This article in Barron’s on Harley’s sales popped up recently. The bottom line is that Harley’s sales are dropping more than predicted, and things are not looking good in Milwaukee. It’s simultaneously interesting and disappointing. I don’t like it when any motorcycle company has bad news, and I’m hoping that Harley gets it turned around. Harley is introducing new, smaller motorcycles, and I think that’s the ticket back. The question is: Can they do it quickly enough?
Harley has a tough row to hoe, having built their business selling overweight, underperforming, uber-expensive bikes to a clientele that is aging out. The smart move would be to acquire a small motorcycle manufacturer or importer with a proven track record and to then build on that success, but hey, what do I know? I know there aren’t too many people left willing to shell out $20K to $40K for chrome, conchos, and leather fringe. I also know that you can’t get inventory fast enough when you’re selling new motorcycles for $2K, or maybe $4K.
We’ll see.
Your thoughts on all of this? Leave us a comment and let us know where you think the market is going, why a great old company like Harley is having such a tough time in a booming ec0nomy, or any other topic.
Hey, one more thing: There are less than 4 more days left to get in on our moto-adventure book drawing! Just leave your email address for automatic email notifications, and you’re entered!
A full day, Day 1 of the TFC05 was. 700 miles, two countries, and three US states. Good times and a great start!
Tijuana is where the 2005 Three Flags Classic started, and in order to start from there, we had to get there. Marty and I both live near Los Angeles in southern California, and we had both ridden in Baja before, so getting to Mexico was not that intimidating. But it was still a 140 mile ride for us and it still involved crossing an international border. We rode down the afternoon before our departure, allowing sufficient time to find and check into the Tijuana Grand Hotel.
I was a bit nervous that day. Yeah, I had done a number of big rides already, but for this one, I knew that I would be on the road for two weeks and that we would cover about 5,000 miles. I also knew part of it would be hot, part of it would be cold, part of it would be sunny, and parts of it would most likely be wet. I would be right on all counts. I just didn’t know (yet) just how right I would be on all counts.
We arrived in mid-afternoon and walked around Tijuana a bit. In those days, crossing the border into Mexico was probably the easiest border crossing you might imagine. There were no stops, no visa required, no questions to answer…no anything. All there was to it was riding under a sign that said Bienvenidos A Mexico, and trying not to drop your bike riding across a line of monstrous Bots dots (you know, those polished metal hemispheres the size of a large grapefruit…they were designed to slow vehicular traffic, and they worked). Just like that, and we were in Old Mexico.
We found Tijuana’s Grand Hotel, we checked in, and we walked around downtown TJ a bit. It was fun. Goofy photos, and more.
Tijuana, the starting point of the Three Flags Classic. This was the view from our room in the Tijuana Grand Hotel.Yep, Tijuana. Just making sure.A sculpture in Tijuana.
We were having a good time, but what was really on our minds was the 3:00 a.m. departure the next day. We were both a bit nervous about that. To leave at 3:00 a.m., we’d have to get up at 2:00 a.m. I briefly thought about staying up all night (after all, getting up at 2:00 a.m. would practically be the same thing), but I decided to turn in early and do the best I could to get some shuteye. I might not have bothered…I was too nervous to really sleep well. I knew we would be covering about 700 miles the next day, I was afraid I would oversleep the next morning, and I usually don’t sleep well the night before a big a trip. I was in bed for maybe 5 hours that night, but I probably only slept for 45 minutes.
Whooping it up the night before our departure in the Grand Hotel in Tijuana. We would all be on the road at 3:00 a.m. the next morning. Can you picture almost 500 motorcycles at the border crossing at that hour!We had an excellent buffet in the Grand Hotel the night before we left. We were on the road for 12 days and we never had a bad meal.
The next morning, well before sunup, we were off. Normally, even back in those days, the border crossing re-entering the US in Tijuana is difficult. Picture this…nearly 500 motorcycles idling north into a crowded but huge border station. There were maybe 15 lanes heading north, but only two were open at that early hour. All of our bikes were in those two lanes, with maybe 20 cars in front of us. But the US border officers were efficient. They opened several more lanes and motioned for the bikes to move into the newly-opened portals. We were across the border in minutes. It could have taken hours, so this was a big deal.
Once we entered the US, it was north on I-5, and then east on I-8, which we would follow well into Arizona. It was still dark out, and we rode directly into what would soon be the rising sun. It was cool, but not cold. Life was good. My Triumph was purring (or growling, depending on throttle position…nothing sounds as good as a Triumph motorcycle). There were literally hundreds of motorcycles, and all were fellow Three Flags riders. We were alive, out in the world, riding motorcycles in one of the world’s greatest motorcycle adventures. We already had knocked down two of the Three Flags, and the sun was still hiding below a distant horizon. This was good stuff.
The first checkpoint, in Holbrook, Arizona.
Our first checkpoint on the Three Flags Classic would be in Holbrook, Arizona. Marty had done this before, and he knew the drill. I followed his lead. I was lucky to be riding with a much more experienced motorcyclist. It took away any anxiety. It was a good feeling.
More Three Flags riders in Arizona. There were quite a few Harleys in this event. This is on the road to Payson.Marty and I in Arizona on the first day of the event.
Shortly after we stepped up to get our event passports stamped, we experienced a severe rainstorm. We were delayed at the checkpoint for about an hour. I didn’t care. Covering the remaining miles that first day would take what it would take, as would the miles on the rest of the ride. Yeah, we had to make the checkpoints. But we were doing well. My Triumph was running well. Marty’s BMW was the Rolex of motorcycles, and it always did well.
After hitting the first checkpoint and after the rain stopped, we continued our ride and crossed the state line into New Mexico. Wowee…what a day: Mexico. California. Arizona. New Mexico. Two countries. Three states. All in a single day. We stopped to take a few photos, and I was loving it. My Nikon N70 35mm film camera was doing its thing, and I was working it. I was seeing grand sights and and I wanted to capture it all. I had two lenses with me…the old first generation 24-120 Nikon lens, and a 17-35 Sigma wide angle (which was actually a pretty decent lens). Our bikes were magnificent…both 1200cc road-burning four-cylinder monsters, both with visually-arresting yellow paint themes, and both capable of stratospheric speeds and arm-stretching acceleration. Both bikes could easily top 160 mph. We could (and at times during the Three Flags we would) cruise for long stretches at speeds well over 120 mph, knowing adventures like this were what the engineers in Bavaria and England had in mind when they designed these motorcycles. Great bikes, great company, great roads, and great scenery. It was an awesome show, and we were the stars.
We covered 700 miles that first day, which would be our highest mileage day for the entire Three Flags Classic. The guys who organized the 3FC05 had it wired. The first day was the big mileage day, and every day after that the miles would decrease a bit. It was a well organized event. Hit the checkpoints, see what you want to see along the way, stay wherever you want, but hit the checkpoints. It’s a great formula, and it made for a great ride.
That first night, we stayed in Gallup, New Mexico. I’d never been there before. Gallup, New Mexico. On a motorcycle. Wow. The next day, the adventure would continue. I couldn’t wait.
Hey, read the prequel to this great story here! And would you like to know more about that dynamite Daytona 1200 I rode in the Three Flags Classic? That story is here!
This is a blog I originally posted on the CSC blog, and I like it so much I want to include it here on ExNotes. The topic is, as the title implies, the ebike scene in China.
I encountered electric bikes in a major way on my RX3 ride across China (you can read that great story in Riding China). Electric scooters and other vehicles are everywhere in China. Quite simply, electric vehicles are a way of life over there. Rather than babble on about that, I thought I would include an excerpt from a Riding China chapter. The locale is Beijing, where I was struggling with the heat and a minor injury…I had been nailed in the eye by a bug the night before, and…well, let me get to the pages I’m talking about…
The next day we took the subway into Beijing. We already were in Beijing when we got on the subway, but Beijing is a megacity and you can’t simply drive into the center of it. We rode the subway for a good 45 minutes, and when we emerged, we visited the Forbidden City and Tien An Men Square. It was all grand. It was touristy, but it’s something that should be on any China visitor’s bucket list.
At the entrance to the Forbidden City.In the Forbidden City. It’s an amazing thing to see.A glimpse of ancient Chinese architecture in the Forbidden City.
After seeing the Forbidden City, we walked around downtown Beijing for a while. I told Tracy (note: Tracy was our translator on this trip) my eye was getting worse and I wanted to get antibiotic eye drops for it. It was Sunday afternoon, but there was a large pharmacy right in front of us and it was open. Tracy went in with me and he told one of the young pharmacists what I wanted. She responded and it didn’t sound good.
“She cannot sell it to you without a prescription,” he told me.
“Well, shoot, Tracy, it’s Sunday afternoon,” I said. “We’re not going to find a doctor. I’ll be okay. Let’s just go.”
“No, it is okay, Dajiu,” he said. “We are China and we have a bureaucracy. It is my bad.”
Good old Tracy, I thought. The guy felt responsible for everything. I was resigned to the fact that my eye was going to take a while to get better. Tracy, in the meantime, had walked not more than 8 feet away to an elderly woman sitting at a wooden table. He spoke to her in Chinese and pointed to me. She never looked at me, nor did she look up. She simply pulled out a white pad with a big “R” at the top. Nah, this can’t be, I thought. She wrote something in Chinese characters and handed the slip to Tracy.
“Our prescription,” Tracy said. “Such a bureaucracy.” He walked the three steps back to the pharmacist, Tracy handed her the prescription, and 30 seconds (and 24 yuan, or about $4) later, I had my antibiotic eye drops. I put two drops in my eye.
When we got off the subway after visiting The Forbidden City and the center of Beijing, we waited on a street corner for our Uber ride back to the hotel. I watched the scooters and small utility vehicles rolling by, and I realized that nearly every one of them was electric. I must have seen 200 scooters during the 20 minutes we waited, and perhaps 2 had gasoline engines. This wholesale adaption of electric scooters and small utility vehicles in China is nothing short of amazing.
One of many, many electric bikes and scooters in Beijing.Another electric scooter……and another……and another……and another……and another……and another……and another. They were all over. I’d never seen anything like it.
Sean (our guide) explained to me that the transition to electric vehicles started about 15 years ago, and the government has done a number of things to encourage people to convert to electricity. For starters (once again, pardon my pun), many of the larger cities in China now prohibit motorcycles and scooters unless the vehicle is electric. Electric scooters are allowed where gasoline-powered bikes are not. That alone is an enormous incentive. The next incentive is that you don’t need a driver’s license to take an electric vehicle on the street. You just buy one and go. And finally, as I’ve mentioned before, electricity is cheap in China. There are windfarms, solar panel farms, coal plants, nuclear power plants, and hydroelectric power plants all over the country. We saw scooters parked on the sidewalk and plugged into extension cords running into small stores everywhere. People charge them like iPhones; they didn’t miss any opportunity to top off the batteries on these things.
An unusual electric trike in Beijing. We saw many unusual electric vehicles in China.
That night was a great night. The Zongshen dealer took us to a restaurant that specialized in Peking duck. The guys were excited about this development, but I was initially leery. I thought I didn’t like Peking duck. Boy, was I ever wrong! I tried Peking duck 25 years ago when I visited Beijing with Sue. We both thought the duck was awful. That’s because we went to a restaurant that served tourists. The food at that place didn’t have to be good. They knew they would never see us again, and Yelp hadn’t been invented yet.
This night in Beijing with the Zongshen dealer and the RX3 owners club was different. The Peking duck was incredible. The chef sliced it paper thin right at our table. They had thin tofu (almost like a crepe), and the guys taught me how to eat duck properly. The deal is you put a few fresh vegetables on the tofu, you add a slice or two of duck, you add this amazing brown gravy, and then you roll the affair up like a burrito. Wow, it was delicious!
We had several rounds of toasts at dinner that night and the liquor flowed freely. I got lucky. Kong sat next to me and he schooled me in the proper way to make a Chinese toast. To show respect, you clink your glass against the other guy’s glass, but you hold your glass at a lower level so that when the two glasses meet, the rim of yours is lower than the other person’s. When the Zongshen dealer toasted me, I followed Kong’s advice, and the Chinese riders all nodded approvingly. Ah, Dajiu knows.
It was funny. Sergeant Zuo and I had made several toasts to each other, and when we touched glasses, we both tried frantically to get our glasses lower than the other, so much so that we usually crashed the bottoms of both on the table (to a hearty laugh and round of applause from everyone). Zuo was being polite; I was being completely serious (I have enormous respect for him).
It was a great night, and the next morning was even better. Those eye drops Tracy had helped me secure a prescription for did the trick. When we rode out of Beijing the next morning, my eye was good as new.
So there you have it. It was in China that I realized this electric bike thing is for real. It’s not just a fad. I think it’s going to be for real in the rest of the world, too. It is the future.
You can read our other ebike materials here, and check back here on the ExNotes site regularly. We’ll be including new ebike materials often.
We hope you have a great Christmas, folks! Three years ago I was in Colombia for a motorcycle ride through the Andes Mountains, and one of the high points of that fabulous adventure was our visit to a little town called La Playa de Belem. It was a grand evening, as you can see here…
Enjoy the holidays…ride safe, shoot straight, and keep your powder dry!
I like to read the ExhaustNotes blog. In the aerospace industry, if you liked what your team created too much, we called it drinking your own bath water. The risk in drinking your own bath water was that you lost sight of what was important to the customer and you stopped reviewing your work objectively. Anyway, every once in a while I’ll read through the blog to see what looks good and what we could maybe do better. And in doing that I realized that old Arjiu and I hadn’t done a dream bike piece recently.
That brings us to today and the dream bike bit du jour: The Ideal Electric Motorcycle. I’m going to define the specs for what I think would be a riotously successful electric motorcycle. Bear with me…I think this is going to be good, which can sometimes happen even with bath water.
I guess the first order of business is to consider the current crop of ebikes’ weaknesses. That’s easy. Limited range, limited top speed, long recharge times, clunky and bulky external chargers (for some bikes), and the biggest one of all (at least to me): A near complete lack of cool. Yeah, I’m defining the specs for an ebike that would do well in the US, and the lack of cool is a very big deal. We have to address that. It’s a serious shortfall in all the ebikes I’ve seen. I mean, nobody visualizes themselves as Steve McQueen jumping a fence in Nazi Germany on an ebike. Nobody thinks of themselves as Peter Fonda kickstarting a silent ebike to take Nancy Sinatra for a ride.
Remember that old Harley ad? The one that showed a toddler in a Harley T-shirt with the this question at the bottom: When did it start for you? That ad says it all. I know for me, and I suspect for nearly all of you, our fascination with motorcycles originated when we were wee ones and we saw a motorcycle that stopped us in our Buster Brown tracks. You know what I’m talking about. A bike that made us just stop and stare, usually for a long period of time. I have two such recollections: One was a 1950’s era Harley Duo-Glide dresser (with a monstrous V-twin engine, corrugated exhaust headers, and drop-dead-deep-gorgeous paint); the other was a ’64 500cc Triumph twin (white with gold accents, pea-shooter mufflers, Triumph’s “parcel grid” on the gas tank, a matching tach and speedo, and those magnificent, sweeping exhaust headers). Yeah, those bikes defined cool. They were visually arresting things. None of the ebikes currently on the market do that for me. Like my old platoon sergeant used to say, this is something we need to talk about.
Serious cool. Visually arresting. I’m not saying an ebike should look like a Panhead, but a Panhead has a cool factor that no current ebike possesses. We need to address that. We need to find a way to have an ebike elicit the same kind of irrational, emotional, I-need-this-in-my-life response.
Okay, enough reminiscing. Let’s get to the specs. The way I see it, we need to address weight, size, top end, range, recharging, cost, comfort, and the cool factor. Here we go, boys and girls…
Let’s hit the elephant in the room first, and that’s the range issue. We need more. Nobody has a motorcycle with decent range. The City Slicker, under best case conditions (I’m talking low speeds and summer temperatures) can do about 60 miles, maybe a scosh more, and obtaining the last few miles involves really low speeds and lots of prayer. Zero claims much greater range, but every magazine that’s tested the Zero shoots those claims down with a heartfelt dismissal that goes along the lines of “in your dreams, Zero.” Nope, the range on the current crop of ebikes just isn’t where it needs to be yet. Where is that? Hey, I’m writing the spec. I’d say 250 miles. Put an ebike out there that can go an honest 250 miles at normal speeds, and I’m in. I think that should be doable at a reasonable price (I’ll say more on that in a bit). Yeah, a 250-mile range would make an ebike viable for me.
We want range, and lots of it. If an ebike had a range of 250 miles and a recharge time of 30 minutes, I could ride to Mama Espinoza’s in El Rosario, charge the bike while I was enjoying one of the old gal’s lobster burritos, and make it all the way to Guerrero Negro in a day. Where do I sign?
Next up: Recharging. Look, the bottom line is I don’t want to wait 8 hours to recharge a bike. As long as I’m writing the spec and dreaming out loud, I’d like to see a sub-30-minute recharge time. When I stop at a gas station, it’s about 10 minutes to pull up to the pump, put the bike on the sidestand, get off, take off my gloves, unlock the fuel cap, get out my wallet, put the credit card in the gas pump, enter my zip code, pick the octane level I want, take the nozzle out of the pump, peel back the nozzle’s foreskin so the fuel will flow (hey, we live in Kalifornia), put fuel in the tank, and then reverse the process. Add another rider or maybe another ten riders (if I’m on one of my Baja tours and I’m being my usual hardass self about not wasting time), and a fuel stop grows to maybe 30 minutes. I’m used to that, and that’s what I want in an ebike: Quick replenishment. That’s beyond the current state of the art, but don’t tell me we can’t do it. The solution is obvious: We need to change the state of the art.
On the recharger, I want it built into the bike, with a simple cord that pulls out of the bike to plug in someplace (kind of like you get on a vacuum cleaner). Give me a 15-foot cord and I’m good to go. I don’t want to screw around with an external power converter, because then I’d have to find a place to carry it on the bike. Build that thing into the motorcycle. Zero has the right idea on this one.
I think an 85-mph top speed is good. I know, I know…maybe you’re one of those guys: Ah need at least a 1000cc and Ah need to go at least a hunnert else they’ll run me down on the freeway. If that’s you, don’t waste any more time here; go back to posting stupid stuff on Facebook and the other forums. Here’s the deal: I’ve been riding for a few years, and the times I’ve needed to go above 85 mph are few and far between. In fact, I’ve never actually “needed” to go over 85. Adding top end takes a big bite out of an ebike. I’m willing to give up stupid top end to get more range, shorter recharge times, and less weight. So, 85 mph it is. Give me that in an ebike and I’m a happy camper.
I want a reasonable amount of stowage space so I can do Baja without bungee cords. Some folks look like they’re moving when they go on an overnight motorcycle trip. I’ve ridden with those guys. They and their bikes are like the opening Beverly Hillbillies scene with Granny on top of the pickup truck (not that’s there’s anything wrong with being a hillbilly, or a Granny, for that matter). The City Slicker has a cool stowage compartment where the fuel tank would be on a gas bike. Something like that would work just fine for me. I don’t need to change my underwear every day on a motorcycle trip.
The ideal motorcycle (not just an ebike, but any motorcycle, in my opinion) should have a seat height no higher than 30 inches, a weight of 400 lbs or less, and physical dimensions that allow for easy u-turns on two-lane roads. None of this 36-inch seat height, 800-lb silliness. The ergonomics should be straight standard motorcycle, too. No Ricky Racer, stupidly-low-clip-on, first-two-years-of-chiropractor-visits-are-free seating positions. And while I’m on doctor references, no gynecological-exam, silly-ass cruiser seating positions, either. If the designers of my ideal ebike could just get a 2006 KLR 650 and duplicate its handlebar/seat/footpeg relationship, that would be fine. My KLR had the best seating position of any motorcycle I’ve ever owned.
I’d vote for 17-inch rear and 19-inch front wheels because that combo just flat seems to work for damn near everything. I won’t be jumping any logs with my ideal ebike or trying to fly across soft sand, and that eliminates the need for a 21-inch front wheel. And everybody has all kinds of tire combos for the 17/19 setup. To borrow a phrase, why re-invent the wheel?
I want a plug-and-play bike with BITE. Not as in “bite me,” but as in built-in-test-equipment (like the aerospace industry uses). That would completely eliminate the need for a dealer (come to think of it, it would also eliminate the need for a shop manual). No obscene, inflated dealer freight and setup fees. Nope, I want factory direct. And if anything goes wrong with the bike, it shows me which module I need to remove and replace. Plug and play. I don’t feel the need to fund an on-the-job-training program for a dealer-based, wannabe motorcycle mechanic. BITE me, baby.
I think the cost of such a bike should be about $7,500. That feels about right for what a motorcycle should cost. Yeah, I know, you probably couldn’t build it for that in America. Maybe India? Or China? Or maybe you could make it in America. Source the subassemblies wherever you need to, keep the UAW and IAM snouts out of the trough, and assemble the bikes here. Create 30 to 50 US jobs at an assembly plant, preferably in Texas or New Mexico. This is doable, folks. Trust me on this. I used to run manufacturing facilities before I moved up to blogging. We can do this.
So there you have it. Do all of the above, and folks would beat a digital path to your online direct sales website. Yep, all of the above, at $7,500. That’s the ticket.
Oh, and one last must have: Electric start. Peter and Nancy (and the rest of the Wild Angels cast), my apologies in advance, but no kickers on my ideal electric bike. I know they’re cool, but this is the 21st Century.
Want to read more of our ebike stuff? Hey, just click here! It’s our new index page with all the good ebike articles we’ve done here on the blog.
More good stuff. It seems the Chairman of the Southern California Motorcycle Association, my new good buddy Gonzo, is a big fan of the ExhaustNotes.us site. We had a nice conversation yesterday, and Gonzo told me he particularly liked our story on the Jack Daniel’s visit (so much so they are running it in their newsletter this month) and our first intro piece on the 2005 Three Flags Classic.
One thing led to another…I’ve been invited to the 2019 Three Flags Classic (boy oh boy, I’m really thinking about that one), and I became an SCMA member. You should be, too, even if you’re not living here in the Southland because SCMA’s events are international in reach. You can join right here.
And one last thing: Want to win a free copy of one of our moto adventure books? You can get in on the drawing if you sign up for automatic email blog updates (the widget is in the upper right corner if you’re on a laptop, and below this article if you read the blog on a phone). We’ll never share your email with anyone else!
Feel like going for a motorcycle ride? How about the Southern California Motorcycle Club’s Three Flags Classic?
Headed for Canada…nope, we were not draft dodgers. We were riding in the 2005 Three Flags Rally! That’s Marty on the left and Joe on the right.
This is one of the best motorcycle runs in the world, spanning (as the name implies) three countries: Mexico, Canada, and the United States. My friend Marty and I, along with 457 other motorcyclists, rode the Three Flags in 2005. It was the 30th Anniversary of this grand event, and it was a hoot.
The Route
What a run this was! We rode our motorcycles from our homes to Tijuana (Mexico), Gallup (New Mexico), Grand Junction (Colorado), Driggs (Idaho), Whitefish (Montana), Calgary (Canada), Penticton (Canada), Portland (Oregon), Roseburg (Oregon), Davis (California), and back home…a 12-day round-trip sprint spanning just under 5,000 miles.
The map. GPS? We don’t need no stinkin’ GPS!
It was a grand ride. Speeds ranged from slogs through traffic to a few times when we cruised at speeds north of 130 mph. Temperatures ranged from ungodly hot to subfreezing. We had sunny days and we had rain. It was grand. I’ll do my best to tell the story with pictures and words, and you’ll have to imagine the rest. Did I mention that it was a great ride?
The Bikes
Marty rode his K1200RS Beemer (with close to 100,000 miles on it when we left) and I rode my ’95 Triumph Daytona 1200 (the only Triumph motorcycle in the entire event). At the banquet in Calgary, Charlie Coyner (the event director) announced that there were 218 Hondas (most of these were Gold Wings), 90 Harleys, 90 BMWs, 34 Yamahas (mostly FJRs), about a dozen Suzukis (mostly DL1000s), about a dozen Kawasakis, and one Triumph.
Yep, one Triumph, and that was me!
The Equipment
I used my Nikon N70 film camera with just two lenses (the 24-120 Nikon, and the 17-35 Sigma). Yep, in 2005 I was still shooting film. The photos were okay…not as good as I would be able to do in later years with my Nikon digital cameras, but not terrible, either. Hey, you go to war with the Army you have, and in 2005, that was my trusty old N70.
Other gear included included Joe Rocket pants, jacket, and gloves, a Firstgear rain jacket, a Gerbing electric jacket (it was worth its weight in gold as we continued north), an HJC helmet, Haix boots (from Australia; they are wonderful!), a Nelson Rigg tank bag, and Oxford saddlebags.
The Guys
That would be Marty and me, and four other guys we rode with who were part of the Brown BMW First Church of Bob. Everybody but me was on a Beemer.
Did I mention I was the only guy in the entire Three Flags Rally on a Triumph?
Most of the time it was just Marty and me. The other three guys were off riding their separate ways, but Marty and I rode together for the entire trip. Marty is a retired Superior Court judge. At the time, I was heading up Layne-Christensen’s western US water treatment business sector. Marty told me about the event and I wanted to go. You had to pay for tickets and hope your name was drawn, and ours were not. I thought that would end it, but nope, Marty told me that happens. You just wait and some of the guys who had been drawn would be selling their tickets, that’s what occurred, and Marty and scooped up a couple. Then I had to ask my boss at Layne for two weeks off, and I thought that would kill it. But nope, he was a good guy, too, and he told me I should go for it. (A side note: Layne was in the drilling business, too, and when those Chilean miners were trapped underground a couple of years later, this same guy ran the drilling project that reached and retrieved the miners…how’s that for “genuine good guy” credibility?)
So, we were off. But I don’t want to force feed you through a fire hose and try to cram the entire 5,000-mile Three Flags Rally into a single blog. We’ll present this story in six or seven separate blogs. This is just the first one…the introduction…something to whet your appetite, as they say.
Colombia has been one of the world’s major motorcycle markets for several years due to a combination of factors, but the primary ones were the end of their civil war and throttling the druggies. When I rode in Colombia, many of the places we traveled through had been inaccessible until recently. Colombia essentially opened up travel when the fighting and the drug running diminished. This occurred in a country where the roads are mostly in the mountains and where there is little public transport. People could suddenly travel freely and safely between communities, and that allowed the Colombian economy to boom.
The above led to a demand for cheap transportation, and motorcycles were the obvious answer. Folks in Colombia like smaller bikes, and wow, did things ever take off. Major motorcycle manufacturers from all over the world starting selling in Colombia, and the Colombian government saw an opportunity. Basically, if you import a completely built up (known as a CBU) motorcycle, there’s a 30% import tariff. But if you import a completely knocked down (CKD) bike in pieces, source something like 17% of the motorcycle’s content from Colombian manufacturers, and assemble the bike in Colombia, the tariff drops to around 3%. I love that approach and I think it’s a real win-win situation. Local jobs, lower tariffs, and great motorcycles made in the home country. I wish we had something like that here.
After our ride through Colombia, I had a tour of the AKT plant and their RS3 motorcycle assembly line, which essentially duplicates the Zongshen RX3 assembly line in Chongqing. Take a look…
The ride I took three years ago through Colombia with good buddies Carlos and Juan was one of the best I’ve ever done…a solid week of riding in one of the most beautiful and best riding destinations on the planet. Roughly 20% of our journey was on dirt roads through rural Colombia and that was a lot of fun.
Juan shot the photo above, incredibly, while he was riding in front of us. We were mounted on AKT RS3 motorcycles, which is the same bike as the CSC RX3 except that it is carbureted instead of fuel injected. That’s me on the left in the above photo in the fluorescent green jacket; Carlos is on the right.
Those AKT 250s were great machines. What amazed me is that we rode from sea level up to 14,000 feet, and those carbureted bikes ran well at both elevations and everything in between.
Juan was amazing…he knew Colombia’s back roads well, and when he didn’t, he wasn’t afraid to use “Juan’s GPS.” That was his term for riding alongside somebody driving a tractor or riding a horse, flipping his visor up, and asking for directions (in Spanish, of course) while we were all still moving. The guy could turn around 180 degrees in his seat while he was riding and get things out of his tailbox or take photos (like the one above). I’m not anywhere near that limber.
One of the more interesting places we visited was a town called Barichara. It was amazing on many levels, not the least of which was an incredible cemetery. Bear in mind that I did this trip while I was writing the CSC blog (I think I wrote something like 2500 entries on that blog), so when you hear me say “This is Joe from CSC,” that was then and this is now.
I miss riding the exotic locales like Mexico, Canada, Colombia, China, and more. But when that happens, I hop into one of the moto adventure books and relive the adventure, and you can, too. You might get one of our books for free if you sign up for automatic email notifications on the ExNotes blog!
Easy Rider was a great movie that captured a restless time in America. Captain America and Billy cruising the country on their choppers inspired a generation to get out and see the world. But there’s another, less slick movie that more closely reflects my experiences with motorcycle travel: Cycles South. I’ve watched the film seven times and still enjoy going back for another session.
In 1975 I took off with two of my high school friends and we rode all over the USA. The bikes we used were a first year Gold Wing, a Kawasaki Z1, and a BMW R75/5. Our ride lasted 3 months and we covered 20,000 miles. Cycles South is a lot like that trip except we didn’t take any drugs stronger than beer. I think the parallels to our long ago trip are why I like this movie so much.
The no-budget, Cycles South is on YouTube in seven parts and blows Easy Rider away. Three friends and a cameraman load up their custom-painted BSA 250 singles and head out from Colorado to see what exactly is up in North America. They eventually end up in Mexico where the hijinks never stop. The film is mostly narrated, as recording and editing good audio was not cheap before the digital revolution came along. The narrator’s jokes are corny but are of the same size, variety and groan-inducing type found on any motorcycle road trip you’ve ever taken with your jerky friends.
While the film is low budget the crew that made Cycles South knew a thing or two about filmmaking. This is no shot-with-a-phone, amateur YouTube production. There are some really great motorcycling in the late 20th century shots and wild, drug-crazed scenes mixed in with the excellent off-road action shots.
In hindsight, BSA 250cc singles were not the best choice for a long, multi-country road trip but the boys came up with the perfect solution to their problems and burnt a few extra dinosaurs in the process. Trust me, you’ll be green with envy.
Cycles South ends in an unsatisfying way. It appears as if they just ran out of money and stopped filming. No matter, 6/7th of Cycles South is still better than most other motorcycle movies so get some popcorn and fire up the computer; you’re gonna love it.
Battery Potter, with steam-powered retractable hidden cannons. Sandy Hook was an early Army proving ground, and the advanced coastal artillery pieces hidden underground behind these walls were tested here. Boom boom!
Hey, check this out…that blog I did a few months ago on Sandy Hook, New Jersey, made it into print in Motorcycle Classics magazine! It’s always cool getting something published, especially in a premier mag like Motorcycle Classics. Your good buddies Joe Gresh and yours truly, being the vain dudes we are, each have a page on the ExhaustNotes site listing our magazine articles. Just click on the Gresh or Berk links to take a gander.
But enough about us. How about you? Are you signed up for our automatic email notifications list? There’s a widget on the right where you can add your name, and you’ll get a short email each time we publish a new blog. Add your email address and you’ll automatically be entered in our moto adventure book giveaway. You’ll find out on 1 January who won!
Okay, back to us: Here’s more good stuff…good buddy Dan notified us about two things we want to explore more…a moto video series on South America, and an article about another good buddy named Dan featured on ADVRider. Gresh knew about the video series (he gets around way more than me), but I didn’t and I’m looking forward to viewing it. Those are both coming up in a future blog. And I found that Spencer Conway did another video series on Africa. I’ll be getting into those later today, too.
The CSC San Gabriel…wow, is that bike ever taking the market by storm. Revzilla and my good buddy Spurgeon Dunbar have a San Gabriel, and there are at least two great videos on that bike floating around on YouTube (I did one of them). We’ll be doing a blog on that awesome motorcycle in the near future. One of the best parts of the story is how the bike got its San Gabriel name. The honors for that go to my good buddy Mike, and we’ll tell you the story behind it.
As you know, the ExhaustNotes layout is a series of index pages with links to our blogs, which is where most of the ExNotes content resides. We have pages on Baja and our Baja adventures (watch for lots more coming up on that page), Gresh’s Z1 resurrection, Gresh’s articles, our books, Berk’s articles, Tales of the Gun, the CSC RX4 (and how it compares to the RX3 and the KLR 650), and our videos. We’ll be adding another page in the near future (along with a bunch of content) on military and police motorcycles. That’s a fascinating and most interesting topic. And another on minimalist motorcycles. The idea behind the minimalist moto page is to consolidate a listing of (and add to) our blogs on small bikes. The CSC RX3, the TT250, the Janus Gryffin and Halcyon models, the GMW G310 GS, the Kawi Versys 300, the Kawasaki KLR 650, and few more we have coming down the pike. And another on electric bikes. And here’s a heads up on a future blog: Dealer, or no dealer? It’s a new world out there, folks, and at least two manufacturers (CSC and Janus) have blown off the traditional path to market by selling direct. It’s a fascinating story.
