CSC Blog

Here’s a cool note and three cool videos I found in my inbox this morning from our good buddy Joe M…

Hey Joe, it’s the other Joe, Joe M from up in Washington state.  I wanted to pass along my video stories of taking my 2016 CSC RX3 Cyclone down to Southern California for some off-road training and touring with RawHyde Adventures.  For perspective, RawHyde Adventures is the official off-road training facility for BMW. 

My RX3 was surrounded by F800s and 1200GSs!  My trip started out going south as fast as I could, a day ahead of schedule, to get in front of a series of storms that were planned to hit from Washington all the way to California.  In Cali, it got named winter storm Leo and didn’t give me the wonderful SoCal weather I was hoping for.  Since I got down to SoCal early it gave me a chance to visit CSC HQ and meet the folks, tour the facility and pick up a new Seat Concepts seat and some miscellaneous spares.  I had a great time doing that and got a nice CSC RX3 T-Shirt to wear proudly with my Dual Sport Club get togethers.  The CSC team is awesome and were very gracious with their time to take care of me. 

Then I headed up to Castaic to connect at RawHyde Adventures camp.  We did 3 days of adventure training there and then I headed out on the first part of the tour called Base Camp Alpha in the Mojave Desert and continued with the Mid-Winter Adventure in Death Valley.  In total, it was 8 days of great riding. 

The bike did great and I only had one small crash with no damage to me or the bike.  I happened to carry my iPhone, Contour Roam on my helmet and EKEN H9R facing backwards on the rear of the luggage rack and got a lot of pictures and video.  I took all my footage and put together a video for each part of the trip which I’ve linked below.  Please feel free to share it on the CSC blog if you want as I’d like to show folks interested in the bikes or current owners what it can really do.  I can’t wait to get more proficient so I can really show it off.  Take care and I’ll see you in March for the Baja tour!

Intro to Adventure:

Base Camp Alpha:

Mid-Winter Adventure:

This is awesome stuff, Joe M, and thanks very much for sending it to us!   I know our readers will enjoy it.

Like you, I’m very much looking forward to the Baja ride.  See you in March, Amigo!

Our Crystal Lake ride scheduled for the 4th of March is shaping up to be a good one.  I think we have eight or nine people signed up now, and while all of our friends are royalty to us, four of the folks who will be on the ride are the stuff of legend.   Let me tell you about them.

I learned just yesterday that Roland Wheeler (our CSC RC3 factory racer) will be riding with us…

Roland, you will recall, won his class at Fontana a couple of weeks ago on his first RC3 race.  That’s mighty impressive.   Roland is a genuine nice guy, and this is a good chance to get to meet him.

The next cool guy is Syl Binau, the rider who successfully piloted our highly-modified CSC 150 to a land speed record in the Modified Scooter class several years ago.   Here’s a great photo of Syl on the race bike (you’ll be able to see the bike at the CSC plant prior to our ride).   That’s our good buddy and artist extraordinaire John Esposito behind him.

I caught a couple of cool shots of Syl on his speed run…

On this last photo, you can see that the heat wrap we had on the exhaust pipe had unraveled.  When folks asked about it, I told them we incorporated a streamer to stabilize the bike at high speed.  I think a few of them believed me…

Our third motorcycle royal family member is Arlene Battishill, President and CEO of Go Go Gear, a company specializing in women’s riding clothes.  This is shot of Arlene on her CSC 150 motorcycle in Santa Rosalia, Baja, with the Sea of Cortez in the background.  It’s one of my favorites.

Arlene and I rode hardtail CSC 150 scooters all the way to Cabo San Lucas a few years ago, and if she looks familiar to you, it might be because you’ve seen her on the TV show Shark Tank.   She’s an awesome lady and I’m looking forward to riding with her again!

And one more…none other than Steve Seidner himself, founder and CEO of CSC Motorcycles.  Here’s a shot of Steve and yours truly on the first RX3 USA ride ever.   It was a 343-mile ride we took on a Saturday from the plant to Joshua Tree National Park, and it was our first indication of just how great a motorcycle the RX3 truly is!

March 4th will be fun.   You’ll want to arrive at the plant well in advance of 9:00 a.m.   Please have a full tank of fuel when you do.  After that it’s about 50 miles of glorious twisties to Crystal Lake and back, and then we’re all headed over to the California Grill Express for the best burgers in the world.   We encourage you to sign up on our Meetup page.

I hope to see you there!

Okay, so here’s the deal:  My three favorite motorcycle magazines are Motorcycle Classics, RoadRunner, and Motorcyclist.  Well, okay, I like Cycle World, Motorcycle.com, and ADVMoto, too.   And maybe one or two others.  I like probably like Motorcycle Classics the best because I write regularly for them and I like vintage bikes (if you want to see the articles I wrote for these folks go to www.MotorcycleClassics.com and type Berk in the search bar).

A favorite piece about a favorite place…Utah’s Arches National Park. Story and photography by yours truly.

The magazine business these days is a tough proposition, though, because we are moving more and more to an online world.   Nearly all of the magazines have an online presence, and the main reason for that is that a print magazine just can’t keep up with real time events.  Basically, everything you read in a print magazine is old news (the stuff you read in a print magazine is at least 30 days old by the time you read it, and in many cases, it is way older than that).

To remain viable, the smarter print pubs realize they need a different angle.   Motorcycle Classics was one of the first moto mags to figure this out.  Their subject matter is less susceptible to late-breaking news (hey, they are all about vintage bikes, so by definition, what Motorcycle Classics prints is already old news and late-breaking news is moot).   But Motorcycle Classics did something else to differentiate themselves.  Their photography, their writing, and their print quality is way ahead of everyone else.   As the other moto mags saw their page count go down, Motorcycle Classics’ went up (even during the recession).  Every time I receive the latest Motorcycle Classics, I am overwhelmed with just how good it is, and then I wonder:  How are they going to top this in the next edition?  And then, of course, they always do.

What I see going on with other magazines is that they realize they need to make their stories more interesting, they need more depth in their writing, and their print quality and photography need to improve.    I mean, really, does anyone care about the latest Gixxer graphics changes or more chrome doodads and fringe on a cruiser these days?   You just can’t fill pages in a print magazine with that kind of drivel.  It’s already been published on the Internet (probably the day it was announced by the manufacturer), and on the Internet, you get the info for free.

There’s another aspect to this, too, and that’s this:  I think people are more interested in experiences than they are in things.  If you have compelling stories about interesting experiences and if you can bring a reader into the story, people will find that intriguing.   Stories about new products?  Well, not so much, I think.   One of the keys to our success here at CSC is our riding and how we share it with you.  We don’t just want to sell you an ADV bike.  We want to bring you into the ADV experience, and we do that with things like our Baja adventures, our books about riding in China and Colombia, and our blog.

So, back to the magazine thing.  This issue doesn’t only affect moto mags (other mags are also experiencing the competitive crush of online pubs).   I was very surprised when reading my latest Guns and Ammo magazine to see a story about riding KLR 650 Kawasaki motorcycles across Utah on a shooting adventure.  It was a great story, with photography by my good buddy Fonzie Palaima (an extraordinarily-talented motojournalist and photographer).  Imagine that:  A motorcycle story in a gun magazine.  I noticed that my latest issue of Guns and Ammo was physically larger, too, and the print quality had improved dramatically.  It was a good move on their part, and I enjoyed reading all of the stories in that magazine.

With my good buddy Fonzie Palaima. The price is out of date; the friendship is not.

I saw a post on Facebook recently that Motorcyclist magazine is going the same way.   Their release said that Motorcyclist will “include larger cut size, thicker paper stock, and expanded feature articles…”

From the Motorcyclist Facebook post about their new magazine format.

I think that what Motorcyclist is doing is great, and I think the writing and the stories in their new format will be absolutely outstanding.   I think I know what I’m talking about here, as another good friend of mine, Joe Gresh (the world-famous moto-scribe and small motorcycle aficionado) is one of Motorcyclist’s regular writers.   Joe writes the “Cranked” column and other features for Motorcyclist.   When we first publicized our ride across the western US (featured in 5000 Miles at 8000 RPM), Motorcyclist magazine was the only publication that stepped up to the plate and sent a journalist to ride with us (and that was Joe Gresh).  His story about that ride was awesome.   When we did the China ride last year (which I wrote about in Riding China), Joe rode with us the entire way (all 6000 miles on an epic ride across a magnificent land).  Mark my words: With their new format and emphasis on real stories by supremely-talented guys like Joe Gresh, I think Motorcyclist is going to do extremely well.

Joe Gresh, who decided to go with Chinese food just prior to riding into the Gobi Desert.

Arjiu (Joe Gresh’s Chinese nickname) riding into the Gobi Desert on an RX3. It was the adventure of a lifetime. It’s the kind of stuff you’ll read about in the new Motorcyclist magazine.

So that’s it for now.   We have lots of exciting things coming up, including the Baja trip next month (watch for more information here on the CSC blog about that ride), and our March 4th ride to Crystal Lake up in the San Gabriels.   Our Meetup.com group is starting to gain traction, with well over 40 members already.  Our next CSC Saturday ride is on the 4th of March, and we’ll have some real motorcycle royalty riding with us that day.  It would be a grand time to join us.  We welcome all kinds of motorcycles and scooters, so if you want to meet a great bunch of guys and gals and ride an awesome road, this is a wonderful opportunity to do so!

Okay, one more photo, just because I like it.  It’s my RX3 on Day One, on my ride home from the CSC plant about two years ago…

My RX3 up on Glendora Ridge Road the day I took delivery. It is a wonderful and amazing motorcycle…but you already knew that!

The guys on the weekend offroad ride out in the Mojave Desert (Matt, Evan, Christian, Mike, and Josh) posted a collection of truly outstanding photos.  I asked if I could get copies to post on the CSC blog, and the answer is right here!

Thanks for the photos, guys!

Those are all great shots, guys, and thanks again for allowing us to share them with our readers!

Wow, just read this about a great offroad adventure a few of my good buddies had this weekend on their CSC motorcycles!   Check this out…

https://thegreasyspanner.wordpress.com/

Looks like you boys had an awesome ride, and the photography is stunning.  Thanks very much for sharing, guys!

Hey, don’t forget our ride out to Crystal Lake on the 4th of March.   We’re hoping to see all of you, and many others, on our next ride.  Willie, thanks for the great ride poster you put together!

Remember, all makes and models of motorcycles and scooters are welcome to join us!

Our next company ride will be on 4 March and the destination is Crystal Lake right here in the San Gabriel Mountains.   It will be 50 miles of twisties from the plant to the Crystal Lake recreation area and back again.   The riding on this road is awesome.   Power doesn’t matter much on this road, folks…it’s all about handling.  I may just ride my TT250 instead of the RX3.   We’ll probably never get much about 45 mph (it’s that tight).   We’ll stop at the California Grill here in a Azusa for lunch after the ride (bring an appetite; these guys create custom burgers that are awesome).   And as always, bring a camera – the photo ops will be incredible.

You don’t need to be on a CSC motorcycle for this ride.  As always, we welcome all scooters and motorcycles!

We’ve posted this ride on our Meetup page, so let us know on Meetup if you plan to ride with us.

Hey, this a cool safety accessory to add to your RX3!  Check this out…

My good buddy Mike has a dynamite blog, and he had another perspective (and a better one, I think) than my writeup on the Saturday CSC ride.   Check out Mike’s blog here, folks!

The sport of metallic silhouette shooting came to us from Mexico, where it started roughly 75 years ago as a part of a culture of rural village celebrations.  They used live animals in those days tethered to a stake, which made it a lot harder to hit them because after the first shot the animals tended to take evasive action.  I guess it was considered politically correct in those earlier times because the match would be immediately followed by a rip-roaring barbeque (at which, of course, chicken, pig, turkey, and ram were on the menu).  I learned all of this from a world-class metallic silhouette shooter named Jose Porras in the 1970s.   Jose used to drive up from Mexico to shoot with us at Fort Bliss when I first got into the metallic silhouette game.  He was the guy to beat, and I never did.  I didn’t care.  I just liked hearing his stories about the old days and the origins of the sport.

I last shot in a metallic silhouette match about 40 years ago.  By then, the sport had morphed into shooting at metallic cutouts (silhouettes), like you see in the photo at the top of this blog.   There were chickens at 50 meters, pigs at 100 meters, turkeys at 150 meters, and rams at 200 meters (this was for the handgun competition).   For high power rifle (which we always shot with a scope back then) the targets were the same, but they were located at 200 meters (chickens), 300 meters (pigs), 385 meters (turkeys), and 500 meters (rams).   Those are long distances, and all of the rifle shooting was offhand (no slings or shooting jackets).  You could shoot from a sitting position in the handgun matches, but the rifle competition was all a stand up affair.  It was challenging, and that’s what made it interesting.  The winner usually connected with only about half the targets, and you either hit them or you didn’t.   It was fun.

I’ve probably told you this hundreds of times before, but in the International Handgun Metallic Silhouette Association (IHMSA) national championships in 1976 in El Paso, I tied for 5th place and then lost a shootoff.  I was out of the money in 6th, but I was still pretty pleased because I was using a bone-stock Smith and Wesson Model 27 .357 Magnum with my cast bullet reloads, and everyone else was shooting custom XP-100 Remingtons.  The XP-100 was a single-shot pistol based on a rifle action, and in those days, guys would have them custom barreled in 30×223.  The 30×223 was a wildcat based on the 5.56 NATO cartridge blown out to take a .30 caliber rifle bullet.  It ultimately became known as the 300 Blackout cartridge.   Jose used one of these 30×223 custom handguns for culling coyotes on his estate in Mexico during the week and for winning matches in El Paso on the weekends.

Well, to make a long story slightly less long, I’ve been wanting to get back into metallic silhouette shooting for the last 40 years.  Today, I finally did something about it.  I broke the suction between my butt and the seat in front of this computer and I shot in the .22-caliber metallic silhouette rifle match at the West End Gun Club.  I shot my Browning .22 A-bolt (a relatively rare and semi-collectible rifle)…

I didn’t know it when I went out there today, but they shoot two classes:  One with scopes, and the other with open sights.   The open sight targets are roughly four times the size of the scope targets, and for whatever reason, on the rams the targets for the scoped guns are set back an additional 10 yards (for the other three animals, the distances are the same).  At all distances, though, the targets for the scoped guns are really, really small.

With apologies for the lack of focus, here’s a zoomed-in shot of the turkeys.  The iron sight turkey targets are on the left; the scoped-rifle turkeys are on the right…

Like I said, the scoped-rifle targets are really tiny.  You can see that in the photo above.  They were maybe two inches tall.  Shooting at these things offhand was a challenge, but I had a blast out there today.   There were four guys shooting scoped rifles and 14 guys (and gals) shooting iron-sighted rifles (mostly lever guns; all with expensive aftermarket aperture sights).   It was a good crowd…mostly older guys (my age and up) with a few folks in their 20s and 30s.  Everybody was very friendly.

I could have started this blog by telling you I came in fourth in the scoped class and let it go at that, but the fact is I had the lowest score in the scoped class.  I only got 14 out of 60 silhouettes, the next guy got 18, another guy got 20, and the highest guy got 22.  It’s a tough game.  I’m pretty happy with what I did, though.   I had only zeroed my rifle at 50 yards (where I got about half the chickens).  I got about a third of the pigs I shot at (these were the 65-yard targets, and every shot at them when I connected was at the low edge of the target).  I only got one each of the rams and the turkeys (the turkeys are always the toughest), but like I said, I wasn’t zeroed and those were just lucky hits.  Next time I’ll do better (and there will be a next time).  This was all shooting offhand at teeny, tiny targets.  I’d like to try the open sight class next time, too, just because the targets were a lot bigger.  It all was a lot of fun.

In two weeks the club is having a centerfire lever gun silhouette match, and I’m thinking I’ll be out there for that one, too.  Those distances go out to about 140 yards, it’s all open sights, and it’s all lever guns.   They told me they mostly shoot .357 and .30 30 for the centerfire metallic silhouette competition.  The bug has bitten and I am enjoying being back in the game.  If any of you want to go with me, let me know (I can bring one or two friends in as guests).

Good times, folks, and this sure has been a great weekend…our awesome ride to the Rock Store yesterday, followed by a metallic silhouette match today.  Life is good.

Good buddies Duane, Richard, Mike, Gerry, and Grisel rode with us to the Rock Store today!

Wow, we sure had a great day today!   It’s hard to imagine how the day could have been any better or (as you can see from the photos) how the folks who rode with us could be any more photogenic!

Just like on last month’s ride in the San Gabriels, the clouds held back on the rain today.   The riding was fantastic.  Duane, Mike, Richard, and yours truly rolled along on the freeways for a good 65 miles or so until we reached the Kanan Road exit, and then it was twisties above Malibu all the way to the Rock Store.

Richard, Joe, Duane, and Mike…a great Rock Store breakfast!

I’ve never seen the Rock Store so uncrowded, which was nice.   It looked like it might rain, and that kept the crowds away, I guess.  I liked it.  We had no problems finding a parking spot, and it was easy getting a table for breakfast.

Grisel met us at the Rock Store (she is a new RX3 rider, having just purchased her beautiful orange 2016 RX3).   Gerry rode his Yamaha all the way down from Santa Barbara and met us at the Rock Store just because he wanted to check out the CSC bikes.   He told me he’d been hearing a lot about them and he wanted to see the bikes in person.

Parked in front of the Rock Store.

We hung out at the Rock Store for a bit and then we grabbed Mulholland for more spirited riding in the twisties.  The road was magnificent, and we stopped high up in the hills for a few more photos…

What a day!

Good buddy and marksman extraordinaire Duane and his electric blue RX3.

Good buddy Mike and his fastest-color RX3.

Our good buddy Richard, an Iron Butt rider who rode along with us on a fine February day!

The Chilean Ambassador, our very own Grisel (aka Bunny Rider)!

I sure had a grand day, and I know the rest of our crew did, too.   After riding the twisties above Malibu, we dropped down to the Pacific Coast Highway and rode north along the edge of the Pacific to just south of Ventura.   We made one more photo stop where I grabbed the first shot of today’s blog (the one you see way above), and then one more…

An orange RX3, a great bunch of riders, the PCH, and the Pacific Ocean.

Grisel took the PCH south back to her home, Mike rode the PCH north to his Navy base, Gerry continued north to his home in Santa Barbara, and Richard, Duane, and I took the 101 south back to our homes here in So Cal.

The ride was awesome, and I can’t wait until our next one!  What a day!