Don’t Try This At Home, Kids…

I thought I might put one or two of my adventures (maybe misadventures would be a better description) up here every once in a while, strictly for their entertainment value.  I came across a video today of a fellow on a trials bike (I’ll show you the video in a second or two), and the entire time I was watching it, I kept thinking about a puddle in Mexico.

Two of my friends and I took a really great trip down to Santa Rosalia (a very interesting town on the Sea of Cortez,about 675 miles south of the border) in 2007 to see the whales and just take in the beauty that is Baja.  You can read about that trip at http://motofoto.cc/baja_2007.htm.  It rained pretty hard the first two days.  We did okay in the rain, put an easy 1500 miles on the bikes, saw the whales, and had some great food (the food in Baja is incredible). 

We were coming home when we opted to stay in a cool little hotel called the Old Mill in San Quintin, Mexico.  It’s a great place, but we had to ride about 5 miles on dirt roads to get there, and this was two days after a solid two-day torrential downpour.  The ground was still soaked, and navigating dirt roads after rain like we had on huge street bikes was rough.   It’s the kind of situation where you see something moving out of the corner of your eye and wonder who in the world could be passing you on such a slippery and muddy road.  Then you look down and see it’s the rear end of your own motorcycle.  You get the idea. 

We were sort of doing okay in the sand and the mud, slipping and sliding, and somehow keeping the bikes roughly vertical, but then we came up to a puddle that looked like an ocean.  No way we could go around it; it literally stretched across both sides of the road.  The fields on either side were deep mud.  So there we were, staring at this puddle, wondering how deep it was, and what was on the bottom.   One of my buddies picked up a rock and threw it in, and then we all looked at each other and started laughing.  The water was so muddy we couldn’t see the bottom, and the rock just disappeared into it.  Throwing that rock was the ultimate futile gesture, and it seemed incredibly funny at the time.  So, we had to make a decision…turn around and go back, or plow through the puddle.

My friend Paul was on a Fat Boy, and he slithered through the puddle without going down.  The water and mud were literally over the tops of his exhaust pipes, and they were blowing bubbles and hissing as the big Harley went amphibious.  I went next on my Tiger, squeezing the grips so hard I thought I saw rubber extruding between my fingers.    Same thing…it was a bit scary, but I got through, and the Triumph sits high enough that I didn’t even get my boots wet. 

Dave went last.   He hit a submerged pot hole (a big pot hole) that Paul and I, by the luck of the draw, missed altogether.  Dave’s FJR1300 went down hard.  Dave didn’t get hurt, but the results were pretty funny.   Even though we had stayed dry, Paul and I waded into water up to our knees.  That big 700-lb, fully-loaded Yamaha was nearly submerged.  The three of us wrestled with it, and after a lot of attempts, we managed to get the bike up on its wheels again.  Somehow we got it out.  Somehow it hadn’t sucked water into the engine.  Somehow we got it started again.   We were soaked.   We started laughing again.  None of us had known Yamaha made U-boats.

My friends Dave and Paul, in a field somewhere near San Quintin, about 200 miles into Baja…

So, what does it take to make a motorcycle go where you want it to go when the terrain is less than cooperative?   Well, here we go…take a look at this guy…

Don’t try this at home, kids…

You have to wonder how long it takes to develop skills like the fellow in this video has, and what kind of courage it takes to make those hops from rock to rock.  All I wondered was:  Would he have gotten through that Mexican puddle without dropping it.  What do you think?