CSC Blog

North Carolina, today, and it’s 3 hours later than usual for me.  I was up at 4:00 a.m this morning, but that’s really 7:00 a.m in Left Coast time, so I guess I could say I slept in.   No, wait a minute, I got that backwards.  It would be 1:00 a.m. in California!  Whatever.  It’s colder than California here, but that’s okay.

So I’m up early reading one of my favorite moto mags (Motorcycle.com) and I noticed an interesting article on the most expensive production motorcycles in the world.   We’re talking about bikes from the low $30K range up to $200K.  Yikes.  Anyway, it was an interesting read, and you can see it here.

Moto Baja! is doing well, and I’m working on the Kindle version now.   I had my first review on Amazon from my good buddy Marty, and it was great…

I have a history with Joe Berk. I’ve known for a long time his love of Baja. He urged me to go there and I resisted due to my belief that everything south of the border was banditos, narco nutters, mordida, and bad bacteria. One day I said okay, to hell with it, I’m going. And am I ever glad that I did — thank you, Joe, for stunning scenery, great roads (excellent asphalt for my autobahn-burner), wonderful food, and best of all, the friendliest people I’ve ever met on this planet. You might think that I speak Spanish and you would be wrong. Somehow friendly ways are a language all its own. Yes, I went back for more. For seasoned motorcyclists, Joe has much to say that makes great good sense on the subject of small capacity motorcycles — pay attention. You are lucky, in this book you get to meet a man who is a force of nature, a rider, an adventurer, a complete human being.

Everything is colorful in Baja…even the cemeteries!

So, back to that Kindle thing.  It will be a week or so before the Kindle version of Moto Baja! goes live.   When I wrote Moto Baja!, my objective was to focus on the photography (Baja is a photographer’s paradise).  I wanted the book to be in color, but I also wanted to keep the page count reasonable to keep the cost to you down.   When you do a book in color, Amazon treats every page as a color page (even those with text only), and that drives the cost up.  To get the page count down, I went to a slightly reduced font size (don’t worry; it’s still very readable), two columns per page, and a landscape orientation.  That worked and the book looks great, but all that fancy formatting threw me a curve when I uploaded it to Kindle.  It was back to the drawing board for me, and I’m laying it all out in a Kindle-friendly format now.  For those of you who are waiting on the Kindle version, all I can say is hang in there; it will be soon.   And for those of you who want the print version, more are inbound to CSC and more will be available on Amazon. Moto Baja! is selling well, and we are printing more to keep up with the demand.

Debbie, a cocktail waitress at the Colorado Belle…a photo from the Destinations Deal Tour.

And the title of this blog?  It’s not just because I’m out here on the east coast for a day or so…it’s Willie Nelson!  Yep, he’s going to be live at the Colorado Belle in Laughlin, Nevada, and Susie and I will be there.  You’ll remember that our Destinations Deal group stayed in the Belle on the first night of our four-state ride, and the Belle’s River Bar had a killer band playing that evening. And one time about 20 years ago on one of the Laughlin River Runs I had the great pleasure of listening to Mickey Fleetwood (of Fleetwood Mac) at the Colorado Belle.  The place just attracts great music.  The opportunity to hear Willie Nelson in concert at the Colorado Belle is too good to let get away.  Next month I’ll be on the road again…specifically to hear Willie Nelson sing that very song!

My good buddy Joey (one of our service techs) had an RX3 out yesterday and I grabbed a couple of photos…

They tell me orange is the fastest color, you know…

Steve had posters prepped for the Long Beach IMS show and I really like them.   We have the posters on display in our new showroom and I thought I would share a few of them with you…

The posters look great!

My good buddy Carlos posted these photos on Facebook this morning!

Carlos rode with us in Baja and everyone loved the guy.  I taught him a little Spanish while we were in Baja and he got along famously with everyone.

Carlos, thanks very much for purchasing Moto Baja!  I am looking forward to riding with you on the next Baja expedition!

Good buddy Jim and his new blue RX3!

That good-looking youngster in the photo above is my good buddy Jim, who picked up his new RX3 this morning.   TK (who also rides a blue RX3) made sure I knew that blue is the fastest color.  I’m in the CSC plant today, and I had a great conversation with Jim.  Jim may be riding with us next year on the Baja ride, and I’m hoping he does.

More great rides are coming up, and I need that.  I love getting out for days (and sometimes weeks) at a time exploring the world on my motorcycle, and I also like the day rides.  We had a fantastic time on the Destinations Deal ride, just like we do on the Baja rides, the China ride, the Colombia ride, and all the rest.

And on that subject, we haven’t had a Saturday dual-sports-and-donuts ride in a while, and that’s because I’ve been on near non-stop travel for the last two or three months.  I’m off to North Carolina the first week in December, and that puts us too close to Christmas to do a Saturday ride next month.  So, mark your calendars for January 6th.  That will be our next Saturday ride.  I’m trying to set it up so we can visit the Owen Collection (that’s a world class private museum of vintage motocrossers to be featured in the next issue of Motorcycle Classics magazine).   But don’t worry; if we can’t get in there, we’ll pick a great ride somewhere else.  Wherever we ride, it will on 6 January 2018, and I hope you’ll be able to join us.   We welcome all brands on our Saturday rides.

The Owen Collection!

As soon as we get the 2018 TT250s in stock, I’ll be setting up another 4-day San Felipe run.  San Felipe is an awesome TT250 destination.  Hey, a free Baja tour with your new TT250…it just doesn’t get any better than that!  Ask any of the guys and gals who have ridden with us, and get yourself a copy of Moto Baja!  We’ll also be doing our 8-day RX3 ride next March, and that will be a hoot, too.

We’re down to just a handful of 2017 RX3s now.  The new ones will be here sometime after the 1st of next year, and Steve is offering killer deals on the few remaining 2017 models.  Give us a call, and we’ll get you on a brand new RX3!

You know, that little server failure we had a short while ago was difficult, but I’m now glad it happened.  We switched to a new server here at CSC and the performance has been way better.  It had been deplorable and it was taking me up to a dozen attempts to sign on to the blog so I could make a new entry.  Now, getting on to the blog is a breeze…I can sign in on the very first attempt.

Anyway, the reason for this blog is that I just read an interesting Cycle World comparo of the large ADV bikes (you know, the BMW GS1200, the KTM 1290, and the like).   What was amazing to me is not which large ADV bike Cycle World thought was best, but the recurring theme that all of the bikes they tested were too big and too heavy.   Consider this quote from the Cycle World article…

The thing about the GS is that it’s just soooo big. Like, massive. Wirtanen likened it to riding a small country, and it definitely feels like it the first time you climb aboard. On top of it being 582 pounds with empty saddlebags, the fuel tank is enormous (its 8.7 gallons are admittedly nice when you’re way off the grid) and makes you feel like you’re riding a hippopotamus. The massive cylinder heads jut horizontally from the frame, adding to feeling of heft and girth.

Hey, that’s not me talking…that’s Cycle World magazine.   The article goes on to talk about the fuel economy (generally mediocre on all of the big bruisers), the weight (generally high on all of the bruisers), and one part I thought was particularly on the mark…

The difficulty with all that heft is that, once the GS starts to go down, it’s really hard to save. Kamrad had a pretty good tip-over coming down a steep hill covered in grapefruit-size rocks. Just watching him try to pick the thing up was exhausting. Mass can be masked when rolling, but when it comes to righting a fallen beast, it’s just dead weight.

I’m not including this to badmouth the BMW or any of the current crop of large ADV bikes.  Hey, BMW and the rest of the uber-ADV-crowd make nice bikes, but the reality is for real world adventure riding (which involves tight twisties, dirt, gnarly roads, stream crossings, getting the bike on and off boats, fixing flats, and more), the current crop of big ADV bikes are not the right tools for the job.  A 250cc motorcycle is.  That’s the conclusion I’ve reached after riding for more than a half-century, and it’s the conclusion I explain in Moto Baja!  

Look, the reality of it is when you’re traveling internationally, you want a bike that can cruise at freeway speeds as well as handle congested city streets, dirt roads, obstacles, and the like.  The ability to run at significantly higher speeds adds nothing other than weight, complexity, and cost.  In most of the world, a 250cc bike is considered huge (it’s only here in America and parts of Europe that we think we need large and heavy bikes).  I remember riding into a gas station in Colombia on an RX3 when the young lady who worked there took one look at my bike and asked what it was like to ride such a large motorcycle.  I thought that was an interesting reaction.

My take on all of this is that the current crop of big ADV bikes (and how they are marketed) are really not a lot different than the chrome-encrusted cruisers that were all the rage a decade or more ago.   High-end riding gear, electronics packages, and all the rest of the paraphernalia are, in reality, not a lot different than loud pipes, conchos, wide whitewalls, and chrome.  It’s okay because it gets people out and riding, and if that’s what floats your boat, that’s cool.

And on that subject of getting people out and riding, one of my friends posted on Facebook that his goal was to get one new person into motorcycling next year.  He suggested it would be cool if we all committed to doing the same.  It’s an interesting concept.

One more topic for this morning and that’s the TT250.  They’re inbound, and we’re taking deposits now.

At $2195, the TT250 is an ideal way to get into the game.  If you’re one of the many folks who spent big bucks on an uber-ADV bike but you’re hesitant to take it off road, the TT250 is an ideal 2nd (or 5th) bike to play around on.  You might be surprised, but roughly half of those who buy a CSC motorcycle already own several motorcycles, and of those, many have a large ADV bike they won’t take off road.  Give us a call.  We’ve got the ideal bike for you.

With all the excitement about the next shipment of TT250s coming in, I thought I would show the YouTube video of our last TT250 Baja run…

If you have a TT250 motorcycle and you’d like to ride Baja with us, just let me know at info@cscmotorcycles.com.  And if you’re wondering what it’s like to ride Baja with CSC, well, hey, you can find out right here…

And if you don’t have a TT250 to ride Baja, well, hey, we have an app for that!

There’s nothing in the world like riding Baja, and a CSC motorcycle is the perfect motorcycle for your Baja adventure ride!

Yep, you can order Moto Baja! now…and it is my best one yet!

It’s all about the photography in this one, folks, along with great rides through the greatest motorcycle playground on the planet!   High resolution, full color, and lots of photos!  This book discusses what makes a good adventure motorcycle, with my real world evaluations of motorcycles ranging from 150cc Mustangs all the way up to full dress Harleys under real world riding conditions!  From Tijuana and Tecate all the way down to Cabo San Lucas, with stories about the people, the attractions, the cuisine, and the riding…if you’ve ever considered riding Baja, this book is for you.  And if you’ve ever ridden Baja with me, you’re in this one!

Whoa, I just posted the blog about the Long Beach IMS show and Chris Cianci heading out to Salt Lake City (that’s Chris in the photo above), and this email arrived!

Joe,

It was nice to see you at the Long Beach show. The next day I rode my RX3 270 miles to Las Vegas. Next day 290 miles to the NV UT border. Day after that 230 miles from the border to Salt Lake City. Had dinner with friends and family and rode back the next 3 days. Just got home. RX3 was great, performed flawlessly during the almost 1600 mile ride.

Chris

We’re glad you had a great ride, Chris, and thanks for your nice note!