Here’s another great day from the Western America Adventure Ride back in 2015 when we rode across the US with our guests from China and Colombia. It was an interesting day for many reasons, but what happened in Carey, Idaho, will stay with me for a long time.
Craters of the Moon
Baja John, our navigator and lodging consultant on the Western America Adventure Ride.
We had left the Craters of the Moon (a National Monument in the middle of nowhere in Idaho) earlier that morning and ridden another 50 miles or so (with literally nothing in between except open plains, rolling hills, and beautiful scenery) when we entered Carey. You have to understand that Carey is basically a wide spot in the road with maybe 40 or 50 buildings along the way. I was focused on getting there, filling the bikes, and getting back on the road.
Pioneer Day and a Parade
When we pulled into Carey, it was like my home town in the early afternoon on the 4th of July. You know, everybody was sitting on lawn chairs, lining the street, waving American flags, and waiting for the parade. That’s literally what we encountered. The good citizens of Carey were waiting for the parade, except it wasn’t the 4th of July.
Gresh and I were leading the pack at about 15 miles an hour when we rode into town, and everybody starting cheering and waving when they saw us. We didn’t know what was going on. I had been blogging every night and Gresh had been kidding me about that. Gresh lifted his face shield and looked at me while we were still rolling. “Boy, a lot of people are following the blog,” he said.
Okay, so we rolled into town on our RX3s. All of us, on RX3 motorcycles, with the town cheering. You can guess where this is going…the good people of Carey thought we were the start of the parade. The Carey people waved and welcomed us. What the Chinese and the Colombian guys were thinking I can only guess.
The Pioneer Day Parade followed us into town.
We pulled into a Shell station (the only one in town). I wanted to get gas and get going. I went into the station and asked what was going on. The girl behind the counter looked at me like I was crazy. I didn’t know it, but it was Pioneer Day in Idaho. It’s a holiday they take very seriously. I imagine everybody in town was out there on both sides of the street.
A Pioneer Day parade pickup.A lady driving a horse-drawn cart asked Hugo where he was from, and when he said China she told him, “Well, hop on up here with us, honey!”
Like I said, I wanted to get gas and get out of town before the parade hit. The Chinese guys and the Colombians wanted to stay and watch the parade.
You can guess which way it went.
The Wild West, on the Western America Adventure Ride.
We had a pretty good time in Carey. Our Chinese and Colombian visitors were seeing a good old fashioned American parade, and the good folks in Carey met folks from the other side of the world. I can only imagine the stories our visitors took home. I sure landed a good story to share with you!
It amazes me when guys post photos of their garages full of motorcycles and every one of them runs. You can hop on any motorcycle they own and it’ll start right up and function perfectly, like the day it left the factory. I’m amazed but unaffected. Those people might as well be from Pluto. Here on earth, my motorcycle collection continues to fall apart faster than I can put it back together.
Your hard-working ExhaustNotes.us correspondent is headed to the Bonneville Salt Flats in a few weeks and since I don’t want to try and mooch a loaner motorcycle on such short notice that means I’ll have to ride one of my clunkers.
The obvious choice would be one of the big Kawasaki street bikes except neither the Z1900 or the ZRX1100 are close to running. I could take Godzilla, it always runs, but this ride will have some high speed sections and while Godzilla can run 70 mph on the highway she gets 30 miles per gallon doing it.
The Husqvarna 510 SMR
So that leaves the most uncomfortable bike I own, a Husqvarna 510 SMR for long distance touring. The Husky is not without its problems, though. The fork seals are puking oil all over the front tire and if they didn’t hold ¾ of a quart in each leg I’d just let the forks bleed out and ride the thing as is.
Husqvarna Fork Repair
Amazon had the seal kits I needed and after watching a few how-to videos on YouTube I took apart the upside-downies. The forks came apart easily. I’d say no harder than the right-side-up forks I’m used to. Man, they do hold some oil!
Pressing in the new seal required a custom PVC seal tool that I copied from a YouTuber and you’ll need to remember to pre-install all the parts in the correct order or you’ll have to start all over. After reassembly I dumped some 5wt fork oil inside and primed the damper rod to get all the air bubbles out. I was dreading this job but it was easy as pie. Don’t fear the new style forks, my brothers.
Husqvarna Chain Replacement
The Husqvarna’s chain had 11,000 miles on it and it was still in fair shape. I think I could have easily gotten another 3000 or so miles on it but I’m not riding solo on this trip and I don’t want to be That Guy. The RK chain I ordered came with one of those rivet-type master links. The kind of master link that I hate.
I’ve got it half-assed riveted but will need CT to hold a backing hammer against the pins while I do a more through job of peening over the hollow head of the link. I know I should use the correct chain riveting tool but at some point you’ve got to stop buying every tool for every job. Don’t make your loved ones last memories of you be bitter resentment for having to dispose of your junk. I’m bringing along the old, clip-type link just in case.
Husqvarna Lever Repair
A while back I broke the clutch lever when I dropped the Husky on a muddy trail at Big Bend Park in Texas. The little stub lever was working ok mostly because the clutch itself had quit working due to a bad O-ring on the slave cylinder. You know me: I keep my stuff in top shape. I priced a new lever and they were more than a Mini Motor top end overhaul kit, my new gold standard of affordability.
I had a donor lever in stock and hacked it to the proper length. Next, I used some of that Harbor Freight aluminum-welding rod that works with a regular torch. It’s odd stuff. You have to scratch and push the rod to get it to stick to your base metal and the work tends to fall away without warning. The rods work great on flat welds but things did not go too well with the lever. After melting two sticks of the welding rod I had a nice, tumorous blob to cut away and grind smooth. It looks like hell, there’s no two ways about it.
The fault line on the repaired lever matches the pre-cut, breakaway slots that came from the factory. We will see if the chewing gum will hold. I may be forced into buying a new lever but not today.
Since the Bonneville area does not have many motel rooms and the few they do have are expensive we will be camping at the KOA. I hate camping on a motorcycle because all the junk you need to carry makes the ride so much less enjoyable. My next project will be fabricating a pipe cage to fit around the Husky’s existing luggage rack. This will give me a secure place to strap all the camping gear: right before it catches fire and falls into the wheel.
The year was 1991, and the last thing in the world I was thinking about was buying another motorcycle, and within the confines of that thought, the very, very last thought I would have ever had was buying a Harley-Davidson. I had previously owned a ’79 Electra-Glide I bought new in Texas, and that bike was a beautiful disaster. I called it my optical illusion (it looked like a motorcycle). I wrote about the bad taste it left in an earlier blog. Nope, I’d never own another Harley, or so I thought when I sold it in 1981.
My ’79 Electra-Glide Classic, as shown in the 1979 Harley catalog. It was the most unreliable and most beautiful motorcycle I ever owned. I wish I still had it.
But like the title of that James Bond movie, you should never say never again. I was a big wheel at an aerospace company in 1991 and I was interviewing engineers when good buddy Dick Scott waltzed in as one of the applicants. I had worked with Dick in another aerospace company (in those days in the So Cal aerospace industry, everybody worked everywhere at one time or another). Dick had the job as soon as he I saw he was applying, but I went through the motions interviewing him and I learned he had a Harley. DIck said they were a lot better than they used to be and he gave me the keys to his ’89 Electra-Glide. I rode it and he was right. It felt solid and handled way better than my old Shovelhead.
Dick Scott on his ’89 Electra-Glide. The day after I took this photo in Baja, Dick died when he crashed his motorcycle.
That set me on a quest. I started looking, and after considering the current slate of Harleys in 1991, I decided that what I needed was a Heritage Softail. I liked the look and I thought I wanted the two-tone turquoise-and-white version. The problem, though, was that none of the Harley dealers had motorcycles. They were all sold before they arrived at the dealers, and the dealers were doing their gouging in those days with a “market adjustment” uptick ranging from $2000 to sometimes $4000 (today, most non-Harley dealers sort of do the same thing with freight and setup). There was no way in hell I was going to pay over list price, but even had I wanted to, it would have been a long wait to get a new Harley.
One day while driving to work, a guy passed me on the freeway riding a sapphire blue Heritage softail, and I was smitten. Those colors worked even better for me than did the turquoise-and-white color combo. The turquoise-and-white had a nice ‘50s nostalgia buzz (it reminded me of a ’55 Chevy Bel Air), but that sapphire blue number was slick. Even early in the morning on Interstate 10, I could see the orange and gray factory pinstriping, and man, it just worked for me. It had kind of a blue jeans look to it (you know, denim with orange stitching). That was my new want and I wanted the thing bad. But it didn’t make any difference. Nobody had any new Harleys, and nobody had them at list price. I might as well have wanted a date with Michelle Pfeiffer. In those days, a new Harley at list price or less in the colors I wanted (or in any colors, actually) was pure unobtanium.
The Harley Softail I bought at Dale’s Modern Harley. I negotiated a hell of a deal. I kept that Harley for 12 years and rode the wheels off the thing. I’ve since learned how to pack a little better.
So one Saturday morning about a month later, I took a drive out to the Harley dealer in San Bernardino. In those days, that dealer was Dale’s Modern Harley (an oxymoronic name for a Harley dealer if ever there was one). Dale’s is no more, but when it was there, it was the last of the real motorcycle shops. You know the drill…it was in a bad part of town, it was small, everything had grease and oil stains, and the only thing “modern” was the name on the sign. That’s what motorcycle dealers were like when I was growing up. I liked it that way, and truth be told, I miss it. Dealerships are too clean today.
Anyway, a surprise awaited. I walked in the front door (which was at the rear of the building because the door facing the street was chained shut because, you know, it was a bad part of town). And wow, there it was: A brand new 1992 Heritage Softail in sapphire blue. Just like I wanted.
Dale’s had a sales guy who came out of Central Casting for old Harley guys. His name was Bob (I never met Dale and I have no idea who he was). Bob. You know the type and if you’re old enough you know the look. Old, a beer belly, a dirty white t-shirt, jeans, engineer boots, a blue denim vest, and one of those boat captain hats motorcycle riders wore in the ‘40s and ‘50s. An unlit cigarette dangled from one corner of his mouth. His belt was a chromed motorcycle chain. I’d been to Dale’s several times before, and I’d never seen Bob attired in anything but what I just described. And I’d never seen him without that unlit cigarette. Straight out of Central Casting, like I said.
“What’s this?” I asked Bob, pointing at the blue Softail.
“Deal fell through,” Bob answered. “Guy ordered it, we couldn’t get him financing, and he couldn’t get a loan anywhere else.”
“So it’s available?” I asked.
“Yep.”
Hmmm. This was interesting.
“How much?” I asked.
“$12,995, plus tax and doc fees,” Bob answered, walking back to his desk at the edge of Dale’s very small showroom floor.
$12,995 was MSRP for a new Heritage Softail back in 1992. That would be a hell of a deal. Nobody else in So Cal was selling Harleys at list price.
I followed Bob to his desk and sat down. I was facing Bob and the Harley was behind me. Bob was screwing around with some papers on his desk and not paying any particular attention to me.
“I’ll go $11,500 for it,” I said.
Bob looked up from his paperwork and smiled.
“Son,” he said (and yeah, he actually called me “son,” even though I was 40 years old at the time) “I’m going to sell that motorsickle this morning. Not this afternoon, not next week, but this morning. The only question is: Am I going to sell it to you or am I going to sell it to him?”
Bob actually said “motorsickle,” I thought, and then I wondered who “him” was. Bob sensed my befuddlement. He pointed behind me and I looked. Somebody was already sitting on what I had started regarding as my motorsickle. That guy was thinking the same thing I was.
“Bob,” I began, “you gotta help me out here. I never paid retail for anything in my life.”
“That’s because you never bought a new ’92 Harley, son, but I’ll tell you what. I’ll throw in a free Harley T-shirt.” I couldn’t tell if he was joking or if he was trying to insult me, but I didn’t care.
I looked at the Harley again and that other dude was still sitting on it. On my motorcycle. And that’s when I made up my mind. $12,995 later (plus another thousand dollars in taxes and doc fees) I rolled out of Dale’s with a brand-new sapphire blue Harley Heritage Softail. And one new Harley T-shirt.
That was my reaction when the photos you see below popped up on my Facebook feed, telling me it had been four years since I posted them. Yep, it was in July of 2015 that yours truly, Joe Gresh, and riders from China and Colombia descended on CSC Motorcycles to christen the RX3 with a ride through the great American West. So Cal to Sturgis, due west to Washington and Oregon, and then a run down the coast home, hitting every National Park and site worth seeing along the way. It was an amazing adventure, and truth be told, I was shocked that it has been four years already. That meant it was about four years ago that CSC brought the RX3 to America, it was four years ago that I first met Joe Gresh in person (a living legend, in my mind), and it was four years ago that we took a ride that made the entire motorcycle world sit up and take notice. A dozen guys, a dozen 250cc motorcycles fresh off the boat from China, 5000 miles, and not a single breakdown. Tell me again about Chinese motorcycles are no good? Nah, don’t waste your breath. I know better.
It was a hell of a ride, and good buddy John Welker did a hell of a job as our very own Ferdinand Magellan, defining the route, making all of the hotel reservations, keeping us entertained with great stories, and more. These are the same photos (I took them all) that popped up on Facebook. They represent only a small portion of the ride, but they give you an idea of what it was like. It was grand.
Somewhere along Highway 89 in Arizona. The guy in the foreground is our very own Baja John Welker. That’s Joe Gresh way at the other end of this row of motorcycles.Same location, with Hugo out front. Hugo is the Zongshen factory rep. He’s a great guy who kept us constantly entertained.Mr. Tso, posing for me in Zion National Park. This guy makes for a great photograph. He rode with us in China, too!We stayed in Panguitch, Utah, the night before we visited Bryce Canyon National Park. Dinner that evening was at the Cowboy’s Smoke House. I liked it so much I later returned with my wife just to have dinner there.Tony and his mascot inside Cowboy’s. Great times.Bryce Canyon National Park. Everyone was captivated by this place. It was awesome.Kyle, one of the Chinese riders, and Big John, our chase vehicle driver. Good guys both.Tony and Kyle, posing at Bryce.The crew when we returned to So Cal. From left to right, it’s Juan from Colombia, Joe Gresh, Tony from China, Mr. Tso from China, John Welker, Lester from China, Kong from China, Big John Gallardo, Hugo Liu, Gabriel from Colombia, and Kyle from China.The obligatory photo at Roy’s in Amboy, somewhere in the Mojave Desert. God Almighty it was hot that day.The guys at the Grand Canyon…Lester, Kong, Tso, and Hugo.In Capitol Reef National Park in Utah, at an impromptu photo stop.I grabbed this photo of Joe Gresh along the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. It looks like he’s Photoshopped into the picture, but he’s not.Same spot, different guys: Gabriel and Juan from Colombia. Juan later invited me to ride with him in Colombia, and I went. That, too, was an incredible ride.
So there you have it, or at least snippets of what was one of the greatest rides I’ve ever done. I’m hoping Facebook has more of these anniversary photos pop up for me, as the ride lasted 19 days and I know I posted more on that ride. Good times. Great riders. Superior camaraderie.
As always, there’s more good stuff coming your way. Stay tuned!
Hey, the whole story of that ride is here. You can get the whole nine yards by buying your own copy of 5000 Miles At 8000 RPM. There’s a lot more good information in there, too, like CSC’s no-dealer approach to market, how we dealt with the Internet trolls who tried to hurt the company, the first CSC Baja trip, the RX3’s strengths and weaknesses, and much, much more!
I am getting thoroughly pumped up about riding the 2019 Three Flags Classic this year on the RX4. There’s just something about the Three Flags Classic that’s magic, and I haven’t been this excited about getting out on the road in quite a while. It’s going to be grand and it’s going to be a blast, and you’ll be able to follow my personal ride from Mexico through the western United States on up into Canada right here on the ExNotes blog. I’ll have tons of great photos and the writing will be as good as I can make it. You’ll be able to follow first hand my further impressions of the CSC RX4, too. This won’t be a silly superficial set of impressions like you’d read in a half-baked one-page magazine article, either. Nope, this will be thousands of miles of international riding across three countries on the newest motorcycle to hit these shores. I’m not worried. I’ve never been let down by a CSC motorcycle, and I feel comfortable that the RX4 is going to be another home run for CSC and Zongshen. Whatever happens, you’ll get the straight skinny right here on ExhaustNotes!
I think it’s going to be great. If you want to read more about the 2019 Three Flags Classic, take a look at the SCMA site here! If you’d like to read about our 2005 Three Flags Classic ride, you can do so here.
Make sure you never miss an ExNotes blog with fresh Gresh and yours truly, and get a free decal! Hey, sign up right here:
First up today…our good buddy Gary’s Vintage Yamaha Enduro site. Gary alerted me to it a few days ago, I’ve enjoyed poking around on it, and you will, too.
This is a cool site about cool bikes. Spend some time here; you’ll be a better person for doing so!
I’ve always admired those vintage Yamaha enduros. Gresh has one and it’s one his favorite motorcycles. I remember the maroon 360 Yamaha offered back in the early 1970s (I was still in college then). I always wanted one, but it’s an itch I haven’t scratched yet. Maybe someday. I’m still young.
Good buddy Buffalo, a world-class artist who rode with us on one of the Baja rides, created a line art RX3 motorcycle and it’s available in several formats. Buffalo loves riding and he loves his RX3. Hey, what’s not to like?
This is muey cool, and it’s from a muey cool dude.
Buffalo is a very cool guy who’s done some very cool things. We’ve written about Buffalo before here on the ExNotes blog. Buffalo also has a very cool blog (MotoFritz.com), and it’s another I recommend you visit. Buffalo (along with his cousin and niece) recently toured Vietnam on motorcycles, and there are cool videos on the MotoFritz blog from that trip.
I’m going hunting. Deer this time, in Idaho. Good buddy J invited me to head up north with him later this year to chase Bambi, and I’ll be posting about that here on the ExNotes blog.
Good buddy J and the Power Wagon on an earlier Baja expedition.
I mentioned J recently when I described his new website (Sierra Mountain Passes), but J and I go back a few years. We first met when we were involved in manufacturing high performance sails for ocean racing yachts. Think a million bucks for a set of sails for one boat (and the sails are only good for one season). Good times, those were.
Whoa! Talk about adventure!
But back on the deer quest…I’m starting to research venison recipes (yeah, I know, it’s a little early for that and I am counting my chickens before the eggs have hatched). I’m really looking forward to this adventure. We may get a deer, or we may get skunked. Either way, it’s going to be fun. I’m thinking I’ll take my .300 Weatherby Vanguard. It’s way more power than I’ll need, but we’ll be in some rugged country, the Vanguard is my only composite-stocked rifle, and the thing is a tack driver.
The Weatherby Vanguard in 300 Weatherby Magnum.
More cool stuff…you’ve seen the series we did on the 2005 Three Flags Classic Rally from Mexico to Canada. I rode with good buddy Marty, and it was a hell of an adventure.
Good buddy Marty on the left and yours truly at Lake Louise in Canada during 3FC05. There were signs warning us of grizzlies in the area!
The 3FC is one of the world’s premier motorcycle events, and it’s sponsored by one of the world’s premier motorcycle clubs: The Southern California Motorcycle Association. As it turns out, the SCMA is one of our biggest ExNotes fans. They’ve run our ExNotes stories in the SCMA newsletter and they follow our zany ramblings daily. Good buddy Gonzo, their president, suggested that I join the festivities again this year for the 3FC19 rally, and you know what? I’m going. I’ll be on a new CSC RX4 (one from the very first shipment), and I’ll be blogging the hell out of the ride the entire way from Mexico through the United States and on up into Canada. And then I’ll do the same thing on the way home, for which I’ll take a different (to be determined) route.
The CSC RX4 up in the San Gabriel Mountains.
The CSC RX4 is an exciting motorcycle. There was a recent article on this bike in Adventure Motorcycle magazine, but I thought that review was a bit on the short side. (How about that? A review of a review!) You can read a lot more about the RX4 right here on ExNotes, and you’ll see a whole lot more when I do the 3FC19 on one of the new CSC 450cc RX4 adventure bikes.
The Bullet in Baja. The new 650 Interceptor was a strong and reliable motorcycle. The Bullet, not so much, but it wasn’t the bike’s fault. Read the article, and learn more…
Some say the adventure doesn’t start until something goes wrong; by that measure, the Bullet was every inch an adventure bike…
Ah, quoted again. That’s my line, and you can read it online in the latest issue of Motorcycle Classics magazine.
Good times and great bikes in Baja, and the story is in the current issue of Motorcycle Classics magazine.
Our story of the Baja Enfield adventure is now available online, and you can read it here. Joe Gresh and I rode the new 650 Interceptor and an older Bullet, and we had a blast. Great food, great riding, beautiful people, and we said hi to the whales. It was awesome!
Yes, it really was like that. Somewhere along the Silk Road (the actual Silk Road) in China. I parked my RX3 when I saw the double rainbow, thinking someday I might use the shot in a blog about this adventure.
Almost 40 years ago, I saw my first Indiana Jones movie and it affected me profoundly. I started traveling the world stumbling upon lost empires. Things that have been swallowed by time, as they say. My motorcycle ride through Colombia had some of that. The Baja adventures have a bit of it, too. But none of the rides had more of an Indiana Jones flavor than did the ride across China. That ride was three years ago this month, and I still think about it every day. There were several things we saw in China that would have been right at home in an Indiana Jones movie. One was Liqian. I can best tell you about it with an excerpt from Riding China, the story of the ride with Joe Gresh across the Ancient Kingdom.
Gobi Gresh, aka Arjiu, stopping to smell the sunflowers in China.
The ride in the morning was just like yesterday. We rode the Silk Road at high speed, making great time in magnificent weather. I knew we were going to Wuwei (you could have a lot of fun with that name; it’s pronounced “woo wee”), but that was really all I knew about that day as we started out that morning. Boy, would this day ever be an interesting one!
It was to be a very full day, and Wuwei would be another one of those cities of several million people that seem to pop up in China every 50 to 100 miles. It was a huge city I had never heard of. China is an amazing place, and I was going to learn today it is more amazing than I could have imagined, and for a reason I would have never guessed. I’ve mentioned Indiana Jones movies a lot in this book. Today, we came upon something that could easily be…well, read on. This is going to be good.
After riding for a couple of hours, we left the freeway and entered a city called Yongchang. It seemed to be pretty much a regular Chinese city until we stopped. I needed to find a bathroom and Wong helped me. Wong is a big, imposing guy. He’s a corrections officer supervisor in Xi’an. He has a friendly look, but he can turn that off in a New York minute and become an extremely imposing figure. I saw him do that once on this trip, and I’ll tell you about that episode when we get to it.
Corrections Officer Supervisor Wong. He looks like a mischievous guy. This guy’s command presence was amazing. I saw him stop a car just by looking at it. Here, he’s enjoying the attention in Yongchang.
Anyway, I followed Wong through a couple of alleys and businesses until we came to an empty restaurant (it was mid-morning, and it had no customers). Wong spoke to the lady there, she nodded her head and smiled at me, and pointed to the bathroom. When I rejoined the guys back on the street, several women at a tailor shop (we had coincidentally stopped in front of a tailor shop) were fussing over Wong. He needed a button sewn on his jacket and it was obvious they were flirting with him. Wong seemed to be enjoying it. Like I said, Wong is a big guy, and I guess you could say he’s good looking. I think the women who were sewing his button on were thinking the same thing.
Beautiful young Chinese ladies. Mostly Chinese, anyway. The one on the left is entering my phone number in her contacts list.
Three teenage girls approached us and wanted to know about our bikes. Like many young Chinese, they spoke English (in China, you learn English as a second language in grade school; it is a strong advantage in Chinese society if you can speak English well). They wanted to practice with us. It was the routine stuff (“how are you?” “hello,” and things like that) until one of the teenaged girls looked directly at me and asked, “Can I have your phone number?” Gresh and I both had a good laugh over that. I actually gave her my phone number and she carefully entered it into her phone (and no, she hasn’t called me yet).
I was enjoying all of this immensely, taking photos of the girls, the seamstresses flirting with Wong, and the rest of China all around me. There was something different about one of those teenage girls. I couldn’t quite recognize what it was, but to me she definitely looked, well, different.
Yongchang statues. They don’t look as Chinese as you might think they should. There’s a reason for that.
It was at about that time that Sean approached me and said, “Dajiu, do you see those three statues over there?” He pointed to three tall statues that faced us, perhaps 300 yards away. I nodded yes. “If you look at their faces, you will see that they have Roman features.” Truth be told, I couldn’t really see it in the statues because they were too far away, but I grabbed a photo and later, on my computer, I could see something different. But before I looked at the photo, it all clicked for me. That’s what had my attention with that girl. We were literally in the middle of China and she didn’t look as Chinese as her two friends. She looked different.
All right, my friends, I need to go tangential here for a minute or two and share this story with you. Hang on, because this is real Indiana Jones stuff. No, scratch that. I’ve never seen an Indiana Jones movie with a story line this good (and I’ve seen all of them).
More than 2,000 years ago, before the birth of Christ, the two most powerful empires on the planet were the Roman Empire and the Han Dynasty. These two superpowers of their time enjoyed a brisk trade relationship along the Silk Road. Yep, the very same trail we had been riding for the last few days. Between them (in what became Iran and its surrounding regions) lay a smaller empire called Parthia. For reasons only the Romans understood, Rome thought it would be a good idea to attack Parthia. They sent several Roman Legions to war (and to put this in perspective, a Roman Legion consisted of about 5,000 men). To everyone’s surprise (including, I would imagine, the Romans), the Parthians kicked Rome’s butt.
Wow, imagine that. Rome, defeated on the field of battle by the much smaller Parthian Empire. To put it mildly, things did not quite go the way the Romans thought they would.
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All of this severely disrupted trade between the Han Dynasty and the Romans, and nobody liked that. “Why the hell did you do that?” the Han Dynasty asked Rome. “We had a good thing going and you screwed it up.” At least that’s what I’m guessing the conversation went like. You get the idea.
Cooler minds prevailed and the Romans realized, yeah, that was a dumb move. The Romans told the Parthians, hey, it’s over, let’s be friends again. The war ended, the Chinese were happy, the Romans were happy, the Parthians were happy, and trade resumed. All’s well that ends well.
Well, sort of. There was still that matter of those pesky Roman legions that had invaded Parthia. They didn’t come back from that war, and for two thousand years, no one knew what happened to them. The Romans probably assumed their Legionnaires had all been slaughtered. No one knew until an Australian dude and a Chinese guy, both University archeologist types (starting to sound a little like Indiana Jones yet?) put a theory together in 1957. Hmmm, maybe those Romans had not been killed after all.
The Parthians, being bright enough to defeat the Romans, were not about to let the Legionnaires go home and perhaps attack them again in some future war. They didn’t want to kill the Romans, either. I guess they were kinder, gentler Parthians. Here’s where those two Aussie and Chinese archeologists enter the picture. They hypothesized that the Parthians told the errant Legionnaires, “Look, we don’t want to kill all you guys, but there’s no way we’re going to let you go back to Rome. And there’s no room for you here, either. Your only option is to keep heading east. Go to China. Maybe you crazy warmongering Italians will find nice Chinese girls and settle down.” With that, and as one might imagine, a hearty arrivederci, the Romans continued their eastward march straight into the middle of China.
And folks, the prevailing wisdom today is that is exactly what happened (although the prevailing wisdom evidently hasn’t prevailed very far, as I had never heard the story until that morning in Yongchang). In fact, prior to this theory surfacing, folks wondered why the Chinese referred to the area around Yongchang as Liqian. That’s not a Chinese word, and it’s unlike the name of any other Chinese town. The folks who know about these things tell me it is an unusual word in the Chinese language.
Liqian is pronounced “Lee Chee On.”
Get it yet?
Lee Chee On? Liqian?
Doesn’t it sound like “legion?” As in Roman legion?
A Chinese man in Liqian. This guy could be the Marlboro Man for a Chinese cigarette company!
I found all of this fascinating. I saw more than a few people around the Liqian area that had a distinct western appearance, and they all consented to my taking their photos when I asked. They recognize just how special their story is. The Chinese government is taking note of this area, too. They are developing a large theme park just outside of Yongchang with a Roman motif. We visited that theme park, and while we were there, Sergeant Zuo gave a book to me (printed in both English and Chinese) about the place. It is one of the two books I brought back from China, and that book is now one of my most prized possessions.
Imagine that: Roman legions, resettled in the middle of China, in a town called Liqian. And I rode there. On an RX3.
Watch for our next Indiana Jones episode in China. It’s about the lost Buddhist grottos at Mo Gao in the Gobi Desert. There’s more good stuff coming your way. Stay tuned!
Want to read more about the ride across China? Pick up a copy of Riding China!
I thought it might make for a nice change of pace if I actually posted something about motorcycles on this here motorcycle blog, so yesterday I fired up my faithful old RX3 and rode over to CSC Motorcycles. Steve has a very cool 1982 Yamaha Seca that he said I could ride, and I wanted to experience what it’s like to ride a nearly-40-year-old motorcycle, built during the Reagan Administration, with only 1700 miles on the clock. I’ll have a story on that later (Spoiler Alert: The RX3 is a nicer motorcycle). For today, I grabbed a few photos of my RX3 and I wanted to talk about my bike and its decals a bit.
Restaurants, Baja Runs, and more…my RX3 wears its decals like campaign ribbons. In a very real sense, that’s exactly what they are.
My RX3 is one of the very first ones delivered to America when CSC starting importing the bikes, and the story behind that is well told (if I do say so myself) in 5000 Miles at 8000 RPM. It’s orange, which became sort of a nice orange-yellow over the years, and I like the look. I also like the look of a lot of decals. I always thought that was a cool aspect of the whole ADV thing, telling folks where you’ve been and (with the help of a little artwork and adhesive) bragging about it a bit. And my RX3 and I have covered a few miles.
My first big RX3 ride, and one of the things that I think put CSC and the RX3 on the map was the 2015 Baja Run (our first, and maybe a first in the motorcycle industry for a new bike introduction). I didn’t know how that would go, I was nervous as hell that the bikes wouldn’t fare well, but my fears were unfounded. It was an incredible ride. And, it was our first decal. That’s the big round one you see just above the my saddle in the photo above.
Next up: The Chinese and a couple of cool guys from Colombia wanted to come to the US and ride with us. And I got to meet a cool guy named Joe Gresh, who Motorcyclist magazine sent to ride with us. You need to read 5000 Miles At 5000 RPM to get the full story on that adventure tour, too. It was grand. Azusa to Mt. Rushmore in South Dakota, ride west across Wyoming, Idaho, and Washington, and then a turn left at the ocean to ride the western US coast back to So Cal. The relevant point here is that ride made for a bitchin’ decal, which you can see in the photo below.
The Western America Adventure Ride. It was grand. 5000 miles, lots of bikes, and not a single breakdown. Gresh staged a burnout with his RX3 in Port Orford, Oregon…the burnout heard around the world. John Welker planned our stops and navigated for us. It was a magnificent ride.
Then we did a bunch more CSC Baja rides, and with each one came another decal. Then I did a ride across China with Gresh on a couple of RX3s we borrowed from Zongshen (I wrote a book about that one, too). Then it was a ride around the Andes Mountains in Colombia with my good buddies Juan (who was on ride across America with us) and Carlos, both supercool guys who took great care of me in Medellin, Barichara, Mompos, and a whole bunch of other magnificent Colombian destinations. Yep, that resulted in yet another book.
Luggage decals…Mama Espinoza’s in El Rosario (incredible lobster burritos), BajaBound Mexican insurance (the best), and the Horizons Unlimited Rally in northern California.My Chinese buddies gave me a Chinese flag to put on my bike, I had to add a US flag to show where my loyalties lie, and a decal good buddy Juan’s Colombian motorcycle magazine, DeMotos.com.co.
I could ask if you knew how many RX3 breakdowns I experienced in all those miles, but I know you already know the answer: Zero.
Yep, that little 250 has taken me to hell and back, and my RX3 just keeps running and running and running. An added benefit? Mine is orange (it’s the fastest color, Orlando).
And that brings us to now, and the latest decal to adorn my well-broken-in, trusty, faithful and fearless companion. It’s the supercool ExhaustNotes.us decal, and it’s perfect on my RX3.
Joe Gresh had a magnificent idea in creating an ExhaustNotes.us decal. I had just enough real estate to add it to my RX3!
So there you have it. Imagine that: A motorcycle story on a motorcycle blog! And there’s more motorcycle stuff in the pipeline. Truth be told, I enjoyed my RX3 sprint this morning, and it helped me realize I need to ride it more. Welker called me about Sturgis a couple of says ago. That might be fun. If I go, I’d do it on the RX3. I’d forgotten just how magnificent a motorcycle the RX3 is.
Stay tuned, folks…there’s more coming!
Would you like your very own ExNotes decal? Hey, sign up for our automatic email updates, and we’ll shoot a couple out to you!
I am getting thoroughly pumped up about riding the 2019 Three Flags Classic this year on the RX4. There’s just something about the Three Flags Classic that’s magic, and I haven’t been this excited about getting out on the road in quite a while. It’s going to be grand and it’s going to be a blast, and you’ll be able to follow my personal ride from Mexico through the western United States on up into Canada right here on the ExNotes blog. I’ll have tons of great photos and the writing will be as good as I can make it. You’ll be able to follow first hand my further impressions of the 
