Author: Joe Berk

Is print dead?

…and another motorcycle publication print version bites the dust.  CityBike, a San Francisco moto periodical, announced this morning that they are going to a digital-only format.   We’re doing a bit on the state of the motorcycle magazine industry in the near future, so I was naturally interested in the CityBike announcement.

I’ve spoken with Surj Gish (the main man at CityBike) a few times during my days with CSC, and he was always a straight shooter with me.  We wish these guys good luck with this change in their approach to market.

The Nethercutt!

Whatever you’re doing, stop.

Get off your computer, quit playing with your cell phone, and get on your motorcycle. Your destination needs be the Nethercutt. It’s nestled away in an industrial park here in So Cal (in Sylmar, about 30 miles north of Los Angeles) and it’s magnificent.

I’ve been to a lot of museums. None compare to the Nethercutt. It’s that good. I’d like to think I could tell the story well, but hey, I know when I’m outclassed. Listen to Kyle Irwin (the Curator and Master Technician of this incredible place) as he welcomed us on our recent tour just this past weekend…

The Nethercutt has amazing vintage cars (and lots of them, more than 250, actually), trains, musical instruments, and more.   And they’re all stunning. Drop dead gorgeous. Visually arresting. But don’t take my word for it. Take a peek at the photos below. Better yet, go there yourself. Call ahead and tell them you want the ExhaustNotes discount for both the auto collection and the guided tour. Tell them Dajiu sent you. Who knows…you might just get in for free.

You can sign up for a Nethercutt tour if you call ahead (trust me, you need to do this).  The automobile collection is amazing.  The music room is even more so.  The Nethercutt has a fully-restored theatre organ with 5000 pipes, and you don’t just see the organ…you enter it.   What you see below is the console…but it’s only where the guy plays the thing.  The real action is occurring within the walls, surrounding the grand hall in which the organ resides.  In the silent movie days, this would have been a theater, and the music would be all around the people watching the movie.  It must have been a grand time and a grand way to spend an evening.

Here’s what a few of the organ pipes look like behind one of the walls…

There are a lot of musical instruments in the Nethercutt Collection, including a Bosendorfer concert grand piano.  It’s been modified by Mr. Irwin and his team team into a player piano (its plays itself). It’s an incredible treat to see and hear…

The visit to the Nethercutt was one of the best days I’ve ever had. It’s that good.  You need to go.  Seriously.  Get off your computer and visit this place.  We’ll be here when you get back.  I promise.

You’ll get a charge outta this…

The only City Slicker in America residing in somebody’s garage…

No clutch. No noise. No gears. Best of all, no gas. Basically, no worries. If you can work an iPhone and ride a bicycle, you’re there.

“Whoooeeeeee!” I thought. This is going to be fun.

I’m the only guy in America who has a new CSC City Slicker in his garage.

I’d like to be able to say I have a lot to learn about electric motorcycles, but there’s not a lot to learn.  There’s close to zero maintenance (ooh, did I actually use that word?).  One of my shooting buddies who owns a dealership in a large left-leaning California city (there’s a redundant expression if ever there was one) is dropping his line of electric bikes because there’s no follow-on maintenance.   Follow-on maintenance is an important income stream for a dealership.

“Maybe we sell a tire once in a while,” he said, “but that’s it. Electric bikes just don’t need maintenance.”

So I rode a City Slicker home today. I stopped for a coffee on the way, because Slick was telling me he wanted to be a GS.  “We’ll stop,” I said, echoing Lloyd Bentsen, “but you’re no GS.”

It was cool. I almost wished I had a job again, just so I could make a daily commute. I’ll bet I passed 30 or 40 gas stations on my 17-mile commute, and I was smiling the entire time. Four bucks a gallon? Who cares?

One more time: This is going to be fun.

Like Arjiu and I always say, check back often.

Buffaloed in Baja!

Well, sort of. On the last CSC Baja run back in March of this year, as the guys were signing up to register for the ride I had one fellow send in an email with the name “Buffalo.”

“What’s your real name?” I asked.

“Buffalo.”

Well, it turns out that “Buffalo” really was his name. But wait, there’s more.  Buffalo is  a world-famous artist. We can’t make this stuff up, folks.  Check out this video and you’ll see…

Anyway, the first guy who signed up for the CSC ride was Tim. Buffalo is Tim’s cousin, and both gentlemen rode with us in Baja on the CSC ride.  When they returned, Tim’s daughter bought the same motorcycle Buffalo and Tim rode in Baja: A CSC RX3. And then, not having had enough of a good thing, Buffalo, Tim, and Tim’s daughter rolled south in Baja again. Wowee!

I asked this intrepid trio if they would consider sending a story and a few photos to us, and they did. Here’s the story…

Two cousins, and one’s 18 year old daughter, ride their CSC RX3 250cc adventure bikes on a 5 day adventure in Baja, Mexico.

Day 1 – We rode from Burbank through San Diego, crossed the border at San Isidro, and took the cuota (toll road) along the coast to Ensenada. We rode a little bit farther from the tourist zone than usual to find our Air B&B for the night. We were almost there when a detour was required to get around a barrier in the middle of the cross street. Instead, we embraced Mexico-style and found a section of broken curb that allowed us to get some air as we moto-crossed our way to the other side. We took a perilous walk down an open-hole/rebar minefield sidewalk to Guadalajara Birrieria for some tasty stewed goat meat tacos and margaritas with locals enjoying live mariachi music.

Day 2 – We rode a really great winding mountain road southwest out of Ensenada on Hwy 3 to a high plateau and the little town of Lázaro Cárdenas. We filled up with gas and met a couple of retirees on quads who, after taking a minute to find their hearing aids, showed us lots of paper maps and advised us to change our planned route south past Mike’s Sky Rancho due to the road being in very poor shape. Instead we took 42 epic off-road miles west towards San Vicente. The dirt road was alternately sandy, hard packed, rocky, and ridged, along mountains and valleys, curves and slopes. Several times a nice section of hard pack tempted us to pick up the speed before patches of deep sand would suddenly grab our front tires, throwing the bikes unexpectedly. Each of us took at least one spill, but we were wearing full ATGATT so we only had some bruises to show for it, though our trusty RX3s required some roadside bending and bungee strapping. It was awesome. We popped out on Hwy 1 some hours later and headed south for some roadside fish tacos before finding our funky partially-finished concrete and rebar hotel resort (La Cueva del Pirata) on the beach at the end of a bit more dirt road in Camalu.

Day 3 – We rode south along a beautiful coastal section of Hwy 1 before a short but fun mountain pass, a military checkpoint, and then into El Rosario, where we decided to take the 16km (10 mile) dirt/gravel road out to Punta Baja, which is just a little fishing village with a dozen or so buildings. We asked some fisherman and found a little collection of picnic tables on a dirt floor under a building, where a lovely woman named Betty made us some abalone soup and fish tacos, and we met a lawyer from Texas with a dual sport and a surf board that was staying in one of the rooms upstairs and still hadn’t figured out how to work the toilets. The ride back to the highway was fast and fun, now that we knew the road and where the dogs would make chase. Next we rode up up up and into the desert of giant boulders and giant Saguaro cactus on our way to our turn-around point of Cataviña, where we stayed at the nice but pricey Hotel Mission Cataviña, with its delicious Micheladas and iffy electricity.

Day 4 – Since there are no gas stations, we began our ride back northwest by buying three plastic jugs of gasoline from some guys on the side of the road with our last twenty dollars cash, and had a lovely early morning ride through the desert before the day got too hot. Coming back to El Rosario, we had a fantastic mid-morning breakfast at the famous Mama Espinosa’s (cash only, try the ABD Supermarket), and headed north again. Back in Ensenada we cranked the Mexico-style adventure to eleven and got matching tattoos before having some tasty street tacos and cervezas.

Day 5 – Taking Hwy 3 just north of Ensenada, we finally passed a stinky truck likely carrying fish guts and rode the beautiful La Ruta del Vino (wine route) through the Guadalupe Valley and the mountains towards Tecate. We jumped on our last chance for some authentic Mexican street tacos at Tacos el Guero, and then we rode up Presidente Rubio Street and popped out right at a gap in the traffic barriers to meet the front of the line to cross the border. We were waved in by a nice man in a Mexican-plated pickup truck. Total time to cross: about 4 minutes. The hill country ride up Hwy 94 was a pleasant re-acclimation to driving in the U.S., and soon we were splitting lanes on the 15 North back to the LA area.

That’s an awesome adventure, guys, and thanks very much for sharing it with us.   Great riding and great photos, and we sure appreciate seeing both! Baja is indeed a great place.  Matching tattoos?  Now there’s an interesting touch to a Baja tale!   You’ve got to send us photos of those!

Sleepless in Seattle: From a Duck to a Truck…

The wheelie Monster!
Mike and his GS in LA a couple of weeks ago.

There’s no doubt that one of the most popular adventure touring motorcycles is the BMW GS1200, and there’s also no doubt that one of the most interesting guys I’ve met in a long time is Mike Huber, who was the topic of the Exhaust Notes blog a few entries down.

When I first met Mike in Baja last March, the conversation turned to bikes of years past (as it invariably does when folks start talking motorcycles).  Mike told me his prior ride was a Ducati, and I commented that going from a baloney-slicer to a Beemer must have been quite a shift in perspective.  “Nah, I can do wheelies on both,” Mike said.  “I can carry a lot more gear on the BMW, though.”

Here’s Mike’s take on the reason why he made the move, along with several stunning photos…

I loved my Ducati M1100 Monster. I drove it from Maine to Seattle, camped on it, wheelied it across the Golden Gate Bridge, loved that the roar of the exhaust set off car alarms, and loved that the clack-clack-clack of the dry clutch sounded like…well, like a WWII airplane preparing for battle.

To me the Ducati Monster M1100 was everything that a motorcycle should be! The only thing that bike wasn’t fit for was the journey I was about to take. My idea was to leave Seattle and travel the country on my motorcycle with a high-level plan of camping in National Forests, visiting National Parks, and continuing to excel within my career.

I work as a project manager, remotely. I am fortunate enough to control my geographic location. I have always made it a point to maximize that strength. In the past I have traveled through Canada, Central America, and South America without anyone knowing I had even left Boston. I find this travel lifestyle improves my day-to-day work as I stay extremely happy. I use travel as a way to remain motivated and work with improved efficiency.

As the weather broke in Seattle in May and the sun shined brightly for the first time in 5 months, I loaded the moto with all my gear and gazed upon my packing job. The packing list was as minimal as possible, yet the bike looked as if it was something from the old Sanford and Son television show. My gear was just too much for this journey on the Ducati.

I had to make a difficult but much-needed decision. That day I traded the Monster in for a BMW GS1200.

Wow!
Another Wow!
A close encounter of the Ducati kind…at Devils Tower National Park, Wyoming!
Sleepless in Seattle, or just another Ducati day on the road…

Mike, thanks very much for your guest blog and thanks for these outstanding photos!   Like I said earlier, when I grow up I want to be just like you!

Canon vs Nikon…

Canon versus Nikon: It’s an old argument, kind of like the Ford versus Chevy debate. There are guys who love Canon, and there are guys who love Nikon. The question is, I guess, which one is best for motorcycle travel?

I’m a Nikon guy, and on our ride across China, Gresh and I got into a discussion about this. Well, it was more like a lecture…something along the lines of “real pros use Canon,” if I remember Arjiu’s comments correctly (Arjiu is the name the Chinese gave Gresh, but that’s a story for another time).

So I thought I’d open the discussion by asking good buddy Joe Gresh to tell me a bit more about his preferences in photo gear. But first, I want to share two quick photos with you. The first is from the Gentry Autry Museum in Los Angeles, and the second is from the Nethercutt Museum in Sylmar.

An Autry Museum mural, as seen with ambient lighting through an 8mm wide angle cheapie lens.
V-16 power and superb lighting on display at the Nethercutt Museum.

We’ll be posting blogs on both destinations (the Autry and Nethercutt Museums) in the near future, but for now, let’s get back to the question du jour: What’s your photo gear preference and why? I’m asking my buddy Joe here, but we don’t want to limit the conversation to just the two of us. Do you have a photo gear preference? Better yet, do you have a photo from one of your moto trips you’d like to share? Hey, send your inputs to info@exhaustnotes.us, or post your comments directly on the ExhaustNotes blog!

Mike Huber: The real deal…

On my last trip through Baja while riding with a dozen guys on RX3s, we stopped for fuel in Catavina while headed south. That’s on the long stretch between El Rosario and Guerrero Negro, where the distance between Pemex stations is over 200 miles. Catavina is a tiny town in a beautiful boulder field (in fact, it’s the area depicted in the lead photo on the ExhaustNotes Baja page). The locals sell fuel out of gas cans in Catavina, and on a motorcycle, you have to stop here to top off.  The boulder fields through this region are dramatic, almost other-worldly.  You can get a bit of a feel for the area from this photo…

Baja’s Catavina boulder fields.  This is some of the most dramatic scenery on the planet!

Anyway, we had stopped for fuel in Catavina when I noticed a guy on an adventure bike amongst our guys.  What grabbed my attention is that I didn’t recognize him.  It felt weird, because this was our second day on the road, and I thought I was losing it. Usually by the middle of the first day on these group rides I know everybody who’s riding with us.  Incidentally, if you want to know what it’s like organizing one of those tours, there’s a story on that topic appearing in ADVMoto this week (you can read it here).

Mike’s BMW topcase. All the way!

Anyway, I looked at this new guy and then I realized his bike wasn’t an RX3; it was a BMW GS1200. I was just about to razz him a bit about that, and then I saw the jump wings on his bike’s top case.   You don’t get US Army jump wings out of a Cracker Jack box, so I knew right away this guy was not going to be your typical adventure rider.   No one who rides a motorcycle in Baja is a “typical” anything, but I knew this gentleman was going to be something special.

I asked the guy if he was a paratrooper, the answer was yes, and over the next roughly thousand Baja miles I got to knew Mike Huber well. He rode with us for several days and all of us thoroughly enjoyed his company. As it turns out, Mike is not your everyday former US Army paratrooper (as if there ever could be such a thing); he’s a serious rider with a very cool lifestyle (more on that in a second).

Mike and I became good friends, and when he was in town a couple of weeks ago, Sue and I met him for lunch at La Casita Mexicana in Bell (just south of LA).  If you’ve never dined there, trust me on this, you need to make the trip.  It’s an award-winning restaurant with a unique cuisine that I learned about from Steve and Maureen at CSC, and to be blunt, it’s the finest Mexican food I’ve ever had.  But I digress…back to Mike…

Lunch with Mike at La Casita Mexicana.  Those enchiladas sure look good!

Mike is anything but a stereotypical guy.   Nope, he’s the real deal.  Mike’s has been living on his motorcycle and traveling North America (and a bit of Central America) for the last year, and he just published a story about his lifestyle in Intravel Magazine.  It’s a great read, and you can see it here.

Well done, Mike!  Ride safe and keep us posted on your travels!

Just when I thought I was out…

So I’m retired, sort of, but I feel this compelling need to keep writing. Hey, I like to write. I want to be as good a writer as Joe Gresh when I grow up.

Anyway, there’s a whole lot more coming, folks, while Joe and I (that’s Arjiu and Dajiu to about a quarter of the world’s population) share what we think on a wide range of topics, including motorcycles, Baja, adventure riding, Baja, riding in other countries, Baja, partying at 14,000 feet on the Tibetan plateau, Baja, guns, Baja, maybe a bit on reloading, Baja, cars, Baja, 4x4s, Baja, and more. Rumor has it that Gresh knows a bit about concrete and living off the grid. You’ll see some of that here. This blog is going to be all about the good stuff: Good writing, good photography, and good times.

Oh, yeah…did I mention Baja?

Wowee, this is going to be fun. We’ve got a lot of cool things to write about, not the least of which will be our impressions of CSC’s new electric bike and maybe a Zero, and a whole lot of other bikes from a whole lot of other people. Yeah, I’m still convinced that small bikes are the way to go for real world adventure riding, but I like big bikes, too. I’d like to play around with an Enfield. Maybe a beat up old Sportster is in my future. I’m still riding my RX3 and my TT250, and both are still going strong. Yep, I’m still an advocate for CSC Motorcycles, too, but we’ll be covering a lot more. There’s a big wave in the motorcycle world headed this way, folks, and it’s spelled C-H-I-N-A (for both small and large bikes), and it’s spelled E-L-E-C-T-R-I-C (and most, if not all, of those bikes are coming from China, too). I’ve been there and I’ve seen it. You’ll get to see it, too. Just stay tuned.

And there’s more. We have an idea about a review of the state of the industry in the motorcycle magazine world. It’s going through a dramatic transition. You’ll read about it here. Like I said above, just stay tuned.

Oh, and there’s Baja. We’ll be covering things like the hotels we like, which insurance is the best, the restaurants that make the adventure truly great, which whales are the fun ones to play with (yeah, we’re on first-name terms with our Scammon’s Lagoon denizens), which cave paintings are the most interesting, which missions are the most beautiful, which wines are the most satisfying, which roads are the most fun, the months you should avoid, where to stay, and more. The research is going to be grand.

You can poke around on some of the other pages on the ExhaustNotes.us site. There’s a lot of cool stuff here, and there’s lots more coming. Gresh and I have been at this writing and riding business for a while, and we’ve got pages with links to our stuff that you can access on the Internet. We’ve got a page just on Baja, and we’re going to cover a bunch of cool stuff on that page (and right here in the Exhaust Notes blog, too).  We’ll be posting blogs about past grand adventures.  And there’s more, but you can find that when you poke around on this site.

And one more thing:  If you’ve got a comment on anything we post here on the ExhaustNotes blog, go ahead and post it.  We want to know what you’re thinking.

I am really looking forward to this. Big time.