CSC Blog

My good buddy J and I had a great conversation a couple of nights ago about a whole bunch of topics, including progress on his barn find CX 500.   J’s got that puppy running already (it was DOA when he took it home), and he posted this video showing his progress…

Very cool, J! Keep us posted on your progress!

Whoever Chrysler is using for their ad agency, they sure got it right.  This is one of the most powerful yet understated commercials I’ve ever seen.  Most of you have probably already seen it on the Super Bowl last week, but on the off chance you didn’t, I’m posting it here for you…

Wow, what’s happening on the east coast of the United States is rough…a couple of feet of snow and lots of cold.  I’m going to guess there aren’t too many people riding their motorcycles in New England today.  I just talked to my mother (who still makes her home back there) and she said it is looking a bit better, but it’s still cold.  No thanks, but I’ll stick to southern California.

A ride up to Crater Lake on the Three Flags Rally...bitter cold, but vivid memories!

We actually had some snow here in So Cal yesterday, and lots of hail. It’s the second time in 30 years I’ve seen snow at my house. We get lots of snow in the mountains, but we’re down around 1500 feet and it’s very unusual to see it at my place.   Sue and the girls were excited to see it.   I guess I was, too!

Up in the mountains, though…well, that’s another story.  There’s snow in the mountains all the time.   The big news around here is about the manhunt up around Big Bear, where there’s lots of snow.   There’s still an active search going on in Big Bear (and apparently in many other places).  I hope they catch that guy soon.  Wherever you are in the U.S., I’m going to bet you’ve heard about it.  If they made a movie about what’s been happening around here in the last few days, I’d dismiss it as improbable, yet here it is actually happening.  Rambo meets real life, I guess…except Rambo wasn’t a homicidal maniac.  Like I said, I hope they catch that guy soon.

I’ll bet just about everyone reading this has a story about being caught in the snow on a motorcycle.  You saw the photo above showing my good Marty and the bikes up at Crater Lake in Oregon when we did the Three Flags Rally a few years ago.   That was one cold ride.   I’ve had some extreme cases in my time involving all kinds of weather.  The funny thing is that those are the rides that stick in your mind forever.

When I was a teenager living on the east coast I had a CB750 Honda that I dearly loved.  I took a girlfriend on a ride to New Hope over in Pennsylvania and we were caught in the rain on the way home.  (Actually, not to send like Sheldon Cooper, she wasn’t really my girlfriend…she was my friend and she was a girl, but she wasn’t my girlfriend).  It was in the middle of the summer and we didn’t have rain gear (who did in those days?).   Between being soaked and the wind chill it sure was cold. I bumped into that girl a few years ago and she remembered that ride as well as I did.  I think the weather is what made it stick in our minds.

Yours truly in November 1971...I'm pretty sure my Mom was still buying my clothes for me back then!

Another time my good buddy John and I were caught in an El Nino downpour in Baja.  We didn’t have raingear on that ride either.  I actually caught a touch of hypothermia on that one…I didn’t stop shivering until about 4:00 a.m. the next morning.   I remember that ride like it happened yesterday, and it was 20 years ago!

After a day of El Nino riding and a night of hypothermia, Baja had lots of mud for us!

The worst weather I ever rode in, though, was not the rain or the cold (or even the snow).  When we rode our California Scooters down to Cabo San Lucas, we went there during Baja’s hottest time of the year.   After several days of riding fully suited up in tropical weather, I was feeling pretty beat up.  The ride and the company were great, but man oh man, the weather was oppressive.  It finally cooled off just south of Guerrero Negro on the way home, and it sure was a welcome change.

Baja in September with the Sea of Cortez behind us...hot, humid, and fun!

So that’s it for now, folks.  If it gets a little bit warmer tomorrow I’ll fire up the old Baja Blaster and see if I can grab a few photos to share here on the blog.   Ride safe and stay warm…especially all of our fans on the East Coast!

Another great letter, folks…this time from our good buddy John!

Joe:

I am not a biker and I don’t own one, but I have a desire to own a motorcycle.  It is a “want to” that may go unsatisfied.  However, I enjoy reading about others who have realized a dream.  I have watched CSC grow and I am amazed at the following.  I am also amazed at what some claim about their Mustangs, including features that now I know never existed.   Yet they are all good memories.

I remember a classmate at our swimming pool who popped a wheelie and then almost lost it. He recovered and it is a vivid memory.

If I remember correctly I paid $150 for this bike.  It was green and fairly scratched up when I purchased it.  I was 13 when I bought it in the summer of 1954.   Just before I turned 14 in the summer of 1955 I had it painted ’55 Ford pink.  If I could do it again it would be red, blue, or green (but not pink).   It was a two-stroke and it had a mechanical problem I never solved.  It would suddenly open to full throttle, and would literally scare me to near death.  Before I was allowed on the streets I would ride around our house and backyard in a figure 8 pattern (and sometimes just a circle).

I sold the bike and bought a Sears Allstate scooter…the fancy one with an “aero” nose.   I wanted a Mustang, but my Mother controlled my purse strings and the answer was a resounding “NO.”   Ever since then I have still wanted to have a Mustang.   It is a “want to” that may not be realized.

At 16 bought my first car.  It was a ’49 two-door Chevy coupe that was an ugly green.  I have since ridden a few Mustangs, but I never owned one.   It is still just had a “want to.”

Bro John

John, thanks very much for sending your letter and photo to us…it’s great material and I enjoyed reading it.  

A quick question…why let your dream go unsatisfied?   You could be tooling around on a brand new CSC-150 in the next week or so.   With our new CSC Basic program, we could send you one you could paint any color you wanted (except pink, of course, as you mentioned above).   We could also provide it in red, blue, and maybe even green if you wanted one in that color.

And a quick comment…I respectfully disagree with your opening comment, John…you are indeed one of us…you are a biker!

I stopped by the plant and the factory folks showed me two beautiful new P-51’s.   Wow, these bikes look good!

We’re building the P-51 now, and I sure like them.  The black Classic above really works with a set of the Greaser’s red wheels…it’s a great combination.  The black tinted windshield goes well with it, too.  And the sapphire blue Classic has chrome billet wheels, LED turn signals, tons of chrome, and a lot of other custom touches.   These are great looking motorcycles!

Wow, what are the odds of this…

My photo of Carla King on our Tahoe ride

Carla King, author of American Borders and international motorcycle adventurer, spent a night here on her way south a week or so ago.   You  read about that in an earlier blog entry.    Carla has done some very cool rides.  American Borders is about her adventure riding a Ural all around the US and Canada.   Her new book (the one she is writing now) is about her adventures in China on a Chang Jiang.   The Chang Jiang is another BMW boxer twin clone, except the CJ guys based their design on the old BMW flathead design.  

Okay, so where am I going with this story, you are  probably wondering…

As Sue and I prepared dinner, Carla wanted to know about our Baja trip on the California Scooters and she wanted to see my red Baja Blaster.  I like showing off, so it was out to the garage we went.  I have a lot of cool stuff in my garage.  It’s my man cave.  In addition to the toys I keep out there, I’ve got a bunch of photos plastered all over the garage walls.  It’s not that they’ve been relegated to the garage because I think they’re unimportant…I’ve just run out of wall space in the house. 

Photos in the man cave...you might recognize my good buddy Jay Leno in the upper left photo. The photo of interest here is the one in the middle on the bottom row...that's a photo I shot in Beijing, China, more than 10 years ago!

Anyway, I’ve got a bunch of my favorites out there, including the ones you see in the photo above.     As Carla perused the collection, she got excited when she saw the photo in the middle center below.

“Oh, do you know Jim?” she asked.

“Huh?” I answered.  “Jim who?”

Carla pointed at the photo.  It’s the same one I showed you in the blog a few entries down….

Our mutual acquaintence, Jim, in Beijing!

You know, the amazing thing is that I took that photo literally on the other side of the world more than a decade ago, and Carla knew the guy.   She’d actually been to that very spot.   In Beijing.   China.    Carla studied the photo closely and said that the motorcycle in it might very well have been the actual one she rode.

Small world, don’t you think?

Here’s a nice story from our good buddy Ralph, a CSC rider and blog reader.  Ralph sent this to us in response to our request for your stories…

Joe,

The attached picture is the motorcycle and the guy (my cousin, George Stultz) that ignited my love for all things mechanical and motorcycles in particular.

When I was about 8 or 9 years old my incessant questions of  “Can I have a ride…can I have a ride?” became too much.  In an effort to shut me up, he kicked the Harley to life, grabbed me up and sat me on the seat in front of him, and took off. I remember it as if it were yesterday.

If I were a decent writer I would try to convey my feelings and overwhelming sense of  awe that I experienced while hanging on for dear life on that 20-minute ride. Don’t think I could do that story justice, and I’m betting most who read this will understand perfectly. Why butcher it up with words?

I would like to tell you a little about George, though, if you don’t mind.  He was a two-tour Veteran of Vietnam, a hard worker all his life, and an absolute artist with a welder.  George passed away last year, age 62, after a debilitating illness that had confined him to a wheel chair for the last three years of his life.  Never a complaint, although you could sense his frustration when his hands began to shake so much he could no longer keep his mind occupied with whatever was in reach that he could assemble and disasemble.  Pistols, computers, TV remote, the joystick control panel on his electric wheelchair…(“got to wondering how the hell that thing worked”)…

RIP cousin George.  You taught me a lot, and you changed my life. 

Ralph

Ralph, I’d say you’re a lot more than a decent writer and I know our blog readers would agree.  Thanks very much for sending this great story to us.   Your cousin George sounds like he was a hell of a man.

Don’t forget, folks, if you’ve got a story to tell about your early days in motorcycling, let us hear about it!  Send it to me at jberk@californiascooterco.com.   Thanks much and ride safe!

Steve shared this email he just received from Gunnar in Norway…seems our good buddy Gunnar (who recently purchased a gorgeous silver 250cc P-51 CSC) is a serious gearhead!   Check out the Ace keeping company with Gunnar’s CSC motorcycle!

Owen bought the Ace in Seattle.  I don’t know much about these, except that I believe they are modeled after the old Morgan three wheelers.  Here’s a photo of an original Morgan…

I think these things are pretty cool.  I’ve seen one of the originals at the Griffith Park Sidecar Rally a few years ago (that’s a fun event), and they just ooze class.  I saw another custom creation in the same three-wheeler configuration powered by a big Moto Guzzi V-twin a few years ago up at Newcomb’s Ranch on the Angeles Crest Highway. 

Cool stuff, and Gunnar, thanks for sending your photos to us!

Folks, here’s another response to my request for inputs from our readers…this one from none other than our good buddy Carl…

Joe:

I don’t know why, but I’ve always been addicted to engines. Didn’t matter if was a model airplane, the Briggs on a lawn mower, or a flathead V8.   If it had an engine, I was mesmerized.

In 1950 when I was 10 years old, my grade school friend Don Budde’s uncle was the bookkeeper at Dynacycle Mfg Co.   Dynacycle was a short-lived company that developed the now very rare Dynacycle motor bike. This was a 165cc reed valve 2 stroke kit that went on a Schwinn bike and was scary fast. Don would sneak one out of his uncle’s garage and we would ride it.  What a thrill!   They topped out at about 45 mph!!!!

60 years later, I now own one of the 20 or so that still exist and am having it restored!

In the last 60 years I’ve owned about 50 motorcycles, but it all started with a Dynacycle ride in 1950.

You can visit www.dynacycle.org for more info. 

Carl

Good inputs, Carl, and thanks for the story!