Tag: Suzuki

My Best Breakdown Story Ever

Nope, it’s not my breakdown story, and it’s not Gresh’s, either.  This one comes to us as a guest blog from good buddy Bob O, whom you may remember from his earlier blog about a custom handgun by TJ, another good buddy.  I’ll give you the link for that blog later.

Bob was a motorcycle messenger in an earlier life, and this story comes to us from those halcyon days of yesteryear.

Over to you, Bob!

It was some years ago, about 1983 or as kids today would call it, the ancient time before the common use of the Internet or social media. I was working as a motorcycle messenger here in Los Angeles. It was an interesting way to make a living. I had started out as an in-house delivery rider for a travel agency and then moved up to messenger services.  We were based in Century City in West L.A. on the land that had been 20th Century’s Film Corp’s back lot back before the movie industry shrank due to television.  I used to run all day long on the bike (typically about 200 to 250 miles a day). Pick up three messages in Beverly Hills going downtown, pick up one downtown going back to the west side, etc., etc., all day long.

Motorcycles are great for this kind of work in dense LA traffic. Lane splitting is legal in California and that in conjunction with ease of parking made bikes a lot more efficient than cars in both time and cost. I was running a Suzuki GN 400, a forgotten little 400cc single-cylinder street bike that they made for about 3 years. It was left over from the prior year’s production and they were being sold off at a bargain basement price. As I recall I paid $1123 for it brand spanking new. It wasn’t fast and it wasn’t flashy but it was fast enough for messenger work and was about as reliable as an anvil or the sun. And it just sipped fuel.  All in all it could have used a little more uumph power wise but it got the job done.

I lived in the Southbay area of LA which is in the southwest part of the county and the office was in West LA. If the dispatchers could they would try to get me a south run to help pay my way home at the end of the day.  This particular day I was in the office at about 4:30 that afternoon and the day was still frantic but winding down. My dispatcher called my name and told me he had an Orange County for me which was a good one money wise and also because it was southbound. The pick up was in Westwood going to Stanton in Orange County.

I took the dispatch ticket and went downstairs to my bike and off to Westwood I went with a big smile on my face. Got the pick up in Westwood and headed south on the notorious 405 freeway lane splitting merrily on my way through bumper to bumper rush hour traffic. I got to Artesia Boulevard in Torrance and doglegged across the Southbay to pick up the 91 freeway going to Orange County which is a distance of about 5 or so miles on the surface streets.

I was just getting on the 91 when suddenly my rear end started swinging wildly back and forth – Ugh!!!! Damn!!! I blew a rear tire!!  I made my way to the shoulder of the freeway and walked about a hundred feet to a freeway call box. Nobody in those days had cell phones then except rich people and they were the size of a brick so all we had were beepers duct taped to our back pack straps. I got on the phone with the Highway Patrol operator and was trying to get a driver to come and pick up the delivery I had as it had to be there. This was somewhat difficult as the office had closed and we were trying to arrange all this through relays of calls to a nighttime relief driver.

As I was waiting for the operator to come back on the line I heard a horn honking repeatedly. I looked down at the freeway onramp just below me and for some reason there was a guy in a white bobtail truck honking and waving at me. I ignored this friendly gesture as I was in the middle of a minor crisis and also had no idea who the hell it was and was still waiting for the Highway Patrol operator on the call box to come back on the line.

Much to my surprise, the truck did not continue onto the freeway but edged over onto the shoulder where my bike was and started backing up. Well, this required a bit of investigation as it obviously was more than just a friendly hello from someone just passing by, so I put down the call box phone and ran over to the bike while the bobtail reversed to about 20 feet away from the bike. I approached the cab of the truck and miracle of miracles it was a friend of mine who just happened to be getting on the freeway who looked over, recognized me, and stopped. “Hey didn’t you see me waving at you”? Um,…..well yeah but didn’t know it was you”. “So what happened”? “I blew a rear tire” “Hey, no problem, lets put it on the lift gate and I’ll get you home.”

Well, we did just that. Up into the bobtail the Suzuki went, it got tied down, and my bud took me to the stop in Stanton to drop the package and then dropped me off right in my driveway in Redondo Beach. As he drove away I was kind of thinking to myself “did that really just happen or am I dreaming?” Well, it did happen. Sometimes you just get lucky. Real lucky.

That’s a great story, Bob.  Thanks for sharing it with us.  Ride safe and keep your powder dry.

As promised, here’s the link to Bob’s other post.

Do you want to write a guest blog for ExNotes?  Let us know (info@exhaustnotes.us) and we’ll get right bactk to you!

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Bikes Gone By

Do you dream about the motorcycles you used to own?

Yeah, me, too.  I don’t have photos of all my bikes that have gone down the road, but I have a few and I’d like to share them with you.

My first motorcycle was a Honda Super 90. I bought it from Sherm Cooper, a famous Triumph racer who owned Cooper’s Cycle Ranch in New Jersey. My Super 90 was cool…it was white and it had an upswept pipe and knobby tires.  Mr. Cooper used it for getting around on his farm (the Cycle Ranch actually started out there).  I was only 14 and I wasn’t supposed to be on the street yet, but I was known to sneak out on occasion. I liked that Honda Super 90 motor, and evidently so do a lot of other people (it’s still being manufactured by several different companies in Asia).

Yours truly at about age 14 on the Honda Super 90. What’s that stuff on top of my head?

The next bike was a Honda SL-90. Same 90cc Honda motor, but it had a tubular steel frame and it was purpose-built for both road and off-road duty. I never actually had a photo of that bike, but it was a favorite. Candy apple red and silver (Honda figured out by then that people wanted more than just their basic four colors of white, red, black, or blue), it was a great-looking machine. I rode it for about a year and sold it, and then I took a big step up.

That big step up was a Honda 750 Four. I’ve waxed eloquent about that bike here on the blog already, so I won’t bore you with the details about how the Honda 750 basically killed the British motorcycle industry and defined new standards for motorcycle performance.  The 750 was fun, too. Fast, good looking, candy apple red (Honda used that color a lot), and exotic. I paid $1559 for it in 1971 at Cooper’s. Today, one in mint condition would approach ten times that amount.  I wish I still had it.

My first big street bike…a 1971 Honda 750 Four. It was awesome. It’s a miracle I never crashed it. I rode it all the way up to Canada and back in the early ’70s. Check out the jacket, the riding pants, and my other safety gear.

There were a lot of bikes that followed. There were two Honda 500 Fours, a 50cc Honda Cub (the price was right, so I bought it and sold it within a couple of days) an 85cc two-stroke BSA (with a throttle that occasionally stuck open), a 1982 Suzuki 1000cc Katana (an awesome ride, but uncomfortable), a 1979 Harley Electra-Glide Classic (the most unreliable machine I’ve ever owned), a 1978 Triumph Bonneville (I bought that one new when I lived in Fort Worth), a 1971 Triumph Tiger, a 1970 Triumph Daytona, a 1992 Harley Softail (much more reliable than the first Harley, and one I rode all over the US Southwest and Mexico), a 1995 Triumph Daytona 1200 (the yellow locomotive), a 1997 TL1000S Suzuki (a sports bike I used as a touring machine), a 2006 Triumph Tiger, a 1982 Honda CBX (a great bike, but one I sold when Honda stopped stocking parts for it), a 2007 Triumph Speed Triple (awesome, fast, but buzzy), a 2006 KLR 650 Kawasaki, and a 2010 CSC 150.   Here are photos of some of those bikes:

My high school buddy Johnnie with a Honda 500 four I later bought from him. That sissy bar was the first thing to go. It was a fun bike.
A Honda 50cc Cub, the most frequently produced motorcycle on the planet. In China and elsewhere, this bike is still being manufactured. I bought this one in the 1960s, mostly because I knew I could sell it and make a few bucks quickly.
My ’79 Electra-Glide Classic. I called this one my optical illusion, because it looked like a motorcycle. I couldn’t go a hundred miles on that motorcycle without something breaking. And people badmouth Chinese motorcycles.
Me with my 1982 Suzuki Katana. In its day, that was a super-exotic bike. Uncomfortable, but very fast, and way ahead of its time. I bought it new and paid over MSRP because they were so hard to get. I was a lot skinnier in those days.
My ’92 Softail Classic Harley. This motorcycle was superbly reliable right up until the moment the oil pump quit at 53,000 miles. At about the time I shot this photo on a trip through Mexico, I started thinking that maybe a Big Twin was not the best answer to the adventure touring question. And I know, my motorcycle packing skills in those days were not yet optimized. That’s a Mexican infantry officer behind the bike.
My buddy Louis V and me with our bikes somewhere in Arizona sometime in the mid-’90s. I’m not sure why Louis had his shirt off…we sure didn’t ride that way. Louis had an ’81 Gold Wing and I had an ’82 CBX Six. That old CBX was a fun bike…it sounded like a Ferrari!
My ’97 Suzuki TL1000S on the road somewhere in Baja. Wow, that bike was fast.  Here’s a story about my good buddy Paul and me featuring this motorcycle.
The 1200 Daytona. I won it on an Ebay auction.  It was an incredible motorcycle and you can read more about it here.
I’d always wanted a KLR 650, and when I pulled the trigger in 2006 I was glad I did. Smaller bikes make more sense. They’re more fun to ride, too.  It seemed to me that this was the perfect bike for Baja.  That’s me and Baja John out at El Marmol.
The ’06 Triumph Tiger. Fun, but a little cramped and very heavy. It was styled like a dual sport, but trust me on this, you don’t want to get into the soft stuff with this motorcycle.
Potentially the most beautiful motorcycle I’ve ever owned, this 2007 Speed Triple was a fast machine. The joke in motorcycle circles is that it should be named the Speed Cripple. That’s what it did to me.
My CSC 150. Don’t laugh. I had a lot of fun on this little Mustang replica. My friends and I rode these to Cabo San Lucas and back.

That brings up to today.  My rides today are a CSC TT250, an RX3, and a Royal Enfield Interceptor 650.  I like riding them all.

Do you have photos of your old bikes?  Here’s an invitation:  Send photos of your earlier motorcycles to us (info@exhaustnotes.us) with any info you can provide and we’ll your story here on the blog.  We’d love to see your motorcycles.

Want to see some of our Dream Bikes?   Give a click here!

Dream bike: 2020 Suzuki Katana

Wow, this is a departure for ExhaustNotes.   So far, all the dream bikes we’ve listed have been blasts from the past.

This one is and it isn’t.

I’m over here in Singapore this week on yet another secret mission, and this story floats in:  Suzuki is resurrecting the Katana!  Whoa!

The 2020 Suzuki Katana. 1000cc, just like the original, but with a Gixxer engine.

This is a story that has my attention.  I’ve always liked Suzuki motorcycles, and I think Suzuki engineering is as good as it gets.  But that’s not what attracted me to this latest development.  I actually owned one of the very first Katanas, way back when they first came out in 1982…

A skinny guy with hair, a leather jacket, and a new ’82 Katana. Life was very, very good.

I still dream about that 1982 Katana.  I paid over MSRP because they were so hard to find (I’ll never do that again, but the fact that I did says just how much I wanted that bike).  It was fast beyond belief, and the colors just flat worked for me.   It had a Joan Claybrook speedometer (remember her?) that only registered 85 mph, as if that would somehow counteract my willingness to do stupid stuff.  85 mph, my ass…that bike lived half its life with the needle buried.   The instruments were cool, too…the tach and the speedometer were pivoted in a way that made them look like they were unwinding when accelerating.  I hope Suzuki does something tricky like that with the new one.  My ’82 Katana was so ahead of its time that I actually got pulled over twice by cops who just wanted to see the thing.  And you know what?  I never got a ticket on that bike. Not once.  Lord knows it wasn’t because I was a good boy.

I don’t need 150 horsepower and I don’t need 1000cc.   But there’s a big difference between need and want, and I want this new Katana.   This just might be the dream that comes true.

Hey, there’s more!