Category Archives: Mexico

Chillin’ like Villians

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We did a lot of hanging out and drinking on the boat. You know you’re in good company when you can have an absolute blast sitting around doing nothing.

We bought our beer from this fellow and his homebrew was -fantastic-!

I wish I got a picture of him driving his car with a giant mug of beer in one hand…

He gives free samples.

And has fat dogs.

Drinking some chocolate lager out of a coffee cop under a boat, oh yeah!

The Zeb chilling with some barnacles.

Alan making a fashion statement.

We moved to the deck of the boat and were sufficiently blitzed when some boatyard kids came along determined to sell us fingernail polish.

Roger insists on sampling the products before purchase.

Alan gets what may be the worlds nastiest pedicure.

We call it a night.

Things I Love About Mexico

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Our first order of business was bike maintenance. I don’t know how well you can see it in the picture, but Alan’s chain is eating his tire and wheel.


He doesn’t look too happy about it.

My bike has a broken mirror, bent rack and wobbly exhaust (that last thing has been an issue since purchase and I’ve just been ignoring it, but if we’re going to ride out into the Mexican desert I should probably make sure all my bike can remain intact).

The nice thing about Mexico is that if someone can’t help you, they know someone who can. We get directed from one shop to the next, but on the third we hit the jackpot and they set to work repairing the Zeb.

Rewelded the mirror so it still had full adjustability.

Heated and bent back the rack.

Created a custom bracket and welded it to my frame to bolt the exhaust on securely.

Grand total for these services? 10 bucks. Total time? Maybe 15 minutes.

I love this country.

San Carlos

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So after a weekend of diving the beach was being vacated and I needed to hit the road again. One of my saddlebags tore when my bike hit the sand and I opted to remove both saddlebags and send them home with my scuba buddy before they tore worse. Since a single saddlebag would be terrible for handling, I removed both and repacked to the bare essentials of what would fit in just the top duffel. I borrowed an empty sand bag and used it as a stuffsack fro my bedding and then bungee netted the whole thing. Tada!

Overpacking was probably a huge part of why I crashed and why the bag tore. Also I had previously bent my rack on a spill before leaving and I think it wasn’t supporting the weight of the bag so well all mangled like that. Oh well, live and learn, it’s amazing how you can get everything you need in whatever space you have available.

I recently purchased a little GoPro camera and mounted it on my bike to record the awesome road from Himalaya (since I was too busy riding to catch it the first time) and pressed record.


Off I go through the sand and gravel washes…

I glance down and realize the camera is missing!

I wait for my buddy to catch up and ask if he saw it.

I turn around and go back and find the camera in one of the washes. I’ll edit the video later when I get a chance because right now it’s like: Dirt riding, dirt riding, gravel wash, car tire, blackness, me staring at it for several minutes looking concerned. I’m just glad I found it and it still worked. Losing/breaking it on the first outing would be super lame.

There’s not much out by Himalaya, just farmers. Here’s some shots Aleksandra got of the landscape.

I was faster on the dirt, but they caught up with me on the slab and we all said our goodbyes at the gas station on the main road.

They were headed back home and I was going South to San Carlos where I was hoping to meet my friend Alan, but last I talked he wasn’t certain he’d make it or not.

Headed down the main highway alone on such a small bike was a bit unnerving. With my mirror broken off I had no warning and a large truck would suddenly whoosh by making my bike wobble from the wind. Going to San Carlos in the off season is a bit odd. The main road into town is a massive multi-lane boulevard with palms up the center. It seemed to go on forever and I kept wondering if I was there yet.

Someone told me this place was fairly affordable, so went there first and booked a room so I could shower. All that beach diving makes you feel pretty gritty.

The room was $30 a night and they let me use their internet so I was fairly pleased…up until they double rented my room out and some guy came wandering in while I was watching TV in my underwear.

I decided to head down to the marina and meet some locals.

San Carlos is a pretty scary place.


This picture pretty much sums up the general population/attitude.

The ex-pats were friendly and I got some free food, drink and company while I waited for Alan (lstzephyr) to join me. I decided to pass the time reading.

My friend loaned me Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and I hoped to get through it on this trip, but it’s not an easy read. The author keeps talking about the two kinds of people, the Romantic and the Classic and I know I’m the former (and the author is a bit condescending to people who think that way). I prefer to believe motorcycles run on hopes, dreams and fairy dust, what of it?

So I’m bumming around San Carlos waiting for something to happen and lo and behold it does! I get an email from CouchSurfing and it turns out a girl I met three years ago in Vienna is staying on a boat in Guaymas with her boyfriend and wants to know if I’d like to stay there with them. Heck yes I do!

I explain I’m waiting for Alan and they decide to come to San Carlos to wait with me.

This is Roger and Christine

They are cruising in this very adorable VW Buggy…

…and when Alan joins us we ride over to Guaymas looking like we got lost on our way to the Baja 500.

Their boat was damaged in the hurricane, so it’s dry docked, making a perfect garage for motorbikes.

This would be our home for three days…

Dive Report

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I should really give everyone a proper introduction.

That’s me on the left, my scuba buddy Jason in the middle and his lovely wife Aleksandra on the right. He seems pretty excited. Those two just got married the week before our trip. Sorry I didn’t mention her in the intro, the poor thing gets horribly car sick so she was just groaning in the passenger seat while we were running circles trying to get everything in order. She’s from Poland and still working on her English, but she made me smile when we arrived and she said “Becky, you are like Dakar racer!” then we had to explain what the Paris-Dakar rally was to everybody else.

This is their massive tent we nicknamed the Victorian Mansion.

I set up camp far away to give them some honeymoon privacy, but wandered back often because they kept offering to feed me. I was extremely grateful because my food supply consisted entirely of tuna packets, power bars and dried fruit/nut mix due to my lack of refrigeration. They had steak, bacon, eggs and fresh fruit.

Please excuse the lack of riding in this post, but diving is pretty rad too and the bike sat parked for the weekend while we dove our brains out. Night diving, deep diving, navigation, sea life identification…

—-brief thread derail while I geek out on dive stuff—


Sea Star


Spotted Sea Snake


Stingray


Sunstar


Bradley Seastar


Nudibranch


I don’t know what this one is…

This corridor is stingray alley:

We attempted to swim through all the way, but the tide was too low, the waves too strong and the walls lined with urchins.

By the end of the weekend I officially became Advanced Open Water Certified!

T’was a wonderful weekend!

Whatever you do, don’t go to Mexico!

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That’s what my mother said to me when I mentioned I was planning to travel this summer. Gulp. Uhh yeah about those plans mom…

Somehow I managed to describe the plans for my awesome Mexico motorcycle adventure in such a way that seemed to put her at ease and only made me feel slightly guilty.

I explained that I would be going down past all the “bad parts” of Mexico with my bike on the back of my scuba buddy’s truck in the safety of a convoy of other divers. This ended up half true.

***********

It was the morning of departure and my buddy is running late. We’re supposed to be meeting the convoy in 15 minutes and we still need to load my bike on his truck. Just as I’m considering riding to the convoy meeting spot without him his truck comes screaming around the corner, a teetering tower of camp supplies precariously piled in the back. He’s frantically apologizing as he stuffs the bike hauler onto the hitch.

“You can load the bike right?! I have to repack some of this…and I only have one contact lens in!” He rushes off securing items while simultaneously trying to stuff a contact lens in his other eye.

My friend Skip loaned me the hauler and gave me a nice demo just a few days earlier, but it’s not even 6am yet and with panic levels at an all time high I don’t think all pistons were firing for me mentally. I manage to talk my roommate out of bed to help me muscle my fully loaded bike over the hitch. I’m going through all the steps in my head and yet when I finish the bike is leaning off the back of the truck at a 45 degree angle.

We’re on the final countdown now, we’re going to miss the convoy.

I keep visualizing my bike falling off the hitch as we fly down the freeway. I can’t take that chance. There’s no time to figure out what’s wrong! I’ll just ride it!

I run back inside and do a quick change superman style into my riding gear, leap on the bike and haul ass to the dive shop. They’re leaving at 6:00am. I arrive to an empty parking lot. It’s 6:01. DAMMIT. They must have left early.

We’ll have to catch them at the Mariposa exit instead. We speed down I-19 as fast as my 400cc’s will take me and suddenly my bike is surging and popping. I reach down and flip the tank to reserve and continue riding. Just as we hit our exit the bike runs out of gas for good and I roll up to the fuel pump running on vapors. But it’s okay. The other divers are here filling up too and I’m just relieved we caught them.

I get a lot of “You’re riding your motorcycle?!” from the other convoy members and some kudos from the more adventurous among them before we take off again.

It’s a long haul to the dive location near San Carlos and even slower in a convoy. We have to make an emergency fuel stop for my bike, full throttle in top gear is burning through gas at an incredible rate. I pat my DRZ, he’s just not built for this.

I’m not sure I’m built to ride nine hours straight in 100 degree heat. In my rush I failed to put on sunscreen and the sun has burned me through my mesh jacket in a barbecue pattern. It seems appropriate.

Finally we reach the turn off for the final stretch. 16 miles of dirt roads to the dive site. I move to the front of the pack and take off. I need to be in the ocean STAT!

I’ve never ridden my bike fully loaded in the dirt like that and the heat and exhaustion weren’t helping. Suddenly I hit a long stretch of deep sand I start screaming at myself to get my weight back and get on the throttle, but my body just won’t obey. I death gripped on the handlebars and slowed down, which promptly sent me into a tank slapper before catapulting me off the bike and sending me rolling across the dirt.

The car behind me stops and a couple guys rush out “Holy crap are you okay?!” I’m much more used to crashing than they are. I assure them I’m fine and they help me lift the bike. My mirror has snapped off, but I find it in the sand and throw it in my duffel. I proceed more cautiously until the last turn when I spot ocean on the horizon. It’s the light at the end of the tunnel. I blast through the last series of twists and washes and up onto the gravel beach until my bike gets bogged down and stalls. I kick down the stand, jump off and run toward the water shedding my gear on the way and finally leap in. The water is so cool and refreshing it feels heavenly. When I pop my head back out of the water a group of divers are staring at me looking confused. Later a guy tells me when he saw me ride up, he thought I was a hallucination.

Eventually the rest of the convoy arrives and I haul myself out of the ocean to set up camp.

It feels good to be back on the beach in Mexico.


A dirty DR-Zebra after a long day.


Mushroom rock at Himalaya Bay.


Some of the dirt road near the bay.


Classy camping Mexico style.


Sunset on day one of my second moto trip to Mexico.

Viva Mexico!

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Work and school have been killer lately and I was looking forward to doing a bike trip over Spring Break. I had wanted to go to Mexico, but plans just weren’t coming together. All my choice riding partners fell through and I didn’t really want to go alone, so I resolved to go ride near Phoenix instead.

I’m big on CouchSurfing so I went to see if I could find a host in the area (preferably one with a bike who might want to ride with me) and came across Perry.

Perry aka whiteknucklemc
Bike: 1150GS
Previous riding experience: Canada, Mexico and the US

For whatever reason (satellites I’m guessing), his profile declared he had recently logged in from somewhere in Switzerland and I was disappointed he probably couldn’t host me, but dropped him a message anyway.

He messaged back “I’m not in Switzerland, but I can’t host you this weekend anyway because I’m going to Mexico…however you can come with me if you want.”

I took it as a sign I was meant to go to Mexico after all and told him “Hell yes!”

I got up bright and early Thursday morning and slabbed it out on Ajo to meet Perry in Why. That’s such a weird name for a town and it’s like all the signs and shop names are rhetorical questions.

I need a bigger tank for the Zebra, I hit reserve just before Why and had to gas up at this casino.

I arrived at our meeting point extremely early and took pictures of motorcycles at the gas station. I thought this little Yamaha 400 was adorable.

Perry arrived, we said hello like we weren’t really complete strangers and headed off to the border together.

I had to get gas -again- at the border.

Crossing the border was a breeze. You just ride right through. There was heavy traffic but everyone was putting around so slowly it wasn’t scary at all. We just zipped around everything and hit the slab to Puerto Penasco.

There was a whole parade of these amusement park rides trucking along which made for exciting passing practice. I had one ‘holy crap’ moment where I cut it a little close, but otherwise it went pretty smoothly and before long we were there.

Perry had already arranged to Couch Surf down there and his hosts kindly let me stay there too.


Rita and Tommy (and I think the horse’s name was Nutmeg)

CouchSurfing Mexican style:

Perry made some crack that Sean would be watching the Spot all night to make sure it didn’t move over to the other couch!

After unpacking we set out to explore the town and found some sand dunes and Competition Hill.

That’s it in the background. Definitely the biggest and steepest pile of sand I’ve ever tried to climb up, but I thought why not and took off. I was going to wait for that jeep but they were so slow I just went…then they decided to run me down I guess.

I drop the bike at the end of that video, but I did manage to pick it up and ride back down. I let Perry borrow my bike to show my how it’s done (he wasn’t sure about doing it on the 1150GS)


Would you ride this up there?

I got back on and did the hill without incident…of course there’s no footage of that!

We were the only bikes out there and I asked the guy at the bike shop why it was just quads and he said there’s not much riding for bikes. I pointed out the dunes and Competition Hill and he said “Most folks can’t handle that” I was grinning my ass off after hearing that.

We found a restaurant with a nice view and had some shrimp at sunset.

The next morning our hosts made us burritos for breakfast.

I’m not sure it was the burritos Perry was really taking the picture of…

Rita was really excited about the new horse she bought “for her daughter” and we spent a lot of time chatting about horses. My parents have horses and I absolutely love them. I always think of my bikes as urban horses. She let me ride it!

They also had cute dogs. This is Negra.

And Taco, the little skin and bones puppy they rescued (she needs a home!)

There was a cute little parade as we were taking off.

I told Tommy I had dreams of riding my bike on the beach, so he led us on his DRZ away from the congested area to a more secluded beach where our bikes could frolic without penalty.

Beach!

Riding on the beach wasn’t so easy. Parts were fairly solid, but other parts were like quicksand. Perry got a workout on the GS.

I started to head back to where we came in, but Tommy said we were going to ride out down on the other side and zoomed off. As soon as he was out of sight, I buried my bike trying to turn around.

It took them a while to come back for me…because they were busy digging the GS out around the corner!

Perry made me ride the GS a little (not on the beach) and it was surprisingly easy to handle. I really thought I was going to drop it just because it was so heavy and I could barely touch the ground, but it wasn’t any worse than my KLR.

I don’t know what it is with guys and wanting me to ride their bikes, you would think the last thing they’d want to do is hand over their keys to some newbie rider chick?

There were some massive pelicans.

and lots of gulls

We hung out quite a while and then headed back home. We wanted to check out a mine, but my range was a limiting factor and we called it a day. Everyone was pretty exhausted though so it was probably for the best.

We gave the bikes a bath and I took a nap before heading out into town.

The guy at the shop was super nice and lubed my chain even though he was technically closed.

I like this statue.

The sun is going down again! Vacations are always too short…

We had some more shrimp and a couple cervesas on the water.

As we left the restaurant a massive pack of dogs chased Perry down the hill and I just laughed because they ignored my bike completely.

The next morning our hosts made pancakes (did I mention they were really awesome hosts?) and Perry and I packed up the bikes to slab it back home.

One of the most fun parts of the trip for me was when we got up to the border and saw the mile of cars waiting to get back in. Perry says he just blazes up to the front, so I followed him, but it was like running the gauntlet. We were riding across rutted dirt drainage areas, paved streets, sidewalks…at one point some people pushed a truck off the road down the hill right where I was riding! I felt like I was playing Frogger. Eventually we made it to the front and the guy running our lane went to lunch or something so we still had to wait a while.

We got through without issue and gave each other a big hug in Why as we split off to go home. Some way to make a new friend eh?