CSC Blog

Here’s one quick photo before we head back to the Phoenix International Motorcycle Show, folks!

Up at Oh:dark:30 this morning, a quick shower, throw the bags in the Subie, and it was point Il Tangerino east towards Phoenix.   I averaged 31 miles per gallon for the entire trip (all 356 miles of it), and we hit the Phoenix International Motorcycle Show this afternoon.   The show is actually in Scottsdale (a wealthy Phoenix ‘burb), and I wanted to post just a few photos for you before calling it a day.

Just as was the case in San Mateo, both the CSC-250 and the CSC Cyclone were huge hits.  I’ll show you more on that tomorrow.   But first, a shot of what we always have in our booth…these atomic fire ball jawbreakers.   I didn’t try  any of these firecrackers in San Mateo, but the bowl emptied quickly every time the Boss dumped another batch in…so I thought I would try one today.   Talk about hot!   But they kind of grow on you, and I had another one before we closed up shop.

The Phoenix show (just like the San Mateo show) had a bunch of custom bikes, and I’ll be showing you more of those in the next couple of days, too.   Here’s one reflecting a new trend that I guess I’ve missed over the past year or so…Harleys with gigondo front wheels.   Personally, I think they look ridiculous, but these bikes make decent photo subjects.    Here’s a group of three…

I don’t know how big those front wheels are, but I’ll take a closer look tomorrow and see if I can find out.   I can’t imagine they handle very well.

I stopped by the Kawasaki booth earlier in the day while it was empty, and when I walked up to their counter to pick up some literature, guess who was there!

Yep, that’s Jason Britton!   He’s a pretty nice guy, and we had a good conversation.    Jason asked if I’d like a signed poster, and I said “you bet!”   Very cool stuff.

Some of you blogistos out there chastised me for not getting enough photos of the pretty girls.   I’m not hard of hearing, guys….

Bear in mind that I’m an old guy and all of these beautiful young ladies were happy to pose (most likely because they appropriately sensed I’m harmless).   You might look at these gals and be struck with their beauty.   I raised two similarly beautiful girls with my best friend and wife (that, of course, would be Susie).   When I looked at today’s beauty shots while posting them on the blog, all I could think of was how much all of that orthondontic dentistry must have cost!

That’s it for now, boys and girls.   I’ve got a lot more photos of the bikes and I’ll grab a lot more when we hit it again in the morning.   Tune in again tomorrow…same time…same place…and we’ll have more for you!

Photos from San Mateo, that is, and then no more blogs until I have more to report from Phoenix, folks.   But don’t worry…that won’t be long.   I’m rolling out for Phoenix before sunup on Friday, and if all goes well, I’ll be back on the air that night.

Here are cool shots of a new Indian I grabbed at the San Mateo show.   The bike is enormous and it’s not my style of riding, but that doesn’t mean I still can’t admire it…

The engine castings on that Indian were beautiful…so much so that I actually touched them just to see what they felt like.   Check out a macro shot of one of the valve covers…

The leather work on the Indian was impressive, too.     Take a peek at this saddlebag…

Wow.   I can only guess at what it would cost to replace those bags.  My old ’92 Softail had leather bags, and I actually lost one on a trip once.   It fell off and I couldn’t find it again.   The bags were about 10 years old when that happened, so I replaced the pair, and it was very expensive.   All that history notwithstanding, the bags on the San Mateo Indian were magnificent.

Remember that shot I showed you of Steve on the Ducati Scrambler?

There was just something about it that I liked (not the price, mind you, but the bike was nice).   I was trying to understand why that Ducati was so appealing to me (none of their other bikes light my fire), and then when I wandered over to the Vintage Japanese Motorcycle Club’s display, it hit me.   The Ducati Scrambler is a redo of the old Honda 305 Scrambler (the two bikes even have the same name).   Here’s the Honda 305 Scrambler that was on display at the VJMC exhibit…

And that, folks, is a wrap.   Unless I get out for a short ride on the KLR or the Baja Blaster tomorrow (and that might happen), you won’t see anything on here until Friday night.

Ride safe, my friends.

Roger’s bike was one of the more interesting San Mateo customs on display…so much so that I returned to it several times for more photos…

Roger’s Harley was an absolutely over-the-top, wild custom with a list of features that just didn’t end.    It had a crocodile kickstand (just visible in the photo above).   Neon lights.   A powered trunk lid.   Custom wheels.   Wild paint.  Wild bars.   Wild grips and foot pegs.   And more.

Take a look at the next photo below.   Do you recognize the pattern in the custom, chromed billet wheels?   That’s the Maserati logo, which appears in several spots on this motorcycle.   I asked Roger if he owned a Maserati.   “Yes, and a Bentley, too!” he said.   Wow.

The seat was perhaps the wildest touch of all.  Check out the crocodile eyes…

The gold plating was extensive, too.   If you look just in front of the seat in the photo above, note the lettering in the dash panel.  It says “24K” as in 24 karats.

Roger told Susie and me that he had a cool $140K invested in this motorcycle.   That’s pretty wild.   I’m not normally a fan of gussied-up baggers, but this bike is an exception.

Well done, Roger, and thanks for allowing us to photograph it.

As promised, I’ve got more photos from the San Mateo International Motorcycle Show, and here they are.

This first one is one of the custom bikes entered in the show.  It’s a CB-750 Honda (based on Honda’s original 750 Four) and it looks like this one’s been poked out to 836cc.   Steve and I both liked it, especially the custom exhausts…

Here’s a Harley bagger that looks like the owner couldn’t make a decision about how to paint the beast.   He had all kinds of design concepts merged together, starting with the Harley batwing fairing and working down…

The rear fender has a zebra motif, while the right saddlebag went with Bugs the Peacenik…

And the saddlebag uppers were kind of a jigsaw puzzle.   An interesting bike, for sure…

Sue and I saw this in the BMW area.   I’m guessing it’s a Bonneville bike.  It was on a rotating table so it was a bit difficult to photograph…

I’m a watch guy.   One of the visitors in our CSC booth was wearing this unusual watch and I thought it looked cool.  It’s a Sottamarino (I never heard of this brand before the San Mateo show).   I found Sottomarino on the Internet, but this must have been an earlier one because I couldn’t find the exact model.   Ah, just as well…I don’t need another watch, but if I had found it, I would have probably bought one…

Another CSC booth visitor.   I asked, and no, he doesn’t have a criminal record.   He’s just like you and me, and everyone who rides…

Our CSC booth was next to the Bell Helmets booth, and they had some interesting numbers there.   When I saw this one, I knew I had found my next helmet…

You may remember the Bell helmet I used to wear…

I really liked that helmet, but I tossed it after about 4 years.   You shouldn’t keep a helmet much beyond that, as the Styrofoam padding starts to degrade and it loses its cushioning abilities.

Anyway, folks, that’s it for now.   I’ve got good news and more good news.   The first bit of more good news is that I still have more photos to show you from San Mateo.   The next bit of good news is we’re heading to the Phoenix IMS to do this all over again, I’ll have a bunch more photos from that upcoming visit.

Onward and upward!

The things I like best about going to the motorcycle shows are you folks (the people we get to meet) and the cool sights.   I’ve already shown you the photos of folks on the Cyclone and the CSC-250.   What I’d like to do now is show photos to you of some of the other cool things we saw in San Mateo.

As I mentioned in an earlier blog, we were directly across the aisle from Ducati.   This is their Multistrada model.   It’s gorgeous, but then it ought to be…it’s got a sticker well north of $20K!

Ducati also displayed their new Scrambler model.  It’s cool because it’s a simple bike and I like the styling.  Steve liked it, too…

Here’s a macro shot showing the machining detail in one of the Ducati parts on their Multistrada model…

I think that part was most likely cast and the apparent machining marks were actually left by the mold.   I can’t imagine they would be machining every part like this.   Then again, who knows?

Here’s a cool shot from the Kawasaki exhibit.   It’s a cutaway display of one of their high performance multi-cylinder engines…

The Kawi engine display was inside a plexiglass case, which is why you see some of the reflections and artifacts in the photos above.   I shot all of the photos on this page using available light (no flash) and the 28mm Nikon lens on my old D200.   The flash doesn’t really work well in these conditions, and I like using available light.    I had the ISO set on 800 and I think the results are acceptable.   The newer Nikon cameras have much better low light performance, but I don’t know if I’m ready to shell out another $3K for the slight improvement a new camera would provide.

This is a cool Honda had on display.  It’s an original, absolutely pristine 1975 Gold Wing.   That’s the first year of the Gold Wing.  I was an artillery lieutenant in Korea when the Gold Wing first emerged, and I was still caught up in the “bigger has to be better” motorcycle mentality.  I never owned a Gold Wing, but I sure spent a lot of time drooling over the motorcycle magazine photos when I first learned about that bike over there in Kunsan.

One last photo for today, folks, and that’s a superwide tire on the back of a custom V-twin…

It’s not my cup of tea, and I imagine that bike would handle like a shopping cart, but it makes for an interesting photo.

That’s it for now.  I’ve got a bunch more photos to share with you, so keep an eye on the blog tomorrow!

Some of you have asked if we’ve forgotten about the CSC-150 and CSC-250 motorcycles with all the excitement surrounding the new CSC Cyclone, and the answer is an emphatic no!   We brought a custom CSC-250 with us to the San Mateo International Motorcycle Show, and we’ll have it with us next weekend at the Phoenix IMS, too.  I grabbed a few photos of folks enjoying seat time on the CSC-250 in San Mateo, and here they are!

That’s it for now, my friends, except to let you know that I have a bunch more photos showing the custom bikes and other interesting tidbits at the San Mateo show (I’ll post those later today or tomorrow), and to remind everyone in Arizona that we’re going to be at the Phoenix IMS show this weekend.   We hope to see you there!

One of the questions we heard most often when we first fielded the CSC-150 was:  Can you take it on the street?   It seemed like a pretty silly question to me, but I guess it was to be expected based on the current US predilection with big bikes.

You’ve read my scribblings on this before…here in the US, we’ve been making bikes bigger and bigger and bigger for decades, so I suppose it was logical when we introduced a 150cc Mustang replica for folks to wonder if it was street legal.  It was actually that sentiment that prompted us to organize the first Baja run on these bikes.   My thought was that anybody who wondered if the bikes were street legal would kind of realize how silly the question was when they saw us ride to Cabo San Lucas and back.

The Cabo run pretty much put that question to bed, but then the next question was:   Can you take them on the freeway?

That question was actually not easy to answer.    The answers and opinions on freeway legality were like belly buttons…everyone had one, and no two were exactly the same.  It was almost funny.  People who had no idea what they were talking about did so with great conviction.   Some folks thought the bike had to have a minimum top speed.   Some thought it depended on weight.   Some thought it depended on engine size.   Everyone thought they were right.

I thought the freeway question shouldn’t be that hard to answer, so I called our local police department.   They didn’t know.   I next called a local California Highway Patrol office, and guess what:  They didn’t know either.  Finally, I called the California Highway Patrol headquarters group in Sacramento.   I had spoken with that group when I wrote The Complete Book Of Police And Military Motorcycles a few years ago and they seemed knowledgeable.   To my great surprise, the fellow I spoke to there (who was in charge of motor officer training) also didn’t know what made a motorcycle freeway legal.   But he promised to find out and call me the next day, and he did.

Here’s what I learned:  In California, if a two-wheeled vehicle has a 150cc engine (or larger), it is legal on the freeway.   There is no minimum speed requirement.     That’s it.   Straight from the CHP’s mouth.   I would guess that most police officers don’t know this, based on my experience asking the question around different police agencies, so I think as long as you’re not doing anything stupid the chances of being stopped for riding on the freeway (at least here in California) are pretty low.

The reality is I take my CSC-150 on the freeway all the time, and I’ve never been stopped.   I almost always stick to the right line, where traffic generally seems to roll at about 55 mph (a speed my CSC-150 has no problem matching).   It’s interesting…here in La La Land we have what I would describe as aggressive drivers, and it’s not uncommon for traffic in the fast lane to be rolling along at speeds well over 80 mph.   In the right lane, though, 50 to 55 mph is pretty much the norm.

Please note that I’m describing our California situation.   Your state most likely has different laws, and you’d have to check to evaluate your home state situation as it pertains to freeway riding.

As always, ride safe, my friends!

We sure had a super time in San Mateo, and so did everyone who stopped by to see the CSC Cyclone.   Folks, the bike was an absolute hit!   We knew it was going to be good when the first folks who stopped by were from the other major moto manufacturers before the gates opened to the public, and the reaction from everyone was simply this:  Wow!   I’ll show you more shots of the San Mateo sights in subsequent scribblings, but for now, take a look at folks securing seat time and signing up on the Cyclone list!

And for all you Arizona rangers out there, don’t forget that we’ll be at the Phoenix IMS show next weekend!

After a quick 500 miles in the Subie today, Susie and I found ourselves at the San Mateo International Show extolling the CSC Cyclone’s virtues.   We had a great time and we can’t wait to get back out there tomorrow with Steve and Maureen for more of the same.   I wandered around a bit and grabbed a few cool photos, so here we go…

Susie and yours truly in front of a mirror…on Halloween, no less!

We at CSC Motorcycles take security very seriously…

Charles, our newest inductee into the Cyclone Hall of Fame…

A 1965 CB-160 Honda…my Dad’s first motorcycle!

I need this.

A very well-executed, Sportster-based ADV bike. I need this, too.

A custom paint job on a big Harley.

Belstaff.    Someday…

Another shot with Susie and me…

Much more to follow, folks, so check back tomorrow night!