CSC Blog

A couple of weeks ago my good buddy Mike B. was in So Cal visiting his aunt, so Sue and I drove down to San Diego in the Subie for lunch with my lifelong buddy…

A low-res iPhone selfy, with Sue, Mike, and yours truly in the chili shirt

We ate at Andres, a Cuban restaurant.  I can’t tell you which was better…the camaraderie, the conversation, or the cuisine.   It was all wonderful.   We snapped that photo above with my iPhone and I immediately forwarded the photo to my kids.  One of them told me she would confiscate my chili shirt if I wore it one more time!

Yesterday morning, I received an email from Mike (now back in New Jersey) with an interesting message.  He had bumped into Mr. H., our 7th grade science teacher, at a local mall.  Or rather, Mr. H. had bumped into Mike.  Neither recognized each other immediately.  Hey, do the math:  7th grade for us was exactly 50 years ago!   It seems Mr. H. saw Mike in his Corvette and he had a question about the engine.   Our former science teacher had shoehorned an LS-2 Chevy engine into a Mazda RX-7 and he wanted some advice on it.

As Mike was telling this story, a lot of memories flooded back.   All of us have had great teachers, and Mr. H. was mine.   I will tell you up front I was a first class pain-in-the-you-know-what in junior high school (and in high school, too, for that matter), but my 7th grade science class held my interest.   Science was cool and so was my teacher.

Mr. H. is a gearhead…the real deal.   His daily driver back in those days was a 1953 Morgan, and he was bringing it back to concours condition.   I had great interest in that car and I remember it well…the classy styling, the big louvers, and a big leather belt to secure the hood.  It was originally a faded and oxidized white, and as one of the final touches Mr. H. painted it a deep burgundy.   The car was awesome.

A Morgan sports car

Mike’s message about Mr. H. was intriguing.   To make a long story less long, I Googled the name and address and a few minutes later I had Mr. H. on the phone.  How about that?  Fifty years since I’ve seen this guy, and now I’ve got him on the phone.

You know, a voice is a funny thing.   Mr. H. sounded exactly as I remembered him.  Strong, firm, and focused on gearhead stuff.  He told me that the RX-7 was a good car, but the rotary engines were only good for about 75,000 miles (he’d been through several of them).   Dropping a Corvette engine in an RX-7 was the way to go, Mr. H. said.  He spoke about it like it was changing from Firestone to Goodyear tires (a classic Mr. H. trait).  It was a great conversation.   He told me he remembered me, which I kind of doubted until he asked me a question about my father.   “Your Dad was the guy who designed and built his own swimming pool, including the filtration system, right?  He made it from an old wine vat.”  That was so long ago I had forgotten about it.   Not Mr. H.   To say I was impressed would be a great understatement.   Wow!

Okay…changing the subject:  As if the above weren’t enough, and to make a great morning even greater, I received another email from my good buddy Jimbo yesterday.   Jim told me of a link on the Mustang website to Paul V’s photos, and folks, you have to visit this site.   The Mustang Nationals just ended a few days ago, and Paul captured some great photos of the bikes at that event (Mustangs, Cushmans, and more).   The photos are awesome.  Paul, we had no idea you are such an accomplished photographer.   Thanks for posting these great images!

Oh, and one more thing.  I received my copy of Motorcycle Classics magazine in the mail yesterday.  Motorcycle Classics is unquestionably the best moto mag on the planet.  I say that not just because I occasionally write for them, but because they truly are great.    The photography and the writing in all of their stories is absolutely first class, as is the editing and story selection by Landon Hall and Richard Backus.   If you’re not reading Motorcycle Classics, the fact that you’re reading this blog means you should be.  It’s that good.  With every issue, I wonder how they are going to do better in the next one, and then they somehow do.   Clement Salvadori (one of the world’s all time great writers, a guy who I want to be like when I grow up) has a piece in the current issue about riding a 1948 Indian Chief on California 101.   It’s a must read, folks!

That’s it for now, boys and girls.  Ride safe and stay tuned!

You’ve gotta read this article about Simon in xBhp, the Indian moto mag…

http://www.xbhp.com/talkies/tourer/26555-simon-gandolfi-octogenarian-motorcyclists-indian-odyssey.html

It’s a good one…and check out Simon’s shirt!

Our good buddy Simon Gandolfi is on the road in India, riding across the subcontinent en route to London.    You can follow his adventures on Facebook.

Another note…today is World Motorcycle Day.   I’m not too sure what that means, but I’m going to use it as an excuse to fire up the Baja Blaster and grab a bagel a bit later this morning (not that I ever need an excuse to go for a motorcycle ride).

Later, boys and girls…my bagel beckons…

Hey, folks, take a look at Brad’s new motorcycle!

The red hot 250 you see above is Brad’s first bike, and he’s put over 2000 miles on it so far cruising the great roads in Georgia.  I love that state, and the riding down there is fantastic.

Brad, congratulations to you and we hope you enjoy riding your CSC as much as we do ours!  Ride safe and keep the great photos coming!

If you have, you know it can be unnerving.

Well, check out this fellow’s experience in British Columbia…

http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/06/14/banff-motorcyclist-pursued-by-massive-grey-wolf-along-stretch-of-b-c-highway-takes-pictures/?NewsWatchCanada.ca

Yep, that’s not a Siberian Husky, boys and girls.  It’s the real deal…huffing and puffing and trying to blow your house down.   I’ve ridden those roads, but I never had this kind of an encounter.  Sounds like quite a ride…

My father, Marty Berk, at the Grand American trapshoot in Vandalia, Ohio. This photo was taken in the mid-1960s.

A special day, indeed. To all of our good friends out there, our special wishes to you on Father’s Day. It is one of the best days of the year, and it is always a day to reflect on our Dads. I do. My father has been gone for more than 30 years, and I still find myself thinking about him at least once a day. Heart disease, the family curse, is what took him on that day in back in the early 1980s, at the very young age of 56.

My father believed in living life to its fullest, and I do, too. He instilled a lot of things in me, and like all of us, I guess I am pretty much the product of the values he passed along.

My Dad was a world class trapshooter. I was never any good at that game (put a shotgun in my hands and the safest place to be is on the clay pigeon), but I most definitely picked up my lifelong fascination with firearms from Dad. He was a rifleman and a reloader, too, and that apple sure didn’t fall far from the tree. Dad was a craftsman who created his own gun stocks, and I a still get giddy when I see a rifle with nice wood. I’ve tried stocking a couple of guns myself, with barely acceptable results. My efforts pale in comparison to what Dad could do, which was nothing short of amazing.

Dad didn’t much care for handguns, but I sure did (no doubt the result of a misspent youth watching too many westerns and Army shows on TV). I remember the day I came home with a big old Colt .45 automatic. When I came home with the Colt, my Dad gave me “the look” (I can still see it). But he was a good sport, and back in those days, if you wanted to shoot you just walked out in the backyard and started shooting. We did just that on a humid New Jersey afternoon, tossing a soda can about 20 feet in front of us for a target. Neither one of us could hit it. It was pretty funny. We went through a box of ammo and the can of pop was untouched. We knew a guy who knew how to make a handgun do what it was told, though, and after learning the lesson about focusing on the front sight, it was pretty easy to keep a can dancing. Good times.

One thing my Dad inherited from me was a love of motorcycles. Yep, you read that right. That fascination went from me to him. When I was a kid in junior high school one of the big kids had a new Triumph Tiger, and I was mesmerized by the thing. I started sending letters to all of the motorcycle manufacturers asking for literature, and before long our house was a motorcycle sales literature library. To my astonishment, my Dad started reading the brochures from Triumph, Honda, BSA, Harley, and others.

One day, one of Dad’s trapshooting buddies stopped by on a Honda CB-160 (the baby Super Hawk). To make a long story short, Dad bought that bike from old Cliff Leutholdt. He rode it for two months and then traded it in on a brand new 305cc Super Hawk. The Super Hawk lasted another short two months before Dad traded it in on a Triumph Bonneville. As a kid in junior high school, I was in hog heaven. A brand new 1966 Triumph Bonneville…in our garage! There were a lot of times when Dad wasn’t around that I fired the big 650 up and…well, those are stories for another day.

One more quick photo of three more Dads.  When I was in the new factory last week Ed was out for a visit, and I grabbed a photo of Ed, Steve, and Josh (yep, three generations of moto men!).   It’s one I wanted to share with you…

Ed, Steve, and Josh. Josh joked about being able to see himself in the future when he saw this photo!

For now, enjoy the day, and again, happy Father’s Day to all of you!

After I left the plant today, I took the long way home…up Highway 39, over to the East Fork Road, and then home on Glendora Ridge Road.  I was in the Corvette, and it was a great drive.   That car is awesome, and in those tight corners, it was a real delight.  I promised a few photos, and here they are…

I especially like the last photo above.  It shows the actual “ridge” in Glendora Ridge Road, and it exactly captures the essence of this great road.  I once wrote an article about it for Motorcycle Classics magazine (the best motorcycle magazine in the world, if I do say so myself).   You know, GRR has more than 200 curves in 12 miles.  Like I said, it’s awesome.

After the ride, I stopped at the Mt. Baldy Lodge for a bowl of their great chili, and because I had the camera with me, I grabbed a shot of that, too…

I can guess what you’re thinking, and the answer is yes…it tasted as good it looked!

Hey, more good news…with our growth into the new facility, we’ve got a bunch of bikes Steve is going to blow out like he did in a few sales we’ve had before.  We just don’t have room to store these earlier development bikes.   Any one of them would make a great project for someone wanting to get into the CSC lifestyle at a lower cost.   They’ll be going up on the CSC Classifieds in the next week or two, but in the meantime, give us a call if you want to get a jump on these deals.   Here’s a sneak peak at what’s going on the chopping block…

Oh, and that original Mustang basket case DeliverCycle I mentioned earlier?   Well, the Boss is going to sell it, and I think what’s he’s asking is way too low based on what I learned about these when I wrote the Mustang article for Motorcycle Classics.  The DeliverCycle will be going on the block in a week or two, too, but in the meantime here’s some eye candy…

Steve gave me a bit of info on the DeliverCycle, and like I said, it’s going up on our Classifieds board (on the www.CSCMotorcycles.com site) in a few more days.   It’s truly a basket case, and it’s almost complete…all of the hard to find things are there.   It’s an original main frame, a super nice stainless front end, the rear end is complete, and the motor seems to be in good shape (it turns over with good compression).  The tranny is all there.  We’re not sure of the year, but the engine number is S52C89 (somebody out there will know).  It would make for a great project for someone who wants to build a DeliverCycle, and all of the parts in the pictures above will go with it.

That’s it for now, boys and girls…

6 June 1944…the beginning of the end for the forces of evil, at least as they existed in Europe during World War II. It was 69 years ago when those brave souls landed in Normandy. We’d like to extend a heartfelt thanks to all who participated and sacrificed in that enormous undertaking.

Things are going well in the new facility.  I stopped by this morning to grab a quick shot or two…

The showroom is looking good, and the production crew is busy assembling new bikes in the manufacturing area…that’s Lupe and Andy, just a couple of our technicians, doing their thing making the best bikes in the world.

I drove the Vette this morning…I hadn’t taken it out for a while and I felt like I was overdue firing the beast up.  It’s not too hot out here today and the semester at Cal Poly is over, so I am kind of taking it easy and kicking back a bit today.  Not that I really need to…teaching college courses is kind of a laid back gig.  I thought I would run the Vette along Glendora Ridge Road and grab a few photos on the way home.  If I do I will post them here for you in the next few days.

And speaking of beasts, my buddy Jim has a ’79 SP1000 Moto Guzzi he’s trying to convince me to buy…

I came close, but I have too many toys now and I don’t hardly ride my KLR.   When I want to get my knees in the breeze, I’m almost always on my California Scooter.   The CSC motorcycle is just too much fun compared to the others.

The Guzzi was cool, though.  After we got it started I rode it around the block.  It’s like a living thing, snorting and bucking, and the torque reaction when you blip the throttle is cool.   The crank is aligned with the bike, so the bike tilts to one side when you goose it like a BMW boxer (yep, I goosed the Goose!).   Fun for sure, but not my cup of tea this time.  We took some photos of the beast and I posted that one above for you.

Keep an eye on our Classifieds section in the CSC site.   We’ll be posting some cool photos of a Mustang DeliverCycle basket case, maybe the Guzzi above, and more in the near future.  Steve asked me to shoot some photos of the DeliverCycle, so I know that one’s going up soon.

Later, folks…ride safe, stay tuned, and keep today’s date in mind.   We’ll never be able to repay the folks who participated in that incredible liberation 69 years ago what we truly owe…but we can remember them and say thanks for what they gave us.

Folks, more exciting inputs from The Real Cannonball scooter rally, this time from Bill Murar, the father and founder of the Lake Erie Loop:

Since returning to reality, I’ve begun to understand the enormity of what we all did. In the next few days I’ll begin to analyze all the fuel usage, the miles per day, and pretty much all the useless facts and figures that no one will ever understand as we are the only ones who can absorb their meaning.

I have crossed this continent six times on two wheels. This ride we did was, by far, the most stressful, hardest, most difficult ride I have ever done.   My rides to Alaska and the ride Joyce and I did to the Labrador Highway and back were a cakewalk compared to this windblown, 104 degree high and 37 degree low challenge. We fought and beat the winter storm called Achilles, We endured and thrived on California’s Santa Ana winds that blew fire and destruction to the northern LA area.  Deb and I (on our way back to Ohio) stayed one step ahead of tornadoes that killed a number of people in Texas and Oklahoma.

All of us, finishers or not, are true champions for even attempting such an endeavor.

Three cheers for us all:  Hip, hip hooray!

Bill

Great story, Bill.  And for our loyal blog readers, Bill sent along a bunch of his photos…

Thanks again, Bill!

Oh, one more thing, folks….the Lake Erie Loop is about to start again!  We’ll keep you posted!

My good buddy Pauly B and I have been talking about a wild boar hunt for a while now…we both own 1894 Marlins in .44 Mag with iron sights and we thought it might make for an interesting hunt.   I’m seeing Pauly next month at the 4th of July Hollister motorcycle rally and we’ll probably move our planning forward during that visit.

Never one to miss an opportunity for an interesting message, Pauly sent me this photo of a young fellow and his new friend on a recent pig hunt in Texas.

All I could say when I saw this photo was “whoa!”  I’ve seen rattlers that big in the Florida panhandle out on the Eglin AFB bombing ranges.   It’s hard to imagine they get this big until you see one, and even then, you wonder if your eyes are lying to you.   It seems the young fellow in the photo above was sitting in a blind waiting for the pigs to swing by when the rattler poked his head in.  It’s 9’6″ long with 22 rattles, a head more than 5 inches wide, and 2 1/2-inch fangs!

It sure would have been fun to have had a video camera on those guys when that snake popped in for a visit!