Odd title for a post about motorcycles huh? This is actually two rides, with a break in the middle. You’ll get the title as you read along.

San Diego to San Francisco (Via Jalama)

Day 1: Christmas was coming. I’m personally not religious so Christmas is more of a time to go see the family. My family happens to be spread out along the California coast. Saturday morning I loaded the bike up and pointed myself north out of San Diego. Mom & Ted were camping at a beach spot in Jalama Beach, just west of Lompoc CA. The route from San Diego to there was pretty laid back. Unfortuantely there is just a ton of civilization between here and there. I could have gone inland and looped around but I was more keen on spending time with family. So, up the 5, 405, 101, 1, and then down a 14 mile twisty road to the beach. Along the way I tried out my new Spot Messenger. Its a pretty cool device, I think I bought as much for my family as I did for myself. I set it up to track my route sending its location every 10 minutes or so. It worked pretty well! Unfortunately they haven’t setup guest access yet so friends and family can check on it. Better yet would be if they setup an API so you can post the information on a website (I’m working on some php code to check an email address and parse the data).

I arrived at Jalama Beach just before sunset. My mom makes some of the best enchiladas for a gringa. Had an awesome dinner, philosophized about life, and crashed out pretty early. The next morning Ted and I wandered down to the beach. He was hoping to catch some fish, I was hoping to catch some good pictures. I got my pictures, he didn’t have much luck with the fish. (I think the act is more important to him than the catch). Had an awesome breakfast, wished them the best, packed the bike up and headed north to San Francisco.

Day 2: It was chilly along the coast this morning as I headed north. My route took me along the 1 with some intersections with the 101 all the way to Santa Cruz. I saw some new sections of the 1 here but this is a route I have ridden many times before on my way to Monterey. The wind was pretty gusty at times, and to be expected it was chilly along the coast. Around Big Sur I ate the most expensive hamburger I’ve every had. I think I paid $14.95 for it. It was good, but a bit pricey. At the stop I uncovered that shampoo in a not so sealed container can fill up entire open cavities with bubbles! DOH! Once I hit Monterey I realised that I’d have to take the short way into San Fran as following the 1 was going to get me in well after dark. Once I hit the 101 south of SF the traffic was heavy. I started to split lanes but apparently the SF 49er fans weren’t too keen on that. I also saw a couple of other bikes, but they weren’t attempting to split lanes at all. Go figure. Got to Jeremiah’s pretty easy and got to see him, Beatrice, and Carmen.

Day3: Today was chill day. Did some sight seeing around SF. Got groceries for dinner (We did our Xmas dinner on Xmas Eve rather than the day. Have turkey’s alway been that expensive? Spent the day playing with Beatrice, she apparently finds her Uncle Jason pretty cool. (I think she’s pretty cool too) Ate too much, passed out on the couch. A good day!

Day4: Xmas morning. I didn’t take off on Wednesday so I needed to head home today. SF to SD in one day isn’t a big deal. About 600 miles or so. I took a scenic route through Hollister, down the 25 to the 198. The 198 is a great road. That took me over to the 33 and south. At this point I had to put on my rain liners to shield me from the wind. It didn’t get above 40 degrees the entire day. I learned something about CA though. Along the 33 there is a stretch of oil wells about 24 miles long. After a while I turned off on Cerro Noreste. This road is fantastic. But, I advise doing it in the summer or warmer months. I came across snow, ice, and gravel all along this scenic route. At one point it was 35 degrees, brrr. Made it home that night, warmed up, and packed up for Baja!

Viva Mexico! San Diego to San Quintin

I should start this out by covering a few things. Our original plan was; Day 1 - SD to San Quintin via Tecate, Day 2 - San Quintin to Bahia de los Angeles (Bay of Los Angeles), Day 3 - Bay of LA to San Felipe, Day 4 - San Felipe to San Diego. Let me recap the bikes people are riding here so you have an idea of what we’re getting ourselves into. Byron is on a Suzuki DR650. Good bike, sturdy dualsport single cylinder. To most people this looks like any dirt bike. Andres has a Kawasaki KLR650. This bike is considered the poor mans adventure bike. Its a great bike honestly. Morgan is on his KTM 950 Adventure and I am on my BMW R1200GS. Morgan and I have big bikes, and later in the story you’ll see how the big bike affects me.

Day 6: Byron & Morgan came by my place around 8:30. First it was just Morgan. I asked “Where’s Byron?” The night before he decided to change the chain on his new DR650. He had some problems as it wasn’t a master link chain and it required a special tool (or a hammer) to mushroom out the rivets. Byron showed up a few minutes later. Loaded up we headed south to the Tecate Border Crossing. Today was fricken freezing. I was lucky, I have heated grips and a heated jacket. Crossing the border Byron got the Pase, Morgan got the Pase, I get the Regrese! I start to pull over for the inspection and the border guard gives me a wave and says “Pase Amigo!” Just inside Tecate we meet up with a final member Andres. Gas up and head south! About 14 miles south of Tecate we leave the pavement and roll onto the Los Compadres Highway. You can see a picture just above of Morgan on the ‘highway’. As you can see, its not much of a highway, but a dirt road.

We took the Los Compadres Highway from just south of Tecate to Highway 3 near San Vicente. From there we went south to Valle de Trinidad and had some lunch. We pulled into town and Morgan was disappointed that his favorite taco shop was closed. A very sad day in motorcycling history. Luckily Andres road around town (across the street) and found us someplace to eat. I had pollo milanese. Basically fried chicken. Boy was it good! It still hadn’t warmed up much so warm food was very welcomed. After our hearty lunch we saddled up and hit the road again. Our next stretch has some significance for me. The dirt road between Valle de Trinidad and Highway 1 is part of the leg I rode in the Baja 500 last year. This section is about 45 miles or so through a mountain pass. It was in much better shape this time around than it was over a year ago.

Just after sunset we arrived at the Old Mill in San Quintin. As we rolled into the courtyard I saw a familiar site. Parked in front of the rooms was Ida’s bike! I had met Ida back in October 2007 on my ride around Utah. After we settled in we found Ida and her friend Pedro and headed off to dinner. One thing I really like about Mexico is the food. Man I love the food. As we’re eating dinner it turns up that Andres (who is Mexican) doesn’t like Mexican food nor beer! WHAT? I think that he’s likely an alien and this is merely a cover. Stories were swapped over dinner. Byron got a little tipsy, he apparently exceeded his one margarita limit.

Day 7: On to Bay of LA, or so we thought. We said our farewells to Ida and Pedro and headed south. There were two plans being discussed. 1, we head south on the road and just get there by 1 or so. Enjoy cervezas and have an easy day. 2, we take a dirt section Byron wanted to see which was recommended by Pepe (another riding compadre). We ended up going with option 2, and using my GPS I was able to find the dirt road section. It started out great just like the roads we rode the prior day. Then, it got shitty. I’ve never been a fan of sand whoops. It took me years to be competent on them with my Husky. I had never really attempted them on my big pig of a GS. The picture above says it all. I must have fallen down about five times by the time I was pissed, over heating (me, not the bike), and generally not having fun. Morgan and I have radios and between swear words I’m asking him how much further this goes. After some convincing I push through and find holy hard packed earth. We motor on maybe a half mile and start a hill climb that just kept getting rockier and steeper. I was already tired, and I had no idea what the conditions were like further down the trail. Finally I stopped at the bottom of this. I sat there for a good 10 minutes. Byron and Andres had already gone up. Morgan was behind me. Finally, I called it and said I was going back to the road. I know, I’m a wuss. But I was tired, hungry, and didn’t want to get into a bad situation.

Andres started to walk back down and I shouted back “I’m going back to the road.” Morgan and I turned around and I got to fall down a few more times in the sand. I have to admit, my bike handled falling over wonderfully. Jesse did a great job of making bags that can handle this punishment. One time moving along at a faster speed I went down, the bike and bags ended up on top of my left leg. The bag just popped off like it was designed and went right back onto the bike as designed. After getting out of the sand and back on the hard pack I just started motoring along. Morgan is a better rider than I so I was pretty sure he was right behind me. After about 5 minutes I notice that my mirrors are totally out of whack so I correct them, and notice no Morgan in them.

Turning around I got back to find Morgan standing next to his bike covered in mud. While he was following me he rode through a mud patch and the bike just went right out from underneath him. It highsided and threw him down the road. Busted itself up some, and gave Morgan a bit of a battering. One of his latches holding on his bags broke, so we lashed it back on the bike with some tie-downs I had. We figured Andres and Byron would have caught up with us but as we talked they probably understood we’d meet then in Cataviña. Putting ourselves back together we headed south on Highway 1. I had been sweating profusely from picking up my bike in the sand, and when we hit the road the wet clothes with the cold air was pretty damn cold. About 30 miles down the road we came upon Byron and Andres on the side of the road. After a brief pow-wow we decided Morgan and I would head north while Byron and Andres would continue to Bay of LA. The band of amigos parted ways with the hopes of the chance of rejoining in San Felipe. Morgan and I hit the road north back to San Quintin.

Sometime over an hour after we parted ways we arrived in San Quintin. Morgan had to talk to the Mexican Insurance company. After a few phone calls, and trying to give them directions to the Pemex in San Quintin the adjuster shows up. Turns out his office is nearly right across the street. Since Morgan had the accident on a marked road (FYI, 80% of the roads in Baja are dirt) he figured he might as well report it. Using my poor Spanish I got us through the procedures. The end result was they totalled Morgan’s bike, and he had to load his crap onto my bike and we got to ride back to the states like two estranged lovers on the same bike. Ok, that’s what I told Byron. The real story was they didn’t have any KTM dealers down here so they asked him to take it back to the states for an appraisal. The bike was ridable, just a bit banged up. Since it was 3:30 we decided to head back to the Old Mill and stay another night and see how we felt in the morning.

Day 8: We woke up after another cold night. The Old Mill is a great hotel. Its very clean, the beds are great. But there is not heat. But hey, what do you expect for $15 a night?! I was pretty sore and tired. After breakfast we decided to head on home rather than cross through the mountains and head to San Felipe. The ride back was pretty uneventful. I got to see Ruta de los Vinos north of Ensenada on the way to Tecate. At some point one of my driving lights coveres lost its screw and started swinging around in the wind. Fortunately I saw it before it completely fell off.

Crossing back into the states was easier than coming through at the Canadian border. As tradition dictates Morgan and I stopped at our normal after the border food stop. El Rey de los Hamburgesas! (Burger King). All said and done. I learned a few things. Had a good adventure. And can’t wait to head out again soon!

For all the pictures you can see them on my Flickr!