Two Giants Go To Baja

[Yeti 0]

We are giants in stature, not in mental prowess. As will soon be seen. :blink:/>

The Characters

longtallsally aka Sally aka Short Fat Sally

That's Sally on his 2007 R1200GS Adventure. Sally is 6'7". The only thing short about Sally is his attention span. Sally had ridden Baja once before with his wife on the back. He had never ridden any of the terrain we crossed in this short adventure.

YetiGS aka Yeti (me)

This is me on my 2004 R1150GS Adventure. I'm 6'3" and, while I'm not a giant compared to Sally, I didn't meet anyone else that was taller than me on the trip. I've been to Baja over a hundred times to go surfing or clubbing, but never on a motorcycle. Time to fix that. :coolio:/>

This was a trip we did in October, figured I should share the pain here.

The plan:

Day 1 - San Diego to Mike's Sky Rancho

Day 2 - Mike's Sky Rancho to Bahia Gonzaga

Day 3 - Bahia Gonzaga to Coco's Corner to San Felipe

Day 4 - San Felipe to San Diego

I can't speak for Sally, but ever since I first saw "On Any Sunday" and even more since seeing "Dust to Glory" I've wanted to go to Baja and ride. The openness, abundant dirt trails and roads, food and friendly people have called to me and it was only a matter of time until I went.

When Sally emailed about going, I was in immediately. We came up with a quick bucket list and knew we had to visit Mike's, Coco's and Gonzaga. With a route and a plan, and some quality GPS tracks from Just Paul we were ready to roll.

What could go wrong?? :heh:/>

(Hint hint)

[Yeti 0]

DAY 1

Day 1 - San Diego to Mike's Sky Rancho

The day's Spot track:

Sally had ridden down to my house from the Bay Area the night before, so we were all set to take off Thursday morning. After gassing up Sally's bike, we headed to the border crossing at Tecate. Sally can't sit still for long:

We rode some twisties to get to the border crossing since I somehow managed to miss the turn onto the 94 East.

I had forgotten the smell of Mexico. If you've never been, Mexico has a distinct smell, and once you smell it, you never forget it. It's like someone is always burning something and the smell just lingers in the air . . .

Anyways, once we crossed the border we rode east for about 15 miles . . .

. . . and then we turned south on the dirt:

After about 30 minutes, things went sideways for me. It had rained a ton the night before and there were mud bogs everywhere. We finally hit one that we could not go around. Sally was ahead of me by a fair bit and I could see his track through the right side of the bog. I elected to go to the left instead. Oops. :heh:

As you can see, I came out of the bog and the rear end of the bike decided to race the front end. The rear end won, and I lost.

The left cylinder guard was filled with mud and my elbow was a little sore from landing on it, but otherwise the only thing injured was my pride. (But not enough that I didn't take pictures.)

After waiting about 5 minutes to see if Sally would come back, I finally managed to get the bike back on its wheels. I tried the usual method of lifting the bike where you put your back to the bike and lift with your legs. No fooking way. That was NOT happening. After trying that 2 or 3 times, cussing Sally out for not turning around each time, I finally got pissed off enough that I bulldogged it like an NFL defensive lineman and simply pushed the damn thing upright!!

Within two minutes of getting going, Sally re-appeared having turned around to see where I was.

So we wicked it up a bit and got going down the trail . . .

Sally disappeared in the distance again, only to reappear in the bushes at the side of the trail with his bike on it's side:

As near as he could recall, he was on the right side of the trail when his right pannier starting hitting the edge of the trail. Next thing he knew, his right cylinder DUG in and he was launched over the bars and through his windscreen, Superman style!! He did a flip in the air and landed on his head!! Here are a few shots of the carnage:

The brand new helmet:

and the right pannier:

Additionally, his windscreen was shattered, one fog light was ripped of its mount and the driving light bent so it was point straight up!

You can see where his pannier skipped along and then the cylinder dug in:

It took about an hour and a half to fix things up enough to continue on. Spending time fixing Sally's bike will be a theme on this trip . . .

(to be continued)

[paulmbowers 236]

cylinders stick out??

[Yeti 0]

DAY 1 (cont'd)

After getting Sally's bike in rideable condition, we headed off again. This was some of the most beautiful and amazing countryside I've ever ridden through. The pictures will do it much better justice than I can . . .

At one point we took a wrong turn in some deep sand. This was the result:

Eventually we came to this:

A brand new paved road! Since we were getting worried about our time, we elected to take this down to Highway 3, rather than the dirt way. At the end of the road, we gassed up from a dude with a bunch of 1 liter juice bottles filled with gas.

We got on 3 at Heroes de la Indepencia and took it to Colonia Lazaro where we picked up the dirt again.

Descending into the valley, Mike's is up in those mountains in the distance somewhere.

It started getting dark soon after we got back on the dirt so I didn't take any more pictures until we saw this very, very welcome sight

GoBajaRidin' (LINK) had a tour staying at Mike's that night and Bruno was planning his pre-running for the Baja 1000.

Here's our room for the night (it smelled wonderful :ph34r:/>):

We got unloaded and went to the dining room for the famous Mike's steak dinner! (And, of course, a few Tecate beers!)

That's Bruno in the blue shirt that Sally's pointing at. :D/> He had some great stories about Baja and gave us some recommendations about what to do and, more importantly, what not to do due to the rains.

The bar at Mike's is quite the sight. Stickers cover every single surface that isn't covered with t-shirts, underwear, hats, animal skins, etc.

After a few beers, it was time for shut eye.

Night night Piggies:

[Yeti 0]

cylinders stick out??

It's a design "advantage."

[Afry 1]

cylinders stick out??

It's a design "advantage."

It's SUPPOSED to make it easier to pick up....

Hint: Stop at the little taco stand in Valle T by the gas station in the middle of town that looks like this...

.

[Dan Diego 40]

Am enjoying this RR--I'm always a sucker for Baja stories.

A lot of those photos looked familiar--mostly the ones with the bikes on their sides in the dirt!

Good stuff.

Question: did you drop the bags to get those pigs through Mikes doorway?

[Vacman 0]

Maybe save you a bit of time?

http://advrider.com/forums/showthread.php?t=927172&highlight=YETIGS

Read this a few months ago. A very enjoyable read, and it motivated me to duplicate this ride someday.

[Bubbagums 42]

Tecates at Mike's?

[kkug 147]

Tecates at Mike's?

Ya good call - Inquiring minds want to know

[Yeti 0]

Bikes fit, BARELY, through the door at Mike's with the bags on. BARELY.

Maybe save you a bit of time?

http://advrider.com/...ighlight=YETIGS

Read this a few months ago. A very enjoyable read, and it motivated me to duplicate this ride someday.

Not everyone here is a member of ADV so I wanted to share it here too. :D/>/>

Tecates at Mike's?

They only had Pacificos at Mike's. I tried to make the bar tab higher than the rent for the room but, sadly, the rooms were a little to expensive. I tried though.

[Yeti 0]

DAY 2

Today's Route:

The original plan for Day 2 was to leave Mike's via a different route than we came in, head east on 3 for a ways and then hit the dirt to cross a dried lake bed and then across to the 5 and go south to Gonzaga where we would camp for the night. That was the plan.

Two things conspired against the plan:

1. Bruno

2. Sally's Bike

After dinner the first night, we discussed our route with Bruno to get his feedback. When he saw we were planning on riding across a dry lake bed, Laguna Diablo, he strongly advised against it. Apparently the rains had turned it into a mud bog. He also told us that the sand between the lake bed and 5 was deep and thick. Not bueno.

There was also the small matter of repairing Sally's bike. It had made it to Mike's, but that was with me carrying the windscreen on the back of my bike and parts dangling dangerously.

After a delicious breakfast of eggs, rice and beans, it was time to get to work.

How many zip-ties does it take to hold a Pig's windscreen together?

Eventually Sally got everything, including the headlight, working again and it was time to head off to Gonzaga. Due to the late hour and the lake being a mud bog, we elected to just motor the 3 to the 5 to Gonzaga.

But first, we had to get to the 3.... Hasta manana Mike's!!

The trail out was a blast!! It turns out we had taken the hard way in because the tracks we were following were made for little bikes. No Pigs. :o/> We pretty much flew out to the freeway.

We took the 3 to the 5:

And caught our first glimpse of the Sea of Cortez (aka Gulf of California)

We headed south of San Felipe looking for some lunch. Bruno told us to look for Laguna Percebu where there was a good restaurant and bar. We were riding along, starving, when suddenly we saw a sign for "Percebu," right as we blew past it. A quick u-turn sorted that and we were on the dirt road to Percebu.

While I went inside and secured the essentials (beer and a menu) from the cute bartender (sorry, no pics), Sally took pictures of our bikes out front:

We ordered up a couple of Tecates and, I thought, Shrimp tacos. I know I said, "Shrimp tacos for both of us, please" because we had been speaking English with the bartender. Here's what showed up:

It may not be easy to tell, but those are not shrimp tacos. Oh well, we dug in anyways.

We decided we HAD to have shrimp tacos too, so this time I said, "Quatros tacos de camarones, por favor." And we got shrimp tacos!! Oh. My. Dog. They were delicious!!! The white sauce was amazing and the shrimp were just lightly battered and then fried.

I also have to say, Tecate beer tastes much better in Baja than it does in San Diego. No idea why, but it's true!!

Between the two of us, Sally and I have a decent grip on the Spanish language, but when we got the bill, we could not figure out what our first set of tacos were. :yikes After asking the server, who turned to the bartender to interpret, it turns out we had goat tacos, followed by shrimp tacos. The goat was delicious!! It really tasted like carnitas.

Following lunch, we continued south on 5, catching amazing views of the Gulf's azure waters:

In contrast to days gone past, the paved 5 now extends almost all the way to Gonzaga. It currently ends about 2 miles north of Gonzaga. It's nice when you need to eat miles, but I suspect some of the charm is going to leave the area now that it's more accessible.

After the military check point just north of town, we pulled into the Pemex in Gonzaga and met these guys. They are filming a documentary on riding in Baja and had some great stories to tell. I wish I had taken a picture of the pannier where they were recording the number of crashes per day. :lol:/>/>

I also spotted these cool painted seashells:

One cool thing I saw, the gas station attendant (you do not pump your own gas in Baja, sort of like Oregon) had a pet rooster. The rooster was constatnly hiding from the stray dogs that hung around. Then the attendant would whistle, like he was calling a dog, and the rooster would come running!! :lol3 He then chucked some grain on the ground for his pet rooster to eat:

We had made it to our destination for the day, Alfonsina's:

We, however, had other plans. We wanted to camp at the Palapas to the south . . . (that's them to the far right of the picture)

[Yeti 0]

Where were we? Oh yeah, after stuffing our faces with tacos and Tecates :D/> :D/> we rode on down to Gonzaga Bay. Sally grabbed a 12 pack of Tecate from the gas station, but neither of us wanted more gas as we had enough for the first part of the next day and the LAST thing we needed on these bikes was more weight. :rolleyes:/>

To rent one of the Palapas, you go to the Mini-Market across the station from the Pemex station and pay a very reasonable fee. We first went to check out the selection and saw a guy sitting under a palapa drinking a Tecate with his TW200 sitting next to it. We started talking and when he flipped us the bird and told us a 12 pack was not enough beer, we knew he was good people. He also mentioned something about a drunk friend getting more beer. :torch:/>

While Sally sat around on his ass and did nothing to set up camp, I rode across the freeway to pay our palapa fee and pick up more beer and ice. I had emptied out my right pannier (the big one) and filled it with ice for the beer, picked up a 6 pack of tall boys and headed back to set up camp. I hauled ass down the dirt road as the sun was setting fast and I hate setting up camp in the dark.

Here are the bikes by the palapa as the sun goes down. This is my new computer desktop:

I also took this one:

We set up camp and our Kermits under constant harassment from our neighbors. Sally responded in kind!

So just who were these characters?? We figured we should have some beers with them to find out.

This is Handlebar Jack. It's obvious where the nickname comes from. Jack is 74 and still riding Baja and still drinking copious amounts of Tecate. He may be my hero!!

Jack is retired. I know he told me what he used to do, but that was after a few beers so I'm not really sure what it was.

The other character, the one with a bladder the size of beer can (i.e. he had to take a piss every time he finished a beer), is Master Chief Dan, a retired Navy Hard Hat Diver. To be a hard hat diver in his day took stones the size small boulders.

Dan is on ADV, although he couldn't remember his screen name. He said, "I like to ride alone, so it's something like "ScrewYouIridealone Dan."

At some point, Sally sat his fat ass down too hard in his Kermit (I'm sure the Tecate had nothing to do with it ) and broke the back piece. While he was crying in his beers, Dan and Jack came to the rescue. Dan keeps Gorilla tape on his fender for just such an emergency.

How many drunk guys does it take to fix a Kermit chair?? (The sleeve of Sally's jacket is dusty from when his fat ass fell over breaking the chair!)

Sally testing out the repairs:

Eventually, Jack went to sleep while the 3 of us kept drinking. I have pictures but they're all blurry and confusing. Eventually, we staggered off to our tents to get some sleep.

Tomorrow would be the journey to Coco's Corner!! :D/>

[Oracle 195]

Very cool, keep it coming...

[Yeti 0]

DAY 3 aka THE LONG ASS DAY

Here is our GPS track for Day 3:

Yes. That is a long-ass day. Very. You shall soon see why . . .

Fortunately, due to my Scotch-Irish heritage, I can drink a ton of beer and wake up no foggier than I do every morning. On the plus side, this is the view I woke up to:

I got out of the tent and reviewed the night's carnage . . . :o/>

Lots of dead Cervesas there!!

I was a bit worried about Jack and Dan. I didn't need to be. They know how to recover as well as they drink beer. Here's Jack thinking about the day's riding . . .

Dan wandered over with a beer in his hand and said, "You can't drink all day if you don't start in the morning." :lol:/>

So, a little while later, I'm sitting in me Kermit, enjoying me morning 3 Via in 1 1/2 cups a water, trying to ensure a successful crap in short order. I look up and this mental midget (Dan) is walking towards me, carrying a rock like an oversize hernia. He's got a gleam in his eye, so I suspect something's afoot. He looks like Igor heading for the Bell Tower carrying this damn rock. "Must be heavy" I think to meself. "What the hell does he have planned for this damn rock and me??"

Just as I'm starting to stand up, Dan hurls the damn rock at me!! :o/>

My Kermit chair goes flying, I'm scrambling like a llama on ice skates, trying to get the hell out of the way of this MASSIVE boulder, when it hits me.

. . .

No seriously, the ROCK goddamn hits me!!

. . .

And it weighs about as much as a 7 week old kitten!!! :heh:/>

Dan might as well have thrown a balled up newspaper at me for all the substance behind the damn rock. And I fell for it, hook line and sinker. It was some sort of soap stone, or other stupidly-light rock.

Well played Dan, well played. ;)/>

We were all heading to Coco's Corner. Dan and Jack would then continue south, eventually headed for Cabo, while Sally and I would turn around with the plan being we'd camp somewhere near San Felipe. Our plans had a way of not going according to plan . . . :rolleyes:/>

Dan and Jack headed off, followed a short time later by us. But first a little story.

You can't really see them in the pictures, but behind the palapas were a row of plywood crappers. Very small, very nasty crappers. The insides were covered in sand too because the doors wouldn't stay closed and the wind blew a ass-load of sand in.

After my 3 Vias in 1 1/2 cup of water, I had to crap badly. Since everyone was still around, I had to close the crapper door. Well, these crapper were not designed with a Yeti in mind. There was NO way in hell I could fit in there. Additionally, the minute I closed the door, the smell became so horrible, my turd crawled right back to where it spawned from. F$%^@ng hell it was disgusting!

After everyone left, Sally decided he'd try using one of the crappers down the beach further and keep the door open. I wished him luck. No sooner had he sat down, when 3 vehicles filled with a Mexican sausage fest blasting bad 70's music at full volume and set up camp right in front of Sally's crapper.I was crying I was laughing so hard as he tried to finish up and get the hell out of there!! :heh:/>

This is the road to Coco's. Well, part of it. The easy part. I'm not saying the road to Coco's is difficult, it's not. But it's also not a road you can haul the mail on when you're riding a fully loaded GSA. Too much sand and too many rocks. I never had a scary moment on it, it's more tedious than anything. 30 miles of third gear cruising along, always keeping an eye out for a deep patch of sand or a wheel eating rock. (That's called foreshadowing...)

There was also this dude in a yellow truck who was "broken down" and told Sally he needed a new battery. Funny thing is, every time we passed him later, he had moved to a new spot. :huh Something wasn't right there, but I wasn't about to stop and find out what. He eventually made his way back to Gonzaga.

Soon enough, we saw Coco's!!

There were a few other bikes at Coco's in addition to ours and Dan and Jack...

If I understood correctly, it was a father, his two sons and a friend of theirs. They were on a 990 (which sounded so sweet with its Akrapovic pipes), a 950SE, a 650R and a Husaberg 570(I think?) Nice guys though.

Dan and Jack had warned us that Coco could sometimes be in a bad mood and to take it chill until we met him. We needn't have worried, he was in a great mood, laughing, trading insults, selling beer, etc.

We sat down, had a beer and chatted with Coco for a while.

Of course we signed the guest book,

checked out the collection,

chatted some more with Coco,

and watched a little t.v.

Eventually, we got our stickers and it was time to go our separate ways from Jack and Dan:

They're a couple of great guys and I hope to see them on the road again soon!

iPhone panorama of Coco's:

Next up, the road back to Gonzaga . . .

[slagnado 0]

Nice RR-is there more?

[Mr.JAJA 384]

Inspiring write up, being down there many time with my VolksBaru, camping In Percebu, day trips to LA bay, cocos corner, Mikes Sky ranch and got stuck in Lake diablo after a raining night. I have to go there with my GS1150 to. :coolio:/>