Colombia Day 5: Villa de Leyva

We’re up to Day 5 in Colombia from my December 2015 circumnavigation of the Andes Mountains.  The riding was incredible, the scenery even more so.  Juan and Carlos were amazing riders, as was every person I saw on a motorcycle in Colombia.   Ah, enough of a prelude…here’s what I posted for CSC Motorcycles on December 19, 2015.

Actually, it’s pronounced “Via Da Layba.” I’m learning how to be a Colombian and how to speak like one. Colombian Spanish is different than Mexican Spanish. Much to my regret, I don’t speak either one. Someday.

Juan Carlos and Carlos told me they’re making me an honorary C0lombian because my riding has progressed significantly in the last few days. Folks, these two guys are the best riders I’ve ever ridden with, and for them to tell me that was quite a compliment. Every rider I know in the U.S. would be subpar compared to your typical Colombian motorcyclist. The way they carve corners and carve through heavy traffic on these mountain roads is a thing a beauty. They are the best riders I’ve ever seen, and the two guys I’m riding with are beyond incredible. But I digress…more on that later. The focus of this blog entry is Day 5, which was yesterday for me.

As you know from reading the blog, we stayed in Barichara. It’s an awesome little town and we stayed in an awesome little hotel. Getting there was an experience. We passed through a bunch of small towns up here in the Andes Mountains. In these small towns, everything is either uphill or downhill. The roads are either cobblestone or dirt. And when I say cobblestone, I’m not talking about little rocks. These are 6 to 12 inch boulders that are basically mashed together to form a street. The cobblestones (actually, cobbleboulders) throw the bike left and right and up and down, and this is all going on while riding up or down extremely steep hills. The RX3 is the perfect bike for this. I couldn’t imagine doing it on anything bigger or heavier.

We stayed at the Artepolis Hotel, and it was an experience. The guy in the room next to me was an Austrian photographer who came here just to photograph the place. It’s that stunning. Here’s the hotel the next morning (it was dark when we arrived the preceding evening, and we had to ride up a rough dirt road to get to the hotel).

The next morning Juan and Carlos wanted to ride a bit and get some photos. They took me to the edge of a cliff and we got some great shots…here’s one of Carlos I especially like:

And here are a couple more:

We continued on a paved road to a little town called Guane, and along the way I spotted a couple of Colombian vultures perched in a tree not far from the road. I always wanted to get a decent shot of a vulture during my Baja travels, but my results have always been mediocre. I’m carrying my 70-300 Nikon lens on this trip, and I thought I would try for that vulture photo I’ve been wanting for years. The lighting was perfect and I think I did okay…

After photographing the vultures, I grabbed a couple of shots from the saddle on our way to Guane.

Guane is a beautiful little town with a magnificent church…I was working the little Nikon D3300 and its 18-55 lens as best I could. That camera is really doing a great job on this trip. I bought it because I wanted something light and small. You folks who are planning to ride to Baja with us in March might want to give the D3300 a look if you don’t already have a camera. It really adds a lot to the adventure if you can capture stuff like this.

In many Colombian towns, the taxi services use tuk-tuks. Tuk-tuks are little three wheel things that have two wheels in the back and one wheel up front. I’d seen them in Thailand, but encountering them again in Colombia was something I had not expected. The ones in Colombia are made by Bajaj, an Indian manufacturer (as in India, not Indian motorcycles). They’re powered by a little 200cc single, and I was surprised at it’s ability to haul Carlos, Juan, and me up and down the hills in Barichara (we took one to go to dinner in Barichara). Juan told me he tested one at Bajaj’s request a year or so ago and he was impressed with it.

The tuk-tuks are often customized with really cool paintwork, and so are some of the other commercial vehicles. Here’s the artwork on one such vehicle in Guane that caught my eye:

After our brief exploration of Guane, we rode back to Barichara. The guys had been telling me I had to see the cemetery, and they were right. It seemed weird to visit a cemetery for the artistry, but it was impressive…

After that we were back on the road, headed for Villa de Leyva. I had mentioned to Juan that I wanted to get photos of the police motorcycles in Colombia, and when he spotted a few motor officers in one of the many small towns we rode through, I checked another photo op off the list.

This first photo shows one of the more common Colombian police bikes, the Suzuki 200 single.

Here’s another bike the Colombian police use…the Suzuki V-Strom 650…

There’s a lot more to tell you about the Colombian police motorcycles, but that will come later. I’m seeing and learning so much I just can’t get it all into the blog. I’m thinking maybe another book is in order. We’ll see.

Juan found our hotel just outside of Villa de Leyva, we checked in, and then we rode into town. This is the town square…it’s the largest in all of Colombia.

If you’re really impressed with that last shot, so am I. I wish I could take credit for it. It was a photo for sale in one of the Villa de Leyva stores, and I shot a photo of that photo before they told me I couldn’t.

It was a good day. The next one would be even better.

And one last thing, folks.  On that day in Barichara before we left, I did a video in their beautiful cemetery.  This wasn’t in the original blog, but I thought I’d add it here.

One more thing…if you’d like to read the first several blogs from Colombia, you can do so here.

.357 Ruger Blackhawk Accuracy Loads

A favorite load that seems to work well in any .357 Magnum revolver, including my stainless steel Ruger Blackhawk, is 15.7 grains of Winchester’s 296 propellant and the Hornady 158-grain jacketed hollow point bullet. I use standard rather than magnum primers. This was a 25-yard target.

The .357 Ruger Blackhawk

Ruger’s Blackhawk is an iconic firearm, one that’s been in production since the 1950s in one form or another. I bought my first one in a department store in Texas for under a hundred bucks back in the mid-1970s, and I’ve bought and sold several since.  I wish I had not sold any of the Blackhawks.

I’ve owned a few .357 Magnums over the years…Rugers, a couple of Model 27 Smiths, a Model 28 Smith (remember that one?), a Model 19 Smith, and a Model 65 Smith.  I’ve owned a couple of Colt Pythons, too.   The Pythons were nice, but not nice enough to command the premium prices they pulled in the 1970s, and certainly not nice enough to pull the exorbitant amounts they sell for today.  The Smiths were accurate, but they didn’t hold up under constant use with magnum loads.  I had a new Model 27 that I wore out in a couple of seasons in the metallic silhouette game; it suffered from extreme gas cutting under the top strap and a cylinder that sashayed around like an exotic dancer in a room full of big tippers.  The Ruger Blackhawks seem to last forever.

Every Ruger firearm manufactured in 1976 carries the 200th year bicentennial stamp, just like the one on my 200th year Blackhawk.   On my gun, the liberty scrollmark is on top of the barrel.

I’m down to one .357 Magnum now and it’s a 200th year stainless steel Blackhawk with a 6 1/2-inch barrel.  It’s one of my favorite revolvers and it’s not for sale (it never will be; I learned my lesson about letting good guns get away).  I have a few favorite .357 Magnum loads I’ve used over the last 50 years.  I thought it might be a good idea to document how they did in the Blackhawk, try a few more to see how they do, and share it all with you here on the ExNotes blog.  I guess this is the appropriate place for the disclaimer:  These are loads that work well in my Blackhawk.   You should never just take these loads (or any others from the Internet) and simply run with them.  Always consult a reputable reloading manual (I like the Hornady and Lyman manuals best).  Always start with lower charges and work your way up, looking for any signs of excess pressure, and go no higher if you see signs of excess pressure.  Okay, so that’s out of the way.  Let’s get to the good stuff.

Last week’s .357 Magnum testing at the West End Gun Club.

.357 Magnum Accuracy Loads

I’ve played with a lot of different .357 Magnum loads over the years.   I have a few favorite .357 Mag loads that have been superbly accurate in any of the .357 sixguns I’ve owned.  That’s a bit unusual because frequently a load that is accurate in one gun won’t be accurate in another, but that rule doesn’t seem to apply here.  The loads I like have worked well for me in any .357 I’ve ever shot.  I verified these loads in my Blackhawk with this latest round of testing, and like I said above, I explored a few more loads.

A few of the loads tested for this blog. From left to right, the first five are .357 Magnum cartridges and the last three are .38 Special cartridges (you can fire .38 Special rounds in a .357 Magnum handgun). The bullets (from left to right) are the 110-grain Hornady jacketed hollow point, the 158-grain Hornady jacketed hollow point, the 158-grain Hornady jacketed flat point, the Xtreme 158-grain plated flatpoint, a cast 158-grain flatpoint, a cast 158-grain flatpoint in a .38 Special case, a powder-coated 158-grain semi-wadcutter in a .38 Special case, and the Missouri 148-grain double-ended wadcutter in a .38 Special case.

So, with the above as background info, let’s get into the loads.  I’ll start with one of the standard “go to” .357 Magnum loads.  That’s the 158-grain cast semi-wadcutter bullet (the Keith-style) over 7.0 grains of Unique.  This is not the hottest .357 load (it’s a mild-recoiling .357 Magnum load), but it’s hot enough, it’s very accurate, and it’s relatively flat shooting.  I have a guy who casts 158-grain flatpoint bullets for me and I like those with 7.0 grains of Unique even better than the semi-wadcutter bullets.  The load is very consistent, and with the same zero and six o’clock hold I use at 50 feet (seen in the target below), I pretty much hit right on target at 25 yards, 50 yards, and yep, even at 100 yards.  I was hitting a steel gonger last week at 100 yards consistently with this load.  My shooting buddies were impressed, and after all, that’s what a lot of this is all about.   This is a good load.

A 50-ft target with the .357 Blackhawk using 158-grain cast flatpoints with 7.0 grains of Unique. Like they say, this is close enough for government work.

For hotter .357 Magnum loads, any of the Hornady 158-grain jacketed bullets (hollow points, flat points, and full metal jacket flat points) work superbly well with 15.7 grains of Winchester’s 296 propellant.  These loads have a distinctive bark, high velocities, snappy recoil, and they are superbly accurate.

15.7 grains of WW 296 and the 158-grain Hornady jacketed flat point resulted in the best group fired in this test series. Two shots went through the hole in the lower right.

Another long time favorite load is a bit unusual but it’s accurate as hell.  That’s the 110-grain Hornady jacketed hollow point and a max Unique load (10.0  grains of Unique, as listed in a Hornady reloading manual from the 1970s).  I first tried this one 40 years ago when I had a Colt Python and I was impressed with its accuracy.  I tried it again in this test series and the results were similarly impressive.  It’s probably the fastest load I tested because of the max load and the light bullets.  My old Hornady manual indicates the 110 grain Hornady bullet with 10.0 grains of Unique exits the muzzle at 1450 feet per second.  That’s fast.

If light bullets and high velocity float your boat, try this one (but work your way up to it): 10.0 grains of Unique with Hornady’s 110-grain jacketed hollow point.

Plated Bullets:  Are They Any Good?

Surprisingly, the 158-grain plated flatpoint bullets I tested didn’t do well with any charge of Unique, and in the past, they have performed very poorly with 296 (the bullets frequently shed their plating in the bore).  These plated bullets are offered by Berry and Xtreme.  These are not jacketed bullets; the copper plating is chemically applied and the coating is very thin.  I did get one decent showing with a lower-end charge of IMR 4227 propellant, but given the choice, I’d go for a plain cast bullet rather than plated bullets.   You may feel differently.  Please leave a comment here on the blog if your experience is different than mine.

Powder Coating and Paint Fumes

I tried powder-coated bullets last week, too, to see how they would perform.  Powder coating is a concept that’s been around for a few years as an alternative to lubing cast bullets.   I found that accuracy was more or less on par with lubed bullets, but not really any better.  The powder-coated bullets look cool (the cartridges kind of look like lipstick).  When I fired several powder-coated bullets fairly quickly, I could smell the paint.   Some folks swear by these bullets and love them for IDPA and similar competitive pistol events.  For me, performance was the same as conventional cast bullets.  Your mileage may vary.  Leave us a comment if you feel differently.

Powder-coated 158-grain semi-wadcutter bullets. I found their accuracy to be comparable to conventional cast and lubed bullets.

A Metallic Silhouette Load

When I shot metallic silhouette competition I used a 200-grain cast roundnose bullet in my .357 Magnum Model 27 Smith and Wesson.  That bullet worked extremely well, and because of its heavy-for-caliber nature and high length/diameter ratio, it carried a lot of energy downrange.  It was superbly accurate with 12.4 grains of 296.  But finding those bullets is next-to-impossible today.  It used to be a standard .38 Special bullet for police duty, but very few (if any) departments carry .38s today, and nobody seems to stock the 200-grain bullets.  Maybe I need to get back into casting.  I sure loved that 200-grain bullet in the .357 Magnum.  They actually made the .357 Magnum work better on the 200-meter rams than a 240-grain .44 Magnum.  The .44 Magnum wouldn’t consistently take down the rams; the 200-grain .357 Magnum did so every time.

.38 Special Loads

One of the great things about a .357 Magnum handgun is you can also shoot .38 Special loads in it.  I guess that’s a good thing, as the .38 Special cartridges have lighter recoil.  I tried three .38 Special loads with three different bullets.  The accuracy load in .38 Special is a 148-grain wadcutter bullet seated flush with the cartridge mouth over 2.7 grains of Bullseye propellant.  That load is super accurate in my Model 52 Smith and Wesson target pistol, and it did okay in the Ruger, too.  I’ve always believed that a .38 Special cartridge would never be quite as accurate in a .357 Magnum handgun because the bullet has to make a longer jump to reach the rifling, and my testing last week did nothing to change my mind on that count.   The .38 Special does okay in a .357 Magnum handgun, but I believe the best accuracy resides in a .357 case.

.357 and .38 Accuracy Testing Results

Here’s a chart summarizing my accuracy results:

Ruger Blackhawk accuracy testing results. All testing was with a two-hand hold at 50 feet. All groups are five shots.  All loads (except the plated bullet loads) were crimped.  All cast bullets were sized to 0.358.  Note 1:  Two shots went off paper.  Notes 2 and 3:  One shot went off paper.

There you have it.  If you have a load that works well, please leave a comment.  We’d love to hear from you.

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Day 4: Barichara!

Continuing the Colombia adventure, this was my post for the CSC blog on the 18th of December in 2016.  We were having a hell of a time and very nearly everywhere we went good buddies Juan and Carlos explained to me that we could not have ridden these roads just a few years ago due to the narcos and FARC instability in Colombia.  It was an amazing trip and I was thoroughly enjoying myself.

More riding, another Andean crossing, a bit of rain, and we arrived in Barichara!

Barichara is an artist’s town, and it’s one of the most exclusive places in all of Colombia. It was another glorious day of mountain riding. I did not take too many photos on the ride to Barichara, mostly because of the rain, our late arrival, and I was enjoying our dinner too much that evening in Barichara to break out the Nikon. But I did get a few photos.

My lunch at a restaurant along the Chicamocha River…

One of my “from the saddle” shots of a hydroelectric dam on the Chicamocha River…

A couple of shots chasing Juan Carlos through a massive tunnel in the Andes Mountains…

A fine feathered friend at a fuel stop…

And finally, a shot after the rain ended of the Chicamocha valley…

I’m enjoying the AKT Moto RX3. It’s different in a few minor ways than the CSC bike, and they are both fantastic motorcycles. I’ll do a blog after I return home describing the differences.

I’m calling it a night, folks. More to follow…as always, stay tuned!

I’ll post a few more photos and another video or two from Barichara in the next installment of our Colombian trip travelogue.  I wrote this blog before we went out that night, and I grabbed a lot more with my Nikon on our night out in Barichara.  It was an impressive town.   I’ve got to get back there one of these days.

More of the Colombia adventure and other epic rides are here!

Mentors: Virgil B. Patterson

Once upon a time I wanted to be a boat mechanic. When I met Virgil B. Patterson I got the chance. Everyone called him Virgil B. The Patterson part rarely came up. I met him at Admiralty Marine down on Shelter Island in San Diego where I had been hired to install bonding systems in boats.

Bonding entails electrically connecting all the underwater metal components of a boat. Stuff like rudders, props and shafts, thru-hull fittings for water intakes or transducers for electronics. These components may be bronze, stainless steel or any amalgam of metals the manufacturer used when they built the part but they are never pure anything. Bonding connects these blended combinations of atoms to a zinc or magnesium sacrificial anode. If you dip the whole mess into salt water you have a nice .75-volt battery. The zinc, being a less noble metal would slowly lose mass as a slight electrical current passed between the zinc and all the rest of the metals. By sacrificing itself the zinc protected any more-noble metals in the circuit .

There’s a lot more to bonding but the rest of it was just as boring as that last paragraph. At first I liked the job. I crawled around boats connecting things with one long, continuous piece of #10 gauge solid copper wire. We used one piece of wire to eliminate the possibility of a bad connection at one fitting causing a disconnect down the line. The wire looped back to the beginning, forming a circle so that if the bonding was cut once everything was still protected. The last thing you want is a bunch of dissimilar metals electrically connected without a chunk of zinc in the circuit. It would be better to leave the boat un-bonded and let each part corrode at its own metallurgical pace.

My initial enthusiasm waned. Bonding became a tedious and thankless task. I could work on a boat for 60 hours and it would look exactly the same as when I started. Nothing on the boat worked better or, for that matter, worse. Unless something goes very wrong electrolysis is a slow process. It took months or even years to see if you actually accomplished anything electrolysis-wise. The worst of it was that it always seemed like the customer didn’t really know why you were there.

When I wasn’t bonding boats Virgil B. would take me along on engine or transmission jobs. Virgil B. was a Marine and tough as nails but he was getting on in years and he needed a young back to help with the heavy stuff. My job was to lift the heavy stuff, carry his toolbox down the docks, run to get parts and drive him home at night after we got hammered on Mickey’s Big Mouth malt liquor. Mickey’s were unique in that they came in little green-glass hand grenades. We loved the things.

Getting hammered on Mickey’s Big Mouth malt liquor was our way of winding down after a hard day’s work. We put in a lot of time at Admiralty Marine. It was a busy shop. 60-hour weeks were normal. One week I clocked 90 hours. I was making $3.25 an hour so I needed all the time I could get. It was 6 or 7 pm when we quit and drove to the store for some Mickey’s. Virgil B. drove a 1973 Ford Ranchero Squire. The one with wood trim. At that time it was a fairly new car.

Some nights, and I never figured out why, Virgil B. wanted me to drive his car home and drop him off, then I would go to my house to sleep and pick him up in the morning. He was no more hammered than I but who knows? I tell you what, that Ranchero hood looked about 70 feet long after 4 malt liquors.

Virgil B. taught me to be the end of the line. The buck stopped with us: If we couldn’t fix the problem then we damn sure figured out how to fix it. There was no quit in Virgil B. and we never failed. The man was relentless. Lowering a 200-pound Paragon transmission (with a reduction gear!) deep into the bowels of a sail boat while Virgil B. held my legs to keep me from sliding into the hole gave me the confidence to complete any task. I was taught that there is no one else coming along and that the job was all on me, on us.

I got real busy with bonding systems so Admiralty Marine hired a full-time helper for Virgil B. He was a young Marine fresh out of the military. I’ll call him Eric because he resembled Eric Estrada. The son-of-a-bitch looked like a movie star. Virgil B. picked Eric from the other applicants because he was big, strong, a Marine and he was beautiful.

Virgil glowed with the pride of ownership. Standing Eric next to me was comical: Eric towered 6-feet 3-inches, I was 5-foot 7-inches. It was like Pee Wee Herman next to Charles Atlas. Eric was well into the lower 200-pound range. I had long, scraggly hair and weighed about 130 pounds.

But the pride of ownership soon faded. Eric and Virgil B. were sent out on jobs and kept coming back with problems. This wouldn’t come loose or that was heavy. Even simple things stalled Eric. He was just lazy, was the problem. Virgil B. took me aside one day and said “I don’t know what happened to the Marine Corps but Eric wouldn’t have been a Marine in my day.”

The final straw was a diesel Ford Lehman cylinder head Eric was to bring in for a valve job. The Lehman is a mid-sized diesel and the head is one big ass chunk of iron covering 6 cylinders. Eric came back to the shop empty handed and told Virgil B. that it was stuck. The frustration welled up and in disgust Virgil B. turned to me and said, “Joe, go get that god-damn cylinder head.”

There was no way in hell I was going to let Virgil B. down. I would have died if that’s what it took. The buck stopped with me. I broke ratchets and sockets. In the cramped engine room I strained lifting the cylinder head off the block and carrying it up from the engine room, down the docks and into the truck. It really should have been a two-man job but I brought Virgil B. that Lehman cylinder head. At the shop I dropped the pickup’s tailgate revealing the cylinder head. The look Virgil B. gave Eric was worth every single BTU of energy I had expended. If couldn’t be pretty or tall at least I could be relentless like Virgil B.

Eric was fired. I overheard Virgil B. telling Admiralty’s owner “He just doesn’t have it.” After the Eric debacle, Virgil B. took me along for all the hard jobs. The jobs that nobody wanted to do. We drank malt liquor and worked late. We rebuilt Perkins and Chevys, Toroflows and Atomic-4s. It was a wonderful time in my life and the methodical trouble-shooting lessons I learned from Virgil B. have served me well. But the most important lessons Virgil B. taught me were that if I never quit I can never fail and that the buck stops here.

Hearst Castle

I had my RX3 out this Memorial Day weekend.  It’s an iconic motorcycle, and it’s one I’ve ridden on three continents.  I hadn’t ridden the RX3 in a few months, and it felt good to be on it again.  Light, responsive, fully equipped, and five years old, my RX3 can and has gone the distance.

I’m thinking about a motorcycle ride up the Pacific Coast Highway to Hearst Castle, and Hearst Castle is a bucket list destination on a bucket list road.  I’d like to do it on my RX3.  Trust me on this: It doesn’t get much better than the Pacific Coast Highway and Hearst Castle.

The Pacific Coast Highway. Life doesn’t get much better than this, folks.  Any motorcycle ride on the PCH is magnificent, and a stop at Hearst Castle makes it even better.

What’s Hearst Castle all about?  Here’s the Reader’s Digest version: William Randolph Hearst is a dude who had more money than God.  His dad came to California during the Gold Rush and somehow managed not to find any gold, but he went a few hills over and hit it big with silver.  Ever hear of the Comstock Lode?  Well, that was George Hearst back in the 1800s.  Father George was a mining guy, and he sort of fell into the newspaper business when he accepted the San Francisco Examiner as payment for a gambling debt.   While all this was going on, young William Randolph Hearst (George’s son) got himself expelled from Harvard, and somehow after that landed a job on the Examiner (ah, nepotism in action).  And while all that was occurring, George bought 40,000 acres in the Santa Lucia Mountains (on the central California coast) so the family had a place to go camping.

I guess some folks run out of things to do when they’re rich, but not young William.  He decided to he needed a castle.   So he built one.  On the family property (which he inherited in 1919) in San Simeon.  It’s one hell of story, and there’s more to it than I can cover here in the blog, but it will soon be in a major motorcycle magazine (and when that happens, I’ll give you the link here).  In advance of that, though, I’ll share a few Hearst Castle photos with you.

The front door to Casa Grande. Bill Hearst liked big doors.
Art, tapestries, ceilings, and more…all this stuff is the result of Hearst’s agents scouring the castles and churches of Europe, and returning the good stuff to California. It’s good to be the king.
One of two Olympic-sized pools at Hearst Castle. This is the first one Hearst built, but guests complained they could hear the staff working upstairs. Undaunted, Old Bill designated this pool for staff only, and built an even larger one outdoors for his guests. The indoor pool makes for a stunning photo op, I think. The blue tiles are custom crafted. It really is amazing.
Dinner was a big deal when Bill held the Hearst Corporation reins. The word “impressive” just isn’t adequate here.
The view from La Cuesta Encantada (the Enchanted Hill) looking west to the Pacific Ocean.

So there you have it.  But there’s more…lots more.  You have to see Hearst Castle to believe it, and it is a stellar thing to see.  Hearst Castle and the Pacific Coast Highway make for a great motorcycle ride.

Tie Back Action!

Tinfiny Ranch is a steep and rutted place. Located in the foothills of the Sacramento Mountains we get a lot of runoff. When it rains water flows through the joint with alarming speed carrying off soil as fast as I can put it back. After living here only 4 years we lost 18 inches of dirt and the house’s foundation was laid bare. The solution to handling intermittent, mass quantities of water is terracing and concrete. I built a long retaining wall and back filled it with dirt but I wanted a bit more tip resistance than just the extended foundation and concrete slab top would provide. The new grade is much gentler slowing the speed of the water and directing it away from the house.

Enter the tieback. The tieback is a belt and suspenders type of thing. In my case I bent a loop on pieces of 5/8” rebar, ground the ends as round as I could by free hand (If I only had a lathe!) and threaded the bar for 5/8 coupling nuts.

The nuts spin on to the threaded rebar until tight, but seeing as how the threads were kind of ragged on the rebar I decided to give them a lick of weld to ensure the bar won’t pull out of the nut. I used an Oxy-Acetylene welder because it’s the only type of welding I can still see.

After welding the tieback I dug a T-shaped hole for concrete. In this setup the concrete is mostly there to protect the rebar from rusting. Any tipping force on the wall tries to stretch the rebar and pull the cross piece through the dirt.

The rebar connects to a 5/8” threaded rod cast into the poured concrete columns. These poured columns tie each 8-foot section of wall together and have a L-shaped foot protruding on the fill side. The L-foot column is yet another tool to prevent tipping.

Once poured, the tie back is buried and the dirt compacted. About 6-feet long with a 24-inch cross bar, one of these tiebacks anchors each 8-foot section. The idea being the wall would have to move a lot of compacted, dry dirt to fall over.

The wall has 3/8” rebar every few cells of the block sections. This rebar is poured into the foundation of the wall and all the block cells are filled with concrete. The 3/8” rebar stands proud of the final slab elevation.

Capping all this monkey-motion, the protruding 3/8” rebar is bent over below the finished grade of the slab and tied to more steel. Another rebar runs parallel along the wall to emulate a cap. Then the slab is poured making a nice beer drinking or steak grilling patio.

Obviously if you’ve read this far you’ll realize I’m not an engineer so all this may be excessive or futile but to tip the retaining wall you’ll have to lever the foundation L-feet, pull the tie backs through the dirt and drag a 30-foot long by 10-feet wide patio across the ground. It’s not impossible given enough ground saturation but the wall is only 4-feet tall at its highest and I’m hoping the slab keeps the dirt beneath dry.

If this wall fails I’ll just leave it for fill and start another wall a few feet away from the wreckage. It’s been a fun project and I plan to extend the retaining wall another 30 feet after this year’s monsoon season is over.

Product Review: Hoford hair clippers

I don’t like barbers, and for good reason:  When I was a little kid, I was traumatized by one.  I didn’t know that’s what you call what happened to me at first (more on that in a bit), but I sure was.  Traumatized, that is.

The story kind of goes like this…I grew up in a rural part of New Jersey.  Yeah, we were only 40 miles outside of New York City, but in the 1950s central Jersey was farmland, most folks built their own houses (like my Dad did), doctors made house calls (ours did), you could shoot a gun in your backyard (we did), and several towns shared one barber.  We did, and he was Charlie the Barber.  He probably had a last name, but to us he was simply Charlie the Barber.  Usually my Dad took me to Charlie’s when he needed a haircut, but on this one day that task fell to Mom.

I was only about 4 years old, but this business of going to Charlie the Barber with Mom (instead of Dad) represented change, something I knew I didn’t like even at that tender young age, and I was already feeling a little uneasy when it was my turn in the big chair.  Charlie was a little guy who was a flurry of motion, and to be blunt, he made me nervous.  He was one of those barbers who was constantly snipping mostly air.  Snip snip snip snip snip, and maybe on the fifth or sixth snip the scissors would zoom in and get a little hair.  Scared me, Charlie did.  He wore a white jacket and had slicked-back jet black curly hair (he used way more than just a little dab of Brylcreem), he had this pencil thin mustache, and he had a voice kind of like Dudley Do-Right (you know, Bullwinkle’s buddy, of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police).  The voice, the mustache, the flashing and slashing scissors, the slick hair…the words didn’t match the music.  I didn’t know what it was, but something was off and it made me nervous.

So I’m sitting in this elevated barber chair, the scissors were swimming in front of my face and all around my head snipping furiously at nothing, and I’m thinking in my four-year-old mind this is not a good situation.  Then, what happened next was really bad.  Remember I mentioned the country doctors who made house calls?   Well, ours was Doc Bristol, who weirdly enough looked exactly like Doc on Gunsmoke (i.e., Milburn Stone).  Doc Bristol, I suppose, was a nice enough guy, but he’s another dude who made me nervous.  When Doc Bristol came around, it usually meant things like hypodermic needles weren’t far behind, and to this day, I don’t like needles.

“Ah, I see you got little Berky on the hot seat,” Doc Bristol said.

“Snip, snip, snip, snip, snip” went the silver scissors millimeters in front of my face.  Charlie was on fire.  He was in the zone.  Zip codes hadn’t been invented yet, but I didn’t like the one he was in.

“Cut one of his ears off,” Doc Bristol said, “I need the business.”

That’s all it took.  I went nuts.  All fours year of my existence went absolutely dogshit nuts.  I screamed.  I wiggled.  I slid out of the chair with a lopsided, unfinished haircut.  You don’t tug on Superman’s cape, you don’t spit into the wind, and you don’t tease a four year old. I ran out, screaming all the way home.

The bottom line?  There was no way in hell I was going back to Charlie the Barber.  My Dad bought a set of hair clippers and he cut my hair until I went in the Army 18 years later.  In the Army, I did a lot of crazy things.  I jumped out of airplanes.  I fired 106mm recoilless rifles (a weapon so loud you shake hands with God every time one lets go).  I tromped around in rice paddies and on missile sites in faraway places.  Nothing scared me worse than getting into a barber’s chair.  And I still feel that way.  I tense up every time I get in a barber’s chair.  A very attractive young lady (a hair stylist, not just a barber) once asked me if I was okay (probably because my knuckles were turning white from the death grip I had on her barber’s chair).  I get that wired when it’s time for a haircut.

Most guys worry about going bald.  Not me.  I’d be fine being completely bald, because then I wouldn’t need to see a barber.  But there’s still enough fuzzy gray stuff on my noggin that I need to get a haircut occasionally.

One time a few years ago we had a couple over for dinner, and she was a clinical psychologist.  For whatever reason, the conversation turned to haircuts, and I told the above story.  “Aw, little Joey was traumatized by his barber.”  Ah, so that was it.  That’s exactly what happened.  The word fit perfectly.  I had been traumatized by a barber.

So we’re into this shelter in place thing, you know, what with Covid 19 and all, and I needed a haircut.  Evidently, so did a lot of people, because when I tried to order a set of hair clippers online, everyone was sold out.  But last week supply caught up with demand, and thanks to Amazon.com and Fedex, I now have my very own hair clippers.

I bought Hoford hair clippers and they work great.  They are battery powered and the kit has all kinds of accessories.  There are three or four standoff combs/spacer things that are for folks with longer hair, but I didn’t need any of them.  I set the clippers at the lowest setting (a set of hair clippers is like a lawn mower…you set the blade as low as possible and you don’t have to mow the lawn very often).  I hit the ON button and the clippers came alive!  Buzzzzzzz!  I love it!  I gave myself a haircut, both my ears are still in place, and I think I look good.  I used to pay $8 for a haircut, so in four more haircuts, these new clippers will have paid for themselves.  Life is good!

South by South Bend: Part 1

As much as I enjoy concrete work I need to take a break now and then. I ran out of mud for the back patio (164 bags, missed it by 10 bags!) so I decided to get my old South Bend 6’ lathe up and running.

My Pop bought the South Bend way back in the late 1960’s. I was just a kid but I remember riding in Pop’s Chevy ¾ ton, picking up the machine and unloading it at our house. It was and still is the heaviest thing I ever want to move. We were lucky in that the South Bend came with a crap load of attachments: a full set of collets, three steady rests, a 3-jaw and 4-jaw chuck and hundreds of tool bits were thrown in with the lathe.

Pops gave me the lathe 14 years ago. He said he was never going to use it again and he needed more room. I took the lathe down to The Florida Keys, where we lived at the time, and it went under water several times due to hurricanes. The motor was mounted lower on the lathe frame so it was lost to the elements. The rest of the lathe sat higher and was ok. All I did in The Keys was work so the South Bend sat for many years and I dragged it out to New Mexico in The Big Haul Ryder truck.

With the Covid, stay-at-home orders I decided now is the time to get the old machine running again. Back when we first got the lathe I asked my dad, “What does it do?” He told me “Everything”. He said, “You can make another lathe with a lathe!” Pops was a good machinist and he showed me the basics of operation. I was cutting threads on the South Bend within a few weeks.

The South Bend came with a hokey, home-made motor/pulley setup that we were going to change 50 years ago but never got around to it. The pulley set up is ugly but it works and that’s probably why it stayed. This go-round I’m leaving it as is. The next guy can come up with a better system. Because with lathes there is always a next guy: they don’t wear out.

The old motor had a wider mounting bolt footprint and one hole of the 4 mounting holes was used for an adjuster bolt. I re-drilled the plate to suit the new motor and tapped the holes for 5/16” bolts.

For the adjusting bolt I used the existing motor mount holes but made a bar to go underneath. The new bar extends past the motor plate to line up with the adjuster bolt. It looks a little better than the previous setup. I need a few parts to finish the new motor installation so that will have to wait.

The South Bend is a 6” lathe but at some point in the past it was jacked up to an 8” lathe (swing over V-ways).  The 1” spacer blocks look so well made they may be factory parts. I’m leaving them.

One of the nice things about this lathe is that it has not been abused. The thing is probably 70 years old and V-ways are smooth and unscarred from work falling out of the chuck and smacking into them. This means that a good machinist ran the thing.

That is, it was unscarred until I got my teen-age meat hooks on it. That gouge in the carriage was put there in the early 1970s by yours truly. I was cutting threads on a shaft, or maybe it was a taper, and the carriage self-fed into the chuck making a loud banging sound. I was confused; Pops was not happy and reamed me out. I never ran the carriage into the chuck again.

The forward/reverse switch is shot so I am replacing it with a toggle. Only because I have a 4-pole, double throw, center off toggle in stock. I’ve wanted to use that oddball switch forever. I’m also relocating the switch and wiring the motor 240-volt so that the 6000-watt solar-powered inverter can start the motor easier. With the old set up you had to reach over and between the spinning belts and pulleys to access the switch. It was sure a thing to keep you on your toes. Front mounting the switch will be mildly safer.

A lathe is one of the handiest machine tools you can own. The old ones are slightly clunkier to operate and I’ve forgotten most of what I knew about operating one. I’m sure YouTube is full of how-to lathe videos so I’ll brush up before I start making scrap metal.

While I wait for parts I’ll start cleaning the beast. Part 2 will cover the motor mounting, belts and wiring.

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Day 3 in Colombia: On to La Playa de Belem

Our Colombian adventure continues…this is the blog from the third day on the road in beautiful Colombia.  It was a ride sponsored by CSC Motorcycles and AKT Motos (one of the largest motorcycle manufacturers in Colombia).  Our destination was La Playa de Belem and it was awesome.  Juan and Carlos were taking good care of me, proudly guiding me through their beautiful country, and I was loving every minute of it.

They tell me la playa means beach in Spanish, and Belem means Bethlehem. There was no beach, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

La Playa de Belem was our destination on the third day of our Colombian moto adventure, and it was indeed awesome. We did a cool 260 miles to get to the evening’s destination, and I have to tell you that 260 miles in Colombia is a long day. What I didn’t realize when we started in the morning is that a good 40 miles of it would be on dirt. And sand. And mud. And I’d even get a chance to play cowboy, except I was mounted on an RX3 instead of a horse.

No kidding, folks, those are cows, and they were on the road. This was something new to me. I mean, when you’re on a 250cc motorcycle, how do you make cows get out of the way? Even if you’re on a big bike, what’s the protocol? These questions were on my mind, when like always, Juan Carlos took the lead. Our bovine buddies just kind of moved aside to let him move through the herd. I wasn’t too sure about that, and then a guy on a little 100cc something-or-other did the same. In for a penny, in for a pound. As I got closer, the sea of cows parted, and I was through. Amazing stuff.

As was the case the day before, it was sweltering, so we stopped to get a juice drink. They have a lot of juices in Colombia, and I’ve been trying them all. I haven’t found one I didn’t like yet.

This little gal was fascinated by us. She let me take her picture.

What I missed getting a photo of were the dinosaurs. No kidding. I looked over at a tree and there were three or four iguanas that were huge. As in 2 1/2 or 3 feet long. They startled me. We ain’t in Kansas anymore, Toto. I jumped up and fumbled around putting the 70-300 lens on the D3300, but by the time I was ready the lizards were gone. Maybe I’ll see more of them again on this trip. Who knows? Things like that are incredible. I’m enjoying the hell out of this trip.

Ah, a few more “watching the world go by in Colombia” photos…all the gear, all the time.

After dodging and dicing through traffic (and there’s lots of traffic in these Colombian towns, and it’s mostly motorcycles), we finally hit a highway that ran straight. Yippee! We accelerated up to about 70 mph and cruised, and then Juan pulled over. What he pointed out to me was amazing. Ant hills. Not the little kind we are used to, but big monsters that are as hard as concrete. Check this stuff out, folks.

And then, much to my surprise, the animal signs started popping up.

Okay, that one was easy. Fox. I get it. I never saw a sign before warning about a fox crossing, but I can wrap my mind around that one.

What came next…well, that wasn’t so easy to surround with the old gray matter.

Anteaters. Wow. The image quality isn’t so great, but hey, we were zooming along and that one crept up on me. And how about this next one?

Okay, enough monkeying around. Back to the journey.

We entered the eastern arm of the Andes Mountains and started to climb. It was a two-lane road, and we rode it for a good 150 miles. It’s like the Angeles Crest Highway, but it goes on forever, and there were construction stops every 10 miles or so. These next few shots were taken at one of the construction stops. Juan Carlos told me we were very close to the Venezuelan border at this point.

A shot of Juan Carlos.

A Colombian taxi driver.

I’m seeing medium-sized trucks that are 60 years old nearly every day on these roads. The ’56 Ford seems to be especially popular.

Our next stop was in another Andean town at a cool little restaurant. This was our waiter.

I had chicken and mushrooms. It was awesome. I ate maybe half of it.

Carlos and Juan Carlos both ordered something in Spanish (naturally), and they were excited to get it. I thought it was beef, or maybe pork. Nope. It was pig stomach lining. Very tasty, according to them. They offered a taste, but I declined.

A word or two on the riding is in order, I guess, at this point. It is exhilarating and terrifying at the same time. In the cities and towns, it’s a free for all. It’s like one of the YouTube videos you see of city intersections with tons of scooters in Asia. Here, it’s scooters, motorcycles, cars, and trucks. There are few traffic lights, and Juan told me nobody pays attention to the stop signs or speed limits. “They are like suggestions,” he said.

I’m a big fan of the twisties, but in Colombia, they take on a new meaning. The national sport seems to be passing everyone you can everywhere you can. It’s tense. Juan Carlos and Carlos are totally used to it. I’m getting there, but it is unnerving. It’s also weird just how good every rider seems to be. I’m riding at my limits (not the bike’s limits, but mine) too often, and while I’m doing this taking a corner way faster than I ever would in the US, some Colombian will pass me on a 125cc Suzuki cruiser or something with his girlfriend on the back, leaned way over, like it was the most natural thing in the world. They look totally at ease doing it, too. These folks are natural riders, and they’re good.

We arrived in La Playa de Belem about an hour before sunset, and immediately split for a one of many Colombian national parks. It was kind of like Bryce. I grabbed a few shots there, including one of my AKT RX3.

Getting in was interesting. We had to ride a pretty rough dirt road that had a stream running down it because it had been raining. The RX3 took it in stride.

So, back to the Bethlehem thing (as I said at the start of this blog, Belem means Bethlehem in Spanish). La Playa de Belem is a beautiful little town dominated by the town square and a magnificent church (like many little towns in Colombia), and it turns out we arrived at a special time. The Colombians start celebrating Christmas nine days before Christmas, and this was that day. The town was buzzing. We hung out and watched kids singing at an outdoor service, we saw fireworks, we watched the service in the church, and then we got to see the vaca loca. I recorded it, so I won’t tell you the vaca loca story now, but if this Internet connection holds I’ll upload the video and tell you about it later.

Two more quick photos in La Playa de Belem, a video, and that’s all for now.

There’s lots more coming, folks. You probably already know this, but I’ll say it anyway: I’m having fun.

If you want to catch up on the Colombia ride, or explore any of the other exotic rides we’ve had, click on over to our Epic Rides page!

Zed: Miles of Smiles

During this Covid-19 lockdown I’ve been racking up the miles of Zed. I fill the tank before I leave home and gas up once mid-ride making sure to rinse my hands with gasoline to kill any virus remnants left on the bowser keypad or handle. For those of you who are concerned about my crashing the bike and adding to the overwhelmed medical staff, fear not: I am riding easy like Easy Rider. Also Southern New Mexico is at the very beginning of the infection curve so the hospitals have plenty of room.

Since the last oil leak was stopped Zed has done 650 miles and she’s dry as a bone. I checked the oil level and it has not dropped. I feel confident that zed’s engine will take me anywhere. It feels like the bike is running a wee bit too rich but my riding area goes from 4500 feet elevation to 9000 feet. The jetting is stock in Zed’s carbs so if I chose to ride only in New Mexico I’d re-jet the thing. As it is I get a fairly steady 40 miles per gallon, mostly highway miles @ 70 to 80 miles per hour.

But I’m not going to stay around here. Berk and me are going to ride down to Mexico when this thing is all over. We’re going all the way to the end of the road, man. We’ll pick up Big John on the way. We’ll drink Modelo beer in the evening and eat Mexican food until we burst. Berk has a new 650 Royal Enfield that will get enough miles per gallon for both of us. I’ll bring my syphon hose. Orlando has a Texas Hill Country ride planned and I’d like to get down there. I’ll be interested to see if Zed’s fuel mileage improves at lower levels. I tried the magic gas treatment on Zed but unlike the 10 MPG improvement I see on the fuel-injected Husqvarna the magic sauce doesn’t seem to do anything for the carbureted Z1. Maybe there are just too many carbs.

Riders today think all bikes handled badly before they came on the scene. The Z1 was reputed to be ill handling, not as bad as the two stroke triples but still deadly. I’m not feeling it. At sane speeds the bike is steady and it corners with a delightful, easy steering. The bike does not show its 500 pounds. Winding it up to 110 MPH reveals no wobbles. Hitting a bump mid-corner induces a tiny wiggle but it’s no worse than other bikes I’ve ridden and quite a lot better than some late-model heavy weights. Maybe modern bias-ply tires are better than they were in the early 1970’s.

The front brake squeals at slow speed. The aftermarket pucks did not have the threaded hole to screw the thin, anti-vibration shim to. I thought I could get away with leaving it out. Looks like I’ll have to try some of that disc pad backing goop.  Or, once all other options are exhausted, get the correct pads.

I’ve tried to social distance on my rides but in the Carrizozo Park my perimeter was compromised by a scraggly looking dude walking two scraggly dogs. “Nice day for a ride!’ he exhaled a dense stream of almost pure Covid 19 virus across the picnic table. I staggered to stay upright, it was a water main gusher. My to-go hamburger was glowing with a faint greenish light. Covid dripped through the expanded metal tabletop peeling the paint from the metal as it went. “Yep, It doesn’t get any better” I said scooting farther down the bench. “What ya riding? A 200?” the wind was at a better angle now, the covid pooled by the dog with one front paw in a sling, who sniffed at the greenish mass with nothing like enthusiasm.

“No, it’s a 900cc.” I said. Scraggly squinted at the bike. “That’s a small bike, 900 you say?” He didn’t believe me and I didn’t want to prove it with a tear down and bore inspection. “I’m a Vietnam vet!” He said. “I’m crazy but it’s not my fault.” He had one bad eye and used it to glare at me. “It’s the stuff they made me do, and now the VA won’t help me!” I said I thought the VA was supposed to be getting more money. He laughed; a chunk of grey, spongy lung flew out of his mouth. “That’s all a lie! That money is going in their pockets.” He stuck his right hand in his pocket for emphasis.

“This town sucks, there’s no prostitutes!” he shouted. I looked around and had to agree that this section of town did not have any working the street. “I hate it here. I’d like to go back to Vietnam and kill people!” I was beginning to suspect Scraggly might really be crazy. I quickly ate my burger and stood up. I told Scraggly, “Well, I’ve got to hit the road.”

“Okay, I’m leaving in 28 days, going to Georgia.” We shook hands; at that point I was already covered in Covid. Back at the bike, I stuck a paper towel inside Zed’s gas tank and used the cool gasoline to wash my hands and face. Then I cleaned my arms and then lit a match and set the whole shebang on fire.

The brakes on the Z1 are not awe-inspiring. It takes 4 fingers to get the front tire to break traction. The rear is pretty good but who uses rear brakes? The front suspension clatters as it tops out over bumps but after a few cycles they quiet down. The back shocks are original and I assume 45 years old but they keep the tire from hitting the fender and that’s all I can ask from shock absorbers.

Me and my riding buddy Mike took a long, 280 mile ride. The Z1 ran perfectly. Mike was on his Fatboy Harley. The Zed hits reserve kind of early. Like 100-110 miles. I still have a lot of gas so I may shorten the pick up tube a bit. I don’t like drawing from the bottom of the tank if I don’t have to. The 104 cubic-inch Harley gets 50 miles to a gallon! Zed is a thirsty beast.

Next up is an oil and filter change on Zed as soon as my oil arrives from Amazon. I’ll be checking the spooge closely for any odd bits of metal. That is, assuming I’m not on a ventilator by then.

Read the story of Zed’s resurrection here!