It's about 2200 miles through some of the roughest
riding on the planet in some of the roughest heat and humidity
imaginable. A mission from the company president, with
directions not to be gentle.
Baja.
All the way down to Cabo, and
all the way back home. On 150cc motorcycles. California
Scooters, to be specific.
I work for the California Scooter Company,
and I love these bikes. I like to think I'm pretty
objective, too, and I'll tell you what this trip was like. Warts and
all.
The first time I saw a California Scooter,
I knew I wanted to ride one up and down Baja. I'm a Bajaeno
at heart, and I knew doing the trip on a California Scooter would be
fun. Steve Seidner, the California Scooter CEO (the guy in the photo to the
right), saw another opportunity.
"Take the bikes down there and
break them," Steve said.
We tried, but we couldn't. The bikes
are bulletproof. Oh, we had some minor issues (I'll tell you
about those in a bit), but the bikes got us there and back without missing
a beat. In style. In comfort. In head-turning style.
Like I said, I work for these
guys...so enough of the commercial. Read on, and see for
yourself...
This is our Baja crew...from
left to right...
My writing and riding buddy Simon
Gandolfi, the novelist and international motorcycle rider (he rode a
125cc bike all the way to the southernmost tip of South America and
back, and he rode another 125cc bike across India). Simon flew
in from the UK for this ride.
My good friend Arlene Battishill
(president and CEO of Go Go
Gear, a maker of high end women's riding
apparel). Arlene is a lot of fun. She rode her custom
California Scooter on this trip (it's the bike in this photo).
Arlene's a real trooper, and I'll you more about her as this page
progresses.
My amigo and longtime Mexico riding
partner John Welker. John and I have been all over Mexico
on our motorcycles, and if you poke around a bit on this site, you'll
see photos of John in lots of the motofoto.cc pages.
My good buddy J. Brandon (president of American
Sahara) drove his Dodge Power Wagon as our chase vehicle. J.
was a godsend on this trip, and not just because he had the chase
vehicle...read on, and I'll tell you more about that, too.
I'm the guy on the right. I grabbed
this photo on the outskirts of Santa Rosalia, just after we had descended
through La Cuesta del Infierno (a drop of a few thousand feet in just a
few miles). That's the Sea of Cortez in the background.
That's a dead fish I'm holding. I don't why I picked it up.
I'd been on my motorcycle for three days in Baja when I took this photo,
and we'd been riding in some pretty extreme heat. I can't
always explain everything I do.
So, what was it like?
Okay, here ya go...
A sneak preview of the next
2200 miles....on 150cc California Scooters!
Our co-stars on this show were
our
California Scooters.
Arlene's Go Go Gear bike is on the left.
My red Classic is next. Simon rode the gray-and-black preproduction
bike we call the Rock Star, and John rode the black preproduction Classic
on the right.
I blogged about this trip on the California
Scooter Company blog, but the nature of blogging makes the trip feel
disjointed as one reads through the entire journey on the CSC blog.
So I'm including it here, roughly from start to finish.
I shot this photo in front of the Desert
Inn Hotel in Catavina. But I'm getting ahead of myself here...
First, a bit about Simon
Gandolfi. He's a British author. A famous one. And a blogger.
A famous one of those, too.
I started reading Simon's blog during his
travels through South America, and I was hooked. He wrote Old
Man On A Bike about that adventure. I sent Simon an email.
He responded. A friendship emerged, and Simon was one of the first
guys I thought of when we started planning this trip. Simon blogged
our Baja trip, too, and his words are, well, artistic. As I
write this page, I'm going to include a few quotes from
Simon's blog...
Joe and Arlene ride production bikes.
John and I ride pre-production bikes. These are small bikes, pretty babies
to treasure. The average owner will ride down to the store on a Sunday or
drop by a neighbour's – say twenty minutes max. Steve wants the bikes
tested to destruction. John is massive and I'm no light-weight. Steve
wants destruction, we're his men. Day one south from Tijuana is
horrific coastal-strip development on the cheap side of cheap. Pass
Ensenada and I begin to understand Baja's magic: clarity of light, range
upon range of mountains, immense spaces across which merely to travel is
an adventure. Even Big John becomes little more than a moving microdot.
John, Simon, and J. stayed the
night at my place the day before we left. We met Arlene at the
CSC plant the morning we departed. The night before we left,
California Scooter Company treated us to a feast at a local
restaurant. The food and the conversation were great.
You could feel the excitement as we thought about leaving early the next
morning.
We didn't have enough beds for everybody,
and John lost the draw. He's having an intimate moment with an
air mattress in this photo. We'd had a few drinks before this
photo. We told John to keep the inflated air mattress away
from any sparks or open flames...
Senor John, checking out his
ride...
We trucked the bikes down to San Diego, and
we were off...crossing the border at Tijuana...
Arlene was our designated
tweetmaster.
Tweet. Tweet.
Did you know that Mexico has designated
spots for tweeters to concentrate on their tweeting?
We didn't know it, either, but signs don't
lie...
Simon Gandolfi in Rosarito
Beach, where we stopped for lunch.
I knew when we started that the
conversation on this trip would be more than worth the price of admission,
and that this ride would be be one of the world’s all time great runs.
Both were written by company presidents,
and both presidents were on the trip (sorry, Barack, but you
didn’t sign up in time for this presidential getaway).
Arlene (she’s the president of Go
Go Gear) wrote a very nice Go
Go Gear blog entry, and J. Brandon (president of American
Sahara) wrote a cool piece on the American
Sahara blog.
My advice is to bookmark all of these blogs.
I think they are all great.
Here we go...south of Ensenada in this photo, and we are
rolling through the real Baja...Cabo San Lucas is about, oh, 900 miles
down the road.
Another shot heading south...
A roadside stop after pounding the bikes through miles of
construction zones...
The only dog I ever met in Mexico who didn't view me
as a future dinner...
We stopped in Palomar for fish tacos about 125 miles south
of the border.
The nice lady at the restaurant in Palomar.
The people in Baja are friendly.
Don't
listen to what you read in the newspapers about Mexico being
dangerous. It's bunk.
We continued our journey south.
Our little 150cc California Scooters
purred.
The bikes like to run right at 45 mph. They just
feel relaxed at that speed, and it’s about the perfect speed for riding
on Mexico’s Transpeninsular Highway.
"Transpeninsular Highway" is an impressive title, and it kind
of makes the road sound like the New Jersey Turnpike, but it is not.
The Transpeninsular Highway is a two-lane country road (one lane each way)
that runs north and south (with lots of zigging and zagging along the way)
for a cool 1000 miles or so.
Onward and southward, with the sun setting, toward San Vincente, our stop
on our first night in Mexico.
J.'s smile is real. San Vincente
was a hopping place that Friday night.
All the bad press in the LA Times and the
San Diego newspaper about Mexico being dangerous is bunk (“bunk” is a
nice word we use for, well, you know).
There is so much bunk in the world that I
sometimes wonder where it all comes from. Is there a
high-volume-production bunk factory out there I haven’t heard about?
The point I’m making is that these Bajaenos are friendly, warm,
and grateful that we visited this wonderful place. They’ve
had a double whammy down here…the recession, and the news media
sensationalism painting all of Mexico as a free-fire zone. Not that
San Vincente is a tourist area (it is not), but my sense of things is that
the people we hung out with in San Vincente were glad to see us.
J., John, and Simon ate off a cart with
this sort of built-in oven top.
J. had a cabeza taco (go ahead and Google it…you’ll be
surprised).
These little agricultural towns have the main road (the only paved
road) running right down the center (it’s the Transpeninsular Highway
that we’re following), and the road is about 4 or 5 feet higher than the
rest of the town. When you get off the road, you go down a pretty
steep hill to get to the same level as the stores and other businesses,
and there’s about a 30-foot dirt area between the street and the town on
both sides of the street. People use this dirt area that parallels
the highway as a street, too, so there’s traffic on the main road and
the dirt areas on either side of the paved road. Which way the
traffic flows in these dirt lanes depends mostly on…well, I don’t
know. If I break the code, I’ll let you know.
Arlene and I wandered around a bit, checked out a couple of
mercados (grocery stores), and we ended up at another little place that
was cooking up a bunch of stuff. Folks were lined up and there
were barstools at a makeshift counter. We both had quesadillas (I
had two, actually).
The guy in front had this cool meat cooker that
looked a lot like the ones I’ve seen in Turkey. The chef was
really cool and he seemed to be greatly amused that I was taking his
photo.
While we were enjoying the festive atmosphere and our
quesadillas, two young kids came up to me as I was savoring a real
quesadilla (Taco Bell has no idea how good these are).
It was pretty obvious we were out-of-towners, and one of the boys
slowly said to me in perfect, unaccented English “It is very good,
isn’t it?” I told him it was and asked his name. “Vinny,”
he said.
I took a flyer and asked if the other boy was his cousin.
“No, he is my brother,” he said.
Ah, okay. Not his cousin Vinny.
We were up with the sun and on the road early the next
morning, and it was cold.
I had checked out the bikes, and all were fine (oil, tire pressure, the
standard big-road-trip-preflight-stuff for loose nuts and bolts, etc.).
Everything on the bikes was okay, but it was cold. Real cold.
I was surprised, because September is supposed to be the warmest month of
the year in Baja. I guess nobody told the right people,
because we were freezing. Then the fog rolled in. Thick,
but not so thick that we couldn’t ride in it. Thick enough
to soak my jeans, though. We saw a coffee shop in Colonet and
stopped for a caffeine fix.
J. bought coffee for all of us, and it was good.
Check out
J.'s video below of us riding in the Baja soup that morning...
Simon at our Colonet coffee stop.
I’ve done this run on big bikes before, and I had a bit of
trepidation about doing it on a 150cc motorcycle, but my fears were
groundless.
The seating position on the California Scooter is perfect for this kind
of riding (the ergos are about the same as a Harley Sportster, except that
the Sportster weighs about 320 pounds more).
Simon was surprised…he told me the bike was extremely comfortable,
and that it feels like a full-sized motorcycle. Don’t
forget…this is a guy who rode a 125 cc pizza delivery bike to the
southernmost tip of South America and back, and across the length of
India.
John, with the fog as his frame.
After our coffee stop, we rolled on for another hour and
stopped for breakfast. Here we were, in this little Baja restaurant,
and they had wireless Internet access. That’s where I posted
my first blog entry on our Baja trip (we wanted to keep moving, so it was
short).
What is the world coming to, though? Wireless Internet access in
Baja. Arrrggghhh! Folks, you gotta get down here and
experience the real Baja…it won’t last forever.
And hey, check this out...Simon Gandolfi checking his email on my
laptop!
Breakfast was good, and after that, it was a short hop down
to El Rosario to top off the tanks before climbing into the Vizcaino
desert. Our bikes climbed, and so did the temperature.
I’ll bet we had a 60-degree temperature swing that day.
It was right at about 100 degrees in the desert.
We stopped several times to peel off our layered riding gear as the
temperatures continued to climb (that's what Arlene's doing in this
photo).
When Catavina came into view, we decided to call it a day.
We might have pushed on to Guerrero Negro, but there is literally nothing
between Catavina and Guerrero Negro, and it’s another 140 miles or so
down the road. Too hot, too far, and we didn’t want to ride
after dark.
Simon spent a couple of days
with us before we left on this trip, and the guys in the shop fell in love
with him. The California Scooter boys quickly dubbed Simon “the
world’s most interesting man.”
Do you remember those Dos Equis
commercials? You know…the ones where a guy holding a Dos Equis
beer is dubbed the world’s most interesting man…with descriptors like
“he never uses lip balm” and “his mother has a tattoo that says
‘Son.’”
We really enjoyed getting to know Simon,
and he most definitely is the world’s most interesting man. Before
I left, my good friend Josh gave me a list of “world’s most
interesting man” descriptions he grabbed off the Internet, and I dribbled
them out to our group as we journeyed through Baja. The one
that got the best laugh was “Simon Gandolfi is the world’s most
interesting man…he once called a psychic…to warn her.”
I grabbed this shot of Simon with his
California Scooter in the Vizcaino Desert south of El Rosario. It's
one of my all time favorites.
The bikes are small and pretty, surely
an unusual description of a bike. Best of all they make people smile, not
with scorn but with pleasure - as does watching your children play out in
the yard.
Entering the boulder fields
north of Catavina, about 325 miles south of the border. The bikes
were performing well. We had two current production bikes (mine and
Arlene’s), and two preproduction bikes (Simon’s and John’s).
During development Steve and the boys found a few improvement
opportunities on the preproduction bikes, and these resulted in upgrades
on the production bikes. Simon’s and John’s preproduction
bikes have had some of the problems we found earlier, but the production
bikes performed flawlessly.
We didn't coddle our California Scooters.
We ran on some pretty rough roads, and the speed bumps (topes) in
every little town we pass through are brutal. The Mexicans don’t
just use one speed bump. They use about 20 of the things in a
row, maybe 50 feet apart, one after the other. When they want
you to slow down, they mean it. We’d slow down for the speed bumps
when we saw them in time (which didn’t always happen), and then we’d
speed up after the topes. Like I said earlier, the bikes like
running around 45 mph. We’ve cranked them up to well over 60 mph,
but then we'd settle into a relaxed putt to enjoy the scenery and the
ride. It’s a sweet way to see Baja.
From Simon's blog...
The desert here is a vast up-and-down
jumble of immense gray boulders, candelabra cactus, Judas trees and skinny
scrub. To the south and west lie mountains scrubbed to their stone core by
a few million years of wind and occasional rain. To the east a long roll of
cloud or fog lies low over the ocean. The dawn light washes the mountains
a pale chalky blue. The cloud bank is touched with pink.
I have ridden on ahead. I haven't met another car or truck in twenty
minutes. Cut the engine and the silence is total. Two buzzard glide
overhead. Nothing else moves. I am absorbed into the stillness and the
quiet and the beauty and find myself shivering, not with cold, but with
that exultation that comes sometimes when, tired yet wonderfully content,
you get into a bed spread with Egyptian cotton sheets stiff from the
laundry and wriggle in minor ecstasy as you clutch yourself in your own
arms. Never done that? Never slept between Egyptian cotton sheets? How
sad...
And if you have never visited Baja California, start planning. Right now
this is about as close as you can get to heaven without a one-way ticket.
The courtyard in Catavina's
Desert Inn Hotel.
Our bikes parked in front of the
Catavina Desert Inn.
The Desert Inn is nice. It’s
100 miles from anywhere. They turn the generators off from
12:00 to 4:00, so there’s no electricity in the afternoon.
The desolation and the surrounding surreal landscape just make it a cool
place to be, even if it’s 100 degrees.
We ate in the Desert
Inn’s restaurant, sampled their Tequilas (hey, our riding was over for
the day), and then we hung out in the pool. Wow, that sure felt
good.
The Catavina gas station. No kidding.
After fueling the bikes and checking that everything was
tight the next morning, we were ready to roll. We had agreed that if the group
separated (which happens on these trips), our next rally point would be
Chapala.
Sure enough, that’s what happened, and Arlene and I waited for John
and Simon to catch up to us near Chapala.
Arlene and I had sodas at the only loncheria in town…
We continued south toward Guerrero Negro.
Guerrero Negro means “Black Warrior” in Spanish, and it’s the name of a ship
that sank near there in the 1800s.
We had a great
breakfast….including a salad with 1000 Island dressing.
We continued down Mexico’s Transpeninsular Highway, and I
grabbed this shot of Simon and Arlene headed toward Guerrero Negro…
Guerrero Negro is right on Parallelo 28 (the 28th Parallel),
which separates the states of Baja California and Baja California Sur.
The town is also a good spot in the winter months for whale-watching
tours. There’s a Mexican Army compound on the highway, and
they have this cool whale skeleton right next to the highway.
From Guerrero Negro, the highway cuts southeasterly across
the peninsula, and we moved from the Pacific side to the Sea of Cortez
side of Baja.
Going across the Baja peninsula was a
fun ride, especially the last
few miles into Santa Rosalia. It’s a 2,000-foot descent in
just a few miles, and it’s wild. No guard rails, and
nightmarish drops if you let things get away from you (so you’ll
understand if I didn’t grab any shots on the way down).
When we arrived on eastern shore of the peninsula, we stopped for a few
shots…
We had breakfast in Santa Rosalia, and by now, the
temperature and humidity were oppressive. That didn't
kill our spirit, though. There was a lot going on, traffic was stopped,
and as we sat in our riding gear and sweltered, a heavily-armed military parade marched
by, music and all. Right in front of us!
Had a revolution started?
We didn't know it yet, but we soon found out that Mexico
was celebrating the bicentennial of its independence!
Check out
this parade that John captured with his camera!
My good friend John Welker.
John and I have been exploring Baja on motorcycles for close to 20
years now. He’s an easy guy to travel with, and he always laughs
at my jokes (so I naturally like the guy…a lot).
We’ve done the cruiser thing, we’ve had other bikes, and we both
ride KLR 650 Kawasakis.
And, we both love California Scooters.
John was a great guy
on this (and many other) trips...he’s a guy that just doesn’t
let the small stuff bother him. A flat tire in the middle of the
jungle? Hey, no problemo! That's John in a nutshell, and it's
why I like traveling with him.
September is one of the hottest months of the
year in Baja, and we
were riding in 100-degree weather. The next town down the coast was
Mulege, and we stopped at the Las Casitas for a cool glass of water…and
to soak our clothes.
J. had a bunch of water in 5-gallon jerry cans on the big Power Wagon,
and I used a trick I learned in the Army a long time ago…I soaked myself
in it and then put my jacket on. The jacket keeps the water
from evaporating too quickly, and in this kind of weather, you can stay
cool for about an hour before you need another soaking. It really
works.
Here's a shot of our bikes parked in front of the Las Casitas Hotel in Mulege (it's
pronounced Mool-a-hay). It was brutally hot by this time. We were
approaching the Tropic of Cancer (it was just a few miles down the
road).
My riding gear.
Joe Rocket gloves. They
work. Don't ask me how I know.
My new Bell helmet. Lightweight,
comfortable, and very, very cool. Everybody loves it.
My Olympia riding jacket.
Visible, but not much else about it impresses me. It started to fall apart
on this trip. When I contacted Olympia, they advised me to take it
to a tailor to get it re-sewn. At my expense. It had a
one-year warranty and I'd owned it for two years.
How about that. At $250, this
is the second-most-expensive motorcycle jacket I've ever owned. And,
in 47 years of riding, this is the only
jacket that ever started to fall apart on me (I have a 10-year-old Joe
Rocket jacket, and it's still in great shape). Arlene's Go
Go Gear Company has a one-year warranty, too, but Arlene told me if
any of her clients ever called her about a problem after any amount of
time, she'd make good on it. "It's all about customer
satisfaction," she said. Don't I know it.
After Mulege, we continued south out of Mulege, and we soon found
ourselves along what I believe to be the most beautiful part of Baja…and
that would be Bahia Concepcion. I’ll let the photos (and John's
video) do my talking
here…
The Sea of Cortez along the Transpeninsular Highway. The
water really is that color.
Check out John's video of us riding along Bahia Concepcion...
John's California Scooter parked in front of Bahia de
Concepcion on the Sea of Cortez.
South of Bahia Concepcion, we
stopped for dinner in Loreto. It's a nice town that is becoming a
touristy spot. John and J. got nailed for a couple of traffic infracciones, paid their fines, and we bolted.
This is a shot on the Transpeninsular
Highway heading south out of Loreto.
The riding was incredible.
Look at this scenery!
We stayed the night in Cuidad
Constitucion on the way down and on the way back. I think I shot
this on the way back. It's a pretty interesting town, but it is not
a tourist spot (which is why I find it interesting).
This local motor officer on a 250cc Suzuki
stopped as soon as he saw our bikes. He knew they were new and
different. I tossed him my keys and asked for the keys to his police
motor. We both had a good laugh about that!
Cuidad Constitucion was celebrating the Mexican
Bicentennial, too, and they had a fireworks display. John
grabbed this video. He said he'd never seen fireworks detonating
this close!
We had dinner at a sidewalk
restaurant in Cuidad Constitucion, and we ate at a plastic table with
plastic chairs right on the sidewalk.
It was a cool evening, the town was
festive, and it was great.
The green things in the photo on the right
are nopales, or boiled cactus (very tasty). The tacos were
delicious, too.
Here's Simon ordering his dinner.
Dos tacos.
And here's yours truly flirting
with the waitresses.
Dos senoritas...
Up early the next morning, we
continued our southward quest. We knew the next major town was
La Paz, but we didn't want to get into it. La Paz meant heavy
traffic and more heat. But, our plans meant nothing. We missed the bypass road, and we
found ourselves in downtown La Paz. It’s a big town, and the
temperature was over 100 degrees again. We were getting goofy from
the heat.
Simon has an entry on his blog that says it all...
La Paz is a hot sweaty city on the Sea of
Cortez. We are hot and sweaty (other than J. who travels in
air-conditioned splendour). We miss the bypass and are lost. I
ask a lady for directions. She begins describing the route. I
understand individual words, even entire sentences. The whole
becomes a jumble. My eyes betray a fatalistic acceptance of inadequacy.
The woman halts her instructions. Her
smile is familiar. It is the generous female's smile of understanding when
faced by male incompetence. Men are men. They have their uses.
However, rational thought is not the male's strong point (expect even
vaguely mature thought and you will be disappointed). Humour
them. Lead them by the hand. Such is the Latin
way...
In brief, she stops giving directions
and says, “It will be best if you follow me...”
Once we were out of La Paz, we
were on the open road again. Even when it's hot, you can still stay cool
on a motorcycle if you are moving. When you stop, though, it gets
warm. Fast. So, we kept moving. We were approaching the
Pacific, and the temperature dropped a couple of degrees.
Simon, with red suspenders flying...
After La Paz on the eastern side
of Baja, it was about 70 miles to
Todos Santos on the Pacific.
It was a nice ride.
Here's a shot of Arlene and John.
Fully suited up. It's still close to 100 degrees.
We stopped in Todos Santos for lunch.
I grabbed
this shot of my bike and I want you to notice the BajaBound.com
decal.
BajaBound was one of our sponsors, and we are very grateful to
Geoff and his folks for their help on this adventure!
I wish I could remember the name of the place we had lunch
in when we stopped in Todos Santos. It was great.
Here’s a shot of our Todos
Santos waitress, Erica…
After lunch, we were on the road
again...en route to our next stop, Cabo!
Simon taking a break just north of Cabo San Lucas.
He's 77 years old.
You gotta admire the guy.
Curva Peligrosa
means "dangerous curve."
I don't know how you say "watch out
for the goats."
Just north of Cabo.
This guy pulled out right in front of us...anybody who would do this has to be a real ass…
We encountered a lot of construction during our
trip, which gave the California Scooters a real workout. I would guess that we probably did about 50 miles
or so on dirt roads where the main highway was under repair.
We didn’t intend to do any dirt riding on
this trip, but we sure rolled through a lot of dirt. One of the
things that surprised me greatly was how well the California Scooters
handled in the dirt, and in particular, in soft sand. Soft sand has
always scared me on a motorcycle. My KLR 650 and the Triumph Tiger,
with their narrow tires, would just sink into it and try to toss me off
the bike. The Scooters don’t do that, though.
California Scooters have wide tires (almost balloon tires) and they are
very light. They handled the soft stuff just fine.
I’m not advocating using a California Scooter as a dirt bike, but if you
find yourself on a dirt road with soft sand, these bikes handle it with
grace.
Check
out J.'s video below showing what these construction zone moto-cross riding
stints were like...
And finally, the California Scooter contingent arrived in Cabo after 1100
tortuous, hot, and beautiful miles through Baja!
Yep, some of the toughest
riding in the world…and we did it...
We ran the entire length of the Baja peninsula!
This is the view from our digs for the
night (there's more on this in the next couple of photos).
That's the Sea of Cortez on the left, and
the Pacific Ocean on the right!
J., like everyone on this trip, has proven himself to be an
amazing person. He enlisted the support of the good folks at Villa
Clara Vista, and they hosted us in a magnificent villa at the very tip
of Baja in Cabo San Lucas, high up in the hills, overlooking both the Sea
of Cortez and the Pacific Ocean.
The first thing we did after arriving at
this mansion is jump in the infinity pool…that's J. in this
photo.
We'd
been riding in temperatures hovering around and over the 100-degree mark, and that
pool sure felt good…
A quick word or two on my good
friend J. and his Power Wagon...
J's big Dodge is an amazing vehicle with
awesome capabilities (much like its owner), but J. was the star here.
J. is the president of American
Sahara. Cool, calm, unflappable, articulate, and just a joy to
travel with, J. is a good friend. We’ve worked together before in
a company that manufactured sails for ocean racing yachts, and I hope to
work with him again in the future. The guy is incredibly bright and
just fun to be around. He's the guy we are working with to set up
future California Scooter Company adventure rides.
Ah, back to our Cabo
digs.
They were just great. After
cooling off in the pool, we kicked back, literally living in the lap of
luxury.
Here's Simon on his laptop after we spent a couple of hours in the
pool.
The staff came by and brought us food to
barbeque. They made us margaritas. We had a few
beers.
We got ready to hit the road, head north,
and do it all over again the next morning.
We picked up the pace quite a
bit on the ride north when we headed home. We made it back up
to Cuidad Constitucion in a day, under similarly hot riding conditions,
and we stayed in the Oasis hotel again. It was a nice clean
place. We were getting to know our way around. The guys who
worked at the hotel really liked our California Scooters. We got
that reaction everywhere we went. We were rock stars.
As we rolled out of Cuidad Constitucion the
next morning in the dark, it was a nice, comfortable, and cool ride.
We continued north on Highway 1, and the temperature climbed.
The scenery was magnificent. Coming down the grade into Loreto from
the south is really special. The views are incredible; each
one seems to be better than the last. We stopped for photos,
but I didn’t grab any. I left my camera in J’s truck. I
had been wearing it around my neck, but a D200 Nikon with a 24-120 lens is
heavy, and after a week of being on the road, I decided to give the camera
to J. As much as I love taking photos of California
Scooters and Baja, it was getting so hot my attention was focused on
finding shade and cool agua.
That day was the only bad day for me.
I and the rest of the guys were using SPF 50 sunblock, and I got some of
that stuff in my eyes. Man, that was agony. We stopped
about 50 miles further up the road and I took my contacts out, and I
poured a bottle of water into my eye. It didn't help at
all. It was 103 degrees that afternoon (again). We found some
shade, but that sunblock stuff had my eyes in real pain (I stopped using
it after that episode).
I put my glasses on and we resumed, but it
felt like I had a weld burn (any of you guys or gals who work around
welding know what that’s like). I was having problems seeing, and
I didn’t know if it was the sunblock or the glare, or both. Then I
got pulled over by a Mexican Federale. I don't know if I was
speeding or having trouble riding in a straight line. The
police officer was very professional. He asked me if I was a Norte
Americano, he checked out the bike for a bit, and then he let me
go. I never did find out why he stopped me.
My California Scooter,
somewhere in Baja...
When we got to Santa Rosalia, John went
ahead and found an air conditioned Chinese restaurant (yep, a Chinese
restaurant in Mexico). We had a long, leisurely dinner, and
after about two hours, I was good to go.
After another day of duking it out with the
heat, we arrived in San Ignacio. We checked into the Desert
Inn again.
The heat was starting to get to
me. I had felt a bit nauseated when I woke up the last three
days, and I was pretty sure I wasn't pregnant. The nausea passed as soon as we started moving each morning, but I
could tell the heat was affecting me. There wasn't anything I could
do about it except drink lots of water and keep moving. The
next morning when we woke up in San Ignacio, it was hot. The morning
had that heavy, damp, muggy, you're-still-in-the-tropics, it's-gonna-be-a-rough-one
feel about it. But, we left promptly (which was something we
were getting better at doing). We were up well before dawn, and we
rolled out at 6:45. I think it was the first time we all got
up, got ready, got on the bikes, and hit the road without having to wait
on anybody. I have to compliment J; all of us were getting
annoyed each morning because there was always someone (we all took turns
being that someone) who kept the group waiting. The night
before, as
we were enjoying our tacos, J suggested we all just agree on a departure
time and be ready to go at that time. It was brilliantly simple, and
it worked.
We’d been on the road a little more than
a week at this point, and as you know from reading this story, the weather in the
last few days had been hellish. Hellish with humidity,
actually. Our journey took us below the Tropic of Cancer, and
the heat and humidity were rough…not on the machines, and maybe not on
all of the guys, but certainly on me. Simon wasn't bothered by
it (he said it was a lot worse when he rode across India). I’m not
used to that kind of heat and humidity, though, and I was not feeling too
good about another day with temperatures over 100 degrees and sticky
humidity.
My mother always told me to be careful what
you wish for, and today certainly proved her warning to be right on the
money. When we left San Ignacio, the air had that pre-dawn heaviness
that promises misery, but then a funny thing happened. We went
through the military checkpoint just north of San Ignacio, and a few miles
down the road, we had a heavy marine layer. That’s fog
that’s just few hundred feet above ground, so it was cool and we had
good visibility. Wow, that was nice, I thought. I
reckoned it would burn off in 20 or 30 minutes, and then we’d get the
high temperatures and humidity I dreaded, but the marine layer stayed with
us all the way to Guerrero Negro and beyond. After riding
about 50 miles, I realized I was cold. It felt wonderful to be cold.
For a while. Then I realized I was really cold. As in
cold enough to pull over, dig out my jacket liner, and layer up.
That was just the ticket. It felt perfect. No
glare and cool air. We rode the next 40 miles or so to Guerrero
Negro feeling great. The bikes purred.
After a great breakfast at Guerrero Negro,
we were on the road again. The guys in the Malarrimo’s
restaurant did their usual outstanding job for us.
Incidentally, if you ever head down this way, Malarrimo’s is my
preferred spot for whale watching tours. I’ve done several, and
Malarrimo’s is the best. The hotel and the restaurant are
nice, too.
After topping off the Scooters in town, we
expected to be stopped at the Immigration checkpoint just north of
Guerrero Negro, but the Mexican officers just waved us through.
Sometimes they stop you and sometimes they don’t. That day,
we got a pass.
We continued to enjoy the cool weather for
another 30 miles. The marine layer lifted and the temperature
climbed back up to 101 degrees. It was dry, though.
We were back in the Vizcaino Desert. Hot, you bet. Humidity, not
today. It was a lot more tolerable than what we’d been
through in the last few days.
Before we realized it, we were back in
the boulder fields around Catavina. J. told us we had covered
168 miles already. We stopped at Catavina’s Desert Inn for lunch
(we stayed there on the way down). You gotta try their tortilla soup
(it’s great). It was hot outside, but the restaurant has
massive doors at both ends. With the doors open, we had a nice
breeze. Simon said he wanted to get more photos, so we took it slow
for the next half hour and Simon shot mpegs for his publishers.
From Catavina we continued north through
the Vizcaino Desert. It’s desert punctuated by mountain ranges,
and that means twisties. John and I wicked it up…we ran
through the twisties at speeds up to 65 mph. With the Scooters'
hardtail configuration, spring-mounted solo saddle, and wide bars, I felt
like Gary Nixon or Bart Markel (I’m dating myself here; they were the
leading flat-trackers in the ‘60s and ‘70s). The Scooters were
purring perfectly. It was a grand ride.
We ran a romping, stomping, perfect 357 miles that day on our
California Scooters, and we ended the day in San Quintin (only 180 miles
south of the border). We had traveled over 1800 miles so far, all
the way down to Cabo San Lucas and back up to our digs for that
night...the little town of San Quintin on the Pacific Ocean. We
stayed in the Hotel Maria Celeste, which is a place that popped up since
my last trip down here. The hotel had wireless Internet service,
too.
On the way up, we stopped for dinner at Mama Espinosa's (incredibly
good food), and John grabbed a video of Simon and me honking by on our
California Scooters.
Before we left on this trip,
I'd been traveling in Baja for a long time and I thought I knew what I
needed to bring. Boy, did I get an education. Had it not
been for J. and his Power Wagon we would have not been as prepared as we
needed to be.
For example, water was a big deal.
September is the hottest month of the year in Baja, but I thought if I had
a couple of bottles of water I’d be okay. J. came through
for us. He had several jerry cans of good Nevada tap water and a
refrigerator on the Power Wagon. It literally saved the
day…9 days, as a matter of fact. J. bought other stuff that
came in handy, too…shop towels, handi-wipes, and other incidentals like
that. It was nice having a chase vehicle with these things, and it
really helped.
We brought along a complete Craftsmen’s
mechanics tool kit with 159 tools. The Craftsmen tools were great;
the plastic carrying case was a joke. I never could figure out
how to open or close it without the tools spilling out of their plastic
indentations. I think the Sears people realized this, too, as
the carrying case had a big hollowed-out cavity at the bottom that all the
tools fell into, which occurred every time I opened the thing.
We would have done just as well throwing all of the tools into a
plastic sack; that’s what the tool case ultimately became.
We brought spare parts with us based on
what kinds of issues we had experienced on the bikes prior to our
departure, and for the most part, that served us well (I’ll discuss the
bike issues below). One thing I didn’t bring was a spare
battery. We never had a battery failure on a California
Scooter prior to this trip, so it just didn’t occur to me that I’d
need one. I was wrong there.
I had asked that we pack a couple of spare
tires, and Steve (the California Scooter Company CEO) was way ahead of me
here. He stuck two complete tire-and-wheel assemblies on J’s Power
Wagon. I ripped up a tire, and it was a lot easier replacing my rear
tire-and-wheel assembly than it would have been to replace just the tire.
That helped a lot.
For the most part, we brought way more
spares with us than we needed (with the exception of a spare battery),
which I guess is okay in the grand scheme of things. It’s better
to have something and not need it than the other way around, and because
we had the Power Wagon, it was easy to carry all of it.
Our intent on this trip was to beat the
heck out of our California Scooters and find issues offering improvement
opportunities. Baja is a proving ground…there’s no question
about that. When I was a kid, American Motors came out with a new
car that they entered in the Baja 1000 (I think it was their AMX model).
Their commercials had a race car driver explaining to a Bajaeno
that they were entering the car in the Baja race. The Bajaeno
responded with “You’re going to enter theese hunk of tin in the Baja?
Ha ha!” It was an image that stuck in my mind. Our direction
from the top (that would be Steve) was to try to break the bikes, and Baja
would be the place to do it.
And try we did…we rode 2200 miles
through some of the toughest riding conditions on the planet (take a look
at those videos again and you’ll see what I mean). Simon commented
that what we were doing with these bikes was probably something no other
owner would ever do with their California Scooters. Rough
asphalt. Dirt roads. Hundreds of miles a day with wide open
throttles. 100-degree temperatures. High humidity.
Up and down mountain passes. Long straights through the desert.
You get the idea.
So, what broke?
I expected to have lots of light bulb
failures, as I’ve had those on virtually any motorcycle I’d ever taken
through Baja (and elsewhere, for that matter). I bought a
bunch of 1157s for the tail lights, and a half dozen headlight bulbs.
As it turned out, that was massive overkill. We had one headlight failure
(Arlene’s conked out just before we reached Cabo San Lucas), and I had two
tail light failures on my bike. Part of what caused my tail
light failures might have been my defective rear tire…it was unbalanced
due to the rip I put in it and that made the rear end on my bike vibrate a
lot. Nobody else needed a bulb replacement. I was surprised at
how few bulb failures we had.
I guess I should point out again that we
had two preproduction bikes and two production bikes on this trip.
Part of the test was to gage our success with the improvements California
Scooter made when the company went from the preproduction to the
production bikes. We wanted to see the same failures on the
preproduction bikes as we had seen earlier, and we didn’t want to see
those failures on the production bikes. I think we succeeded.
One of the problems we had experienced on
the preproduction bikes back in La Verne was an occasional failure of the
welded frame tab to which the muffler attaches. We
strengthened that tab and its weld joint on the production bikes.
Both tabs failed on the preproduction bikes within the first two
days of riding in Baja; neither of the production bike muffler mounting
tabs failed during the entire trip. I found a welder somewhere
south of Guerrero Negro (my new buddy Umberto). I asked
Umberto to fabricate new tabs identical to those on the production bikes,
and to weld the new tabs on the preproduction bikes using the same weld
pattern as the production bikes. Umberto did so, and the welds
on the preproduction bike held for the remainder of the trip.
My new buddy Umberto
upgrading a preproduction muffler tab to the production configuration.
As mentioned above, we had two battery
failures, and both occurred on the preproduction bikes.
Neither of the production bikes had any battery problems. There’s
nothing inherently different between the preproduction bikes’ batteries
or charging systems and those on the production bikes, and at first, I was
a little nervous about having a similar problem on the production bikes.
Then, as the miles rolled by, I realized that the preprod bikes had
batteries with a lot of time on them. The batteries in both preprod
bikes had been in those bikes for at least a year and a half, and who
knows how old the batteries were before we installed them. We were
flogging these bikes in high temperatures, and that’s why the batteries
conked out. When we got back to the plant, we put new
batteries in both preproduction bikes, and both fired right up and ran
just fine. The lesson here…don’t leave on a long trip
through Baja with an old battery. Duh. The weather
conditions – high heat and humidity – were tough on batteries…even
J’s Power Wagon had a dead battery one morning and needed a jump to get
going. One thing about this battery business that was
interesting was that Simon’s preproduction bike battery failed in a
manner that didn’t allow the bike to start at all. John’s
preproduction bike battery failed in a manner that allowed the bike to be
kick started. John began the trip with the idea that he would
kick start his bike for the entire trip…he just didn’t know when he
started that he was going to have
to do that. And that’s what he did. John rode
that preproduction bike for 9 days and 2200 miles, kick starting it all
the way.
As I mentioned above, I tore up a tire.
I noticed one afternoon that the tire was bald in just one spot, almost as
if the rear wheel had been skidded for a long distance. I know
I didn’t do that; maybe someone who rode my bike did. Or maybe I
hit something in the road that damaged the carcass. Whatever the
cause, I opted not to change the tire until later that day, and sometime
in the next 150 miles, the tread split down to the cord in that bald spot.
This caused a lot of vibration, but I took a chance on reaching San
Ignacio before replacing it and it worked out okay.
I guess the last thing I should mention is
that we learned which nuts and bolts you have to keep an eye on during a
trip of this nature. Nothing new here, folks…I’ve gone through
this with every motorcycle I’ve ever owned. On my Kawasaki
it’s the lower fairing bolts, the muffler heat shield, the muffler
mounts, and the steering stem. On my Triumph Tiger it was the
right foot peg and the saddlebag acorn nuts. On my Harley
Softail it was, well, nearly everything. On the California
Scooter it’s the two 10mm exhaust clamp bolts at the cylinder head, and
the 12mm elongated bolt at the bottom of the muffler. It
became part of our ritual to check these bolts on our California Scooters
each morning.
After a short while, I stopped thinking
about my California Scooter as a 150cc bike. It was a
motorcycle, and it rode like a motorcycle. It didn’t feel
“little” in any way, other than its light weight. The seating
position is about perfect for me. Some of you may find this
tough to believe, but I actually found it more comfortable on a long trip
than my KLR or my old Tiger. Don’t get me wrong…these are
not mini-Gold Wings…but the fact is, they are pretty comfortable.
Simon commented several times that the seat was the most comfortable
he’d ever experienced on a motorcycle.
And the engine? Well, as far as I’m
concerned, it’s bulletproof. We absolutely flogged these
bikes (we essentially ran wide open for the last 500 miles), and we
didn’t have a single engine problem. These are good,
solid, reliable motors.
The best part of the trip?
Hard to say...the heat notwithstanding, I
had a great time and I got to know J., Arlene, and Simon well.
They are fine people. The roads and the riding are the best in the
world. And the bikes....I would have never imagined a 150cc
motorcycle could be so much fun. These are high quality,
high-fun-factor bikes. The best part for me, though, was the US
border officer at the Tijuana crossing when I re-entered the United
States. He asked where we’d been.
I told him. Cabo San Lucas.
“You went all the way down to Cabo on
this?” he asked, pointing at my Scooter.
“Yep.”
“Cabo?”
“Yep.”
“What size is your bike?” he asked.
“It’s a 150.”
“Cabo?” he asked again.
“Yes, sir, Cabo San Lucas.”
“How long did it take?”
“We’ve been on the road about 9
days.”
“Cabo?”
“Yep.”
He smiled, gave me my passport, shook his
head, and waved me in.
What a ride.
When I got home, I stared at the bikes for
a long time, and the feeling I had (and still have) is one of overwhelming
pride. These are great bikes.
And, don't get me wrong...riding the Baja
peninsula on any motorcycle is an accomplishment. But on a 150cc
bike? Hey, lots of folks have done the trip on Beemers, KLRs,
Tigers, and other big road bikes. But how many people do you know
who have done it on a 150cc motorcycle? Besides us, I mean....
The other question I've been hearing…when
are we going again? It's gonna be in March, boys and girls.
We’re going down to San Ignacio (the trip will be about half as long as
this one was). The weather will be much nicer, and the whales
will be in Scammon’s Lagoon.
Wanna go?
If you'd like more information about
California Scooter Company motorcycles, be sure to visit the California
Scooter website.
If you are interested in buying a
California Scooter Company motorcycle for adventure touring like we did on
this trip (or just for running around town), drop me an email.
I can get you an adventure touring discount. No kidding.
And finally, if you'd like a
high-resolution digital copy of the California Scooter Company catalog, please
let me know via email (we won't ever give your address to anyone
else).
A
postcript...
It's not just yours truly who thought this
was a cool trip...the above story has been picked up by the Cyril Huze
blog, Rider magazine, Motorcycle Classics magazine, RidersReview
magazine, and White
Line magazine. Check these out when you get a chance!
Check out our published work
below. Click on the pictures to learn more about each book...
The
California Scooter Company - the Mustang mystique in a modern
motorcycle. These things rock! How exciting are
these bikes? Imagine a kid in a candy store with a
credit card...and take a look at this
video!
GoGo
Gear, fashionable protective apparel for women. This is a
great company with a great line.
Autobooks-Aerobooks
is a great automotive and aeronautical bookstore. Visit their website
for great deals on great books!
Heading into Mexico? BajaBound
offers great deals on motorcycle insurance. It's the only one we
use!
