I slowly awoke to a sunny Tokyo October morning. It obviously took me a bit to realize it was sunny as I was inside a windowless pod. Once I was out and about into the busy streets of Tokyo, I could actually embrace the sun’s warmth. It was time to enjoy a coffee and ensure my head was clear from the previous night’s adventure in Akihabara. Today was the day I was to begin an 8-day motorcycle adventure through Japan.
The caffeine kicked in as I boarded the Tokyo train to Rental819 in Odaiba, where I had reserved a motorcycle 2 weeks prior. Throughout my world travels I have found renting a smaller displacement on a motorcycle when outside the United States is the way to go. The larger heavier bikes just can’t compete in terms of agility in most other countries. For Japan I chose a displacement more in the middle as there are expansive highways in Japan where having some more pick up would be required. A Suzuki V-Strom 500cc would be my chosen steed for this journey through the land of the rising sun.
You never realize the expansiveness and density of Tokyo until you motorcycle through it. I was familiar with driving on the left side of the road as I have been flip flopping directional driving over the past 2 years month to month and country to country. With this level of comfort, I could fully absorb the awesomeness and size of Tokyo in its entirety. With no highway speed cameras it didn’t take long before I was out of the city and on my way towards Mount Fuji, but before that there was one place I wanted to experience.
I was on the outskirts of the Aokigahara Forest as mist and clouds began to surround me while the trees grew denser. This forest is also known as the suicide forest. This location is one of the most used places for suicides on earth. I parked the motorcycle next to a small sedan and decided to do a short hike to stretch out from the 3-hour ride. As I began hiking it hit me that maybe that sedan belonged to someone that came here with a purpose. The atmosphere was already very heavy and not wanting to see a body swinging from a tree I opted to end the hike and briskly return to the motorcycle and leave the forest.
A downside of riding this time of year in Japan was that Mount Fuji was hidden behind a wall of clouds. It reminded me of my home from a previous life near Mount Rainier, which would only show its ghostly glowing during the summer months. It seemed as though today would not be the day I would get my first glimpse of Mount Fuji, so as the sun began to dip into the clouds I opted to find a hotel for the evening, have dinner and prepare a direction for tomorrow’s adventure.
Last year I started a Facebook group focused on Uberti firearms (and that’s the name I gave it). I saw a note on Facebook that if you didn’t see a group you wanted, you could create your own group, and I did. I created the group because I’ll sometimes post firearms-related blogs there. It was trivially easy to do, and within weeks, membership had grown to 13,500 members. I like Uberti guns, I’ve written about them before here on ExNotes, and it just sort of seemed like a good thing to do.
Last week, a fellow named Aldo Venturini posted some intriguing pictures of cap and ball revolvers he had engraved, along with a few knives he had made. One thing led to another, and with the help from Translate.Google.com we had an interesting conversation. Here’s what Aldo told me:
I’m a passionate engraver. I’ve been engraving for 15 years. I’m experienced in various engraving techniques. I also work with leather, which allows me to make sheaths for both the guns I engrave and the knives. With engraving, I do what inspires me…I don’t have any established subjects.
I’m a lover of weapons as objects and believe that weapons are the best canvas for engraving.
For variety, I make knives, mainly Bowie knives. I own a fair number of my own.
All work is done in-house by hand. The knives are made entirely, complete with sheaths. The Colt sheaths are also handmade. For my personal satisfaction…I do engravings upon request, after agreeing on the work and cost. I don’t do it for the money.
I’m self-taught, and I learned because I wanted to engrave my motorcycle the way I liked it. Then, once I finished, I continued with other engravings. I have 10 motorcycles….😄I’ll give you one that’s a bison…1700 cc twin-cylinder.
I’ll be 80 this year. I have no problems and can still afford to ride my 10 motorcycles (all large-displacement bikes). I’m also an inventor…with several patents filed, including one in the United States in the medical field. Check my name. Others are filed in the European Patent Office in Munich.
I asked Aldo if I could post some of his photos here on the ExNotes blog and he said okay. This is beautiful work and I’m happy to share it with you. First, a few of the guns and their holsters…
Next are a few of Aldo’s knives…
And here are photos of some of Aldo’s motorcycles…
Aldo is an interesting man. I wish he lived closer than Torino (in Italy). He’d fit right in with the ExhaustNotes crowd.
Aldo, grazie mille per aver condiviso la tua arte con noi. Guida con prudenza e restiamo in contatto, amico mio!
Man, I love my Colt Python. I thought I’d get that out of the way first in case anyone had any doubts. The Python is one of those things that just feels right. I’m glad I bought it and every time I take it to the range I feel good because I know I made a good decision.
I’ve been on a kick lately developing different loads for the Python with a focus on 158-grain and 180-grain jacketed bullets, and different propellants (including Winchester 296, Bullseye, IMR 4227, and Unique). Not to be combative and before you get your inner keyboard commando up, let me state at the outset that I can hear the comments already: What about 2400, or Power Pistol, or (fill in with your favorite powder). You go to war with the Army you have and I had to put a cap on the development work (and the above listed powders are what I had). If you want to see more development work with other powders, hit the donate button below and send me a note. Or start your own website.
158-grain DKC bullets, .357 Magnum reloads, and the Colt Python: A marriage made in Heaven.
I keep a stash of Hornady jacketed bullets as my preferred projectiles in the .357 Magnum, mostly because of their consistent quality and accuracy. Recently, I received an email from Raven Rocks for DKC 158-grain jacketed hollowpoint bullets, so I thought I’d try those. DKC is a Turkish bullet maker, and I know from prior defense industry experience that the Turks usually do a good job on armament components. You may recall that I recently tested some of DKC’s 147-grain 9mm bullets in three different handguns and I wasn’t too impressed with them (that blog is here). I wanted to see if the DKC .357 bullets were any better than the 9mm bullets (spoiler alert: they are).
For this testing, I fired all loads at 50 feet, I used my Garmin chronograph to measure the velocities, and I used my Lee classic four turret press and Lee’s .38/.357 four-die set for loading the ammo. I believe in Lee reloading gear, and when it comes to getting a good crimp on hot revolver cartridges, the Lee dies work best (you can read about that here). That’s especially critical on the Colt Python, which has a very short cylinder compared to some other sixguns). Making sure the other bullets in the cylinder don’t jump forward under recoil is critical with the Python (see our earlier testing).
So what’s the bottom line?
It’s 15.0 grains of IMR 4227, CCI 550 primers, and the DKC 158-grain jacketed hollowpoint bullet. Here’s how I got there:
I know the table’s font is too small to read as presented here. If you click on the table, a larger table will appear. You can thank me by clicking on the Donate button.
Oh yeah! A 50-foot target shot with the 15.0-grain IMR 4227 load. Point of aim was 6:00 on the orange bullseyes.
As stated above, I found that 15.0 grains of IMR 4227, a magnum primer (I used CCI 550 primers), and the DKC 158-grain bullet gave the smallest groups, but several of the other recipes were not too far behind. Just about any load combo worked well. But that 15.0-grain load…wow, it was a honey. The velocity (which averaged 1140 fps) was what I would consider moderate for a .357 Magnum. The recoil was correspondingly moderate.
Every gun is different, and it’s interesting to see what works best in different guns chambered for the same cartridge. The Unique load at the top of the table above was the accuracy load for my 6 1/2-inch blue steel Ruger Blackhawk. The 158-grain Hornady jacketed hollowpoint load with 16.7 grains of Winchester’s 296 worked best in my 6 1/2-inch Ruger stainless Blackhawk and it was stunningly accurate in my 8 3/8-inch Model 27 Smith and Wesson 40 years ago. But 16.7 grains of 296 makes for a religious experience type of load. Recoil is impressive and steady servings of those cartridges beat both the stainless Ruger Blackhawk and the Smith Model 27 to death. I only tried a few of those monster loads in the Python, and I’m glad they weren’t the accuracy winner.
I keep a stash of the .38 Special standard target load (2.7 grains of Bullseye with a 148-grain Hornady hollowbase wadcutter bullet) on hand. It is a one-hole load in my Model 52 Smith, and it’s been accurate in other .357 and .38 Special handguns. I wanted to use it in the Python as a standard of comparison, and it surprised me. It was the least accurate of any of the loads tested in my Python. Like I said above: Every gun is different.
After settling on the 15.0-grain IMR 4227 load, I wanted to see how it would do at 25 and 50 yards. I went to the West End Gun Club on a beautiful Sunday morning and set up targets at both distances.
I first shot at the 25-yard target and shot a great group, but it was high (it’s the group circled in red in the target below). The rear sight only had four more clicks left in the down direction, so I dialed those in and fired another five rounds. That produced the group circled in green in the target below. I used a 6:00 hold on the black bullseye for both groups.
A 25-yard target with my 15.0-grain IMR 4227 load. Two groups…one in red before lowering the rear sight, and one in green after lowering the green sight.
After firing the first 25-yard group, I shifted to the 50-yard target before adjusting the rear sight. That produced the group outlined in red in the target below. After lowering the rear sight, I shot the group outlined in green in the target below. It was a good group at 50 yards, but still too high (I was using the same 6:00 bullseye hold mentioned above). Because I was out of adjustment on the rear sight, I tried to hold about 4 inches below the bottom of the bullseye, and I shot the group outlined in yellow.
I couldn’t get the rear sight low enough at 50 yards, so I dialed in a little Kentucky droppage to get the group in yellow.
I’m pleased with these results. I might need to move the rear sight a scosh to the left, but I want to shoot a few more groups to confirm that. That will happen in the near term. I am also thinking about a taller front sight. The rear sight is already in its lowest position; a taller front sight would bring the point of impact in line with the point of aim. We’ll see.
What’s next? I’m thinking a trip to Arizona for some more pork. I’d like to see how this combo works on a pig, and I think there’s enough energy and accuracy to humanely take next year’s stash of bacon. Well, okay, you got me: I’m just kidding about the bacon part. There’s no belly fat on a wild pig. There’s plenty of other meat on one of those Arizona hogs, though, and I’m already thinking about a cookbook featuring recipes for the same.
I’ve always been afraid of (and morbidly curious about) spiders, so when Bobbie Surber posted the photo you see above of a spider in her Ecuadorean hotel room’s bathroom, it had my attention. I don’t think I could stay in a hotel room where a spider like that put in an appearance. I know I’m a big tough guy who rides motorcycles and made it through jump school in a prior life, but spiders creep me out. I’m deathly afraid of the things.
Which doesn’t mean I’m going to pass up an opportunity to get a photo of one. Baja John and I were rolling through Baja a decade and a half ago on our KLRs (I loved that motorcycle; it was one of the best I ever owned). We were doing maybe doing 60 mph when I somehow spotted a tarantula creeping along the pavement’s edge. I had to turn around and get a photo (it’s the one that sometimes graces the scrolling photo collection you see at the top of every ExNotes blog). Baja John, being a curious sort, did a U-turn and parked his KLR by the side of the road, too. I had my old D200 Nikon with its first-gen 24-120 Nikon lens (not a good choice for a spider macro shot, but it did the job).
The KLRs of Baja John and yours truly stopped along the Transpeninsular Highway for an impromptu tarantula photo shoot. Those KLRs were great bikes.A Baja tarantula minding his (or her) own business.Cover and concealment, tarantula-style.
Before you knew it, I was snapping away while Baja John and I were crouched down in front of the hairy thing. The tarantula’s ostrich-like behavior was kind of funny. It hunkered down with a weed over its six or eight (or whatever the number is) eyes, thinking because the weed covered its eyes it was concealed. At least for a while. Then it realized we were still there and it charged. I’m not kidding. The thing charged at us with startling speed. Both of us did our best impersonation of Looney Tunes cartoon characters, our feet moving faster than we were, trying to run backwards from the crouched position, screaming like little girls. We made it, and the spider scurried off to wherever it thought was a better spot. Baja John and I, thoroughly adrenalized, laughed so hard I thought I was going to pee my pants.
I’m an old fart who really doesn’t give a rat’s ass about what anybody thinks of me anymore, so I’ll tell you that I am scared of spiders on some basic, fundamental, hardwired-into-my-psyche level. That said, I know that some of you younger guys who read ExNotes probably still worry about being perceived as tough macho men (you guys who haven’t achieved my level of self-awareness and acceptance yet). Because of that, I’ll share with you a technique I’ve used for decades. You know the deal…your significant other spots a spider, usually in the bathtub, and the job of sending it to the promised land naturally falls to you, the man. You’re as scared as she is, but your ego won’t let you admit it. There’s a spider there, and militant feminism be damned, it’s your job (as the man) to “get it.”
Here’s where the story turns to my other favorite topic: Guns. I’m helping you out here, guys. Here’s an excuse to pick up another firearm. You can thank me later.
What you need is a pellet pistol. Preferably a manually-cocked model that doesn’t require a CO2 cartridge. My weapon of choice is the Daisy 777 air pistol. It’s a fantastic gun and it is quite accurate (I used to compete with one in bullseye air pistol competition, but I digress…back to the story at hand).
When your lovely significant other comes to you announcing a spider in the bathtub, choke down those feelings of fear, revulsion, and inadequacy. Here’s what you do: Grab your air pistol. Cock it, but (and this part is very important) do not put a pellet in the chamber. While maintaining a firm grip on the weapon, point it at the offending arachnid with the muzzle approximately one inch away from your target. Do not stand directly under the spider (for reasons that will become clear momentarily, this is also very important). Take a deep breath, let it halfway out, and while maintaining focus on the front sight and proper sight alignment, gently squeeze (do not jerk) the trigger. A high-speed jet of compressed air will exit the muzzle, strike the spider, and break it up into legs, thorax, abdomen, and other body parts. They will float to the ground and in most cases, the separate parts will continue twitching (adding to the excitement, the thrill of the hunt, and proof of your masculinity). Mission accomplished, as old George W liked to say. Your job (which was to “get it”) is done. You can now turn to your sweetheart, smile, and ask her to clean it up.
About two years ago Sue and I visited Spain and Portugal. I posted more than a few blogs during that trip, but not enough on Antoni Gaudí. Gaudí was a Spanish architect who lived from 1852 to 1926. He was clearly a genius. I wish I had known more about him before we went to Barcelona; I would have appreciated what I was seeing more. Better late than never, and after our trip I started reading and studying his life. This was an amazing man.
We visited three of Gaudí’s works in Barcelona: The Park Güell, the Casa Milà apartment building, and the Sagrada Familia.
Park Güell
One of our first stops in Barcelona was the Park Güell. Park Güell was commissioned by Eusebi Güell in 1900, a Catalonian businessman, when he enlisted Gaudí to incorporate several properties he already owned into the park. The photo ops were everywhere we turned, from the sculpted tunnels to the paths to the buildings and the sculptures.
When wandering Park Güell, I noticed that we could overlook the city of Barcelona and see all the way to the Mediterranean. I snapped a photo or two, without realizing that my photo included the Sagrada Familia (it’s in a photo below, identified by a large red arrow). I’ll talk about that more in the next part of this blog.
If you look closely, you can see the Sagrada Familia from Park Güell.
Casa Milà
Casa Milà is another famous Gaudi work. Completed in 1912, it was initially an apartment building. Today it is a UNESCO World Heritage site. Like Park Güell, Casa Milà suggests a Dr. Suess-like whimsiness in its design. The structure is a giant loop, with an opening surrounded by the apartments. The roof contains many sculptures, with some that double as chimneys. When we visited Casa Milà, our guide asked if one reminded us of anything. It did. You’ll see it one of the photos below. George Lucas saw it, and it became the inspiration for Star Wars storm troopers. Another one of the photos below shows a model. Gaudi preferred to design with models and use these as the basis for the larger work.
The Sagrada Familia
Talk about a long-running construction project: Barcelona’s Sagrada Familia temple has been under construction for 140 years, and it’s not finished yet. We heard that it would be finished in another 15 years, but who knows?
The construction schedule notwithstanding, the Sagrada Familia is an active church, and if entering it does not make you a believer, nothing ever will. To say it is impressive would be a massive understatement. You have to see the Sagrada Familia to understand the excitement, the grandeur, and the genius of its design. The exterior has that same Dr. Suess/Harry Potter mystique. Once you are inside, the feeling is not one of being in a building; it is more like being in a well-illuminated and immense living creature. The illumination comes from the building’s stunning stained glass, designed with colors tuned to the light from Barcelona’s sunrise and sunset.
Words like those you are reading here don’t do justice to the Sagrada Familia. It is a place that has to be personally experienced to get a feel for its magnificence. I’ll return to Barcelona someday, and you can bet that I’ll visit the Sagrada Familia again.
Antoni Gaudí was a bit of a dandy in his younger days. In his later years, he stopped taking care of himself and basically dressed like a homeless person. He died as a result of being struck by a Barcelona streetcar. When he was injured, people did not realize who he was (they thought he was a vagrant). Antoni Gaudí’s remains are entombed in the Sagrada Familia, perhaps his greatest and certainly his most widely-known work. The Park Güell, the Casa Milà apartment building, and the Sagrada Familia are not the only projects Antoni Gaudí created. I’d like to search for and visit more of Gaudí’s works when I return to Spain.
When Sue and I visited Spain and Portugal, I didn’t take my Nikon D810 and it’s 24-120mm lens (as I usually do). The weight of that camera and lens has become too much for me to carry around. I won’t bore you with the specifics of my age-related infirmities; I’ll simply share that I’m not what I used to be. But I’m still kicking and typing, and for this trip, it was my much smaller and lighter Nikon D3300 and its smaller 18-55mm lens. I also had a lightweight, non-zoom, non-metering Rokinon 8mm fisheye lens, which I used more than I expected to (it proved to be a very capable lens). The D3300 and these two lenses (along with a bit of post-production PhotoShop tweaking) created the photos above. The interior photos were all shot at high ISO (in the range of 800 to 3200), which accounts for the graininess in some. Mea culpa.
A disclaimer up front: I don’t own the Ball Watch Trainmaster GMT you see above, and I don’t actually have one to review. In fact, I’ve never seen one in person. But I sure want one. Sometimes it’s fun to think about buying something for a while without actually pulling the trigger. One such item for me is the Ball Trainmaster GMT watch, as seen in the photo above. Part of the desire is the watch’s design, and part of it is the Ball Watch heritage.
I like the Trainmaster’s bold face and big numbers. Some have criticized the watch’s wonky font, but I like it. If you look closely at the numeral 7, you’ll see the Ball designers did a cool thing there. The sharp contrast between the blue hands and the white face works well, and the GMT red hand stands out, too. It’s just a cool face; one I know I wouldn’t get tired of checking.
The appeal of a GMT is real for me. I used to need one when working for CSC and when I was in the defense industry. I’ve had projects in Chongqing, Kayseri, Tel Aviv, Haifa, Athens, Mexico, Glasgow, and Medellin, and knowing the local times instantly with a simple glance at my watch was a good thing. It kept me from waking people up in the middle of their night and it let me know when they should be at their workstations. These days I don’t have any overseas activities, but I still like the idea of a good GMT watch. They’re just cool.
About that name: The Trainmaster. Ball has a history rooted in the railroad industry. You’ll see it on every Ball watch with the letters RR (which stand for railroad). It started 135 years ago with Webb C. Ball and a deadly railroad disaster.
Back in the day, trains used to coordinate their travel such that one would pull off onto a siding (a parallel track) so another (going in the opposite direction) could pass. You can guess where this story was going. In the Great Tipton Train Wreck (as it came to be known), one of the conductor’s watches lost four minutes and it didn’t coordinate correctly with the train going in the opposite direction. Webb Ball, a Cleveland jeweler, investigated the two watches used by the conductors on the two trains and found a 4-minute discrepancy. After that, Ball became the go-to guy for all railroad time-keeping issues He started a watch company and Ball watches became the standard for all US rail activities. It’s where the expression “on the ball” comes from. If you were running on schedule, you were “on the Ball” (meaning you were on time).
Today’s Ball watches (including the Trainmaster) have a unique feature: Their illuminated hands and time indicators. The conventional luminosity approach other watches use is to incorporate photoluminescent pigments on the watch hands and numbers (or markers near the numbers). The luminescent pigments absorb photons from exterior light sources like the sun or other strong lights. The problem with this conventional lume approach is that it loses luminescence relatively quickly, and the lume doesn’t glow as brightly as the watch ages.
Ball’s approach is different. Instead of using conventional watch lume materials, Ball incorporates what they refer to as micro gas tubes that stay bright. These are tiny phosphor-coated glass tubes located in the watch hands and the numbers (or watch face markers) that contain tritium gas. The micro gas tubes stay bright with no intensity diminishment. They’re said to be good for 25 years. Different Ball watches place the micro gas tubes in different locations. On the Trainmaster, they are in the hour, minute, and second hands, and in markers by each number on the face. There’s no marker in the GMT hand (I guess Ball thinks you don’t need to know the time elsewhere in the world at night).
Ball offers a couple of relatively unique options on this watch. They will engrave your name for free. You can also select your own serial number that goes on the watch face (if someone else hasn’t already selected it). When Ball first announced these, I checked, and 007 was available. Today, though, it’s not. I guess James Bond already ordered his.
As I said at the start of this blog, I’d like to own a Trainmaster, but not badly enough to actually shell out the cash owning one would require. The Trainmaster retails for something north of $3,000. Poking around a bit on the Internet, I found places that sell the Trainmaster in the $2500 to $2600 range, but that’s still pretty rarefied air for a watch I don’t need.
My buddy Paul is a serious Randall knife aficionado. Randalls are way out of my pay grade, but I admire them greatly. About a year ago, Paul sent a link to me for a YouTube video about a Marbles knife that approaches the look and quality of a Randall. The YouTube video may be lacking in quality, but it more than makes up for it in content. It sure grabbed my attention.
The price for (and the wait to get) a Randall knife make them a nonstarter for me, but the thought of a high-quality Bowie knife had my attention (as you probably already know from following the ExNotes blog). The Marbles MR 723 sure seemed appealing, and for a measly $55, I thought I would take a chance. It was money well spent. The knife is beautiful, it is substantial, and it has the look and feel of a high-quality item.
A week or two after I received the Marbles Bowie, I learned that they are also available with a green Micarta (instead of black Micarta) handle. At first, I was disappointed. I would have preferred the green Micarta version. Then I thought about it a minute. For another few dollars, I could have both, and that’s what I did.
The specifications for these Marbles knives are impressive. The knife has a blade length of 7 1/2 inches. The blade is D2 tool steel, which I’ve read is a good knife steel (it’s kind of a moot point for me, as I don’t intend to do anything with the Marbles Bowies other than look at them). The blade is substantive (it’s almost a quarter of an inch thick where it emerges from the guard), and it has a satin finish. It’s very sharp. I can’t tell you how long the edge will last, nor can I tell you how difficult it will be to sharpen it. The guard and pommel are polished brass. The handle material is, as mentioned above, Micarta, and it is available in either green or black (and both look good). The sheath is first class, being nicely finished leather with a sharpening stone included. Overall, these are very nice knives. I know some folks who read this will dismiss me as a knife neophyte who won’t really use these knives the way other folks might use a Randall, and hey, they’d be right. I’m not Davy Crockett, and I’m not going to try to kill a bear with either of these.
These Marbles are great looking knives, and they look good sitting amongst the other knives I’ve accumulated over the last year or two. I’m pleased with the purchase.
Facebook and Meta were slammed in court yesterday, with a mega-million-dollar award going to a plaintiff claiming harm from Fecebook’s intentionally-addictive interface. I can see both sides of that argument, and I’m saying that as a guy who is hopelessly addicted. I can spend hours scrolling mindlessly through all the stupid stuff I see on Facebook (especially, for reasons that would take team a team of psychiatrists to unearth) videos of baby gorillas.
There’s a Facebook feature showing friends who are currently online, which I never paid much attention to. There’s another feature that allows you to call (through your computer and the Facebook interface) friends who are currently online. You can probably guess where this is going. I saw that Mike Huber was online yesterday morning, and I decided to give the Facebook telephone option a try.
A few rings later and Mike and I were conversing, clear as a bell, about a variety of topics. Mike is in Colombia for a few more days, and we had a great time talking about that wildly-beautiful country. Oddly enough, Mike ran into Buffalo Bonker down there in Colombia. I first met Mike on one of the CSC Baja rides when we were filling our gasolina tanks in Cataviña. Buffalo was also on that ride 8 years ago. It’s interesting how these motorcycle-based chance encounters can become lifelong friendships.
Lunch with Mike Huber at Las Casitas in Bell, California. It was as good as it looked!Mike Huber’s top case and jump wings. It led to a conversation that led to a great friendship.A Buffalo self-portrait in Baja.
That had me thinking about my trips to Colombia. I love the place. I did a lot of blogging while I was there. If you don’t see any friends you can call on Facebook, if you’re tired of listening to warped news shows pretending to be objective, or if you just want to see a bunch of cool photos and a few videos of my Colombian adventures, today is your lucky day…
Greenwich Mean Time. In case you were wondering, that’s what GMT means, and I thought I would introduce this blog with a simple definition of what Greenwich Mean Time actually means, only it’s not that simple. Here’s the first part of a long explanation from Wikipedia:
Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) is the local mean time at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, London, counted from midnight. At different times in the past, it has been calculated in different ways, including being calculated from noon; as a consequence, it cannot be used to specify a particular time unless a context is given. The term “GMT” is also used as one of the names for the time zone UTC+00:00 and, in UK law, is the basis for civil time in the United Kingdom.
It gets more complicated from there, with considerations given for the historical differences between the day starting at noon (versus midnight), variations in the time at which the sun crosses directly over London’s Greenwich Observatory (it can vary by 16 minutes either way), and other factors I’m not going to go into here. After reading through the Wikipedia definition, I’m going to settle on GMT standing for Greenwich Mean Time and leave it at that.
In my watch-centric context, GMT means a watch that can be used for showing the time in two time zones simultaneously. There’s a lot of ways to do this and the watchmaking world has numerous different approaches. It’s perhaps easiest with a digital watch that can switch between cities (Casio has a number of watches that can do this and we’ve blogged about them before). Within the analog world, there are also different approaches, and we’ve also written about those before (see our blogs on the Citizen Blue Angels and the Citizen Night Hawk).
The more conventional GMT approach in the analog watch world is to add a fourth hand and a separate 24-hour set of markings, with the fourth GMT hand or the hour hand used to designate the second time zone. Last year, I bought a two-tone Seiko GMT watch because I thought it was cool and it compared favorably to my Rolex GMT Master II (and that blog is here).
So where’s this story going?
Several watches needed new batteries. The one at the top is a Seiko military-styled chrono in blue. The one at lower left is Sue’s Citizen. The one in the middle is a Timex flyback day-date I bought several years ago. I hardly ever wear that one, but I like it. The one in the lower right is a Fossil I admired when moto-buddy Joseph Lee wore it one day. To my surprise, he took it off and gave it to me.
A few days ago, I noticed several of my quartz watches had stopped running. One of Sue’s quartz watches had, too. Dead batteries. It happens on an irregular basis. But that’s okay, because it gives me an excuse to swing by my favorite watch shop, Golden Times Jewelry, in nearby Pomona. They’re nice people and they only charge $3.25 to install a new battery. And while I’m waiting, I can peruse their selection of new Citizen and Seiko watches.
My new Seiko Field Series 5 GMT. This is a good-looking and accurate watch.
I was doing that when I noticed a Seiko I had not seen previously. It was the Seiko 5 Field Series GMT. It had all the features that appealed to me, including big numbers (my eyes aren’t what they used to be), a black face, strong contrast between the hands and the face, a stainless steel case and bracelet, it was not hideously huge (why do watchmakers make watches so unnecessarily big these days?), and an overall appearance that, to me, looked good. I asked to see it, and Stephanie (the nice lady who manages the shop) lopped 35% off Seiko’s suggested list price. That was a superb deal.
The Seiko 5 Field Series GMT and the Rolex Explorer II. The Rolex’s street price is around $11,000. The Seiko’s MSRP is about $450, but you can get it for less. I think the Seiko is better looking than the Rolex.
The new Seiko reminds me of Rolex’s Explorer II GMT. I tried it on and asked Stephanie if it made me look fat. She smiled. I pulled the trigger and I’m glad I did.
When I got home, I navigated to the official US time site (www.time.gov) and set the new Seiko to the exact time on it. I’ve been wearing the new Seiko for several days now and the watch is tracking to the official government time exactly. That’s awesome from a mechanical automatic (i.e., self-winding) watch. A new Rolex (or one that’s been appropriately serviced) is accurate to about 5 seconds per day. The Seiko is keeping better time.
The new Seiko sits lower on the wrist than my other Seiko Series 5 watches.The Seiko 5 Field Series GMT window. I like it.
There are several things I like about this new Seiko. It sits lower on my wrist than most of my watches. That’s good. Like the other Seiko 5 watches, the watch has a window that allows you to see the movement and the self-winder. That’s a feature I like. The Seiko has a 41-hour reserve (if you take it off when it is fully wound, it will keep running for another 41 hours). That’s less than a Rolex’s 70-hour reserve, but in the real world, it’s kind of a pointless advantage (in my opinion). If I take the watch off, it’s only going to be for an hour or so. If I’m going to wear a different watch, it will usually be for a week or more (so neither a 41-hour reserve or a 70-hour reserve will keep it going).
Few dinners are as easy to make and ritzy as barbequed salmon. It’s one of my favorites, and it came about as a result of dinner several decades ago at the now-defunct California Lawry’s restaurant out near Griffith Park. Lawry’s is a company that makes spices, one of which is their 17 Seasonings. I’m not sure why I ordered salmon that night (it might have been a first for me), but it was delicious. So much so, in fact, that I asked our waiter how it was prepared. He smiled. That was the whole point of Lawry’s having a restaurant: To get you to like their meals and buy their spices.
“It’s easy,” he said. “Drizzle a little olive oil on the fish, put some of our Lawry’s 17 Seasonings on top of it, throw it on the grill, and you’re there.”
The guy was right, and I’ve been making my barbequed salmon that way ever since. It’s a favorite if it’s just Sue and I having dinner, and it’s a favorite when we’re having folks over for company.
With that as an intro, let’s get into it.
Ingredients
Salmon. Duh. Yep. You can get a big container at Costco (although lately their salmon hasn’t been that good), or you can buy a couple of cutlets packaged like you see below. When you open the salmon, if it smells fishy or it has an ammonia aroma, bring it back to the store. It’s been on the shelf too long. Good fish will have no smell.
Seasonings. I think you can still get Lawry’s 17 Seasonings. These days, we just buy Costco’s bigger bottle of seasoning, which they call their organic no salt seasoning. A bottle of that lasts us a year or two. It’s just as good as the Lawry’s, but way less expensive.
Olive Oil. Get the extra virgin stuff. If you see anything labeled extra extra virgin, steer around it. It only goes up to extra virgin. I know people in the olive oil business. Trust me on this.
Charcoal Briquets. I like to barbeque the old-fashioned way, with a barbeque and charcoal.
A Charcoal Grill. Nothing fancy here. I use the cheapest charcoal grill I can find at Walmart. Every decade or so I’ll need to replace it. I like the taste of charcoal grilled stuff better than a gas grill.
Once you have everything, you’d good to go. This takes about 45 minutes to prepare, with a good half hour being necessary just to get the charcoal going.
Get the charcoal grill started and put the wire grill on top of the glowing briquets. Scrub the grill clean after it’s hot and spray the grill with a nonstick spray.
Steelhead, Atlantic salmon, Coho salmon…it’s all good. We prefer steelhead trout. Salmon is in the trout family, hence the name.
While the grill is heating, open the salmon container, rinse the cutlets (or the filets with tap water).
Rinsed and ready for the oil and the seasonings.We do a lot of shopping at Costco. Their Organic No-Salt Seasoning is just like Lawry’s 17 Seasonings.
Drizzle a little oil over the top of the cutlets, and then sprinkle the seasonings on top of the oil.
Drizzled, sprinkled, and ready to grill.
Place the salmon skin side down on the grill for 14 minutes. After 14 minutes, flip the cutlets and grill for an additional 3 to 4 minutes.
Having a decent chronograph helps here (my preferred watch is either a Casio G-Shock or my Bulova Lunar Pilot). Any watch will do. But I’m not going to let a chance to show a watch slip by. If want to read our watch reviews (and other equipment reviews, too), they are right here.
There’s a hell of a story behind this Bulova.
Remove the salmon from the grill; it’s ready to serve. Just about any veggie goes well with salmon. We like steamed carrots, asparagus, a salad, maybe some citrus as sides (as you see in the photo at the top of this blog), and others.
Good to go, and great to eat.
So there you have it. Barbequed salmon, à la ExhaustNotes. Don’t thank us now; just click on those pop-up ads or maybe click and leave a donation to support your favorite blog writers.
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hour, minute, and second hands, and in markers by each number on the face. There’s no marker in the GMT hand (I guess Ball thinks you don’t need to know the time elsewhere in the world at night).
