CSC Blog

Joe Gresh topping his tank prior to riding into the Gobi Desert.

I like to ride, I like to write, and I like to read.   My favorite reading always involves motorcycles and it’s been that way as long as I can remember.   Videos are okay, photos are cool, but a well-written piece about riding is just what the doctor ordered.   My favorite writers?   I like Dave Barr’s books about his adventure travels (Riding the Edge is easily the best adventure travel story I’ve ever read), my favorite magazine is Motorcycle Classics (a real magazine with lots of high gloss pages and real stories about classic motorcycles), and my favorite columnist is Joe Gresh.  It’s not just that I know Joe or that I’ve traveled with him; the guy is just flat good and his stories are funny as hell.  Consider this line from one of his first pieces about a ride to Alaska, when he and his dad performed major surgery on Joe’s Honda in an Alaskan dealer’s parking lot…

The dealership’s mechanic buoyed our spirits by saying things like, “Last time we ordered a part, it took six weeks” and “Two guys on motorcycles were killed by a grizzly bear a mile from here.”

If you want a free treasure trove, I found a compendium of Joe’s work online and you can get there by clicking this link.   It’s good stuff, my friends.  Enjoy.

…and it was a cool place.  The crowds were jam packed (lots and lots of shoppers), and security was heavy because of the nature of the world we live in.   I was there with my family and my trusty D3300, and I grabbed a few photos for the blog.

One of the more interesting things I saw were the motor officers.  It was a cool night up here, but a good night to be on a motorcycle.  The SFPD uses Harleys and (get this) DRZ-400 Suzukis (“because we can go up and down stairs on them”).  Cool stuff…

We had a good time, including a dinner in Chinatown.  It wasn’t nearly as good as the dinners in China I enjoyed with my Chinese brothers, but it was pretty good for an American Chinese restaurant.  I bought a new wallet (a Tumi, the best there is) because the humidity did mine in on the China ride last summer.   I had a lot of fun walking around.  I love San Francisco.  I am definitely looking forward getting home, though, and riding my TT250.   I’m not going to ride up and down any stairs, but I’ll bet I could if I had to…

I hope your day was as nice as mine.  Time with family is always time well spent and I sure enjoyed the day…

We’re visiting family in northern California and our dinner today was fantastic.  We opened a bottle of Doffo Malbec and it was superb…easily the best Malbec I’ve ever tasted!

You’ll recall we visited the Doffo Winery recently.  As I mentioned in an earlier blog, the Doffo winery has a superb collection of vintage small displacement Italian (and other) motorcycles.  That visit was a great one.   Sometime in the near future we’ll organize a CSC ride there.

I’m off to Asia early in December (more secret mission stuff) and I’m looking forward to the trip.   There’s lots of great riding coming up, too…our next CSC Baja trip in March, several shorter trips before that, our planned across-the-continent RX3 ride this summer (we’re hoping many of you can join us for portions of that one), and it seems I may get to ride Africa this summer as well.  Wow, that will be an adventure!

That’s our Black Friday sale, folks, and it’s underway now.   You know, it’s kind of funny…we sent out an email about our Black Friday sale with pictures of a few of the items that are on sale.   The sale is going fabulously well, but the items we showed in the email are the bulk of the items we’re selling.  The sale is not limited to just those items; it’s everything we have except the bikes. 

Yep, everything but the bikes.   Pick anything you want on our website, and the price will be automatically reduced when you add it to your cart.   Everything but the bikes, folks!  20% to 60% off!

Wow, this is exciting.  Folks, meet Roland Wheeler!

Roland is the real deal…a real motorcycle racer!  He’ll race the CSC RC3 you see above in the 2017 road racing season, campaigning in WERA West competition and possibly in AHRMA racing (in the SOS 3 category) starting next month!  Wowee!

This is very cool stuff, and I think it’s one of the most exciting things we’ve ever done.  Roland lives nearby and we’ll be bringing you cool stories on the bike’s preparation as Mr. Wheeler rolls on the street break-in miles and incorporates competition modifications.   This will generate some real excitement about the CSC RC3.   Wow!

Folks, don’t forget that the remaining 2016 RC3 bikes are going out the door for just $2988, including freight, setup, and documentation.  There’s no time like the present, and if you have an interest in a red, white, or blue RC3, the time to act is now!

More cool RC3 stuff…we considered a lot of colors before settling on our current slate of red, white, and blue motorcycles.  I like the look of the solid colors best, and I think we made a great selection with the colors we are offering.   We sure considered a bunch of different combinations, though, along with two or three additional solid colors.  Take a look…

The boss sure had the color guys busy on the RC3.  My favorite?  I like the blue best.  I think it’s the fastest RC3 color.   We’ll see.   I’m betting Roland will confirm that!

Yesterday morning I went for a ride on Glendora Ridge road with my good buddy Marty.   Marty has a superbike…a BMW K1300S…

I took my KLR instead of either the RX3 or the TT250, mostly because I haven’t ridden the KLR in months and I wanted to color match Marty’s bike.   Nah, I’m just kidding about that color thing.   Truth be told, I like the handling of my two CSC bikes much better than the KLR.  But, I still enjoy riding the beast…and it is running better than it ever has!

I was really surprised at how top heavy the KLR felt yesterday.  I guess I’m just used to more nimble bikes like the TT250 (the air-cooled TT250 is incredibly light to the touch…you just think where you want to go, and the TT250 is there).    Don’t get me wrong; I still enjoy riding the KLR (especially after Gerry made it a new bike again for me).  It’s just that the RX3 and the TT250 are so much better motorcycles.  And a note to all of you guys out there who ride KLRs…if you want to get your Kawi purring better than it did when it was new, Gerry is your guy.   He went through my bike and touched everything, including:

• Cleaning and adjusting the carb.
• Installing a new air filter.
• Installing a new battery.
• Changing the oil and the filter.
• Flushing the radiator.
• Replacing the fork oil.
• Replacing the brake fluid front and rear.
• Adjusting the clutch.
• Checking and tightening the spokes.
• Installing new fork seals.
• Fixing and remounting the windshield (the KLR cracks windshields on a regular basis due to its high vibration levels).
• Installing a new chain.
• Adjusting the valves (actually, Gerry just checked my valves; they were still in spec).

I probably missed a few things in the above list, but you get the idea.  The bike runs extremely well now.

When we were about halfway through our ride in yesterday morning’s crisp and cool mountain air, we stopped for the photos you see above at the intersection of Glendora Mountain Road and the East Fork Road, and to my surprise another guy on an RX3 rode by.  It was my good buddy Mike, who was out doing the same thing we were…

Mike has over 16,000 miles on his RX3.  He’s done that in just a little over a year.  In contrast, I have just under 15,000 miles on the KLR and I took 11 years to do it.    And for those of you who are wondering, I have about 12,000 miles on my RX3 (and maybe another 12,000 on other RX3s, like the ones I rode in Colombia and China).

That’s it for now, although I may post another blog later today.   There’s a lot happening around here.  I’m wrapping up an article on the China trip for one of the motorcycle magazines, and I’ve got another cool topic to tell you about in the next blog.   The writing thing is a hobby for me, and there is a lot more to it than just sitting down and banging out stuff on the keyboard.  Writing is both a joy and a burden…I love the writing, but I hate it when I’m not happy with what I write (which is what always happens with the first draft of anything).

There’s an old saying in the keyboard-punching business:  There are no good writers; there are only good rewriters.  I sure agree with that.  I don’t write anything without rewriting it multiple times, including every one of these blogs.  I always worry if I am clearly stating the message I want to communicate, if the writing flows, if the paragraphs make sense, if I screwed up the spelling anywhere, and on and on it goes.   When I do the “Destinations” pieces for Motorcycle Classics, they are only about 600 words, but I put an enormous amount of time into those 600 words.   And then there’s the actual visits to the places I write about and the photography.  I’ll send the magazine the 15 or 20 photos I like best, knowing that they are only going to use two.   It’s always fun to guess which two photos my good buddy Landon at MC will select.   I’ve been doing it long enough that I can usually nail which ones he’ll pick.  The latest issue of MC (the one hitting the stands now) has my story on the Naval Air Museum in Tillamook, Oregon (one of our stops on the 5,000-mile Western America Adventure Ride), and the next issue will have my story on…well, you’ll have to buy the magazine to read all about it!

This writing and rewriting business is the same with the magazine article I’m doing right now on the China trip.  It’s only 2,000 words, but I’ve spent several weeks trying to select the perfect 2,000 words.   And I took about 7,000 photos during my 40 days in China.  I’ll pick the best of those and give the magazine maybe a hundred to pick from.   The photos help, but the real story will be the article.   We’ll see if the editor likes it.  I will when I’m done with it, but it’s not my vote that counts.

So I got off track for a bit and I didn’t mention the most important development of our ride yesterday.   After our morning ride, Marty and I stopped at the CSC plant, and there’s exciting news there:  We’re going racing!  Yep, we are, but you’ll have to wait just a bit to read about it.  Stay tuned, and I’ll tell you about that in the next blog!

…has already started at CSC.   Everything (other than the motorcycles) is on sale at a 20% to 60% discount!    That’s either in person or online, so don’t let these deals get away.  Helmets, luggage, jackets, fluids, tires, accessories, parts, books…you name it, and it’s been steeply discounted for our Black Friday sale!  Even yours truly picked up a helmet (a cool neon green number you’ll see in future blog photos), as the Black Friday sale knocked the price to something even lower than my “official CSC blogger” discount!

Don’t let this one get away from you, folks!

I love vintage bikes, and coming back from the rifle range today, I spotted this beautiful machine on the 210 freeway. It’s a vintage 1976 Honda Gold Wing (one of the very first), it appeared to be all original, and it was loaded for serious travel.

The bike had an out-of-state plate. I was in my Subie and the Gold Wing was gone in an instant, which was too bad. I would have enjoyed learning more about it.

Is not always where the squeak is coming from….on those rare occasions when you have a squeak…

This is cool stuff…I write for Motorcycle Classics magazine and as you might imagine I follow what they do fairly closely.   MC is a great moto mag (the best, in my opinion), and their CB350 project has been nothing short of amazing.  Richard Backus is the editor and he’s a cool guy.

I spent the morning at the gun club yesterday sending .45 ACP, 9mm, and 7.62X54R ammo downrange and it was fun.   There was an older fellow there shooting cast bullets from a .30 06 vintage Model 721 Remington (a seldom seen rifle that is the predecessor to the Model 700).  We had a nice conversation.   My new friend Guy is 84  years young and he loves getting out to the rifle range.  I know that feeling!

A 74-year-old Mosin-Nagant that shoots well…cheap fun!

I’m headed over to the CSC plant a bit later this morning.  Steve ordered a new helmet for me and I’m eager to check it out.