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.
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 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.
