Just under 100 hours…

An ice-cold Tecate overlooking Bahia de San Quintin

A little less than 5 days and we point the bikes south.  Seriously south.  As in not turning around until we are a thousand miles into Baja and we run out of land.  I am having a hard time falling asleep at night thinking about how much fun we are going to have.  I love riding in Mexico.

I’m an east coast guy (I grew up in New Jersey), and I really didn’t get exposed to the rest of the world until I went in the Army back in the early ‘70s.  I didn’t know anything about Mexico, other than what I saw in the old Zorro TV shows.  I got lucky, though. I joined the Army and my first post was to Fort Bliss, right on the Mexican border.  I quickly made a new friend, Mark Collier, another east coast boy who was a worldly and mature guy.   At 27, he was much older than me.  Mark drove a Porsche Targa, he wore a Rolex, and he’d already been in Vietnam.  He was my hero.

Mark invited me to a Mexican restaurant the first day I met him, and the invitation shook me up.  Back in the ‘50s and ’60s in New Jersey we weren’t as global as we are now.  There weren’t any Mexican restaurants off Exit 9.  Mexican food?  Man, I just didn’t know.  Veal parmigiana, sure.  Gefilte fish, bring it on.  Bagels and lox? Hey, don’t scrimp on the schmear.  But Mexican food?  Couldn’t you catch a disease or something?

Fortunately for me, Mark was a very cool guy.  He took me to this little hole-in-the-wall Mexican place that was right on the border.  I looked out the window and Juarez was just a few feet away on the other side of the river, although the fabled Rio Grande didn’t look like much of a river (I guess I was expecting the Mississippi).  I could have waded across the Rio Grande. Or maybe even walked on the rocks in it without getting my feet wet.  It couldn’t have been more than a few inches deep.

Mama Espinosa's lobster burritos in El Rosario

The waitress, a pretty young woman with beautiful dark eyes, brought the menus over and I was in a pickle.  I didn’t know what to order.  Burritos?  Man, I shuddered to think what was in those.  Quesadillas?  Couldn’t even pronounce that one, but for some reason I was pretty sure it had armadillo in it.  Pollo?  What’s a pollo?  Mark laughed when he saw me reading the menu, and he took it from there.  “Dos Tecates con lime y sal…” a pause…“dos chile rellenos,” he said, and that was the prelude to one of the best dinners I’d ever had.  Ice cold Tecate beer with rock salt around the edge of the can, and a wedge of lime you squeeze into the beer.  Incredibly soft and long, cheese-stuffed, battered peppers.  Beans.  Rice.  Chips.  More Tecate.  I was hooked then and there.  Still am, as a matter of fact.

So, here I am, 40 years later, and all I can think about is finding more little places like that restaurant as we meander south a thousand miles into Mexico and then back on our California Scooters.  Maybe I’m trying to relive my youth, doing the ride on a bike inspired by one that was in production when I was in grade school.  Maybe I’m excited about spending quality time with Simon, Arlene, J, and John.  Maybe I’m excited about the great photos I know we’ll grab down there. Maybe it’s the real Mexican food I know we’ll be enjoying.  You know, as I wrap this post up, I know there’s no maybes…it’s definitely all of the above, and more.  And we’ll keep you posted.  Right here.