CSC Blog

I spotted this one while I was walking around the campus today…it’s a reclaimed KZ1000P Kawi police motorcycle…

You still see these old police Kawasaki motorcycles around, sometimes in private security services escorting funerals and sometimes converted to civilian use like the one above.

I always wanted one of those police Kawasakis.   I have no idea why, although I suspect maybe this show I used to watch a few years ago has something to do with it…

Even though Kawasaki is no longer in the KZ1000P business, you sometimes see these bikes still in police service.  Here’s one I photographed just a few years ago in Prescott (one of my all time favorite cities)…

You might be wondering…what has any of this to do with CSC and the RX3?   Well…

I saw the police version of the RX3 last December when I visited Zongshen.   I’m going over there again in a couple of weeks.

Hmmmmm….

One of the guys over on the China Riders board started a location map for RX3 owners.  It’s pretty cool, and you can even specify the color of your bike.   I just added my location, and you can find the map here.  You don’t want to give your exact location (no sense making it easy for the bad guys), but if you put your general location it will give all of you an idea where other RX3 riders are located in the United States.

You know the feeling…you’ve got a motorcycle ride planned and you’re looking forward to it.  Gathering your gear, pushing the motorcycle out of the garage, suiting up, and riding to link up with your amigos.   I’ve got the feeling right now, and I’m looking forward to Sunday morning.   It’s going to be a grand ride to the Rock Store.  I love that place.

I’ve seen some pretty impressive bikes at the Rock Store, and some extremely impressive people, with none other than Jay Leno being at the top of that list.   What I especially like about Mr. Leno is that he is a nice guy and he is totally unpretentious.   He arrives on a motorcycle without an entourage, he’s always surrounded immediately by people wanting autographs and photos, he’s always accommodating when that occurs, and after 15 minutes of satisfying the demands of his admirers, he’s just one of the guys taking it all in.   I grabbed this photo of Jay and my buddy Dave Walker a few years ago, and he was joking with us the entire time.   He’s a cool guy.

I like the crowd at the Rock Store.   And I like the photo ops.   I’ll bring back some photos and put them on the blog.

I had dinner with the bosses last night, and the conversation turned to the profile of our typical CSC RX3 buyer.   We decided that there is no such thing as a typical buyer…you folks are as varied as they come.  Male, female, young, old, new rider, more experienced rider, affluent, not so affluent…we’re all over the map.  But one thing was extremely interesting…about half of our RX3 riders own other motorcycles, and most of those are BMWs.  It seems that a lot of folks who are buying the RX3 are BMW riders.

Part of it, I think, is that the RX3 is not an intimidating motorcycle.   I read an online comment by a guy who owns a GS1200A the other day seeking inputs on the RX3, and the gist of it was this:  He owns a GS1200 that he is making payments on, but everything is so expensive and the bike is so big, tall, and heavy that he is afraid to take it off road.   We understand that, and we hear it a lot.  It’s interesting and in a way, sad…folks drop $25K+ on an adventure bike, and then for a variety of reasons they don’t want to take it off road.   Some folks do, but a lot don’t.   The standard joke is that the most likely place you’ll find a GS is parked in front of a Starbucks.

Don’t get me wrong…BMW is a first rate outfit and they make a world class motorcycle.   But the comparisons and the connections with the RX3 keep coming.

• We’ve been told that the cost of a set of aluminum bags for the GS costs about the same as our entire RX3.
• I mentioned what the guy at Overland Expo told me a couple of weekends ago…the headlight for a GS costs about $1500.   Buy a couple of those and you’re within spitting distance of what an entire RX3 costs.
• I know from when I wrote my book about police and military motorcycles that a clutch replacement on BMW police bikes is north of $1200 (and for the police bikes, that’s not covered on the warranty).   Due to the demands the boys in blue put on their bikes, clutch replacements are frequent.   Three clutch replacements on a BMW and you could have a new RX3 with a hundred bucks left over.

You get the idea.

Another connection to the BMW world…in the very near future we’ll be announcing our new CSC service manager, and he comes to us from a career spent managing BMW service organizations.  Stay tuned for more info on that.

More good stuff…our good buddy Rob sent us some great shots of his recent RX3 ride.  First, the video…

And a few shots of Rob’s RX3 up on Rowher Flats…

Rob, thanks for the great camera work!

I’m looking forward to seeing all of you Sunday morning.  We’ll arrive at the Rock Store about 8:00 a.m., and if you want to ride out there with us, be at the CSC plant no later than 7:00 a.m.

That’s where we’re headed, leaving from the CSC plant in Azusa at 7:00 a.m. and arriving at the Rock Store in the hills above Malibu around 8:00.    Show up on your RX-3 and Steve’s buying breakfast!   We’ll hang out for a while, shoot some photos and maybe a video, and then we’ll ride down to the Pacific Coast Highway for a short run up to Neptune’s Net for a light seafood lunch and a few more photos.

The Rock Store is So Cal’s iconic Sunday morning moto hangout….you can read more about it by clicking here.   It’s going to be a great ride and we’re looking forward to seeing you there!

And that young man would be Clint Eastwood.   Mr. Eastwood’s birthday is today, and he’s 85.   I always liked that guy, starting with his appearances in the weekly western, Rawhide, as Rowdy Yates, through all of the Dirty Harry movies (the first one got me hooked on the Smith and Wesson Model 29, and I’ve owned one ever since), and all of his later work (which just kept getting better and better).

Mr. Eastwood is no stranger to motorcycles, and he seems particularly partial to British vertical twins.   Check out these Nortons…

That first photo above was shot during a break in Where Eagles Dare, an all time favorite World War II movie.   That’s a Norton P-11 750cc “Scrambler” with low pipes…in its day, it was the hardest accelerating motorcycle in the world.

Triumphs were a favorite, too, as these shots from Coogan’s Bluff and elsewhere show…

Here’s Mr. Eastwood on another Triumph, done up in the San Francisco PD livery.   It was used during  the filming of Magnum Force, and if you were really paying attention, you noticed that the motor officers were using Moto Guzzis until the aircraft carrier scene, where the more nimble Triumph was necessary.

Mr. Eastwood even shot a scene or two on a Harley, including one in another great movie, The Eiger Sanction.   I don’t think the shot below is from that movie, but you get the idea…

And of course, Any Which Way But Loose…

So the question is:  At 85, does he still ride?   I don’t know.   But I’m going to send Mr. Eastwood an email this week.   Seems there’s an RX3 here he might look pretty good on…

You know, maybe something longer than just a run into the mountains?   Maybe even longer than a weekend?

Hubert Kriegel did.   He’s been on the road for 10 years now.   You gotta check this out…

http://thetimelessride.com/US/LC/Newtothesite.html

Just a few photos from the D3300 showing my commute home today through the San Gabriel Mountains…

My next big ride is going to be to Laughlin, probably through Amboy.   There are lots of photo ops out that way.

My RX3 is running great.   I am loving that bike more and more every day.

Tough duty, I know…

One of our very first CSC RX3 buyers was my good friend Peter, who knows a good deal (and a great motorcycle) when he sees one.   Peter is a high-level aerospace industry exec, and he and his beautiful wife Sasi have been doing a lot of traveling lately, so it wasn’t until today that they picked up their new RX3.    The bike looks great, and so do they!

Peter doesn’t live too far from me, so it’s a safe bet you’ll be seeing more of him here on the blog.   I can guess we’ll be riding the San Gabriels and more.

Like we always say…stay tuned!

For me, you might wonder…what was the best part of the CSC Inaugural Baja Run?   Hands down, it was the people I had the privilege of meeting and with whom I rode.   We had 15 grand adventurers on that ride, and getting to know every single one was a real treat.

Good buddy Pete

One guy I particularly enjoyed meeting was Pete.   Pete flew in from the east coast (he’s originally from New York, which is not too far from where I grew up).

Pete had a great sense of humor and he was one of those people you just like as soon as you meet him.   Now that I’m writing this, though, I realize the same is true for everyone on the Baja ride.

Our turnaround point on the Baja Run was Santa Rosalia, a little Mexican town I love and one in which I’d like to spend more time (and I probably will this summer, as I think I’m going to point the RX3 south and meander down that way again in a few weeks).

We stayed in the Frances Hotel while in Santa Rosalia, as it’s a favorite of mine and it’s just dripping with authenticity, history, and charm.   I mentioned in a previous blog post that one of the things I like about the Frances Hotel is that the rooms have real keys…there’s none of this high-tech plastic key swipe baloney.

Santa Rosalia’s Frances Hotel

All right, time for another good story.   You’ve heard me mention Juddy, one of the guys on the trip who is a real gentleman, and who obviously has a very refined sense of interesting practical jokes.

Good buddy Juddy

Okay, so the night we were in Santa Rosalia, Pete accidentally locked himself out of his room at the Frances Hotel, so he left to get another key from the lobby.   A few of the riders on our Baja expedition were standing in front of Pete’s room while Pete was off fetching another key, when Juddy happened along.   He heard what had occurred, and for reasons I can only guess at, Juddy was able to unlock the door in seconds by using a card to push the door bolt open.   “Don’t tell Pete,” Juddy told everyone, seconds before Pete reappeared with a substitute key.

“What’s going on?” Juddy asked Pete.

“Ah, I locked myself out of my room,” Pete said, “and I got another key from the office.”

“Wait,” Juddy said.  “I have an app on my iPhone that can unlock the door,” and with that, Juddy punched a few buttons on his iPhone screen, he held it next to Pete’s door knob, and then said, “try it now…”

Pete did.   The jury is still out on whether he knew Juddy was having some fun with him.

You’re hearing this story second hand, as I was off doing something (probably writing a blog entry) and several other folks told me about it.    I wished I had been there to see it in person.   Everyone had a good laugh, and I’ve probably told that story 30 times already.    It was that kind of a trip.   Grand fun.

John (of the John and Jay team from Washington state) told me that he thought the best part of the trip was our ride out to see the cave paintings at San Francisco Sierra.  A good portion of that ride was on a fairly gnarly dirt road.   I thought that part of the ride was pretty cool, too.

I told you on the blog a few days ago that I had ordered a couple of books about Baja, and one of them was about the cave paintings.   The cave painting book arrived, and it’s awesome.   So far, I’ve just been looking at some of the photos in it, and I’ll dig into reading it in the next few days.     It’s one of the reasons I’m headed back to Baja this summer…there are lot more cave painting locations in Baja than I had known about, and I want to see and photograph as many of them as I can.  This is real Indiana Jones stuff, folks.   The civilization that created the paintings did so over 10,000 years ago, and then they vanished.  Poof.  Wiped clean off the face of the earth, just like that line in the Indiana Jones movie.

So, back to Pete…he’s the rider on our expedition who captured that great video of the ride out to the cave paintings we put on the blog a couple of entries back, and here’s another for you from Pete.   It shows some of the scenes at the San Francisco Sierra cave paintings as well as some of our ride back to Guerrero Negro.  I didn’t add any music to the soundtrack (whenever I do that, I get a half dozen or so emails complaining that you’d rather hear the engines), but imagine background music from Raiders of the Lost Ark and you’ll pretty much capture the feeling of what this part of the ride was like…

Pete, thanks again for these great videos!