Motorcycle Adventure Ride – Page 27

Product Review: Chase Harper 650 Tank Bag

I’ve dropped a lot of usable content on Facebook without thinking about it. Good stories that would have made excellent topics for an ExhaustNotes.us blog post and I’ve screwed around and published them on Facebook’s Anti-Social Network. To what end? All it does is supply the buoyant pontoons that support a miserable, never-ending political tussle on my Facebook feed. My Chase Harper magnetic tank bag is a perfect example. Why haven’t I written a product review on this thing?

Until John Burns over at Motorcycle.com brought up tank bags I had completely forgotten I had one. I bought the Chase Harper 650 the day Berk and I left for our 650/500 Royal Enfield Baja trip. Neither Royal Enfield was set up with luggage so we strapped our gear on the bikes as best we could. I started out on the 500cc Bullet and I had so much junk to carry I used a backpack to hold some of it.

I’m a proponent of letting the motorcycle carry as much weight as possible. Slinging 20 pounds of junk onto your back and then pounding on city streets is not smart or sexy. My back was already hurting. We were working our way south to pick up a freeway when I called out to Berk, “Is there a motorcycle shop around here? I need to get a tank bag.”

“Yeah, follow me.” I followed Berk through the nondescript Californian sprawl and we arrived at a motorcycle accessory shop that was not named CycleGear. The shop guys came out and ogled the (at the time a new model not yet sold) Royal Enfield 650. We shot the breeze for a bit and then went inside to look at tank bags. Which didn’t take long because they only had one in stock: the Chase Harper 650.

The Model 650 is as plain as you can make a tank bag. It has a few zipper compartments and four strong magnets to hold the thing to your tank. Nothing expands or is special. Chase Harper is proud of their motorcycle products and prices them accordingly. The thing was like 90 dollars! As it was the display model, kind of dusty and missing the box and paperwork I asked the guys for a discount. No deal.

Berk started telling them how we were famous motojournalists. The clerks shook their heads, neither having heard of or read our stuff. I showed them a few tired old Motorcyclist Magazine stories on my cell phone and they seemed really interested but would not budge on the price. “We’ve already reduced the price on that bag, we can’t go any lower.” I bet Peter Egan could have gotten the price down. The fastest way to end this ego shattering indignity was to fork over the money and haul ass as fast as we could.

The bag was a great relief for my back. It held my camera, wallet, phone and enough stuff that I could survive a day or two on the hoof. Whenever Berk and I went into a store or restaurant I took the bag with me. The magnets make that so easy. I didn’t like that the bag had no rain cover. Those soulless misers at the motorcycle shop not called CycleGear said it was rain resistant. Whenever a motorcycle gear manufacturer says a product is resistant to rain you can take that to mean the damn thing is a sponge. I mean, anything that doesn’t dissolve like sugar when it gets wet could be described as resistant to rain.

As it turns out we didn’t hit any rain on our ride through Baja and the tank bag worked out perfectly fine. I got the 650 Royal Enfield up to an indicated 115 miles per hour and it stayed put like it was made to do 115.

In all the time I have owned the C-H bag I never really looked it over too closely. I didn’t see any straps for using the bag like a backpack. This is a common feature on tank bags. It wasn’t until Burns’ brought up tank bags on Facebook that Steve, another C-H 650 user told me that the straps were hidden in a zipper compartment under the grab handle.

And they were! Well hidden, I wonder if I the shop not named CycleGear had given me the original paperwork for the 650 would I have found the straps sooner? Probably not: I would have tossed the paperwork anyway. I’m a rebel, man.

The interior of the C-H 650 is plush, deep red. I feel like I have a bordello between my legs whenever I open the lid. Well padded, my camera gear survived Baja’s bumpy roads unscathed.

The lid of the 650 has quite a few features. There’s a bungee cord crisscrossing the top to hold odd shaped bits. Behind the mesh map holder there is yet another zipper for papers and what not.

Finally, there is a front-opening pouch with a red plastic liner that might keep something dry depending on how much the zipper leaks. I haven’t used any of these little hidey-holes so I can’t say if they are worthwhile. I toss everything into the main compartment.

The backside of the C-H 650 is not covered in super soft material. It’s more like vinyl. I had no tank scratches using the 650. There is one clip on the front and two clips on the back that I imagine could be used for strapping the bag to non-metallic gas tanks. I did not get the parts that would affix the bag to a non-metallic tank. They might be an extra cost item or you-know-who lost them at that shop not named CycleGear.

Overall I’m happy if not ecstatic with the Chase Harper tank bag. Just remember to bring plastic bags to protect your stuff in the rain. It did the job I needed it to do for much more money than I thought it should. For only having one, dusty tank bag the shop not named CycleGear did ok. My last tank bag lasted 10 years. This one looks sturdy enough to go the same distance.

Land O’ Goshen: A Janus ride!

Janus Motorcycles has a series of videos on their motorcycles, and this is the latest with Jordan and Josiah. There are few things that sound as good as a single-cylinder motorcycle accelerating, and that comes across loud and clear in the video. Enjoy, my friends.

Watching the Janus video reminded me of the Baja ride I took with Jordan and Devin (you can read about that adventure here). It was cool, riding the jewel-like, CG-engined, Janus motorcycles across northern Baja. We may do that again at some point in the Covid-free future and that would be fun. We sure had a great time on our Janus Baja adventure.

You can read about our other rides here, and more on things to see and do in Baja here.

Stranded in Baja, Hearst Castle, and more…

Every once in a while we do a blog that covers a bunch of topics, and this is one of those times.

Good buddy Mike Huber and his friend Bobbie motorcycled Mexico (Baja, to be specific, almost another country all by itself), and he most recently published an excellent story about being stranded down there by the Covid 19 pandemic. It’s not often that we recommend another blog, but hey, Mike’s writing is outstanding and it’s a great story. Take a look; it’s very good.

My favorite motorcycle magazine (that would be Motorcycle Classics) sends out marketing emails on a regular basis, and in those emails they include links to past (and sometimes recent) articles. I write for MC, and the most recent email that slipped into my inbox included a link to my Destinations piece on Hearst Castle. You might want to read that story; I love Hearst Castle. It’s closed for the pandemic, but the pandemic won’t last forever. Hearst Castle will be there when it’s over.

We’re having a heat wave (both here in the Peoples Republik of Kalifornia and at Tinfiny Ranch). That prompted us to start a piece on riding in extreme heat. My first recommendation would be: Don’t. But things don’t always work out the way you want them to. I once rode the length of Baja on a Mustang replicas with several friends, and due to a lack of research on my part we did the ride in Baja’s hottest month (and that’s September). You can read about the 150cc Baja ride through Hell here. Do you have any advice for riding in high temperatures? Please share them with us (info@exhaustnotes.us) and we’ll include your recommendations here on the blog.

We have more motorcycle, gun and other stuff coming up, including info on Ruger’s new Custom Shop and their Super GP100 .357 Mag revolver, favored loads in the Henry .45 70 Single Shot, a piece on Turnbull’s iconic color case hardening and restoration services, a stunning (and tack-driving) Kimber with exhibition grade French walnut, the wrap-up of our ride through the Andes Mountains in Colombia, the Canton Fair, and for you fans of The Ten Commandments, making bricks without hay and mortar. And a whole lot more.

Stay tuned, folks.

Skip Duke

Skip Duke lived in New Mexico and died before I got the chance to meet him. I don’t know the exact date he shuffled off. Judging from the condition of Tinfiny Ranch when we first bought it from his daughter I’m guessing five or more years had elapsed between our purchase of Skip’s run-down mountain property and his death.

I never met Skip Duke but I get a strong sense of the man from the junk he left behind. I found boxes of mixed fasteners and some really nice ¼-inch by 8-inch screws with flat-topped heads. The heads are 5/8-inch wide and made so that the fastener countersinks itself like a giant deck screw. These screws are so nice I want to build something just to use them. Skip left behind two really nice red-painted, bottle jacks; one of them must be a 50-ton model. It’s a bruiser, like a foot tall and weighs 40 pounds. Skip was into radios: he was a Ham operator I’m guessing. Tinfiny had several antenna wires strung over the trees and arroyos. In his broken down shop I found a signal generator, watt meter and some other radio test gear that I couldn’t identify. That’s some old school radio stuff, man.

I never met Skip Duke but I think I would have liked him. Skip Duke had multiple uncompleted projects running in parallel when he died and that’s the same way I work. I get bored with one project and switch over to another, never finishing any of them. The 1975 Kawasaki 900 I call Zed was one of Skip’s unfinished projects. In the scattered debris of Skip’s life I found motorcycle magazines from the 1970’s featuring the new Z1900. The bike got universally rave reviews in the magazines, and rightfully so: the 900cc Z1 Kawasaki was a landmark motorcycle.

From reading old correspondence I found that Skip was having trouble with a Dyna III electronic ignition system he bought for the old Kawasaki. A melted wiring harness on Zed and no sign of the electronic ignition leads me to believe Skip sent the rotor and pick up coils back for a refund or tossed them in the bushes. One day I’m going to look for it with a metal detector. I found the original points plate in a box of MG car parts and after I cleaned them up the bike ran fine. I remember when electronic ignitions were novel, high tech stuff. I didn’t like them back then either.

Abandoned for years, Skip Duke’s house was overrun by rats when we looked at it with Ronnie, our real estate agent. A converted garage, the house had one bedroom, a living room, a kitchen and a bathroom. Maybe 500 square feet under roof. On the right side of the house was a small garage where Skip kept his tools and his motorcycles. I found a working 4-inch Makita belt sander in there. The bottom garage door panel was broken and the door hung off its track. You could walk inside. Ronnie looked around and said, “There used to be more motorcycles in here.” Next to the garage Zed was sitting outside in the weather, leading me to believe thieves had made off with Skip’s better motorcycles. As if there ever was a motorcycle better than a Z1.

We gutted Skip’s house. Every night after work I would put down 5 of those green rat poison blocks. Every morning they would be gone. Eventually the pace slowed until one day I found the poison untouched. The rats ate a total of 3 gallon-size buckets of poison but I won the war. I spent a pleasant two weeks hauling out dead rats and disinfecting the entire place with a solution of 50/50 bleach and water. My lungs burned and my vision blurred but at last the place was clean and rodent free inside.

We replaced the siding, drywall and insulation, and rewired most of the the electrical system. Skip’s little garage area is now my wife CT’s walk in closet. The concrete ramp leading to the garage has been leveled off and is a 5’ X 14’ office and storage room. We re-plumbed the bathroom and redid the kitchen eliminating any appliance that hinted at being a stove. We named the little house in the arroyo “The Carriage House” hoping to boost the little shack’s confidence. New paint and tile made The Carriage House look fresh inside. Skip’s old fiberglass shower stall was hard to remove and we were running out of time so it still serves, the last remnant of a bygone owner.

Skip Duke was not satisfied with the little Carriage House and had bigger plans in the works. Further up the property there was a graded area where Skip was going to build a structure. Two large, wooden sawhorses held 8-foot x 20-foot sheets of a composite material consisting of 6” white Styrofoam sandwiched between two layers of glued-on, exterior grade, 1/2’’ oriented strand board. There was enough paneling to build a 20 X 40 insulated building. Unfortunately, death has a way of messing up the best of plans. The 20’ X 40’ structure never got built. White plastic sheeting covered the composite panels but the relentless New Mexico sun crystallized the plastic. The sheet lay in tatters and it would crumble when you tried to pick it up. Without protection the panels fell victim to the elements.

Oriented strand board is fairly weather resistant but you can’t let it remain wet for long. Stacked horizontally on the sawhorses, the panels couldn’t shed water and the pooled moisture between the panels rotted the OSB. I’m sure if Skip Duke knew he was going to die he would have stacked them vertically allowing water to run out from between the panels. I managed to salvage enough panel material to build the walls for another of Skip’s unfinished projects: the pump house.

The original pump house was a 55-gallon metal drum over the wellhead. Inside the living room was a 40-gallon pressure tank to smooth out the cycling of the well pump. I can’t figure why anyone would want a gigantic pressure tank in their living room but Skip was not a man who trifled with cosmetics. The amount of paneling I could salvage determined the size of the well house so I poured a 6’ X 10” slab with a central drain and built a small shed over the well. I moved the 40-gallon pressure tank to the new well house and installed a water softener next to the pressure tank. With 6” thick Styrofoam walls the pump house is so well insulated a 150-watt chicken coop heater keeps the pipes nice and toasty in winter. Too bad so much composite paneling was ruined; it would have made for a super energy efficient house.

When Skip Duke died he left behind a 24-foot motorhome without an engine, an 18-foot Hobie Cat sailboat on a trailer, a 1974 MGB-GT hardtop 4-seater, a 4-person Jacuzzi with seized air and water pump motors, two large dog houses and a backyard chicken coop with camouflage netting over the top. Skip was a man who was into everything cool. I got rid of the junk except for the MG. Those hardtops with their Italian, Pininfarina-designed hatchbacks are rare. I might get it running one day.

Life is funny. I have an Internet buddy also named Skip Duke. He is very much alive and a Kawasaki Z1 guru. The living Skip Duke’s Kawasaki advice has saved me untold woe in the long restoration process of dead Skip Duke’s motorcycle. I bet the two Skips would get along famously (either that or they’d kill each other).

I never knew Skip Duke. We’ve remodeled and reused his vast pile of junk in ways he could not have foreseen. I wish he had left details of his future plans, like notes stuck to each project describing what he saw as success. I hope he’s looking down (or up as the case may be; Skip might have been a real jerk) and smiling as he sees his old Kawasaki motorcycle (now my old Kawasaki motorcycle) roaring down the highway full of life and power. I hope whatever becomes of that soulful part of a man after death is aware of the happy life CT and I have built atop the 5-acre spread he must have loved dearly. And I hope he finds joy in all that we have done.

Follow the complete Z1 resurrection here!

For more on Tinfiny Ranch and the Tinfiny Summit, check out the YouTube videos here!

Motorcycle Camping: Level 1

The town of Weed is our last chance for gas or groceries. It’s a small place, population 20, and every Weed-ian citizen is packing heat. The chick working at the only store in town sports some kind of .45 auto that wobbles a crazy figure 8 on her hip as she totes pallets of soda pop from the storage shed into the store. The tall cowboy who delivers propane has a revolver on his hip also but that gun is not nearly as active.

Look there: a soccer mom wearing a white cowboy hat, plaid shirt, jeans and a 9mm pistol goes into the store for a gallon of milk. Mid-sized dogs hop out of a Polaris side-by-side, both dogs strapped with camouflaged vests that sport bandoliers of ammunition and pup-optimized night-vision goggles. Tactical mutts, man. A small child, not more than 2 months old waves about a menacing AR-15 while his head lolls in an elliptical orbit. Each complete cycle baby’s hard eyes lock onto mine and dare me to steal his candy before rotating on.

Okay, okay, I’m joking. The baby wasn’t carrying an AR-15. Needless to say, the crime rate is low in Weed. Either that or the woods are full of spongy ground and failed attempts. Mike and I fill our gas tanks at Weed not so much because we need fuel but because it’s more an offering to the forest gods before we leave civilization. Cover me while I pump the 87 octane.

Mike has a BMW 650 and I’m on my Husqvarna 510. We leave Weed heading west and after the even smaller town of Sacramento, Aqua Chiquita Road rises into a dark green forest of pines and aspens. This is the Lincoln National Forest. National and state parks may be closed due to Covid but here in New Mexico rough camping in the forests is still allowed.

We originally planned on camping further west, on Thousand Mile Trail, but an interesting unmarked side road caught our attention so we wandered off to see where it went. You can do stuff like that when you have no destination.

The side road was bumpy and almost all rock. Not loose rock, but solid rock. We bounced along for a mile and the road dipped into a sandy mud hole. Off to the right was a wide, shallow valley covered in lush green grass and dotted with grazing cows. “What do you think?” asked Mike. “Lets go check it out.”

The valley was much smoother than the road. There were tangles of old barbed wire sprinkled among the cow patties. Each time we would stop at the perfect camping place another perfect camping place was just a little further ahead. We kept following the Valley Of Perfect Campsites until it split off into two directions. We made camp at the junction of the two valleys on a slight rise that gave a commanding view of the pastoral scene.

I mean camping doesn’t get any better than this: no people, no RV’s, the camp even had a pre-constructed fire-ring and enough firewood for a month. Setting up my new tent was easy. I’ve used pup-style tents for years and they are all the same simple sleeve with two poles. One modification I’ve learned over the years is to use bungee cords for tying off the end poles. In a hard wind the bungees stretch but don’t yank the tent pegs out of the ground.

The pup tent was easy enough to rig but my new air mattress made up for it. I bought a Soble brand mattress with a built-in pump. The deal is, you remove the cap and then the plug on the square pump area. Next you push down on the square pump to fill the mattress. And you pump. And you pump. I started grumbling, “This damn mattress pump isn’t doing anything!”

I pumped and pumped. Sweat started trickling down my sides and still I pumped. Then I tried inflating it by blowing into the fill hole. After 20 minutes of struggling I was light headed, feeling sick and getting nowhere. I gave up and tossed the completely flat mattress into the tent and my sleeping bag over that. At least we had soft grass under the tents.

We were drinking smoky coffee and cooking hot dogs on a stick over our roaring fire. It really was the perfect camp site. Mike asked me, “Tell me how your air mattress works.” I explained the cap and the plug and the little square built-in pump to him. Mike thought about it for a few minutes then asked me, “How do you deflate the mattress?” I was stunned. What a dumb-ass question: deflating the mattress was the last thing I wanted to do! Then Mike said, “There must be a way to let the air out.”

My world shattered. Dark, stumbling stupidity was illuminated by the light of one thousand suns. Of course! There had to be a second plug! I ran to the tent, all doubt erased. There, underneath the pillow on the opposite side from the pump was a 1-inch deflation valve and it was wide open. For 20 minutes I had been pushing air from the foot of the mattress out the valve on the other end. With the deflation valve plugged the Soble mattress took about 2 minutes to inflate into a firm, comfortable sleeping pad.

After the air mattress debacle I realized I should have brought some gin along. I’ll put that on my list of equipment along with more water. Making coffee, cleaning up and drinking used up most of our water supply. Mike had an emergency drinking straw, the king you put into any old water and it filters the muck. A stream runs alongside Aqua Chiquita road a few miles away so we weren’t going to die. Other things we brought but didn’t use were aerosol cans of bear spray and bear bells. The bells were CT’s idea. If a bear can’t hear me snoring then he’s a pretty old bear.

Speaking of snoring, I’ll need a new sleeping bag as the tiny mummy bag would not allow much movement. I finally un-zipped the thing so I could turn and parts of me fell out into the 50-degree night air. I woke up sore. But then I always wake up sore. That night air also soaked all our gear. The bikes were wet, our folding stools were wet, the inside of my tent was dripping with condensation and that’s with both sides open. Mike’s tent didn’t have a rain fly, the top is mesh and was still wet inside. I don’t know if this was just a function of the dew point or the tent material not breathing.

Hot coffee in the morning will pave over a lot of rough patches and by 11 a.m. we felt alert enough to head back down the mountain. We rode west on Aqua Chiquita until Scott Able Road and followed Scott Able back to the paved highway.

A brief discussion was held at the 1000 Mile Trail, our original destination but we were both kind of tired from our night on the hoof. Anyone who thinks homeless people are homeless by choice has never camped with me. I don’t like motorcycle camping and this trip has done nothing to alter my opinion. I guess it’s the new normal until things start re-opening and a treatment or vaccine for Covid 19 is created. I’m not going to complain too much. I’ve learned more on fine-tuning my camping gear, which was the goal on this ride. You know, waking up sore and damp beats not waking up at all.

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!

Slow Ride Home

The other day while surfing the offerings on Prime, we found Slow Ride Home, an indy movie about eight scooter dudes riding 3,700 miles from Jacksonville, Florida to Seattle. The bikes were Yamaha Zumas, the displacement was 125cc, the top speed was 40 mph, some of it was kind of silly, and the language was crude, but hey, it was a good flick. What struck me immediately were the similarities between this ride and the long-distance group rides I led for CSC Motorcycles. Listening to the complaints about getting everybody on the road each morning was pure deja vu. If you rode with me on any of those rides, you’ll really appreciate this one, and even if you didn’t, you’ll still like Slow Ride Home. There’s no hidden messages and this is not a movie that makes you think, and that’s what made it fun.

Here’s your link to Slow Ride Home.

Riding Tools

Our good buddy Mike Huber, who literally lives his life from a motorcycle, has shared several great stories with us in the past. This one came in yesterday, it’s one of his best. It’s about the websites and services that support you when in the field, and it’s a great read and a great resource. We’re happy to share it with our ExNotes readers.

Mike, thanks again!

Many people think motorcyclists just wake up, ride in whatever direction we want, have no plans, and live without a care in the world. This stereotype often is true, but for veteran riders who have battled weather, crashes, and other unforeseeable incidents we know that being prepared with the proper tools and having our awareness honed can not only save our lives, but will allow for a more enjoyable ride when we do encounter these obstacles.

There have been a lot of trial and error moments over the years living as a fulltime motorcyclist; some of these errors in hindsight could have been easily avoided with little planning and the use of a few tools. I want to share a few links and tips with you to improve your safety and riding experience while avoiding the headaches I have had to conquer in the past.

Camping

For me, dispersed camping is the only way to go. When beginning motorcycle camping KOAs and local state parks are great for training wheels to learn and overcome mistakes or equipment you forgot or need to purchase, but can be rather loud and unfulfilling as a camping getaway. After a few incidents with generators running at all hours, kids screaming, and dogs barking I realized this wasn’t communing with nature at all. It was, however, testing my patience and destroying my Zen. From that moment on dispersed camping on a motorcycle is all I do (with the exception of some National Parks). Dispersed camping allows you to be alone deep in nature with a crackling fire reflecting off the steel of your motorcycle while embracing the silence. This is an experience not to be missed as a motorcyclist and these two links below have greatly helped in guiding me to some beautiful and unforgettable campsites that otherwise would never have been located.

freecampsites.NET
ioverlander.com

Riding Offroad

Everyone has different ability levels on their own style of motorcycle when it comes to off-roading. The links below provide information on the terrain you will likely encounter and difficulty levels which can keep you from getting in over your head while riding these beautiful roads. Along with these links, speaking to locals in coffee shops and bars can be an invaluable resource since many of them will be up to speed with the current conditions and be able to provide you with tips and suggestions that websites just can’t compete with.

alltrails.com
trailsoffroad.com

Weather/Area Warnings

The apps below are another must have for any serious rider. Storms in the mountains can appear very ferociously and with little warning at times. Staying current on weather and fire conditions will minimize your risk of being caught in a dangerous situation. These tools when used can enable you to avoid and even learn to wait out, outrun, or detour around many storms. An added suggestion would be to scout out the weather and fire conditions in the area you plan to camp. Dispersed camping often will leave you with no cell phone signal or other warning capabilities. Researching these conditions ahead of time will not only ensure you are comfortable from a weather standpoint, but can also save your life if there are adverse conditions or wild fires you aren’t prepared for.

myradar.com
windy.com
https://www.fireweatheravalanche.org/fire/

Emergency Support

When I began my journey I spoke with several riders (especially those doing the BDRs (Backcountry Discovery Routes) who swore on using a GPS or satellite communication device for emergencies. I thought at the time this was overkill even for my deep level of preparedness. Well it just took one solid fall while off-roading to convince me otherwise. I now keep this device in my riding jacket at all times (not on the bike, as in a crash you and the bike tend to part ways) in the event I do require help and am alone without cell phone coverage. The SPOTGen3 also has an “All OK” signal I use each evening when camping so my Mom knows I am safe and not in any danger.

https://international.findmespot.com/#/

These are the websites and apps I have learned to use and appreciate while riding and camping off my motorcycle. I am always interested in learning what other tools people are using on their motorcycle trips in order to continue and pass on ideas to others in our tightly knit motorcycle community.

Mike, that’s awesome. Thanks so much for sharing this with us and our readers. All the way, Amigo!

A Santa Cruz Mountains Loop

I had a great ride this week…a loop through the Santa Cruz Mountains down to the Pacific coast and back. Think giant redwoods, beautiful scenes, great roads, and a rich history.

First, the route: It’s a quick hop down the 280 to the Woodside exit (that’s Highway 84), and then a twisty ride west on the 84 to Highway 35. Highway 35 is called Skyline Boulevard, which runs north to Highway 92, and 92 drops down to Half Moon Bay. Then it was another left onto the world-famous Pacific Coast Highway. I had an interesting stop at a very old cemetery just off the PCH, and after that I continued south to San Gregorio State Beach. Another left put me back on 84 and on into La Honda. From there, the 84 completed the loop. Here’s what it looks like:

The area to the west of 280 is surprisingly rural for a location so close to San Francisco (about 30 miles to the north) and Silicon Valley (which sort of starts just on the other side of 280). Highway 84 is a quick ride to the first town on this loop, and that’s Woodside.

Woodside is one of the wealthiest towns in America. A partial list of the big names who live or have lived in Woodside include Charles Schwab (yes, that Charles Schwab), Steve Jobs, Michelle Pfeiffer (the classiest actress ever), Joan Baez, Nolan Bushnell (the founder of Atari and the Chuck E. Cheese restaurant chain), Scott Cook (the founder of Intuit), Carl Djerassi (a novelist and the guy who developed the birth control pill), Larry Ellison (the CEO of Oracle Corporation), James Folger (as in need a cup of coffee?), Kazuo Hirai (the CEO of Sony), Mike Markkula (the second Apple CEO), Gordon E. Moore (Intel’s co-founder and originator of Moore’s Law), Prince Vasili Alexandrovich (the nephew of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia), Shirley Temple, John Thompson (Symantec’s CEO), and Nick Woodman (founder and CEO of GoPro). Woodside is within commuting distance of Silicon Valley, so it’s understandable, I guess, why so many high-rolling Silicon Valley types call it home. Needless to say, I didn’t bump into any of these folks on my ride (if I had, you’d see photos here). Given the choice, I’d like to meet Michelle Pfeiffer, but it just wasn’t in the cards that day. Charles Schwab would be cool, too, as Charles Schwab & Company have done well for me. Maybe next time.

After passing through Woodside and climbing into the Santa Cruz Mountains, it’s on to the intersection of Highways 84 and 35. Alice’s Restaurant is right at that intersection. Getting there was fun. The road has 15-mph hairpins and there are redwoods, eucalyptus, and other tall trees on either side. In many cases they form a green leafy tunnel over the road. I would have liked to grab a photo or two, but there was literally no place to stop and truth be told, I had my hands full.

It’s only about 3 1/2 miles from the 280 to Alice’s on Highway 84. Before you get too excited, it’s not that Alice’s Restaurant (you know, the one in the Arlo Guthrie song). But the woman who started this restaurant is named Alice, and hey, why not ride that coattail? I was there during the week and I was able to get a photo of the place. When I went by on an earlier weekend, Alice’s was jammed with people, motorcycles, and Ferraris.

Highway 35 is called Skyline Boulevard. I think of a boulevard as a city street, but this was nothing like that. It was another twisting mountain road and the views were stunning.

Skyline Boulevard tees into Highway 92 at its northern end and my ride along it was only 13 miles, but 13 miles can take a while on mountain roads. Part of it is the twisting nature of the roads and part of it is the scenery. I had the road to myself and it was awesome. Skyline Boulevard follows the ridge of the Santa Cruz Mountains. There are places where you can see San Francisco Bay looking to the right, and the Pacific on the left. The photo below shows the Crystal Springs Reservoir to the east, and if you look real hard, you can almost see San Francisco Bay beyond it.

When I reached Highway 92, another quick 5.4 miles brought me to Half Moon Bay.

Highway 92 has twists and turns, but it’s a busy road and Half Moon Bay is a tourist place. Not needing any refrigerator magnets and having been there many times before, I didn’t stop in Half Moon Bay on this ride. But it’s a cool place and based on my earlier visits, it’s impossible to find a bad restaurant (my favorite is the Greek Taverna on the left side of 92 as it nears the PCH; it’s a great walkup place for fresh seafood). Bring money; things are not cheap in Half Moon Bay. The major employer is the Ritz Carlton Hotel (it’s that kind of place).

Another interesting tidbit about Half Moon Bay: They used to host big wave surfing competition here. They get 50 to 60 foot waves when conditions are right and the area attracts the best surfers in the world. The organizers moved the competition someplace else about three years ago. Me? I’ll stick to something safer, like riding motorcycles.

Highway 92 ends at the Pacific Coast Highway (also called the Juan Cabrillo Highway) and it runs long the Pacific for about a dozen miles before our next turn comes up (and that’s Highway 84 again, to complete our loop). Even though the road is the Pacific Coast Highway, it’s a fair way off to the Pacific and for most of that distance I couldn’t get a photo with the road and the ocean in the same frame, but hey, it’s the PCH, man. It doesn’t get much better than that, as these two Triumph-riders near San Gregorio State Beach already knew (where I finally did get the photo I wanted).

Before I reached San Gregorio State Beach, though, I had a stop I wanted to make. In researching this area before the ride, I discovered that there’s a ghost town and an old cemetery about four miles south of Half Moon Bay. It’s Purissima (with two “s”s), not to be confused with the La Purisima Mission, the subject of a recent ExNotes blog. The town of Purissima is long gone, but the cemetery is still there, and I stopped for a few photos. It’s a left on Verde Road, and the cemetery is about a half mile up the road.

I like old cemeteries. After snapping a few photos, I was back on the PCH pointed south.

Eight miles down the road at San Gregorio State Beach I made a left on Highway 84. The town of San Gregorio is just up the road. There’s not much there, but the people are friendly. When I stopped for a shot of their general store there was a guy with a white beard taking in the day. When he saw me taking pictures, he asked if I wanted him to move. “No way,” I said. “Stay right there. You add character to the place.”

The Spaniards were the first Europeans to pass through this area in 1769 when they were expanding the Alta California mission chain. They stayed for a bit and named the area San Gregorio after Pope Gregory I. San Gregorio became a favored 1850s destination when San Franciscans visited the area for swimming, fishing, and hunting. Grizzly bears used to live in these hills, you know. And mountain lion. And deer (the ones the mountain lions didn’t get). I’ll bet the hunting was good. I’ve hunted California’s coastal mountains a hundred miles or so further south (we were chasing wild boar, but all I ever got was poison oak). The thought of going after a grizzly bear with a single-shot muzzleloader 170 years ago crossed my mind more than a few times as I rode through this area.

Further up the 84 (heading east) I entered the tiny town of La Honda (the name means “the sling” in Spanish). Impressive redwood trees made me stop for a photo, but before I could get to the trees this motorcycle whizzed by:

La Honda is a nice little place. I chatted with an old guy who had an English bulldog. I say old, but he was probably about the same age as me. “I did that once,” he said. “Stopped because my car was making a noise and decided this is where I was going to retire.” We had a nice conversation. He’s a former aerospace guy like me, and we talked shop for a bit about the good old days. You know, when the cold war was still in a full tilt boogie and the aerospace industry was the closest you could get to Heaven without a one-way ticket.

La Honda is a wide spot in the road that isn’t very wide at all, but it sure has a colorful background. The outlaw Cole Younger and his brothers used to live here. That’s the Younger brothers who ran with Jesse James (the real one, not the reality TV dude). The Younger brothers hid out in La Honda because it was cool and it was remote. Ken Kesey lived here (he wrote One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest), and his drug-fueled La Honda exploits with Hunter S. Thompson and Tom Wolfe are documented in Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. And like I mentioned above, grizzly bears used to live in these mountains. There are stories about a guy who survived a grizzly attack by killing the bear with his knife (not Davy Crockett, but the two would have probably got along). Fewer than a thousand people live in La Honda (at least as recorded by the last census). It’s a cool place made even cooler (literally and figuratively) by the giant redwood trees in the area.

So, about those redwoods:

I was hungry when I reached La Honda. I usually select a place to eat based on how many vehicles are parked in front (who needs Yelp?) and by that measure, the La Honda Country Market looked mighty inviting (I had to wait for other folks to leave to get the unobstructed photo you see below). The Country Market has a killer deli bar. I had a pastrami sandwich on toasted marbled rye and it was maybe the best pastrami sandwich I ever had. Give it a shot. You can thank me later.

I’m up in this area fairly regularly, but this is the first time I’ve done the loop described here. It’s a great ride best done during the week. Because it is such a great ride (and because it’s close to both Silicon Valley and San Francisco), these roads are jammed on the weekends (motorcycles, Ferraris, Lamborghinis, Cobras, McClarens, and other motoexotica). When I did the ride on Tuesday, the roads were delightfully open.

I’d advise avoiding speeding (especially on the weekends, as the roads had a significant CHP presence) and I’d also say don’t wear a tinted visor. The giant redwoods and eucalyptus trees bathe the roads in alternating patches of bright sunlight and deep shade (the riding equivalent of chiaroscuro), and in the shade it’s tough to see through a dark visor.

The ride I described above is about 60 miles from the point you exit the 280 until you get back on it, as shown in the map at the top of this blog. I’d allow about two hours for a relaxed ride during the week, and maybe throw in another hour or two if you want to stop for breakfast or lunch.

Want to see our other rides on one of the greatest roads in the world? That would be California’s Pacific Coast Highway, and you can see it here.

Day 7: Volcan Nevado del Ruiz

On my 8th day in Colombia and 7th day on the road, we left the town of Honda and rode to the top of Volcan Nevado del Ruiz, which took us up to about 14,000 feet. It was the highest I’d ever ridden and I was surprised at how well the RS3 (the carbureted version of the RX3) was doing. But I’m getting ahead of myself…let’s get into the blog I wrote for CSC Motorcycles at the end of that fine day.

Posted on December 21, 2015

A delightful hotel, sweltering heat, more mountain twisties, freezing cold, fog that cut visibility down to 30 feet, dirt roads, riding at 13,576 feet, hot sulfur baths, and a burbling volcano that killed 23,000 people in 1985…all in a day’s ride for us.

The hotel first…it was the Epoque, a great little boutique hotel in Honda that was one of the coolest places (in one of the hottest cities) I’ve ever parked a motorcycle. It was arranged in a square around a small pool (which we enjoyed immensely the previous night). Here are a few shots of the courtyard, Juan and Carlos having breakfast, and an antique record player in the dining room…

From there, it was another trials ride following the boys from Medellin as we twisted, turned, climbed, and descended cobbleboulder streets in Honda. Juan took us to the first bridge to ever span the Magdalena River, where I grabbed this shot of a Colombian woman taking in the humid morning air of Honda…

Here’s the bridge. It has planks across the bottom as the road surface. It’s real Indiana Jones stuff….

We saw the Magdalena River museum, and stopped in to check it out. Folks, it was hot. I was soaking wet by now, drenched in sweat.

The museum was interesting and it had some bizarre art. This guy reminds me of a boss I had a couple of decades ago…

The Colombians used steamships on the Magdalena, just like we did on the Mississippi River.

We left Honda and started to climb. The temperatures dropped mercifully. We stopped in Fresno. Yep, Colombia has a Fresno, too.

That’s me in the town square. I’m the guy on the right.

Two young ladies in a small store in Fresno.

As we were sipping energy drinks, Juan pointed out our destination for that evening, the Volcan Nevado del Ruiz. It was showing a little steam, and I stuck an arrow in this picture so you could see it.

We continued our climb. The roads were magnificent.

The photo below shows my front tire, with chicken strips that are about as small as I’ve ever been able to make them. I was getting better at keeping up with the Colombian motorcycle community.

Our riding positions are Juan, me, and Carlos. Juan is amazing. I’m struggling to keep up in the twisties, and I know he’s dialed it back for me. He’ll ride through the corners (and the roads are all corners, folks) standing on the pegs. At one point, we were taking a set of curves at speeds way above those at which I would normally ride, with the bikes leaned over at an unimaginable angle, when I looked ahead and saw Juan. He was standing on the pegs, similarly leaned over, and while all this was going on, he was reaching back to check the latch on one of his saddlebags as if it was the most normal thing in the world to do. The guy is an incredible rider.

As we continued to climb, we entered the clouds. Literally. We left the pavement and got on a dirt road headed up to the volcano.

4,138 meters! That’s 13,576 feet, and it’s as high as you can go on a motorcycle anywhere in Colombia. Juan told me he once did this ride on a Yamaha DT100, carrying a passenger on the back!

That’s not dirt on my RX3, folks. It’s volcanic ash. This was not your typical motorcycle ride.

Yours truly, posing with Carlos, on the top of the world, on top of a volcano with indigestion. Wow. This volcano is the very same one that blew in 1985 and wiped out an entire community. It was like Pompeii, as the guys explained it to me. 23,000 people lost their lives in that event. And here we were, riding in conditions where I could barely see Juan’s tail light in front of me, on dirt roads, in bitter cold. Wow.

Here are a couple of shots showing my helmet and my jacket, dusted with Volcan Nevado del Ruiz ash.

We left the volcano, rode another 20 kilometers on this dirt road, and found our hotel in the middle of nowhere.

The hotel had hot springs, and they were awesome. I had a good soak, we had dinner, and that was the end of Day 7 on this epic journey.

Today is our last day. We’re finishing our great circumnavigation and headed back to Medellin. Much of our ride today will be on dirt. I’ll take a few shots and post about it tomorrow.

Later, my friends.

You can read the earlier blogs from this great trip, and a few other moto adventures, here on our Epic Rides page!