Ed's Gone South

Feliz Año Nuevo en Baja!

Total Miles of Trip: 3,320
Days on the Road: 18
Current Location: Garopaba, Brazil (more on that later!)

Ok, ok, ok… So I sent out an email alerting you of more adventures afoot. So it’s been a month and you probably got to wondering if El Cab and I ever made it home from mañana-land. So I didn’t really follow up on my promise of “more updates from the road.” So?

Well, I apologize for the late posting, but technically this IS an update from the road, although not the same road I was on in late December when I alerted my most faithful readers of the newest upcoming chapter of “EdsGoneSouth – Part 1.5: El Cabroncito Rides Again!” Well, I’m happy to report that good ol’ El Cab did indeed ride again, and aside from a few bucks and winnies, he did just fine.

As I said in my last email, when I received a call from my friend Zac about a Baja trip for New Year's, who was I to hold good ol' El Cab back? He was a-buckin' and a-rearin' in the garage just at the thought of cold margaritas on the beach, crater-sized potholes taken at 60 mph, and good ol' taco gas warming up the saddle. Although the trip would eventually take on a life of its own, the original plan was six men, five bikes, one Land Cruiser and 16 days in the land of plenty... Mexico! We were to meet on the evening of the 20th in San Felipe, the northernmost town on the east side of the Baja Peninsula. From there we were slated to take the nasty yet scenic dirt roads to get down to Los Barriles by Christmas Eve. At least that was the plan...

Pasted below are some photos from the journey, and further down, two short stories about the adventures and friendships that ensued. To see even BETTER photos, go to James Cox's website of our trip here.

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While at first I thought this skeleton on the side of the road somewhere south of San Felipe would be the best view of a whale I’d get on the whole trip, I saw one perform a full breach (you know, when they jump completely out of the water and land on their back!) off the coast of Cabo over a week later while James and I “played guests” in the beachside pool of a five star hotel.

James and I made a deal to try to run every day…

...and that deal was quickly eroded by a steady flow of liquid gold!

Many thanks go out to Chris for letting us all stay at his little slice of heaven in Los Barriles, between La Paz and Cabo. We camped out for three days next to his airstream playing music, getting stupid, and generally just being six guys on vacation.

The backroads of Baja are not known for their regular maintenance, and really there’s no real promise they will even still be there when you try to drive them! This washout is about one or two storms away from closing down the coast road from Los Barriles to Cabo for a little while.

We couldn’t resist a stop in the “smallest bar in the world.” Four stools, one bartender, and 53 tequilas served only in shot glasses.

James and I thought we were hardcore, staying up until 2:30 on New Years. Ha! The owners of our hotel stayed up listening to roaring music and singing full volume until AT LEAST 9 AM the next day when we were motivating to the hit the road. This is what was left of the party as we were leaving. There didn’t seem to be any end to debauchery in sight.

Just another Sunday afternoon in Todos Santos, with seven guys standing around drinking beer watching one guy work on a car...

On the way home, James and I encountered a little cold spell. We hunkered down in the fancy balclavas that Chris gave us and rode like hell.

Back home in Santa Fe, the weather was far from the 85 degrees we had just the morning before in Los Mochis.

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Uh, Anybody seen Brian?

To persevere on international overland journeys, one must have three key characteristics: 1) A sense of humor, 2) A sense of self, and 3) A sense of smell. Luckily, our compadre from Durango, CO, Brian Epstein, has all three.

Brian was a late addition to the trip after Chris, our host in Baja, decided he wanted to get his early sixties Land Cruiser down to his place in Los Barriles. The plan was simple: pump some money into new tires, a battery, and some other maintenance treats for the dilapidated yet sexy old rattle trap, and drive like hell for 2,000 miles from Crested Butte to the end of Baja in six days. Piece of cake…

Brian’s adventures began somewhere between Colorado and southern Utah, when the Cruiser started spewing oil like a sieve. By the time he got to Zion to rendezvous with Chris, the Cruiser had drunk a full case of oil. Somewhere between Durango, CO and Blanding, UT there’s one hell of an oil streak on the pavement I’m hoping to never have the inopportunity to meet – at least not on two wheels. I can just see the Motorcycle Missionaries out of Salt Lake piled fifteen Harleys high in a blind left-turner right around Monticello.

After a little creative welding, Brian was underway again, and headed to San Diego. Things were well until San Felipe, Mexico – the first gringo settlement south of the border on the east side of the Baja Peninsula. James and I had arrived on time on the 20th, and we learned our the rest of the bunch was running at least a day behind out of San Diego. Already on Mexico time, James and I occupied ourselves with a typical Mexican winter’s day: Tecates, nursing a bottle of fine 100% blue agave love potion, and stuffing our faces with fish tacos. For better or for worse, there’s not much else to do in San Felipe.

The gents arrived late that day with Brian and the mighty Land Cruiser in tow, well, not literally in “tow.”

Not yet, at least.

Early the next morning, we set out at the crack of 10:00 AM south out of San Felipe on one of Baja’s famed dirt roads. The Baja 1000 had just passed through this way a few weeks earlier, so we knew we were in for it. We took off like a team of racers with Randy from southern California leading the charge. Randy is one of those riders that makes hacks like me want to pack it up and go home. Sure, I’ve ridden a few laps around South America by this time, but I don’t GET AIR on a fully loaded 500 pound bike on wash-board detours in the middle of Mexico. Randy is truly radical in every way.

Anyway, around noon we stopped for piss break #4, and someone blithely inquired, “Hey, where’s Brian?”

“He’s ahead of us.” “No, he’s about ten minutes back.” “Shouldn’t we wait?” “Didn’t he stop for beer?” “Nah, he’s fine.” “Was the truck running ok?” “Of course!” “Man, I sure could go for a beer.” “He probably stopped to pee.” “Didn’t he have a camera?” “Fuck it, let’s go – we’re losing daylight.” “Anybody else want to stop for beer?”

And that’s how it happened. That’s how our Baja adventure took its first turn towards “Epic Journeyitis.” All trips south eventually get to that point, it’s just a matter of where and when. You’d think I’d recognize the symptoms by now, but each “Epic Journey” is so distinct from the last. It’s truly an asymptomatic affliction, at least in the early stages. The end result, however, is common among all cases of Epic Journeyitis: despite one’s best intentions and careful planning, the road itself eventually takes control of the journey rendering it epic in every way. That’s when Epic Journeyitis sinks its long talons into the back of your small rodent of a plan. The best thing is to just go limp and let it take control. To fight it is to cause yourself and your fellow Journeymen more pain.

While our trip was headed towards truly epic proportions fast enough, Brian’s trip was already reaching Warp 5. Unbeknownst to us, Brian never made it two miles out of San Felipe. No, he didn’t stop to pee, take pictures, buy beer, or even take a nap. He broke down five minutes outside of town – plain and simple. And it wasn’t even a truly worthy breakdown. He didn’t break an axle on a boulder or even blowout on a rocky stretch. No, the demise of the mighty Land Cruiser was not so glamorous. No, that terrible old beast just threw a rod at 50 mph on a straight-away stretch of Baja’s best blacktop. He hadn’t even made it past the obnoxious Coldwell Banker and Century 21 signs advertising the eventual raping and pillaging of the wildest stretches of Baja at the hands of northern imperialists. Nope, he just heard a few pops and whirls and rolled to a stop in the suburbs, just as if he were somewhere in Orange County.

What happened over the next 24 hours, however, will be the stuff of tequila-laden campfire stories for years to come.

According to sources at the scene, Brian sat on the side of the road for about an hour before a friendly Mexican man in an old pick-up stopped to tow him back to town. Not speaking a lick of Spanish, Brian merely pointed to the engine and said, “No go.” Luckily his succinct cry for help was understood.

Brian was dropped off at one of the few mechanics in town sometime around midday. We were meanwhile already 75 miles down the road dodging basketball sized rocks, sandy ruts and miles and miles of bone rattling washboard. One bike had already been laid down and before the end of the day two more of my fellow riders would take a few hundred bucks off the value of their cherry bikes in similar mishaps. We pulled into the beach front yurt of Chris’ friend Ray around 4:00 all the while getting more and more preoccupied about Brian. Zac was perhaps the worst of us, having been best friends with Brian since childhood.

Around that time, Brian was negotiating with a mechanic in Spanish and really not getting anywhere. Penniless and hungry, he took up the mechanic on a generous offer for a place to stay for the night. I’m not sure whether it was at his place, or with a friend, but Brain soon got a taste of the side of San Felipe not often seen by tourists.

He recognized the smell immediately – don’t ask me why. That acrid smell that hangs in the air for days. The smell of death. The smell of meth.

It turns out that Brian’s hosts were running one of the best crystal meth dens in San Felipe. The place was full of manically frenzied Mexicans who could have at least put that inexhaustible chemical energy to good use in cleaning the place up. Instead they conspired overnight while Brian slept, pilfering his Ipod, some money, sunglasses, and even his old sneakers.

The next morning, Zac, Randy, and Chris set out backtracking to find Brian somewhere along the road. We really had no idea if he was still back in San Felipe, or if he had passed us overnight, so James and I took off south to check with gas station attendants and highway police if they had seen Brian, the Land Cruiser, or hopefully both.

Once the northern reconnaissance team found him, Brian was put on a bus to La Paz, 24 hours south, so we could rendezvous with him there. He arrived safe and sound, and James and I picked him up a day later to make it down to Chris’ place in Los Barriles. While we didn’t make it for Christmas, we were all reunited again on the 27th, spending a mere five days together before James and I took off on a ferry for the mainland. Last I heard about Brian, he had made is way back to San Felipe to pick up the Land Cruiser only to have the new engine fail somewhere just south of the border again. Rumor has it that he finally got back home to Durango a week or so later…

The Odd Couple

People say that traveling together is the true test of friendship. If you can stand spending day in and day out talking to, eating with, listening to the snoring of, and dealing with the idiosyncrasies of another person for weeks on end, be it man or woman, your friendship is built to last. But what if you’ve never met the guy before? In all my travels, I never thought I would resort to “internet dating” to find a travel buddy, but that’s essentially how I met James. James Cox from Toas, NM. Well from Chico, really. Well, maybe from somewhere between Connecticut and Mexico, but that’s a different story.

James and I met up in Santa Fe in my garage. Our courting period to size each other up and decide whether or not we could actually travel together was done over a 15 minute car ride on the way to the BMW shop where our bikes awaited us. He didn’t smell, bark, bite, or have turret’s syndrome, so I figured he was ok. I suppose he put me up to the same rigorous standards and decided I was ok as well. Whew…

The first real test of our friendship came the first night in Mexico. James knew I was, shall we say, more reserved than he as far as expenditures go while on the road. Fourteen months of scraping by to make the duckets and drops of gas last programmed me to be a little parsimonious, I suppose. I think James would call it cheap. And I also knew that James was, shall we say, more reserved than I regarding gastronomical adventuring. Or better said, he'd ratehr eat proper food and a glass of good wine, while I'll eat just about anything off the back of a truck.

Anyway, as we cruised the endless array of hopeless trinket sellers in San Felipe with their stacks of straw-hat sombreros, shell-strung wind chimes, and wooden “ribiting” frogs, we perused the options for dinner. Uninspired and not crazed with hunger just yet, we ended up on the malecon (boardwalk) talking to a few local drunks. They were nice enough with three day old beards and enough clothes on to withstand a Santa Fe winter. It was chilly, but not cold by my standards. It was obvious after a few moments they just wanted a few pesos for a few beers, but with a little prodding they opened up about the local job scene and told us about their family situations. The conversation was fun, but James seemed bored, not speaking much Spanish. Before we left, we traded them a few pesos for a beer in exchange for a recommendation of where we should eat.

“Oh, well you should go down to Matilde’s! It’s where all the locals eat. Real home cooked food, not this overpriced tourist stuff.” Always on the take for some sliver of “authenticity” in the over-priced and over-sterilized world of travel, I took them up on their recommendation, and we wandered on over.

As we walked up I could hear James’ pace stutter. The restaurant was a converted hotdog stand with a few aging picnic tables out front and a piece of blue plastic sheeting wrapping around one side to block the cold winter wind. On each table was a bowl of loose salt and nothing else, save some crumbs and dried salsa. James’ eyes widened as I asked what she had for dinner. Matilde wore a short flowered apron and stains of old salsa and beans marred her white cotton blouse. She said she had stew and tortillas. After a long cold day, stew seemed to be just what the doctor ordered. I turned to James to describe the situation, and he replied, “Is it dog or cat stew?” He was going to be a good sport, but he wanted to make sure I knew where he really stood.

I could feel his instinctual resistance: Run away! Bacteria! The plague! Giardia! But after only a few moments of hesitation, James sat down and played ball. The stew came and we dug in. Huge chocks of boiled beef and ugly pieces of random bones lined the bottom of the bowl among two inch long chucks of broken carrots (knives?) and sliced potatoes. James ate voraciously and didn’t look back. No one would call James uncommitted to the moment.

After I paid up and thanked ol’ Matilde for the tasty grub, we lumbered back to the hotel to hunker down for the night. It was Monday in San Felipe in the dead of winter and let’s just say things weren’t exactly “hopping.” James thanked me for making him step out of his comfort zone, but warned that there would be hell to pay if Matilde’s mystery stew brought on a case of Montezuma’s revenge. I told him the proof would be in the pudding later that night (sorry, couldn’t resist!)

As we bedded down for the night, I honestly feared I may have taken James a little too far too fast as far as gastronomical explorations go. We both had dull pains in the gut and my own paranoia almost prevented me from sleeping. When we arose in the morning, we found we were both safe and sound and I didn’t recall any sounds of agony coming from the bathroom at 4 AM. Mission accomplished.

James and I established a camaraderie very quickly, and we came to trust each other’s judgement. Despite our inherent differences and my deeply engrained thriftiness, we made a great traveling team. Our odd-couple style worked out perfectly just the way it should, and I can honestly say the “internet travel buddy” thing worked out. Now, if he would just get his fucking motorcycle out of my garage.

Cannonball Run

It seems no matter how many miles I travel and no matter how many times I ride too far for too long and say “Never again,” I always seem to end up in the same situation. I push it. I get destination fever, and forget comfort, sense, and my own limits. Maybe great feats are born out of pushing the limits, but so are stupid mistakes.

Either way, James and I found ourselves in a predicament on the way home. We were in Los Mochis on Monday, January 3rd – the day James has promised to be back in Taos. We were 1200 miles away from Santa Fe, and it looked like the skies were conspiring to rain all day. And they did…

We set out at 9:00 am, and drove like hell through the falling rain. We were both more and more surprised as the day grew longer, just how much ground we were covering. The stretch of highway running along the western Mexican mainland from Mazatlan to Nogales is an expensive four-lane toll road. It was going to cost us about $60 each just in tolls to get through the day. It’s similar to the per mile cost of the Delaware stretch of I-95! In most Latin American countries, there are motorcycle lanes that actually go around the toll booths. I guess they figure bikes are so small, they really shouldn’t have to pay. I wish I could say this was the case in Mexico, but it seems that only half of the toll operators felt this was a good policy. We tried dodging every toll booth we could, driving over sidewalks, around pilings, under low-hanging roofs – you name it. In at least half the stations we either got caught and told to pay or we just couldn’t find a way around.

Somehow, someway, we made it to the border by 8:00 pm. It had been dark for an hour and some, and we were stepping all over my cardinal rule of international motorcycle travel: Never, but NEVER ride at night. Yeah, well…. We arrived wet and frozen to the bone. James’ racing style pants were funneling all the rain INTO his boots, so he was dumping them out by the pint-full every half an hour. The line to get across the border was backed up for a few miles. As the rain and our body temperatures kept falling and the line failed to move, I showed James one of the few unspoken rights to motorcycles in Latin America.

Bikes. Don’t. Wait.

It’s actually a pretty sensible rule. We’re the ones standing in the rain. We’re the ones with high RPM engines that easily overheat at an idle. We’re the ones that can slip between the smallest of spaces between cars, barriers, etc. So we did. WE took off down the right shoulder and drove like hell. There was a Mexican cop watching the line a few hundred yards back, but we figured by the time he saw us, we’d be gone. And we were. I led us all the way down, the ramp leading to the border above Nogales and into line six cars behind the border station. James (God bless him) was obviously uncomfortable with the situation, not liking being one of “those people” that rides on the shoulder and bucks the line. But as soon as we were allowed in line, he did his boot dump trick, spewing water onto the wet pavement for a good 20 seconds. I glanced about at the cars around us and the look of compassion in everyone’s eyes made it clear that no one cared if we Had just bucked 1.5 hours of traffic.

The next morning we set out again around 9 am, and miraculously made it all the way to Santa Fe by 7 pm. We hauled 1200 miles in less than 34 hours, still ten hours short of the iron butt award.