An upcoming adventure with Russ!

I received a couple of great emails in response to my call for two-wheel stories a few blogs down.   This one is super interesting from our good buddy Russ, and I’m sharing it here with you!

Hi Joe:

I own a 2012 CSC (Lil’ Boy Blue).  I’ve done serious miles on my larger bikes including 600 plus miles daily on my Honda Pacific Coast.  So…casting about this winter I found a group from Upland, Indiana that yearly takes an extended small scoot trip.  This year’s trip will be in October traveling from Indiana to Kentucky, West Virginia possibly North Carolina, back to Kentucky, and then home to Upland. 

Of course, I live in Iowa so it is a 504 mile trip just to get where they are meeting.  I guess it usually is a group of 15 to 20 older riders who will be touring about 11 days covering 1300 miles.  So, for me about a total of 2300 miles on Lil’ Boy Blue.  The group is www.wanderingwheels.org.   Bob Davenport is the contact.

The reason for this info to you is that I plan to document with pics and words (sorry no video) this trip and asking if any of this would be of interest to our CSC community?   I like videos but am not equipped to so do but that could change or perhaps another member of the group could share such footage? 

This question may better be directed to someone else at CSC:  I don’t anticipate any mechanical problems.  However, what small parts would be wise to include in my on board storage space?  I can think of maybe??  Spark plug, chain links, inner tube, light bulbs, and what else?   The bike currently has 2010 K on it.  And do the current dealerships for CSC carry any parts?   Also, how does the engine handle mountainous altitudes, say up to 1700 elevation? 

Joe…as soon as I can gather some pics of my “STORAGE” on the bike I will forward them to you.  It includes a small bag out front below the windshield, a tank bag, a top box, saddle bags, and a sissy bar bag.  Yep…a sissy bar bag!!!!!!!!!!   Fortunately I weigh about 170 as the trip will call for camping equipment as well as the other necessities. 

Any advice offered will be appreciated.

Russ

Russ, thanks for your kind letter.  You bet, it would definitely be cool to see photos from your upcoming adventure!  We’ve had other riders do this (most recently our good buddy Howard who took an extended trip through the West with his CSC 150), and we love reading about and posting our riders’ adventures!

Regarding spare parts…wow, what a great question!   When I go on longer trips, I generally take along my Gerber pliers (they’re kind of like a Leatherman pair), duct tape, and bulbs for the headlamp and taillight.  That’s about it for me.   The last big trip I did was the Hell’s Loop Rally…there were three of us on that ride and we had no problems whatsoever.   When we did the Baja trip (that was about 2200 miles through some pretty rugged terrain) we had essentially no problems on the production configuration bikes.   We had one or two bulb replacements, but that was it.  Incidentally, you can read about that adventure here.

Thanks again for your inputs, Russ, and give us a call if you have any more questions!   And for the rest of our readers, if you have a good story, let’s hear it!   Don’t worry about spelling or grammar…if you make any mistakes we’ll fix all that stuff before we post it!