Adventure Motorcycle Books – Page 7

Cannibalize, mayhem, and other mototerms

Gee, I was gonna buy the RX3 and then I heard they were coming out with the RX4. Then I was gonna buy the RX4 and I heard they were coming out with a 400cc twin. Then I was gonna buy the 400cc twin and I heard they were coming out with a 650cc twin. Then I was gonna buy the 650 and I heard about this new 850cc Zongshen adventure bike.

I’m going to guess the above is a thought that has trickled through more than a few minds. It’s what I’m guessing occurs everytime Zongshen announces or leaks (I’m not sure what the appropriate word should be) that they have something newer, bigger, and better coming down the pike (like the RX850 you see above). Webster defines mayhem as “needless or willful damage or violence” (in a criminal context it’s the intentional mutilation or disfigurement of another human being) and Dictionary.com defines cannibalize as “to cut into; cause to become reduced; diminish.” Both words (i.e., cannibalize and mayhem) somehow seem relevant to Zongshen’s marketing practice of announcing new models just as (and sometimes even before) the preceding displacement model enters the marketplace. You’d think it would cannibalize sales of the models currently in showrooms, especially given our brainwashed belief that more displacement is always a good thing.

But what do I know? I sell one or two used motorcycles every decade or so, while Zongshen sells something like a million new motorcycles every year. I suspect companies selling Zongs both here and in other countries sell every bike they get (I know that’s the case with CSC, and I’ve seen it to be the case in Colombia). I once had a guy write to me who wanted to buy two RX3s so he and his wife could tour Colombia, but he couldn’t find a dealer in Colombia who wasn’t sold out. He wrote to me after reading Moto Colombia to ask if I could intervene with the AKT Motos general manager (I did, good buddy Enrique obliged, and that couple’s ride through magical Colombia went well).

My advice? Buy what you can get now. The 650 Zongshen hasn’t even hit the streets yet, so don’t wait for it or the RX850 you see above. If you want to have a lot of fun for a little money, any of the available Zongs will serve you well. I put a lot of miles on my RX3 and I got good money when I sold it 5 years later.

Oh, one more word I wanted to address, and it’s an adjective: Dormant. Webster defines it as being asleep or inactive. It is a word that is not in Zongshen’s dictionary.

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Phavorite Photos: Alone in China

We were somewhere in China approaching Aba after leaving the Tibetan Plateau, and somehow it was just Gresh, Sergeant Zuo, and me. I can’t remember why we were separated from the rest of our group. Honking along at a brisk pace and blitzing through one area after another, the photo ops were flying by and I wanted to capture at least some of them with my Nikon.

I finally caught up with Zuo and Gresh and flagged them over. I asked if I could go back a mile or two and they said they would wait. We had passed a Buddhist temple with a gold roof. The overcast skies, the green mountains, the asphalt, my orange and muddy RX3…all the colors clicked. I needed to commit that memory to the SD card.

When I turned around, I was surprised at how long it took to return to the spot you see above (I think we were on China’s G317 highway, but it might have been the G213). Then I felt fear: What if Gresh and Zuo didn’t wait for me? I don’t speak the language, I had no cell coverage, and I wouldn’t be able to find my way back to wherever. It was like being in outer space. It was just one of those crazy psycho unreasonable moments that sometimes hits when you realize you’re not in control of the situation. I snapped a few photos, they looked good enough on the camera’s display, and I wound out the RX3 to get back to my compañeros as quickly as possible. They had waited. I was in clover.

About a month later as we approached Beijing some of the street signs were in both Chinese and English, and it was obvious Beijing was directly ahead. Gresh told me he felt better because if we had to we could find our way home. I guess I wasn’t the only one having those “out in the boonies” feelings. It happens.

Earlier Phavorite Photos? You bet! Click on each to get their story.

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Phavorite Photos: Wenchuan Man

It was the fourth or fifth day Joe and I had been on the road in China, and we were headed up to the Tibetan Plateau. I think I can safely say that Gresh and I were the only two Americans in Wenchuan that day based on the fact that we were taken to the city’s police department to fill out forms and let them know we were there (it was the only place in China we had to do that).

Wenchuan is a lively town, and the next morning we were enjoying what had already become a routine breakfast of hardboiled eggs and Chinese fry bread on the sidewalk when a bus stopped in front of us. The fellow you see above stepped off and looked at us quizzically (we didn’t quite look like Wenchuanians). I asked if I could take a photo by holding up my Nikon. He nodded his head, I shot the photo you see above, and he was gone. The entire encounter lasted maybe two seconds, but that photo is one of my China ride favorites. His expression could be used in a book on body language.

Three earlier favorite photos, one in Bangkok, one in Death Valley, and one in Guangzhou. Click on them to get to their story.

Phavorite Photos: A Cantonese Monkey

Another favorite photo, and as you can see, it’s a bit unusual. This was a young chimp in the Guangzhou zoo about a dozen years ago. I was there on a secret mission and we wanted to do something on the weekend. One of my Chinese contacts told me there were two zoos in Guangzhou…the big one and the little one. The big one was outside the city limits and the little one was in the center of town, so we opted to stay in town. I didn’t think the zoo was little at all (it was at least as big as the LA zoo), and I caught a lot of great photos there. This one was of a young chimp who seemed as interested in us as we were in him.

The photo makes it look like the chimp is just about to take something (or maybe give something) to the young lady reaching out to him. I had my old Nikon D200 and the similar-era Nikkor 24-120 lens (two boat anchors, to be sure, but they worked well), along with a cheap polarizer that eliminated reflections. There was a piece of inch-thick plexiglass between us and the chimp, and I took a bunch of photos playing with the polarizer and my position to get the angle right so the glass barrier would disappear. I think I succeeded.

Two earlier favorite photos, one in Bangkok and the other in Death Valley. You can click on either to get to the story that goes with each.

Phavorite Photos: Orlando and Velma

We started this Phavorite Photo series a short while ago at Python Pete’s suggestion, and while going through a few of my favorites recently the photo you see above popped out. That’s my good buddies Orlando and Velma on their CSC RX3 headed up to Dante’s View, a natural overook that provides what has to be the best view of Death Valley (the view is shown in the photo below). We were on the Destinations Deal tour, and Orlando and Velma bought their RX3 motorcycle specifically to go with us on this ride. The Destinations Deal was a grand ride, and Orlando and Velma are great traveling companions.

I grabbed that photo of Orlando and Velma with my little Nikon D3300, its kit 18-55mm lens, and a polarizer. The D3300 was a superb traveling SLR. The photo needed a little tweaking in PhotoShop to bring it up (they almost all always do). A bit of cropping, a correction in levels, another correction in curves, eliminating an unsightly sign that was in the background, and just a little bit of vibrance and saturation enhancement. Here’s what the original looked like:

I was particularly impressed with Orlando’s RX3 motorcycle. This was the second time I led a CSC tour with folks riding two up on an RX3. Orlando had no difficulty hanging with the rest of us (we were all riding solo), and surprisingly, his bike returned the same fuel economy. There’s a lot to be said for small bikes. I’ve said some of it before.

I have more than a few favorite photos. You’ll see more here on the ExhaustNotes blog.

Something we’ll do in each one of these Phavorite Photos blogs is show our prior favorites. Just click on the photo to get to each earlier blog. There’s only one so far; there will be more.

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Bond. Titanium Bond.

A watch is a personal and emotional purchase, much like a motorcycle or a rifle. By definition, whatever you choose is perfect and the best; what anyone else chooses is not and is somehow indicative of a deep-seated character flaw. I get that.

Having said that, I never got the attraction of an Omega wristwatch. I know some folks love them and if you wear an Omega, more power to you. It’s just not me, which is why I found the attractive young lady pushing the latest Omega at me amusing.

Omega, you see, never misses a marketing opportunity, and their latest product placement achievement is the new Bond movie, No Time To Die. In it, 007 wears a titanium Omega Seamaster. The high end watch store in Palo Alto had a couple of the titanium Bond Omegas in stock, and the young sales lady was attempting what could only be described as a hard sell. She was new to these shores, I think, and evidently convinced that if James Bond wore a titanium Omega, every man in America would want one as well.

“Bond wears,” she kept repeating, as if that was all it would take to get me to plunk down $9800 for an Omega (it would actually take a lot more, like maybe a $9700 discount). Before I realized it, she had unbuckled my Casio Marlin (the best deal in a dive watch ever and one I wear frequently), and she had the titanium Bond on my wrist. She would have made a good pickpocket.

“Bond wears,” she said again.

I wondered if she realized Bond is a fictional character.

The titanium Seamaster was light, almost like a plastic watch. I could barely detect its presence. I didn’t care for the look of the mesh bracelet, but damn, that thing was a feather.

“NATO Bond,” she said, pushing another titanium Bond Seamaster at me, this one with a cloth NATO band. NATO watchbands…that’s another fad I never fell for. They look cheap. I was in the US Army and the only special watchbands I ever saw were the velcro bands paratroopers wear (they tear away if your watch gets caught on the door when exiting an aircraft…you lose your watch but you get to keep your arm, which isn’t a bad deal if you think about it). I’m pretty sure guys in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization don’t actually wear NATO bands, but what do I know?

I like the look of a dive watch and I own a couple of them. My tastes run toward high quality and low cost, so my personal favorites are the Casio Marlin (a watch I’ve written about before) and a Seiko Batman I bought at Costco a few years ago. The Marlin was $39, it keeps superb time, it looks good, and it works well (it’s the watch I wore when I rode through Colombia). The Marlin did just fine in the Andes’ torrential rains. I’ve never tried the Marlin in the deep blue sea, though. I’m not a diver and I really don’t know how well it would work as a dive watch. But I’m not a fictional British secret agent, either, so unlike Daniel Craig I don’t need the titanium Bond watch. If I need external inspiration, I’ll take it elsewhere. Bill Gates wears a Casio Marlin and even though he doesn’t have a blog or a motorcycle, he’s real and he seems to have done okay. But I don’t need to emulate other people. I just wear watches I find appealing.

I asked the young sales lady where she was from and she said Cupertino. No, originally, I asked. “China,” she said. I asked where and she told me (it was a city in Hebei Province), I told her I had been there, and we chatted about the ride Gresh and I did across China. She told me I had been to more places in China than she had. I wore a Timex on that ride, I told her, like Napoleon Solo in The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (the Chinese guys called me Dàshū, which means “big uncle,” so it sort of fit). She laughed, but I’m pretty sure she didn’t know what I was talking about. Sometimes that makes for the best conversations.

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Favorite Baja Hotels: Guerrero Negro’s Don Gus

That photo above could also be in our Phavorite Photos series. It’s the motorcycles on one of our Baja rides (all CSC RX3s) parked outside our rooms at the Don Gus Hotel in Guerrero Negro. That photo has always been one of my favorites.

Not fancy, not expensive, and comfortable: That’s how I would describe the Don Gus Hotel in Guerrero Negro (incidentally, that’s also a pretty good good description of the RX3). The Don Gus is on the main drag on the left as you come into town, and it’s nearly directly across the street from the more well-known Malarimmo’s. The Don Gus has a nice bar and the food is great.

Malarimmo’s usually fills up quickly when the California gray whales are in nearby Scammon’s Lagoon (that would be from January through March). There are at least a half-dozen hotels in Guerrero Negro, and the Don Gus is the one I’d go for if Malarimmo’s is booked up. The Don Gus is less expensive than Malarimmo’s and the restaurant maybe isn’t as fancy, but it’s a good place to stay and you won’t be disappointed. If you want a whale watching tour and Malarrimo’s is full, let the folks at the Don Gus know the night before and they’ll hook you up with another tour company. They’ve done so for me many times, and I’ve found that once you are out on the water who you tour with doesn’t make a difference. They are all great.

Looking at these photos….man, I have got to get my knees in the breeze and point my Enfield south. I am missing Baja big time. Gresh, you up for Tony’s fish tacos?

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Chongqing to Tibet!

The RG3 is Zongshen’s newest motorcycle, and yesterday this video and its description showed up in my feed:

We are excited to share the epic journey of RG3 crew! Along the 318 national highway, our RG3 adventurers spent 12 days riding to reach Lhasa, Tibet from our factory in Chongqing. May the journey inspire you to start you own!

This is cool stuff and Zongshen (sold by CSC Motorcycles here in North America) is a cool company. I’ve been in the Zongshen plant a bunch of times along with good buddy Gobi Gresh, and we rode with Zongshen across China.

Gresh and I had a lot of fun with the Cult of the Zong, and we joked about the lines we’d be able to use after our 6,000-mile ride in the Ancient Kingdom. You know, little things we’d slip into a conversation like “as I was riding across the Gobi Desert” and “when we rode down off the Tibetan plateau” and others. We knew it would gave us the street cred we needed to converse with hardcore riders making the trek to Starbuck’s.

Zongshen puts together first class videos, and I always watch their new ones as they are released. One of my Zongshen favorites is the one they did on our China ride:

And another I enjoy is Joe Gresh’s video on that same ride:

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Favorite Baja Hotels: Guerrero Negro’s Malarrimo’s

This blog grew longer than I had planned. I thought I would touch on Malarrimo’s (one of my favorite hotels in Baja) and that would be it, but I realized once I got into it that there’s a lot more to the story and Guerrero Negro.

If you’re headed into Baja, especially if you’re headed there to see the whales, you’d be hardpressed to find a better hotel than Malarrimo’s in Guerrero Negro. Guerrero Negro is at the halfway point when headed down the Baja peninsula (it’s about 450 miles south of the border). It’s located along the 28th Parallel, the dividing line between Baja and Baja Sur (Baja’s two Mexican states).

Although some might be inclined to dismiss Guerrero Negro because as little more than a gritty industrial town, it’s actually a pretty cool place to visit and a good base for further explorations. There’s whale watching, the ecological preserve, salt mining, the nearby cave paintings, the food, and more.

Ah, the food. As Gresh so aptly put it, no one loses weight on a Baja ride with me. I’ll get to that in a minute.

Don Enrique Achoy founded Malarimmo’s about a half century ago, and it has remained a family business. He was ahead of his time, offering eco tours to see the whales, the ecological preserve surrounding Scammon’s Lagoon, and more. There are other hotels in Guerrero Negro, but I always check Malarimmo’s first. It’s not fancy and at around $65 per night it’s a tiny bit expensive for Baja, but it is inviting. it’s clean, and I just feel good there. The restaurant is arguably the best in town, and I love the bar (more on both in just a bit).

Getting There

Malarrimo’s is easy to find. Just head south on the Transpeninsular Highway from the border for 450 miles. You’ll see a huge metal eagle at Parallelo 28 and a Mexican military base. Shortly after that, you’ll see a sign pointing to the right and Guerrero Negro.

Take that right, and Malarimmo’s will be on your right as you enter town. You can’t miss it. Incidentally, the lagoon you see in the satellite photo above is Scammon’s Lagoon. It’s where the whales will be, which takes me to our next topic.

Whale Watching

Whale watching tours are available from January through March when the California gray whales are in town, and it is a life changing experience. Those are strong words and you might be tempted to dismiss them as hyperbole. Take one of Malarrimo’s 4-hour, $50 whale watching tours out on Scammon’s Lagoon and then you tell me. I’ll bet you come away feeling the same way.

We have a lot more on whale watching on our Baja page, so I won’t spend too much time here on it. Trust me on this, though: It is like nothing you have ever done.

The Ecological Preserve

When you get a whale tour at Malarimmo’s, it will take about a half hour in a Malarimmo van to get to the where the pangas (the small boats that take you out to see the whales) are docked, and on that ride, you pass through an ecological preserve that is home to more than 150 wildlife species. You’ll see many nesting ospreys (a bird of prey), and if you’re lucky (like we have been) you’ll get to see an osprey enjoying a bit of sushi. It’s a fun thing to encounter.

Salt Mining

Guerrero Negro is a company town, and the company is Mitsubishi, which owns (along with the Mexican government) the salt processing operation. It’s one of the largest salt producing regions in the world. They use an interesting approach: Flooding the coastal plains near the town with seawater, allowing the water to evaporate, and then using earth moving equipment to scrape up the salt that remains behind.

Guerrero Negro Cuisine

No discussion of Guerrero Negro would be complete without a discussion of the cuisine down there. In a word, it’s wonderful. My favorite meal? Fish tacos, served right off the truck (caught fresh daily) by my good buddy Tony. No one I’ve ever taken there has had anything but high praise for these incredible treats.

Another place I like is San Remedios, a restaurant a block or two north of the man drag through Guerrero Negro. Just head west a few blocks from Malarrimo’s, turn right, and you’ll find it. The food is awesome and the young ladies who serve it are stunning.

I’ve already mentioned the restaurant and bar at Malarimmo’s. You can’t have a bad meal at the Malarrimo’s restaurant, and the bar…wow, it’s interesting. The Guerrero Negro area forms a big hook out in the Pacific Ocean with the hook’s U facing north (you can see that in the satellite photo above). As a result, a lot of interesting stuff washes up on shore in that area, and Malarrimo’s has a collection of it hanging from the roof in their bar. It’s pretty cool.

There are other restaurants in Guerrero Negro, too, and I try to make it a point to try a new one each time I am there. Baja John and I enjoyed an amazing Chinese dinner in Guerrero Negro on one trip; try Lucky’s if you feel like something different.

The Cave Paintings

There are several cave paintings located throughout Baja. This is real Indiana Jones stuff; the cave paintings are estimated to be about 10,000 years old and not much is known about the people who put them there. They are all relatively remote, too, but one of the easier (I’m using that word in a comparative sense) ones to get to are the cave paintings in Baja’s Sierra San Francisco Mountains.

The cave paintings near Guerrero Negro are further south and east of the Transpeninsular Highway (Highway 1, the main and often only road running north and south in Baja). You take Highway 1 south and then turn left after passing through the town of Vizcaino to head east and up into the Sierra Francisco mountains. It’s a magnificent ride with an awesome climb into the mountains, then the road turns to dirt and then it becomes, for lack of a better word, gnarly. You buy tickets and secure a guide in a small village, and then double back for maybe a mile to see the paintings. If you have a 4WD car or a dual sport (or ADV) motorcycle, you can get there on your own; if you don’t, you can grab a tour that leaves from Malarimmo’s. It will take most of a day to get out there, see the paintings, and get back to Guerrero Negro, but it’s well worth it.

There’s a lot more to Baja’s cave paintings, but it’s too much to include here. Watch for a future blog on this topic.

So there you have it: Guerrero Negro, Malarimmo’s, and a bunch of things you can do while in that area. I love everything about Baja, and I especially love the Guerrero Negro area. You will, too.

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A New BajaBound Atlas

Wow, check this out…a new Baja road and recreation atlas brought to us by the folks who know Baja best: BajaBound Insurance!

I ordered mine already and I’m looking forward to getting it. You can be sure I’ll put it to good use. If you want to order yours, you can do so here!

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