I was up in San Francisco a week or so ago and I stopped by good buddy Barry’s San Francisco Scooter Centre for two reasons: To say hello to Barry, and to check out the new Genuine G400c motorcycle. It’s the bike manufactured by Shineray (in Chongqing, China), and I had seen two versions of it when I rode across China on an RX3 nearly three years go.
Brand new Genuine G400c motorcycles in good buddy Barry’s San Francisco Scooter Centre.The new Genuine’s pricing in the San Francisco Scooter Centre. Like other Asian and Indian bikes from Royal Enfield, CSC, and BMW, the price is seriously lower than others on the market from the Big 4 and Europe. Unlike many other dealers, the San Francisco Scooter Centre’s setup, documentation, and freight charges are honest and reasonable.
I didn’t have the time or the gear to ride the Genuine G400c last week, but Barry said he wants me to try the new machine and he offered a ride. I’m going to do that later this month, and I’ll tell you more about the bike when I do.
The products available to us as motorcyclists sure are changing, and there’s no doubt the imports from China and India are rocking our world. Gresh and I have a bit of experience on Zongshen’s RX3, RX4, and TT250 (made in China and imported by CSC). I’ve had some seat time on the new BMW 310 made in India. Joe and I recently completed a week-long adventure in Baja riding the Royal Enfield 500cc Bullet and their new 650cc Interceptor (both made in India). I don’t have any time yet on Harley’s 500cc and 750cc v-twin cruisers (also made in India), but I’m working on correcting that character flaw. There’s an old proverb that says “may you live in interesting times.” We certainly are.
Hey, more good news: I finally received my printed copies of Destinations, and my story on Kitt Peak National Observatory is in the next issue of Motorcycle Classics magazine. You can see all of theDestinations pieces (and get your very own copy) right here. Good buddy Mike did. Mike and I graduated junior high school and high school together back in the day (as in 50 years ago), and we still talk to each other a couple of times each month. Good friends and good times!
Good buddy Mike, who knows a good thing when he sees it!
Good buddy Bob, our most recent adventure moto book contest winner!
It’s that time again, and our first quarter 2019 adventure motorcycle book contest winner is good buddy Bob. Bob became eligible when he signed up for our automatic email blog updates, and you can, too! We’re giving away another book at the end of this quarter, and all you have to do is sign up for our automatic email updates.
When we notified Bob of his win, he wrote to us…
I like your approach with the Zongshens…1200cc is not required for touring. My touring machine is shown in the photo: A 2002 Honda Silverwing scooter. I sold it with 35K showing on the odometer and later bought another.
Bob, your copy of Destinations, our latest moto adventure book, will be going out to you in the next few days. Congratulations to you and thanks for being an ExhaustNotes reader!
Shortly after we passed this Alfa See Ya motorhome, we stopped at a rest area along Interstate 5. The coach pulled in behind us.
I was driving south on Interstate 5 this weekend, enjoying the Subaru and the wildflowers, and feeling good about the zillions of bugs splattering on the Subie’s windshield instead of me (as they had been doing with a vengeance when Gresh and I were in Baja on the Enfields the prior week). Various thoughts floated through my mind, one of them being that we had not done a “Back in the Day” blog in a while. That concept was Gresh’s…a series of blogs about past jobs, experiences, and…well, you get the idea. That thought drifted around in my noggin while we passed a long string of trucks and motorhomes, and Susie suddenly said “Look, Joe, an Alfa!”
Sure enough, it was an Alfa Leisure 36-foot, diesel pusher motorhome…the See Ya model, to be exact. If you’re wondering why this was a source of wonderment for both Susie and yours truly, it’s because I used to run the plant that manufactured that magnificent RV. That was almost 20 years ago.
Yep, I was the Operations Director for Alfa Leisure. It was one of the best jobs I ever had, and I worked for one of the smartest guys I’ve ever known. That would be Johnnie Crean, and I’ll get to him in a minute. Well, maybe less than a minute, because I’ll tell you about the motorhome first, and I can’t do that without touching on Johnnie’s genius.
The See Ya was a watershed product, and that was because it was one hell of a deal. Let me start by putting it this way…the See Ya’s MSRP was $184,600, but the thing was so good and demand was so high the dealers were tacking on more than $20K over list price and we still couldn’t build them fast enough. That’s because the See Ya was way better than the competition.
Johnnie did a lot of cool things. He put the air conditioner underneath the chassis, which allowed a higher ceiling inside the coach while still meeting Big Gubmint’s max height requirement for road vehicles. That may not sound significant, but that one feature alone sold a lot of motorhomes for Alfa. On any dealer’s lot you could go into any other motorhome and with their low ceilings they always felt cramped. You see, they all had their air conditioners on the roof, which forced them to make the ceiling lower. Walk into an Alfa, though, and it felt like you were in your house. The difference was immediate and obvious, and it was all Johnnie. And just to rub salt in that marketing wound, Johnnie put a ceiling fan in the See Ya. You know, a Casa Blanca, like you might have in your family room.
Next up was the color palette. For the exterior, you could have any color you wanted, as long as it was white. Johnnie realized that folks spend their time inside the motorhome, and they really didn’t care what the exterior color was. That little deal right there was a $10,000 price advantage. Another cool color advantage: Alfa only offered two interior carpeting colors (light tan and dark blue) and two cabinet color choices (light oak and dark walnut). We built the light tan carpeteted, light oak configuration almost exclusively. Johnnie knew that women preferred those colors (men preferred the darker colors), but the purchase decision was almost always made by wives, not by husbands.
One morning, Johnnie popped into my office early in the morning. “Put a spoiler on the coach,” he said, and with that, he turned to leave.
“A spoiler?” I asked. Johnnie always drove either a Porsche or a Bentley, but mostly the Porsche, and he owned a couple of race cars. I kind of assumed he was talking about a whale tail spoiler like his Turbo 911 had, but I didn’t know.
“A chin spoiler,” he said, showing through body language and tone that he was thinking I wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer.
“A chin spoiler?” I asked. “That will take a few weeks, you know, to talk to the guy who makes the front fiberglass for us…”
“No, no, no…” Johnnie answered, frustrated by my inability to visualize what he had in mind. “Just cut a spoiler out of plywood and mount it under the nose with angle iron. Make it stick out about a foot.” He was drawing pictures in the air with his hands, tracing an imaginary arc in front of an imaginary coach. “Just tell your guys what I want. They’ll understand.”
So I went to our R&D shop, told the guys what I thought I wanted (Johnnie was right; they got it immediately), and 90 minutes later they were bolting a chin spoiler to the lower front face of a 36-ft diesel pusher motorhome. I thought it was an absurd idea, until I took that coach out on the freeway moments later. It felt like it was glued to the highway. Planted. Solid. Where before being passed by an 18-wheeler turned the See Ya into an E-ticket Disney ride, the coach now felt stable and absolutely unfazed when passing (or being passed by) a semi. I took it on the overpass from the northbound I-15 to the westbound I-10 (one of those high-in-the-sky elevated roadways where the winds were always severe) as an acid test, and I was convinced: The guy was a genius. The See Ya’s handling was dramatically better.
Another time, Johnnie came into my office and without sitting down, he told me he had just read a book about ancient Roman baths and he wanted to do the same in the See Ya.
“A Roman bath?” I said.
“No, no, no,” he answered. I didn’t know what Johnnie was talking about, but I knew it would be revealed soon. The trick was to dope out what the guy had in mind without appearing to be too slow. Sometimes I succeeded. This wasn’t going to be one of them.
“They heated their marble floors with hot springs, you know, geothermal stuff. It kept the floors warm so they didn’t get cold feet,” Johnnie explained, and again, the body language and tonality hinted that he felt like he was talking to a 5-year-old.
“You want me to park the coach over a hot spring?” (I can be kind of slow at times, people tell me.)
Johnnie just looked at me. Then he started drawing pictures in the air with his hands. “There’s hot water coming out of the engine, going to the radiator. Route that hot water through a zig zag pipe under the tile floors down the main hallway in the coach. Like a coil.” He was making zig zag motions in the air, that big gold Breitling watch flashing in front of me as he did so. I got it, finally. Son of a gun, the Roman bath idea worked. My guys had a prototype mocked up in a day, and the tile floor was satisfyingly toasty. Maybe it doesn’t seem like a big deal to you, but trust me on this, it was. Try walking down the aisle of a motorhome with a tile floor in the winter in your bare feet. There isn’t much under that tile. It gets pretty cold. But not in an Alfa. It was a brilliant idea.
I could go on and on because I have lots of Johnnie stories like that. Those were some of the best days of my working life. Yeah, Johnnie’s a character, but damn, he came up with some amazing things. I think I learned more working there then I learned anywhere else, and building motorhomes was a lot of fun. They were like the Battlestar Galactica, huge moving things with features galore. When I started at Alfa, at the start of the See Ya production run, we were building one coach a week. When I left a couple of years later, we were building 10 coaches a week. Good times those were, back in the day.
I read an article a couple of days ago in the Wall Street Journal about electric vehicle subsidies being sharply cut back in China. It seems there are an incredible number of EV manufacturers in China. 487 electric vehicle manufacturers, to be exact. And if you build EVs over there, there are rich Chinese government subsidies (from both the local and central Chinese governments). China is scaling these back significantly. All of the local subsidies are being eliminated, and the central (what we would call federal) government subsidies are only being provided for vehicles with a range of 155 miles or more on a single charge.
You may remember my observations in Riding China about the preponderance of electric motorcycles and scooters over there. It turns out that the subsidies are not provided on motorcycles and scooters, so they are not affected. Interesting times.
Destinations is a collection of motorcycle rides and destinations culled from the pages of Motorcycle Classics magazine. I’m a regular contributor to Motorcycle Classics, and this book encompasses travel stories going back as far as 2006. My good buddy and editor Landon Hall (who found a few Rock Store photos I put on the Internet in 2005) is the guy who first got me started in the travel writing business, and he wrote the foreword to this book for me.
Destinations has 56 chapters and 150 photographs (many of which have never before been published). Great motorcycle hangouts, mountain roads, national parks, motorcycle museums, best kept secrets, how to get there, things to avoid, the best restaurants, and more for great rides both in the United States and Baja…it’s all here, inviting you to ride the best roads and the most exciting destinations in North America!
Two of the all time greats…a Safari Grade Model 700 Remington, and the .375 Holland and Holland cartridge. Check out the walnut on this magnificent rifle!
I started playing with guns when I was a youngster and the disease progressed as I aged. I almost said “matured” instead of “aged,” but that would be stretching things, especially when it comes to shelling out good money for fancy guns. When I see a rifle I want, I haven’t matured at all. I sure have aged, though.
So anyway, when I was a young guy, I read everything I could about all kinds of guns, and I especially enjoyed reading about big game rifles. Really big game, as in Peter Hathaway Capstick chasing cape buffalo, Jim Corbett chasing man-eating tigers in India, and Colonel John Henry Patterson chasing the man-eating lions of Tsavo. It was all books and magazines back in those days. Al Gore was still a youngster and he had not invented the Internet yet, and if you wanted to read about cool things you went to a place called the library. One of the cool things to read about there, for me, was the .375 Holland and Holland cartridge, along with the rifles that chambered its Panatela of a cartridge. The descriptions were delicious…a magnum rifle firing a 300-grain bullet 3/8ths of an inch in diameter at 2700+ fps with the trajectory of a .30 06.
The .375 H&H goes all the way back to 1912, when it was developed by the great English firm of Holland and Holland. It’s still one of the best cartridges ever for hunting big beasts that snarl, roar, bite, stomp, and gore those who would do them harm. It was the first belted magnum cartridge. The idea is that cartridge headspaces on the belt (a stepped belt around the base), a feature that wasn’t really necessary for proper function, but from a marketing perspective it was a home run. Nearly all dangerous game cartridges that followed the mighty .375 H&H, especially those with “magnum” aspirations, were similarly belted. Like I said, it was a marketing home run.
As a young guy, I was convinced my life wouldn’t be complete without a .375 H&H rifle. You see, I had more money than brains back in those days. I spent my young working life on the F-16 development team, and my young non-working life playing with motorcycles and guns. I was either on a motorcycle tearing up Texas, or on the range, or hanging around various gun shops between El Paso and Dallas. In Texas, some of the shops had their own rifle range. People in Texas get things right, I think.
One of the shops I frequented was the Alpine Range in Fort Worth, Texas. The fellow behind the counter knew that I was a sucker for any rifle with fancy walnut, and when I stopped in one Saturday he told me I had to take a look at a rifle he had ordered for a customer going to Africa. He had my interest immediately, and when he opened that bright green Remington box, what I saw took my breath away. It was a Safari Grade Model 700 in .375 H&H. In those days, the Safari Grade designation meant the rifle had been assembled by the Remington Custom Shop, and that was about as good as it could possibly get.
The Model 700 was beautiful. Up to that point, I’d never even seen a .375 H&H rifle other than in books and magazines. This one was perfect. In addition to being in chambered in that most mystical of magnums (the .375 H&H), the wood was stunning. It had rosewood pistol grip and fore end accents, a low-sheen oil finish, the grain was straight from the front of the rifle through the pistol grip, and then the figure fanned, flared, flamed, and exploded as the walnut approached the recoil pad. I knew I had to own it, and I’m pretty sure the guy behind the counter knew it, too. Did I mention that the rifle was beautiful?
“How much?” I asked, trying to appear nonchalant.
“I can order you another one,” the counter guy countered, “but this one is sold. I ordered it for a guy going to Africa. I’ll order another one for you. They all come with wood this nice.”
“Has he seen this one yet?” I asked, not believing that any rifle could be as stunning. I knew that rifles varied considerably, and finding one with wood this nice would be a major score, Remington Custom Shop assembly or not.
“No,” the sales guy answered, “he hasn’t been in yet, but I can get another for you in a couple of days. Don’t worry; they’re all this nice.”
His advice to the contrary notwithstanding, I worried. This was the one I had to own. “How much?” I asked again.
“$342,” he answered.
Mind you, this was in 1978. That was a lot of money then. It seems an almost trivial amount now. The rifle you see in the photo above, especially with its fancy walnut, would sell for something more like $2,000 today. Maybe more.
“Get another one for Bwana,” I said. “This one is mine.”
“But this is the other guy’s.”
“Not anymore it’s not. Not if you ever want to see me in here again,” I said. Like to told you earlier, I was a young guy back then in 1978. I thought I knew how to negotiate. My only negotiating tool in those days was a hammer, and to me, every negotiation was a nail. You know how it is to be young and dumb, all the while believing you know everything.
“Let me see what I can do,” the sales guy said, with a knowing smile. When the phone range at 10:00 a.m. the following Monday, I knew it was the Alpine Range, and I knew the Model 700 was going to be mine. I told my boss I wasn’t feeling well.
“Another rifle?” he asked. He didn’t need to ask. He knew. We were in Texas. He had the disease, too.
In less than an hour, the rifle you see in that photograph above was mine. The guy behind the counter at the Alpine Range was good. He had already received a second Safari Grade Model 700, in .375 H&H, so the safari dude was covered. I asked to see the replacement rifle and the walnut on it was bland, straight grained, and dull…nothing at all like the exhibition grade walnut on mine. It made me feel even better.
I’ve owned my Model 700 .375 H&H Remington for more than four decades now. I’ve never been on safari with it and I have zero desire to shoot a cape buffalo, a lion, a tiger, or anything else, but I do love owning and shooting my .375 H&H. I’ve never seen another with wood anywhere near as nice as mine, and that makes owning it all the more special.
When I saw the first photographs of Royal Enfield’s new 650 twin the bike seemed perfect. 650 vertical twins have owned the sweet-spot of cool long before McQueen bashed them around the desert and they are still an ideal size and configuration for all around use. Unfortunately the latest vertical twin offerings from other motorcycle manufacturers have sprouted slow-moving tumorous pistons, lost their summer beach-bodies and become uselessly complex. The whole situation kind of put me on edge. I was actually a bit angry: “Royal Enfield better not screw this up,” I mumbled to my cat.
I liked the new Interceptor 650 so much I was going to get really pissed off at Royal Enfield if the bike was crude and uninspiring. Luckily for everyone involved, the Interceptor, or INT, or Cartridge, or Clip or whatever legal BS we are supposed to use, is a great bike. It’s hard to judge long-term quality without the requisite passage of time but from what I can see the 650 is well and truly the Nads.
In the video I rave about the frame, because it is noticeably well-finished. I couldn’t get over the thing. All the component parts of the RE 650 appear to be designed not only with function in mind but also with an eye toward aesthetics. This is a motorcycle that will look just as good dismantled as it does assembled, like how a Norton 750 looks good in pieces on your cycle bench. Thanks, whoever is responsible for this.
The 650 Royal Enfield engine feels peppy and it breathes well. The bike pulls hard right up until the rev limiter cuts in at 7500 RPM. It feels like a happy engine if you know what I mean. Sitting upright I saw an indicated 115 mph in 5th gear at redline and 6th gear dropped the top end to 110. I think if I didn’t have 75 pounds of touring garbage flapping in the breeze and made myself really small I could have gotten 120 mph in high gear.
The fuel injection on my 650 delivered its tiny spurts of fuel precisely and in a timely fashion. I could not imagine it working any better. On the highway the thing got an amazing 70 miles per gallon. Fuel injection is one of the few modern advances that I think are useful on a motorcycle. Handling was a non-issue: The bike tracked well and the suspension is good enough for me.
The shifting is slick and effortless and if I wasn’t running out of old Cycle magazine issues from the 1970’s to steal complimentary phrases from I’d go on about the transmission for hours. I’d really like to take this bike apart and see what makes it so good.
The brakes were not super powerful. I never felt like the bike wouldn’t stop but I’ve gotten used to incredibly powerful brakes on other bikes. It’s not a deal killer for me because this is a multi-purpose motorcycle, not a race bike. I didn’t care for the Royal Enfield’s anti-lock brake system but in their defense I don’t like anybody’s anti-lock brake system. I’ll have to yank the fuse or defeat the system somehow when I get mine.
Yes, I would actually buy one of these motorcycles if moto-journalism paid in something more fungible than “Likes.” I’m not sure what they will actually sell for yet but it will be less than the other guys. If they make a high-pipe scrambler version all bets are off.
Some motorcycles play much larger than their spec sheets would indicate. The Royal Enfield is one of them. It’s such a joy to travel on a simple, lightweight motorcycle and the pleasing burble exiting from the 650’s exhaust system is music to anyone who rode a Honda twin from the 1970s. The 650 is a bike built to ride and it’s nice to look at parked in the garage.
I’m afraid motorcycle riders have become trapped in the American Dream of bigger is better and more plastic is better. The road grows dimmer and further from their nerve endings in the cause of comfort and technology. Stop now. You can easily find a more powerful motorcycle or find a faster one but you’ll play hell finding a better looking motorcycle than the Royal Enfield 650. And you won’t find one that’s more fun to ride on the street.
If you’d like to read the rest of our recent Royal Enfield Baja adventure ride posts, here are the links…
Here’s Part II of our grand ride to the top of Volcan Nevado del Ruiz. Colombia was an awesome adventure, and my good buddies Juan and Carlos were great traveling companions. Here you go, folks….
As I mentioned earlier, our riding positions were Juan, me, and Carlos. Juan was just amazing. I was keeping up, but I was working hard to do it. And I knew Juan and Carlos had dialed it back for me.
Juan made it look so easy. He would sometimes ride through the curves standing on the pegs, almost as if he needed to give himself more of a challenge. At one point, we were taking a set of curves at speeds way above those at which I would normally ride, with the bikes leaned over at an unimaginable angle, when I looked ahead at Juan. He was standing on the pegs again, with his motorcycle leaned way over in a sweeping curve, and he was reaching back to check the latch on one of his panniers. He was doing this as if it was the most normal thing in the world. Both he and Carlos are incredible riders.
Colombian chicken-strip-reducing twisties on our climb to the top.
Juan knew another photo spot, and we stopped. He and Carlos took positions on the side of the road to take photos, but I zeroed in on my front tire. I wanted to check out my chicken strips.
Chicken strips are the edges of the tire tread that haven’t contacted the road surface. The harder you corner on a motorcycle, the more you lean the bike over, and the narrower your chicken strips become. Our ride during the last 30 miles or so had been aggressive, and my chicken strips showed it. They were about as narrow as any I have ever created on a motorcycle.
Juan and Carlos came over. They thought I had a problem with the motorcycle’s front tire until they saw me photographing it. Both guys laughed. They knew immediately what I was doing.
“I was watching you in the mirrors,” Juan said, “and you are riding more strongly. We will make you an honorary Colombian motorcyclist!”
The spot Juan had selected to stop was indeed a good one. The Nikon 18-55mm lens came off the camera I replaced it with the Tokina 12-24mm. I grabbed a shot that became one of my favorites (it’s the one you see above).
Chicken strips (the narrow unused tread area at the tire’s edge).
The climb continued, we turned left at an intersection, and then we made a right turn onto a dirt road. We were in the fog, but the fog had not descended to reach us. We had climbed into the clouds to reach it.
It was cold. I could barely see Juan through the fog and I thought it was because my visor had clouded over. I lifted the visor and I realized that it was indeed fogged over, but the visibility wasn’t any better with it up. We were in the soup, and it was thick.
I hit the toggle switch on the left handlebar to activate the RX3’s emergency flashers. I saw Carlos follow my example in my rear view mirrors, and then Juan did so, too. I fixated on Juan’s taillight and his flashers; it was really all I could see in that thick soup. I was glad I was wearing my contact lenses instead of glasses; I would not have been able to see anything if I had worn my glasses.
I could barely see the dirt road beneath my wheels (the fog was that thick). The road had not turned to mud (and for that I was grateful). I felt the moisture hitting my face. It was cold.
That dirt road and the fog we were riding through went on and on and on. I saw a sign that said we were at 3400 meters. Wow, I thought after doing a quick mental calculation. That’s over 11,000 feet! It was about as high as I’ve ever been on a motorcycle, but it was a record that would be broken just a few more miles up the road.
As we continued, the moisture continued to smack my face, but it was stinging more. I thought maybe it was freezing rain. It seemed to bother my eyes quite a bit more, too. I put my visor down and it fogged over immediately. I put it back up just as quickly as I had put it down. This was extreme riding.
13,000 feet and climbing!
Juan stopped at another sign. We were now at 3,950 meters! That’s 13,000 feet. I was cold, but I knew I had to get the camera out for a photo of the bikes next to this sign. I told Juan the elevation was amazing, and he told me we would be climbing even higher.
Then Juan noticed something on my jacket. He looked at my bike and he became very excited. My jacket and the bikes had little specks of dust on them. Those little specks were what I had felt hitting me in the face. They hadn’t been freezing rain droplets. They were volcanic dust! The volcano we were riding up to was belching its innards all over us!
Volcanic dust on my RX3 in Colombia.
Juan was excited. “I’ve been up here maybe 10 times,” he said, and I’ve never seen this. The volcano knows we are here, Joe, and it is talking to us.”
We rode another couple of miles and we arrived at the Colombian National Park headquarters for the volcano. The bikes were covered with volcanic dust. Our helmets were muddy because of it. My eyes itched, but I didn’t dare rub them. I now knew my eyes were irritated because they had cinders in them, and rubbing them would grind that dust into my eyeballs. Nope, it would be best to let the tears that were streaming down my face do what they were designed to do and wash this stuff out naturally.
The people manning the Colombian National Park told us they were sending people away, back down from the volcano because it was active. Imagine that!
A volcano!
And it was active!
Wowee!
The sign at the top told us we were at 4,138 meters. That’s 13,562 feet, folks. And we rode up here on our 250cc motorcycles!
That’s 13,562 feet above sea level, just below the rim of an active volcano!
Juan told us there was a trail that went all the way up to the volcano’s rim, and that was above 15,000 feet. The Colombian government no longer allowed any kind of motorized traffic on that trail, so we couldn’t take the motorcycles. Juan told me he had done that ride while it was still legal to do so, and he had done it on a 100cc two-stroke Yamaha while riding two up! This guy is one hardcore biker, I thought.
We stayed for a bit, we had a cup of tea, we took a few photos, and we left. That would be one more checkmark on my bucket list. I didn’t even know riding up to an active volcano had been one of the things I wanted to do in my life. Having now done it, though, I can tell you what we accomplished that day deserved a spot on the list. It felt good knowing I could say I had done it.
We rode another 10 miles or so on dirt roads, downhill all the way, to a hotel that was about as far off the beaten path as I have ever been.
It was still bitter cold as we rode down the side of the volcano, but I was feeling good. I’ve said it in every chapter, and I’ll say it again: Juan was showing me one hell of a good time. This Colombian adventure tour was the most exciting motorcycle ride of my life.
Our destination that evening was the Hotel Termales, and it was at the end of a long dirt road. The Hotel Termales was interesting. As we rode in, there were springs emerging along the side of the road. The springs were small, but they gave off a lot of steam in the cold air. I could smell the sulfur. It was obvious we were in a very geologically active region.
The dirt road leading from Volcan Nevado del Ruiz to the Hotel Termales.
As we were unloading the bikes I realized just how cold it was. The sulfur smell was heavy, but it wasn’t too objectionable. The aroma reminded me of Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming or that stretch in Baja between Mexicali and San Felipe (two other geologically active regions I had ridden through on previous motorcycle adventures).
We checked in and a young guy carried my bags up to my room. It was a great room at the far end of the hotel. I had a huge window just above the bed with a commanding view of Manizales, the nearest town nestled in a valley perhaps 30 miles away. The lights of Manizales sparkled in the evening air. It would have made a good photograph, but truth be told, I was about photographed out that night. The ride up to the volcano had been demanding and I wanted to get in that hot pool.
The bellboy explained how to work the heater. To my surprise, it was an electrical heater that blew air through an electrically-heated grid. It was noisy and I thought it might keep me up, but I enjoyed the heat it threw as soon as the guy turned it on. I thought it was odd that with all the hot water coming out of the ground the hotel opted for electrical heating. That’s what happens when you’re an engineer, I guess. You look at things and wonder why.
I met Juan and Carlos in the lobby and we went outdoors to the hot springs pool. We were in our swimsuits and, wow, it was cold out there! Juan had warned us that he pool water was scalding hot and it was best to ease into it gradually, but it was so cold out there I wanted to get submerged as quickly as I could. It was a real shock going from the frigid air into that super-hot water, but I acclimated to it quickly. It was wonderful soaking up all that heat. I had been chilled to the bone, and now I was being boiled. The water had a strong sulfur odor, but I didn’t mind that at all. I was enjoying the heat.
I found that the water temperature, while hot throughout the pool, was much hotter where the water fed into the pool. I stayed close to the water inlets as very hot water cascaded over my shoulders and neck. These areas bothered me every night, no doubt due to the muscle tension associated with riding the Colombian twisties. Those hot springs helped enormously. It was better than being in a Jacuzzi.
That night we ate in the Hotel Termales restaurant. I strayed from my usual evening meal (nearly always chicken) and I tried the truche (that’s Spanish for trout). It was exquisite. Trout in the US is always a dicey proposition. Usually there’s only a small amount of meat on the fish (US trout all belong to Weight Watchers, I suppose). That was not the case here. Even though the truche was about the same length as a US trout, it easily had twice the meat on the bone. It was succulent, it had a pink hue to it, and it almost tasted like salmon. It so intrigued me that I looked up truche up on the Internet, and I learned that trout is actually in the salmon family. In Colombia, I guess the trout family relationship is much stronger than it is in the US.
I slept like a baby that night. The hot air heater didn’t keep me up at all. It was very cold outside, but my room was toasty.
So, back to what I mentioned at the beginning of this chapter…as I fell asleep that night, I thought about everything we did that day. Day 7, just like Days 1 through 6, had been a full day. Breakfast in Honda, exploring the town and the very first bridge to cross the Magdalena River, the river museum, Fresno, hard core cornering as we climbed into the clouds, bitter cold, fog more obscure than the US tax code, dirt roads, riding higher than I had ever ridden before (above 13,562 feet!), volcanic dust from a volcano that could have used some Pepto Bismol, a hot springs bath, and a delicious trout dinner. It had been another day in Paradise. I was loving it.
I thought about everything we had done during the day, and then I realized tomorrow was Day 8. I felt a strong twinge of regret when I realized it would be our last day on the road in Colombia.
And there you have it! If you want to read the entire story, get yourself a copy of Moto Colombia!
I’ve enjoyed fantastic adventure rides on fantastic motorcycles in fantastic places. One of the best adventure touring motorcycles available at any price is the Zongshen RX3 (brought to the US by CSC Motorcycles), and one of my rides on this fantastic machine was in Colombia. Colombia was one of the greatest rides ever. Want a taste of that adventure? Hey, here’s one of the chapters from Moto Colombia on a ride at extreme elevation…a visit to an active volcano. We’re presenting it here in two blogs…one today and another tomorrow. Enjoy, my friends…
Day 7: Volcan Nevado del Ruiz
Breakfast in a delightful hotel, more mountain twisties, sweltering heat, freezing cold, fog that cut visibility down to 30 feet, dirt roads, riding at 13,576 feet, hot sulfur baths, a burbling volcano that killed 23,000 people in 1985, and volcanic dust in our eyes…it would all be in a day’s ride for us on this, our 7th day on the road in Colombia.
The Casa Belle Epoque was a great little boutique hotel in Honda. It was one of the coolest places (in one of the hottest cities) I’ve ever parked a motorcycle in front of (uh oh, I just ended a sentence with a preposition, but you get the idea). As always, I was up early, but the hotel staff was up even earlier and I enjoyed a cup of dark Colombian coffee after sleeping soundly through the night. My laundry was done, it was wrapped up nicely, and it was dry. That nice lady the night before was right; my laundry had dried. I was surprised and pleased.
Carlos and Juan enjoying a magnificent morning meal in the Casa Belle Epoque.
I used the time before Juan and Carlos came down to breakfast to examine some of the antiques in the hotel’s dining room and lobby. Antiques are a big thing in Colombia, I guess. I remembered the restaurant from a few days ago similarly adorned with old things. I thought about writing to Mike and Frank…perhaps they could do a Colombian Pickers episode.
An antique record player in the Casa Belle Epoque.
After breakfast, Juan, Carlos, and I walked over to where the bikes had been secured for the evening. We rang the bell at another massive gate and waited for the groundskeeper to come unlock it. I half expected to see that fellow from Romancing the Stone stick his face through the window and say, “Joan? Joan Wilder?”
Juan had an exploration of Honda in mind, and as always, I followed him with Carlos riding behind me. That was our standard riding formation, and we would cover about 2600 kilometers riding Colombia in that formation. Those two guys took good care of me.
I thought the roads in Zipaquira were steep (and they were), but Honda’s cobblestone streets took things to the next level. I couldn’t believe the streets we were navigating. You might think I am exaggerating, but I am not. I didn’t quite have to slip the clutch to get up the hills, but I was pretty close to doing that. The hills in Honda were strictly first gear affairs. Someone once told me in situations like this, you just look where you want to go. That’s what I did. On these streets and on those cobblestones, I wondered if we would have had enough traction to get up the hills if the streets had been wet. The roads were that steep.
We rode up a mountainside and arrived at a most interesting bridge. It was painted bright yellow and it had wooden planks for the road surface (and they were a good 300 feet above the Magdalena). This was real Indiana Jones stuff. Juan and Carlos told me the bridge was built by the San Francisco Bridge Company in 1898 and it was the first bridge in Colombia to span the Magdalena River. The photo ops were incredible with the bright yellow bridge, the bright blue sky, the verdant green of the mountains, and the river below us.
The first bridge across the Magdalena River, built by the San Francisco Bridge Company in 1898.
An older woman emerged from a stone house on our side of the bridge and she smiled when I pointed to my camera. She somehow reminded me of my grandmother. She was full of smiles until I put the camera up, and then I couldn’t get her to smile (my grandmother had the same uneasiness around a camera).
The bridgekeeper in Honda. This charming Colombian lady graciously consented to a photograph.
There were folks way below us digging in the banks of the Magdalena (I don’t know for what…perhaps some form of freshwater clams, or maybe gold or emeralds). I looked at those guys below the bridges, I thought of the Internet trolls who love to criticize the RX3 (you know, trolls hanging out under bridges), and I laughed. Those Internet morons would never experience the kind of riding we were doing. All they could do was criticize. We were out here living the adventure. I felt a brief tinge of pity for the Internet trolls, but it passed quickly.
From that vantage point above the Magdalena River, we could see distant ridges in the Andes on the horizon. They were capped with snow and the clouds were just above the peaks. Juan pointed to one where the cloud seemed to emanate from the top of a mountain. It was a good 80 miles away.
Volcan Nevado del Ruiz, visible on the horizon. It erupted and killed 23,000 Colombians in 1985. It was our destination that evening.
“That is Volcan Nevado del Ruiz,” Juan said, pointing at the peak touching the clouds. I returned a blank look. “It is the volcano we are riding to today,” Juan explained.
“We’re riding to a volcano?” I asked.
“Yes,” Juan answered. “Volcan Nevado del Ruiz. It erupted in 1985 and killed many people.”
I checked out what Juan told me later that evening after I could get an Internet connection. “Many” was something north of 23,000 people. They were all killed deader than Julius Caesar, and it all happened just 30 years ago. And we were riding our motorcycles to it. I thought about the bikers I knew in California who thought they had something to brag about because they rode to the Laughlin River Run. Right.
I looked at the distant peak again and took a photo. I was really too far away to see anything, but with Juan’s explanation I knew that what had appeared to be a mountain reaching into the clouds was actually a volcano belching steam. I’ve been to a lot of places on a motorcycle, but I’ve never ridden a motorcycle (or anything else, for that matter) up to an active volcano!
We left the bridge, rode a less than a mile, and stopped at a museum dedicated to the Magdalena River’s history. As I mentioned earlier, the Magdalena River is Colombia’s version of the Mississippi. It’s huge, and Colombia developed around it. This museum in Honda was exclusively about the river.
The Magdalena River Museum in Honda.
We spent an hour at the museum. We could have spent a day there. The Magdalena River and its surrounding areas were more like the Mississippi River and the United States than I would have imagined. The Magdalena flows through cotton and coffee plantations. It was Colombia’s primary trade route as the country developed. The Colombians used large steamboats of similar design to those used on our Mississippi River in the 1800s. It was another example of how Colombia’s history paralleled the history of the United States.
The Museo del Rio Magdalena had interesting displays about the river, the crops it transported, the steamboats, the indigenous populations along the river, the early explorers, and more. The museum also had an interesting photo exhibit consisting entirely of photos shot by students using pinhole cameras of their own construction. The photos were good and I enjoyed seeing them.
I especially liked a long painting along one wall depicting the Magdalena’s 1000-mile length, and notable things along the river. It gave me a much better feel for and appreciation of the magnificent country we had been riding through. Our museum visit was a very successful one. I enjoyed it. It was one of the high points of the trip for me.
One of the halls inside the Magdalena River Museum (note the mural on the left wall showing key points along the Magdalena’s 1000-mile length).
As I mentioned, we spent an hour at the museum, and when we left Honda was sweltering again. Juan looked at my clothes and laughed. I had been worried the previous night about my laundry having enough time to dry at the hotel. It was only 10:00 a.m. and I was already drenched in sweat. My clothes were soaked.
A pretty young lady, the museum curator, gave us a tour of the museum during our visit. She seemed cool and totally at ease with the heat and the humidity. I realized as I listened to her discuss the exhibits that she was used to living in the tropics, but I still wondered how she was able to get through the day without perspiring like me.
An old riverboat photo in the Magdalena River Museum.
I like history. I think I’m too old to go back to school now, but if ever went back to college for another degree, it would be for a degree in history. I like learning about how things developed, including countries, companies, and cultures. I thought that hour in the Museo del Rio Magdalena was one of the best hours I spent during my entire stay in Colombia.
The museum visit further reinforced a thought I had earlier when we visited Boyacá about the similarities between our US culture and the Colombian culture. Our American Revolution was for independence from the British. Colombia’s war of independence did the same with the Spanish. The British took our natural resources and taxed us without representation. The Spanish looted Colombia’s gold and emeralds. We in the US have a lot of things in common with the people of Colombia.
I don’t know if Juan planned our visit to the Museo del Rio Magdalena. He did a magnificent job planning our adventure tour, but I had the impression when we spotted this museum that he made an impromptu decision to visit it. Whether our stop was planned or accidental, if you ever get to Honda, you don’t want to miss this spot.
Colombian artwork in the Magdalena River Museum.
As we left the museum and pulled our gear on, the sweat was pouring off me and I was showing the effects of the heat. Carlos told me not to worry. We would be cool soon enough as we climbed back into the Andes’ higher altitudes.
I sure was more comfortable when we were on the bikes again. Let’s generate a breeze, I thought, and we did. Juan wanted to try a new way out of Honda, and it worked. Nobody needs a GPS as long as Juan is leading the pack.
Our next destination was to be Fresno (yep, Colombia has a Fresno, too). The road between Honda and Fresno was great. You must be thinking by now that I’ve said that about every road we had ridden in Colombia. Yep, I did. And they were.
My motorcycle in Fresno. As Juan said, the traffic rules “are like suggestions to us.”
We arrived in Fresno and stopped for a break. The town followed the standard Colombian Andes Mountains formula: Steep up and down streets and a magnificent square in front of a majestic church. And Carlos had been right about the temperature. Even though it was midday and sunny, it had cooled considerably as we climbed into the mountains. Fresno was comfortable.
Fresno’s town square had an interesting exhibit with a statue of Juan Valdez and his mule, carrying only the finest Colombian coffee beans (as the commercials used to proclaim). Carlos took a photo of Mr. Valdez and me.
Juan Valdez and two jackasses in Fresno.Two young ladies in a Fresno corner store.
There were chairs and a table in front of a small store next to Fresno’s church. We bought soft drinks from two nice young ladies working there and we took seats at the table. It was relaxing sitting there, watching the good folks of Fresno go about their lives. A pretty girl pulled up on a motorcycle and parked on the sidewalk. I could get used to Fresno, I thought.
We left Fresno and stopped to refuel on the way out. The road continued to climb, the temperatures continued to drop, and the sun disappeared behind the clouds we were climbing into. It rained and little bit and then stopped. The roads dried, the sun remained hidden, and the twisties became even more glorious. I knew we were high up in the mountains. I didn’t know how high, but I knew we were way up there. I was surprised at how well the bikes were performing. Although the AKT version of the RX3 is carbureted, I couldn’t feel a drop in performance as the altitude increased (and our ride had taken us literally from sea level to over 13,000 feet).
There wasn’t any traffic (we had the road to ourselves) and Juan stepped up the pace. It was just a modest increase at first, and then he ratcheted it up. By this time I was comfortable on these twisting roads and comfortable with my heavily-laden RX3. I hung in there with Juan, with Carlos right on my tail. It just felt like the right thing to do, and it felt entirely natural.
To be continued…watch for tomorrow’s ExNotes blog. And if you want to read the entire story, get yourself a copy of Moto Colombia!
At one time I owned a 1973 BMW R75/5 motorcycle. I traded 1300 dollars and a 1957 small-window VW van for the BMW. The good points about the bike were the suspension and the weight. For a 750cc the bike was lightweight and the thing had plenty of fork travel so it worked pretty good off road. The bad part was the charging system. I never could get the damn thing to electric start due to the battery being low. At the time I tried everything I knew to fix it but the little red discharge light was on constantly.
But this story isn’t about the BMW because I soon lost my driver’s license by wheeling and speeding around Florida on the German motorcycle. (It would do 110 MPH!) Maybe that’s the root of my animosity towards the brand. It had a bizarre ignition key to boot.
A year or two earlier Florida had changed the description of a moped and you no longer needed a driver’s license to operate one. I still had to travel 10 miles to my job at the JC Penny auto store so my mom drove me to the Garelli dealer on 49th street and I picked up their loss leader, Plain Jane Garelli moped for 399 dollars.
With no speedo and painted fenders the red Garelli was a study in thrift. It got 80 miles to a pre-mix gallon flat out at 30 miles per hour. Helmets weren’t required on a moped so I didn’t wear one. I wore a ball cap turned backwards.
My route to work changed to avoid busy roads. I crossed railroad trestles and scrambled behind Hialeah Speedway cutting across parking lots and running down alleys being chased by the exact same dog each day. The ride to work became an adventure and I learned to wheelie the Garelli for long distances. The moped’s lights were not exactly powerful but they always worked and the ride home at night kept the thrill going.
In the rearmost section of the luggage rack was a tin box containing the Garelli’s tool kit. The tool set was a spark plug socket and a couple wrenches of the cheapest thin steel so I used a letter punch to stamp ‘Snap-On” into the factory tools. This got huge laughs whenever I dragged the kit out to do what little maintenance the Garelli needed.
I rode the Garelli for three months and even after my license was reinstated I kept riding the moped for a while to save my driver’s license for a big cross-country trip my buddies and me had planned. I finally sold the bike for 300 dollars to an old man who could barely pedal the thing fast enough to get it started.
When I saw the first photographs of Royal Enfield’s new 650 twin the bike seemed perfect. 650 vertical twins have owned the sweet-spot of cool long before McQueen bashed them around the desert and they are still an ideal size and configuration for all around use. Unfortunately the latest vertical twin offerings from other motorcycle manufacturers have sprouted slow-moving tumorous pistons, lost their summer beach-bodies and become uselessly complex. The whole situation kind of put me on edge. I was actually a bit angry: “Royal Enfield better not screw this up,” I mumbled to my cat.
At one time I owned a 1973 BMW R75/5 motorcycle. I traded 1300 dollars and a 1957 small-window VW van for the BMW. The good points about the bike were the suspension and the weight. For a 750cc the bike was lightweight and the thing had plenty of fork travel so it worked pretty good off road. The bad part was the charging system. I never could get the damn thing to electric start due to the battery being low. At the time I tried everything I knew to fix it but the little red discharge light was on constantly.