Category: Harley-Davidson

Getting to One

Joe Gresh raised an interesting topic with his recent blog on motorcycle quantity.   You know, how many motorcycles are too many?  That blog got a lot of hits and tons of comments on Facebook.  It seems like he struck a nerve.

The most motorcycles I ever owned at one time was five, which pales in comparison to Gresh’s shop full of motos and maybe the collections of a few other people I know.  When my collection hit that peak, I had a Triumph Daytona 1200, a Harley Heritage Softail, a Suzuki TL1000S, a Honda CBX, and a KLR 650.  That was about 20 years ago. There was no rhyme or reason to my collection and no central theme guiding the contents of my fleet.  I just bought what I liked.  In those days I had more money than brains, but don’t interpret that to mean I was rich.  I just never had a lot of brains.  Most folks who know me recognize that pretty quickly.

My Harley Softail in the muddy plains outside Guerrero Negro, Baja California Sur. There’s a kitchen sink in there somewhere.
The Triumph Tiger. Good, but tall and very heavy. It was essentially a sport bike with excess suspension travel and ADV cosmetics.
Me with a buddy currently in the witness protection program, and my Honda CBX. It was a surprisingly competent touring motorcycle.
The Triumph Speed Triple. One of my buddies nicknamed it the Speed Cripple, which became true for me.
Ah, the yellow locomotive. My Triumph Daytona 1200. Delightfully crude and fast. I loved this bike and I rode the 2005 Three Flags Classic on it.
Turning sportbikes into touring machines…my TL1000S somewhere in Baja. This was a seriously fast motorcycle.

I seemed to hover around that number (five, that is) for a while.  Other bikes moved in to displace one or more of the above, most notably a Triumph Tiger and then a Triumph Speed Triple.  Those were fun, but they’ve gone down the road, too.

One of my favorite former motorcycles for real world adventure riding…the Kawasaki KLR 650 in its natural surroundings (Valle de los Cirios in Baja).

Which one did I enjoy riding most?  That’s easy.  It was the KLR 650.  The KLR 650 was the bike that led me on an arc toward smaller motorcycles, like the CSC RX3 and then a TT250.  I was a bit player implementing Steve Seidner’s decision to bring those motorcycles to America.  The 250s were a lot of fun.  I sold off all the big bikes and only rode 250s for a few years, then I fell in love with the new Royal Enfield 650 Interceptor when it hit the market, and suddenly I was back up to three.

But three, for me, was too many.  I haven’t been riding much in the last few years for a lot of reasons.  The pandemic put a dent in any big travel plans (YMMV, and that’s okay), and constantly moving the battery tender around and cleaning the TT250’s jets was getting old.  I couldn’t move anything in my garage because there was so much stuff crammed in there, and I had to park the TT250 under the rear porch awning.  I don’t have a separate workshop area and I don’t pour concrete (I don’t have Mr. Gresh’s talents, but even if I did, it looks like too much work to me), so hanging on to a big motorcycle fleet was not in the cards.

My TT250. I’ve ridden it in Baja, too. It sold the day after I placed an ad for it a couple of weeks ago, and at the asking price. This bike held its value well.

Badmouthing Facebook has become trendy, but I’ll tell you that Facebook Marketplace came to the rescue.  I already had a ton of photos of my motorcycles and whipping up ads for the TT250 and the RX3 literally took only seconds.  I checked Kelly Blue Book values, picked prices only marginally below what a dealer would charge, and both bikes sold quickly.  The TT250 sold the day after I listed it; the RX3 took one additional day.

All the China haterbator keyboard commandos said Chinese bikes had no resale value.  Like everything else they posted, they were wrong.  The haters said Chinese bikes were unreliable (they were wrong), the haters said you couldn’t get parts for them (they were wrong), the haters said they were built with slave labor (I’ve been in the factories, and they were wrong), and they said they had no resale value (and they were wrong about that, too).  My 6-year-old RX3 with 20,000 miles on the clock went for 69% of its original MSRP, and my 5-year-old TT250 with 3,000 miles went for 74% of its original MSRP.  That’s pretty good, I think. And both sold right away.  Not that I was in a hurry to sell.  I probably could have held out for more.

My current sole ride (or is that soul ride?), the Royal Enfield Interceptor 650 on Baja’s Highway 1 south of Ensenada.  At this point in my life, one motorcycle is enough.  Your mileage may vary.

So I’m down to one motorcycle, and that’s the Enfield.  For me, at this point in my life, one motorcycle is the right number (your mileage may vary).  I’m on to other “how many” questions now, like how many guns are too many, and how many bicycles are too many.  The answer to both of those questions is something south of my current number, but those are topics for future blogs.

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The Big Ride: 5 Factors Affecting Daily Mileage

How many miles can you ride in a day?

About 30 years ago I cranked 1070 miles in one day on a Harley Softail coming home from Mexico (and that was on an older Softail without the rubber mounted engine…it’s the one you see in the photo above).  I was younger and I could ride, as they say, like the wind.  A couple of weeks ago, I did a 250-mile day ride on my Enfield and it about wiped me out.

Gresh and I were talking about this recently, and I thought I would share my thoughts on how many miles you can plan on covering in a day.  Maybe it will influence your planning.  Maybe not.  We get paid the same either way.

1: Age

Like I said above, big miles used to be no big deal for me.  That’s not the case any more.  After substantial scientific study and close observation of my geezer buddies over many decades, I developed a graph showing the relationship between age and how many miles you can reasonably ride in a day.

Like it or not, when we get older, it gets harder to rack up big miles.  Serious scientific study went into the above, so if you want to debate our conclusions, bring facts.  We want to hear them.

2: Weather

Weather plays a big role in how many miles you can ride in a single day, and here at ExNotes we rely heavily on our weather rock before leaving on any ride.  You’ve probably heard about weather rocks.  We sell weather rocks here on ExNotes and they are conveniently sized to fit into a tank bag.  They work like this…you hang the rock from any available support (you have to supply your own string and support).  Here’s how to interpret your weather rock:

    • If the rock is wet, it means it’s raining and you should reduce however many miles you had planned to ride by half.
    • If the rock is swinging, it means it’s windy that day, and you should reduce your miles by maybe a third.
    • If the rock is hot to the touch, it means the temperature is elevated, and you should reduce your miles by maybe a third.  Maybe even more.
    • If the rock is cold, it means it’s cold, and you probably can ride as long as you dress appropriately.  If the rock is really, really cold, though, maybe you should stay home.  If there’s ice on the rock, you definitely should stay home.

ExNotes offers weather rocks in brand-specific models:

    • If you ride a Harley, we offer chrome weather rocks for $395, chrome with conchos and black leather fringe weather rocks for $495, and chrome, conchos, fringe, and matching do rag weather rocks for $595 (freight and setup fees not included).
    • If you ride a BMW, we offer the GS weather rock with an electronically adjustable center of gravity, BMW logos, and a one-year Starbucks gift certificate for $1995.
    • If you ride a Ducati, you probably don’t need a weather rock (Ducati riders generally only ride their motorcycles short distances on clear days, anyway, although if you insist, we can provide a red rock for you personally autographed by the former famous racer of your choice, or we can put several rocks in a bag you can shake to sound like a Ducati clutch).  Ducati rocks are free, or at least that’s what we tell you (we’ll recover the cost on your first valve adjustment and let you think you got the rock for free).
    • If you ride a Chinese motorcycle, we sell an ExNotes weather rock decal for $2 and you can put it on your own rock.

3: Roads

The kind of roads you plan to ride make a huge difference.  If it’s all freeway, you’ll be bored but you can rack up huge miles.  If it’s surface streets (and a lot of us do everything we can to stay off the freeway), you won’t cover as many miles unless you’re riding in Baja, where you can run 140mph+ on the long straights south of Valle de Los Cirios.  If it’s in the mountains, it will be less, unless you’re posting about your skills on Facebook, where the folks who post are world class riders (to hear them tell it).  The same holds true for riding in the dirt.  You just won’t cover as many miles.

4: Headcount

This is the big one, folks.  Maybe I should have listed it first.  If I’m riding by myself or with one of my motorcycle buddies in Baja, I can easily do over 500 miles a day.  Throw in more people, and…well, read on, my friends.

The number of riders in your group has a profound impact on how many miles you can ride in a day.   In the math world, we would say that the miles per day are inversely proportional to the number of riders in your group.

As a starting point (and after extensive research and mathematical modeling), the technical staff here at ExNotes developed Formula A:

A)  Miles per Day = (M)/(N)

where:

M = Miles you want to ride
N = Number of riders in your group

What the above means is that as the number of riders in your group increases, the number of miles you can cover in a day decreases.  That’s because with more riders you’ll start later in the morning, you’ll be stopping more often, and you’ll take more time at each stop.  That is, unless you’re riding with me.  Then Formula A reduces to Formula B:

B)  Miles per Day = M

where:

M = Miles you want to ride

The B in Formula B stands for Berk because basically I’ll leave you behind if you’re not ready when I am.  You can catch up with me later.  You might think I’m joking. I’m not.

Formula A varies a little depending on what kind of riders you have in your group, and especially if you have a Rupert.  Rupert is the guy who takes 20 minutes putting his motorcycle gear back on after every stop.  I once rode with a Rupert who could take 20 minutes just putting his gloves on.  He got better when we threatened to cut a few of his fingers off.

5: Your Motorcycle

There are several motorcycle factors that play a huge role in how many miles you can ride in a day.  In the old days, a motorcycle was a motorcycle and we did it all with a single bike (touring, off-road, canyon carving, adventure riding, etc.).  Today, you gotta get specific:

    • ADV-style bikes are actually pretty comfortable and the ergonomics make sense.  500-mile days are easy.  My KLR 650 was one of the best touring bikes I ever owned.   It had phenomenal ergos.
    • Standard motorcycles are also relatively comfortable and you can probably do 500 miles in a day, but you’ll feel it, especially if your bike does not have a windshield.  My Enfield 650 Interceptor is a good bike, but it’s the one that wiped me out on that recent 250-mile ride.
    • Cruisers look cool in motorcycle ads and they complement do rags and tattoos nicely, but they are less comfortable on long rides.  I’ve found I can reasonably do 350-mile days on a cruiser without needing to see a chiropractor.  Go much beyond that and you’ll feel it.
    • Sportbikes generally cut into big miles, but a lot depends on your age. Good buddy Marty and I rode sportbikes on the 2005 Three Flags Classic (I was on a Triumph Daytona) and we did big mile days on that ride. But I was 20 years younger then and I bent a lot easier.  I wouldn’t want to do it again.
    • Classic bikes generally require shorter daily riding distances, particularly if they are British and equipped with electricals manufactured by Lucas (as in Lucas, the Prince of Darkness).  I think a mid-’60s Triumph Bonneville is the most beautiful motorcycle ever created, but I wouldn’t want to ride Baja on one.

Beyond the style issues outlined above, there are other motorcycle factors to consider:

    • Bigger motors generally mean more miles in a day, but bigger motorcycles can slow you down if they suck up too much fuel.  One year at the International Motorcycle Show, Yamaha’s bikes all had labels that showed, among other things, fuel economy.  The VMax, as noted by Yamaha, averaged 27 miles per gallon.  You’d be making a lot more fuel stops on that one.  27 miles per gallon.  I can’t make up stuff this good.
    • Daily mileage is independent of displacement at 400cc and above (as long as fuel economy is not VMax nutty).  Below 400cc, it gets harder (I think) to crank big miles.  On my 250cc RX3, 500 miles is a big day for me.  But my good buddy Rob once did a 1000-mile Baby Butt on his RX3, so I guess anything is possible.
    • Seats can make a big difference.  I’ve never found any motorcycle seat to be really comfortable, but I have found a few to be god-awful (my Enfield is working hard to earn that title).  If you want to really improve a motorcycle seat so you can up your miles, get a sheepskin cover (I’ve found those to be quite comfortable).  There are other options like inflatable seats or custom made seats, but my advice is don’t waste your money.  A guy showed up with an inflatable seat cover on a group ride once and it slowed us considerably.  It kept blowing off his bike and we had to stop and look for it each time that happened.
    • Fuel tank capacity doesn’t make much difference.  My KLR could go 250 miles on a tank; my TL1000S would start blinking at 105 miles.  You’d think you could ride a lot further with a bigger tank, but I found I need to stop and stretch roughly every hour or two, and if I do that at gas stations, tank capacity doesn’t matter.

What do you think?

So there you have it:  Our thoughts on a complex topic.

We know there are keyboard commandos out there who will take exception to our carefully constructed and presented thoughts.  If you disagree, let’s hear it.  We appreciate all comments, dumbass and otherwise.  Please leave your thoughts here on the blog for others to see.  Don’t waste your time leaving comments on Facebook (all the cool people leave their comments here…only losers post comments on Facebook).  You’ll be a faster rider, you’ll be thinner, and you’ll look better if you post your comments here.  And don’t worry about spelling, punctuation, grammar, or capitalization (believe it or not, it will help our readers assess the validity of your thinking).

Like they say, your mileage may vary, and we’re looking forward to your comments.  If they’re particularly inane, so much the better. We await your inputs.

Some of our more interesting rides?  Right here, folks!

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Used Sportsters: Who knew?

I think CSC gets $3995 for a new RX3 these days, and that’s with all the goodies…skid plate, luggage, ABS, 300W alternator, auxiliary accessory switches, the 19-inch front wheel, and probably a few more things I don’t know about.  That’s my RX3 in the photo above.  I’ve been riding it for more than 5 years.  For the Sinophobic haterbators out there, I’ve never found any fish oil in it, I’ve spent substantial time in the factories where they make the RX3 and there are no children chained to the manufacturing equipment, and the Zong techs are most definitely not slave labor.  My RX3 has been and still is a good motorcycle.

Looking over the windshield, on the road in Baja.

I know you can buy a used Sportster for what a new RX3 costs if you shop around; the topic comes up nearly every time I mention the price of an RX3.  It’s a silly thought, actually, because I’m still looking for that prospective buyer who is trying to decide between a used Sportster and a new RX3.  I’ve been on that quest ever since I started writing about the RX3 six years ago, when the keyboard commandos first started pushing the used-Sportster-in-lieu-of-an-RX3 argument.

Here’s a hot flash:  That person (the dude or dudette struggling with such a decision) doesn’t exist.  You either want an ADV motorcycle, or you want a used bar-hopper with “much chrome” (as the Sportster ads often highlight).  I have never met, or even heard of, somebody pondering whether they should buy a used Sportster or an RX3.

Behold:  The financial equivalent of a new RX3.

I hear the same kind of keyboard drivel when Janus motorcycles are mentioned.  They’re stunning motorcycles, and I’ve had good times riding them through northern Baja. Invariably, though, the used Sportster financial comparison will emerge. Janus is always polite in their responses.  Me?  I’m a noncombatant and I don’t respond to such Internet drivel. If you want a used Sportster, it’s a free country. Go for it.

To listen to the keyboard commandos, there must be a lot of folks out there dreaming about used Sportsters.  Maybe that’s the answer to Harley’s problem.  Even though motorcycle sales in general are up sharply since the pandemic started, Harley’s sales most definitely are not. In fact, to read The Wall Street Journal, Harley is circling the drain.  Not to worry, though, because I think I have the answer: Rather than rewiring or hardwiring or screwing around with $30K electric motorcycles, or hiring high-priced executives with zero motorcycle experience (as they seem to love to do), Harley should simply stop production and only traffic in used Sportsters.  There would be no need for a factory; that’s a huge savings right there.  More savings? Harley wouldn’t need to spend anything on advertising; there’s a potful of worldwide web wannabe wizards pushing used Sportsters already doing that for free.

Used Sportsters. Who knew?

Back to my RX3:  I’ve covered a lot of miles on it here and overseas. I had it out this Sunday charging through the smoke we call breathable air here in the Peoples Republik of Kalifornia.  I hadn’t ridden the RX3 in a couple of months, but it started right up (like it always does) and it’s still running strong (like it always has).

Good buddy Greg on the road to the cave paintings in Sierra San Francisco, Baja California Sur.

It’s kind of a funny story about how the RX3 came to America.  I was in China on a consulting gig for another client when CSC asked me to poke around for a 250cc engine for its line of Mustang replicas.  It’s funny in the sense that a lot of Internet people told us they’d buy the Mustang if only the bike had a 250cc engine (instead of its 150cc engine).  I found a source for the 250cc engine (Zongshen; they weren’t very hard to find).  CSC put the 250cc Zong engine in the Mustang and sales…well, they remained essentially the same.  All those yahoos who said they’d buy one if the bike had a 250cc motor?  They went MIA. I don’t know what they did after CSC introduced the 250cc engine, but they sure didn’t buy a new Mustang.  Ah, I take that back…I do know what they did…they posted more comments on Facebook.  It’s hard work being a keyboard commando, I guess, and it’s lonely down there in those basements.  But they kept at it.  Why buy a CSC Mustang, they said.  You could buy a used Sportster for that kind of money, they said. Actually, most of the CSC Mustangs were optioned up by their customers so much that their cost approached and sometimes exceeded what a new Sportster would cost, but that’s neither here nor there.

A 250cc CSC Mustang, accessorized to the max.

The arrangement with the Big Z was a good one, and it led directly to things like the RX3, the RX4, the City Slicker, the TT250, the SG250, and more.  It’s how I came to own my RX3, and like I said above, I am still riding and enjoying it.  Even though I could have bought a used Sportster.

Good buddy Kyle from China, somewhere in South Dakota’s Black Hills. Don’t worry; he’s not armed (and if you’re wondering what that’s all about, you can read that story here).

I’ve been up and down Baja lots of times with lots of RX3 riders.  I’ve been across China, including the Gobi Desert and the Tibetan Plateau, and I’ve ridden around the Andes Mountains in Colombia.  I’ve ridden to Sturgis, then back across the top of the US, and down the Pacific Coast with a bunch of guys from China.  Gresh rode with me on a lot of of those rides.  I know, I know, he didn’t get invited on the Colombia adventure, but hey, he didn’t invite me on the Russia ride, either.  But to stay on topic:  It’s all been on the RX3.

Riding into the Gobi Desert with Joe Gresh as my wingman. Or was I his?  In 6000 miles and 40 days of riding across China, we did not see a single Sportster, used or new.

Those early RX3 rides were marketing demos, basically, designed to show a few guys having the time of their life and demonstrating to everybody else that the RX3 had real chops as an ADV bike.  But don’t think I wasn’t nervous.  We took 14 guys and one gal on a 1700-mile ride through Baja literally the same week the first RX3s arrived in the US from China (I was sweating bullets on that one), and then we immediately took another 12 or 15 guys from China and Colombia (and one motojournalist from Motorcyclist) on a 5000-mile ride from southern California to Sturgis, back across the top of the US, and down the Pacific coast on what was arguably one of the most highly-publicized (in real time, too) motorcycle publicity stunts ever.  I was scared the entire time, thinking something might break and generate a lot of bad press.  I guess I didn’t realize how well things were going until the last night of the trip, 4700 miles into it, when Gresh told me to relax.  “You won, man,” he said.   He was right.  But just think: I coulda had that used Sportster.

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Bikes Gone By

Do you dream about the motorcycles you used to own?

Yeah, me, too.  I don’t have photos of all my bikes that have gone down the road, but I have a few and I’d like to share them with you.

My first motorcycle was a Honda Super 90. I bought it from Sherm Cooper, a famous Triumph racer who owned Cooper’s Cycle Ranch in New Jersey. My Super 90 was cool…it was white and it had an upswept pipe and knobby tires.  Mr. Cooper used it for getting around on his farm (the Cycle Ranch actually started out there).  I was only 14 and I wasn’t supposed to be on the street yet, but I was known to sneak out on occasion. I liked that Honda Super 90 motor, and evidently so do a lot of other people (it’s still being manufactured by several different companies in Asia).

Yours truly at about age 14 on the Honda Super 90. What’s that stuff on top of my head?

The next bike was a Honda SL-90. Same 90cc Honda motor, but it had a tubular steel frame and it was purpose-built for both road and off-road duty. I never actually had a photo of that bike, but it was a favorite. Candy apple red and silver (Honda figured out by then that people wanted more than just their basic four colors of white, red, black, or blue), it was a great-looking machine. I rode it for about a year and sold it, and then I took a big step up.

That big step up was a Honda 750 Four. I’ve waxed eloquent about that bike here on the blog already, so I won’t bore you with the details about how the Honda 750 basically killed the British motorcycle industry and defined new standards for motorcycle performance.  The 750 was fun, too. Fast, good looking, candy apple red (Honda used that color a lot), and exotic. I paid $1559 for it in 1971 at Cooper’s. Today, one in mint condition would approach ten times that amount.  I wish I still had it.

My first big street bike…a 1971 Honda 750 Four. It was awesome. It’s a miracle I never crashed it. I rode it all the way up to Canada and back in the early ’70s. Check out the jacket, the riding pants, and my other safety gear.

There were a lot of bikes that followed. There were two Honda 500 Fours, a 50cc Honda Cub (the price was right, so I bought it and sold it within a couple of days) an 85cc two-stroke BSA (with a throttle that occasionally stuck open), a 1982 Suzuki 1000cc Katana (an awesome ride, but uncomfortable), a 1979 Harley Electra-Glide Classic (the most unreliable machine I’ve ever owned), a 1978 Triumph Bonneville (I bought that one new when I lived in Fort Worth), a 1971 Triumph Tiger, a 1970 Triumph Daytona, a 1992 Harley Softail (much more reliable than the first Harley, and one I rode all over the US Southwest and Mexico), a 1995 Triumph Daytona 1200 (the yellow locomotive), a 1997 TL1000S Suzuki (a sports bike I used as a touring machine), a 2006 Triumph Tiger, a 1982 Honda CBX (a great bike, but one I sold when Honda stopped stocking parts for it), a 2007 Triumph Speed Triple (awesome, fast, but buzzy), a 2006 KLR 650 Kawasaki, and a 2010 CSC 150.   Here are photos of some of those bikes:

My high school buddy Johnnie with a Honda 500 four I later bought from him. That sissy bar was the first thing to go. It was a fun bike.
A Honda 50cc Cub, the most frequently produced motorcycle on the planet. In China and elsewhere, this bike is still being manufactured. I bought this one in the 1960s, mostly because I knew I could sell it and make a few bucks quickly.
My ’79 Electra-Glide Classic. I called this one my optical illusion, because it looked like a motorcycle. I couldn’t go a hundred miles on that motorcycle without something breaking. And people badmouth Chinese motorcycles.
Me with my 1982 Suzuki Katana. In its day, that was a super-exotic bike. Uncomfortable, but very fast, and way ahead of its time. I bought it new and paid over MSRP because they were so hard to get. I was a lot skinnier in those days.
My ’92 Softail Classic Harley. This motorcycle was superbly reliable right up until the moment the oil pump quit at 53,000 miles. At about the time I shot this photo on a trip through Mexico, I started thinking that maybe a Big Twin was not the best answer to the adventure touring question. And I know, my motorcycle packing skills in those days were not yet optimized. That’s a Mexican infantry officer behind the bike.
My buddy Louis V and me with our bikes somewhere in Arizona sometime in the mid-’90s. I’m not sure why Louis had his shirt off…we sure didn’t ride that way. Louis had an ’81 Gold Wing and I had an ’82 CBX Six. That old CBX was a fun bike…it sounded like a Ferrari!
My ’97 Suzuki TL1000S on the road somewhere in Baja. Wow, that bike was fast.  Here’s a story about my good buddy Paul and me featuring this motorcycle.
The 1200 Daytona. I won it on an Ebay auction.  It was an incredible motorcycle and you can read more about it here.
I’d always wanted a KLR 650, and when I pulled the trigger in 2006 I was glad I did. Smaller bikes make more sense. They’re more fun to ride, too.  It seemed to me that this was the perfect bike for Baja.  That’s me and Baja John out at El Marmol.
The ’06 Triumph Tiger. Fun, but a little cramped and very heavy. It was styled like a dual sport, but trust me on this, you don’t want to get into the soft stuff with this motorcycle.
Potentially the most beautiful motorcycle I’ve ever owned, this 2007 Speed Triple was a fast machine. The joke in motorcycle circles is that it should be named the Speed Cripple. That’s what it did to me.
My CSC 150. Don’t laugh. I had a lot of fun on this little Mustang replica. My friends and I rode these to Cabo San Lucas and back.

That brings up to today.  My rides today are a CSC TT250, an RX3, and a Royal Enfield Interceptor 650.  I like riding them all.

Do you have photos of your old bikes?  Here’s an invitation:  Send photos of your earlier motorcycles to us (info@exhaustnotes.us) with any info you can provide and we’ll your story here on the blog.  We’d love to see your motorcycles.

Want to see some of our Dream Bikes?   Give a click here!

Movie Review: The Forgotten Tragedy

Last year we wrote a blog about The Warning, a statue honoing two motor officers who came to be known as the Paul Reveres of Santa Paula.   The statue was an unanticipated discovery on a motorcycle ride through Santa Paula, and it had my attention because it’s not the kind of monument you see every day.

The other night Sue and I were flipping through the movies on Amazon Prime, and to my great surprise one I had not seen before popped up:  The Forgotten Tragedy:  The Story of the St. Francis Dam. 

You know, I’m embarrassed to admit that when I first saw that statue in Santa Paula 10 years ago, I had never heard of the St. Francis Dam and its collapse.  I grew up on the east coast, and there’s a lot we never heard about back there.  It took a little digging for me to learn about California’s second largest disaster ever (the only event involving greater loss of life in the Golden State was the San Francisco earthquake), so the idea of a movie on the St. Francis Dam and its collapse had my immediate attention.   The Forgotten Tragedy is a documentary and it’s very well done.  It even included a bit about the motorcycle officers in the above statue (although it only mentioned one).

Trust me on this, my friends.  The Forgotten Tragedy:  The Story of the St. Francis Dam is worth viewing.

Happy Thanksgiving, and let’s hear from you…

My first motorcycle had 3 cubic inches. This one must be 48 times better.

I love this time of year.  The temperatures are nice (although it’s raining here in So Cal today and for the next couple of days), it’s good to get together with friends and family, and like most folks fortunate who live in the US, I have a lot for which I am thankful.

Earlier this week, I picked up a screw in one of my Subie’s tires, so it was off to America’s Tire, where they fix these things for free.  The idea is that you’ll think of them first when it’s time for new tires, and in my case, you can bet that’s going to happen.   It was a 2-hour wait, and I used that time to go for a walk.  Our local Harley dealer is just up the street from the tire place, I hadn’t been in a Harley showroom in a while, so I stopped by to check things out.

 

Things have changed from when I rode a Harley.  In those days, any Harley dealership was a hopping place.   When I walked over to the dealer this week, the place was mostly empty, they didn’t have a ton of T-shirts, and there were plenty of motorcycles.  It’s a world gone mad, I tell you.

Sometime when I wasn’t looking, production shifted from T-shirts to motorcycles. In the early and mid-1990s, you’d have to go to the Laughlin River Run, Daytona, or Sturgis to see this many Harleys in one spot.
Ah, hope springs eternal. A thousand dollar dealer markup? At least these folks are honest about it, and they don’t try to disguise gouging as freight and setup.

I haven’t kept up with the latest from Harley, other than the headline-grabbing stuff about the Livewire.  I guess they had a hiccup with the initial rollout, but that sort of thing happens and I hear it’s been fixed.  What hasn’t been fixed is the Milwaukee notion that any Harley is worth $30K, and I think that’s one of the major reasons the bar-and-shield folks’ best days are in the rear-view mirror.  I haven’t heard that Livewires are flying out of the showrooms, and judging by the looks of the dealer I visited, neither is anything else.  It’s not just me saying this…the stock market shows a Harley trend that is downright scary.  Harley has ridden their rebel reputation big time since the early 1990s, but one place you don’t want to buck the trend is in the stock market.

Harley’s stock performance over the last 5 years.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average over the last five years. It’s been said that a rising tide lifts all boats. Maybe it does. Maybe Harley’s stock would have been much lower without the bull market of the last few years. Maybe, maybe, maybe….

The Harley sales guy was eager to help, so I asked him about the Bronx 975 (Gresh did a piece on it not too long ago).  My guy never heard of the Bronx, so I asked if they had any Sportsters (there was one, so maybe they are selling better).  I then asked about Harley’s Street models (the 500 and 750 V-twins), and he told me there were none.  “They didn’t sell too well,” he said.  I thought that was unfortunate.   I’m conceited enough to think that if Gresh and I had ridden those bikes in Baja, if Harley offered guided Baja tours to Street buyers, and if Harley had an effective blog, that bike could have been a winner.  We sure sold a lot of motorcycles at CSC with those Baja tours (including to folks who didn’t ride with us in Baja).  It was just the idea that they could (that, of course, and the CSC motorcycles’ price).  Good buddy Dan is adventure touring in Tunisia right now along with a bunch of other Guzzistas on a ride organized by Moto Guzzi.  I think that’s brilliant (and I’m jealous).   Tunisia!  Damn, that’s exotic!

I don’t think there’s much of a future in two-wheeled, 900-pound, 114-cubic-inch dinosaurs, but hey, what do I know?  That’s a rhetorical question…I think my lack of knowledge is right up there with the industry wizards who continue to ponder the “what can we do about the sad state of the motorcycle industry” question, and then continue to offer 114-cubic-inch, $30,000 motorcycles that sit for presumably extended periods on showroom floors.  And like I said earlier, I don’t think ebikes are the answer.

So, what do you think?  Let us know with a comment or two.  We love hearing from you.  And I think the folks in Milwaukee would, too.  They read these pages, I think, judging by what I’m seeing on Google Analytics.  Let us know.

The Perfect Bike?

This was a blog I wrote for CSC about 6 years ago, and it’s still relevant.  Earlier this year I posted a photo showing my Harley in Baja and Gresh made a good comment:  Any motorcycle you take a trip on is an adventure motorcycle.  I agree with that.  The earlier blogs on my Harley Softail had me thinking about this question again:  What is the perfect motorcycle?

Cruisers. Standards. Sports bikes. Dirt bikes. Dual sports. Big bikes. Small bikes. Whoa, I’m getting dizzy just listing these.

The Good Old Days

In the old days, it was simple. There were motorcycles. Just plain motorcycles. You wanted to ride, you bought a motorcycle. And they were small, mostly. I started on a 90cc Honda (that’s me in that photo to the right). We’d call it a standard today, if such a thing still existed.

Then it got confusing. Bikes got bigger. Stupidly so, in my opinion. In my youth, a 650 was a huge motorcycle, and the streets were ruled by bikes like the Triumph Bonneville and the BSA Lightning. Today, a 650 would be considered small. The biggest Triumph today has a 2300cc engine. I don’t follow the Harley thing anymore, but I think their engines are nearly that big, too. The bikes weigh close to half a ton. Half a ton!

I’ve gone through an evolution of sorts on this topic. Started on standards, migrated into cruisers after a long lapse, went to the rice rockets, then morphed into dual sports.

Cruisers and Adventure Bikes

The ADV bug hit me hard about 15 years ago. I’d been riding in Baja a lot and my forays occasionally took me off road. Like many folks who drifted back into motorcycles in the early 1990s, the uptick in Harley quality bit me. As many of us did, I bought my obligatory yuppie bike (the Heritage Softail) and the accompanying zillion t-shirts (one from every Harley dealer along the path of every trip I ever took). I had everything that went along with this kind of riding except the tattoo (my wife and a modicum of clear thinking on my part drew the line there). Leather fringe, the beanie helmet, complimentary HOG membership, and the pot belly. I was fully engaged.

Unlike a lot of yuppie riders of that era, though, I wasn’t content to squander my bucks on chrome, leather fringe, and the “ride to live, live to ride” schlock. I wanted to ride, and ride I did. All over the southwestern US and deep into Mexico. Those rides were what convinced me that maybe an 800+ lb cruiser was not the best bike in the world for serious riding…

The Harley had a low center of gravity, and I liked that. It was low to the ground, and I didn’t like that. And it was heavy. When that puppy started to drift in the sand, I just hung on and hoped for the best. Someone was looking out for me, because in all of that offroading down there in Baja, I never once dropped it. As I sit here typing this, enjoying a nice hot cup of coffee that Susie just made for me, I realize that’s kind of amazing.

The other thing I didn’t like about the Harley was that I couldn’t carry too much stuff on it without converting that bike into a sort of rolling bungee cord advertisement. The bike’s leather bags didn’t hold very much, the Harley’s vibration required that I constantly watch and tighten their mounting hardware, and the whole arrangement really wasn’t a good setup for what I was doing. The leather bags looked cool, but that was it. It was bungee cords and spare bags to the rescue on those trips…

Sports Bikes

The next phase for me involved sports bikes. They were all the rage in the early 90s and beyond, but to me they basically represent the triumph of marketing hoopla over common sense. I bought a Suzuki TL1000S (fastest bike I ever owned), and I toured Baja with it. It would be hard to find a worse bike for that kind of riding. The whole sports bike thing, in my opinion, was and is stupid. You sit in this ridiculous crouched over, head down position, and if you do any kind of riding at all, by the end of the day your wrists, shoulders, and neck are on fire. My luggage carrying capacity was restricted to a small tankbag and a ridiculous-looking tailbag.

I was pretty hooked on the look, though, and I went through a succession of sports bikes, including the TL1000S, a really racy Triumph Daytona 1200 (rode that one from Mexico to Canada), and a Triumph Speed Triple. Fast, but really dumb as touring solutions, and even dumber for any kind of off road excursion.

Phase III for me, after going through the Harley “ride to live” hoopla and the Ricky Racer phases, was ADV riding and dual sport bikes. The idea here is that the bike is equally at home on the street or in the dirt. Dual purpose…dual sport. I liked the idea, and I thought it would be a winner for my kind of riding.

A BMW GS versus Triumph’s Tiger

The flavor of the month back then was the BMW GS. I could never see myself on a Beemer, but I liked the concept. I was a Triumph man back in those days, and the Triumph Tiger really had my attention. A couple of my friends were riding the big BMW GS, but I knew I didn’t want a Beemer. In my opinion, those bikes are overpriced. The Beemers are heavy (over 600 lbs on the road), they have a terrible reputation for reliability, and I think they looked goofy. The Tiger seemed to be a better deal than the Beemer, and it sure had the right offroad look. Tall, an upright seating position (I had enough of that sports bike nonsense), and integrated luggage. So, I bit the bullet and shelled out something north of $10K back in ’06 for this beauty…

The Triumph had a few things going for it…I liked the detachable luggage, it was fast, it got good gas mileage (I could go 200+ miles between gas stations), and did I mention it was fast?

The Tiger’s Shortfalls

Looks can be deceiving, though, and that Tiger was anything but an off-road bike. It was still well over 600 lbs on the road with a full tank of gas, and in the soft stuff, it was terrifying. I never dropped the Triumph, but I sure came close one time. On a ride out to the Old Mill in Baja (a really cool old hotel right on the coast a couple hundred miles south of the border), the soft sand was bad. Really bad. Getting to the Old Mill involved riding through about 5 miles of soft sand, and it scared the stuffing out of me. I literally tossed and turned all night worrying about the ride out the next morning. It’s not supposed to be like that, folks.

And the Tiger was tall. Too tall, in my opinion. I think all of the current dual sport bikes are too tall. I guess the manufacturers do that because their marketing studies show a lot of basketball players buy dual sports. Me? I don’t play basketball and I never cared for a seat that high. Just getting on the Tiger was scary. After throwing my leg over the seat, I’d fight to lean the bike upright, and not being able to touch the ground on the right side until I had the thing upright was downright unnerving. I never got over that initial “getting on the bike” uneasiness. What were those engineers thinking?
The other thing that surprised me about the Tiger was that it was uncomfortable. The seat was hard (not comfortably hard, like a well designed seat should be, but more like sitting on small beer keg), and the foot pegs were way too high. I think they did that foot peg thing to make the bike lean over more, but all it did for me was make me feel like I was squatting all day. Not a good idea.

Kawasaki’s KLR 650

I rode the Tiger for a few years and then sold it. Even before I sold it, though, I had bought a new KLR 650 Kawasaki. It was a big step down in the power department (I think it has something like 34 or 38 horsepower), but I had been looking at the KLR for years. It seemed to be right…something that was smaller, had a comfortable riding position, and was reasonably priced (back then, anyway).

I had wanted a KLR for a long time, but nobody was willing to let me ride one. That’s a common problem with Japanese motorcycle dealers. And folks, this boy ain’t shelling out anything without a test ride first. I understand why they do it (they probably see 10,000 squids who want a test ride for every serious buyer who walks into a showroom), but I’m old fashioned and crotchety. I won’t buy anything without a test ride. This no-test-ride thing kept me from pulling the trigger on a KLR for years. When I finally found a dealer who was willing to let me ride one (thank you, Art Wood), I wrote the check and got on the road…and the off road…

My buddy John and I have covered a lot of miles on our KLRs through Baja and elsewhere. I still have my KLR, but truth be told, I only fire it up three or four times a year. It’s a big bike. Kawi says the KLR is under 400 lbs, but with a full tank of gas on a certified scale, that thing is actually north of 500 lbs. I was shocked when I saw that on the digital readout. And, like all of the dual sports, the KLR is tall. It still gives me the same tip-over anxiety as the Tiger did when I get on it. And I know if I ever dropped it, I’d need a crew to get it back on its feet.

That thing about dropping a bike is a real consideration. I’ve been lucky and I haven’t dropped a bike very often. But it can happen, and when it does, it would be nice to just be able to pick the bike up.

Muddy Baja

On one of our Baja trips, we had to ride through a puddle that looked more like a small version of Lake Michigan. I got through it, but it was luck, not talent. My buddy Dave was not so lucky…he dropped his pristine Yamaha mid-puddle…

The fall broke the windshield and was probably a bit humiliating for Dave, but the worst part was trying to lift the Yamaha after it went down. Slippery, muddy, wet…knee deep in a Mexican mudbath. Yecchh! It took three of us to get the thing upright and we fell down several times while doing so. Thinking back on it now, we probably looked pretty funny. If we had made a video of it, it probably would have gone viral.

The Perfect Bike:  A Specification

So, where is this going…and what would my definition of the perfect touring/dual sport/ADV bike be?

Here’s what I’d like to see:

Something with a 250cc to 500cc single-cylinder engine. My experience with small bikes as a teenager and my more recent experience has convinced me that this is probably the perfect engine size. Big engines mean big bikes, and that kind of gets away from what a motorcycle should be all about. Water cooled would be even better. The Kawi KLR is water cooled, and I like that.

A dual sport style, with a comfortable riding position. No more silly road racing stuff. I’m a grown man, and when I ride, I like to ride hundreds of miles a day. I want my bike to have a riding position that will let me do that.

A windshield. It doesn’t have to be big…just something that will flip the wind over my helmet. The Kawi and the Triumph got it right in that department.

Integrated luggage. The Triumph Tiger got that part right. The KLR, not so much.

Light weight. Folks, it’s a motorcycle…not half a car. Something under 400 lbs works for me. If it gets stuck, I want to be able to pull it out of a puddle. If it drops, I want to be able to pick it up without a hoist or a road crew. None of the current crop of big road bikes meets this requirement.

Something that looks right and is comfortable. I liked the Triumph’s looks. But I want it to be comfortable.

Something under $5K. Again, it’s a motorcycle, not a car. My days of dropping $10K or so on a motorcycle are over. I’ve got the money, but I’ve also got the life experiences that tell me I don’t need to spend stupidly to have fun.

It was maybe a year after that blog that the RX3 came on the scene, and it answered the mail nicely.  A year or two after the RX3 hit the scene, BMW, Kawasaki, and one or two others introduced smaller ADV motorcycles.  I commented that these guys were copying Zongshen.  One snotty newspaper writer told me I was delusional if I thought BMW, Kawi, and others copied Zongshen.   I think that’s exactly what happened, but I don’t think they did as good a job as Zongshen did.

If you’ve got an opinion, please leave a comment.  We’d love to hear from you!

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Wild Conjecture: Harley-Davidson Bronx 975

You’ve got to give The Motor Company credit. They are throwing tons of new models against the wall hoping something sticks. The Milwaukee Wrecking Crew is producing a slew of modern products, only one of them called the 975 Bronx.

To my admittedly untrained eye the engine looks similar to the new liquid-cooled V-twin used in Harley’s (also new) Pan American ADV bike. The Bronx will have less displacement but I’m sure it will still have enough power to unravel a man-bun at full throttle.

The Bronx styling is ok, kind of a standard-ish, street fighter thing. It looks good to me. The big pulley on the back wheel is probably for a belt drive. I guess I could do some Internet research and find out more hard facts about the Bronx but facts don’t matter, performance numbers don’t matter, and styling doesn’t matter with this effort.

What matters is Harley-Davison’s maybe-too-late arrival and the amount of money they are spending to play catch up in the broad, non-cruiser categories. There are so many market segments now: ADV-big, ADV-small, Scrambler, Streetfighter, Sport bike, Sport Tourer, Race replica and the list goes on.

I get that Harley is trying to outlast their dying customer base. It’s a smart thing to do but exactly how much cash do these guys have to burn? The Bronx is not available for a few years yet they have to have the equipment to build the thing, right?

I’m worried about H-D. I like to poke fun at them but I cheer on their to-date-futile attempt to make a competitive flat tracker out of the long and portly Street 750 engine. I don’t want to see Harley fail. Yet they keep cranking out new models nilly-willy, seemingly without asking anyone if it’s a good idea or waiting to see if any of them are going to be popular. At the rate they are going Harley will have their promised 100 new models done by next June.

Will Harley dealerships will be able to adapt to the flood of new technology being shipped to them from the factory? The customers for these new, modern bikes will be nothing like the old guys wanting a big Hog because they can finally afford it. Harley will be competing on price, performance and quality, three areas that they never had to concern themselves with in the past.

Throughout its history Harley-Davidson has always moved forward slowly, fearfully even.  Innovations like disc brakes or fuel injection take decades to become part of their story. It was almost comically conservative: The first liquid-cooled Hogs were only half liquid-cooled! This conservative approach has served them well: They sell a lot of motorcycles to guys who think like me. Any one of these new models would be a shock to H-D’s system: The Livewire, The V-Rod, the Streets both 500 and 750. When is the last time you’ve heard anything about the Street 500? Does H-D even make it anymore? It’s like they don’t have time to promote each new model and let it find some kind of stability in the marketplace.

I love that somebody at Harley is shoving stacks of chips onto the ever-contracting motorcycle industry crap table. It means that the humans are still in charge. I hope they have the money to sustain this betting strategy because H-D needs to win. They need to succeed. The motorcycle landscape would be a much duller place without those clumsy bastards barging around America’s roadways.

The bike handles well when it’s out of control…

Gresh has some really honest, really funny videos, and the thing about the funny part is that the guy is not trying to be funny…he’s just telling it like it is and a lot of times, the truth is pretty funny.  This is a video Joe did 7 years ago on the Harley XR1200 Sportster, and the best line in it is the title of this blog.   Enjoy, my friends.

Top This

I’m a big fan of electric motorcycles. I like electrical stuff in general and I spent most of my working life as an electrician with benefits. Harley’s new Livewire E-Hog is an impressive first effort but at $30,000 dollars a copy it is a lousy deal compared to E-bikes from other manufacturers. You can easily beat the Livewire in both speed and distance for half the cost but that’s not the Livewire’s major problem.

The Livewire’s problem is industry-wide. Harley and those other guys are trying to duplicate the internal combustion experience with an electric motorcycle and they are burning a lot of joules doing it. Electric motorcycles are not direct IC replacements and their riders understand this.

For motorcycles, battery technology today is not compact enough and recharges too slowly for a rider with no fixed destination in mind. Until manufacturers can agree on a standard-sized, easily swappable battery pack we are stuck waiting for the bike. The first battery operated power tools were like this: you had to plug the whole tool in and wait. No work could be done until the thing was charged.

With standard-sized batteries (within a product line) cordless power tools have nearly supplanted the old, outlet-bound stuff. It takes only a second to swap in a new battery and you are back on the job doing whatever it is that you do. No one has range anxiety because there’s always a hot battery in the charger ready to use. Tesla is working on speeding up charge wait times by swapping the huge battery in their cars and it only takes a few minutes. When an electric vehicle can pull up to a gas station and swap in a charged battery as fast as I can change my power drill battery they will have become viable transportation.

The reality is, manufacturers are not going to standardize battery sizes. The best we can hope for is a battery changeable along the lines of the power tool situation: each battery is specific to the brand. Even that will not happen soon and maybe if you move the goal posts it doesn’t need to happen for the majority of users.

That leaves commuting back and forth to work as the ideal use for an electric motorcycle. You can have a charging source at both ends of the ride and you will be busy working or puttering about the house while the bike charges so there’s no down time. Give up on the idea of e-bikes matching IC bikes in all instances. The highest and best use of electric motorcycles is a situation where you have time to kill between rides.

I know The Motor Company is not going to listen to me, but here goes: Harley, stop making expensive, high performance electric motorcycles. I’ve seen your lighter weight electric bikes and they are so far removed from the traditional Harley-Davidson customer they might as well be electric Buells.

Harley’s marketing for as long as I can remember has been based on heritage. Timeless styling and traditional products have served you well. For a successful E-bike look to your past and the Topper scooter; it’s the ideal commuter platform to modernize (not too much) and electrify. The boxy rear section can hold a huge battery bank without looking like it’s holding a huge battery bank. It’s a classic form that simply drips Harley-Davidson heritage and the youth of America will go gaga over the styling. Keep the thing below $4000 so a normal person can afford one. You’ll have to outsource most of the drivetrain components to keep the price reasonable but you can slap the parts together in an old V-Rod factory and call it made in the USA!