The Canton Fair

The Canton Fair:  I’d heard of it many times, and it has been billed as the world’s largest motorcycle trade show.   I don’t know if that latter statement is true, but the Canton Fair is certainly China’s largest motorcycle trade show, and China is one of the world’s dominant motorcycle producers.  Biggest or not, I had an opportunity to attend the Canton Fair in 2017, and who could say no to something like that?

Inside the Canton Fair’s motorcycle exhibit area.

So, after a midnight departure from Los Angeles International and 15 hours in a center seat on a Boeing 777, I arrived in Guangzhou at around 8:30 p.m. either that day, the next day, or the day before (I can never get the time change thing right).  Those 15 hours in the big Boeing flew by (literally and figuratively) quickly, clearing Chinese Customs and Immigration in Guangzhou was efficient, finding a cab was easy, and before I knew it, my Chinese Mario Andretti cab driver was shepherding me through the rain-slicked streets of late night Guangzhou.  I’ve spent a lot of time in China and it felt good to be back.   A lot of folks hate China these days.  I’m not one of them.  I’ve had too many good times and I have too many good friends in China.

Receptionists at the Paco Hotel somewhere in Guangzhou.

I stayed at the Paco Hotel, only a couple of miles from the Canton Fair.  A hotel right next to the Fair was a cool $1000 a night, so that was a nonstarter. The Paco had what I thought was a good buffet and I ate heartily on all but my last day in Guangzhou.  On that last day, a cockroach the size of a small bird ran across a tray of noodles just as I was reaching in, and that killed my appetite for the Paco buffet.  I guess I’m lucky it happened on the last day.

Here’s a shot taken while I was on the bridge crossing the Pearl River. The oval building on the left bank is part of the Canton Fair complex. That tower you can barely see in the distant haze is Guangzhou’s radio tower, which is a cool quarter of a mile high. For a few years, it held the title of the world’s tallest structure.

The next morning, my first full day in China, it was off to the Canton Fair.  I had no idea what was in store for me.  Think big, think big crowds, and think “I have no idea what I’m doing or where I’m going but I’m following the crowd,” and you’ll start to get a feel for what getting into the Canton Fair was like for me that first day.  My leg was killing me (an old motorcycle injury), it was hot and humid (hey, it’s China) and it took a good two hours from the time I left the hotel until I was actually inside seeing new motorcycles.  There’s the Guangzhou traffic. It’s normally heavy, but as we got closer to the fair (after crossing the Pearl River, which bisects Guangzhou), things really got thick.  And there were the crowds.

The crowd entering the Canton Fair. There were a lot of people.

There was a press of humanity trying to get into the fair once I was off the bus. I walked along with a heavy crowd for a good mile, with my sciatic nerve on fire every inch of the way. Getting into the fair was a process, and it started with guessing which crowd to follow.  I got lucky; I guessed right.   I had to buy a pass, and I opted to get the 100 RMB buyer’s badge. 100 RMB is about $16, and that allowed me to enter the Canton Fair all week (as opposed to paying 30 RMB for a spectator’s pass every day).  But I couldn’t just buy the badge. Lines, lines, and more lines.  And for every one of them, I had to guess at which one to follow.  I had to go through a metal detector after standing in one long line. Then I had to stand in another long line to fill out an admission application form. Then it was another long line for a photo. Then it was another long line to take the photos to the folks who made the badges. Then it was another long line to pay for the badge. Then it was another long line to get the badge. And while all this was going on, the crowds were deep and pushy. But they were friendly.

Oddly, I didn’t bump into anybody from the United States.  I met several interesting people from other countries. One guy pushed up into me and asked where I was from.  When I told him, he told me he was from Iran. Wow. Iran. An American, and an Iranian, literally pushed into each other.  He asked me what I thought about what Mr. Trump had done in Syria a few days ago (The Donald had lobbed a missile in).  Hmmmm. This could get interesting, I thought.  “You know, Don doesn’t call me as often as he used to,” I told my new friend, “and even if he had called this weekend, I was on a 15-hour flight to get here, so I would have  missed the call.”  My new buddy stared at me for a couple of seconds and then he started laughing.  I did, too.  He took a selfie of the two of us. Me. Working for world peace, one Iranian at a time. My photo is probably in the ayatollah’s database now, but hey, you do what you gotta do.

Badges? We don’t need no stinking badges!

Things were moving along. I had my photo, I had my badge, and there was one last line:  The line to get inside and actually start seeing motorcycles.  And then it started raining. On us. Standing in line.  Outside.  Hey, if it was easy, everybody would be doing it.

Inside, much to my surprise, I still wasn’t in the motorcycle part of the Canton Fair.  The complex is immense, and I had to ask around a bit to find my way to the motorcycle area.  I finally made it, though, and the Zongshen booth was the first one I saw. It was one of many and I knew several of the guys from Zongshen, so we visited a bit.

The Zongshen booth. Recognize that bike?

Zongshen, as one of the Big 4 Chinese motorcycle manufacturers, has a lot going on and they have a lot of interesting products.  They make motorcycles, they make workhorse trikes, and they make a lot more.

Zongshen’s 500cc diesel trike. Gresh fell in love with these when we saw one in Zongshen’s R&D area in Chongqing.

There were a lot of motorcycle manufacturers showing their new products at the Canton Fair.  I enjoyed seeing them all.

Tien Ma. Never heard of them, like most of the manufacturers I saw displaying motorcycles at the Canton Fair. Lifan (the booth behind this one) is one of China’s Big 4 motorcycle manufacturers.
XGJao, another one I never heard of. One of their sales guys was named Elvis.
Loncin, another one of China’s Big 4.

My buyer’s badge gave me status. There are motorcycle parts suppliers at the Canton Fair, and when they see a buyer’s badge, they’re on it.  They all wanted my business card and they all wanted me to have theirs.  That’s another bunch of databases I wormed my way into, I guess.  I still get four or five emails every day from manufacturers trying to sell me stuff.   I could have made a killing on N95 masks.   And I can buy digital watches for 88 cents each if I buy a thousand or more.  Who knew?  And the exhibitors?  They all seemed to hire attractive young women who wanted me to buy their motorcycle stuff.

Motorcycle component supplier booths at the Canton Fair.
A young lady selling motorcycle batteries.

More than a few of the bikes and trikes were interesting.  Some had names that were funny as hell.  And some were styled to fit regional preferences.  Take a look.

Now, I ask you: Who wouldn’t want a Yamasaki? It might go nicely with your Kawazuki.
Monkey bikes, miniature versions of the real thing.
Appropriately named, of course.
Behold:  The mighty Zarang. Check out this CG-engined trike cargo hauler sold in Afghanistan. If I was marketing this thing, the music would be Zarang Me, sung to the tune of Johnny Cash’s Hang Me.  “Zarang me, Zarang me, they ought to take a rope and hang me…”
The Zarang’s lighting and hornage. Think about that poor alternator!

The Canton Fair has a restaurant row that must have 100 restaurants, ranging from exotic Middle Eastern foods to all kinds of Chinese food to Papa John’s pizza. I had Chinese food every day (it’s a “when in Rome” kind of thing for me).  The beef dumpling soup was a whopping 25 RMB (that’s $3.96 in US dollars), and it was delicious.

The Canton Fair’s restaurant row.

There are people here from the Middle East, Australia, South America, Africa, and  other places.  Yesterday while I was enjoying my now-standard lunch of beef-and-onion dumplings, an older fellow asked if he could sit at my table (the seating is very crowded because there are so many people here).  “Sure,” I said.  His English was a little rough, but he reached into his bag and pulled out a piece of flatbread.  He broke it in two and offered half to me.  Not wanting to be rude, I accepted it. I asked my new friend where he was from and his business.  He was a construction guy from Lebanon. My guess is that piece of flatbread was from Lebanon.  Imagine that…a guy from California at a motorcycle show breaking bread (literally) with a construction guy from Lebanon.   A small world indeed, and I was living it, one flatbread bite at a time.

Beef dumpling soup, best paid for with true money.

I had another interesting experience one day at lunch when I attempted to pay.  I peeled off some the Chinese currency I had and the young lady at the cash register examined it closely.  “Not true money,” she exclaimed, in English, and loudly.  Other folks around the cash registers looked at me.  “Not true money,” she said again, the volume up another notch or two.  And then, just in case I was hard of hearing: “NOT TRUE MONEY!!!”

So there I was, attempting to pass counterfeit currency in the Canton Fair, with what seemed like fifty thousand Asian faces taking in the drama unfolding before them:  An American (me) trying to pay for his soup with counterfeit money.  I had visions of rotting in a Chinese prison.  Maybe worse (they have capital punishment over there, you know).   I fished out more bills and handed them to Miss NOT TRUE MONEY, and her focus immediately shifted from prosecution to sorting.  She studied each bill, giving some back to me and keeping others.  The line behind me continued to grow.  Weirdly, nobody seemed to mind my attempted criminal behavior or the delay it had induced.

Miss NOT TRUE MONEY was finally satisfied with the cash she selected, and the soup, as always, was delicious. When I left the restaurant area, there was a young guy selling ice cream outside.  I found an ice cream bar that looked good and paid him, using some of the bills Miss NOT TRUE MONEY had rejected.  He looked at each one suspiciously, but he ultimately accepted them.  That ice cream was delicious, too.  I admit:  It was kind of a rush, committing a felony in a foreign land.  I’m only writing about it now because I think the statute of limitations ran out.

When I returned to the hotel, I hit the ATM around the corner to get more (and hopefully, more true) cash.  When I reached into the ATM hood, my hand started burning.  Something either stung or bit me.  I had an immediate and big welt on the back of my hand that hurt like hell, and within an hour, the entire back of my hand turned black. Maybe it was a murder hornet before they gained fame here in the US.  My Mom would have told me it was God punishing me for passing that counterfeit money.  Whatever it was, it sure hurt.  It was gone by the next day, but wow, my experience with all things related to Chinese currency was not pleasant.

I had been sticking to the motorcycle exhibits during my time at the Canton Fair, but I took a different entrance one morning.  Silly me:  I thought the Canton Fair was only motorcycles.  Nope, it’s everything.  There are a lot of exhibits marketing to the construction industry.  China was still building furiously, and they evidently supply construction materials to a lot of the world.  I imagine Lowe’s and Home Depot have been here more than a few times.  Here are a few shots as I walked through these areas.

Surprisingly, I didn’t meet a single US person in the motorcycle area during my several days at the Canton Fair.  There were lots of folks from Asia, and more than a few from the Middle East, South America, and Europe.  But no Americans (other than me).  Go figure.

The Canton Fair was canceled this year due to the Covid 19 pandemic, but it’s going to be back.   If you ever have a chance to roll through Guangzhou in April, the Canton Fair needs to be on your bucket list.  It’s a cool thing to see.

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The Not-So-Free Press

Long time readers know that we try to avoid political topics here at ExhaustNotes.us. There’s no percentage in it as the best you can hope for is losing half your audience. Oh sure, we could tear off the bandages and let fly with the anti-pros and pro-cons as good as the next guys. But with Berk leaning right and me not-leaning-right the result would be a complete loss of all of our readers. No, the free press I’m referring to in this click-bait title is my four-brick, paper brick maker that I got for Christmas last year.

This brick thing happened because I’m a subscriber to the Sunday edition of The New York Times. The Sunday Times is a left-biased but mostly true news source that is so big you can read the thing all week long. The NYT puzzle page is legendary and it takes me forever to do the crossword…in ink. And what happens after you read the huge quantity of great writing contained within? Boom! Into the trash goes all that fine newsprint. I felt guilty throwing those efforts into the landfill. It doesn’t have to be this way. I’ve started recycling The New York Times into home heating blocks for the coming winter. If this works out well I may start a commune. We’ll wear flowers in our hair and stink. I’ll call it The Gresh Utopian Society, or Gus, for short.

After shredding all that mostly true but left-biased information I toss the confetti into an empty cat litter bucket. Any bucket will work but the cat litter bucket seems appropriate for America’s political mood. Next I pour water over the top of the paper and add a bit of bleach to keep the odor and mold to a tolerable level. You’ll need to let the paper soak for a week or more for it to break it down into an oatmeal-consistency mush. I give the mush a stir every few days just to let it know I’m thinking of it.

The paper brick mold is a simple machine with four perforated compartments for mush and a close-fitting plunger to squeeze the water from the mush and compress the block. My example was a little too close fitting as it was nearly impossible to get the plunger into the mold. A quick session with a grinder and pliers made the plunger more plungerable, if I can use that word.

Once you’ve filled the mold with your paper mush a heavy weight on the plunger will supply steady pressure and solidify your firebricks. Drying time is about a week out here in arid New Mexico. If you tried this in Florida or the Pacific Northwest the bricks may never dry. Yes, this is a time-consuming process but look on the bright side. If you find one let me know.

The finished paper brick is surprisingly lightweight. It takes two NYT Sunday editions to make about six bricks (depending on what President Trump has said or done the week the paper came out). I have just started building my winter stockpile so I can’t really say if this is a good idea or a total waste of time. As they say, the truth is in the burning and if the bricks ever dry out completely I’ll write a follow up report on how long the paper bricks stay aflame on the next slow news day.

Stranded in Baja, Hearst Castle, and more…

Every once in a while we do a blog that covers a bunch of topics, and this is one of those times.

Good buddy Mike Huber and his friend Bobbie motorcycled Mexico (Baja, to be specific, almost another country all by itself), and he most recently published an excellent story about being stranded down there by the Covid 19 pandemic.  It’s not often that we recommend another blog, but hey, Mike’s writing is outstanding and it’s a great story.  Take a look; it’s very good.

My favorite motorcycle magazine (that would be Motorcycle Classics) sends out marketing emails on a regular basis, and in those emails they include links to past (and sometimes recent) articles.  I write for MC, and the most recent email that slipped into my inbox included a link to my Destinations piece on Hearst Castle.   You might want to read that story; I love Hearst Castle.  It’s closed for the pandemic, but the pandemic won’t last forever.  Hearst Castle will be there when it’s over.

We’re having a heat wave (both here in the Peoples Republik of Kalifornia and at Tinfiny Ranch).   That prompted us to start a piece on riding in extreme heat.   My first recommendation would be:  Don’t.   But things don’t always work out the way you want them to.  I once rode the length of Baja on a Mustang replicas with several friends, and due to a lack of research on my part we did the ride in Baja’s hottest month (and that’s September).  You can read about the 150cc Baja ride through Hell here.  Do you have any advice for riding in high temperatures?  Please share them with us (info@exhaustnotes.us) and we’ll include your recommendations here on the blog.

We have more motorcycle, gun and other stuff coming up, including info on Ruger’s new Custom Shop and their Super GP100 .357 Mag revolver, favored loads in the Henry .45 70 Single Shot, a piece on Turnbull’s iconic color case hardening and restoration services, a stunning (and tack-driving) Kimber with exhibition grade French walnut, the wrap-up of our ride through the Andes Mountains in Colombia, the Canton Fair, and for you fans of The Ten Commandments, making bricks without hay and mortar.  And a whole lot more.

Stay tuned, folks.

California State Railroad Museum

Sacramento is a cool town.  I’ve lived in California for more than 40 years now, but until recently, I’d never visited Sacramento other than for quick “in and out” business trips.  All that changed last year, when we spent a weekend in town to take in the Capitol, the restaurants, Old Town, the American River, and more.  That “and more” part included a real gem:  The California State Railroad Museum.

There are only about 45 steam locomotives built before 1880 still in existence here in the United States.  The California State Railroad Museum has eight of them.  The one you see below is the Virginia and Truckee Railroad No. 12 Genoa.  It was a wood-burning locomotive that was shipped by the Baldwin Locomotive Company of Philadelphia in 1873.   This was a popular steam locomotive configuration back in the day.  In its day, more than half the locomotives in the United States were of this design.

The locomotive below is an unusual one, and a configuration that I had never heard of or seen before:  It’s the Southern Pacific’s No. 4294 cab forward articulated locomotive.  This one has the engineer’s cab on the front of the locomotive.  You’ve got to look at it for a moment to realize what’s going on.

It’s easy to see why this locomotive weighs a cool one million pounds.

The photo below is the Virginia and Truckee Railroad’s No. 13, originally ordered in October of 1872 and delivered in 1873.  Somewhere along the trajectory of its life the railroad changed it to No. 15 (you know, 13 being an unlucky number).   This one was once torn down to the bones for salvage, but the team at the California Railroad Museum resurrected it to the  condition you see here using period photographs as their guide.   It’s brilliantly displaced with a mirror underneath so you can catch all the details.

Here’s another cool old steam locomotive, also designated as No. 12. It’s the North Pacific Coast Railroad’s called the Sonoma.  This one ran in service from the 1870s all the way to 1938, and then in 1939 it was restyled to look like the Central Pacific’s Jupiter (one of the two locomotives that met at Promontory Point upon completion of the Transcontinental Railroad; see Golden Spike National Historic Site) at the Golden Gate International Exposition in San Francisco.  It was later restored to its original condition and colors, and ultimately donated to the California State Railroad Museum.

Here’s the inside of a mail carrier.  This is cool stuff.

The museum also had a cool cutaway of a diesel locomotive, a configuration we’ve all seen.  A few years ago I had a consulting gig at a locomotive manufacturer in Idaho, and I was surprised to learn that “diesel” locomotives are hybrids.  The diesel engine turns a generator, which keeps a huge battery bank charged.  The batteries power electric motors located at the wheels, which drive the locomotive.  You could see all that in this cutaway locomotive.

The California State Railroad Museum had several cars on display that you could enter.  The one below is a dining car.  Back in the day, the railroads had their own fancy china with each railroad’s logo in the dishes.  It was pretty cool.  The guy you see on the left is one of the museum’s docents.

Here’s the kitchen in that same dining car.  Many of the old “diners” (popular roadside restaurants in the eastern US) started their lives as dining cars.  When they reached the end of their service as rolling rail cars, they were moved to highway locations and became restaurants.  Then the architectural style caught on and new restaurants were constructed to resemble dining cars.

In the early days in the American West and elsewhere, the snowdrifts could get quite deep across the tracks.  We saw this dramatic photo of one actually in service, and then we saw the real thing.

The California State Railroad Museum has a pretty cool Lionel train exhibit, too, including a wall full of collectibles.  One was the Pennsylvania Railroad GG-1 electric locomotive.  The Pennsy mainline ran about a half mile away from where I grew up, and when I was a kid, we used to spend a lot of time playing around those tracks and watching the trains fly by.  I remember seeing the GG-1 locomotives and they were really something.  The GG-1 was a sort of an art deco design from the 1930s, and they were still in service when I was a youngster in the ’50s and ’60s.  The Lionel version is a real collectible.  My buddy Steve has one that is new in the box.

I thoroughly enjoyed my time at the California State Railroad Museum.   If you’re a gearhead or a history buff, I think you will, too. While we were in Sacramento, we stayed at a hotel right at the base of the drawbridge that brings you into the downtown area (see the photo at the top of this blog), and the museum was within walking distance.  You can easily spend a half a day or more in the California State Railroad Museum.  It’s worth a visit.

All of the photos in this blog were shot handheld with available light (no flash), and Nikon’s 16-35 lens on a Nikon D810.  It’s a heavy rig and it’s tough lugging it around, but it sure does a good job.

Want more rail stuff?  Hey, we’re here for you!  Check these out:

Golden Spike National Historic Site
Old No. 463
The Nevada Northern
The Chattanooga Choo Choo

Lonesome Dove

The greatest story ever told:  That’s Larry McMurtry’s blockbuster work, Lonesome Dove.  We’ve touched on it before with our book review on Revolver – Sam Colt and the Six Shooter that Changed America.  This is another book review, and a movie review, too, as Lonesome Dove was also made into a four-part TV special three decades ago.

McMurtry wrote Lonesome Dove in 1985.  It was loosely based on the true story of Charles Goodnight and Oliver Loving, and their third cattle drive north.  I have a copy of Lonesome Dove that I bought when it first came out, and I’ve probably read it a half dozen times.  Sometimes a few years will go by before I see it tucked away in the bookshelf, and I’ll pull it down and take a few days to read it again   Even though I know what’s coming next (I almost have it memorized), I still enjoy reading it.  It’s that good.

Motown Productions did the Lonesome Dove four-part television mini-series in 1989.  Most of the time a movie based on a book gives up a lot, but this one did not.  When it pops up as a re-run, I’m in.  I’ve probably watched it no fewer than five times.

The scenes in both the book and the TV series (which stayed faithful to the novel) are well crafted and memorable.  Several stood out, including the river crossing water moccasin attack, McCrae’s taking out a group of renegades while rescuing Lorena, Call’s horse-collision-takedown of an arrogant and abusive cavalry officer, and the bar room scene in which McCrae puts his Colt Walker to good use teaching a surly bartender western etiquette (that one is my favorite).

If you’ve read the book or seen the TV series, you know what I’m talking about.  If you haven’t, you need to. Trust me on this one one, folks.  The next time Lonesome Dove is on TV you’ll want to see it, and if you have a chance to grab a copy of Lonesome Dove, you should do so.

More ExNotes reviews are here.

Book Review: Revolver

My daughter buys books for me, and she has a knack for finding great ones she knows I will enjoy.  The latest in a long line of successes is Jim Rasenberger’s Revolver:  Sam Colt and the Six-Shooter That Changed America.  I enjoyed the book on many levels because I’m a shooter, I like biographies, I’m a student of business success, I like to read about mechanical things, and I love history (especially the history of the American West).  Revolver checked all the boxes.

Samuel Colt was anything but an overnight success, but successful he sure was.  He was one of the key figures in our Industrial Revolution, and he made the concept of interchangeable parts and mass production work well before Henry Ford came along.   Colt started out as sailor on a merchant vessel, he became a huckster selling laughing gas exhibitions, he failed at his first attempt to build a firearms manufacturing business, and then he succeeded wildly when he worked with Samuel Walker, the Texas Ranger who guided Colt’s design of the famous Colt Walker.  Revolver delves deeply into all this, including the Colt Walker story, and a grand story it is.

On that topic of the Colt Walker:  The Walker was the .44 Magnum of its day, a gun so over-the-top in size and power that as Colonel Colt observed, “it would take a Texan to fire it.”  I always thought it would be cool to own a Walker, but Colt only made 1,100 of them, and originals don’t come up for sale too often.  The last one that did went for over a million dollars.  The blogging business is good, folks, but it ain’t that good.

Robert Duvall as Gus MacCrae in Lonesome Dove, the greatest story ever told (in my opinion). Gus carried a Colt Walker.

Uberti, a company in Italy, manufactures a replica of the original Colt Walker, and reading Revolver gave me the push I needed.  I ordered one this morning.  Good buddies Paul and Duane are both black powder aficionados, and I figure they can give me the help I’ll need learning how to load and shoot these historical weapons.

Uberti’s modern copy of a Colt Walker (one of these is headed my way). Colt manufactured just over a thousand Walkers in 1847-1848. Originals sell for something north of a million dollars.

If you’re looking for a good read, pick up a copy of Revolver.  I believe you’ll enjoy it.

More Tales of the Gun are here, and more product, book, and movie reviews are here.

Skip Duke

Skip Duke lived in New Mexico and died before I got the chance to meet him. I don’t know the exact date he shuffled off. Judging from the condition of Tinfiny Ranch when we first bought it from his daughter I’m guessing five or more years had elapsed between our purchase of Skip’s run-down mountain property and his death.

I never met Skip Duke but I get a strong sense of the man from the junk he left behind. I found boxes of mixed fasteners and some really nice ¼-inch by 8-inch screws with flat-topped heads. The heads are 5/8-inch wide and made so that the fastener countersinks itself like a giant deck screw. These screws are so nice I want to build something just to use them. Skip left behind two really nice red-painted, bottle jacks; one of them must be a 50-ton model. It’s a bruiser, like a foot tall and weighs 40 pounds. Skip was into radios: he was a Ham operator I’m guessing. Tinfiny had several antenna wires strung over the trees and arroyos. In his broken down shop I found a signal generator, watt meter and some other radio test gear that I couldn’t identify. That’s some old school radio stuff, man.

I never met Skip Duke but I think I would have liked him. Skip Duke had multiple uncompleted projects running in parallel when he died and that’s the same way I work. I get bored with one project and switch over to another, never finishing any of them. The 1975 Kawasaki 900 I call Zed was one of Skip’s unfinished projects. In the scattered debris of Skip’s life I found motorcycle magazines from the 1970’s featuring the new Z1900. The bike got universally rave reviews in the magazines, and rightfully so: the 900cc Z1 Kawasaki was a landmark motorcycle.

From reading old correspondence I found that Skip was having trouble with a Dyna III electronic ignition system he bought for the old Kawasaki. A melted wiring harness on Zed and no sign of the electronic ignition leads me to believe Skip sent the rotor and pick up coils back for a refund or tossed them in the bushes. One day I’m going to look for it with a metal detector. I found the original points plate in a box of MG car parts and after I cleaned them up the bike ran fine. I remember when electronic ignitions were novel, high tech stuff. I didn’t like them back then either.

Abandoned for years, Skip Duke’s house was overrun by rats when we looked at it with Ronnie, our real estate agent. A converted garage, the house had one bedroom, a living room, a kitchen and a bathroom. Maybe 500 square feet under roof. On the right side of the house was a small garage where Skip kept his tools and his motorcycles. I found a working 4-inch Makita belt sander in there. The bottom garage door panel was broken and the door hung off its track. You could walk inside. Ronnie looked around and said, “There used to be more motorcycles in here.” Next to the garage Zed was sitting outside in the weather, leading me to believe thieves had made off with Skip’s better motorcycles. As if there ever was a motorcycle better than a Z1.

We gutted Skip’s house. Every night after work I would put down 5 of those green rat poison blocks. Every morning they would be gone. Eventually the pace slowed until one day I found the poison untouched. The rats ate a total of 3 gallon-size buckets of poison but I won the war. I spent a pleasant two weeks hauling out dead rats and disinfecting the entire place with a solution of 50/50 bleach and water. My lungs burned and my vision blurred but at last the place was clean and rodent free inside.

We replaced the siding, drywall and insulation, and rewired most of the the electrical system. Skip’s little garage area is now my wife CT’s walk in closet. The concrete ramp leading to the garage has been leveled off and is a 5’ X 14’ office and storage room. We re-plumbed the bathroom and redid the kitchen eliminating any appliance that hinted at being a stove. We named the little house in the arroyo “The Carriage House” hoping to boost the little shack’s confidence. New paint and tile made The Carriage House look fresh inside. Skip’s old fiberglass shower stall was hard to remove and we were running out of time so it still serves, the last remnant of a bygone owner.

Skip Duke was not satisfied with the little Carriage House and had bigger plans in the works. Further up the property there was a graded area where Skip was going to build a structure. Two large, wooden sawhorses held 8-foot x 20-foot sheets of a composite material consisting of 6” white Styrofoam sandwiched between two layers of glued-on, exterior grade, 1/2’’ oriented strand board. There was enough paneling to build a 20 X 40 insulated building. Unfortunately, death has a way of messing up the best of plans. The 20’ X 40’ structure never got built. White plastic sheeting covered the composite panels but the relentless New Mexico sun crystallized the plastic. The sheet lay in tatters and it would crumble when you tried to pick it up. Without protection the panels fell victim to the elements.

Oriented strand board is fairly weather resistant but you can’t let it remain wet for long. Stacked horizontally on the sawhorses, the panels couldn’t shed water and the pooled moisture between the panels rotted the OSB. I’m sure if Skip Duke knew he was going to die he would have stacked them vertically allowing water to run out from between the panels. I managed to salvage enough panel material to build the walls for another of Skip’s unfinished projects: the pump house.

The original pump house was a 55-gallon metal drum over the wellhead. Inside the living room was a 40-gallon pressure tank to smooth out the cycling of the well pump. I can’t figure why anyone would want a gigantic pressure tank in their living room but Skip was not a man who trifled with cosmetics. The amount of paneling I could salvage determined the size of the well house so I poured a 6’ X 10” slab with a central drain and built a small shed over the well. I moved the 40-gallon pressure tank to the new well house and installed a water softener next to the pressure tank. With 6” thick Styrofoam walls the pump house is so well insulated a 150-watt chicken coop heater keeps the pipes nice and toasty in winter. Too bad so much composite paneling was ruined; it would have made for a super energy efficient house.

When Skip Duke died he left behind a 24-foot motorhome without an engine, an 18-foot Hobie Cat sailboat on a trailer, a 1974 MGB-GT hardtop 4-seater, a 4-person Jacuzzi with seized air and water pump motors, two large dog houses and a backyard chicken coop with camouflage netting over the top. Skip was a man who was into everything cool. I got rid of the junk except for the MG. Those hardtops with their Italian, Pininfarina-designed hatchbacks are rare. I might get it running one day.

Life is funny. I have an Internet buddy also named Skip Duke. He is very much alive and a Kawasaki Z1 guru. The living Skip Duke’s Kawasaki advice has saved me untold woe in the long restoration process of dead Skip Duke’s motorcycle. I bet the two Skips would get along famously (either that or they’d kill each other).

I never knew Skip Duke. We’ve remodeled and reused his vast pile of junk in ways he could not have foreseen. I wish he had left details of his future plans, like notes stuck to each project describing what he saw as success. I hope he’s looking down (or up as the case may be; Skip might have been a real jerk) and smiling as he sees his old Kawasaki motorcycle (now my old Kawasaki motorcycle) roaring down the highway full of life and power. I hope whatever becomes of that soulful part of a man after death is aware of the happy life CT and I have built atop the 5-acre spread he must have loved dearly. And I hope he finds joy in all that we have done.

Follow the complete Z1 resurrection here!

For more on Tinfiny Ranch and the Tinfiny Summit, check out the YouTube videos here!

A Bullseye Birdseye Blackhawk

By Joe Berk

Good buddy Greg and I (along with about a gazillion other people) are  long term Ruger Blackhawk fans, and last week we were on the range with a new .357 Magnum Blackhawk Greg recently acquired.  It’s one of a limited run offered by Talo, a distributor specializing in custom guns from a variety of manufacturers.

Greg’s Blackhawk has a 5 1/2-inch barrel (standard New Model .357 Blackhawks have either a 4 5/8-inch or 6 1/2-inch barrel) and really cool birdseye maple grips (most Blackhawks these days have black plastic grips).   The birdseye maple grips contrast well with the Ruger’s deep bluing, and that 5 1/2-inch barrel just flat works on a single action revolver.  At 40 ounces (one ounce heavier than a 1911 Government Model .45 auto), the Ruger balances well and feels right.  Greg’s birdseye Blackhawk is beautiful, it groups well, and it has a superb trigger.  This particular offering from Talo includes an extra cylinder chambered in 9mm, so Greg can use .357 Magnum, .38 Special, or 9mm ammo (I guess he won’t be running out any time soon).

Greg loads the same .357 Magnum ammunition that I do (a 158-grain cast lead bullet with 7.0 grains of Unique), which is the “go to” accuracy recipe in .357 Magnum.  It sure shoots well.  A target load that is superbly accurate in a Blackhawk is the .38 Special with a 148-grain wadcutter bullet and 2.7 grains of Bullseye propellant (that’s been a preferred .38 Special accuracy load for decades).

Ruger makes a beautiful revolver, and this Talo birdseye Blackhawk’s limited production run almost guarantees these will be investment grade guns.  Most dealers are sold out, but if you poke around a bit on Gunbroker.com, you may still find one.

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Yoo-Hoo Fred weighs in!

In response to our Bikes Gone By blog last week, good buddy Yoo-Hoo Fred sent this note to us:

Hello Joe & Joe:

Enjoyed your Bikes Gone By piece as I do almost all of your blogs.

As suggested here’s a list of the vehicular transportation modes that have gone through my garage(s) over the years:

Motorcycles
Yamaha Mini-Enduro
Yamaha DT100
Yamaha DT125
Yamaha DT250
Honda XL250
Yamaha XT250
Yamaha Maxim 700
Yamaha XT350
Kawasaki Vulcan 700
Yamaha Seca II
Kawasaki Ninja 250
Ducati 900CR
Honda XR400
Yamaha PW50
Yamaha PW80
Honda XL70
Yamaha YZF750
Yamaha Virago 1100
Yamaha FZR600
Yamaha FZ1
Honda XR100
Yamaha R1
Yamaha FJR1300
Triumph Tiger 1050
Triumph Thruxton
Yamaha FZ6R
Triumph Speed Triple
Triumph Tiger 800
Yamaha DT250
Yamaha WR250

Cars
Datsun PL620 Pick-Up
Datsun 200SX (78)
Chevrolet Monte Carlo
Pontiac Sunbird (78)
Dodge Colt Levis Edition
Datsun B210 Wagon
Mazda B2000 Pick-Up
Datsun 200SX
Ford F-150 Pick-Up
Chevrolet S-10 4X4 LB
Dodge Colt Vista Van
Pontiac 6000 Wagon
Pontiac Fiero (84)
Pontiac Sunbird (92)
Pontiac Bonneville
Ford Ranger Splash
Ford Conversion Van
Lincoln Continental
Chevrolet Cavailer Z24
Jeep Cherokee
Chevrolet S-10 Lowrider
Chevrolet Astro Van
Honda Passport
Acura Legend
Ford Mustang
Nissan Frontier
Chevrolet Trailblazer
Honda Accord
Dodge Grand Caravan
Pontiac Grand Prix
Pontiac Sunfire
Nissan Xterra
Pontiac Fiero (85)
Chevrolet Cavalier (03)
Chevrolet Cavalier (98)
Chevrolet Camaro (97)
Chevrolet Silverado
Volkswagen Jetta
Chevrolet Cavalier (00)
Jeep Wrangler 4 Door X
Chevrolet Cruze
Chevrolet Camaro
Chevrolet Volt
Chevrolet Sonic
Mazda Miata
Jeep Wrangler (09)
Buick Tour X
Subaru CrossTrek

That includes some for spousal units and kids…..currently only have the Tiger 1050, Volt, and CrossTrek in the garage.

Except for the Fieros (!) each vehicle could store a sufficient amount of Yoo-Hoo.

I would send pictures of them all, but the Internet would break.

Fred, that’s a lot of cars and a lot of motorcycles.  Thanks for sending the photos and the note!

So, how about it, ExhaustNotes readers?  Do you have photos of your motorcycles that have gone down the road?  Please send them to us (info@exhaustnotes.us) and we’ll post them here on the blog!

Motorcycle Camping: Level 1

The town of Weed is our last chance for gas or groceries. It’s a small place, population 20, and every Weed-ian citizen is packing heat. The chick working at the only store in town sports some kind of .45 auto that wobbles a crazy figure 8 on her hip as she totes pallets of soda pop from the storage shed into the store. The tall cowboy who delivers propane has a revolver on his hip also but that gun is not nearly as active.

Look there: a soccer mom wearing a white cowboy hat, plaid shirt, jeans and a 9mm pistol goes into the store for a gallon of milk. Mid-sized dogs hop out of a Polaris side-by-side, both dogs strapped with camouflaged vests that sport bandoliers of ammunition and pup-optimized night-vision goggles. Tactical mutts, man. A small child, not more than 2 months old waves about a menacing AR-15 while his head lolls in an elliptical orbit. Each complete cycle baby’s hard eyes lock onto mine and dare me to steal his candy before rotating on.

Okay, okay, I’m joking. The baby wasn’t carrying an AR-15. Needless to say, the crime rate is low in Weed. Either that or the woods are full of spongy ground and failed attempts. Mike and I fill our gas tanks at Weed not so much because we need fuel but because it’s more an offering to the forest gods before we leave civilization. Cover me while I pump the 87 octane.

Mike has a BMW 650 and I’m on my Husqvarna 510.  We leave Weed heading west and after the even smaller town of Sacramento, Aqua Chiquita Road rises into a dark green forest of pines and aspens. This is the Lincoln National Forest. National and state parks may be closed due to Covid but here in New Mexico rough camping in the forests is still allowed.

We originally planned on camping further west, on Thousand Mile Trail, but an interesting unmarked side road caught our attention so we wandered off to see where it went. You can do stuff like that when you have no destination.

The side road was bumpy and almost all rock. Not loose rock, but solid rock. We bounced along for a mile and the road dipped into a sandy mud hole. Off to the right was a wide, shallow valley covered in lush green grass and dotted with grazing cows. “What do you think?” asked Mike. “Lets go check it out.”

The valley was much smoother than the road. There were tangles of old barbed wire sprinkled among the cow patties. Each time we would stop at the perfect camping place another perfect camping place was just a little further ahead. We kept following the Valley Of Perfect Campsites until it split off into two directions. We made camp at the junction of the two valleys on a slight rise that gave a commanding view of the pastoral scene.

I mean camping doesn’t get any better than this: no people, no RV’s, the camp even had a pre-constructed fire-ring and enough firewood for a month. Setting up my new tent was easy. I’ve used pup-style tents for years and they are all the same simple sleeve with two poles. One modification I’ve learned over the years is to use bungee cords for tying off the end poles. In a hard wind the bungees stretch but don’t yank the tent pegs out of the ground.

The pup tent was easy enough to rig but my new air mattress made up for it. I bought a Soble brand mattress with a built-in pump. The deal is, you remove the cap and then the plug on the square pump area. Next you push down on the square pump to fill the mattress. And you pump. And you pump. I started grumbling, “This damn mattress pump isn’t doing anything!”

I pumped and pumped. Sweat started trickling down my sides and still I pumped. Then I tried inflating it by blowing into the fill hole. After 20 minutes of struggling I was light headed, feeling sick and getting nowhere. I gave up and tossed the completely flat mattress into the tent and my sleeping bag over that. At least we had soft grass under the tents.

We were drinking smoky coffee and cooking hot dogs on a stick over our roaring fire. It really was the perfect camp site. Mike asked me, “Tell me how your air mattress works.” I explained the cap and the plug and the little square built-in pump to him. Mike thought about it for a few minutes then asked me, “How do you deflate the mattress?” I was stunned. What a dumb-ass question: deflating the mattress was the last thing I wanted to do! Then Mike said, “There must be a way to let the air out.”

My world shattered. Dark, stumbling stupidity was illuminated by the light of one thousand suns. Of course! There had to be a second plug! I ran to the tent, all doubt erased. There, underneath the pillow on the opposite side from the pump was a 1-inch deflation valve and it was wide open. For 20 minutes I had been pushing air from the foot of the mattress out the valve on the other end. With the deflation valve plugged the Soble mattress took about 2 minutes to inflate into a firm, comfortable sleeping pad.

After the air mattress debacle I realized I should have brought some gin along. I’ll put that on my list of equipment along with more water. Making coffee, cleaning up and drinking used up most of our water supply. Mike had an emergency drinking straw, the king you put into any old water and it filters the muck. A stream runs alongside Aqua Chiquita road a few miles away so we weren’t going to die. Other things we brought but didn’t use were aerosol cans of bear spray and bear bells. The bells were CT’s idea. If a bear can’t hear me snoring then he’s a pretty old bear.

Speaking of snoring, I’ll need a new sleeping bag as the tiny mummy bag would not allow much movement. I finally un-zipped the thing so I could turn and parts of me fell out into the 50-degree night air. I woke up sore. But then I always wake up sore. That night air also soaked all our gear. The bikes were wet, our folding stools were wet, the inside of my tent was dripping with condensation and that’s with both sides open. Mike’s tent didn’t have a rain fly, the top is mesh and was still wet inside. I don’t know if this was just a function of the dew point or the tent material not breathing.

Hot coffee in the morning will pave over a lot of rough patches and by 11 a.m. we felt alert enough to head back down the mountain. We rode west on Aqua Chiquita until Scott Able Road and followed Scott Able back to the paved highway.

A brief discussion was held at the 1000 Mile Trail, our original destination but we were both kind of tired from our night on the hoof. Anyone who thinks homeless people are homeless by choice has never camped with me. I don’t like motorcycle camping and this trip has done nothing to alter my opinion. I guess it’s the new normal until things start re-opening and a treatment or vaccine for Covid 19 is created. I’m not going to complain too much. I’ve learned more on fine-tuning my camping gear, which was the goal on this ride. You know, waking up sore and damp beats not waking up at all.