CSC Blog

Boy, that didn’t take long!

Our good buddy Russ responded quickly to our request for photos of bikes gone by…and without further ado, here you go…

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Hi Joe: 

Great idea to share our bikes, former and present.  Looking at my list I realize that I’m not particuarly loyal to one brand though the Hondas appear here several times. 

My introduction to motorcycles came in 1951 at age 16 when I bought from my earned farm chores income a 1941 Indian.  Yes…like many I’ve also repeated, “wish I still had that one!”   And then the typical story of going off to college, raising a young family, and not able to add a bike to the mix until our real need for a second car, the 1964 Honda 150 appeared which my students thought was really cool!  (Sorry, no pics for those 2 early bikes.) 

Growing up on a farm and being around machinery constantly dad thought it wise that I should read the magazine, Mechanics Illustrated.  I especially enjoyed the Mustang M.C. ads and dreamed of course of owning one, but priced around $300 it was out of reach until (fast forward many years to 2001) I found and bought my dream, a 1964 Mustang Stallion which I owned for 12 years.

Early BMWs with the opposed engines always intrigued me and a 1973 R75/5 found its way to my garage a few years ago.  It was a keeper for sure.  Anyone said that before?  A gentleman from France found a pic on the internet of the bike and questioned if it might be for sale and I was quick to respond, “no, tis a keeper.”  After repeatedly saying he would pay “good money” for it I doubled what I thought it was worth hoping he would just go away but he said, “consider it sold.”  Was tuff to see that one get away!! 

Five years ago I grew to admire the Honda 4 cyl bikes and found near by a fresh restoration of a 1976 Honda 550.  Wonderful bike except……..a very uncomfortable seat for me.  It now lives near Austin, TX. 

I had never owned a true scooter until I discovered a 2006 Aprilia Scarabeo 500, a real classic looking bike.  I did some very long and comfortable trips on that one, which now resides in WI. 

Wanting another Honda I read a lot about the Pacific Coast 800 which owners said was very dependable and a good long distance machine.  Love my 1996 and it is a keeper (hmmmmmmm……..does that sound familiar?).   

Being fully-clad I’ve been asked many times if it might be a scooter.   

Then came the desire to have another Mustang and searching the internet I found CSC.  These Mustang P-51 bikes have to be the most FUN PACKED bike one could ride!  As you say Joe, “it is your favorite.” 

I also have a close companion to the CSC, a 2013 VESPA GTV ie which speaks of quality and reliability like the P-51.

What does the future hold for my 2 wheel desires?  Slowing down, sizing down, but riding more as I’m nearing 80 years.  But we always dream of the one that got away.  My interest now in two wheelers has gone full circle as I do have an interest (again) in an Indian, a new one, that looks a lot like that Indian I rode back in the 50’s.  However….tis a big heavy bike and I did say I was down sizing. 

We’ll see….

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Great photos and a great story, Russ, and thanks for sharing them with us!   You’ve owned some interesting bikes, and I know our readers will enjoy hearing about them!

Ride safe…

I’m going to bet that like me, a lot of you have owned a lot of different motorcycles.

Here’s an invitation….send any photos of your “early days” motorcycles to me (jberk (at) californiascooterco.com) with any info you can provide on them and we’ll post them here on the blog.   (I did that (at) thing to cut down on the spam I know I’d receive if I included the “at” symbol…I already know there are zillions of young Russian women who want to marry me, lots of former finance ministers from Nigeria who want to send me millions of dollars, and lots of folks wanting to sell me purple pills….sounds like it would be a heck of a party if all of those offers were real.)

Unlike a lot of the rest of the country, we’re having beautiful weather here in So Cal.   The problem for me is that I caught a cold a couple of days ago, and I’m not going anywhere today.  I’d be out riding if I wasn’t down with the sniffles.    So, I’m reminiscing…I’m scanning some old photos of my old bikes to include here on the blog.  I thought I would use these to prime the pump on this invitation for your old photos.    We’d love to see them, and I’ll bet our readers would, too.

My first bike was a Honda Super 90.   It previously belonged to Sherm Cooper, a famous Triumph rider/racer who had a large Honda and Triumph dealership in New Jersey.   It was cool…it was white and it had an upswept pipe and knobby tires.  I was only 14 and I wasn’t supposed to be on the street yet, so those two accessories made it pretty cool for fooling around off road.   I really liked that Honda Super 90 motor, and evidently so did a lot of other people (there are still versions of it being made in Asia).

Yours truly at about age 14 on the Honda Super 90. What’s that stuff on top of my head?

The next bike was a Honda SL-90.   Same 90cc Honda motor, but it had a tubular steel frame and it was purpose-built for both road and off-road duty.  I never actually had a photo of that bike, but it was a favorite.   Candy apple red and silver (Honda figured out by then that people wanted more than just their basic four colors of white, red, black, or blue), it was a great-looking machine.   I rode it for about a year and sold it, and took a big step up.

That big step up was a Honda 750 Four.   I’ve waxed eloquent about that bike here on the blog already, so I won’t bore you with the details about how that machine basically killed the British motorcycle industry and defined new standards for motorcycle performance.   It was fun.  Fast, good looking, candy apple red (Honda used that color a lot), and exotic.  I paid $1559 for it in 1971.   Today, one in mint condition would be north of $15,000.    And yes, I wish I still had it.

My first big street bike…a 1971 Honda 750 Four. It was awesome. It’s a miracle I never crashed it. Rode it all the way up to Canada and back in the early ’70s. Check out the jacket, riding pants, and other safety gear…

There were a lot of bikes that followed.  There were two Honda 500 Fours, a 50cc Honda Cub (the price was right, so I bought it and sold it within a couple of days) an 85cc two-stroke BSA (with a throttle that occasionally stuck open…which made for interesting riding), a 1982 Suzuki 1000cc Katana (an awesome ride, but uncomfortable), a 1979 Harley Electra-Glide Classic (beautiful but the most unreliable machine I’ve ever owned), a 1978 Triumph Bonneville (I bought that one new when I lived in Fort Worth), a 1971 Triumph Tiger, a 1970 Triumph Daytona (wish I still had that one, too), a 1992 Harley Softail (much more reliable than the first Harley, and one I rode all over the Southwest and Mexico), a 1995 Triumph Daytona 1200 (the yellow locomotive), a 1997 TL1000S Suzuki (a very aggressive sports bike I used as a touring machine), my 2006 Triumph Tiger (a great touring machine), a 1982 Honda CBX six (a great bike, but one I sold when Honda stopped stocking parts for it), a 2007 Triumph Speed Triple (awesome, fast, but buzzy), my 2006 KLR 650 Kawasaki (a bike I still own), and of course, my 2010 Baja Blaster California Scooter 150  (my current favorite ride).

My high school buddy Johnnie H with a Honda 500 four I later bought from him. That sissy bar was the first thing to go. It was a fun bike, but a real slug compared to the 750 Honda.

A Honda 50cc Cub, the most frequently produced motorcycle on the planet. In China and elsewhere, this bike is still being manufactured. I bought this one in the 1960s, mostly because I knew I could sell it and make a few bucks quickly.

My buddy Louis V and me with our bikes somewhere in Arizona sometime in the mid-’90s. I’m not sure why Louis had his shirt off…we sure didn’t ride that way. Louis had an ’81 Gold Wing and I had an ’82 CBX Six. That old CBX was a fun bike…it sounded like a Ferrari!

Another selfie…me with my 1982 Suzuki Katana. In its day, that was a super-exotic bike. Uncomfortable, but very fast, and way ahead of its time. I bought it new and paid over MSRP because they were so hard to get. I was a lot skinnier in those days.

Good times and good bikes all.   I’ve had some real roadburners, but my preference is still my California Scooter.   And you can bet that as soon as I shake this cold, I’m going to be out on it again.

So, if you’ve got some old photos you want to share with us, please send them.   If you don’t have a digital version you can mail them to us, we’ll scan them, and we’ll return them to you right away.

Oh, and don’t forget about our company ride next Friday, folks.   We hope to see you there!

…and we hope to see you there!    We’ll head up into the San Gabriels and lunch at the Mt. Baldy Lodge, with a stop along the way for a cup of coffee!

We’ll leave the plant at 9:00 a.m., so show up before that time with a full tank of gas and we’ll be good to go!

Here you go, folks…enjoy!

I put this together over the last couple of days.   We sure had fun last year, and here’s to even more fun in 2014!

A bit belated, perhaps, but with our best wishes!

A selfie…with the boss!

2014 is off to a great start for me.   We just kind of kicked back today, watched the Rose Parade in the morning, had a great Italian dinner last night, and we’re waiting to pick up my daughter at the airport a little later tonight.   Both of my daughters, my son-in-law, and my cousin Bobby’s daughter Hilary spent the Christmas break and New Year’s Eve in New Orleans.  I love that town (it’s an American gem…one of the greatest cities in the country), and judging by the photos the kids posted on Facebook, it looks like they had an awesome time.   They’re grown up now, and it’s cool seeing them having fun like this.  Life is good.

I’m enjoying the time off.   I spent a lot of time in the garage and I’m happy to report that nearly everything is working…got the air compressor fixed and all the tires on all the toys are as pumped up as I am.  Set up my 9mm reloader and I cranked out 500 rounds this afternoon, so I’m ready to go to the range and scare a few paper targets.   Got all my tools organized, found all the missing sockets, and everything is in its place.

The doc told me I need to exercise more, so the boss and I got out for a walk in the later afternoon.   We bumped into my good buddy Marty (he’s a walker, too), and he was pretty excited – he just bought a new 6-series Beemer.    Susie and I walked with Marty over to his place, and he gave us a ride in his new turbocharged toy.   Wowee!

Marty and the Teutonic turbo…an awesome ride!

Like a lot of folks, I’ve made my resolutions for 2014 and I aim to keep them.  There’s the aforementioned exercise – and I’ve got a good start on that (I’m going to walk, hit the gym, or ride my bike every day this year).    I’m going to get more seat time on the motorcycles this year (both the KLR and the Scooter).    We’ll be setting up a CSC company ride up in the mountains sometime this month (keep an eye on the blog).   The Baja Blaster is running great, and I’ll get out on it for a bit tomorrow.

The Baja Blaster…a bike that absolutely stands out in any setting!

Another resolution is the Mustang book.   I’ve been focused on other things, but the first quarter of 2014 is going to see a real focus on our book about the Mustang.   My good buddy Jimbo Cavanaugh gave me the  nudge I needed on this project, and we’re going to crank on this one.   I promise you…it will be great.   The Mustang story is one that deserves to be in a book…and I know a couple of guys who have some great Mustang photos!

J and I have been talking about the next Baja trip, and that’s most likely going to be in late March.  The gray whales are down there from January through early April, and March is a good time to see them.   By then they’ve grown used to the turistas like us going out in those small boats to see them, so they are a lot friendlier.   It doesn’t rain as much in Baja in March, either, so it should be good all the way around.   We’ll probably take our KLRs on this trip…but we’ll see…if we get enough interest from our CSC buddies, we might just do the trip on our California Scooters!

One last thing, folks…the response on the Bike in a Box program has been good, and Steve is going to continue it for just a bit longer.   If you want the ultimate project bike at a price that is just flat awesome, this is your ticket in!

The Bike in a Box…if you want a bike you can say you built, this is it!

That’s it for now, folks.  Enjoy the day and our best wishes for a healthy and happy 2014!

Here’s something that’s kind of cool…I’ve kind of rediscovered the panorama feature in Photoshop…you know, you can take a series of horizontal photos and then use Photoshop to stitch them together.

For starters, these are the photos that I stitched together…

Photoshop has a merge feature that lines up the photos and puts them together. Here’s what you get…

I didn’t crop all the excess out of this one because it gives a sense of how what you see consists of more than one photo.   Based on the sun’s position, I positioned myself to not let my shadow get in the photo of the bike, but in the panorama, you can get an idea of where I was.

I stuck the panorama photo in the blog at a fairly large size…you probably won’t be able to see all of it in the blog (depending on what appears to the right of this text), but if you click on the photo, it should open up in a new page in a larger display.

We’re having some really nice weather today, so I may celebrate the end of 2013 with a Baja Blaster ride later.   If I do, I’ll post more photos.

Ride safe and be careful if you’re on the road tonight!

Cold up there late today, boys and girls, but still a great ride.   Fired up the Baja Blaster and I was in the wind a couple of hours ago…

And one last one….a 900-pixel-wide shot of my CSC 150…

I know…the old girl needs a bath…and that’s probably going to happen in the next few days.   I’ve been wrenching and reloading all week long, and after I got the air compressor working again late this afternoon it was time to fire my Scooter up.   Like always, she fired on the first touch and the Baja Blaster is running strong.   Hard to believe that its 9 cubic inches carried me all the way to Cabo San Lucas and back!

You know, I’ve had my California Scooter 4 years now, and it’s still as much fun getting out on the road today as it was the first time I took her out.   Good times, with many more rides in the future…

Ride safe and ride often, my friends!

I received a nice note from my good buddy Russ B after I posted the Death Valley and KLR photos a day or two ago.   You guys and gals will remember Russ…he’s got a gorgeous blue accessorized CSC motorcycle with our gangster white wall tires…

Here’s Russ’s note…

Hi Joe:

I check your blog daily and can tell when you are busy and still working for a living (smile)….no news….which this person misses from CSC.  You not only take great pics but with some artistic thought included. 

Enjoyed your Death Valley views.  Coyotes here in Iowa are a different color and of course no Road Runners that I’m aware (was it Plymouth who used the name?).   In Iowa currently we are hovering down with near zero temps and so your tales of riding 2 wheels this time of year causes a bit of anxiety with me.    Would love to ride with you guys sometime but is a bit of a haul from central USA to CA. 

Your wrenching the bolts as a maintenance check is a good suggestion for sure.  One I must do on all of my bikes soon.  Hey Joe, put that license plate on a hinge.  Might rattle? 

Attached here is my Red 1996 Honda Pacific Coast 800 which I did buy from a CA owner.  Great cruiser!  And of course, Lil’ Boy Blue leading the pack. Keep the stories coming!!

Russ

Russ, thanks for your kind words, and for our blog readers, here’s that photo of Russ’s PC 800 Honda…

It was Plymouth who introduced the Roadrunner, Russ, as their low bucks muscle car in 1968.   I remember it well.  My late buddy Bobby O’Connell had one with a 426 Hemi (their base engine was the 383 wedge), and Bobby’s car was the fastest ride in town.   It was really cool.   Bobby’s car was exactly the color you see in the photo below…

The rumor is Chrysler spent a ton of money perfecting the Roadrunner’s horn to sound exactly like the roadrunner in the cartoon series (you know…beep beep).    Cool stuff.

I really like your Pacific Coast, too, Russ.  They’re awesome bikes…a fully faired motorcycle with an 800cc V-twin engine.   I always wanted one.   Someday.   Yours looks great in red.   I would like to find one in their pearl white color, which is one of my favorite colors.

The KLR 650 license plate fix is to move the plate up onto the fender instead of the stock location (where it hangs below the fender).  I just never got around to doing that because I never thought I would ride the thing hard enough to let the tire hit the plate.   Boy, was I ever wrong about that!

That’s it for now.  Thanks again for the kind words, Russ, and everyone…ride safe, stay warm, and stay tuned!

A fun photo here, folks…and I just had to share it with you.   My two daughters and their cousin Hilary are in one of our favorite cities (that would be, of course, New Orleans) to celebrate the New Year right now, and my daughter Erica just posted this photo on Facebook…

From left to right, that’s my niece Hilary, and my daughters Erica and Lauren.   The top and bottom photos are separated by about 20 years.   Good times spanning a couple of decades…and a great photo!

Looks like that new KLR battery did the trick.   I just finished the installation, the old girl fired right up, and I took her out for a couple of miles just to make sure everything is okay.

My good buddy J wants to do another Baja trip, and it wouldn’t take much for me to agree to that…

That photo above is from a trip Primo and I did down to Guerrero Negro in October 2009, which was the last time the KLR was in Baja.   I think the translation is Baja hace señas, and if Google translate is right, that means Baja beckons…

The Baja ’09 run was a fun ride, and if you want to read the whole ride report (including me being a fast food meal for the wild dogs of Mexico, discovering a cool shipwreck off a remote stretch of the Baja coastline, riding out to an  abandoned onyx mine, our re-discovery of an ancient Jesuit mission, and lots of good food and pretty girls), you can do so here.

Our next Baja adventure will most likely be in March…and we may even have an editor from one of the national motorcycle magazines riding along with us!   You can bet I’m looking forward to it.

Speaking of which, there’s lots happening in Baja right now.   Carla King (our good buddy from Misadventures Media) is down there as you read this, and she has been posting awesome photos (you can see those here).    The other newsworthy event is that an earthquake took down a stretch of the Transpeninsular Highway just south of Tijuana near Salsipuedas…I heard about this from J yesterday and the news is starting to come in…

I’ve ridden right through that stretch many times, including the CSC Baja trip a couple of years ago.   The CSC Baja ride sure was a hoot…here’s a photo with the bikes overlooking the Sea of Cortez, right on the Tropic of Cancer marker…

That ride was one of the best Baja trips I’ve ever done, and if you want to read that ride report…well, here you go!

I received a couple of nice photos and a nice note from our good buddy Russ, so watch for those in an upcoming blog.

That’s it for now…Susie and I are off to Harbor Freight to pick up a few items.   It’s one of those stores where I just like wandering the aisles, and Susie is okay with me doing so today.   Gotta strike while the iron is hot!

Later, folks!