Baja, baby!

On the road…Baja’s Transpeninsular Highway through the rock formations around Catavina!

So, the RX3s are in, the dates are cast in concrete, and come H-E-Double-Hockeysticks or high water, we’re Baja bound, baby! We’re making this run from April 29 to May 3 (that’s Wednesday through Sunday), and here’s what we need to know:

• Are you in?
• Are you picking up your bike here at the plant now, are you picking it up here immediately before the Baja trip, or do you plan to have us ship it to you before the Baja trip?

Shoot me an email directly (jberk@cscmotorcycles.com) so I’ll know how many are going. We’re going to have a great time, my friends. I can’t wait.

Here are a few preliminary answers to the questions I know you’ll be asking:

You’ll need to be here the night before.  We’ll be pulling out of Azusa at 4:30 in the morning on Wednesday to avoid the LA and San Diego rush hour traffic.  Coffee is your friend, and we’ll have a pot going here.

The rule for our departure on each morning of the trip is this…if you’re not ready to leave when the group is, you’re on your own, because we’ll be down the road. I’ve done this before, and (trust me on this), if we don’t leave on time, we won’t be able to finish the trip on time.  That 0:Dark:30 departure on Wednesday, though, is for our first day only…we’ll leave at a more reasonable 8:00 a.m on all of the following days while we are in Mexico. 8:00 a.m. Not 8:10, or 8:15, or…well, you get the idea.

You’ll need your US passport, US insurance on your bike, and insurance for your bike in Mexico.  As I posted before, we strongly recommend Baja Bound Insurance. It’s the company I always use, and they are awesome.

Baja Bound: Our preferred Baja insurance provider!

Our good buddy Geoff, a VP at Baja Bound, will buy us all breakfast in Ensenada at Velero’s.     Trust me on this, folks…we’ll have covered about 200 miles at that point on our first day, and a breakfast at Velero’s is an awesome way to start a trip into Baja!

Breakfast at Velero’s in Ensenada courtesy of Baja Bound Insurance…it doesn’t get any better than this!

Well, maybe it does…we’ll all get fish tacos at my Guerrero Negro buddy Tony’s place…courtesy of your blogmeister!

Whoa…it just keeps getting better….another free meal…the lobster burritos at Mama Espinoza’s courtesy of CSC Motorcycles!

The next thing to consider…I want you to think very seriously about your riding skills from this perspective:   When we get on the open road, we’ll be running at speeds up to about 65 mph.   If you’re not comfortable riding at highway speeds yet because you are a new rider, you should take a pass on this Inaugural Baja Run.   We’ll be doing this ride every year, and if you have an RX3, you’re automatically invited.  If you’re not comfortable riding at these speeds, though, it would be better to plan on making the trip next year after you have a few more miles under your belt.   I did a group ride once with a guy that wanted to run 35 mph the whole distance, and I’m not going to do that again.  It’s unfair to the rest of the group.

You need to be on an RX3.   We’ve had a bunch of other folks write and tell us they want to ride with us on their BMW, or their Harley, or their whatever.   Folks, part of the CSC RX3 ownership experience is that we’re running these adventure rides for our riders.   If you have a Tiger or a Ducati or whatever, check out the adventure rides they run (you’ll find they don’t have any).   Better yet, if you ride anything other than an RX3, take the money you’d spend on your first couple of years of scheduled maintenance on your BMW or Ducati or Triumph, buy an RX3, and come ride with us!

The abandoned Mission San Fernando Rey de Espana Velicata

The ride will be exclusively on asphalt, or it will mostly be on asphalt.  It’s your call.  If you want to see the cave paintings, the abandoned Mission San Fernando Rey de Espana Velicata, Coco’s Corner, or the Isla Del Carmen shipwreck in San Jacinto, it will mandate a few miles on dirt roads, but we’ll make that decision as a group, and if anyone doesn’t want to ride in the dirt, we’ll take those places off the list.    Believe me, there’s plenty of other cool stuff to see in Baja.

You’ll probably need about $850 (maybe less) for expenses along the way.  If you want to share a room with one of the other riders, that number will drop sharply.   I’ll refine the cost estimate based on the scouting run I did a couple of weeks ago with Susie, and I’ll post that in the next few days.

I’m off on another secret mission this coming Wednesday for Steve (it’s Canada this time, folks), but I’ll be reachable via email if you have any questions.

That’s it for now, boys and girls.   Don’t read anything negative into the above.  I want you to ride with us and I (as always) can’t wait to get my knees in the breeze and point my new RX3 toward Baja.   I’m getting the orange one….I hear they’re faster than the others!