Category: Feel Good Stuff

Mompox

So, about that photo at the top of our ExhaustNotes blog. We had a contest to see if anyone could identify the location (with a copy of Moto Colombia! as the prize), and after several weeks, our good buddy Patrick grabbed the brass ring. It’s Mompox in Colombia. It was a magic place we rode (and sailed) to on our second day in this wonderful country.

Colombia was easily one of the two best motorcycle rides I’d ever done (the other was China). I rode with great guys while I was there…my good buddies Juan and Carlos. To get the full impact of that photo at the top of the blog, allow me to share with you an excerpt from Moto Colombia! telling a bit more about Mompox…

********************************

Boarding the ferry to Mompox for the trip down the Magdalena River.

Finally, it was time to start loading the ferry. The guys directing this operation had the trucks turn around so they could back onto the ferry. These were big trucks, the angle down to the boat was steep, and there wasn’t all that much room on the boat. Juan told me they load the trucks first, then the cars, and then the bikes (we would be the last ones to get on the ferry).

When the first truck’s rear wheels rolled onto the port side of the ferry, the entire boat tilted.  Guys with the shovels materialized and piled dirt on the now tilted-to-the-left ramp. The second truck fired up its diesel engine and slowly backed down the bank to load on the starboard side. The ferry leveled out. This was repeated until the loadmasters had two lanes of trucks on either side of the ferry, then the cars backed onto the ferry, and then it was time for us to ride our motorcycles onto the boat. I’m smiling as I type this, because I remember how exciting this all was. It was incredible fun.

Loading a ferry from the Magdalena’s muddy banks.

After the boat was loaded, I wanted to hop off and grab a photo, but there was a woman who was directing traffic who motioned for me to stay on the boat. She was perhaps 50 years old and she was stunning. Many of the Colombian women I met on this trip were stunning. I’ve heard people say Colombia has the most beautiful women in the world. They might be right.

The ride down the Magdalena River was magical. When I say “down” the Magdalena, it felt unnatural. We were heading downstream, but we were sailing north. I’ve never been on a river in the United States where you can do that. The Magdalena flows north to the Caribbean from deep within the upper reaches of Colombia’s Andes Mountains.

This entire region is an area laden with waterways. Mompox used to be on the Magdalena. The town is still in its original location, but at some point in the distant past the Magdalena changed its course. The main branch of the Magdalena took a turn on its way to the Caribbean to meet the sea at Barranquilla, and Mompox was left behind.

I shot a video on our ride to Mompox and I posted it on YouTube that evening. It was fun…

The ride was comfortable because it was cooler on the river and the ferry created its own breeze. When I panned around with the camera, to my great surprise Juan was on top of the pilot’s cabin. The whole thing added another dimension to this adventure that I really enjoyed, and we were only into our second day of an 8-day ride.

We arrived at the debarkation point, and as I knew from other ferry debarkations, getting off the boat can only be described as controlled chaos. The ride up the dirt bank at this end of our trip was even steeper, and traffic converged to a single lane on a steep uphill dirt slope. Juan was in front of me and we were all stopped.

There was a huge truck on my left (the top of its wheels were at eye level when I was on the bike), I was on dirt, there was a taxi crowding me on my right, and I was pointed uphill at a severe angle. Juan was able to get between the truck and the taxi and pull away. I slipped the clutch and eased up the hill, leaning the bike sharply to the right to keep my left pannier from touching the truck tires. As I did so, I felt my right pannier scraping along the taxi’s fender. Not good, I thought. I scraped along the taxi (it was motionless), I got past it, and we were gone. Surprisingly, the aluminum case was unmarked when I checked it later (it didn’t have a scratch). I don’t know how the taxi fared (no pun intended).

Juan’s rearward-facing photo, shot from the saddle of his motorcycle, as we maneuvered along a dirt road on the way to Mompox. Photo by Juan Carlos Posada Roa.

The next 10 miles or so were rough. The road was dirt, it was a bit gnarly in spots, and there was a lot of traffic. The sun was setting and I was a little uncomfortable. I don’t consider myself much of a dirt rider, and I especially don’t like riding on dirt in the dark. Juan and Carlos were unfazed by all of this; they are used to the roads. Juan even turned around on his bike to take pictures of Carlos and me while we were all moving.

When we entered Mompox it was already dark. Juan found the hotel quickly, we checked in, and Juan asked for a restaurant recommendation. I was picking up enough Spanish to know that he asked for a good pizza spot (¿Dónde hay un buen lugar para una pizza?). The nice young lady who checked us in recommended a place owned by an Austrian a block away.

Quite possibly the best pizza I have ever had.

We each ordered an Aguila (that’s a Colombian beer), and those first cold brews went down easy. So did the second one. This was our second night on the road and we were already comfortable with each other. We ordered a couple of pizzas; the recommendation had been a good one. The dinner was great. It was quite possibly the best pizza I’ve ever had.

The conversation that evening was relaxing and intellectually stimulating. Juan told me about Mompox and its historical significance to Colombia. He mentioned the Pulitzer-Prize-winning novel 100 Years of Solitude, written by the great Colombian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I was embarrassed to admit to Juan and Carlos that I had not read it (a character flaw I corrected as soon as I returned to the United States). The novel was set in the mythical town of Macondo. Some people think that Marquez based his fictional town of Macondo on his own Colombian home town of Aracataca, the town where he was born. Others believe Macondo used Mompox as the novel’s inspiration. I am firmly in the second camp. While reading the novel after I returned to the US, I felt as if Marquez was describing the areas we rode through, and his descriptions of Macondo kept my mind drifting back to Mompox.

Carlos, me, and Juan having pizza, beer, and a literary discussion in Mompox.

When we finished dinner, I thought we would go back to the hotel and call it a night. I was tired. I told Juan and Carlos I wanted to post an entry on the blog I wrote for CSC Motorcycles.

“Joe,” Juan said, “your readers will wait.”

The way he said it made me realize he was right. The blog took a back seat to walking along the Mompox riverfront with Juan and Carlos that evening. I was glad I listened to Juan.  I captured some of the best photos of my entire stay in Colombia while we were in Mompox.

The Santa Barbara Church in Mompox. It is a brilliantly-colored yellow and white structure. I had to put the D3300 on manual focus for these shots; there was not enough light for the camera to autofocus.
The Church of San Francisco in Mompox. This church was a deep burgundy with white trim. It was striking in the evening.

Mompox, a place I had never heard of, is an absolute treasure. I’ve read a bit about it since my return, and it’s intriguing. Mompox looks pretty much like it did in Colombia’s colonial times. The place was founded in 1540, and in 1998 it was designated a World Heritage site. Mompox used to be a key trading center when the Magdalena River flowed by it, but when the river decided to take another route to the sea, time more or less forgot Mompox (exactly as described in 100 Years of Solitude, by the way, for the fictional town of Macondo).

Mompox was a big port for the Spanish while they were systematically looting Colombia’s gold and emeralds. Mompox’s inland location helped protect the soon-to-be-seaborne loot from Sir Francis Drake and his pirates, who were as busy stealing from the Spanish as the Spanish were stealing from the indigenous Colombians. I remember seeing the river front and imagining galleons so laden with treasure the tops of the boats were barely above the water line. I may be exaggerating, but not by much. Many of those Spanish galleons sunk in rough seas because they were so overloaded.

Homes along the river in Mompox. It would be awesome to live here.

That late night walk along the river was one I’ll remember forever. The place was an explosion of color and I was having a blast photographing it. There was a wall I used to stabilize the camera, and I shot at a low ISO to get great colors. I was lucky to be able to shoot this city at night; the colors were far more saturated than they would be if I shot in sunlight. It was 10:00 in the evening and the place was alive. People were walking along the river, small motorcycles with young couples were burbling along on the narrow streets, cafes were serving coffee, and salsa music drifted through the humid evening air. I remember thinking it was amazing I had never heard of this place before.

The money shot, taken along the riverfront in Mompox.

Juan told me that there are plans to build a bridge to Mompox. That would do away with the need for the ferry and the ride down the Magdalena River to get to this magical place. I’m not so sure that’s a good thing. Mompox and the journey to reach it are special. I am glad Juan included it in our itinerary.

Day 2 had been a good day. A great day, actually. Juan knew what he was doing when he planned this trip. I thought about our first two days. I wasn’t playing at being Indiana Jones on this ride; I was Indiana Jones. On a motorcycle, no less. I couldn’t wait to experience the coming days. I wondered: Had the trip’s high points peaked too soon? How could Juan have possibly planned this adventure with even better things awaiting our exploration?

Did you enjoy reading the above?  Hey, I wrote a book about that ride, and you can order it here.   I think you’ll like reading it, and I know I sure had fun writing it!

Vintage Rolls at the Nethercutt

We had a grand time at the Nethercutt Collection yesterday.   There were several collections within this collection, and two of our favorites were the vintage Rolls Royce and the vintage Cadillac collections.  This post focuses on the Rolls Royces; we’ll post the Caddies a bit later.

All of the above photos were in the main hall of the Nethercutt Collection, where approximately 150 cars are on display.   Across the street, in the showroom for the guided tour, we saw the Rolls that formerly belonged to Constance Bennett, an actress.

This is the greatest collection of vintage cars I’ve ever seen, and it’s all free. We had an earlier Nethercutt post from a prior visit, and you can see that one here.

Keep an eye on the ExhaustNotes blog; we’ll be posting the Nethercutt’s  similar series of vintage Cadillacs in the next few days.

No More, No Motus

The shocking news is that they lasted 10 years. Motus Motorcycles announced they were shutting down and I mean right now. Which is a shame because I liked the looks of their sport tourer and it apparently had a great engine. Legendary moto-journalist Jack Lewis said he liked the bike and that’s good enough for me. The Motus sold for around 30,000 dollars. That undercut some other American-made motorcycles in the rarified cruiser category but was still a hefty chunk of change for a sport tourer.

The mighty Motus is no more.

I saw Motus at Daytona long time ago, before the production motorcycles were available. There were a couple of good-natured models standing around the bike. Closer to the ground and less aloof than the Ducati models, the girls wore short black skirts and belly-exposing, Motus logoed crop-top T-shirts. I joked around with them and they let me pose for for a photograph with one on each arm. The girls really didn’t know anything about the Motus but they were packing in the crowds. I thought it was damn good marketing.

Good natured and good looking, Joe Gresh is.

I never got to ride a Motus. I never asked the company for a loaner. They were getting plenty of coverage in the moto-press and I am not very ambitious. The V-four engine attracts a lot of attention because of its small size and torque. Loosely based on a Scat style engine, I predict a bright future selling the Motus engine as a stand-alone unit.

Old British sports car owners, guys tired of being run over in 4-cylinder Jeeps, perhaps racers in a spec-engine mini, sprint-car series are all potential customers for a reorganized Motus. Call the new company Motus Power Systems and sell bolt-in kits to repower various lightweight 4-wheelers.

Could taller, more aloof models have saved Motus? Hard to say. My advice to Motus is to forget about motorcycles. There are so many fantastic bikes available we don’t need another. The entire United States motorcycle industry would fit inside the tackle box of the recreational fishing industry. Motorcycles are such a tiny fraction, a statistical rounding error really, of the greater automotive economy that it’s not worth Motus’ trouble.

Hell, if you sold every motorcycle rider in America a Motus you’d still need to borrow money from me to get Uber fare home. The money simply isn’t there. So start work on the Jeep/Motus repower kit, boys. I’ll be first in line to mooch a test fitting in Brumby the YJ. I’ll even let you guys hire models to pose next to the old Jeep.

Old, new again…

Doug Turnbull Restorations is a cool company specializing in firearm restorations and new firearms treated with classic color case hardening.  This video showed up in an email this morning…

Here’s another one that’s interesting…the restoration of an old axe.   The video is well done and the finished products (both the axe and the video) are impressive…

Tracy!

During the summer of 2016, your blogmeisters (Arjiu and Dajiu) rode RX3 motorcycles 6000 miles across China.   Tracy was our translator and he was funny as hell.

Our good friend Tracy is an up and comer in the Zongshen organization.  He sent an email to us recently, along with the above photo.  Tracy is being reassigned to the Zongshen team in Mexico, and Gresh and I may take a ride down there once Tracy is in country.   You can bet the beer will flow freely when that happens!

Hey, buy two or three…they make great gifts!

If you’d like to read the story of our ride across China, you can do so here.   It was a great ride and an amazing adventure.

Tales from the Trail

Or maybe the title of this one should be:  Go West, Young Man!  That’s what Ernie did, and that’s what I did, too.

My good buddy Ernie and I go back.  Way back. As in kindergarten back.   Hell, that was 62 years ago.  That’s how long I’ve known Ernie.  Elementary school, junior high school, high school, and beyond.  Whoooeee!

Ernie and yours truly in elementary school.

Anyway, we’re coming up on our 50th year high school reunion back in the Garden State, and Ernie has been posting stories (along with a few other folks) about what’s gone on his life over the last five decades.  Ernie’s stuff is good, and it sure hit home for me.  I asked Ernie if I could run one of his stories here on the blog, and he agreed.  You’ll like this…I know I sure did.

Fast forward 5 years, and it was 1969, and that meant high school graduation. Two boys from the Garden State. We both had a lot of hair back then. Ernie still does.

And those photos above?   They are, as you probably guessed, from our school yearbooks.  Yep, I still have them.

Ernie, over to you, my friend…

*************************************

Thanks, everybody, and especially you, Joe. I enjoy your tales on the trail. I have a few tales that you might enjoy, too.

In 1979 when our daughter Stephanie was born, we made one of our good friends Jim her Godfather. Jim was really cool. He and his brother were on a road trip with Jim’s wife Bonnie, and I was lucky enough to have met them and made friends with them, when I decided to get out of NJ and try my hand at the West.

I had been to Salt lake City about a half year before with two of my buddies. We had a few weeks where the 35-man shop was a bit slow due to the economy, so the three of us did a scouting expedition points West. We left in late October, and as luck would have it, we hit a bad snow storm in Pennsylvania.

After we made it through that, we pushed on across Ohio, Indiana and into Illinois. It was around midnight and as it has happened before to me since then, I-80 had construction and we made a wrong turn and were headed straight into the windy city. It was hell getting back on track and on 80 west again. We wasted a good hour. The highway around the area is a lot like the famed city. It blows, too.

Well, on we went. it was dark out when we were in western Nebraska and entering Wyoming. We stopped in a bar and my friend Paul, all he could talk about was Coors beer all the way from NJ, so we needed this break and to our delight guess what they had on tap. Well, it was pitcher time. All we heard was Paul’s mouth flapping happy about that ice-cold Coors.

When we got back on the road, and into Wyoming as luck would have it, a herd of mule deer were about to run out in front of us, but our headlights persuaded them not to. A while later we saw our first Western state’s snow. We stopped at a rest area and spent a good half hour throwing snowballs at one another. Finally, we rolled into Utah, and the sign said Port of Entry. The hell with the port, we wanted more Coors. Then we experienced our first big downhill run. Parley’s Canyon. 14 miles downhill at a 6% grade, winding through the Rockies.

We saw our first major “run-away truck lane.” If I was a semi, I would want to run away too. Then we saw a big opening and soon…ta dah…the Salt Lake Valley loomed in front of us. We intersected with I-15 and off to our left we spotted Dryer’s Harley Davidson. We decided that was going to be our first stop. Good thing too, because right next to it was a tavern. Well I can go on and on about this trip because we had some great experiences throughout Utah, which we circled, and some cool adventures on the way home with 25 cases of Coors beer. And we got stuck in a snowbank in Kansas, and a state trooper helped get us out. And, as luck again would have it, the exit we took led us to the hotel that they used in that movie Paper Moon. We stayed there. Yahoo!

So that scouting trip was the deciding factor that Chris and I were going to move to Salt Lake City. Months later my Dad and I took off in my Dodge van and drove across country to Salt Lake. I got the biggest kick out of my Dad, all the way across he was wide awake and thrilled at all the sights he saw. He stayed with me a few days till I found a good place to camp to look for an apartment. It was sad. It was the first and only time I saw my Dad tear up.

I camped out at the KOA on I-80. That’s where I met Jim, Bonnie, and Tom. They were on a bike road trip, and the cool thing about it was both Jim and Tom worked at the Harley-Davidson factory in Milwaukee. They both worked in engines and transmissions. Later Jim became a factory test rider. His job each night was to log in 250 miles on the test bikes (what a job, what a job!). They even sent him to Harley’s test track in Texas to race their bikes. We were at the big car show back in February and Harley had a big van there with all their new models. I entered a contest and got to talking to one of their staff. It turned out he knew Jim and Tom well. Jim still works there.

I went back to NJ to pick up my 1974 74 cubic inch dresser from my parents’ house. On the way out of NJ, I was pulled over by a state trooper who noticed my bike in the back of my van. I had shoulder length hair then and a beard and all, and I looked the part, I guess. Well ha, ha, ha. I whipped out my registration and bill of sale and foiled that trooper’s ideas.

I did lots and lots of riding while living in Utah with and without Chris. So, back to the main objective of the story, Joe. When our daughter was born we invited Jim and Bonnie to Stephanie’s christening. A few days later (this is now in Gresham, Oregon) I wanted to escort Jim and Bonnie out of town. It ended up I drove all the way to the California border with them, via the mountain pass at Eugene to Highway 101. Here is the part you may find fascinating, Joe. The Harley I had at the time was a stock 1965 Electra Glide. The problem was the front brake was out all the way down. The real issue was, the rear brake went out just when I started home from leaving Jim and Bonnie. I drove that bike up 101, through the hairy mountain pass and around that damn grooved circle they used to have in Eugene (you know how it makes your front tire wobble, Joe), then the 120 miles up I-5 in heavy traffic on the I-205 (which at the time was not completed) and on back roads to Gresham. It was challenging as hell, but a real thrill ride.

The other story is one of my best friends named John, who was a factory-sponsored, award-winning motorcycle racer for Harley-Davidson. He once rode a Harley from Seattle all the way to Portland on old highway 99 with tons of stop lights and through many small towns without a clutch, and never stopped or stalled the bike. He also hill climbed the widow maker between Salt Lake and Provo canyons, and get this, he took his Harley up to the top of Beacon Rock on Highway 14 (you know where it is, Joe), and he almost made it to the very top of Mt. Hood. The sun melted the snow and prevented him from making the last few yards.

Joe, this man was a legend. He built my 1947 Knucklehead from a basket case. The man knew every nut and bolt on just about anything that rolled sailed or flew. I was privileged to have known him.

******************************

Good stuff, Ernie, and thanks for allowing me to share it with our friends over here on the ExhaustNotes blog.  We’re looking forward to seeing you next summer, Dude…we have a lot of catching up to do!

And for our great blog followers, you may be wondering how well the last 50 years have treated us.

Well, wonder no more, my friends…

Life is good.  With lifelong friends like Ernie, it’s even better!

Never miss an ExhaustNotes blog…subscribe here for free!

BajaBound: A great organization!

Our recommendation for Baja motorcycle insurance is BajaBound.

If you’re headed into Baja, you need to have Mexican insurance on your car, truck, motorcycle, or motor scooter.  Your regular US motor vehicle insurance won’t be recognized as meeting this requirement in Mexico.  It’s that simple.

At the risk of being challenged by a keyboard commando telling me that you don’t have to have insurance in Mexico, I’ll say at the outset that what you need is proof of financial responsibility for liability incurred as the result of a motor vehicle accident.  Yeah, there are other ways of getting around this.  You can arrange a bond in advance with a Mexican bank (not very practical), you can carry enough cash to meet Mexico’s upper liability limits (just bring $333,000 in cash with you to show to the officer if you are stopped) or you can get Mexican insurance.  Door No. 3 is the obvious answer.

You might be tempted to just blow off the requirement for Mexican insurance, and you might get away with it. Then again, you might not. If you are stopped (or worse, you have an accident) and you can’t produce proof of Mexican insurance, you are going to be spending a lot more time in Mexico (and the accommodations will dramatically different) than what you originally planned. Trust me on this. It’s just not worth the risk.

I’ve been traveling in Baja and other parts of Mexico for close to 30 years, and I’ve tried several different outfits. To cut to the chase, BajaBound is the easiest and best way to insure your vehicle. What I like about it is that it’s all done online, it’s inexpensive, and it’s a quality product. What you need to get insurance is an internet connection, your driver’s license, a credit card, your bike’s registration, and a printer. That’s it.

Why go for anything but the best?

I always buy my insurance a day or two before I travel to Baja, and I always set it up to start the day I enter Baja (and just to be on the safe side, I insure for one day longer than I plan to be south of the border). If you’re new to BajaBound, you’ll answer a few questions about yourself to set up an account the first time you visit their website, and then you’re ready to start making selections (how many days, how much coverage, etc.). If you’ve insured previously with BajaBound, all you need to do is log in, specify the vehicle you’ll be using (super easy if it’s one you’ve previously insured), specify the dates, and pick the coverage you want. In my case, it typically works out to something south of $20 per day, and that’s a hell of deal.  You pay with a credit card, the policy is immediately available, and all you need to do is print the proof of insurance and you’re good to go.

I’ve been lucky. I’ve never needed to use my BajaBound insurance because I never crashed my car or motorcycle in Mexico. On one of the tours I led in Mexico, though, one of the guys I rode with had a bad crash. He got through it okay, but the motorcycle did not. My friend put in a claim and BajaBound paid promptly. This is the real deal, folks. It’s good insurance, it’s easy to get over the Internet, it meets all of Mexico’s legal requirements, and when necessary, they pay promptly. It doesn’t get any better than that.  It’s the only insurance I use for my Baja forays.

Would you like to know more about riding in Baja?   Hey, it’s the best riding on the planet!  Check out our ExhaustNotes Baja page for the best routes, hotels, restaurants, whale watching, cave paintings, and more!   Do a search here on the ExhaustNotes blog using the search term “Baja.”   Better yet, pick up a copy of Moto Baja, available now on Amazon.com!

Dirty Secret

Dirt roads…my favorite place to ride.

If I were forced to live in a large city I probably wouldn’t ride motorcycles. Connected technology has brought us all closer together, so close that none of us really like what we see from our fellow man. This ubiquitous-connectedness has created a disconnect in a huge quantity of automobile drivers. Proximity sensors that auto-apply braking and lane-holding algorithms are responses to a driving populace that grows ever more disinterested in what is happening on the other side of the windshield. Self driving cars can’t get here soon enough for me.

Public roads are dangerous for motorcycles, no two ways about it, but there is a better place to ride. It’s a place where youthful hijinks don’t end in an expensive traffic citations or death by obliviousness. This place can be found everywhere, mere inches below the civilized world. This place is called The Dirt.

The Dirt. It’s awesome. There are no drivers on their cell phones.

The Dirt is the true and holy Mother Road, unlike The Street, which relies completely on and has to be built on top of The Dirt. The Dirt stands on its own merits needing neither creation nor sustenance. Dirt will still be here long after the last human on Earth has crashed the last Volvo on Earth into the last telephone pole on Earth while sending the last text ever sent…on Earth.

The Dirt encompasses a wide variety of surfaces from graded county roads to nearly impassable paths more suitable to mountain goats. And you can ride a motorcycle over all of it. True, it’s getting harder to find places to ride near population centers. So pull up stakes and move to the less tony parts of the USA where there are miles and miles of dirt roads to explore.

A better place to ride.

Motorcyclists who start out in the dirt are simply better riders than those that don’t. Finding the limit on pavement is risky, expensive and painful. Those same limits can be exceeded and re-exceeded many times while riding in the dirt, sometimes without any input from the rider. Hell, sometimes the rider is tangled in a bush with a sprained thumb while the motorcycle explores the limits on its own. Crashing in The Dirt is less damaging to both body and bike. I’m not saying you can’t get killed dirt riding but it takes a determined effort to accomplish on your own what a drunken car driver will do for free.

The most interesting, less-picked-over sites are accessible only by dirt roads. Fencing and authorities are few and far between. If you see an abandoned mine shaft that needs falling into or a rusty car that needs a few more bullet holes you can fall or shoot with complete freedom.

Listen, don’t let street riding scares put you off motorcycles. Pick up an old dual purpose bike for a thousand or two and start finding your groove out where it’s safe to do the things you like to do.

Dream Bike: Harley XR1000

I liked that Dream Bike piece Gresh did over the weekend about his fantasy bike, the Kawasaki 350cc Avenger.  I like the concept: Articles on the ones that got away.

And as is always the case, if Gresh wrote it, I like it.

Can I say that on this blog?  You know, Gresh and I do most of the writing, so am I allowed to say that about his stuff?  Hey, I don’t care.

I’m guessing if you’re reading this, you have a dream bike.   You know, one you didn’t buy but wish you had.   We’d like to hear about it.   Do a short piece on it with a photo or two and we’ll publish it here.

In the meantime, and because I like “the one that got away” concept so much, I’m going to do a short bit on my dream bike. One of them, anyway. It’s the 1983 Harley XR1000. Yeah, I know, I’m a guy who made his bones writing about small bikes (the CSC RX3, in particular), and the XR1000 is anything but small. But I like it.

The 1983 Harley XR1000. Check out the massive Dellortos and the K&N air filters. All business. I like it.
A view from the other side. I’m not a guy who normally leans left or listens to folks who do, but the XR1000’s asymmetry and leftist tendencies are oddly appealing.

The magazines of the era all panned the XR1000, and every once in a while one of them does a retrospective (and they still don’t like it). You know what? I don’t give a rat’s rear end about some magazine weenie’s opinion. I like the look, the concept, and the sound of the XR1000, and one of my few regrets in life is that I didn’t buy one new in ’83.

Not that I didn’t have good reason back then. I had bought a Harley Electra-Glide Classic, new, in 1979. It was the worst vehicle of any type I’d ever owned, and I swore I’d never buy another Harley. That was the principal thing that kept me from pulling the trigger on a new XR1000 in ’83 (I sold the Electra-Glide in ‘82, and the reliability reputation injuries it left hadn’t healed yet). But time heals all wounds (I wish I had that Electra-Glide now), and if I could find a clean XR1000 I’d be on it in a New York minute.

The magazines said the XR1000 vibrated (they actually paid folks to point that out on a Harley?), you could burn your left leg on the exhaust (duh), and the twin Dellortos hit your knee on the right side of the bike (seriously?). Not content with stating the obvious, one of the magazines actually wrote the bike had a predilection for turning left. A bike based on a flat tracker? A predilection for turning left? And folks wonder why the motorcycle magazine business fell on hard times.

Everything the magazines hated about the XR1000 made me want one more. It was a raw, muscular, asymmetric, no passenger, no compromises, in-your-face motorcycle. I still want one.

We spend a lot of time dreaming about motorcycles.   See our other Dream Bikes here!

Creativity

Most of us think of ourselves as creative people. But we’re really not. In fact, some studies show that our creativity peaks when we are in kindergarten, and takes a steady slide south by the time we graduate from high school. I’d argue that it’s even worse for engineers, as most of our focus never gets beyond meeting minimum requirements at the lowest possible cost. It’s a concept that seems to be in force when we see the latest motorcycles from the major manufacturers, often with nothing newer than paint and decals.

I’m an engineer and I feel comfortable saying the above, and I’m not alone in that regard. Many of the engineering managers I’ve known feel their engineers are not particularly creative. So much so, in fact, that I was asked to develop a course on engineering creativity several years ago, and it’s one I’ve since taught in the US and overseas many times. And in order to do that, I wrote a book covering 16 preferred creativity tools…

Unleashing Engineering Creativity, with an interesting cover photo showing a simple gate latch and a Modelo 1909 Argentine Mauser. Paul Mauser, inventor of the bolt action rifle, got the idea for his new rifle by observing a simple gate latch. Adapting earlier design concepts to new applications involves a technique called TRIZ, developed by a scientist in the former Soviet Union.

Unleashing Engineering Creativity includes a collection of quotes I thought I’d share with you…

Everything that can be invented has been invented.

– Charles H. Duell, Director of US Patent Office, 1899

Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?

– Harry M. Warner, Warner Bros Pictures, 1927

Heavier than air flying machines are impossible.

– Lord Kelvin, President, Royal Society, 1895

The horse is here today, but the automobile is only a novelty – a fad.

– Michigan Savings president, advising against investing in Ford

Video won’t be able to hold on to any market it captures after the first six months. People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night.

– Daryl F. Zanuck, 20th Century Fox, commenting on television, 1946

What use could the company make of an electric toy?

– Western Union, when it turned down rights to the telephone, 1878

And my personal favorite, one I’ve heard many times in my life…

We’ve always done it this way…

– Unknown

All this begs the questions:

What’s the next big thing in motorcycle design?

Where it will come from?

Are other businesses or industries are doing things that might make a new motorcycle more fun?

There’s a creativity technique called lateral benchmarking, which involves looking outside your industry for new ideas. Southwest Airlines greatly reduced their turnaround times after studying how NASCAR pit crews worked.  Is there something a company not in the motorcycle business is doing that would work well in a new motorcycle?

Kano modeling is another creativity technique in which you identify and assess potential cool features not expressed by the customer, but once experienced by a potential customer cinch the sale.  I bought a Corvette in 2004 when I saw its Heads Up Display.

A 2004 Z06 Corvette Heads Up Display. I wasn’t looking for such a feature, but when I saw it, I knew I had to own that car!

I would have never imagined I needed such a thing, but I worked on the F-16 HUD back in the ’70s, and when I saw it in the Z06 I knew I had to have that car.  What’s out there that’s supercool and might be incorporated in the next cool motorcycle?

Hey, do you have any motorcycle ideas? Let us know about them, and we’ll toss them up here on the ExNotes blog for comment.

One of the pages on the ExhaustNotes.us site lists the books we’re written.  Surprisingly, since we’ve launched the site, Unleashing Engineering Creativity has enjoyed a nice sales spike. I guess there are a lot of engineers following ExNotes. That’s cool, and thanks very much, folks!

Let’s wrap this one up with two thoughts.   First, please add your email address to our subscribers list (it’s the widget in the top right corner of this page).   You’ll find out the instant we post a new blog, and we’ll never provide your email address to anyone else.  And second…what are your ideas on new features that might entice you to buy a new motorcycle?   Let us know!