CSC Blog

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!

I’m waiting just like you folks are.   The Xin Fei Zhou is still sitting just outside the harbor entrance.   In the meantime, I saw this Baja video on Facebook’s Motorcycle Mexico page.  It’s really good…it captures the spirit of the place superbly well…

Our shipping agent tells us the Xin Fei Zhou should be berthing soon.  I’m hesitant to share the date, as we’ve got that wrong before, but the news should be good.   Stay tuned and we’ll keep you posted!

Good stuff, folks, and as promised, we’re providing a comprehensive RX3 accessories update.    There are a lot of things here and due to a few limitations with this software, it’s taking a bit longer than I’d like to add all of these items.   I’ll be posting stuff throughout the day, so check back often for new items.   If you see anything you like or if you have more questions, give my good buddy Ryan a call at 909 445 0900!

Motorcycle Accessories Grips

Lighting Kits

Centerstands 

Oil Changes

Tools

Fluids

T-Shirts

And that’s it for now.   We’re adding new things all the time, so keep checking the blog for our latest new products!

Boys and girls, it’s been an interesting day!   I was in the plant this morning to grab some photos so I could share some of our newest RX3 accessories and support gear, and like always, things are hopping.

You might have seen the photos on the Motorcyclist magazine Facebook page up on GMR and in front of the plant.    Lots of Facebook “likes” on those, my friends!   Here are the photos…one from our ride showing Ari Henning wringing out the RX3 up on Glendora Mountain Road….

And another showing Ari talking to an old bald fat guy in front of the plant…

That sure was a fun ride.   Motorcyclist is doing a story on smaller displacement bikes, and Ari told me he thought the RX3 was great.   He said he’d been testing small bikes all week and all of the others had glaring deficiencies, but he gave the RX3 a thumbs up.   Ari knows his stuff!

More good stuff…after leaving the plant today, I decided to take some personal time and head over to the range.   It was great and I had the place to myself this afternoon.    It’s relaxing, it’s fun, and I had a chance to put my bright stainless steel Colt .45 and the Springfield Armory 9mm through their paces…I love shooting those handguns…

My club is in a remote location up in the San Gabriels and it requires driving a couple of miles on dirt roads to get there.   On the way out, I spotted what I thought was a Pacific ribbon snake on the side of the road, so I stopped, grabbed my iPhone and walked right up to it to grab a photo…

You can imagine my surprise when I leaned over the thing and saw the rattles.  Whoa!    I guess it’s springtime, and young rattlesnakes are out doing what they do when the weather gets nice.   You may recall the one Susie and I saw on our way to see the cave paintings in Mexico last week…

You know, the iPhone does an okay job when taking pictures, but it just doesn’t compare to a Nikon with a big lens.  That “up close and personal” photo of the Mexican rattler was with a 70mm lens…I was in the Subie and the snake was just outside my car window.   It looks like the thing is about to kiss me, but trust me, I was a good 4 or 5 feet away.   In the photo up top (the one I grabbed with my iPhone), I was nearly on top of the thing.  In both cases, neither snake rattled.   They were checking me out and I was checking them out.   The things fascinate me.

Okay, enough of the snake stories.  On to more interesting stuff.

Everybody wants to know when the Xian Fei Zhou is going to unload.   I wish I knew.  Our shipping guy is telling us between the 1st (that’s tomorrow) and the 4th.   As soon as we know, we’ll post it here.

Next topic…what’s happening in Baja?   The LA Times has published stories on the labor riots in and around San Quintin for the last week.   It looks like the riots have subsided.   Here’s a photo I grabbed off the Internet (it’s not mine)…

It was pretty scary when Susie and I got caught in it, but it’s calmed down considerably.   We’ll be okay when we ride through there.   We just have to get the bikes off the boat and into your hands so that we can head to Baja, and we’re doing what we can to make that happen.  We’re as impatient as I know you are.

More good stuff.  I’ve got an updated accessories and supplies list for the RX3.   That’s the good news.   The bad news is that I ran out of steam tonight.   Keep an eye on the blog…I’ll post the updated accessories and supplies list tomorrow.

Later, my friends.

A blog or two down I mentioned that our motor maestro Rich was doing a hop up on our good buddy John’s CSC 250.   It’s a cool project…a ported and polished, milled-down cylinder head…

Rich had the head milled 0.035, and he got to that number by doing a clay impression of the piston at top dead center to make sure that the modified motor would have sufficient valve clearance.  Milling the cylinder head reduces the combustion chamber volume, which bumps the compression, which increases power.   Very cool stuff, and nobody is better at it than our guy Rich.

A quick shot of the engine…

And a photo of the completed bike in our “skunk works” area…

The CSC 250 you see above is a tastefully-accessorized motorcycle (these bikes look awesome in gloss black, but then, they look good in any color).  With the engine mods, it is going to be one quick scooter.   John, you’re going to have a lot of fun with this bike!

Yep, we were up in the mountains again today, this time with Ari and Brian from Motorcyclist magazine.  Good times, folks…

The orange RX3 in the photos above is absolutely stock with the exception of the handguards.   We’ll have those with the CSC logo (the handguards in the photo above are preproduction items) for just $49.95.

Here’s a shot of the blue RX3…

The blue RX3 has our Tourfella aluminum bags ($849.95) and the 19-inch front wheel ($199.95 for the wheel only; $269.95 for the wheel, tire, and matching CST dual sport tire).  I rode the blue bike today.  It was fun.

I was on the road again today, on my motorcycle,  but not for too long.  I fired up the Baja Blaster right after we returned from, well, Baja, and she was running rough at low rpm.  The little 150 single ran well at higher rpm, but it wouldn’t idle properly.  Steve told me the low speed passageways in the jets were most likely clogged.  He reminded me I actually wrote a blog about that a few years ago, and he suggested I take a look at it.   Son of a gun, that’s what happens when you get old.   I did a search on main jet, and whaddaya know…

It’s those little holes along the brass tube that get gummed up, so I cleaned them out and the bike absolutely purrs at low speed now.   So much so that I hopped on and rode up to Mt. Baldy…

Good times up there today…I stopped at the Mt. Baldy Lodge and there were a few other bikes, including this Harley belonging to my new good buddy Bill…

Bill was interested in the CSC 150, as is usually the case when anyone sees these Mustangs for the first time.   We had a nice chat, we talked about the different surgeries we had endured (another common theme when old bikers get together), and I grabbed another shot of the Baja Blaster and Bill’s Harley…

All this happened before I even left the parking lot.   When I got to the Mt. Baldy Lodge front door, I saw another couple of cool bikes…a Triumph and an old Honda Trail 70…

Both of their owners came out and I had another nice chat.   Wowee.  I was a regular chatty Cathy today.

All talked out, I went inside to have an ice tea.  I never drink alcohol when I ride, but there was a Bud somebody left on the bar and I was playing with the camera…

That’s Corina in the background.  She’s nice.  Had a nice chat with her, too.

I started looking around, and I noticed all of the stuffed animals I had never taken note of before…so, wanting to play with the camera, here we go…

After enjoying my iced tea, I rode down the hill and I got to thinking:  It’s been a while since we had a CSC 150/250 ride.   All you guys out there…what do you think about getting together this weekend or next for a ride up in the mountains on the modern Mustangs?  Drop me a line (jberk@cscmotorcycles.com) and let me know if you’re interested.   I sure am.

More news…we’re modifying our CSC website.  We’re going to have two websites in the near future.   One will be focused entirely on the new RX3 line (that one will be www.CSCMotorcycles.com) and the other will be focused on the CSC 150 and CSC 250 (that one will be www.CaliforniaScooterCo.com).   If you type in either address today, it takes you to our one site, but within the next month, we’ll have the two different sites described here.   The blog will serve both sites and it will continue to feature stories about both bikes.

You’ve probably noticed the new layout and format for the blog.   We changed that today.   Let me know if you like the new look (you can write to me at the above address).

More good stuff.   Rich is hopping up a CSC 250 engine for one of our customers with a port and polish job, and he milled the heads 0.035 to bump the compression.   I’m very eager to see how that performs when it’s all bolted back together.   I’ll post some photos of it in the next few days.

Still more good stuff:   Lots is happening in our accessories world.   Thanks to my good buddy Ryan’s efforts, we now have a complete line of lubes and other chemicals for your RX3 and your CSC 150/250, and we’ll be posting prices and special offers on them very shortly.

And yet more:   We’re now taking orders on the 19-inch front wheel.   It’s a bolt-in replacement steel-rimmed, wire wheel.   The good news is this:  The complete new 19-inch wheel is $199.95.   With a matching tire and tube (matching to the stock CST dual sport tires, that is), the price is $269.95.   The bad news is the wheels are 60 days away, but we are taking orders for them now.    Folks, that’s a hell of a deal on a complete front wheel.   Shop it around and you’ll see what I mean.

Call us at 909 445 0900 and ask for Ryan if you wish to add any of these new accessories to your RX3, and as always, keep an eye on the blog.   More news on the accessories is coming up.

The Xian Fei Zhou is currently about 140 miles out of Long Beach, waiting to take her turn in getting a berth in the harbor.   She’s the vessel surrounded by the red brackets, and her position is shown below.

Once the ship berths (we don’t know when that will be), she has to be unloaded (that part goes quickly), and then the cargo has to move through Customs (that part is also tough to predict).   Our cargo from the Germany (the one that arrived last week) is still waiting to clear Customs, so we’re close, but still a ways off.

We’ll keep you posted, folks.

We’re back…crossed the border yesterday at Mexicali (a swing way to the east to avoid the labor riots) and we are back in the good old USA.   It’s been an interesting few days.

When I was a lot younger I thought Indiana Jones and Raiders of the Lost Ark was one of the coolest movies I had ever seen (I still feel that way).  I even have an Indiana Jones hat.    Actually finding yourself in a dangerous situation with no easy way out, though, isn’t quite as glamorous as it seemed to be in that movie.   All that’s in the rear view mirror now.   We’re home.   Safe and sound.

So, the first question a lot of you are wondering about has got to be this:

Is the Baja trip still a go?  

Folks, the answer is yes.  

I’ve thought about this nonstop for the last several days and I’m not going to get a bunch of thugs destroy something for me that I’ve enjoyed greatly for the last 20+ years.   Folks, we’re going!   More on this later.

For now, more photos and more storytelling.    My apologies in advance…I’m sitting here on a Monday morning, enjoying a cup of coffee, and I feel like writing.   The problem is the dates are all running together and some of the photos are out of order with the preceding three or four blogs.   No big deal…just bear with me.

Up above…that’s the best plate of quacamole and chips Susie and I ever enjoyed.   Good stuff.   We ate at Malarimmo’s restaurant the night before we ventured out to see the whales, and Susie ordered it as an appetizer.   Just awesome, but not nearly as awesome as the next day’s events.

We were up early in anticipation of seeing the whales.   It’s exciting.  It’s like being a little kid again.   You meet in front of the hotel, the little van picks you up, you get to the docks, it’s life vest lessons 101, and you’re off, bouncing off the waves at around 30 mph, racing to that part of Scammon’s Lagoon (aka Laguna Ojo de Liebre) where the whales hang out.

The entire region is fascinating.   The town is called Guerrero Negro, which means the black warrior in Spanish.   It’s the name of a whaling ship that sank off the coast in this region in the 1800s.   The locals starting referring to the area as Guerrero Negro, which is unusual in itself because unlike most Mexican towns, it’s not named for a hero of the Mexican Revolution or a saint.

And the lagoon has quite a history, too.   Nobody used to know where the whales were going during their annual migration, and the whaling ships of the day just wandered up and down the Pacific coast trying to harpoon them.   It sounds strange today, but the whales were needed for their oil.     Whaling was a big industry back then.   Real Moby Dick stuff, I guess.

Well, ol’ Captain Scammon discovered where the whales were going on their annual southern migration, and it was Baja.   He sailed into the lagoon that you see in the videos on this blog and in the photos below, and it was a slaughter.   So much so that he and the other whalers of that era nearly eradicated the herd.

That’s when the Mexican government stepped in and enacted laws to protect the whales, and those laws worked well.   The herd is now estimated to be over 20,000 whales, which is as big as it was prior to the Scammon-led slaughter of the innocents.   Today, this area is the only place in the world where you can actually touch a gray whale.   The remote location keeps the numbers down, and surprisingly, you don’t see that many Americans doing this.  It’s mostly Mexican folks and a few Canadians.

The first hour is always slow…you’ll spot whales off in the distance, surfacing and spouting, and it always seems like maybe that’s as good as it will get.   Then the whales get used to the little pongas (it’s what they call the boats these guys use in Baja), and they start approaching.

Folks, let the fun begin…

And a bunch of photos showing the day’s fun times…

Susie pets a baby whale…

And just for the sake of completeness, here’s that video I posted yesterday, showing the whales having fun with us..

After we completed our whale watching activities, the next leg of our journey was to get around San Quintin.  That seemed like it would be tough to me, because as I’ve said before, there’s only one paved road down and back through Baja.  It’s the Transpeninsular Highway, and it rolls right through San Quintin.  I did not want a repeat of what happened to us on the way down, and that meant we had to take to the dirt.

I’d never done this route before, and depending on who I talked to, we’d either be in the dirt for 45 miles or 80 miles.   Most folks in southern Baja knew that the road south of San Felipe (on the Sea of Cortez side) was supposed to be paved some day, but no one seemed to know the road’s current status.

We rolled north on Highway 1 for about 80 miles out of Guerrero Negro, and then turned east, on the dirt road, to head across the peninsula.

One mile into it, we met an old guy on a 1st generation BMW GS motorcycle who had a flat tire.  It was hot out, he was suited up in his riding coveralls, and he said his onboard tire pump wasn’t working.   That’s the little compressor like I talked about as an accessory for the RX3 several blogs ago.   He asked if he could plug it into my cigarette lighter (the one in the Subie), and we did so.   It was dead.  I then noticed that it had an on/off switch, and I turned it to the opposite position it was when he handed it to me.   The little compressor fired up, scaring all three of us with its noise.   That poor old guy was so discombobulated by the heat that he had forgotten to turn the thing on!    That happens…you get overheated and then you stop thinking clearly.

We pressed on, and the road became pretty gnarly.   The little Subie was a champ, and I was thinking how fortunate we were that my War Wagon has 4-wheel drive.

Then, up ahead, we saw another vehicle carefully picking its way across the rocks and the ruts.   It was a Chrysler mini-van (a real soccer mom vehicle), and it had a taxi medallion on top!   A mini-van taxi out in the middle of nowhere, on a dirt road across the central Baja peninsula’s mountainous spine!  Only in Baja, folks!  I would have liked to have grabbed a photo of that, but Susie and I were laughing too hard and I was concentrating too intensely on piloting the Subie over the rough stuff.

The dirt road in that photo above looks pretty smooth, and at that point it was.   I was too scared to stop elsewhere on this road for a photo.

The old guy on the BMW told us the rough stuff lasted for 23 miles, but based on the stories I had heard from other Bajaenos, I did not know if that meant the rough part of the dirt road, or the length of the dirt road.

Well, we got lucky.  After 23 miles, just like our BMW ancient mariner had told us, we pulled into the Gonzaga Bay area (on the Sea of Cortez) and onto a newly paved road that was literally brand new!  Woohoo!  It was pavement all the way up to San Felipe.  The next approximately 80 miles were paved, and not dirt!

Here’s a photo of Susie and the Subie overlooking Gonzaga Bay on the new road…

We spent our final night (for this trip, anyway) in San Felipe.  San Felipe is a tourist town and quite frankly, it’s too touristy for my tastes.   Susie and I walked along the Malecon (the shoreline) after a seafood dinner at Chuy’s (not as good as I remembered it from a previous trip) and I grabbed a few evening photos…

We were up early the next morning, we rolled the 130 miles north to Mexicali (a large industrial town of about a million people, right on the border), waited the 45 minutes to get up to the crossing, and then from there it was a quick 200 miles back to our home.

This trip was definitely one for the record books.   Our mission was to scout out what was happening in advance of our CSC RX3 Inaugural Baja Run, and we sure did that!   Vultures, rattlesnakes, Ospreys, cave paintings, riots, the Sea of Cortez, Santa Rosalia, dirt roads, and on it goes.

After that first day, I was mad at Mexico.   Those folks staging the riot ruined my vacation, or so I thought.   Everyone we bumped into south of that point was talking about it, and the desk clerk at the hotel in Catavina (where we spent our first night) said it was a very bad situation.   Then I got to thinking about it.   21 years of touring Baja.  One bad experience that we got though okay, other than some minor war wounds on the Subie.   Was it worth discarding one of the most beautiful parts of the planet I’d ever seen over that?

One of our fellow travelers exchanged email addresses with us and we received this note while we were down there:

Hello Joe and Sue!

We met you on the church steps at San Ignacio – Hope your trip to Mulege has been good.

We’ve had a great time including the whale trip to the lagoon.  The worst part was the hugely long detour we had to take when strikers closed the roads at Colonet – but GOOD NEWS —We drove from Catavina home to San Diego today and the road all the way north is open.  Beginning in San Quintin we did see some scorched roadways where fires had been built, and people taking down wood barriers to protect their store fronts/windows.  Most of the OXXO stores were closed until we got to Ensenada.

Best of luck in your travels —

Baja Lovers,

Pat & Greg

My thoughts were that for our Baja ride, we could come down through San Felipe and take the dirt road I described above on the RX3s, but truth be told, that road is just too gnarly (in my opinion) for the bikes.   There are huge stretches of soft sand and I don’t like riding through that on a motorcycle.   The road through the San Quintin area (the Transpeninsular Highway) has been brought under control and it’s open.   That’s the way to go.

I also received several notes from you in response to my earlier question about doing a tour through the US instead of Baja.  Every one of you said you’d do whatever I felt was best, but you would greatly prefer Baja.   My Baja buddy John Welker told me I’d find out who the real adventurers were based on whether they opted for Baja or a US trip.   Well, I did, and it’s you.

Boys and girls, we’re Baja bound! 

Stay tuned, and we’ll be confirming the dates as soon as we know for sure when the bikes will be here.

More to come, folks, but here’s a preview…

That was in Scammon’s Lagoon, near Guerrero Negro.  It was an awesome morning.

I’ll post more in the next day or so…