As you know, Susan Carpenter of the LA Times ran a story about motorcycles popular with women, and our Babydoll figured very prominently in her article. As it turns out, Sue’s story is proving to have real legs….it’s been picked up by the Twin Cities (Minneapolis and St. Paul) Star Tribune, the Nashua (New Hampshire) Telegraph, and Portland’s Press Herald!
This Babydoll has appeared in four newspapers across the United States!
For a 150cc motorcycle, that bike sure gets around!
When I was back east last week, I took a ride into Newtown, Pennsylvania. It’s in Bucks County and it’s a pretty cool place. William Penn (yep, the same guy the state was named after) founded the place, in (get this) 1684, and it figured prominently in the Revolutionary War. Wow.
I say it was “cool” but actually, it was anything but on that day last week. The temperature was an oppressive 98 degrees, and with the humidity, the official “feels like” was 110. Wow again! The town is small (only 2250 people), but the architecture is classy…
While I tried to stay cool on a bench in the shade, this bike parked right in front of me. It’s a very classy CX500 Honda Turbo from the early 1980s. That engine configuration is perhaps the worst one in the world to put a turbocharger on, but the magazines of that era said Honda did it just to prove that they could. It is a beautiful bike, but it has a pretty serious flaw. The regular CX500 Hondas are reputedly absolutely reliable, but the Turbo version has a nasty habit of lunching alternators, and on this motorcycle, you have to split the cases to get at the alternator. Yikes!
That Honda sure was pretty though. I kind of know what it was like riding on that day, too, based on the CSC Baja trip. I’m usually an ATGATT guy (all the gear, all the time), and the Turbo’s rider was, too. In that kind of heat, I’ll bet he weighed a few pounds less when he got home.
Everybody seems to love the CSC videos, so here’s another one…this is my commute to the CSC plant on the 210 freeway and the mean streets of La Verne…
Ol' Yeller
The bike in the above video is Ol’ Yeller, one of our test mules. One of the many fun things about working at CSC and writing this blog is I get to grab pretty nearly any bike I want when I feel like getting my knees in the breeze.
You may have noticed a couple of what appear to be bullet holes in the top of the fuel tank. Those are thermocouple test ports to monitor fuel temperature during emissions testing. There’s a lot that goes into getting a made-in-America motorcycle approved for street use!
That’s it for now. I’m taking a run into El Monte in a few minutes. Might stop for a burrito while I’m there. Life is good!
Just a quick spin on my Classic, that is….just a quick run along the foothills with my Midland video camera! Don’t forget…we have these available if you want to make movies on your CSC, too!
I made this one at the 1080p setting, which gives the video higher resolution (although you might not be able to see it on YouTube). It also reduces the wide angle effect a bit, which eliminates some of the fishbowl feeling at the lower resolutions. I am having a lot of fun with the camera and, of course, with my Scooter.
Good to be home and good to be back in the saddle of my modern Mustang!
Wow, my first full day home after two weeks on the road. The boss (that would be Susie) is out for her morning run, and I have a few minutes to tap out a blog…and she’s already told me that when she gets home I’m making (or at least attempting to make) the same French toast fluffer nutter breakfast we enjoyed on the road in Memphis.
What an adventure the last two weeks has been…California, Nevada, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, North Carolina, Tennessee, Florida, Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. I think I may have wore out the shutter on my trusty Nikon (just kidding on that one, folks…those Nikons last forever).
I thought I might show you just a few more photos from my recent travel extravaganza…
I started with the Tahoe trip…and I posted a bit on it here on the CSC blog a couple of weeks ago. Just a bit more…meet my new buddy Joanne Donn, of Gear Chic fame (that’s gearchic.com).
Joanne is a fellow writer, blogger, and rider, and she’s fast! She rides a Suzuki SV-650 V-twin sports bike, and she sure knows how to ride!
For our first ride after a hearty breakfast in Tahoe, our guides told us we’d be covering about 300 miles during the weekend. That’s not too many miles, but the first road we road on was little more than a paved goat trail. Joanne was immediately in front of me (I was on my KLR), and I thought that I’d have no problem keeping up with her. That sure was not the case!
I found a video I made with my new Midland XTC-300 Extreme Action video camera while racing through the Sierra Nevada Mountains two weekends ago with Joanne and others…and I uploaded it to YouTube last night. On this video, there’s no music and no editing…it’s just the raw footage uploaded to YouTube. You’ll notice it’s a bitty choppy, but that’s because I used the Midland direct suction cup mount. I mounted it on the KLR’s headlight fairing, so there’s a whole lot of fairing flexing and shaking going on. You’ll remember that my other Tahoe video was quite a bit smoother, and that’s because I had the camera mounted on my helmet. I guess my big old noggin makes a pretty good vibration dampener!
After racing home on the KLR from that weekend, Susie and I were on an airplane headed to Atlanta early the next morning. I’ve already shown y’all a bunch of photos from that journey…but there are a few I missed and I really like them.
One of the highlights of that trip was our visit to the USS Alabama, which is moored just outside Mobile. Mobile is a cool town, and the USS Alabama was unbelievable. If you ever have a chance to see it, don’t pass up that opportunity!
We pushed east from there, along Florida’s Emerald Coast, and then we headed back up into Georgia. Another bit of travel advice…if your adventures ever take you anywhere near Columbus, Georgia, you owe it to yourself to visit the US Army’s Infantry Museum at Fort Benning, Georgia. It’s another pearl that most folks have never heard of. We could have spent all day there.
We did something that was extra-special to me, too, and that was a quick trip onto Ft. Benning to visit the Airborne School’s tower areas. Folks, take a look at the 34-foot mock tower (it trains you to exit an aircraft in flight) and the 250-foot towers (they actually lift you up with an already-inflated parachute, and then they drop you). It was a real fun thing for us to see, and we talked to a couple of young soldiers who were starting their Airborne training the following Monday. Boy oh boy, are they in for an exciting time. They’ll be making their first jumps right about now!
There’s a lot of history on this field…nearly every US military parachutist (from World War II to the present) trained right here!
In fact, it was my time on that historic field a cool 40+ years ago that led to this CSC video…one of our favorites!
After our time in the South, I headed north, and one of the best parts of that trip was the morning I spent with my good buddy Mike in New Brunswick a couple of days ago. You’ve seen Mike on a California Scooter right here on the CSC blog before. Mike retired as the Police Director in New Brunswick a few years ago, and he now works directly for the Mayor. He’s done well and we’re proud of him.
Mike has always been a fun guy. When I entered City Hall’s hallowed halls on this trip, the first thing Mike did was introduce me to the Mayor’s staff, followed by a question: Who looks younger?
I won that one, folks. But then I have an advantage…I get more seat time on a California Scooter!
You betcha, as my good buddy Sarah P. used to say…I’m back in my old stomping grounds here in California after being on the road for two weeks. It sure is good to be in front of my laptop here at home.
In catching up on my emails, I had this nice note from Jimbo along with a couple of great photos:
Hi Joe:
After looking and admiring Eddy Meek’s restoration of his beautiful Triumph, I realized that I also had before and after photos of my 1962 Thoroughbred project that my wife and son David found in Ohio. It was a surprise birthday gift.
Cheers!
Jimbo
Take a look, folks, at these great photos Jimbo sent to us!
The before version of Jimbo's Thoroughbred...sorely in need of Jimbo's TLC!
The finished (or should we say "refinished?") '62 Mustang...as the Mustang production superintendent, Jimbo built this bike twice!
Just awesome photos, Jimbo, and thanks for sending them to us!
I don’t know about you guys, but I’m going to get out and ride this weekend. Time to get my knees in the breeze on my California Scooter! Watch for another video in the next day or two!
Yeah, dat’s right…I’m back in my old stomping grounds….just a few miles from where I grew up. In New Jersey. Me and the Sopranos. I drove in a couple of days ago from points north (more secret mission stuff), got lost trying to navigate my way through New York City, and finally ended up in the land of the world’s best Italian food. No kidding…it really is. Better than the food in Italy, even…and I know because I’ve been there. We had a pasta plate last night that was worth getting lost in the Bronx and fighting rush hour traffic on the NJ Turnpike!
On the GWB, crossing the Hudson River, back to the land of my people....
Once I was in NJ, well, you just see a lot of funny things in my home state. Check this one out…
I added the arrows and the captions...I was tempted to call, but I didn't...
I don’t want you guys (or should I say youse guys?) to get the wrong idea about the Garden State. It really is a pretty place with a lot of things going for it. When I was a kid, the area in which I grew up was mostly rural, and I spent a lot of time hunting and fishing. I stopped by the lake in my old neighborhood where I once was attacked by a very large and angry goose…that’s right, I once was attacked by a goose. Folks, I can’t make this stuff up! Here’s where it happened…
Attack geese live here...
So anyway, that’s enough about the Sopranos and aggressive geese…
I talked to Steve on the phone last night and he told me he finished the last two Bobbers. He was so excited about them that I asked for a few photos. I gotta tell you (or should I saw I Gotti tell you?) that I can see why. These bikes are awesome. Steve and the crew did one with a black engine and one with a silver engine. Well, hey, take a look for yourself…
Blue Bobbers...destined to be real show stoppers!
The Matt Blue really works...
...and it works with the silver engine, too!
Another beauty shot of the Blue Bobber...
I think Steve told me still has one Bobber left of the original five that the crew created. If you’re interested in that bike, you have to act fast. Give TK a call. He might make you an offer you can’t refuse…
I had lunch with my good buddy Dennis today (we go back more than 40 years!) in a classic New Jersey diner, and that was really fun. Denny looks good and we had a great visit! And tomorrow I’m going to have breakfast with my good buddy Mike (another high school buddy) and maybe even the mayor of New Brunswick. Is there a CSC-150P police motorcycle or two in store for New Brunswick’s finest? Hey, that’s secret agent stuff, and I don’t tell tales out of school…
All kidding aside, I’ve been tooling around a lot on the back roads in New Jersey and Pennsylvania in the last couple of days, and they’re perfect for a California Scooter. I sure wish I had the Baja Blaster out here with me.
Okay, folks…one last mystery shot…how many of my fellow geezers can tell me what this puppy is?
Any educated guesses? Post your comments and inputs here, folks! Jimbo, you're excluded from competing in this one!
That’s all for tonight, folks. I’ll be back to the People’s Republik of Kalifornia in another day or two, and I’ll be posting lots more when I get home!
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