In San Diego I lived across the street from a Safeway food market. Man, I never ran out of anything. That Safeway is now a West Marine boat supply store. They got nothing to eat in the whole damn place. But back then, around 1980, it was a great food source.
In my pad I had a tiny refrigerator with one of those wine-in-a-carton things inside. My buddy Mark found it in the road, not far from the house. Nobody I knew drank wine, or at least that wine. There was a perforated cardboard section that you knocked out and inside was a hose that connected to the plastic sack of wine. It was practical as hell, like a battery acid container. The hose had a shut off thingy, you kind of rolled the shut off onto a ramp until it pinched the hose closed. The wine tasted bad. Maybe it got hot in the sun out in the street. No telling how long it was there before Mark found it. Whenever anyone would drop by I’d ask if they wanted some wine, that’s what adults do. It was still in the fridge a few years later when I moved away.
I’d leave my one bedroom, one bath rental house on Point Loma’s Locust Street around 5pm. My bike was a 1968 electric-start XLH Sportster converted to kick start. Because electric kickers are for Honda riders, man. From Point Loma I’d reel onto Interstate 5 and roll the throttle on, lane splitting for 15 miles to Gene’s house in Mira Mesa. Back then every subdivision in San Diego sounded like one of the wooden sailing ships that discovered America: The Nina, The Rancho Bernardo and The Santa Antiqua. I guess they still name California things that way. Streets are Calles or Avenidas. Townhouses are called Don Coryells, after a football coach.
Gene had a 1973 Sportster, the one with the crude looking steel bar bent into a U-shape to secure the top shock absorber mounts. The result of AMF cost cutting. My older Sporty had a beautiful cast part welded into the frame tubes performing the same function. You couldn’t see either one once the seat was installed but I knew it was there. Gene knew it too. Gene was my wing man, my BFF. We used to drink in bars and shoot pool after work. It was nothing to stay up late at night, I only needed a few hours sleep. In those years Harley-Davidson motorcycles had a terrible reputation. Their riders were no prize either. We liked the way the bikes sounded and the way they looked.
California traffic was just as bad in 1980 as is today. We lane split all the way to Oceanside where the northbound traffic would thin out for 30 miles or so then lane split to the 405 and past the “Go See Cal” auto dealership. Cal’s dog Spot was a lion. He was featured in Worthington Ford television ads. It was nerve wracking bumper to bumper riding all the way til dusk and the exit for Ascot park Raceway.
I saw my first Ducati Darmah in the parking lot at Ascot. It was the most beautiful bike I’d ever seen. The squared off crankcases were works of art. Our iron-head Harleys looked like civil war relics next to the Darmah. Like Genus Rattus, man. I didn’t envy the Ducati. I was still a hard core Harley guy. Pretty don’t mean nuttin’ to us. Fast, reliable motorcycles are for the weak. I still feel that way.
I may have this wrong but Ascot held two AMA Grand National races each year. Every race I went to was advertised as the final race because the track was closing to be sold. This went on for 12 years until the track really did sell. One National was a standard flat track race and one National was a TT, which is a standard FT track with a bump and a right hand turn. Usually by the time Gene and I got up there the heat races had already started.
Ascot wore its years well. The stands were uncomfortable and crowded. AMA Nationals are big deals. The restrooms were dungeons. We would eat bad food and drink beer and watch the best racing anywhere until 11pm at night. Being part of the hundreds of motorcycles leaving Ascot was a real thrill. The riders were fired up from the racing and we rolled it on to 405 and then 5 to the El Toro Road exit and the Bob’s Big Boy restaurant. Bob’s was a tradition for AMA Nationals. The burgers were small and nearly tasteless, the little triangle salads were frozen and the fries were thin as shim stock. Bob’s was a good place to feed your Genus Rattus.
Because we were riding so late, no matter what the time of year it was always cold on the way home from Ascot. Long, empty stretches of interstate 5 stuffed each gap in your leather jacket with a chilling, low hanging fog. The cold would quiet your mind. Focus on your breathing now, keep still, those iron engines loved the cold. I could see Gene’s Sportster chuffing away in the dark, tiny glints of chrome primary case flashed in sync with my wobbling headlight. Both our Sportsters ran straight pipes and Interstate 5 sounded like the back straight of Ascot. Except we never chopped the throttle.
South of La Jolla the air temperature would rise and dropping off 5 onto Rosecrans Street wrapped sea-warmth around my body. I loved that part of the ride. The shivering was over, I could smell ocean smells. My muscles relaxed. This early in the morning Rosecrans is deserted, I have to run the red lights because the sensors in the pavement cannot pick up motorcycles. The only sound is my 900cc Sportster slowly rowing through the gearbox, rumbling home.
I didn’t start out in the typing business looking for swag. I was more interested in seeing my byline on a real, printed object. Being published meant at least one person in the world thought my stuff wasn’t terrible. No, it was like more swag found me. Slowly at first, then faster as the typing game became less and less lucrative, swag has grown ever larger in importance.
CSC sent me a flat-brimmed swag cap. They didn’t need to: I love those guys and how their business plan is a fantastic experiment in mail order motorcycling. I like that the customer needs to be a bit more self sufficient to operate their motorcycles. And I like the hat. With most products becoming sealed off to us regulars, CSC bikes actually require you to dig in. Since I own mostly weird motorcycles that have no dealer support I relate to the pride a CSC owner feels when he sets his own valves or replaces the chain and sprockets on his motorcycle.
Swag works. The preceding paragraph should be all the proof you need. Swag turns customers into advocates and a scuba suit beer cooler celebrating Pandya’s 50th birthday will always come in handy. Come to think of it, Exhaustnotes.us has no swag that I’m aware of. I’ll have to get to work on that.
I guess more financial mags are zeroing in on Harley-Davidson’s plans to introduce an electric motorcycle. You saw our post a week or so ago about The Motley Fool and their thoughts on the Livewire. Barron’s, another financial newspaper/advisory service, similarly reported on Harley’s woes but with a twist. 
The Motley Fool is an investment advisory service newsletter I’ve been following since the 1990s, and my take on things is they generally have good advice and make predictions that have proven to be sound. Most recently, The Motley Fool published an article (
Maybe I’d organize both cars and bikes by engine type. There would be a Kawasaki 750 triple, a Saab 93 triple, a Suzuki 750 triple next to a crisp, modern Honda NS400. Flathead Row would have a Melroe Bobcat with the air-cooled Wisconsin V-4, and all three Harley flatties: The 45- incher, the Sportster KH and that big block they made (74-inch?). You’d have to have an 80-inch Indian and the Scout along with most of the mini bikes built in the 1970s.
I love a disc-valve two stroke but I’ve never owned one. First bikes in that section will be a bunch of Kawasaki twins (350cc and 250cc). I’d have a CanAm because with their carb tucked behind the cylinder instead of jutting out the side they don’t look like disc bikes should. A Bridgestone 350 twin without an air filter element would be parked next to a ferocious Suzuki 125cc square-four road racer, year to be determined.
To complement the Bobcat I’d have a gas-engined backhoe, something from the 1950’s with all new hoses and tires. I’ll paint it yellow with a roller and then hand paint “The Jewel” in red on both sides of the hood with the tiny artist’s brush from a child’s watercolor set. The backhoe would be a smooth running liquid-cooled flathead with an updraft carburetor and it would reek of unburnt fuel whenever you lifted a heavy load in the front bucket.
I staged one of the photos above to show a couple of San Fernando Valley police officers stopping me on my Triumph Tiger. That was one of the most interesting parts of the research. I interviewed the two SFV officers in the police station and they were regular guys. Joking, telling stories, you know the drill. I was having fun listening to them and trying to capture it all in my notes. One of the officers suggested going outside for more photos, and with that, both of them put on their helmets and sunglasses. The transformation was dramatic. With their helmets off, they were two regular (and different) guys. When the helmets and shades went on, they became RoboCop. They were indistinguishable, all business, no room for nonsense. Serious. Emotionless. No more smoking and joking. The real deal.
Fun times, to be sure. I really enjoyed doing that story, and before we wrap up this blog, here’s another bit of trivia: I first saw “Motors” in print while recovering from a motorcycle accident (I got busted up pretty good and I had a lot of time to catch up on my reading). The first responder on that one was Jim Royal, a La Verne, California, motor officer. Just a few weeks before my crash I shot photos of Jim for this very story. One had Jim holding a radar gun; it’s the photo you see in the article above.