Tag: CSC

Baja Riding Gear

The right bike and the right clothes make for good traveling, and this is especially important when you’re riding Baja.   Travel light and travel right is the way to go.  What you don’t want to do is travel like I did on my first Baja trip.  On that one, my Harley looked like that opening scene in The Beverly Hillbillies (you know, the one with everything strapped to Jed Clampett’s old pickup, including Granny in a rocking chair on top).

How not to do it. My old Harley was way overloaded on this early Baja trip.

I guess it all starts with the right bike, and for all of us, that’s the bike we have.   I’ve ridden Baja on many different motorcycles, and they all worked for me.  My preferred bike for Baja riding, though, is my CSC RX3, which I think is perfect (especially with its standard luggage).  I’ve settled on a 250 as the perfect size for real adventure travel (your choice may be different, I’m not trying to pick a fight, and if my choice upsets you, hey, you’re young…you’ll get over it).

My RX3 early in its life. I can pack everything I bring with me on a Baja ride in its luggage. My bike also has a sheepskin seat cover, which makes for a more comfortable ride.

When I’m on the RX3, I can carry everything I need in its two panniers and the top case, with nothing strapped onto the bike with bungee cords.  I don’t like to carry stuff outside the luggage, because everything is locked and I can leave the bike when we stop to eat or take pictures without worrying about anyone stealing anything.   I’m usually carrying more than most of the folks I ride with, too, because I’ve got my Nikon DSLR, a laptop computer, the power supply and cord for the laptop, the recharger for the camera battery, an extra camera battery, and a laptop mouse.  I need to keep the beast fed (i.e., this blog), and I blog daily from the road.   The top case is devoted to the computer and the camera gear.  I keep tools, spare parts (you can read about recommended Baja spares here), and chain lube in the right pannier, and clothes in the left pannier.   Remember what I said above…travel light and travel right.

If I’m on a bike that doesn’t have luggage, my preferred approach includes an older Nelson Rigg tailpack and a set of Wolfman soft pannier bags.  That’s all I need.  These two items go on and off the bike easily and they are high quality items.   I bought the Nelson-Rigg tailpack 20 years ago when I rode Baja on my TL1000S, and I bought the Wolfman bags from CSC when I rode Baja with my TT250.  I’ve been impressed with both the Wolfman and Nelson-Rigg brands.   Wolfman, especially…it’s good gear.

My old TL1000S (the first year for that bike…it was a ’97) and the Nelson-Rigg tailpack. The TL is long gone; the tailpack is still covering miles with me.
My TT250 with my Joe Rocket gloves, HJC helmet, Wolfman soft luggage, and Nelson-Rigg Tailpack (the same one you see on the TL1000S above, but 20 years later in this photo).  All good gear.

My helmet is another item I bought from CSC.  It’s an HJC and I like it.  It’s not heavy (which makes a huge difference when you’re covering hundreds of miles day after day) and it’s comfortable.  I’ve tried others, but I keep coming back to the HJC line.   I have a Scorpion, but it doesn’t have a visor position that allows opening the visor slightly for air flow.  Others don’t form a good seal between the visor and the helmet, so when it rains the visor gets wet on both the inside and the outside.  Nope, for me that HJC works.

The HJC helmet I currently use. It’s comfortable and it’s not heavy.

My jacket is made by Olympia.  I like it because of the color (fluorescent yellow), and the fact that it is all one color.  Most (maybe all) of the other fluorescent yellow jackets available today have black panels along with the fluorescent yellow and I don’t care for that approach.  My jacket has a removable liner and it keeps me warm, and at night if it’s cool and I’m off the bike, I can wear just the liner as a light jacket.

A selfie showing my Joe Rocket gloves and my Olympia riding jacket. I didn’t realize it when I bought it, but keeping that Oly jacket on the road required more maintenance than the motorcycles.

I should mention that I hated the Olympia jacket the first two years I owned it.  Olympia used cheap stitching when they had these made, and most of it came undone.  Every time I washed that jacket, more stitching came apart.  Oly wouldn’t make good on it (they were quick to point out that the jacket had a 1-year warranty).  I paid a tailor to resew all the seams, though, and after that, it stayed together (even after repeated washings).  It’s the jacket I wear most often now.

I always bring along my R Heroes 505 workshirt, an ultra-high quality sweatshirt I wrote about in an ExNotes blog a few months ago.  I own two of these shirts (one of which has held up for 10 years now).  It’s warm and it’s extremely comfortable.  It’s also loose enough that if you’re carrying a concealed sidearm, it provides good coverage (don’t do that in Baja, though). I love my R Heroes shirts.

My R Heroes 505 workshirt. I love it.

I wear Walmart jeans (I’m not into fancy jeans and I think anybody that pays big bucks for blue jeans is bonkers) and an old set of motorcycle pants.  On  warmer days, the motorcycle pants go into one of my bags and it’s just the jeans.  On cooler days or if it’s raining, I wear both.  My motorcycle pants are water resistant but not waterproof (if the rain lasts long enough, they’ll soak through).   Every year or so, I’ll spray the paints with Kiwi water repellant to refresh the Scotchguard.  I’m kind of embarrassed that I don’t know who made the motorcycle pants.  I’ve had them for more than 20 years and the labels are long gone.

My gloves are Joe Rocket.  Joe Rocket gear is reasonably priced and the quality is there.  I have two pair.  I cut off the right index finger tip off on one so I can work my iPhone when I’m using it as a nav system.  I also have an older set of BMW cold weather riding gloves, and they work gangbusters. I think I paid a hundred bucks for the BMW gloves (everything that says BMW is big bucks), but on supercold mornings, I’m constantly reminded that was money well spent.

The last item I’ll mention are my boots.  I’m not a big fan of any of the motorcycle-specific boots because they are too big, too heavy, and too uncomfortable when you get off the bike.  I like military or police style boots, and my preferred brand is from an outfit called HAIX.  They’re Austrian (the boots are actually manufactured in Croatia).  They’re expensive (about $200), but they are worth it. The first pair I bought lasted 10 years.   I bought a new pair a year or two ago, and I’ll get 10 years with them, too.

Precipitation, polarities, headgear, and gobble gobble…

The rain has been nonstop here for the last several days, and for the last couple of nights it’s rained so hard that it woke me up a few times. I guess nearly all of California is getting drenched. It’s too wet to ride and it’s too wet to shoot, so I’ve been catching up on other stuff.

On that shooting bit…to get to my gun club you have to drive down a dirt road for a couple of miles, and at one point the road actually crosses a stream. Usually it’s only a couple of inches deep and sometimes it’s even dry, but that sure isn’t the case right now. The gun club sent out an email yesterday afternoon with a video warning folks not to try to drive across the stream (which is now a little river)…

So, with all this rain (and some hail) I’ve been attending to other things…catching up on writing a couple of articles, doing a bit of reloading, and I even put a new battery in my TT250.

Reloading is a good thing to do on a rainy day, and the menu today included .44 Magnum and .45 AutoRim, two of my all-time favorite cartridges.

.44 Mag loads for more accuracy testing in the new Ruger Turnbull Super Blackhawk. These loads have a 240 grain cast bullet with Unique loaded at 9.0 grains, 10.0 grains, and 11.0 grains. We’ll see which load the Turnbull prefers.
.45 AutoRim ammo. This cartridge is just like the .45 ACP, except the rim allows shooting it in revolvers chambered for the .45 ACP without the use of metal clips. This is a 200 grain moly-coated cast bullet with 6.0 grains of Unique, and it is a shooter!
Shooting the .45 AutoRim cartridge in a Model 625 Smith and Wesson last week before the rains started. That’s 100 rounds at 25 yards. The two outside the black happened when a fly landed on my front sight. Or maybe it was a sudden gust of wind. Or maybe I sneezed. Yeah, that was it.

Back to the battery for my TT250…I’ve owned my TT250 for close to three years now and the battery finally gave up the ghost. I stopped in at CSC and told Steve I wanted a new one on the warranty, and we both had a good laugh about that. Steve told me I was the only guy he knew who could get that kind of life out of a Chinese battery. I thought that was kind of funny because all the batteries are Chinese now.

Seriously, though, I think the reason my batteries last so long is that I usually keep them on a Battery Tender. Those things work gangbusters for me, the bikes run better when the batteries are kept fully charged, and the batteries seem to last a good long time. You can buy a Battery Tender most anywhere; my advice would be to get one (or more) from CSC. They come with a little pigtail you can permanently install on your battery, which makes connecting the Battery Tender a snap. I have one on both my RX3 and my TT250.

I rotate the battery between my RX3 and my TT250, and the batteries seem to last a lot longer. I don’t know why anyone who owns any motorcycle wouldn’t have one of these.
The Battery Tender pigtail on my RX3. You can’t get the polarity wrong on these if you’ve connected the pigtail to the battery correctly. You get a pigtail for free when you buy a Battery Tender.

Another bit of a commercial for CSC…the mailman dropped off a box on Saturday, and it was one of the new CSC hats. I’m a hat guy. I like wearing a hat. My favorite kind of hat is a free one. The CSC hat I received was free (thanks, Steve), but unless you wrote a blog for CSC for 10 years, it’s not likely you’d get yours for free. I think they sell for $19.95, which is a bit above what hats normally go for, but this one is more than worth it. It’s got cool embossed stitching and it looks good. I like it and I think it will make me a better man.  Like I said, $19.95 ain’t bad, but maybe you could get one for free as part of the deal when you buy a new CSC motorcycle. I’d at least ask the question. The worst that could happen is Steve will say no. But if he does that, ask for a free copy of 5000 Miles At 8000 RPM when you buy your new motorcycle.  You never know.

I got a free hat from CSC. Gresh didn’t. At least not yet, he didn’t. Seriously, these are nice hats.

Hey, here’s one more cool photo. I’ve been spending a bit of time up in northern California. I have a new grandson up there who I think is going to be a rider, a shooter, and a blog writer. On that blog writing thing, I told him it’s a great foundation for any “get rich slow” scheme, and I think he gets it. Anyway, my wife Sue is still up there, and she saw the neighborhood brood of wild turkeys this morning walking around like they own the place…

Genuine Screaming Turkey performance parts? It could work…

You know, there was some talk of making the turkey our national bird instead of the bald eagle when our country first formed (Ben Franklin was pushing for the turkey, but I guess the rest of the founding fathers told him to go fly a kite).  As an aside, when I ride up to northern California, I take Highway 152 across from Interstate 5 to the 101, and there’s a tree where I always see one or two bald eagles.  Bald eagles are majestic raptors.  I can see the logic behind the turkey, though.   But wow, would it ever take a rethink of a lot of marketing stuff, and in particular, it would make for a major revamp of one particular Motor Company’s marketing and branding efforts (you know, the guys from Milwaukee).   Seriously, their performance parts would all have to be marketed under a new Screaming Turkey brand.  You could bask in the assumed glory of your motorcycle’s heritage as you rode like, well, a real turkey.  Perhaps the Company could get a patent on a new exhaust note….one that would have to change from “potato potato” to “gobble gobble.”  There would have to be new logos, tattoos, T-shirts…the list just doesn’t end.  But I guess I had better.   You know, before I offend anyone.

Stay tuned, folks. Like always, there’s more good ExNotes stuff coming your way.   Gobble gobble.

Good Buddies in Long Beach…

One of the best parts of the Long Beach International Motorcycle Show is always running into good friends.  Here are a few good buddies we saw last weekend at the show.

Good buddy Pete, who rode with us twice on the CSC Baja adventure rides!
Good buddy Steve at the CSC booth, which was absolutely packed with folks taking in the new RX4, the new San Gabriel, the new City Slicker, and the iconic RX3 and TT250 motorcycles. That’s Steve in the background, second from the left. Check out the crowd!
Good buddy Marcelo, owner of the Doffo Winery and the MotoDoffo Collection in Temecula!
Good buddy Bill, of Butler Maps!  I see Bill every year at these events.
Good buddies Ash and Pete, of Mosko Moto. These folks make awesome ADV soft luggage!

I always enjoy seeing friends at the Long Beach Moto Show.  It’s the best part of the show for me.

Managing Expectations

Alta, a manufacturer of electric dirt bikes, very recently announced they are closing their doors.   Here’s the article I read on it:  Alta Motors Ceases Operations.  This is interesting on several levels.  Alta previously announced a strategic partnership with Harley-Davidson.  I thought this would figure into Harley’s Livewire project and help both companies enormously, but I guess that isn’t the case.  Last year, Alta lowered their prices substantially.  I thought this would  increase their sales, even though their prices were still high.  Alta had the electric dirt bike niche all to themselves, and this niche seemed to be more suited to an electric motorcycle’s range limitations.   Basically, motocross racing doesn’t require extended range, making Alta’s focus appear to be a well-thought-out strategy.   And finally, Alta had sold a large number of bikes, and they had orders for several hundred more (see the link above).

I guess, in the final analysis, it all comes down to profitability and cash reserves, and if you don’t have enough of either, you can’t keep going.  This makes Alta the second big US e-bike effort to flop (the first being the Brammo).

We are living in interesting times, and that is especially true with respect to the e-bike world.  The e-bike industry is simultaneously emerging and going through a shakeout.

I have been to the mountain. In this case, I did it on Slick. Slick isn’t the last e-bike that will emerge from Chongqing’s inner chambers; he’s only the first of many.

The CSC City Slicker, the newest player in this arena, is already playing a significant role.  The three big things Slick has going for it are its price, its quality (it’s world-class; see our earlier blog posts) and CSC’s well-earned reputation for customer service.  The biggest challenges for CSC and the City Slicker, I think, will be overcoming the US aversion to Chinese products, the ongoing uncertainties in the US/China trade relationship, and redefining customer expectations.

Overcoming US aversion to Chinese products is the least of these issues, and personally, I wouldn’t waste a single second attempting to do so. I think CSC and Zongshen put that issue to bed with the RX3 (it’s a world-class machine, with quality as good as or better than any motorcycle produced anywhere in the world).  To be blunt, anybody still singing songs about Chinese slave labor and low Chinese quality is too stupid and too ignorant to waste time listening to.  They won’t change their minds, so expending any effort attempting to convince them otherwise is an exercise in futility.  Hey, there are still people who think the earth is flat and that we faked the moon landing.  Best to forget about them, thank your lucky stars you aren’t that stupid, and move on.

I think the current uncertainties in the US/China trade relationship will sort themselves out within the next several months.   I think the tariff issue will either go away or have relatively insignificant effects, and I think much of what is going on now is posturing and positioning for a serious set of negotiations between our leaders.  Our trading relationship with China is, to borrow a phrase, too big to fail.

So we’re down to that last issue, redefining expectations, and that will be the biggest challenge for CSC and the electric motorcycle market.  There’s no question that CSC has a pricing advantage that is insurmountable, and I think when CSC announced the City Slicker it set a new reality in the US e-bike industry.  I think Alta realized that and that it might have played a role in their throwing in the towel.   I have to think that the folks at Zero are similarly eyeing the situation and ingesting huge amounts of Pepto-Bismol (and that’s using as charitable a phrase as I can think of).   You might argue that Alta and Zero have (or had) bigger motorcycles with different missions, but that would be as shortsighted and wrong as arguing that all Chinese goods are low quality or the earth is flat.  Yes, Zero motorcycles are bigger and have more capability, but that’s the world as it exists this instant.  The world does not stand still, my friends.   Do you think, even for one second, that the City Slicker is the only sensibly-priced e-bike that will emerge from Chongqing?  Do you think that future e-bikes from China will be small and have the same limitations as do today’s e-bikes?   I have been to the mountain, folks.  The answer is no.

A street scene in Beijing. You might see 50 e-bikes for every gas-powered scooter over there. It’s a tsunami, and it’s coming this way, folks.

But I digress:  Back to this expectations thing.   The City Slicker is not a bike that you can hop on and ride 2000 miles through Baja with a few stops for gas (or topping off the battery).  The range is limited to something like 40 to 60 miles today, depending on how fast you want to go.   The challenge here is to reach customers willing to use their City Slickers like their iPhones…something you plug in and top off whenever you have a chance.  That’s a different market than folks who buy internal combustion bikes.  But it’s potentially a huge market, as I saw firsthand in China where zillions of e-bikes were tethered to extension cords in front of every business on every city street.   More on this expectations thing:  CSC recently announced the price for a replacement Slick battery, and I think it’s about $1100.  Some of the keyboard commandos were choking on that number.  Hey, go price a replacement Zero battery.   You could buy three brand new City Slickers for what a Zero battery costs.   Like I said earlier, the challenge is going to be redefining expectations.  Are we up for it and will CSC market the City Slicker (and the Chinese e-bikes that will inevitably follow) in a manner that emphasizes this new reality?

Time will tell, but I know where I’d put my money.

Malls, Munro, Taj Mahals, and more…

An Indian in the cupboard? Not quite. Read on.

I guess I should start this piece by explaining I’m not even sure what the Clifton Club is. After spending several minutes on Google researching it, all I could find is that it’s either a wedding and Bar Mitzvah venue in Lakewood, Ohio, or a series of bling pieces from high-end watch maker Baume and Mercier. I’m going to go with Door No. 2 on this one. It’s the only explanation that makes sense in the context of what follows.

Let me back up a step. Yesterday I chauffeured the ladies to Fashion Island in Newport. It’s a very trendy shopping mall in a very trendy part of So Cal (think Neiman-Marcus, Nordstrom’s, French poodles, BMWs, and the like).  For me, a visit to any shopping mall is torture, but it keeps me in good graces with the rest of the clan and builds up goodwill points for the next collectible firearm purchase, so it all works out.

Anyway, while the girls were shopping I wandered into a high-end watch store (think Rolex and armed guards) and I noticed, of all things, a motorcycle. A new Indian, to be precise, in the middle of the store. I’ve never ridden an Indian (new or vintage), but I always thought they were beautiful motorcycles (again, both new and vintage).  I’m not a big cruiser guy, but if I was, I think I would buy an Indian. They are good-looking motorcycles, and my buddies Joe Gresh and Duane both hold them in high regard (and that’s a powerful endorsement).

While I was admiring the Indian, a sales guy approached me (my new good buddy Eduardo…Eduardo, I think, is a particularly elegant name).  Eduardo saw my confusion (a motorcycle in a jewelry store?), and he explained that Indian had a marketing partnership with Baume and Mercier, a high-end Swiss watchmaker.  It all centered on Burt Munro and his record-breaking land speed record activities.  Indian.  Baume and Mercier.  Burt Munro.   Ah, it all came together.

The Baume and Mercier Indian watch. $3900, and it could be yours. Motorcycle not included. It is a beautiful timepiece.  It’s part of their Clifton Club collection, and if you wear it, you could be a member, too.
Indian got it right.  It’s an OHV engine, but the valve covers are designed to emulate the flathead design of the original Indians.  It’s masterful, I think.
There’s a lot of room in those freight and setup fees.  Don’t ever pay what any dealer asks for in these two categories. Read 5000 Miles at 8000 RPM, available on Amazon.com, and you’ll see what I’m talking about.

Do these marketing partnerships work? I suppose they do. More than 20 years ago, Ford teamed with Harley to offer a special limited edition F-150 pickup with Harley decals.  As near as I could tell, the decals were the only thing special about that truck, and the only thing limiting the edition was how many they could sell. I had a lot of fun teasing a friend of mine who owned both a Harley Bad Boy (yep, they actually had a model with that name) and the limited edition truck. I drove a ginormous Tahoe and I rode a Suzuki TL1000 in those days.  I told my friend I was going to put Suzuki decals on the Chevy and call it a TL-Ho. Good times.

Anyway, the Baume and Mercier watch I saw yesterday was cool (at $3900, it should be), and the Indian was beautiful. I hope the deal works out for Baume and Mercier, and for Indian. I pondered the Harley and Ford partnership mentioned above; I’m guessing nothing came of that, as the two companies seemed to have parted ways.  Then I remembered that Bentley, the luxury British carmaker, has a partnership with Breitling (Breitling is another expensive Swiss watchmaker).

I wondered…what’s in it for the companies that strike up such partnerships, and what’s in it for their customers? I don’t think there’s any kind of pricing advantage or free gear package, so what would be the attraction?  Is it simply living a branded lifestyle (you know, for insecure rich folks who need something more in their lives)?   Or is it somehow making a statement about one’s wealth?   Look at me!  I drive a Bentley and wear a Breitling!

That got me to thinking…would a marketing partnership work for other brands, and in particular, would such a partnership work for less expensive motorcycles and watches?   You know, look at me!  I ride an RX3 and I wear a Timex!

What if you could sell a new motorcycle and give away a free watch with it? I’m thinking of China bikes, India bikes (not Indian Moto, but bikes actually made in India), and maybe Thai bikes.  It might work if you included a free watch with each new motorcycle, and it would cost essentially nothing. I visited the Canton Fair in Guangzhou last year and I’m on their email list now, so I get all kinds of offers from Chinese manufacturers.  You can buy new Chinese watches for $0.62 each (and if you’re thinking they are low quality, you need to think again and maybe research where what you’re currently wearing is actually manufactured).

The branding and theming opportunities might be fun.  KLRs are made in Thailand…suppose you got a free milk-crate-themed watch to match your KLR’s topcase?  The KTM 390 is made in India; perhaps you could include a Taj Mahal themed watch with each new 390 (isn’t that what the “TM” in KTM stands for, anyway?).  Think of all the marques with models, engines, or major components manufactured in Thailand, India, and China…Hawk, SWM, CSC, Royal Enfield, BMW, Harley-Davidson, Triumph, Honda, and more.  You can see the possibilities.

Yeah, this could work.

Another cool blog…

Colorado Dan in Mexico!

Our good buddy Dan from Colorado (the other Dan from Colorado; we know two of them) sent an email to me last night with a link to a very cool blog (the Maple Fiesta) about five guys who all bought new TT250s when they were first offered by CSC.   They had a plan…they all bought the bikes to ride the Continental Divide Trail from Mexico to Canada.

A great read about a great adventure. Five men, five TT250 motorcycles, and three countries. Well done, guys!

Yeah, they had a few problems, but that’s what adventure riding is all about.  They fixed the problems and trucked on, and they all made it.  It’s a hell of story and it’s worth a read!

A cool video…

This is an interesting video about used bikes under $2,000 that might make for good winter project bikes, and the guy who created it was so taken with the idea of a new CSC bike for under $2,0000 that he included a segment on CSC.  CSC is one of our advertisers and both of your blogmeisters (that would be Arjiu and Dajiu) put big miles on the RX3 on rides in China and the US.   It’s a good video…our compliments to the guy who put it together.  Enjoy!