The CSC Inaugural Baja Run – Day 3

What a day, and what a life (to borrow a phrase from our good buddy Reuben’s Four Corners blog).    Wow!

Last night, as you know, we had a great dinner at El Muelle’s in downtown Santa Rosalia.   We were down about 700 miles south of the border in Santa Rosalia, and it was our turnaround point.   The dinner was great, and the owner (Anna) really took good care of us.   So good, in fact, that we went back there again for breakfast.

We stayed at the Frances Hotel, and it was fun.   There are no Holiday Inns around here, folks.   The Frances Hotel is the real deal, and everyone enjoyed it.  Here’s what it looked like in the morning…

Here’s a photo of our good buddy John, who had a genuine war story for us.   John was chased down and bit by a dog (hey, it’s Mexico, and you remember me telling you about the dogs in these parts).   The dog chomped down on John’s shoe but didn’t break through, and John told us all about it in the Frances Hotel courtyard this morning…

While we were prepping for the ride down to the El Muelle for breakfast, Justin somehow managed to climb up on the roof for a better perspective…

This guy is amazing…Justin is a regular MacGuyver, but more on that later.

Here’s a photo our southern Cyclone, Tiffany, in downtown Santa Rosalia….

Justin and Juddy at breakfast.   The black Canon is faster…

After breakfast, we visited the Gustav Eiffel church just around the corner.   You’ve read my stuff about this church here on the blog before.   The churches in Baja are amazing.   More on that in a bit, too.

On the road again, leaving Santa Rosalia and heading for San Ignacio…

Tiffany, on the way into San Ignacio….

Those are date palms behind Tiffany.  The Jesuits introduced date farming to this region hundreds of years ago.   San Ignacio is natural oasis, evidently perfect for growing dates.   The area is beautiful.

Here’s a photo of my bike…

My bike again, in front of the San Ignacio Mission.

We kicked back for about an hour in San Ignacio.   Good times.

The Colonel, Justin, and Keith.   Great guys.   I’m having a blast traveling with these folks.

My good buddy Greg…another great guy.  I first met Greg at the Phoenix IMS show a few months ago.   He wanted to know all about the Baja trip, and what do you know, here he is.

And here’s Reuben, another great guy.   Reuben is an interesting man.   I already told you about his blog.   Reuben is doing a Four Corners run on his RX3, which he interrupted to ride Baja with us.   Let me tell you something else about Reuben…he owns two RX3 motorcycles.   One is in the Philippines, and the other is the one he is riding in the US  (and of course, Baja).   Reuben bought his US bike just to run the Four Corners, and he loves it!

Here’s a photo of the Colonel on his red RX3.   Eric is a retired US Army Lieutenant Colonel with two tours in Vietnam under his belt.  He’s a cool guy, and he rode with us out to San Francisco Sierra this afternoon.

Here’s another photo of Greg on the same road.   It was a glorious day in Baja…

Here’s a shot of Greg piloting his RX3 in Mexico.   Greg’s day job is piloting a Boeing 737.   Greg is another very interesting dude…he’s a real gearhead.   We had a great conversation at dinner last night.

Here’s Justin on the way to see the cave paintings…

These are our guys who opted for the cave painting ride this afternoon, high up in the San Francisco Sierra Mountains…

To get to the cave paintings, it’s 27 miles off the Transpeninsular Highway on an absolutely stunning paved (but deserted) road, and then another 7 miles on a really gnarly dirt road.

This church is in San Francisco Sierra…

One of the cave paintings…the black figure is a cougar.   These paintings were done over 10,000 years ago!

The guys taking it all in…

The question I know many of you are wondering about is how the bikes are doing.   They’re doing well, thank you.   Not perfect, but pretty good considering the service they’ve seen in the last few days.   We’ve put about 20,000 collective miles on the 15 new RX3s on this ride, most of it in Baja under some fairly extreme conditions, and we’ve had a exactly four things happen so far.

The Colonel’s bike didn’t want to turn over twice the first morning we left.   We push started it both times, it fired right up, and it’s run fine since.   It could have been a lot of things, including a weak battery, but whatever it was, it’s doing fine now.  We’ll give Eric’s bike a thorough checkup when we get back to the plant, but we are thinking this problem is behind us now.

Two guys have had centerstand problems.   On Keith’s bike, the centerstand appears to be distorting at the gusset.   That’s a hefty part, so it might be a piece of soft steel.   We’ll replace it for Keith when we get back to California.

The other centerstand issue was on Justin’s bike.  One of the Circlips securing the centerstand pivot popped off.  We removed the centerstand from Justin’s bike and we’ll reinstall it when we get back to the plant.

The other problem we had on Justin’s bike was something I’ve never encountered before on any motorcycle…the countershaft sprocket nut came off.   This was right after we rode that gnarly dirt road to the cave paintings, but I really don’t think the road had anything to do with it.   As I said earlier, Justin is an amazing guy.   He walked back along his path and found the nut lock, but we couldn’t find the nut.   That didn’t slow Justin down at all, though…he put the retainer on, grabbed some baling wire, and fixed the problem…

To be sure, Justin’s fix is a temporary one, but it got us the 70 miles back to Guerrero Negro tonight.   We bought spare parts with us, but not the countershaft sprocket nut (like I said, I’ve never seen this happen before, on any motorcycle).   We’ll find a new one when the shops open up here in Guerrero Negro, and we’ll be on our way in the morning.

It sure feels good to be in Malarrimo’s Hotel tonight here in Guerrero Negro.   I grabbed this photo of Juddy just a short while ago, and his expression seems to capture everyone’s feelings about this trip…

That’s it for now, folks.  We’re having fun.   It’s been awesome.   The bikes are great and the folks on this trip are incredible.   Like Reuben would say…what a life!