CSC Blog

My good buddy Alan (aka the Scootermeister) has a bunch of cool photos from The Real Cannonball.  That’s the coast-to-coast run (from Manhattan to California) he organized this year.   Without further ado, here are the photos and Alan’s captions…

The Real Cannonball. Motel 6, Ft. Smith, AR.  Just off I-40.  As up-scale as any Best Western!  Thank you VERY much Pam and Capt. Lew for the dry clothes, rain suit, Crown Royale and extremely nice digs!  Team Laurito Racing Photo.

 The Real Cannonball. I-40. Pam, the undisputed most beautiful member of Team Laurito Racing, giving me a much needed hug and words of encouragement as the race drug on through the plains. Thank you soooooo much!

The Real Cannonball. Just off I-40, probably somewhere in Oklahoma, or Texas?  Another gourmet lunch.  Energy bars.  Team Laurito Racing Photo by Pam.

The Real Cannonball. I-40.  We made short order of Stan Scott’s (Honda 250cc Helix) home state.

The Real Cannonball. I-40.  Middle of nowhere!  Capt. Lew and Pam following me mile-after-mile, hour-after-hour.  Team Laurito Racing Photo by Pam.

The Real Cannonball.  I-40.  Middle of nowhere! C apt. Lew and me stopping yet again to mess with some minor irritating problem.  Team Laurito Racing Photo by Pam.

Another Shell pit stop.  One of many.  This Team Laurito Racing pix of Capt. Laurito and me, taken by Pam, must have been shot early-on because the top mount on the Leo Vince “ZX” pipe hadn’t gone south yet.  The distal end of the silencer was MIA, making this pipe so loud two different Virginia State Troopers sitting on the side of the road with their windows rolled up heard me zip by and gave chase!

Pam and I somewhere on I-40 during The Real Cannonball.  Team Laurito Racing Photo.

Capt. Lew and I at one of the dozens of Shell stations we stopped at on I-40 at during The Real Cannonball.  Pam, the feminine crew-member of Team Laurito Racing, was kind enough to hand me a cup of hot coffee to warm my inner core from the gnawing cold, and snap this pix.

Capt. Lew Laurito, Team Laurito Racing, helping me for the umpteenth time at the bottom of an I-40 off-ramp in God-knows-where with attempting to secure the disintegrating “ZX” pipe during The Real Cannonball.

Alan, it looks like you guys had an absolutely outstanding time!

Thanks very much for allowing us to share your great photos with our CSC blog readers.

Send us all of the details on the next Motor Scooter International Land Speed Federation event, and we’ll share them with the CSC community right here!

Next year, my friend…

That’s the name of the city…but I can’t tell you the country. Yep, another secret mission, and I finally hooked up with a web connection here in the airport on the way home. In the meantime, Steve sent me a couple of photos of the new showroom, and here they are…

I really like the new facility, and I’m sure you guys and gals will, too. When you’re in So Cal, please stop by.

Ride safe, my friends…

Most people wouldn’t know what the title of this blog is all about.  Up until this weekend, I wouldn’t have, either.  But now I do.

The Ford 8N was a dynamite tractor manufactured by, well, you guessed it:  The Ford Motor Company.

I guess I sort of vaguely knew that Ford manufactured tractors, but it wasn’t something I spent any time thinking about.  Until this weekend, that is.   You see, our local Ford dealer (Ford of Upland here in So Cal) is just down the road from my home, and when I was tooling by this weekend and I spotted a real beauty. Not the young lady in the photo to the right…although she sure is nice, too.  Nope, I was driving by and the tractor you see below was in Ford of Upland’s parking lot. I knew it was something special when I saw it, and I just happened to have my Nikon with me, so I stopped in and walked over.

Now you and I both know that a competent sales person is not going to let you walk onto a new car lot without coming over to say hello, and I hadn’t gone 10 steps toward that tractor when my new friend Deb approached. I told her straight up that I didn’t want to waste her time as I had just bought a new car and I wasn’t in the market for another one.  What I really wanted to do was photograph that very cool tractor.  I asked what it was and I was surprised…Deb is a real tractor expert. She told me that it’s a 1949 Ford 8N (you could tell it’s a ’49 because it doesn’t have a tach; they didn’t add a tach until 1950).  Yeah, I knew that.  Didn’t you?

Anyway, Deb told me to take as many pictures as I wanted, and I picked the best ones for you here on the blog.  Deb also let me take her photo, and she told me that if any of you guys or gals are in the market for a new Ford, you should give her a call at 909 946 5555.

While I was there I took a good look, and I have to tell you, the new Fords are pretty nice.  Ford common stock has been going gangbusters, too, and I think they really have their act together.  When Alan Mulally came over from running Boeing a few years ago, he applied many of the same engineering and manufacturing techniques Boeing uses to Ford’s products, and the results speak for themselves.  Folks, these are great looking cars, and I can tell you from the ones I’ve rented on my many secret missions, they are fine automobiles.

Deb asked what I did and I told her. She told me she’s into motorcycling, and I told her our bikes are styled like the original Mustangs made in Glendale.  As a person who’s probably about 30 years younger than me, Deb had not known of the original Mustang motorcycles.  I told her that Mustang went out of business in 1962, and within a year, another young fellow named Lee Iacocca picked up the rights to the Mustang name for a little project he was working on at Ford.   That Mustang has been in production for almost 50 years now, and if you call Deb I’ll bet she’ll give you a killer deal on that black beauty I grabbed a photo of up above.  Ah, it is indeed a small world….

And hey, before I go, I found this pretty cool video on tractors…

It’s a fun video with the right kind of music, and it has quite a few photos of the mighty 8N.  You know, gearheads like anything with a motor, and tractors are no exception. My good buddy Ernie is a bona fide tractor dude, and my favorite moto mag (Motorcycle Classics magazine) has a sister publication focused on antique tractors.

Cool stuff, boys and girls…

Ride safe, and I’ll see you on the open road.  I’ll be on the modern Mustang.  The two-wheeled variety, that is…made right here in the good old USA.

TK, that’s not the lift kit I was talking about!

Yep, the caption above is the winner!

Our good buddy Lance brings home the bacon on this one!   Good job, Lance.   Contact us with the address you’d like your new CSC T-shirt sent to and let us know your shirt size!

My good buddy J picked up a “barn-find” CX-500 Honda last year and he nursed it back to life.   It’s awesome!   Take a look at this ride up in the high Sierras, folks…

Great video, J!    I felt like I was up there riding with you!

First, another video from a couple of nights ago…

I was out and about on my California Scooter when I saw a couple of dual sport bikes with much bigger engines. My little California Scooter has the 150cc engine, so I thought I would play around a bit and chase them around the neighborhood. I think I kept up pretty well.

When I was at the shop on Friday, things were hopping and everyone was having a good time. We’re getting a lot more folks in the store than we did at the airport location…being right on old Route 66 sure has its advantages.  During a lull in the customer traffic, Steve told us a story about trying to scare off the deer from eating his roses.  He had us laughing so hard we couldn’t stop.  Seems he installed a motion-activated water sprinkler system to scare Bambi and friends away, and the first victim of a good soaking was none other than Steve himself!  Good stuff, Steve!

I hope you are enjoying this Memorial Day weekend as much as we are.  I always make it a point to get out to the range on Memorial Day.  Part of the reason is that it reminds me of my time in the Army (some of the best days of my life), and part of it is that I just like shooting.

A first-year-of-production Ruger Blackhawk....check out the serial number!

I like the older style guns a lot, especially the Ruger Blackhawks.   Made in America, they’re styled like the old Colt .45, and as kid who grew up watching TV westerns (Gunsmoke, Maverick, Hop-Along Cassidy, The Lone Ranger, Bonanza, and more), I guess I just feel comfortable with them.  Ruger Blackhawks are a real draw for me, and when I see an interesting one, I’m a goner.

Anyway, when I was at the range yesterday with my old pal Jim shooting my Ruger Blackhawk, I suddenly felt somebody tapping on my shoulder.  I guess I was concentrating so hard (sight alignment, breath control, trigger squeeze, you know the drill), it took me a few seconds to realize it was my good buddy Josh. Or maybe I’m just getting old and I had a senior moment.  Whatever.

Turns out that Josh is a real pistolero.  He was connecting real well with a steel gonger way down range.  I shouldn’t be surprised.  Josh is a world class trapshooter, and I guess those skills carry over to doing well with a handgun.

You know, another funny thing often happens at the range that takes me back to an earlier era.  I reload my own ammunition, and I never miss an opportunity to pick up spent brass cartridge cases.  Steve pays me pretty well and I guess by most measures I’m relatively successful, but if there’s empty brass laying around…well, I’m on my hands and knees rooting around in the grass like a pig looking for a truffle.  My buddies all behave the same way, too.  It’s pretty funny, actually.  I do it because I still feel like I’ve hit the lottery when other shooters don’t want their brass.  Old habits die hard.

This business of picking up brass is interesting.  I do it because it’s a thrill for me and because I can reload it.  I remember another time in another land, though, watching people literally risking their lives to pick up spent brass.  When I served in Korea, both the North Koreans and the US frequently shot up the DMZ (the thin strip of land dividing the two Koreas).  Both sides were careful not to interfere with each other doing this…both the US and the North Koreans were just flexing their muscles.  We’d fly our helicopter gunships along the DMZ firing the Gatlings and spent brass would rain down into the heavily-mined land below.  The North Koreans would do the same.  And all the while, folks from both sides would literally be out in the DMZ hopping between the land mines picking up the brass.  They wanted to melt it down and fashion it into brass ornaments, candelabras, and other stuff.  It was an incredible thing and a powerful reminder of how lucky we are to have been born in the good old USA.

Just a few weeks ago I was in upstate New York, and I while I was there I toured the battlefields at Saratoga and Fort Ticonderoga.  These areas are the birthplace of our way of life.  It was the start of a modern form of government that would have worldwide ramifications for the next several centuries.  And last year I visited the US Army Infantry Museum outside of Fort Benning, Georgia, where we took in the heroics of the Revolutionary War and all of our other conflicts right up to today.  I watched an interactive exhibit on Medal of Honor winners, including the story of Jack Jacobs (a Medal of Honor winner whom I personally met in the 1970s).  Awesome stuff.

I guess all of the above is part of the privilege of living in this great country and being able to enjoy our freedoms.   Freedoms like being able to vote, speak out against things we don’t like, owning our own homes, owning firearms, and riding motorcycles.   I’ve been in countries where these freedoms are not allowed.   Our freedoms are all part of living in what is unquestionably the greatest country the world has ever known, and the folks who made it possible are the ones we honor this weekend.  So as you enjoy your Memorial Day weekend, think about that.  And then do what I’m going to do…go for a motorcycle ride!

Think we should put one of these on a CSC 150?

Hey, keep an eye on the blog for our photo caption winner!

Found this one over on the ADVRider site….it is a very nicely done video from Subaru of Australia. Enjoy!

I landed at LAX just before lunch yesterday, and on the drive from the airport to my home I was thinking about how cool it would be to fire up my CSC motorcycle and head into the mountains for a ride.   It’s been too long.

Most of my recent travel has involved airplanes and automobiles, which is okay when the distances are great or the weather is bad.   A couple of new things (new to me, at least) that I’m getting used to are the GPS and Bluetooth phone systems.  My new Subie has a built-in GPS and a handsfree phone system.   Progress, I guess.  Or is it?

I haven’t decided if the GPS is a good thing or a bad thing.  It’s cool because it takes a lot of the stress out of driving in strange or new areas.   For example, when I was in Chicago a month or so ago, the rental car GPS came in handy when I landed late at night and I had to drive 70 miles.  Driving through Chicago late at night could have been an adventure, but the GPS made it pain free.   I guess that’s a good thing.  What’s not a good thing it destroys my situational awareness.   I mean, if you think about it, I rode my California Scooter all the way down to Cabo San Lucas and back armed with only a map and my sense of direction.   I was fine with that.   I felt connected to wherever I was.

In the good old days, I used to have to think a lot about where I was and the lay of the land (and I was fine with that).   Now I just put my mind in neutral and wait for the GPS lady to tell me what to do.   Like I said, I‘m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.   I sometimes wonder what this kind of mental emptiness (floating from one destination to the next, waiting for someone to tell us what to do, with no responsibility for determining our own way) will do to us on a longer term basis.  Maybe I’m just thinking too hard.

The other new toy is the Bluetooth phone system.   Let me say at the outset that I hate cell phones.    We’ve become a nation of folks glued to those nasty little things.   I don’t like people who are loud on their cell phones, and it seems like that’s just about everybody.  Folks, we don’t want to hear your half of the conversation (take it outside, please).   Better yet, talk to the people you’re with.  And it bothers me when I see people thumb-diddling away on those little keyboards while ignoring the people they’re with.   Put the cell phone away and have a real conversation, face to face, like a normal person.  Whatever you’re doing on email or Facebook or some other mind-numbing empty-headed activity can’t be as important as looking other folks in the eye and talking with them.

Okay, back to the Bluetooth.  The deal with it is you can use your cell phone without having to hold it…the thing just takes my voice commands and calls whoever I tell it to call.  The good part is that I don’t need to break the law and hold my cell phone when I’m driving.   I hate it when I see people doing that because I know they’re not paying attention, and when you ride a motorcycle, seeing cell phone freaks on the highway is downright scary.   What I find with my car’s new Bluetooth system, though, is that I make a lot more phone calls than I used to just because I can.  It breaks up the drive.   When I used to see folks jabbering away in their cars all the time, I always wondered what in the world they were talking about.   Now I know…it’s mostly nothing.  They’re just killing time.  

Anyway, if it was up to me, I’d do away with cell phones altogether.    They bother me.   I don’t want to be that accessible, and I don’t want to hear other peoples’ cell phone conversations.   The human race seemed to do okay for a long time without cell phones.   I think we would do just fine marching into the future without them.

So….by now you’re probably tired of my rant, and I’ll turn back to motorcycle stuff.   Here’s a quick video of a Baja Blaster ride along the base of the San Gabriel Mountains in my neighborhood (with a brief pop at the end to clear out the carbon).    If you’re new to the blog, the Baja Blaster is my CSC 150 Classic.  I’ve been riding that little hot rod for a little over three years now, and it just keeps getting better and better.

Ah, my knees in the breeze….no Bluetooth, no GPS, no interruptions, and only the sound of the wind rushing by and the CSC 150 engine.   The real deal…just the way life is supposed to be.

And it’s a good one…

My buddy Alan Spears alerted me to this over on the ADVRider board.   It’s well worth a read!

http://www.advrider.com/forums/showthread.php?t=874739

Great job, Stan, and thanks for telling us your story!