Cardón me

I was moving some stuff around in the house a couple of weeks ago and came across some 21-year-old photos from my very first motorcycle and photo trip to Mexico.   I’d forgotten I even had them, and when I saw them, I realized the photo quality was poor.  Part of that was me (I didn’t really know what I was doing with a camera back in those days) and part of it was the passage of time (the photos had faded badly).   Ah, the wonders of my cheap scanner and Photoshop…

What you’re seeing is a December 1994 photo of my good buddy Dick Scott and yours truly at the base of a Cardón cactus in Baja’s Vizcaino Desert.   It was my first motorcycle trip into Mexico (yep, the very first), and as you have certainly surmised, it had quite an impact on me.

The Cardón is an amazing cactus.    These plants grow to over 70 feet tall, they can weigh 25 tons or more, and they live for hundreds of years.   Yes, my friends, some of these things were around before there was even a United States.    The Cardón only grows in Baja.

We’ll see a lot of plants like that on our upcoming Baja ride plus a whole lot more (there are about 30 species unique to Baja).   The Cirio (also known as the boojum) is another one.   When you see those, you’ll think they were designed by Dr. Suess (maybe after he had a couple of shots of Tequila).  It’s all part of the Baja beauty.

I’m down with a bad bit of bronchitis (ah, sometimes the alliteration flows so freely), and I’ve been too wheezy to make it into the plant or the University this week.   So with nothing to do, I scanned a few of those 1994 photos from that first exploration south of the border and I wrote a trip report of sorts.  It’s on my personal motorcycle photography website, and if you want to read it, you can find it here.

That’s it for now.   Things are happening in China.   We’ll have good news to report soon, so like always, stay tuned.