The World’s Most Interesting People…

My new best friend...one of the few times a dog in Mexico didn't want me for dinner!

 On our way south, we stopped for fish tacos in Palomar…

A quick stop in Palomar for fish tacos...

The lady who served us in Palomar

We spent the night in San Vincente on our first day in Baja, and it was more than fun.  San Vincente is a wide spot in the road about 80 miles or so south of Ensenada.   It’s an agricultural town, and it is definitely not a tourist spot.  That doesn’t mean it wasn’t fun, though.  It was a blast.  It was Friday night, and San Vincente was a hopping spot.

These little agricultural towns have the main road (the only paved road) running right down the center (it’s the Transpeninsular Highway that we’re following), and the road is about 4 or 5 feet higher than the rest of the town.  When you get off the road, you go down a pretty steep hill to get to the same level as the stores and other businesses, and there’s about a 30-foot dirt area between the street and the town on both sides of the street.  People use this dirt area that parallels the highway as a street, too, so there’s traffic on the main road and the dirt areas on either side of the paved road.  Which way the traffic flows in these dirt lanes depends mostly on…well, I don’t know.   If I break the code, I’ll let you know. 

On the road, well south of Ensenada, in the wine country

Anyway, Vincente was hopping last night.  J, John, and Simon ate off a cart with this sort of built-in oven top.  J had a cabeza taco (go ahead and Google it…you’ll be surprised).  Arlene and I wandered around a bit, checked out a couple of mercados (grocery stores), and we ended up at another little place that was cooking up a bunch of stuff.   Folks were lined up and there were barstools at a makeshift counter.  We both had quesadillas (I had two, actually).  The guy in front had this cool meat cooker that looked a lot like the ones I’ve seen in Turkey.   I can’t remember if I put that photo in the blog yesterday, but I’ll put it in again today (the guy was really cool and he seemed to be greatly amused that I was taking his photo).

J getting a couple of tacos....real tacos

J's tacos...cabeza...look it up!

On that subject…as I suspected, all the bad press in the LA Times and the San Diego newspaper about Mexico being dangerous is bunk (“bunk” is a nice word we use for, well, you know).   There is so much bunk in the world that I sometimes wonder where it all comes from.  Is there a high-volume-production bunk factory out there I haven’t heard about?  The point I’m making is that these Bajaenos are friendly, warm, and grateful that we are visiting this wonderful place.   They’ve had a double whammy down here…the recession, and the news media sensationalism painting all of Mexico as a free-fire zone.  Not that San Vincente is a tourist area (it is not), but my sense of things is that the people we hung out with last night were glad to see us.

The real deal

While we were enjoying the festive atmosphere and our quesadillas, two young kids came up to me as I was savoring a real quesadilla (Taco Bell has no idea how good these are).  It was pretty obvious we were out-of-towners, and one of the boys slowly said to me in perfect, unaccented English “It is very good, isn’t it?”  I told him it was and asked his name.   “Vinny,” he said.  I took a flyer and asked if the other boy was his cousin.  “No, he is my brother,” he said.  Ah, okay.   Not his cousin Vinny.

Vinny and his brother

We were up with the sun and on the road early today, and it was cold.  I checked out the bikes, and all were fine (oil, tire pressure, the standard big-road-trip-preflight-stuff for loose nuts and bolts, etc.).   Everything on the bikes was okay, but it was cold.  Real cold.  I was surprised, because September is supposed to be the warmest month of the year in Baja.   I guess nobody told the right people, because we were freezing.   Then the fog rolled in.  Thick, but not so thick that we couldn’t ride in it.   Thick enough to soak my jeans, though.  We saw a coffee shop in Colonet and stopped for a caffeine fix.   J bought coffee for all of us, and it was good. 

'Twas a cold and damp morning in Colonet...

We continued our journey south.  The little 150s purred.  The bikes like to run right at 45 mph.   They just feel relaxed at that speed, and it’s about the perfect speed for riding on Mexico’s Transpeninsular Highway.   Transpeninsular Highway is an impressive title, and it kind of makes the road sound like the New Jersey Turnpike, but it is not.  The Transpeninsular Highway is a two-lane country road (one lane each way) that runs north and south (with lots of zigging and zagging along the way) for a cool 1000 miles.  

Lots of fog headed out of Colonet

I’ve done this run on big bikes before, and I had a bit of trepidation about doing it on a 150, but my fears were groundless.  The seating position on the bike is perfect for this kind of riding (the ergos are about the same as a Harley Sportster, except that the Sportster weighs about 320 pounds more).  Simon was surprised…he told me the bike was extremely comfortable, and that it feels like a full-sized motorcycle.  Don’t forget…this is a guy who rode a 125 cc pizza delivery bike to the southernmost tip of South America and back, and across the length of India.

Simon Gandolfi...the world's most interesting man

Simon Gandolfi.   What a guy (you should Google him, too).   Simon spent a couple of days with us before we left on this trip, and the guys in the shop fell in love with him.  Our boys quickly dubbed Simon “the world’s most interesting man.”   Do you remember those Dos Equis commercials?  You know…the ones where a guy holding a Dos Equis beer is dubbed the world’s most interesting man…with descriptors like “he never uses lip balm” and “his mother has a tattoo that says ‘Son.’”   We are having a lot of fun with Simon, and he most definitely is the world’s most interesting man.  Before I left, Josh gave me a list of “world’s most interesting man” descriptions he grabbed off the Internet, and I’ve been dribbling them out to our group as we journey through Baja.   The one that got the best laugh was “Simon Gandolfi is the world’s most interesting man…he once called a psychic…to warn her.” 

After our coffee stop this morning, we rolled on for another hour and stopped for breakfast.  Here we were, in this little Baja restaurant, and they had wireless Internet access.   That’s where I posted my first blog entry this morning (we wanted to keep moving, so it was short – my apologies).  What is the world coming to, though?  Wireless Internet access in Baja. Arrrggghhh!   Folks, you gotta get down here and experience the real Baja…it won’t last forever.

How about that...Simon Gandolfi typing on my laptop!

Breakfast was good, and after that, it was a short hop down to El Rosario to top off the tanks before climbing into the Vizcaino desert.   Our bikes climbed, and so did the temperature.  I’ll bet we had a 60-degree temperature swing today.  It was right at about 100 degrees in the desert.  We stopped several times to peel off our layered riding gear as the temperatures continued to climb, and when Catavina came into view, we decided to call it a day.   We might have pushed on to Guerrero Negro, but there is literally nothing between Catavina and Guerrero Negro, and it’s another 140 miles or so down the road.   Too hot, too far, and we didn’t want to ride after dark.

Ah, yes, Baja's Transpeninsular Highway

So, we’re staying tonight in the Desert Inn Hotel in Catavina.   The boulder fields and Cardon cactus in this area are stunning.  I’ve seen it many times and I’m still dazzled every time I’m down this way.  Simon and Arlene were seeing it for the first time, and they both stopped for photos.  “Awesome” just doesn’t make it as an adjective here, folks.   Bright blue sky, bright green 70-foot-tall Cardon cactus (it doesn’t grow anywhere else), and huge white boulders.  It all looks like something you’d see in a science fiction movie, or maybe in a dream.  It made me feel good.   Simon’s been all over the world, and he was blown away by Baja’s beauty.

The boulder fields in Catavina

The Desert Inn is nice.   It’s 100 miles from anywhere.   They turn the generators off from 12:00 to 4:00, so there’s no electricity in the afternoon.   The desolation and the surrounding surreal landscape just make it a cool place to be, even if it’s 100 degrees.   We ate in the Desert Inn’s restaurant, sampled their Tequilas (hey, our riding was over for the day), and then we hung out in the pool.  Wow, that sure felt good.

The bikes are performing well.  We have two current production bikes (mine and Arlene’s), and two preproduction bikes (Simon’s and John’s).  During the development process Steve and the boys found a few improvement opportunities on the preproduction bikes, and these resulted in upgrades incorporated in the production bikes.   Simon’s and John’s preproduction bikes have had some of the problems we found earlier, but the production bikes have been performing flawlessly.  

And we’re not babying our California Scooters.  We ran on some pretty rough roads under construction for about an hour, and the speed bumps (“topes”) in every little town we pass through are brutal.  The Mexicans don’t just use one speed bump.   They use about 20 of the things in a row, maybe 50 feet apart, one after the other.   When they want you to slow down, they mean it.  We’d slow down for the speed bumps when we saw them in time (which didn’t always happen), and then we’d speed up after the topes.   Like I said earlier, the bikes like running around 45 mph.  We’ve cranked them up to well over 60 mph, but then we always settle into a relaxed putt to enjoy the scenery and the ride.   It’s a sweet way to see Baja.

Well, that’s it for tonight.   More great riding tomorrow…we’ll probably get to Guerrero Negro or maybe even San Ignacio.  I’ll post this as soon as I find an Internet spot.  Part of me wants to find one so I can share this with you, and part of me hopes I don’t because it means Baja is changing, and I think it’s perfect just the way it is!