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I try to take at least one extended motorcycle trip each year to cleanse the soul. This year's most memorable trip was to Baja, and it included 5,200 (s)miles aboard my faithful 1998 BMW R1100 GS motorcycle. I left my home in Fayetteville, Arkansas on December 19, 2002 and eventually returned the evening of January 6, 2003. I had 1,700 miles to ride to meet up with five other riding buddies at the Tecate border crossing in California. I was able to make the ride in three days through mostly decent, but cold winter weather. I stayed as far south as possible, using I-20, I-10 and I-8 in an effort to avoid winter weather delays. A quirk of fate included riding through an incredible winter storm in the mountains on Interstate 8 not too far east of San Diego, of all places. Pea soup fog and torrential rain slowed my progress, but was nothing compared to the snowstorm I encountered at about 4,000 feet in altitude. The snow fell so hard that I had to scrape snow and ice from my face shield every 30 seconds in order to see. Despite the additional snowy adventure encountered on the twisty little mountain road from I-8 to Tecate, I was able to make it in time to meet up with the guys at the agreed-upon 10:00 AM meeting time. Fellow riders included Ged Schwartz from British Columbia, Eric Blume and Jonathan Simon from the Seattle area, Jim Bessette from Colorado and Curtis Lloyd from Arizona. After meeting and greeting, the purchase of provisions and the typical border crossing activities such as bike searches, the purchase of tourist visas, etc. we found an ATM and obtained enough pesos to last for an indeterminate number of days. We were going to be in remote locations that wouldn't have banks available, and the holidays were coming up. We took Mexico 3 south to Ensenada where we had a wonderful late lunch at a restaurant named Sabor de Antaņo. I took Jonathan's advice and ordered a colossal combination plate, which I managed to almost finish. It was absolutely delicious. Jonathan was our advisor for all things Latino, since he spent 18 years growing up in Costa Rica and was fluent in Spanish. This would come in handy throughout our travels. After lunch, we headed southeast on Mexico 3 and ended up in the middle of nowhere with about 15 minutes of daylight left and nasty looking storm clouds ahead. We elected Jonathan as our representative to ride up to a house in a Christian campo for boys to ask where we might be able to camp. In what we later discovered to be typical Mexican hospitality, the gentleman offered for us to camp right there on the property, and even invited us into his house to use his shower or whatever else we needed. It was really heartwarming as we rode in and were surrounded by excited boys shouting and running all around our motorcycles. I let a few of the boys "help" me put up my tent in the waning daylight as I fumbled for the appropriate words in Spanish, but we got the job done! It was very cold that night, and we woke up to a heavy frost on the tents and motorcycles and a dusting of snow in the surrounding mountains. We hung our tent rain flies up to dry in the early morning sun as we fixed coffee and got the rest of our things packed up. In exchange for the kindness and hospitality, we each pitched in 100 pesos (about $10 U.S.) and gave it to the camp leader for the boys' Christmas fund. We headed southeast on Mexico 3 over the mountains and through some incredibly beautiful desert scenery. After a going through a couple of military checkpoints, we arrived in San Felipe for fuel and some desayuno...and what a breakfast it was! Heriberto, proprietor of Puerto Padre restaurant treated us to extremely warm hospitality, an incredibly delicious breakfast and all the coffee five cold motorcycle riders could possibly drink. He quipped in Spanish, "You might go away hungry, but you won't go away thirsty." Hardly the case...my omelette de camarones must have had literally half a pound of huge, succulent shrimp in it. Yum! After breakfast, we headed south to Puertecitos where the pavement ends and the roughest continuous road I've ever encountered began. This was part of the Baja 1000 race course, and it's no wonder. The washboard was relentless. Much of the ride was done standing on the pegs. After an hour or so of the washboard, I looked down in amazement (or was that horror?) as the A-arm of my front suspension flopped up and down at several cycles per second with no damping whatsoever from the shock. I figured that the shock oil must have been the consistency of water and about 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit by then. Due to the extremely rough road conditions, several of the riders who were heavily loaded had some mechanical issues...two blown out rear shocks, one blown front fork slider seal, and a snakebite sidewall puncture. I stayed behind and helped Curtis rig up a sidewall repair for his front tire using a BMW dog-bone shaped tire plug and a couple of heavy-duty zip ties to reinforce the sidewall, then I rode behind him to make sure he made it to the camp spot at Bahia San Luis Gonzaga. The views were as spectacular as the road was rough. In over two hours of riding time, we only encountered two other vehicles on this road. One was a Land Rover and the other was a pickup. Curtis and I arrived at our beachside camp as the last of the sunlight was leaving the sky. Whew, just in time! I think the vultures in the photo to the left were hoping we wouldn't make it. After everyone got camp set up, they rode to Alfonsina's for dinner. I elected to walk along the beach instead. The restaurant was about a half mile from our camp site and I enjoyed the scent and sound of the ocean, the nice breeze and the incredibly clear sky complete with a spectacular milky way streak across the night sky. There were so many stars visible it was a bit disorienting, and I could scarcely find familiar constellations. I happened to look behind me part of the way through the walk to Alfonsina's, and to my total amazement my last half-dozen footsteps glowed an unearthly greenish fluorescent color! This was the first time I witnessed this amazing phenomenon, but I had heard of it before. Upon closer inspection, even the waves crests had small floating balls of glowing plankton. When I arrived at the restaurant, I told the rest of the guys about it and we all walked down to the beach and ran around in the dark stomping around and kicking the wet sand around like kids as we observed this miracle. |
