Things are happening fast now that the RX3s are here. Our new good buddy Ken was down from San Francisco with his family visiting Disneyland, he saw us on the Internet, he stopped by, and he pulled the trigger. Yep, Ken’s buying a blue RX3, and he’s one happy camper! All this happened while I was writing the previous blog showing the white RX3!
Welcome aboard, Ken!
The white RX3 is awesome, guys. The first two we unpacked are white, and that color is stunning!
It’s difficult to get a true representation of the colors under fluorescent lights, so let me tell you just a bit…the white has a bit of pearl tone to it, and it has a very slight bluish-gray hue. In a word, it’s awesome!
Jim, think Baja!
On the road…Baja’s Transpeninsular Highway through the rock formations around Catavina!
So, the RX3s are in, the dates are cast in concrete, and come H-E-Double-Hockeysticks or high water, we’re Baja bound, baby! We’re making this run from April 29 to May 3 (that’s Wednesday through Sunday), and here’s what we need to know:
Shoot me an email directly (jberk@cscmotorcycles.com) so I’ll know how many are going. We’re going to have a great time, my friends. I can’t wait.
Here are a few preliminary answers to the questions I know you’ll be asking:
You’ll need to be here the night before. We’ll be pulling out of Azusa at 4:30 in the morning on Wednesday to avoid the LA and San Diego rush hour traffic. Coffee is your friend, and we’ll have a pot going here.
The rule for our departure on each morning of the trip is this…if you’re not ready to leave when the group is, you’re on your own, because we’ll be down the road. I’ve done this before, and (trust me on this), if we don’t leave on time, we won’t be able to finish the trip on time. That 0:Dark:30 departure on Wednesday, though, is for our first day only…we’ll leave at a more reasonable 8:00 a.m on all of the following days while we are in Mexico. 8:00 a.m. Not 8:10, or 8:15, or…well, you get the idea.
You’ll need your US passport, US insurance on your bike, and insurance for your bike in Mexico. As I posted before, we strongly recommend Baja Bound Insurance. It’s the company I always use, and they are awesome.
Baja Bound: Our preferred Baja insurance provider!
Our good buddy Geoff, a VP at Baja Bound, will buy us all breakfast in Ensenada at Velero’s. Trust me on this, folks…we’ll have covered about 200 miles at that point on our first day, and a breakfast at Velero’s is an awesome way to start a trip into Baja!
Breakfast at Velero’s in Ensenada courtesy of Baja Bound Insurance…it doesn’t get any better than this!
Well, maybe it does…we’ll all get fish tacos at my Guerrero Negro buddy Tony’s place…courtesy of your blogmeister!
Whoa…it just keeps getting better….another free meal…the lobster burritos at Mama Espinoza’s courtesy of CSC Motorcycles!
The next thing to consider…I want you to think very seriously about your riding skills from this perspective: When we get on the open road, we’ll be running at speeds up to about 65 mph. If you’re not comfortable riding at highway speeds yet because you are a new rider, you should take a pass on this Inaugural Baja Run. We’ll be doing this ride every year, and if you have an RX3, you’re automatically invited. If you’re not comfortable riding at these speeds, though, it would be better to plan on making the trip next year after you have a few more miles under your belt. I did a group ride once with a guy that wanted to run 35 mph the whole distance, and I’m not going to do that again. It’s unfair to the rest of the group.
You need to be on an RX3. We’ve had a bunch of other folks write and tell us they want to ride with us on their BMW, or their Harley, or their whatever. Folks, part of the CSC RX3 ownership experience is that we’re running these adventure rides for our riders. If you have a Tiger or a Ducati or whatever, check out the adventure rides they run (you’ll find they don’t have any). Better yet, if you ride anything other than an RX3, take the money you’d spend on your first couple of years of scheduled maintenance on your BMW or Ducati or Triumph, buy an RX3, and come ride with us!
The abandoned Mission San Fernando Rey de Espana Velicata
The ride will be exclusively on asphalt, or it will mostly be on asphalt. It’s your call. If you want to see the cave paintings, the abandoned Mission San Fernando Rey de Espana Velicata, Coco’s Corner, or the Isla Del Carmen shipwreck in San Jacinto, it will mandate a few miles on dirt roads, but we’ll make that decision as a group, and if anyone doesn’t want to ride in the dirt, we’ll take those places off the list. Believe me, there’s plenty of other cool stuff to see in Baja.
You’ll probably need about $850 (maybe less) for expenses along the way. If you want to share a room with one of the other riders, that number will drop sharply. I’ll refine the cost estimate based on the scouting run I did a couple of weeks ago with Susie, and I’ll post that in the next few days.
I’m off on another secret mission this coming Wednesday for Steve (it’s Canada this time, folks), but I’ll be reachable via email if you have any questions.
That’s it for now, boys and girls. Don’t read anything negative into the above. I want you to ride with us and I (as always) can’t wait to get my knees in the breeze and point my new RX3 toward Baja. I’m getting the orange one….I hear they’re faster than the others!
As many of you know, Revzilla recently published a piece on the CSC RX3 on their online magazine (you can see it here). The article is getting some interesting comments, including one from our good buddy Jay in Malaysia I’ll quote a few excerpts from…
…thanks to online tutorials from Joe Berk, and the good guys from CSC, I can now…change oil by myself…and even TRY to change tyres (kept pinching the freaking tube).
The point is, I believe the CSC business model is encouraging new riders such as myself to get our hands dirty, operating on a motorcycle and all. Being a rider who loves adventure-riding, sooner or later I will have to make my own repairs by the roadside. Or riverside. And I rather have the knowledge beforehand than trying to figure out which wrench I have to use to open up my wheel in the middle of nowhere.
And, when I’m stuck at some desolate jungle in Borneo here with my flat tyre, I will be sure to thank Joe for the tyre-changing tutorial.
Thanks CSC!
Well, after reading that, you’d think I might get a swollen head. Actually, it’s a bit late for that…I already have one, as evidenced by the XL full face helmet I wear. But that can come in handy, too! Here’s another comment on that Revzilla article…this time from our buddy Piglet2010…
Will an XL Bell Vortex fit in a pannier or the top box?
Well, Piglet2010, I don’t know about your Bell helmet, but just for you I took the following two photos a few minutes ago. My HJC carbon fiber helmet (size XL, by the way), fits in there just fine…
Please note that the top box you see in the photo above is our optional Tourfella luggage set ($849.95). A full face helmet will not fit in the stock RX3 luggage.
My good buddy Ryan has been busy adding new products to our accessories and supplies line. Here’s an update!
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A new multipurpose lube from Maxima! It’s a great general purpose silicone-based water displacement lube, and it’s only $8.45. |
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We offer combo packs of chain lube and chain cleaner, as outlined earlier. Buy this as a package and we’ll give you 10% off for $17.91! |
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Here’s a cool item…a grunge brush for cleaning your chain! The grunge brush is $13.95. |
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Hey, a combo pack of chain cleaner, either the chain wax or chain lube, and our multi-purpose lube. Same deal, folks…buy the package and get 10% off for a total of $25.51! |
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Or, how about a combo pack of chain cleaner, chain lube (your choice of either chain wax or chain lube). Again, buy the combo and get 10% off for a price of $30.46! |
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Here’s the same thing showing the chain wax as part of this package…buy the combo and get 10% off for a price of $30.46! |
For any of the above items, give us a call at 909 445 0900 and ask for Ryan.
That guy you see smiling in the photo to the right is our CEO, Steve Seidner, and the reason he’s smiling is what’s behind him. It’s history being made…the first shipment of CSC RX3 motorcycles arrived in Azusa this morning, and they’re being unloaded into our plant as I write this!
Yes, indeed, the first of our RX3 motorcycles are here! We’ll be receiving the rest of the shipment over the next four days. Folks, our wait is nearly over. Woweee!
Don’t deluge us with calls about your bike just yet…we’ll need a tiny bit of time to enter everything into our inventory control system, get things sorted, and get your bikes on their way to you!
Much, much more to follow, my friends….but I wanted to get the word out to you first!
A good weekend and a good Monday today…the containers are being unloaded in Long Beach, and I received a nice letter from my new good buddy Martin in New Zealand. Martin is a dealer (Belamoto) in New Zealand who’s bringing the RX3 to that beautiful land. Martin wrote some interesting things and he had a cool photo of the RX3 next to a GS 1200 BMW.
First, the photo…
Seeing that photo says a lot to me. In US dollars, the CSC RX3 is $3,495. The GSA is around $23,000. The RX3 will do 84 mph. The GSA is faster. If you drop the RX3, you can pick it up. If you drop the GSA…well, you know. If you want to know how to service the RX3, you can go right here for the CSC maintenance tutorials. If you want BMW’s online service tutorials (or Harley’s, or Honda’s, or…well, you get the idea) search for those links and let me know what you find. If you want a free Service Manual, buy a CSC RX3. If you want a BMW service manual (or one from Harley, or Honda, or well, you know…) bring your credit card.
I really like Martin’s photo. It’s a picture that’s worth a thousand words.
There was some cool stuff in Martin’s letter to me…
…putting aside the fact that we’re used to our 1200s, for what it is, the RX3 is loads of fun to ride. It feels nimble but planted on the road, seated and standing, and I really felt I could throw it into the corners. I can’t wait to see what it’s like once run in and I can really open it up, plus I’m keen to test it on gravel…
…everyone we’ve shown it to has been really impressed so far – it definitely has more ‘presence’ than you would expect for a 250…
And here’s another comment Martin made on one of the Internet forums following the RX3…
…assembly was no problem. The setup tutorial on CSC’s blog was a big help…
Hey, we’re glad to hear that, Martin, and thanks for the compliment!
More good stuff…we’ve had several instances already of people commenting on the forums about my good buddy Ryan’s professionalism and willingness to take the time necessary to help folks with their purchasing decisions. Folks, Ryan is a great guy and we really appreciate the compliments!
Sometimes I go tangential on other topics, and here I go again. More than a few of you tell me you like the gun stuff I occasionally post here, and I have to tell you about two super deals I pulled the trigger on this weekend. One of my favorite shops is the Gunrunner in Duarte, and he had some interesting rifles in there when I stopped by on Saturday. One was a custom Ruger No. 1 (Ruger’s ultra classy single-shot rifle) with an exotic stock and fore end….
This Ruger rifle is a custom proposition from the git go, including the cartridge…it’s what we call a wildcat (a custom cartridge that you have to make yourself). It’s 6mm Improved, which is a real oddball, but I don’t care. At the price I paid for this, I already have a guy who will put a standard .30 06 barrel on the rifle, and I similarly already have a guy who wants to buy the 6mm Improved barrel. Sometimes everything just goes the way you want it to.
After I thought I had finished my negotiations on the Ruger, I noticed another rifle…an older .223 Remington Model 700. It’s a standard (non custom) rifle, but it’s another one with a price that was just too good to walk away from. And the photos don’t do it justice. It has a real contrasty bit of walnut with horizontal dark stripes that are unusually nice on a production gun. I’m still watching Frank and Mike on the American Pickers TV show (I watch that show every chance I get), and I’m still honing my negotiating skills. As Frank would say, it was time to do some bundling, and I did…
That Remington is going to get a scope and I’m looking forward to seeing how well it does.
You’re probably thinking I sunk a ton of money into these two rifles, but I did not. The two of them cost what a new set of RX3 Tourfella luggage cost, and folks, that’s a steal (both for the rifles and for the RX3’s aluminum luggage)!
Well, we are a motorcycle company, so I guess I should get back to motorcycle stuff. I’ll be in the shop tomorrow morning with my Nikon, and I’ll capture some more photos for you.
Steve is talking to the Long Beach Harbor folks, our shipping agent, and everyone else who has any impact on our bikes arriving in Azusa, and we hope to have answers on that question soon (as well as the next big question, which is, of course: When are we going to Baja?).
You for sure will want to bring your camera on the Baja trip! Our guy Matt has been doing a magnificent job on the new blog layout, and he’s given me some features I have not had before. Let’s see if I can do this right…here’s a panoramic shot stitched together from nine photos of the area around Baja’s Guerrero Negro lighthouse…it looks like it’s only 650 pixels wide (the width of the blog column), but click that photo and see what you get, and then click it again!
Baja, folks….it’s coming up! And you’ll know the dates as soon as we do!
It has been a busy weekend. The big news, of course, was watching the Xin Fei Zhou dock in Long Beach. I’m just hoping we have accurate information and our bikes are in fact in the shipping containers on that ship. I’m real sure they are, but I don’t want to give anybody bad information again. The big questions now are when will they be unloaded, and when will they get through Customs? Steve will be talking to our shipping agent on Monday, who probably won’t be able to tell us this information yet, but you can bet we’ll stay on it.
The next big question is when are we going to Baja, and I guess another question is how far down the peninsula are we going on our CSC RX3 Inaugural Run? So here’s the answer to both questions: I don’t know yet. I’ll have a better feel once we see how the freight is moving through the dockside operations area. As soon as I know, you’ll know.
On our Baja scouting trip a couple of weeks ago in the Subie, we got some good info (in addition to rolling smack into the middle of a labor riot). Tonight’s blog is a good news, maybe some bad news, and more good news story.
The first bit of good news is that the labor riots appear to be over. They pay those poor folks $10 a day. That’s probably shameful, but I will admit all my sympathy went out the window when those folks threatened Susie and me, and then keyed my car for good measure. They wanted $20 a day, and the big agribusinesses countered with $10.60 a day. More riots. They bumped it to $11.00 per day, and the unrest continued. Then $12 a day and things started to get calmer. When the owners agreed to cough up $13 a day and the labor unions said no, the workers apparently looked at each other, shrugged their shoulders, and went back to work. The bottom line is that all is well down there now.
Here’s some mildly moderate bad news: The whales bail out of Baja in April. The whales ain’t stupid, and they know with warmer weather on the way it’s time to swim back to Alaska. The Malarrimo tours stop at the end of March. There are still some whales down there in April, but most of the tours end with the end of March because the tour operators don’t want to spend the additional fees to the Mexican government to go that extra month. But I spoke with Emilio Achoy, who owns the Malarrimo operation, and he told me to email him when we have our dates squared away. He’ll ask around to see if any of the other tour operators are still running when we roll on down there.
Back to more good news: If we don’t take the half day (actually, more like two-thirds of a day) to see the whales, we can probe further south, and that would be my preference anyway. Maybe that’s not fair because I’ve already seen the whales, but I really would like to show you guys San Ignacio and their beautiful mission, and Santa Rosalia on the Sea of Cortez. It all depends on how many miles you guys and gals want to do each day. I’m ordinarily a 500-t0-600 mile per day guy, but that may be a bit much. We’ve talked about 250 miles per day, but I think that would be too little. I think if we target 350 miles or so each day, we can really get a lot of good stuff into this trip.
So, about that little town of Santa Rosalia…it’s awesome. It would be right on the Transpeninsular Highway (again, don’t let the name fool you…it’s just a two-lane country road winding through the mountains and the Vizcaino desert). After we stop for fish tacos in Guerrero Negro from my buddy Tony Lopez….
…we’ll continue diagonally southeast across the peninsula to hit Santa Rosalia on the Sea of Cortez. Every red-blooded adventure rider has to ride to the Sea of Cortez. When the other beer-bellies are talking about their rides to Cook’s Corner and the rest of the cliché moto-stops, you’ll be able to tell them about a real ride…
If you’re wondering about accessorizing your RX3 and what are the best things you can put on your new motorcycle for the Baja expedition, allow me to make a recommendation. You need the sheepskin seat cover. Folks, I’ve done a lot of riding, and my motto is this: Nothing but the best for my butt, and for my money, that’s the sheepskin seat over. These things just flat work!
If you call my good buddy Ryan at 909 445 0900, he’ll hook you up with one.
On to Santa Rosalia…it’s one of Baja’s gems. Baja has a lot of gems, but this little town is unique. It was a copper mining town for much of its life (and the copper is coming back). Think back to the late 1800s and the electrification of the entire world. Copper was king…the power companies and everybody else needed it for electrical wiring. And Santa Rosalia had it. The Mexican government sold a 70-year lease to a French mining company (Boleo), and Santa Rosalia grew up as a Boleo company town. Unlike most other towns in Mexico, the architecture is French, and the homes are made of wood rather than stucco. It’s a cool little place.
One of the neatest places in Santa Rosalia is the Frances Hotel. It’s all wood, it’s old world, it sits high on a hill overlooking the town and the Sea of Cortez, and it’s just flat cool…
If we work it right, this can be our turnaround point, and we’ll spend the night at the Frances Hotel. They have Internet there, and you won’t need an alarm clock or wake up call. The roosters will take care of that!
The French company bakery was owned by Boleo, and the Boleo panaderia (that’s Spanish for bakery) is still in business. Muey cool, my friends. We can wander over there after dinner for a dessert pastry…
The sun will still be up, and an after-dinner stroll to take in some of the town’s sights (and I’m only showing you a few here) always works well…maybe a cup of coffee…
Or maybe just a chance to grab a few more photos…
And of course, no visit to Santa Rosalia would be complete without a visit to the town’s Gustav-Eiffel-designed church…
And that’s it for tonight, my friends. All the Santa Rosalia photos you see here and that one of my good buddy Tony Lopez were shots I grabbed a couple of weeks ago when Susie and I rolled through la zonas de disturbios (that’s Susie you see in the photo above standing in the doorway of Santa Rosalia’s Eiffel church). When you make this trip, boys and girls, bring a camera!
Easter Sunday and I’m up with the roosters. Too excited to sleep, I guess. You probably already know this because I posted it on Facebook: The Xin Fei Zhou docked yesterday afternoon in Long Beach…
The marine tracking service is impressive…you can even see the tugboats that pushed the Xin Fei Zhou into position. Now, it’s all over except for the waiting. The ship has to be unloaded, the containers have to be moved (that’s where the real backup is occurring, we’re told), the containers have to clear Customs, and then they can be transported to our plant. As always, we’ll keep you posted.
I’d like to go for a motorcycle ride today, but I think I’m going to run out to the range this morning and punch holes in some paper.
I know you guys are wondering about the Baja trip. So am I, folks. As soon as we have more info on the dockside activities, I’ll post the dates. The good news is: We’re going!
More to follow, so keep your ojos on the blog!
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