern hybrid automobile, it’s because it is.

A diesel electric locomotive: The worlds’ first hybrid.

As we left, it was just starting to rain. It was overcast the entire time we visited Steamtown National Historic Site. I was okay with that, because overcast days are best for good photography. I stopped to grab a few photos of the Big Boy parked at the entrance to the site.

Big Boy 4012, one of only 25 ever built.

These Big Boy locomotives are a story all by themselves. They were the largest steam locomotives ever built, designed specifically for the the Union Pacific Railroad by the American Locomotive Works. They are articulated, which means their 4-8-8-4 wheel set (4 little wheels, 8 big drive wheels, 8 more big drive wheels, and then 4 more little wheels) are hinged underneath the locomotive so the thing can negotiate curves. The Big Boys were created for the specific purpose of pulling long trains up and over the Rocky Mountains. They only made 25 of them. We had one here in my neighborhood a few years ago and we wrote about it on the blog.

Which brings me to my next point. I started this blog by saying that folks my age love steam locomotives. I guess that pertains to Gresh and me, as it seems we’ve done a number of ExNotes blogs that include railroad stuff. Here you go, boys and girls.

The California State Railroad Museum
Big Boy!
The Nevada Northern
Golden Spike National Historic Park
Going Nowhere, Slowly
Santa Rosalia’s Hotel Frances
A TT250 Ride

Pennsylvania is a beautiful state. I grew up one state over (in New Jersey), and a lot of the folks I knew in New Jersey relocated to Pennsylvania because of the more rational tax structure. There are beautiful motorcycle roads in Pennsylvania, too, once you get off the freeways and start exploring. If you make it to Scranton, the place has great restaurants, and like most east coast locales, the Italian food is the best in the world (even better than Italy, in my opinion). Try Vincenzo’s for pizza. It was awesome.

A Vincenzo’s delight. Thin crust, the right toppings, and wow, was it ever goood!

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ExhaustNotes 2021 Motorcycle Rider Gift Guide

Long after the last word has been typed, when the world lays in waste and all that remains is a ground-hugging sulfuric cloud of swirling brown gas fed on by fantastic single-celled creatures all named Bob, there will be Christmas gift giving guides. This is because gift-giving guides are really just listicles masquerading as useful information. Listicles are the lowest form of writing and like the single-celled Bobs, can survive anything. Of course that depressing scenario doesn’t stop ExhaustNotes from jumping on the bandwagon. At least we waited until after Thanksgiving.

The motorcycling community is many-fractured; to the outsider we may seem to require only one description: motorcyclists, but that is far from the reality. ExhaustNote’s gift guide recognizes both the Yin and the Fro of the motorcycling public and is helpfully broken into rider type to better match motorcycle-gift to motorcycle-giftee.

This beautiful gold-tone trophy is an excellent gift for the Canyon Racer. Canyon Racers are easy to identify because they just passed you on the inside of a blind corner…in a school zone. Canyon Racers ply their trade on public roads because those guys on the racetrack are going way too fast for Canyon Racer to get past; unlike that Chrysler mini van they out-braked and stuffed mightily in the Arby’s drive up window. Canyon Racers have colorful motorcycles that mimic the appearance of race bikes in the same way Canyon Racers mimic actual racers. They dress in expensive leather suits and spend most of their time sanding down the edges of their tires to mask a common malady named Chicken Strips. Have no fear of duplicate gifts with the above trophy, the one you give your Canyon Racer will be the only one he ever sees.

Morbid and practical describes both the finely crafted casket above and the riders in our next group: The Cruisers. Consisting of mostly dead men, the Cruiser rider segment is so old they can remember the time before the Internet was invented. As the Cruiser rider’s body withers away to leather and buckles the bikes he rides become ever larger, slower and more expensive. Often mistaken for a briefcase, the Cruiser rider blows all his money chasing chrome and noise-making devices leaving his next-of-kin no money to pay for his funeral. The casket above will subtly tell the Worst Generation, best known for their ability to close the door behind themselves, that the one thing belonging to future generations that the Cruisers can’t mortgage is time.

One of the handiest gifts you can give an Adventure Bike rider is this inflatable cast. The tall, heavy motorcycles Adventure Riders prefer are sized exactly right for breaking an ankle when they fall over. And fall over they do. A normal person would look at an Adventure motorcycle and never in a million years guess that you are supposed to take the machine off road. Everything about the bike, its weight, size, width and ground clearance screams ridiculous. The Adventure Rider only screams when the bike falls on him. Other suitable gifts for an Adventure Rider would be a first aid kit, health insurance, a girl friend or a gift card to a nationwide chain of coffee brewers.

These rose-colored glasses are perfect for the Vintage motorcycle enthusiast. Even older than the Cruiser Rider, Vintage Riders are way more stubborn. They can be found at home because their bikes are never actually ridden. Simply looking at a motorcycle is all the excitement their weak and failing hearts can take. (This means no girl friends!) If you get the optional, rose-colored magnifying glasses your Vintage Rider will be able to identify the date codes on the many, many parts he has stored in boxes. Knowing the date code won’t really change anything but he will sleep better having the useless data points. The Vintage Rider will never sell his parts because he knows what they are worth, preferring instead to leave it to his nephew to toss the boxes of greasy bits into a dumpster when he is summoned to settle the Vintage Rider’s estate.

This gift will delete…I mean delight Scooter Riders. Properly used, the castration tool will provide welcome clearance for the odd, two-feet-together seating position most scooters employ. In addition to the improved comfort, dramatic personality changes can be expected that will make your favorite Scooter Rider more pleasant to be around. He’ll fight much less and smell better to boot! If your Scooter Rider has designs on a singing career get him one sooner rather than later.

All these gifts are available online at Amazon or other local-shop destroying, mega corporation websites. Merry Christmas!

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Ferrari versus…Jeep?

You’ve probably seen the movie Ferrari versus Ford a few years ago about Enzo Ferrari, Henry Ford II, Carrol Shelby, and the 24 hours of Le Mans. As flicks go, it was decent show. Ford GTs are cool and so are Ferraris, made even more so by their stint in the police show a few years ago where a Ferrari Testarossa shared top billing with the two actors who played the good guys. That show had one of the greatest intro scenes ever:

I didn’t know why that show and the Miami Vice sound track was playing in my mind repeatedly for the last day or so, and then it hit me: Joe Gresh posted an old passport photo on Facebook. Take a look and tell me what you think:

Gresh is a Jeep man, though, through and through. Like me, I think he’d have a hard time even getting into a Ferrari. Hence the title of this blog.

A bit about the Ferraris on Miami Vice. It’s shades of Long Way Around all over again, you know, when those two dilettantes who call themselves adventure riders wanted to borrow a couple of KTMs and do a show about going around the world on motorcycles. KTM wouldn’t cough up the bikes, so BMW stepped in with their GS ADV bikes, and Starbuck’s parking lots haven’t been the same since.

Something similar happened on Miami Vice. Its producer asked Ferrari to give them two Testarossas and the answer was no. So they had two kit cars made up using Corvettes as the base car and Enzo went nuts. He sued the kit car company, but in the end, he coughed up the two real Ferraris so Don Johnson could be authentic. Not as authentic as Joe Gresh in a Jeep, but more than he would have been otherwise.

One more thing about Miami Vice: A lot of big name actors got their start on that show. Take a look:

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Newcomb’s Goes On The Block

All good things must come to an end, I suppose, and Newcomb’s may be one of those things. I just read that this iconic roadhouse on what may be the most famous moto road in So Cal is on the block. The article also said that Newcomb’s has been shut down for months…another casualty of the pandemic. Ah, let’s hope the right somebody buys it and brings it back to its former splendor.

Truth be told, it was the ride, and not the Newcomb’s restaurant that made Angeles Crest Highway something special. The food was okay and the service was always outstanding, but the real attraction was the Newcomb’s parking lot and the ride to get there. Ferraris, MV Augustas, vintage bikes, Jay Leno…you just never knew what you’d see out there. That was always worth the ride.

I wrote a Destinations piece for Motorcycle Classics magazine on the Angeles Crest Highway and Newcomb’s Ranch a few years ago. I’ve ridden the Crest many times, and I don’t think I’ve ever ridden by Newcomb’s without stopping.

You can approach Newcomb’s from either end of the Angeles Crest Highway. The Crest, or California Highway 2, can be picked up off the 210 freeway just north of Glendale (which is just north of Los Angeles), or you can get on it in Wrightwood at the northeastern end on the other side of the San Gabriel Mountains. It’s a delightful ride.

I have a lot of stories about rides on the Crest. I led a bunch of CSC Motorcycles company rides up there, I’ve ridden it a lot with my geezer moto buddies, I’ve seen more than a few crashes (by others) up there, and I even went ice racing up there on a Triumph Daytona once. Good buddy Bryan (who is fast approaching geezerdom) and I started out from the Wrightwood end one winter day and we soon noticed we were the only two people on the road. Then it got cold. Then it started snowing. Then we realized the bikes were moving around a bit more than usual. We were riding on ice. And we faced that age-old question: Do we admit defeat and turn around, or press ahead in the belief warmer weather lies ahead and things will get better?

Being redblooded American engineers (read that any way you want), Bryan and yours truly pressed ahead. We stopped at Newcomb’s, and we were the only ones in the parking. We went inside to warm up and the folks who worked there were astonished. How did you get here? On our motorcycles, we said. But the road’s closed, they said. Wow.

Newcomb’s. An American and So Cal icon. Let’s hope it comes back to life soon.

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Yamaha RD350 No. 9: Shocks, It Was Nothing

The RD350’s rear suspension seemed kind of springy to me, like there was no damping or the shock oil had leaked out. In corners the bike would hit a bump and bounce. Nothing frightening or dangerous but in combination with the front forks needing a rebuild anything less than smooth pavement was a ragged, unsophisticated ride. The RD still wore its original shock absorbers from 1974 so I figured it was time for a replacement set.

I found many options online, prices ranged from $500 to $50. I think we all know what option I took. Look, it’s not that I don’t want a really nice set of shocks it’s just that I’ve had some bad luck with expensive shock absorbers. In a nutshell they didn’t last very long. I mean it’s not like a dirt bike where you need good suspension. I’m using the RD350 on the street, an environment where you hardly need rear suspension at all. I found a set of shocks on ebay that looked similar to the original Yamaha shocks. For $47 shipping included I was willing to take a chance. The shocks arrived in about 3 days.

Out of the box the eBay shocks looked really well made. The chrome was beautiful, the top-mounting boss was cast aluminum and the things even have a plastic sleeve between the shock body and the spring to eliminate squeaking. The original shocks did not have this feature and squeaked a lot. They sounded like an old, rusty gate swinging in the wind when you hit a bump.

Fitment was straightforward except that the original Yamaha shocks had no bushings: the rubber inside the mounts fit directly over the shock studs. I had to press out the steel bushings on the new shock, which was fairly easy using a bench vice and a couple appropriately sized sockets. Instead of black rubber like the originals the new shocks used a material that resembled urethane and may in fact be urethane. It is translucent yellow and looks cool.

With the bushing removed the new shocks fit a bit loose on the mounting studs but not loose enough to fit a bushing. I thought about cutting a strip from an aluminum beer can and wrapping it around the stud to take up the slack but instead decided to hope that the now-bushingless urethane would relax a bit over time and swell to suit its environs. I often hope for mechanical things to fix themselves and frequently they do. The washers on either side of the stud sandwich the urethane a bit when the shock bolts are tightened so maybe they will smoosch the fit tighter.

After fitting the shocks I found the first spring preload position was too soft so I stuck a pin punch inside the nifty preload adjuster hole and cranked it up to the second position. That seemed about right. I wheeled the Yamaha out into the daylight and fired up the sweet-running two-stroke twin. It’s a sound that never gets old.

The first thing I noticed while riding was no squeaking, the eBay shocks were quiet. The roads around my place are sort of rough and there was a noticeable improvement in the bounciness department. It seemed like with the rear shocks working better the blown out front forks felt worse or maybe I just paid more attention. Corners were steadier and the rear tire rubbed the fender less than it did before. Still, it wasn’t the dramatic improvement I was shooting for. That might be down to the $47 price point.

Curious about the original shocks I compressed the spring with a long bar clamp and removed the spring collar along with the spring. Now I could test the shocks for damping action. Surprisingly both shocks still had oil in them and offered firm resistance to rebound. The compression action was much less as you would expect. It’s really hard to tell but I think the two Yamaha shocks offer slightly different hydraulic action. Certainly nothing I could feel on the road. I’ll go out on a limb here and say that there was probably nothing wrong with the original shocks. They work like they work I guess.

I’ll clean up the Yamaha shocks and pack them away to rot. In the meantime I’ll be running the eBay shocks to see if they hold up for 47 years like the originals. The new rear suspension has moved fixing the forks to the front burner. The RD350 handles well with clapped out suspension, I can’t wait to get both ends sorted and sample some of that legendary road-racer for the street performance RDs are known for.

More of the Gresh Resurrections!

Ankara!

Sleepless in Seattle? Nah. How about awake in Ankara?

I’ve had a few secret missions to Turkey and I love the place. When I fly in to Ankara, I usually arrive at 2:30 a.m. over there. That would be 4:30 p.m. back in So Cal, so I’m still usually wide awake after flying through the night (it’s 12 hours to Istanbul, and another hour to the capital). Hence the title of this blog.

Maybe I was a Turk in a prior life. But then I’ve sort of always felt I was Mexican in a prior life, too. I love Mexico (especially Baja), but here’s something you probably didn’t know: I love Turkey, too. And it’s weird…as far as I know, there’s nobody in the Berk family tree from Turkey. But my last name, with it’s unusual spelling (B-E-R-K) is a common last name in Turkey. When I’m over there and I pay with a credit card, folks frequently ask if I’m a Turk. Berk the Turk. Go figure.

Ankara is one of my favorite cities in Turkey, and like the rest of the country, it’s a photography Nirvana. I’ll share a few of my favorite Ankara spots in upcoming blogs, and I thought to get the ball rolling I’d share a few from the airport ride into downtown.

I’ll have a few more in future blogs…the Ataturk Museum, Old Ankara, the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations, and more.

Turkey would be my dream ride. They sell Zongshens over there, and the 250cc RX3 would be perfect for a ride across Turkey, I think. Someday.

Never miss an ExNotes blog!

Geezer on a Beezer

The latest news to sweep across the ether is that BSA is being revived in India. Eh, we’ll see.

I’m naturally skeptical about revivals. Lord knows Norton has been through a few, and last I checked, like Julius Caesar they’re still dead. Indian (not bikes from India, but the American Indian brand) should maybe be called the Easter bike based on how many times they’ve been resurrected. And there was Henderson for a while maybe 20 years ago (remember that flash in the pan?). Triumph…well you know that story. They rose again, but it wasn’t really the original Triumph…it was just the name, but then they reintroduced the vertical twin Bonneville, except the displacement increased until the marvelous 650cc we used to know grew to 1200cc and the bike gained a couple of hundred pounds, give or take. I’d like to see Bud Ekins jump one of the new Bonnevilles escaping from a German POW camp. He might have better luck getting airborne with a Panzer.

And then of course there’s Royal Enfield, but they’re technically not a resurrection. They never went out of business. Well, maybe they sort of did, but before the Japanese bikes drove the final nail in the British motorcycle industry coffin (with a lot of help from the British motorcycle industry, who’s official motto seemed to be “too little, too late”), the original Royal Enfield (the folks in England) starting building bikes in India, and when the Brits went belly up, the folks running the Indian plant watched, shrugged, and kept on building. I ride an Indian Royal Enfield, but it’s not an Indian like most folks in the US motorcycling community use the word. Well, okay, it is, but it’s from India. It’s not a Polaris Indian from America.

Confused yet?

This BSA thing might be cool, though. I’d like to see it work, and if it works as well as my Royal Enfield (which is as fine as any motorcycle made anywhere), it would be a good thing. I always wanted a Beezer when I was a kid, and I suppose owning one now would make me a geezer with a Beezer (like the kid’s book, Sheep in a Jeep).

In the meantime, here are a few more photos I’ve shot of BSAs at the Hansen Dam Britbike meet in California, in Australia, and elsewhere over the years. We can only hope the resurrected bikes look as good.

You know what I’d like to see? I’d like to see two bikes from the 1960s resurrected…a 1966 Triumph T120R and a 1965 Electra Glide (the last year of the Panhead, and the first year of the electric start). Those are two of the most beautiful motorcycles ever made. The HD photo below is an earlier Duo Glide, but you get the idea. Make them reliable, substitute enough aluminum for steel so that when you add all the smog and other regulatoria the bikes weigh in at their mid-’60s weights, and make them reliable. Zongshen, you guys listening?