An interesting week, this one was….you all heard about Steve’s travails with the forest fire last week, what with being evacuated and all. We had to cancel the company ride, but Duane and I were able to get together for a short Scooter ride up the hill anyway.
Duane on the way up to Mt. Baldy
That was a good day…and at the risk of making some of our good friends jealous, I will tell you that the weather here has been absolutely awesome. Sunny, warm, and not a cloud in the sky. Contrast that with what’s going on in the rest of the country and, well, you know. It’s cold out there! I spoke to my Mom on the way home from work yesterday. It was 80 degrees here in So Cal. It was 4 degrees in New Jersey. Yikes!
My buddy Marty and I visited my good friend TJ (a top notch pistolsmith) on Saturday for a bit of work on my .45 auto. What a day that turned out to be. We wanted to stop at our favorite Italian restaurant for lunch, but they were closed, so we moseyed up the road and found a dynamite little hole-in-the-wall Mexican place (Armando’s in San Gabriel). The food was awesome, but we experienced something we never had experienced before. One of the folks ordered fajitas…you know, the food comes out on a steel tray at about a zillion degrees, and the whole enchilada (sorry, couldn’t resist that one) is sizzling and steaming. I’m not sure what kind of peppers and other spices Armando’s had on that hot plate, but within seconds the entire room (including yours truly) was coughing and sneezing. The waitresses were running around opening all the doors and windows….they had clearly done this before, and nobody seemed troubled or bothered by it (other than the coughing and sneezing). I had chile rellenos, and my lunch was awesome. One of these days, though, I’m going to try the fajitas there. They’re obviously something special!
So after we left, we had to get back on the San Bernardino Freeway, and when we saw the entrance we were off. The only problem was that I grabbed the wrong entrance…I picked up the one that was for the high occupancy toll lanes. Once I had turned onto it, I saw that the regular freeway entrance (for the poor folks like me who don’t like to pay tolls for roads we’ve already paid for with taxes) was just beyond the entrance I grabbed. I was committed, though. And there are cameras all over the place. I don’t have the transponder deal, so I expect I’ll be getting a hefty bill in the mail for that mistake.
But wait…this story gets better. Once I was on the freeway, I got out of the toll lane as soon as I could…and here’s the clincher: I exited the carpool HOV toll lanes right in front of a California Highway Patrol officer. Yikes again. A carpool lane violation. That’s a $500 ticket, folks. On top of the big bill I know I’m going to get for being in the HOV lane without the transponder. Oh, this was turning out to be a red letter day!
The Chippie lit me up and Marty and I pulled over. He was a good guy, though…I told him what happened, he checked my license, and he let me go with a friendly warning. Wow. I felt like I needed to run out and buy a lottery ticket right away.
And you know what? When I get the letter from those toll road folks, I’m going to contest it. The toll entrance was deceptive, and there was no way to get out of it once I started to enter. Got an ace up my sleeve, too. My buddy Marty will testify for me if it goes to trial. Marty is actually a superior court judge, and he just might make a decent witness. We’ll see.
My refinished Mosin Nagant 91/30…a really fun project rifle!
A few blogs ago I told you about a couple of older rifles I’ve been playing with. One is a Russian Mosin Nagant. I am actually having a lot of fun with it. Those old Russian rifles are inexpensive, they are crude, and they shoot well.
I’ve had the Mosin Nagant to the range a couple of times already, and it sure is fun. Mine was made in 1940. It just feels cool firing a rifle that is almost 75 years old.
The Mosin Nagant sure was rough looking, though. Mine was absolutely caked with dirt and cosmoline. I guess the cosmoline did its job…there’s no rust anywhere on this 75-year-old rifle, but it sure was funky. The cosmoline had seeped into the wood as well as the metal work, and you don’t get that stuff off with solvents…you have to heat up the rifle and melt it off. I bought a heat gun at Harbor Freight for just that reason, and that little heat gun has been earning its keep this week.
This week I took the thing completely apart and I worked on it for hours to get all of the cosmoline, grease, and dirt out. Then I stripped the stock and refinished it with 8 coats of TruOil. It looks amazing now. In fact, I had it out to the range this morning, and it shoots even better than it did before. I was out there doing my best impersonation of Vasily Zaitsev (Google that name, or better yet, watch Enemy at the Gates). The Mosin Nagant is the same rifle old Vasily used at Stalingrad. It’s a hell of a story.
On the way back, I stopped at Pegasus Hobbies. That place is awesome. We work a few projects with our engineering students at Cal Poly that require Tamiya motor and gear kits, and Pegasus helps us with these. I love that place. I used to be a big time model builder, and I still love seeing what’s out there in kit form. It turns out that Tom, the owner, is a serious biker, too. He’s got Nortons, older Kawis, and other classic bikes. Some of the kits were awesome, and I snapped a few photos for you…
A Brough Superior 1000…I saw a real one once I and wanted to own it badly, but Susie wouldn’t let me sell the house to buy it!
A Suzook Katana…I had an ’82 that I just recently discussed on the blog!
I always wanted a Guzzi…and this may be as close as I ever get!
I’ll be at the plant tomorrow…Steve and the crew have a couple of new custom CSC motorcycles they just finished, and the word is out that they look good. I’ll grab a few photos for you, so check back in a day or two right here on the blog.
That’s it for today, my friends. Ride safe, stay warm, and keep the shiny side up!
SG250 San Gabriel Cafe Racer
TT250 Enduro
RX1E Electric Motorcycle