ExhaustNotes – The ExhaustNotes Blog

Churchill Clark in 1969. Our graduation yearbook was dedicated to him. I saw Mr. Clark again at our 20th reunion. He was one of the greats and the creator of the Exhaust Notes name. Sadly, he is no longer with us.

The year was 1968, I was a 17-year-old pup, and Churchill Clark approached me with an idea for the Viking Press. We were the Vikings (no one is quite sure how we got that name, as there were very few Scandinavians in South Brunswick), and the Viking Press, you see, was our high school newspaper. Mr. Clark was an English teacher (a great one), and he was the Viking Press faculty advisor.

A bit more background: There were several cliques in our high school (there were, are, and always will be in any high school, I guess), and I belonged to the greasers. You know, the gearheads. We lived and breathed GTOs, Camaros, Hemis, motorcycles, street racing, and anything that ingested fossil fuel. We were in the middle of the muscle car era, maybe one of the best times ever to be a teenager in America. Old Mr. Clark wanted to get our crowd reading the high school newspaper (he was a bit of a greaser himself), and as I was one of the more literate greasers, he asked me to write a column about cars.

“What do you want me to say?” I asked.

“Whatever you want,” Mr. Clark answered.

So I did, and I have to admit, it was a heady experience seeing something I wrote appear in print for the first time. My idea was to have a little fun with the war stories and poke at the ridiculousness of it all. Mr. Clark titled the column Exhaust Notes and he drew the little car that appeared at the top of every article. I liked both, and the Exhaust Notes name stuck. When Joe Gresh and I started the blog, there was no question about what it was going to be called.

A few months ago my high school class, South Brunswick’s Class of 1969, held its 50th reunion. My good buddy and friend since kindergarten, Kathy Leary, told me she had saved a few of the old Viking Press newspapers, and she scanned a couple of the articles for me.

Those were great times, folks, and great memories. I’m glad Kathy had the foresight to hang on to those old papers, and I’m grateful she scanned and sent a couple of the articles to me. And I’m glad old Mr. Clark trusted me to run with the idea.

We updated the ExNotes home page to make it easier to find our blogs on Baja, Epic Rides, Berk’s magazine articles, Gresh’s magazine articles, our YouTube videos, the new CSC RX4, motorcycle resurrections, Dream Bikes, Tales of the Gun, electric motorcycles, police motorcycles, and how to advertise on the ExNotes site. Here are the home page links and the stories behind the photos…

This is the first image on the ExhaustNotes home page, and it provides a link to the ExNotes blog. This is the Gobi Desert in northwestern China, and that’s the real deal…a camel caravan. Gresh and I rode there on our motorcycles.

The link to articles by Joe Gresh previously published in a variety of magazines. There’s good reading here! The photo? That’s Gresh entering the Gobi Desert on a Zongshen RX3.

This is at the entrance to the Forbidden City in Beijing, and it’s your link to magazine articles by Berk.

Want to know what the ExNotes site is all about? You can get the story here. That photo? Hey, Gresh and I like gladiator movies. We were actors in one filmed in central China, near the city of Liqian.

Trust me on this: You need to advertise on ExhaustNotes.us. Here’s the link to get that process started. This photo was up on the Tibetan Plateau, with the city of Aba in the background.

The best riding on the planet, and it starts just across the border! Click this link to get our stories, our guidance, our suggested itineraries, and more on this magical place. I took this photo while riding my CSC Mustang through Baja’s Catavina boulder fields.

Yep, we’re a motorcycle site, but this is one of the busiest places in all of the ExhaustNotes empire. Click this link for our Tales of the Gun stories. That’s me firing the mighty M1 Garand. My daughter shot the above photo on her iPhone, capturing the cartridge case in midair!

The only thing better than our Epic Motorcycle Rides page is actually getting out and creating the adventure yourself! Enjoy our tales of the adventure riding trails here! Oh, and that photo? It’s Gresh on an Enfield in Mexico!

Gresh doesn’t do 100-point restorations. Nope, his deal is rustorations, not restorations. A bike is only original once. The photo is Gobi Gresh’s mighty Z1 Kawasaki at the Tinfiny Ranch. It runs now, and you can read about how Joe brought it back to life here.

The stuff of dreams, the ones that got away, and more. You can peek into our dreams here. That’s my old 1200 Triumph Daytona after a 120-mph sprint across Highway 58 in California.

Who you calling Tubby? Here’s a cool collection of our videos. The photo was taken in Qufu, the birthplace of Confucius. Gresh and others are grabbing videos during a changing of the guard ceremony.

Motors, the best job on the force. I believe it, and you should, too. We’ve recently added a page indexing our police motorcycle stuff, and you can get to it here. The photo is good buddy Jim Watson on a Honda ST1300P police motorcycle.

The RX3 is a great bike, but folks wanted more displacement. Zongshen responded with the RX4, and upsized version of their iconic RX3, and CSC is taking orders now. You can read all about the RX4 and how it compares to the RX3 and the KLR 650 here. We rode the one above in the San Gabriel Mountains, which is where we shot this photo.

It’s a new world out there, folks, and electric motorcycles are part of it. You can catch up on what’s happening here. That’s a CSC City Slicker, a phenomenal buy at just $2495!

Writers write. Hey, it’s what we do. With something north of 20 titles under our belt, yeah, we’re gonna brag a bit. Read all about it here, and get links to buy our books on this page!

Want the e-ticket ride back to the ExhaustNotes home page? It’s right here. And that photo? It’s the Bridge of the Gods, spanning the mighty Columbia River from Washington to Oregon. When I’m there, it feels like it’s a place where I belong. What could possibly be a more fitting home page link?

There you have it, my friends. You’ll see all of the above when you open our home page, and it’s your nav system to the rest of the site.

Hey, there’s more good stuff coming your way. We do our best to blog every day, and we’ve got great stories lined up for you:

Good buddy Steve’s Norton Commando
More vintage police motors
The continuation of our .45 ACP ammo series
The Indiana Jones aspects of riding in China

And much, much more. Don’t miss any of it…sign up for our automatic email updates (add your name to our email list), and you’ll stay up to date!