Note: Here is a story I wrote in 3rd person from my good friend Stu Markey's perspective. Happy Birthday Stu.
Hi my name is Stuart Markey. My friends call me anything from Stu to Stoo, from Commodore to Czar. Sitting in my meeting, I was pondering the ride just a few days ago and wonder how to tell the story of what happened. Today’s meeting is a crazed group of special interests and school board all trying to get some “fair” share the 3 billion in funds that I am supposed to manage. You see I am the Executive Director, Capital Improvement Bond Program Facilities Planning
and Construction for the San Diego School district. I suppose I should be paying attention but right now I am thinking of the little ‘siesta’ that I took yesterday. While these guys are scrapping for millions, yesterday, I was at a dirt floor tire repair shop 100 miles south of Ensenada.
Out in front of the tire repair shop, a scruffy little cat with an injured eye kept trying to get my attention. Feeling a bit hot, I leaned up against a wall in a chair trying to find some shade from the heat. There was no breeze at all and I felt almost claustrophobic in all my offroad riding gear. The heat did not seem to bother the cat that just kept zigzagging back and forth rubbing the toe of my boot. Looking past the cat, I see my pack sitting on the ground. The dirt was dark and powdery and I realize the tip to my Camelback drinking hose was resting in the dirt. I wince and think, “Shoot, I have to put that thing in my mouth.” How many years of filth are in the dirt? I snag the hose out of the dirt and give the tip a wipe on the sleeve of my shirt, study it closely, shrug my shoulders, and take a long drink. “What’s a little more dirt?”
I suppose it is all perspective, I realize with a grin. While these guys are scrapping today for millions, yesterday, I was at a dirt floor tire repair shop 100 miles south of Ensenada. And the guy who just spent an hour fixing my buddy’s motorcycle tire was hoping to get 600 pesos. Six stinking dollars.
We weren't even supposed to be there. With all the drug related crime in Tijuana, we decided we were going to try a three day ride in Arizona. At the last minute, we found out that three days was just too much in our busy lives so we changed the plan to a one-day ride in Baja. The plan was to head down to Baja, cross at the Tecate boarder and start our ride at Hacienda St Veronica. It was going to be an easy day since we were riding without the support of a chase truck. We would head down Compadre Road, a dirt
road that comes as close as it gets to a bonafide highway in Mexico. In some aspects, it is safer than riding the paved highways.
We rode down 40 miles of Compadre and then we headed down to Ojos Negros on the recent section of the Baja 1000 racecourse. This was a fun, tight dirt “road” that maybe a farmer might use if he really had to. On dirtbikes, the road was Disneyland. We descended a steep rocky section and headed out onto rolling sections of the road. Every time we came over a rise and looked out over the valley, we were treated with a scenic ride the high desert of Baja. There are only a few weeks in the spring when every weed and bush blooms with thousands of gold and purple flowers. The bugs frantically race between all the flowers to get their fill. Unfortunately, since we were riding at the speed of heat. These little critters kept pinging off our goggles and helmets. At one point, we even rode through a swarm of bees hoping none get wedged into a gap in our clothes.
We were riding down a very nasty section of the Baja 1000 race course when suddenly, my rear brake just stopped working. I down shifted tried to control my motorcycle as it bounced off rocks and boulders. It was picking up speed faster than a snow ball heading straight to hell. The road shot back up the other side of the ravine and I got my bike back under control. I broke in over the rider-to-rider radio to tell my buddies that my rear brake just gave out. We rolled to a stop to assess the damage. The clip to the master cylinder had pulled through. Tim produced from one of the several packs lashed to his bike a 10mm nut. Tim really is our medic, having been a corpsman on board a ship. It may be a funny description but he always packs some pretty good painkillers. Luckily today, we just needed a few nuts and bolts. After some fiddling, we were able to restore the rear brake on my bike. An out of commission brake is not a day stopper but no brake makes those down hillers a little too sketchy.
Thirty minutes later, we rolled into the town of Ojos Negros. Even though it was April, the sun was high and the temps were in the eighties. The town is several blocks square and all the roads are dirt. We stopped there to eat a few “dogtail tacos” and suck down a high octane Coke. None of us ever drink full sugar Cokes, except when in Mexico. They seem to wash down trail dirt really well. At the taco shop, we kicked around the plan for the afternoon. After filling up on food and gas, we would head out onto the “Expeditionary” part of the ride. The plan was to find the passage from Ojos Negros going west to St Tomas. Earlier in the week, Jim had pressed our friend, Seve, for directions. In the dusty heat of the Taco stand, Jim explained his directions to Tim and
me. Seve said, “Okay, Head east on Hwy 3 from the Pemex, okay? (Seve, punctuates his directions with two kinds of “okay-s” one at the start means ‘Pay attention’ one at the end means, “Did you get that?” If there was a double set of ‘okay-s’ that meant that between ‘okay’-one and ‘okay’-two, Seve thought about something. If that something was life threatening, Seve would say something. So that something was probably a very difficult section. Between so called ‘expert riders’, to say a section would be very difficult is like a poker card call. If you are right, your friend loses. If you are wrong, you lose. Either way, he thought it would be best if we discover it ourselves!) Okay, Take the first dirt road to the south, okay? Okay, the road forks twice, okay? Stay to the right or you will end up heading back around and eventually hit Hwy 3. (I knew this already as we got lost that way before.) Okay, don’t worry about all the smaller side trails. (What was ‘smaller’? I thought. Since there was not a double okay, I assumed they were easy to recognize.) After about…, okay…., 15 miles or so, look for a cement water trough. The entrance to the correct dirt road is around there, okay?. Once on the dirt road, there will be a couple of fun rollers (up and down hills). Okay, uh, okay…You will come to a boulder ravine but you should have no problems since you will be going down hill.” (Hmm double ‘Okay’ and problem only in one direction, I committed that to memory.)
Listening intently, Tim and I interrupted in unison, “What about if we want to come back?”
He didn’t say, Jim shrugged. Everyone took another quiet sip of Coke. Great! I thought. I hate sand, I hate whoops, I hate pavement. I hate going down nasty stuff but most of all, I hate going up nasty stuff. It never ends in a pretty picture and costs me plenty of replacement parts.
At noon, Ojos Negros was getting hot. We piled all of our gear back on, chest protector, arm protectors, backpack loaded with tools, meds, radios, drink bladder, and a few powerbars, our helmets, goggles and finally gloves. Once we start to move, all this stuff becomes transparent and our own wind cools us down. A quick stop to top up at the Pemex station and we were off following Seve’s directions to the yet to be discovered passage to the sea. Leaving town, the dirt road is flat and wide. It passes a few farms which we usually slow down for out of courtesy. The road has one set of 90 turns before it heads off into the interior.
We headed down the road just like Seve said. All the turns were just as he said. However, 15 miles came and went and there was no cement trough. The same at 16 miles. Just as the feeling of not finding this passage was creeping in, at mile 17 we saw the cement trough. Sure enough, there was a turn to the right. We turned and within 400 yards it dead-ended at an abandoned farm. Now the left hand turn was the direction that we originally took and got…. Not really ‘lost’, we prefer to say there was a high factor of wandering around. Confused that we had found the cement trough but the right turn was a dead end, we ‘wandered’ back to the turn. Upon close inspection, there actually were three choices, Right: which was wrong. :Left: which was wrong too! But to our amazement, there actually was a “Straight”. We didn’t notice it because it appeared to be just another access to the abandoned farm.
Pressing into new territory always has its ‘fun’ factor of exploring yet in the back of our minds, every mile forward is another mile further of retreat if things don’t go right. The old adage is true, ‘You can ride further in an hour than you can walk all day.’ So at close to 3 PM, we cautiously pressed on.
The ‘found’ road was amazing. It had everything a rider looks for; nice rolling up and downs, some technical, some fast sections, after another few miles, the road popped out at the high end of a long set of valleys. The view was amazing, an afternoon sun lit up miles of spring time flowers. Every little rise, we could see mountains tens of miles away. On we went descending this rollercoaster road into the valley.
And then it happened, we found the place of the double okay. As every good rollercoaster goes, there was a gradually increasing decent. The angle just kept getting steeper and steeper. We were obviously going into a canyon that the water cuts through when it rains. As we descended, the walls of a canyon closed in on us. Like a giant funnel, we were shooting down into it. When there was no place to turn around, the ‘road’ turned into a series of bedrock steps. These steps were random to each side and strewn with various size boulders and rocks. In order to stay upright, the trick is to let the motorcycle find its own way down. Of course the other part of the trick is to make sure that your path does not end into a major boulder or a drop taller than the bike. The whole thing was an orchestration of front brake, back brake, lean here, lean there, more back brake, even more back brake, a little gas for the next drop off, plop, back on the brakes fast before the momentum got out of control. No time to push the radio button and warn anyone of a particular hazard because there were so many.
The nasty part felt like a mile long but was probably only a quarter mile. We have been down worse (get-off-and-walk worse!) We have even been up worse. (wet your pants worse). But we have never been up or down that section before! Fortunately, a quick head count revealed that we all made it through. The road flattened out and we could start to feel the coolness and humidity of the ocean. Our spirits lifted as we found our goal, the passage to Santo Tomas!
We rolled into the Pemex about 4PM. It was still pretty warm. We gassed up and bought a jumbo sized iced tea in a can. Sitting there on the curb, we started calculating our situation. We had covered over 90 miles. It was 4PM and the GPS said that sundown was at 7:15. There was no calculus needed to figure we would be back at the car in the dark. Not that it would be a problem, perhaps in the past but now all of our bikes have
pretty bright headlights. The section that would be dark we know like the back of our hand now and there are no tricky turns.
You should have seen our faces when Jim popped the question, "Well, what's the plan? Head Back?" "Hell no." I thought. I announced, "You know what I think? Lets call the wives and head to San Quintin instead." Tim didn't even pause and said, " We could do that!"
Jim gave us the usual crap about our lack of bravery. We are not spring chickens all of us having boys that are college age. Jim is a few years younger than Tim and I. The little rat even used to run Ironman Triathlons so he is a wiry guy and always trying to keep up with the boys. We all have our roles. As an engineer, Jim thinks too much an gets upset about riding in Mexico with all the risks but once he is there he helps fix all sorts of stuff that breaks.
After getting the hall pass from the wives, we were giddy like kids getting the okay to camp in the backyard. This was game changing. Now all we had to do was to hatch the plan of how to get to San Quintin 80 miles south of us before the sun set. By now it was 4:30, less than three hours of light. Usually, St Tomas to San Quintin was a full day ride for us. Of course, that included time to dork around, time to fix flats, time to eat lunch with the support truck… Oh, whoops, we don’t have a support truck.
We came to a compromise in our plan that would get us to our hotel sooner with out riding the highway too much, we would ride 30 minutes down Hwy 1 and then head down to Erindira, a small one block town right on the ocean. In Mexico, dirtbikes are allowed to ride on the highway.
Still in high spirits, we pulled out of St Tomas and rocketed down the highway. After 20 minutes, our spirits were broken by a bad case of Monkey Butt. The modern dirt bike is an incredible machine. It can take an extreme amount of abuse and cover ground at over 80 MPH. It can also dish out an extreme amount of abuse but not in a way that you think. The seat is torture. After 20 minutes, the circulation in your butt goes away. Don’t ask me why, but this is called a bad case of Monkey Butt. Really, when riding in the dirt, we rarely sit down. In fact, we may ride 100 miles standing all day.
We were happy to finally turn off the highway and head down a small road to Erindira. A glance at my watch, yikes, we were in a race against the sun. In an hour, the sun would be sizzling into the Pacific Ocean and it would get cold. Mark Twain once said that the coldest winter he ever had was a summer in San Francisco. I know what he meant. Riding along the coast is beautiful but the cool moist air pulls the life right out of a person. We were snaking our way down a canyon leading to the Pacific Ocean. The temperature dropped twenty five degrees. Since we thought this was a day ride and we would be in the desert. We only were wearing our flimsy riding shirts. From experience, the cold damp air can be downright painful.
We call Mexico, “the Land of Not Quite Right”. Erindira was a prefect example. The road leading to the town was paved. It was full of pot holes and washouts but it was paved. Some where just before entering the town, the pavement stopped. The few shops in town throw water out on the dirt road to keep the dust down. We came rolling into town just about quitting time for all the farm workers. It was like a scene out of an old western. Three riders making their way through town, most everyone else was just walking. Some people checking out these new comers. Some people could care less. I broke the silence over the radio, “Hey, lets look for a $10 Serape to keep the cold off.” There were three roadside stands looking like a mini swap meet. Each one had a wild assortment of used clothes that looked like they were freshly donated from the United States. We must have looked crazy. Here were these Gringos, dressed in $300 worth of gear and riding motorcycles that were worth a year’s wages in Mexico. We were shopping for used clothes in a farm town. We could not find anything. At the last stand, we found just the thing we were looking for, jackets. Jim went to get his bike. Tim and I started shopping. I found a jacket that was in great shape, some sort of racing promo jacket from Winston series. It fit well. “Great idea! This will keep us from freezing our butts off.”
By that time, Jim started sifting the racks, there was only one jacket left….. and it was purple. As he pulled the jacket out, we could see that on one pocket it once proudly proclaimed, “Girl Scouts of America” on the other side, the name “Cloe” was iron transferred on. Looking at the jacket in disgust, I said, “Oh, that will look hot on you! …Cloe!” He looked at me and said, “Bastard, YOU got MY jacket!”
Everytime we stop-start, our speed gradually goes from a cruise to sub-freeway speeds. It can only be described as a speed somewhere between seeing 90 degrees of what is in front and to only 30 degrees. There are times where the speed is so fast that only a very narrow focus of a few degrees ahead is even possible. At that speed, your heart is working as fast as your head. Signals are sent to the hands and legs in anticipation of the direction the bike needs to take in the next 100 feet which goes by in a few tenths of a second. Most of the time, we ride at the 85% level or the 30-degree. Since we knew that we were playing beat the clock on sunset, we rode just a little more frantically. The only thing that kept us in check was the fact that a wreck out here would be disastrous. We were riding well. Ironically, the smaller the group, the faster the average speed. We were making great time over what normally would take us hours. It was great teamwork. Occasionally, we would ride up to a gate. A ‘gate’ in Mexico is a place where the barbwire stretches across the road so by definition, we are constantly on-guard for these random ‘gates’. The ends of the barbed wire are wound around a pole like branch. This
branch is held taught by a wire loop from the next fixed section of fence. We quickly got into a routine that allowed us to get through the gates fairly fast. The first rider announces over the radio, “Gate, Gate, Gate.” Skids to a stop, parks his bike and drops the gate. The other riders ride through and one of them parks. Rider one jumps on his bike and rides through and the second rider attaches the gate again.
Unfortunately, by the time we got over to the section were we can actually get down and ride on the sand, the tide had covered the whole beach up. This cemented the decision to head back up to the highway and ride the last 30 miles into San Quintin. We just pulled into our favorite hotel, “Old Mill” as the sun was setting. Perfect timing. The owner there always had complimentary bottled beer on ice for the guests as they checked in. We went into the office to see if there were any rooms. It turns out that there were plenty of rooms. In fact, the place was almost empty. All of the drug related violence along the border was keeping tourism down. Normally the place would be packed with American fishermen and other dirt bikers. Tonight, there were two other riders and one group of fishermen.
A quick check of our cash and we determined we were a bit low for a two day ride. We still needed to eat dinner and breakfast and pay for the next day’s gas. To make matters worse, the slowdown in tourism shut down the hotel’s restaurant. So the big question was; shower first, put our only (dirty) clothes back on and ride into town, or just ride into town, eat and get out. Since we were low on cash, I suggested we just ride over to some taco stand and shower later. What was worse, being dirty and hungry or hungry and dirty? “Hungry’ we all agreed. Just as we were getting ready to grab our stuff, an American from Santa Cruz started talking to us.
“Hey, where you guys from?” he asked. With several things on our minds and tired from riding all day, I am sure that everyone was just thinking that someone else would answer this stranger. But, you know, when you are on a trip like this, it doesn’t matter if we are tired, hungry, dirty, or just plain ‘done’, we have always been friendly. So I started to tell the guy our story of how we just rode over 130 miles today to get here.
“Whoa!” the guy said. “Hey, why don’t you guys come eat dinner with us? We have a ton of fish that we caught today and we are making fish tacos.”
Free food! It was as if a light turned on. “Hey Tim, these guys want to treat us to a fish dinner. You better get out here!” We all rushed to wash our hands and the dirt ring off our faces. We headed over to a feast of fish tacos made the traditional way; tortillas, fried fish, shredded cabbage, lime, and hot sauce. I snuck off to get us another beer from the hotel’s supply. Free beer and free food. God must be watching over us. What a great day! With full stomachs and a warm shower, we all slammed our heads on to the pillow for eight solid hours.
The day started off early. We wandered over to get some breakfast and coffee. The three different Mexican families had already set up shop and were selling beads, hats, and ponchos. They must have gotten there at 6:00 AM. They wont be doing much business I
thought to myself with only 8 people at the motel. We wandered around to the back of the motel looking for the restaurant. The back of the motel was the most scenic as the motel backed up to the bay. There was a modest dock and a boat launch ramp. I saw the guys who sported us dinner already on the move. Hardcore. And surprising too since they were drunk on Rum and Coke when we started eating their dinner. They were still going after our heads hit the pillows.
The restaurant was vacant. No sign of any breakfast or coffee. That meant that we would have to get all our gear on and check out before we had our coffee. So this must be how the Third World suffers, no coffee in the morning.
One of our favorite parts of this whole route is riding down the sand on the beach. It blows the mind. In California, we are not even allowed to daydream about riding on the beach with dirt bikes. Baja has miles and miles of beach with no one anywhere close. Even when we do pass a lone fisherman, they don’t seem to care. It’s only the little kids that love to wave to us as we pass by. Again, we had a dilemma, what would win out? Hunger or fun? Hunger or fun? Hunger wins again. We head into town and ride down the highway looking for a place to eat. The radios were dead silent. No chatter between us. Not even the customary “Radio check?” to ensure we all could speak with each other. The lack of coffee was wearing the roughriders down. Everything seemed to be closed. “Domingo” I thought. No one works on Sunday. We kept motoring down the road to what seemed like miles. Now, we were going a bit too fast to study taco stands for signs of coffee. Just then we spot a huge sign (good thing too because at our speed if it was small we would have missed it.) Sunday Buffet both in English and Spanish. By the time we got on the brakes and pulled onto the front street, we overshot by a block. There is band of dirt that runs parallel to the road so that cars can pull in and park with out blocking traffic on the highway. At this point we didn’t care, we rode down the empty front street in the opposite direction of traffic. Smack dab in the middle of the restaurant’s driveway, two guys were shoveling dirt in an attempt to repair the front street. Probably a low spot that caused the water to collect and cars to track mud into the parking lot of the restaurant. It was good to see that they were working safe. There was a small twine rope strung around the hole they had made in an effort to warn cars. The sight was so Mexico. I am not being racist; it’s just that we never see anyone just digging dirt anymore. If it were California, the contractor would have been required to rent a hundred blinking reflective signs indicating an open trench. There would have been a skip loader moving dirt and a decent sized dump truck. This whole affair would be littered with guys wearing hard hats. As I rolled past the hole, all I saw was two guys and one wheelbarrow.
The restaurant was too good to be true. All you could eat buffet? Clean new building? I went in before the other two even got off our bikes to do some recon. In a moment, I came out smiling. “600 pesos.” Or about $6. And coffee too. S-W-E-E-T!
There were only a few people eating but it was still early. We immediately sat down and flipped the upside down coffee cups over. Hot cuppa joe on the way! For some reason, Mexicans love Cremora that non-dairy wonder powder. We slopped some creamer in and
then some sugar and it was “Mmm Good!” The next matter at hand was to scout out the buffet. Fresh OJ! A whole bunch of premade stuff and eggs cooked to order. As I looked the whole buffet over, I spotted a tray of Mole with some mystery meat. Mole, a toasted sesame and cocoa, gravy, usually mixed with chicken. A tasty treat! I got a sample. I am pretty sure that it was Spam, which I spit out rapidly, I mean, what if it wasn’t Spam? As my grandfather used to say, “It was the part of the cow that was the last over the fence.”
After our fill of breakfast, we set out to pound the pavement. Not quite your classic Easy Riders. We shot up the highway 50 miles. As we pulled into the Pemex, Tim tells us that he has a flat front tire. After getting gas, he rolled to the back of the station to fix his flat. “Hey Tim, why don’t we go to one the twelve tire shops around here?” So we rolled over to a shop almost across the street. No waiting. These guys got right to it. As mentioned in the opening of this story, we were out of there in 45 minutes. While everyone worked, I enjoyed a quick nap.
With the tire fixed, we headed out onto the highway again. I still was sleepy for the forty minutes of monotonous riding on the asphalt. I finally snapped out of it when we got off the highway and onto the dirt. It was like putting a fish back into water….okay that’s not a good way to put it. The dirt road was smooth and hard, probably freshly graded. Ideal for cars, sketchy for dirt bikes. Going around every corner was like driving on ball bearings; just a twitch could send the bike fishtailing in the turn. On top of that, there was a hot wind picking up driving the dust straight into the second and third rider. Without speaking to each other, we all thought that it meant we were riding away from the cool coast and into miserably hot desert. The canyon the dirt road followed started to narrow. The scene changed from arid dust blown farmland to chapparal. As we continued, the road started it climb in elevation to eventually snake over a range of mountains that separated the coast from the Baja desert. Instead of getting hotter, it started to cool off. The higher elevation was giving us a break. We all started to notice something. Later, at our next stop, I asked, ”Hey, did you guys smell all the blooming flowers on the way in? At first I thought I was catching a waft of perfume.” Tim said, “I thought it was the shampoo I was smelling.”
Twenty-five miles inland, and just as the dirt road starts to crest over into the desert, there is a single rancho we ride by. I looked close to make sure there were no sheep grazing nearby. Standing close to the ranch was the finest looking Palomino horse. Nearby, was an even more handsome, almost all white horse. The pair raised their heads and kept a close eye on us as we rode by. I suspect with all our horsepower, we would not be able to keep up with these guys on a 1/8th-mile track.
As we headed out of the mountains, down onto the high desert, we could see our next stop in the distance. Valle de Trinidad. I was in pole position and decided to air out the bike. I rolled onto the throttle and cranked it up until I had my bike going flat out. We must have been doing eighty. I couldn’t tell because my bike does not have a speedometer. Anyway, I was too busy watching the road for ruts and the sides for cows. At this speed, either would mean a serious flight in space without the luxury of a
parachute or water touch down. As we crested mild rises in the road, the front wheel sometimes became air borne for who-knows-how-far. With a little timing, a crack of what was still left of the throttle could bring the front end up. It was like a ski jump with the tips up. A nice soft landing, only at 80 mph. As I was having fun a turn came up faster than expected. I was not sure that I would slow in time. Fortunately, I made the turn but not without a big pucker factor so to speak. Hmm note to self, momentum at 80 miles an hour is not to be underestimated. It takes longer than I thought to get down to half that speed and navigate a turn in the dirt. Better to learn it now than plowing into the side of a cow later. Those things are a helluva lot bigger in person than I remember watching Bonanza on TV.
Like a scene out of High Plains Drifter, we rolled into the small town, Valley de Trinidad. It was high noon. A hot wind was blowing the dust down the dirt road town. We slowed to a few miles an hour to keep the dust down. Straggling in, little kids stopped to watch us from the sidewalks. We rolled to a stop and kicked out the kickstands. When the last bike stopped its engine the town was so quiet. The only noise was our hot exhaust pipes cooling down from the 80 mile an hour run a few minutes earlier. “Tink..tink..tink” Our boots made a heavy thunking noise as we walked across the porch of the store. A cool drink would be a real treat. Two small Pomeranian puppies slept in a tiny cage in front of the store. “Se Vende. $3000” Thirty bucks. Poor little guys, they looked tired and hot. Each pup was about the size of a shoe. I bought everyone a jug of some sort of citrus soda pop. We chugged it down trying to cool down a bit. “Let’s ride!” I said. “Let’s roll.” Said Tim.
After one last stop at the Pemex, we headed out on the highway. At this point, the heat and the miles made us agree to avoid the “Goat Trail”. The Goat Trail has a bad rep and lives up to it. It’s a nasty little road that really is cut right into the bedrock. Usually, the Baja 1000 race goes down this nasty drop. We usually go up it. The trickiest part is a cowcatcher gate about half way up. I would think if a cow made it that far down the trail, heck, might as well write it off because it sure wasn’t going to make it back up. Anyway, this cowcatcher was cemented in place with an eight inch step on the down hill side. Going up and over required a little bit of body English and a quick twist of the throttle to pop the front wheel over it. Just to make sure you were concentrating, there is a broken piece of re-bar sticking out, just like a scorpion’s tail looking to jab a hole in the crank case. The technical stuff really is not so bad. It is the moto eating whoops just after the goat trail that makes you think twice. “Whoops” are a freak of physics. They are
basically like speed bumps in a parking lot. It is just that these bumps are placed one right after the other. As the wheel of the last vehicle bottoms out, it kicks a little more dirt out of the rut. Some times these ruts can be three feet deep. Over and over and over again. Up and down. It really takes some stamina to ride them at any speed.
Well, like I said, we decide to go around on the highway. We rode up the highway. Fortunately, it was the last miles of pavement we had to ride. Towards the end our seats felt like a wood 2by4. When we finally got off the road and onto the trail at the block house there was a collective sigh of relief. Next we shot up another part of the old Baja race course called the “Corkscrew” A clever little name for a section of road that climbs from about 3000 feet to 5800 feet. A person could have fun riding this trail at any speed. It has more bobs and weaves than Mohamed Ali. You couldn’t design this section better. There were sections straight enough to gain some speed and then tight turns that would open up again to a straight away. We should have played it easy…but we didn’t. Jim got out front and I could tell he was feeling his oats. I wondered why we were racing up this whole section. Should I let it rip or just let those guys race their brains out? Being in the sweep position, the only way to tell if you are not going fast enough is by judging how fast the dust was settling.
Finally they slowed to a stop. “Hey, let’stake a picture.” Jim said. We must have done this a hundred times before. For some reason, it never feels the same and the pictures turn out lame. Fortunately, while we were grouping up for another picture, a SUV comes rolling down the road. If we had not stopped, our chance meeting may have had a different outcome as only a few moments earlier, we were flying up the road.
When we reached the top, we rolled to a stop and had a late lunch. The setting was perfect. Huge pine trees everywhere. The road skirted around this high meadow that looked like it was right out of the Bonanza show. I swear we saw Little Joe ride through the in the in the background. No one really had any “lunch”. We dug around in our packs. Soon, we were sharing beef jerky bits, Cliff bars, and Gatorade. It was like a couple of kids at school on the play ground trading snacks. “Whaddya got???”
We sat there munching away with a cool breeze blowing that vanilla smell from the Ponderosa Pines.
We jumped back on our bikes and rode the last 60-mile stretch. We fondly reminisce when we first started to ride in Baja. Our kids were in sixth grade and rode 80 cc bikes. We would explore our way out getting up to only 40 miles from camp to make sure that we had enough gas to make it back. Finally, we had to bite the bullet and ride the 50 miles one way and buy gas from a little old lady that fills up old milk jugs from a 55-gal drum. Today this 60-mile stretch seems like a milk run. We were cranking down the road on our 450-cc bikes, accelerating and breaking so hard that the wear on our tires is visible after each ride. As we rolled into camp, I stopped to get the traditional six-pack of trail dust beer. No matter what the brand, it tastes great after a full day’s ride. It is even better to get out of our riding gear into dry clean clothes. We sit on the tailgate, laughing at all the adventure that was stuffed into two days. The final tally on our total ‘day’ ride? 1380 miles total, 460 miles each, 30 hours from start to finish, 27 total gallons of gas,
eighteen beers, fifteen tacos, five stops for gas, three tired riders, one flat, almost one little lamb, no support truck, no crashes (thank God), and one purple jacket named Cloe.
“Uh Stu, How much should we give the union to settle this?”
“460 miles. Uh, million.” I stammered. “Wait! What was the question?”
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