{"id":21522,"date":"2023-04-01T00:01:04","date_gmt":"2023-04-01T07:01:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/?p=21522"},"modified":"2023-03-31T16:17:20","modified_gmt":"2023-03-31T23:17:20","slug":"the-wayback-machine-were-not-in-kansas-anymore-toto","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/2023\/04\/01\/the-wayback-machine-were-not-in-kansas-anymore-toto\/","title":{"rendered":"The Wayback Machine: We\u2019re not in Kansas anymore, Toto\u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"
By Joe Berk<\/h6>\n

This Wayback Machine post goes back to a blog I wrote for CSC Motorcycles<\/a> in December 2014.\u00a0 The nine years between then and now has been quite a blur.\u00a0 A bit of background…CSC was transitioning from production of its Mustang replica bikes to importing the about-to-be-released Zongshen RX3.\u00a0 Susie and I went to Chongqing to help finalize the deal, and this was a blog I wrote while I was in that city.<\/p>\n

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I guess I\u2019ll start by telling you that riding my CSC-150 Baja Blaster, Steve Seidner\u2019s resurrection of the venerable vintage Mustang, has been good practice for me and this visit to Chongqing.\u00a0\u00a0 When you ride a CSC motorcycle, you collect stares wherever you go (we call it the rock star syndrome, and we even had a CSC custom in the early days we named the Rock Star).\u00a0 \u00a0The photo at the top of this blog is Steve’s personal CSC-150, the Sarge, and it draws stares wherever it goes. That\u2019s sure been the situation with Susie and me here in Chongqing.\u00a0\u00a0 Susie and I are the only non-Chinese folks everywhere we\u2019ve been, starting with our getting on the airplane in Beijing, and people are naturally curious.\u00a0\u00a0 It\u2019s like riding the CSC\u2026we\u2019re drawing the stares.\u00a0\u00a0 Like the title of this blog says, we\u2019re well off the tourist trail on this trip.<\/p>\n

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The view from our 21st floor hotel room\u2026it stays misty in this mystical city!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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After a great breakfast this morning (see the blog below), we asked about the things to see and do in Chongqing, and our sights this morning settled firmly on a cable car ride across the Yangtze River.\u00a0\u00a0 We started by grabbing a cab\u2026<\/p>\n

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I hope this guy knows where we want to go, I thought to myself as we got in his cab\u2026<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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It\u2019s strange\u2026the cabbie spoke no English, so the guy at the hotel had to explain what we wanted.\u00a0\u00a0 Then he gave us a card so that when wanted to return, we could show it to the next cab driver.\u00a0\u00a0 Another sign of not being in Kansas anymore.<\/p>\n

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You know what to do:\u00a0 Please click on the popup ads!<\/span><\/h3>\n
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It\u2019s a bit on the cold side over here, but riders ride and the Chinese are no exception to that rule.\u00a0\u00a0 These folks use their motorcycles as transportation, as trucks, as cabs, and more.<\/p>\n

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This guy would make a good KLR rider\u2026looks like this bike gets washed about as often as my KLR!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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If you take a close look at the photo above, you\u2019ll notice something that\u2019s pretty common here in Chongqing\u2026a set of handwarmers.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 These are no-fooling-around, guaranteed-to-keep-your-paws-toasty, sure-fire handwarmers, folks! They go way beyond the heated grips that BMW brags about (and that we\u2019ll be offering as options on the Cyclone, by the way).\u00a0\u00a0 I\u2019ll show you a few more motorcycle photos; be sure to check out the handwarmers on many of these bikes.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s another shot\u2026a Chinese\u00a0scooter equipped with what has to be the ultimate luggage rack\u2026<\/p>\n

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The world\u2019s ultimate luggage rack?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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The Yangtze River cable car ride was awesome.\u00a0\u00a0 It\u2019s about 4,000 feet across the river, and we were packed into that little box like sardines.\u00a0\u00a0 Going up to the cable car in the elevator gave a hint of what was to come\u2026we were squeezed in with folks I\u2019ve never met before, and I was already more intimate with them than I had been on most of my high school dates.\u00a0\u00a0 I guess that\u2019s just a natural consequence of being in a city with 34 million inhabitants.<\/p>\n

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A scene vaguely reminiscent of a James Bond movie\u2026that\u2019s downtown Chongqing in the mist<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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In the photo above, just to the right of us is where the Yangtze and the Jialing rivers meet.\u00a0\u00a0 It\u2019s the downtown area that you\u2019ll see in the following photos.\u00a0\u00a0 34 million people live here.\u00a0 I\u2019m pretty sure we met about half of them this morning.<\/p>\n

First, a photo of a Chinese postal service motorcycle.\u00a0\u00a0 They paint their postal service vehicles green.\u00a0\u00a0 Zongshen is a big supplier of motorcycles to the Chinese postal service.\u00a0 Check out the handwarmers on this rig!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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A postal service motorcycle in downtown Chongqing\u2026check out the handwarmers and the parcels<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Here\u2019s another bike we spotted while walking downtown.<\/p>\n

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Live to ride\u2026ride to live\u2026and loud pipes save lives.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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There were a lot of people out and about.\u00a0\u00a0There were so many people on the sidewalks we were starting to get a little claustrophobic.\u00a0 It\u2019s way worse than New York City.\u00a0\u00a0 You won\u2019t get a sense of that in the photos that follow, mostly because I waited until there were brief instances when the crowds parted to give me a less-obstructed photo.<\/p>\n

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Fresh fruit delivered the old-fashioned way.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Another fruit transporter.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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I grabbed a few more scenes on our walk downtown.<\/p>\n

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This fellow was making and selling necklace pendants from animal teeth\u2026those are skulls on the ground in front.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Sidewalk art.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Colors abound in downtown Chongqing.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Here\u2019s a cool shot of a youngster who wasn\u2019t too sure about this old guy in an Indiana Jones hat taking his photograph\u2026they don\u2019t see too many people like Susie and me in this neighborhood.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Why is this guy taking my picture?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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And of course, the food vendors.\u00a0\u00a0 We did a lot of walking and bumping into people (literally; the sidewalks were jam packed\u2026it was wall-to-wall humanity).\u00a0\u00a0 It made me a little hungry.\u00a0\u00a0 Check out the food photos.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Feeling hungry?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Top Ramen?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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I’ll bet it tastes good.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Oranges being delivered the hard way.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Chongqing used to be known in the West as Chun King.\u00a0\u00a0 The way the Chinese pronounce it, it almost sounds like Chun King.\u00a0\u00a0 When I was a kid, my Mom used to buy Chinese noodles and the name of the company on the can was Chun King.\u00a0\u00a0 Little did I know that it was a real place and one day more than a half century later I\u2019d be visiting it!<\/p>\n

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People\u2026lots of people\u2026and motorcycles\u2026lots of motorcycles!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Another Chinese rider in downtown Chongqing.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Just another photo or two, folks.\u00a0\u00a0 The Chinese use these three-wheel vehicles that I guess are cars, but they are based on a tricycle design.\u00a0\u00a0 I had not encountered this particular model before, so I grabbed a photo\u2026<\/p>\n

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A three-wheeler\u2026it\u2019s a cool concept!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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I looked inside of one of the three wheelers and it actually looked pretty nice in there.\u00a0\u00a0 They are used as taxis.\u00a0\u00a0 Maybe we\u2019ll grab a ride in one before we leave Chongqing.<\/p>\n

I told Susie that I was getting a bit tired (we\u2019re still fighting the time change).\u00a0 I think I\u00a0said\u00a0I wanted to stop monkeying around and head back to the hotel.\u00a0\u00a0 That\u2019s when she pointed this scene out to me\u2026<\/p>\n

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Monkeying around in downtown Chongqing\u2026<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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I think that\u2019s probably enough for now.\u00a0 \u00a0Tomorrow\u2019s the first day of this visit with the good folks from Zongshen.\u00a0\u00a0 I\u2019ve been following all the stuff on the forums and in your emails to me, and I\u2019ll address many of the things you\u2019ve written about.\u00a0\u00a0 I won\u2019t be able to post all of it here, but keep an eye on the blog and maybe I\u2019ll get a photo or two of the factory.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I\u2019m pumped, and I\u2019m looking forward to our discussions tomorrow.<\/p>\n

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That was quite a visit.\u00a0 I’d been to Chongqing once before, but that was an in-and-out trip, and on the visit described above, Sue and I poked around the city a bit.\u00a0 I loved it.\u00a0 It was one of the most beautiful and exotic places I’d ever been.\u00a0 It was fun because we were in a place most Americans don’t get to visit, I made great friends in China, and it was cool being in on the ground floor of the effort to bring the RX3 to America.\u00a0 I know there are a lot of people out there who hate China and who think anything that comes from China is of low quality.\u00a0 I’m not one of those people and I make no apologies for it.<\/p>\n

The RX3 was a watershed motorcycle.\u00a0 It was the only small displacement adventure touring bike in America until BMW, Kawasaki, and others tried copying the RX3.\u00a0 \u00a0The RX3 was still the better motorcycle, and I had a lot of fun on mine.<\/p>\n

If you’d like to know more about the RX3 and CSC Motorcycles bringing the bike to the US, pick up a copy of 5000 Miles at 8000 RPM<\/a>.\u00a0 I’ve been told it’s a good read.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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Never miss an ExNotes blog post:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Joe Berk This Wayback Machine post goes back to a blog I wrote for CSC Motorcycles in December 2014.\u00a0 The nine years between then and now has been quite a blur.\u00a0 A bit of background…CSC was transitioning from production of its Mustang replica bikes to importing the about-to-be-released Zongshen RX3.\u00a0 Susie and I went … Continue reading “The Wayback Machine: We\u2019re not in Kansas anymore, Toto\u2026”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21627,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[392,72,369],"tags":[2421,78,75],"class_list":["post-21522","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-back-in-the-day","category-china","category-zongshen","tag-chongqing","tag-csc-motorcycles","tag-zongshen"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/sarge-001-900.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21522","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21522"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21522\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21795,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21522\/revisions\/21795"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21627"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}