Nov 20 - San Quintan to Santa Rosalia - Momentus

So I gets up nice and early the next morning and decide to have myself and energizing and untypical breakfast before heading out on what I hoped would be a big mile day.

Coffee and food all consumed I head to the room to grab my gear and while loading the bike I see, just outside the motel, people lining the streets. Then I see the cool old and classic cars, including the Starsky and Hutch machine and numerous lowriders. A classic car cruise, cool, but on a Tuesday morning?

Bike loaded I pull up to the side of the road to watch the cars. Cars followed by some herd of sheep, then a marching band....a full on parade on Tuesday morning. Well I sat there and watched it for abit but it was never ending and I could hear more marching bands in the distance to be seen yet.

Why a parade on Tuesday morning? Is it a national holiday? Is my whole day going to parade after parade? I found out later it was American Thanksgiving (why did these guys celebrate that?) and no, not every town had a parade thank god.

Now, as most know, things in Mexico move at a diffferent pace than a gringo is used to. This was one sloooow parade, and I mean slow. I watched one guy march off the street, get a taco, march back into the parade and never broke a casual amble pace.

With miles to make and entertainment value of this parade limited (it seemed to imitate a Canadian parade but the effort of imitation seemed conspicuous and false, thus not being attractive to me) I needed to get going. One thing about a gringo on a huge old bike like mine is the entertainment factor. The thought occurred to me when people marching in the parade were looking at me parked in the sidelines - I am parade worthy.

I have been in parades before (Scouts, BMX, motorbikes, car dealerships, football) and I know the drill, sooo, I fire up the beast and head out into the parade flow.

Well this parade is slooow, so letting the bike chug along in first gear while I waved to confused spectators (wished I had some candy to throw) allowed me to easily pass the other participants and make time out of town. The cops at the end of the parade route looked abit confused as I didn't make the parade route turn but rather headed into flowing traffic. How does the song lyric go? "I smile and wave"...

As you can imagine the traffic heading away from the town was pretty slow, a parade of its own, but moving. So I am cruising along, following the car in front of me, in about the centre of my lane, when crap! the mexican riding a beat up old mountain bike on the side of the road suddenly turns into my lane and my path.

Now...time slows down when this happens, but only so much, and only enough that I was able to redirect the bike enough that I didnt completely t-bone this guy. However, 5´10" reasonably fit canadian = 175lbs, full dress Goldwing = 775lbs, mexican on a crappy old mountain bike = 130lbs? Result = messy.

One thing you learn about riding a huuuuge bike like this with tuned, but still 26 year old braking systems, is to respect momentum. Cooking into unmarked curves a little hot (more on that soon), chasing a lean Vik on his sweet Beemer while canyon carving in Cali, or trying to do fishtails for the camera in dirt and sand all give momentum a real sense of perspective.

When in a situation like this, as you can imagine, momentum can be your friend. I turned as much as possible, pulled my knees in and braced for impact. Uhhh, not much impact for me and it barely changed my course so no wipe outs were imminent. When I looked back the mexican dude was still finishing his wipeout. He bounced about 10 feet off the front of my bike to land in a pile in the sand at the side of the road.

My options? I am in Mexico, a gringo and I just nailed a local guy at about 20 miles per hour speed difference. Running was a consideration, but one not considered for long. I started looking for my dirt track options of the side of the road, turned, took the impact of dropping off about an 8" pavement drop and headed back.

The dude was about 40, scraggly ass and up and dusting himself. He looked very confused, even moreso when I rode up. I asked if he was ok, was he hurt? I made him move everything, nothing broken, no blood, I got off my bike (leaving it running) and grabbed him, checking for injuries, felt the knee he seemed to be favouring, more confusion on his part, and he was ok....so I saddled up and split. I mean what do you do? Wait for the cops to "help"? He was ok, he seemed happy that I was concerned about him, I was outta there.

I wish I had a sticker to give him, lol. Stickers are like currency during the Baja 1000 race. Most teams have boxes of them to give to the screaming kids that wait by the topas for handouts. In the case of Big Rich, he had an entire garbage bag full to give out. He actually got a bit frustrated with me as I was the passenger and not throwing those stickers out the window fast enough. "Steekers!!!, Steekers!!!" the little kids would yell. And wearing a team uniform I was constant target for people young and old "Steekers!!!, Steekers!!!". They really expedited military checkpoints and other obstacles to chasing the race truck.

I drove about 30 mins at a good clip then stopped to inspect the bike. A few new scratches (the bike is far from immaculate to start with),. nothing broken, no blood or hair anywhere, lol, so I carried on.

Not far after that in a rather tight corner was a rock the size of cantalope. I was leaned over abit so really couldn't adjust my line much so I just tried not hit it with the wheels and prepared for impact. Again momentum was a friend. The rock hit the centre stand of the bike but I basically carried on unscathed. I was not too happy about how my morning was shaping up though.

A weird thing about these roads was that although there are arrows indicating there is a corner and it tells the generla direction, left or right, they give no indication of severity of radius. In northern California and most of Canada we have spped indicators. Canadian ones I convert kms to miles and I am good. A 50kph corner is taken at 50 miles, all good.

California ones have a trick. 30 mph corners can be taken around 50 mph. 15 mph are taken at 15 mph or LESS! Extremely sever corners.

Baja corners give no indication. After cruising into a few corners about 15 mph too fast and needing to lean waaay over with abit of panic, off throttle and rear brake I soon beecame pessimistic about every corner taking them all slow. Made for a nice ride but not good for making up miles.

The road down the Baja Peninsula crosses the peninsula several times. It has mountian ranges and long flat desert. Long flat desrert is good for making miles in a day and little geckos or whatever they are are not even noticed when you run over them at 130kph.

The only shortfall I have with this old bike is I wish it had another gear for long fast higway riding. After 7000 km´s on this bike in the last 4 weeks I still try to shift in to 6th gear about once a day.

Riding through this desert is an interesting thing. The sun is baking hot, hot hot hot. With my new open faced helemt I have to put sunblock on a few times a day and it gives abit of an oddshaped tan. IN that desert the sunsets were spectacular, the colours incredible.

One cool area I ride through had bike pilñes of round stones, huge stones, much like Joshua Tree but abit different, very Flintstones.

Apperently kitties like to sleep on the seat of the Wing, this was the third one.

That day I ground out over 700km's regardless of hitting people, rocks, sun, and dust. I actaully could have went alot more but I do not like that road, or the other users of it, at night. At one little town aong the way I stopped for the night. I was hoping to make it to La Paz so I could take the ferry in the morning to the mainland, but if the ferry didn{t leave first thing and I rode in the morning I could still make it from where I was.

So I book into a motel and start asking the woman about the ferry and what time it leaves in the morning. Well my spanish is limited and Mexican people are even worse at cherades than the French so it was slow going. She kept telling me it went to Gauymas (not Mazatlan as was my understanding) and she said it was across the street. Ok, so when I write it like this it seems obvious (maybe like watching a tv show is obvious to the observer) but there was another ferry that left form the very town I was in and went to the mainland.

The advantange of this is that the mainland has a much better road (4 lanes) and one that I had not traversed twice in the past 5 days and one that Vik and I hope to ride together in the spring when we go back to get the bikes. One thing about travelling with a professional photographer is that you get to see ALL of the road you are on, photo stops are plentiful so I would get to see that road in detail.

Ok so the ferry leaves at 9 am, all set.

More pics...