TJ’s Urban Camo Process

A couple of months ago I shared a photo of a very cool SIG 239 that good buddy TJ had finished in Urban Camo (it’s the one you see in the photo above).  I was intrigued by the finish, and as TJ walked me through the steps, I started to get an appreciation for how much work is involved.  Here’s the process as TJ explained it to me:

Step 1:  Disassemble, clean and inspect the firearm.
Step 2:  Sand blast or other surface preparation.
Step 3:  Apply base coat (black Duracoat for the gun you see above).
Step 4:  Add camo stickers to create pattern.
Step 5:  Spray light grey Duracoat.
Step 6:  Add more camo stickers to create pattern.
Step 7:  Spray dark grey Duracoat to create pattern.
Step 8:  Add more camo stickers to create pattern.
Step 9:  Spray base coat again (black Duracoat for the gun you see above).
Step 10:  Remove all camouflage stickers and inspect gun.
Step 11:   Overspray muting stripes (netted flat black).
Step 12:  Spray clear coat.
Step 13:  Clean excess Duracoat from holes, rails, etc.
Step 14:  Reassemble and oil firearm.

Here’s what it looks like as the gun proceeds through the urban camo application process:

The above makes for a good-looking gun and a durable finish.  After it’s fully cured, it’s relatively impervious to solvents or gun oils.

TJ can do other finishes as well, including a soft camouflage done without the tape described above (freehand spots or stripes).

TJ can also do speckling (like you see below), which is a good finish for hiding pitting and other surface imperfections.

If you would like to get a feel for a few of the other finishes TJ offers, you might take a look at his website at www.TJsCustomGunworks.com.

I’ve had six handguns and a rifle customized by TJ, and every one of them is a stellar example of his craftsmanship.  These include my Model 59, a bright stainless Colt 1911, my MacManus Colt 1911, the Rock Island Compact, a Model 60 Smith and Wesson snubbie, a Ruger Mini 14, and my new Colt Python.  TJ’s emphasis is on reliability and perfection and he’s met both of those objectives in every case.  It’s been money well spent.  When it comes to custom firearms, TJ is in a class by himself.

 

 

Snakes Alive!

When I was a kid growing up in rural New Jersey, we convinced ourselves that the local lakes and streams were inhabited by water moccasins.  All the books said cottonmouths didn’t live that far north, but we had seen them (or so we thought).  I even caught one in a pond on a fishing lure…I saw it sitting on a rock, I dangled the lure in front of it, and the snake went for it.  That scared the hell out of me:  I was the classic case of the dog that finally caught the bus he always chased.  What do I do now?  I ended up cutting the line to let the snake (and my lure) get away.  It was, after all, a water moccasin (or so I thought).

And then, of course, many years later there was that rather unsettling scene in my favorite movie, Lonesome Dove:

Last week Sue and I were back in Sopranoland for a wedding, and the next day we rode around so I could show her my old haunts.  One was the Old Mill in Deans (not to be confused with the Old Mill Hotel in Baja).  It was behind where my grandma lived and it was basically a dam that created a huge lake where we used to play back in the day.  So we’re walking around and I snapped a photo or two when this woman said “there’s a snake down there!”

A panorama of the lake at the Old Mill…five photos stitched together in PhotoShop.

I checked and what do you know, she was right.  The snake was on a log downstream of the dam where a bridge carried traffic over the spillway.  The snake was almost directly beneath the bridge.  As usual, I didn’t have the perfect lens on my Nikon (that would have been the 70-300 Nikkor), but what I had on the camera (Old Faithful, my 24-120 Nikon lens) worked a lot better than a cell phone.  I zoomed all the way and grabbed some awesome photos.  Then I looked around and I saw another snake on the same log.  And then another slithering through the water.  And then two more that might have been making even more snakes.  Snakes alive, I was in the middle of a moccasin orgy!

This spot is at least a couple of hundred years ago. There used to be a mill located here, powered by the water held behind this dam. We played here as kids. It was a good time and a good place to grow up.
And another!. The lower snake is the same one you see in the big photo above. Then I spotted the one you see at the top of this photo!
This guy was next to the log, slithering around in the water.
I saw these two looking straight down from my vantage point on the bridge above the stream. I leaned waaaay over the bridge railing to get this shot. Water moccasins making whoopee?

I was so intrigued by the above photos that I Googled “water moccasin” to get photos of the real McCoy.  After spending decades believing there were indeed moccasins in New Jersey, I convinced myself that what I was seeing in my photos were common New Jersey water snakes.  Moccasins have a more triangular head and a slightly different pattern.  Still, these snakes are pretty big (the big one on the log in the photo above was about 5 feet long) and I would not want to tangle with any of them.  You never know…I might be wrong and maybe they are moccasins.

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The Springfield Mile

That photo above?  It’s the Springfield mile, with riders exiting Turn 4 at over 100 mph on their way up to 140 or so. These boys are really flying.  It is an incredible thing to see.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.  Two blogs back I wrote about the East Windsor half-mile dirt track, which has gone the way of the dodo bird.  The Springfield Mile is bigger and better and last I checked it’s still with us.  A dozen years ago I made the trek out to Illinois watch the big boys (and a lady or two) mix it up and it was awesome.  I don’t know if this is accurate or if it’s more biker bullshit, but the guys claim the bikes hit 140 mph in the straights and maintain a cool 100 in the turns.  And “straights” is a relative term.  The track is basically a big oval, with the straights being less of a curve.  What’s nice about oval track racing, though, is you usually can see all the action all the time.  When you go to a grand prix type event, you get to see the bikes or the cars for just an instant when they scream past wherever you are.  Oval tracks are a better deal, I think.

We planned to ride to Springfield from So Cal, but just before it was wheels-in-the-wells time my good buddy Larry passed and I stayed for his funeral.  We flew instead and because that gave us a little bit more of our most precious commodity (time), we bopped around Springfield a bit more.  We visited Springfield’s Lincoln Museum and had a lot of fun getting there. I drove our rental car and we promptly got lost (it was in the pre-GPS era). We pulled alongside a police officer and he gave us directions. As soon as I pulled away, I asked my buds which way to go. “I don’t know,” they answered, “we weren’t listening…” Neither was I. We all had a good laugh over that one.

An interesting Norton in the fairgrounds parking lot.
Another shot of the Norton.

The Illinois State Fairgrounds has two tracks, on a quarter-mile dirt oval and the other the big mile.  The quarter-mile races were awesome.  This racing, all by itself, would have been worth the trip out there.  I love watching the flat trackers.

These boys are kicking up some dirt coming out of Turn 4 on the Illinois State Fairgrounds quarter-mile track.
One of the riders lost it coming our of Turn 4 and he crashed hard directly in front of us.
I didn’t think he was going to get up, but he did.  The next day, this guy won a heat on the 1-mile track.  The announcer said he was “tougher than a $2 steak.” I believe it.

The next day, we went to the 1-mile track on the other side of the State Fairgrounds.

The field entering Turn 2 at over 100 mph on the Springfield 1-mile track. The noise is incredible and there’s nothing like it.  These guys are drifting sideways at 100 mph, just a few inches apart!
The same shot as above, but with the two fastest riders at the Springfield Mile identified.  The arrows point to Chris Carr (National No. 4 in the white and orange leathers) and Kenny Coolbeth (National No. 1 in the black leathers).  Coolbeth won on Sunday and Carr won on Monday.  This photo was just after the start.
One lap later: Coolbeth and Carr are riding as a closely-matched pair well ahead of the group.

I was really happy with these shots. I had my old Nikon D200 and a cheap lens (a 10-year old, mostly plastic, $139 Sigma 70-300). I zoomed out to 300 mm, set the ISO to 1000 for a very high shutter speed (even though it was a bright day), and the lens at f5.6 (the fastest the inexpensive Sigma would go at 300mm).  The camera’s autofocus wouldn’t keep up with the motorcycles at this speed, so I manually focused on Turn 2 and waited (but not for long) for the motorcycles to enter the viewfinder.  It was close enough for government work, freezing the 100 mph action for the photos you see above.

Kenny Coolbeth, after winning the Springfield Mile.
Nicole Cheza, a very fast rider. She won the “Dash for Cash” and the crowd loved it.
A Harley XR-750 rider having fun.

As you might expect, there were quite a few things happening off the track, too.  Johnsonville Brats had a huge tractor trailer onsite equipped with grills, and they were serving free grilled brat sandwiches.  It was a first for me, and it worked…I’ve been buying Johnsonville brats ever since.  There were hundreds of interesting motorcycles on display and a vintage World War II bomber orbiting the area.

An old B-17 flying above the track…it made several appearances that weekend.
An old Ariel Square Four. The owner started it and it sounded like two Triumph 650s.
An old two-stroke Bridgestone, a marque that never quite made it in the US. Imagine the marketing discussions in Japan: “Let’s logo it the BS…that will work!”

So there you have it, along with a bit of advice from yours truly:  If you ever have an opportunity to see the Springfield Mile, go for it.  I had a great time and I would do it again in a heartbeat.

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Riding With The Carrizozo Mud Chuckers

Sixty-one miles north of my place in La Luz, New Mexico lies the town of Carrizozo. The seat of Lincoln County, Carrizozo’s streets are laid out at an angle to the intersection of Carrizozo’s two main highways, 380 and 54. There are colorful donkey statues stationed around, a junkyard church on the outskirts of town and the Carrizozo Mud Chuckers motorcycle club.

The Mud Chuckers MC, founded by my riding buddy, Mike, is primarily a dirt-based riding club. The area around Carrizozo has hundreds of graded farm roads and tight mountain trails. It’s an ideal spot for racking up miles on the dirt. I recently joined them on one of their frequent moto-camping rides. The Chuckers shun traditional campgrounds preferring instead to camp anywhere they can find a spot with no people around.

Like all the ‘Chuckers rides I’ve been on the pace was downright leisurely with frequent stops to look at old mine sites, hunt for geodes, gold deposits and old metal objects or just sit in the shade to discuss unimportant things. The ‘Chuckers are in no hurry to get anywhere and that suits me just fine.

On this day we rode west to Socorro, NM and took the Escondida Lake exit to the Back Country Byway. The Byway meanders generally east-west then south with the terrain ranging from desert scrub to medium-high trees. At the speed we operate it’s best to look for a campsite early because ‘Chuckers don’t like stress. We checked out several places but nothing looked appealing. There was either no shade or no firewood or a stinky dead cow rotting nearby so we pushed on.

Eddie dropped his KLR 650 in a sand wash and bent his clutch hand so that it didn’t want to work right. He was doing 45mph so the impact, while soft, still hurt. The ‘Chuckers are not spring chickens. In perfect tune we can hardly swing a leg over the motorcycle. Eddie called it a day. Since we never leave a man behind we short cut the Byway and followed him back to his house in Carrizozo where we had begun this adventure.

With Eddie’s DNF, that left me, Dan and Mike still on the lead lap. By now it was getting late so we abandoned our plan to camp on the Back Country Byway and decided the higher mountains behind White Oaks would be the best option. It was late and we still had a 30-mile ride to the forest.

We found a spot with plenty of firewood and soft ground. We managed to get camp set up just before dark, which is always a good idea. Once they find a place to roost the Carrizozo Mud Chuckers really come on the pipe. The fire was roaring, Mike brought along pork chops and a metal grill to cook with. I don’t know where he stores all that junk on his 390 KTM. Sizzling pork chops, boiling coffee, cookies, beef jerky, Wheat Thins: man, things were hopping at camp this evening. The altitude we were camping was around 7000 feet, it got pretty cold, probably in the 30’s but around the fire it was 75 degrees.

Campfire nights last longer than regular ones and I turned in at midnight. Mike and Dan sat up longer. Flickering lights and murmured shadow conversation played across the inside of my tent. I felt safe knowing the bear would go after them before me. The next morning The Mud Chucker’s were in no hurry to leave. We restarted the fire and had coffee with whatever scraps of food we had left over from last night’s feast. The Mud Chuckers always leave their campsites cleaner than they found them and the way they put out a campfire borders on obsessive.

When I got back home it felt like I had been away a month instead of only two days. Camping on a motorcycle seems to distort time and distance. Changing your observation point really does have a profound effect.

Mike and Eddie want to start a motorcycle tour business. Their plan is to buy a few TW200 Yamahas and run all inclusive, guided camping tours around New Mexico. It sounds like a pain in the butt to me. Why ruin a nice motorcycle ride with business?

I’ll let you know if the tour company idea works out. Maybe a full ExhaustNotes.us tour review or something. Get the ‘Chuckers to kick in a free tour as an ExhaustNotes subscriber gimmick?

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Evel Knievel and East Windsor

It was the summer of 1966, I was a skinny little 15-year-old kid, my Dad owned a new Triumph Bonneville, and I was in hog heaven.  We were going to the motorcycle races.  A big night out in those days was the East Windsor Speedway, a half-mile dirt track oval where they raced everything.  Stock cars, two-strokes, and the big bikes.  Not just locals, either.  Harley’s Bart Markel (National No. 1), Triumph’s Gary Nixon (National No. 9), and more.  It was the 4th of July weekend and it was 55 years ago.  I remember it like it was last week.

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

The East Windsor Speedway’s stands, abandoned and overgrown several years ago, are no more.
The infield, now covered with tract homes.

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

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

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

The Evel show…multiple passes and then he was up in the air.

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

The crowd went nuts.  A seismic cheer drowned out the mighty Milwaukee sound machine.  We had seen Evel, the man and the motorcycle.  Airborne and in person, flying over the buses that would have you leave the driving to them.  It was awesome.

It all happened 55 years ago.  Evel, my Dad, and the East Windsor Speedway have gone on to their reward and I’m officially a geezer drawing Social Security.  But that evening?  It will live in my memory forever.

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A Model 625 load…

When I first posted about the Model 60 load development plan and the Altamont grips I bought from good buddy Paul, the cover photo showed my recently-acquired Model 60 snubbie and a Smith and Wesson Performance Center Model 625 I’ve owned for years.

The Model 625 and the Model 60.

I like that photo because the two stainless steel Smiths look great on the wild boar skin.  That skin is from a pig hunt Paul and I did in Arizona a few years ago.

The earlier blog was about finding an accuracy load for the Model 60, but a few people wrote to ask if I had a favorite load for the Model 625.  I do: My usual accuracy load for the 625 is a cast 200-grain cast semiwadcutter bullet (sized to .452 inches) over 4.2 grains of Bullseye.

When I went to the range to run a few rounds through the 625 I picked a box of ammo I had reloaded in 2014.  It was different than my usual accuracy load.  I used the same bullet (a 200-grain cast semi-wadcutter), but instead of Bullseye I had loaded these over 6.0 grains of Unique.  And instead of .45 ACP brass in star clips, I used AutoRim brass.  This is the load I fired that 6-shot group you see in the cover photo above for this blog, and it’s a honey.  The group, that is…not the photo (it’s hard to get true colors when using an iPhone in the shade).  I shot at 50 feet while standing…there’s no rest for the Model 625 or the weary.

.45 ACP cartridges in star clips for the Model 625. These are loaded with 230-grain cast roundnose Missouri bullets.
The .45 ACP cartridge (left) and the .45 AutoRim cartridge (right). The AutoRim cartridge is designed for use in the Model 625 without star clips. The ACP cartridge has a 230-grain roundnose Xtreme bullet; the AutoRim cartridge has Missouri’s 200-grain semi-wadcutter.

The AutoRim brass is in the tumbler as I write this and when I reload it I’m going to go with the same load: The 200-grain cast semi-wadcutter over 6.0 grains of Unique.  It seems to be working for me.

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More Tales of the Gun stories are here:

Phavorite Photos

Good buddy Python Pete wrote to me with a suggestion a few weeks ago.  His comment and idea was that I probably had thousands of photos (which I do) and I probably had a few favorites (which I do).  His suggestion was to share those here on the ExNotes blog. I thought that was a sterling idea.

I shot the photo you see above on a sultry night in Bangkok’s Arab district (every night is sultry in Bangkok).  The street is unofficially called Soi Arab; officially it’s Sukhumvit Soi 3/1.  That road (and sidestreets off it) are lined with Middle Eastern restaurants, a cuisine I love.

Bangkok’s Arab district attracts many folks from the Middle East partly due to its proximity to those countries, partly due to a vibrant nightlife, and partly due to a world class hospital that treats people from that part of the world.  Me?  I was in town to teach a couple of engineering courses and enjoy Bangkok. It’s one of the world’s great cities.  Take it from me:  Never say no to an opportunity to visit Bangkok.

So as I liked to do, I walked to Soi Arab and sat down at a sidewalk cafe and  ordered a plate of hummus and chips.  While I was enjoying my dinner a group of several Middle Eastern types entered and sat at a nearby table.  All but one were burly guys dressed in dark business suits.  The exception was an elegant older gentleman dressed in traditional Arab garb.  Distinguished would be an appropriate but not quite adequate adjective.   Majestic would be more on the mark.

I kept stealing glances at this fellow, thinking it would be great to grab a picture.  I guess I was a little too obvious.  I noticed a couple of the dark suiters with him (obvious security types) were looking directly me.  One of them stood up and walked over to me.

“Uh oh,” I thought.

“Is there a problem?” the man asked.

“Uh, well, no,” I said with mixed emotions.  I wanted to get what I knew would be a great photo, but I also wanted to continue breathing.  “It’s like this,” I said, “I’m an amateur photographer and your principal would make for a very dramatic image.  I don’t wish to offend or insult, but I’m wondering if there’s any way I could take a picture of your distinguished protectee.”  As I said it I realized how stupid that sounded.  Anyone who travels with bodyguards doesn’t want to be photographed.  But the words were out there.  The words “rendition” and “beheading” crossed my mind.

The security guy looked at me.  He didn’t know what to think (I’m told I sometimes have that effect on people).  He walked back to his table and leaned over to whisper to the man you see above.  The flowing headdress turned my way, I saw a smile and he motioned me over to his table.  I had my Nikon and I got the photo you see above in a single shot.  I have no idea who he is, why he was in town, or exactly where he was from, but that photo is one of my all time favorites.

Tulsa and Oklahoma’s Green Country

You may recall that about a year and a half ago I did a blog on our visit to Oklahoma and the great riding in the eastern half of the state around the Tulsa area.  I wrote a piece about that for Motorcycle Classics magazine and you can get to most of it online here.  You can pick up a copy of the latest issue at your local newstand.  Better yet, subscribe to Motorcycle Classics.

Your two blogmeisters (yours truly and Joe Gresh) have been published in several motorcycle magazines and other publications both in print and in the digital world.  You can get to a partial compendium of our articles by clicking here for me and here for Gresh (or by clicking on either of the above photos).

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Favorite Baja Hotels: Guerrero Negro’s Malarrimo’s

This blog grew longer than I had planned.  I thought I would touch on Malarrimo’s (one of my favorite hotels in Baja) and that would be it, but I realized once I got into it that there’s a lot more to the story and Guerrero Negro.

If you’re headed into Baja, especially if you’re headed there to see the whales, you’d be hardpressed to find a better hotel than Malarrimo’s in Guerrero Negro.  Guerrero Negro is at the halfway point when headed down the Baja peninsula (it’s about 450 miles south of the border).  It’s located along the 28th Parallel,  the dividing line between Baja and Baja Sur (Baja’s two Mexican states).

Although some might be inclined to dismiss Guerrero Negro because as little more than a gritty industrial town, it’s actually a pretty cool place to visit and a good base for further explorations.  There’s whale watching, the ecological preserve, salt mining, the nearby cave paintings, the food, and more.

Ah, the food.  As Gresh so aptly put it, no one loses weight on a Baja ride with me.  I’ll get to that in a minute.

Don Enrique Achoy founded Malarimmo’s about a half century ago, and it has remained a family business.  He was ahead of his time, offering eco tours to see the whales, the ecological preserve surrounding Scammon’s Lagoon, and more.   There are other hotels in Guerrero Negro, but I always check Malarimmo’s first.  It’s not fancy and at around $65 per night it’s a tiny bit expensive for Baja, but it is inviting. it’s clean, and I just feel good there.  The restaurant is arguably the best in town, and I love the bar (more on both in just a bit).

Getting There

Malarrimo’s is easy to find.  Just head south on the Transpeninsular Highway from the border for 450 miles.  You’ll see a huge metal eagle at Parallelo 28 and a Mexican military base.  Shortly after that, you’ll see a sign pointing to the right and Guerrero Negro.

Take that right, and Malarimmo’s will be on your right as you enter town.  You can’t miss it.  Incidentally, the lagoon you see in the satellite photo above is Scammon’s Lagoon.  It’s where the whales will be, which takes me to our next topic.

Whale Watching

Whale watching tours are available from January through March when the California gray whales are in town, and it is a life changing experience. Those are strong words and you might be tempted to dismiss them as hyperbole.  Take one of Malarrimo’s 4-hour, $50 whale watching tours out on Scammon’s Lagoon and then you tell me.  I’ll bet you come away feeling the same way.

We have a lot more on whale watching on our Baja page, so I won’t spend too much time here on it.  Trust me on this, though:  It is like nothing you have ever done.

The Ecological Preserve

When you get a whale tour at Malarimmo’s, it will take about a half hour in a Malarimmo van to get to the where the pangas (the small boats that take you out to see the whales) are docked, and on that ride, you pass through an ecological preserve that is home to more than 150 wildlife species.  You’ll see many nesting ospreys (a bird of prey), and if you’re lucky (like we have been) you’ll get to see an osprey enjoying a bit of sushi.  It’s a fun thing to encounter.

Salt Mining

Guerrero Negro is a company town, and the company is Mitsubishi, which owns (along with the Mexican government) the salt processing operation.  It’s one of the largest salt producing regions in the world.  They use an interesting approach: Flooding the coastal plains near the town with seawater, allowing the water to evaporate, and then using earth moving equipment to scrape up the salt that remains behind.

Guerrero Negro Cuisine

No discussion of Guerrero Negro would be complete without a discussion of the cuisine down there.  In a word, it’s wonderful.  My favorite meal?  Fish tacos, served right off the truck (caught fresh daily) by my good buddy Tony.  No one I’ve ever taken there has had anything but high praise for these incredible treats.

Another place I like is San Remedios, a restaurant a block or two north of the man drag through Guerrero Negro.  Just head west a few blocks from Malarrimo’s, turn right, and you’ll find it.  The food is awesome and the young ladies who serve it are stunning.

I’ve already mentioned the restaurant and bar at Malarimmo’s.  You can’t have a bad meal at the Malarrimo’s restaurant, and the bar…wow, it’s interesting.  The Guerrero Negro area forms a big hook out in the Pacific Ocean with the hook’s U facing north (you can see that in the satellite photo above).  As a result, a lot of interesting stuff washes up on shore in that area, and Malarrimo’s has a collection of it hanging from the roof in their bar.  It’s pretty cool.

There are other restaurants in Guerrero Negro, too, and I try to make it a point to try a new one each time I am there.  Baja John and I enjoyed an amazing Chinese dinner in Guerrero Negro on one trip; try Lucky’s if you feel like something different.

The Cave Paintings

There are several cave paintings located throughout Baja.  This is real Indiana Jones stuff; the cave paintings are estimated to be about 10,000 years old and not much is known about the people who put them there.  They are all relatively remote, too, but one of the easier (I’m using that word in a comparative sense) ones to get to are the cave paintings in Baja’s Sierra San Francisco Mountains.

The cave paintings near Guerrero Negro are further south and east of the Transpeninsular Highway (Highway 1, the main and often only road running north and south in Baja).  You take Highway 1 south and then turn left after passing through the town of Vizcaino to head east and up into the Sierra Francisco mountains.  It’s a magnificent ride with an awesome climb into the mountains, then the road turns to dirt and then it becomes, for lack of a better word, gnarly.  You buy tickets and secure a guide in a small village, and then double back for maybe a mile to see the paintings.  If you have a 4WD car or a dual sport (or ADV) motorcycle, you can get there on your own; if you don’t, you can grab a tour that leaves from Malarimmo’s.  It will take most of a day to get out there, see the paintings, and get back to Guerrero Negro, but it’s well worth it.

There’s a lot more to Baja’s cave paintings, but it’s too much to include here.  Watch for a future blog on this topic.

So there you have it:  Guerrero Negro, Malarimmo’s, and a bunch of things you can do while in that area.  I love everything about Baja, and I especially love the Guerrero Negro area.  You will, too.

When you head into Mexico, make sure you insure with BajaBound.  They are the best, and they are the only insurance company we will ever use.

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More Baja, including a list of our other favorite Baja hotels and things to see and do, is here on the ExNotes Baja page.

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So what’s it like to ride in Baja?  You can learn more with Moto Baja!

Enfield Recall and First Service Quotes

Things happen, I guess, and one of the things that’s happened to me lately is my new Royal Enfield 650 Interceptor was recalled.  As recalls go, it’s not that serious, I suppose.  It has to do with brake caliper corrosion, and from what I’ve read, it might be related to road salt as used in the snowy parts of our country.  Ain’t no snow in So Cal unless you get way up in the mountains, and we don’t use road salt.  Eh, I don’t know…if all the dealer is going to do is look at it and tell me it’s not corroded, hell, I can do that.  Maybe they’re replacing all of them.   I gotta look into this more.  I have had bad experiences on product recalls (including with my Henry 45 70 rifle), so unless the concern is real, I tend not to act on these things.

I thought that as long as I was going to be making an appointment to have the brake calipers checked out, I might as well go ahead and schedule the first maintenance.  Whoa, was that ever educational.  The first service is basically a valve adjustment, an oil and filter change, tightening the chain, checking the nuts and bolts for tightness, etc.  You know, basic stuff.

I started by calling the dealer closest to me (Southern California Royal Enfield), and they quoted $580 for the service.  Wow.  There’s no shims and buckets in the valve adjustment (it’s just threaded locknuts, like on the CSC bikes or a Moto Guzzi), so the valve adjustment should go pretty quickly.   $580. Wow, that’s steep, I thought.  Especially for a service that I doubt would take even two hours.  So I called Pro-Italia over in Glendale.  They came in at $110 less than the boys in Brea ($470 for the first service, after they first told me it was $440, then $450, and then finally when I asked if they were sure about the number, the kid looked it up and told me it was $470).  Wow, that’s quite a swing, and I’m not too sure about Glendale’s competence.   They’re the same boys who sent Gresh and me down to Baja on a Bullet with nearly no oil, a rusty chain, and a battery that died on Day 3 (you can read about that here).

Then I got interested in how much price variation for the same service I could find, so I called the Royal Enfield dealer in San Diego (Rocket Motorcycles).  They won the prize for the lowest quote at $368.55, which almost seemed sort of reasonable to me.  San Diego is 120 miles south of here, though, so it’s really a nonstarter for me.  I thought I would try one more, so I called the Royal Enfield dealer in San Jose, and not surprisingly, they got top billing at $600.  Hey, those Bay Area and Silicon Valley entrepreneurial types are rolling in dough.

If I lived in San Diego, I’d think about heading over there, but I’m not going to do that.  I’m the guy that wrote most of the service manuals for CSC (with a lot of the “how to” demonstrated and explained by Gerry Edwards), and the Royal Enfield service manual is a free download.

The biggest part of the first service is adjusting the valves, and I doubt that would take more than an hour.  I can change the oil and the filter, and I can tighten and lube a chain.  I know which way I’m going on this.  I may bring the Enfield in for the caliper recall because that’s a freebie.  As for the first service, I’ll pick up the synthetic oil and a filter, do the valve adjustment and the rest, and keep that $368, or $470, or $580, or $600 where it belongs:  In my pocket.

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Read the entire Enfield Baja trials (for both the Bullet and the Interceptor) here!