Triumph – Page 3 – The ExhaustNotes Blog

The Motorado vintage motorcycle show is held once a year on the eastern outskirts of Santa Fe, New Mexico. It’s a cozy show with a few hundred entries and the parking lot contains a few dozen more worthwhile bikes. I could go into one of my patented off-topic rambles only to bring you back to the show 500 words from now but I’ll spare you the agony. Here are a few of the motorcycles I found notable.

This year’s Motorado was Italian themed and the round-case 750’s came out in force. These are beautiful bikes but the non-desmo, spring-valve GT850 with its bizarre, Jetsons styling is the one for me.

Adjustable rear dampers on the mono-shockish Moto Guzzi Falcone. Also known as the Baloney Slicer for the large outside flywheel. The Falcone sports a 500cc lay down engine and were used extensively by the Italian army and Police force.

Italian-themed doesn’t mean Italian only. Motorado hosts all brands and style motorcycle. This Series C Vincent was blinding in the clear blue skies of New Mexico. Spotlessly restored and British, no one puts this baby in a corner.

In all ways unfortunate, this ’73 Norton High Rider was one of the first-ever factory chopper style motorcycles. Someone at Norton spent a lot of time screwing up a great motorcycle. I can’t imagine how they decided enough was enough but it looks like they just stopped styling on the bike and called it good.

Pre-unit vs. Unit Triumphs: Me being me, I prefer the pre-unit engines for their added complexity and abundant opportunities to leak. The long primary cover looks better too. Unit Triumph lovers are soulless automatons who should never be invited to parties.

The rare Bridgestone GTR350. Disc-valved, two cylinders, this bike was a screamer. Motorado had an unrestored example on display. The owner says he has about 100 motorcycles in his collection! The aluminum crossover intake ducting has only a screen to keep debris out of the engine so I’m guessing these things wore out fairly fast.

A couple of Ravens utilizing Moto Guzzi engines as they were never intended. The twin-cylinder model is shocking enough but the single with its rear cylinder blanked off takes the prize.

My internet buddy Wes dropped by on his H2 with bits and pieces from many years and even some 650 Kawasaki wheels. The whole of the parts exceeds the sum of the parts in this case. It’s a sweet bike and I should have killed him and stolen the thing.

I have about a million more shots from the show but you get the idea. Keep the date open for Motorado 2019 and I’ll see you there, maybe on an old Z1 if I can get the beast going in time.

More Joe Gresh stuff is right here!

Here’s an interesting story that popped up on my news feed earlier today. It seems an errant scooter rider, a young one at that, was stopped by the Maine State Police riding his scooter on the Maine Turnpike late last night, using only his cell phone for a headlight. There must be more to the story, because after stopping him, the police gave the guy a lift to his destination some 70 miles away. I can’t make stuff up this good, and if you doubt my word, you can read the original story here.

So that story naturally pulled my attention to a somewhat similar experience with my good buddy Baja John and his girlfriend Annie. This goes back to 2006 again, shortly after John bought a place right on the Sea of Cortez in Bahia de Los Angeles. Literally, right on the sea. Oceanside housing. It’s awesome.

Casa Baja Juan, in Bahia de Los Angeles.

Baja Juan, probably telling a fish story, in his back yard.

I had just bought a new Triumph Tiger. John and Annie invited me to their new place. Who can say no to an offer like that?

My Triumph. On the ride down to Bahia de Los Angeles, we hit very dense fog. We stopped and waited for it to lift. At one point it was so thick I couldn’t see the ground.

Here’s where the story gets interesting. When John bought the Casa Baja Juan, it came with a VW bus. John worked on it for a week and got it running, and it became his get-around-town wheels. He never registered it, so it had no plates, but it was cool. I love old VWs, especially the buses.

The VW bus that came with Baja John’s oceanside estate. Lights? We don’t need no stinkin’ lights!

That night, we took the VW and went to dinner at the best taqueria in town, just a short distance away…

A typical Baja roadside restaurant. You can get some mighty good food in these places.

John, Annie, and I had a great dinner, a few Tecates, and then it was time to head back to his place. There was a problem, though. The sun had set, and the VW had no headlights. The three of us pondered this situation a while, and then John remembered he had a flashlight.

John handed the flashlight to Annie and she hung out the passenger window, lighting the way as we rolled down a dirt road to John’s house. We couldn’t see squat (the flashlight was pitifully weak), but we were laughing so hard we didn’t care.

Then we drove past another restaurant on that dirt road. Imagine that: Another restaurant on that same dirt road. Then I saw who was sitting under the veranda as we went by. Uh oh, I thought.

There were three Mexican police officers having dinner, sitting out front, just a few feet away as we passed. The police officers saw us, we saw them, and Annie waved, using the flashlight, which I thought would only accentuate the obvious: We had no lights and the VW wasn’t registered.

The police? They waved back, holding up their cervezas in a salute to our ability to adapt, improvise, and overcome.

Ah, Baja….