The trip in total was 3100 miles over 16 days.
There is a large gap in the tracking, as I was driving a support truck for a couple of racers in the Sonora Rally.
Part I
Only this time I was going to be riding my Tiger! After driving around there for a few days in Oct helping out the boys with the rally. I really had the urge to get down there on a bike. When Dusty mentioned doing tours down there this winter I was all over that idea.
Leg#1
I didn’t want to put the bike in the truck to take it over to meet up with everyone. Doing that would mean I’d have to go back to La Mesa. (More on that later…) Since I had plans for after the Baja ride to meet up for the second week of my vacation in San Luis Rio, it was better and easier if I was able to ride over.
So I just packed up the bike with most everything that I could need for the next week and headed off to the west.
Now I wish the trip out there was uneventful, but I wasn’t that lucky. It wasn’t any kind of a show stopper, but… I could have done without those few new experiences. New experience number 1 was being sick with a helmet on. Just to be clear, I didn’t throw up IN the helmet, I was able to bet the chin bar out of the way. Still not something I care to ever repeat. Not sure what was up, but I did have dinner a couple of nights before with a friend who ended up sick a day later. So I’m just going to blame him for this one. That happened twice, so I didn’t make it very far that day, nor did I get to stop in Phx to visit a couple of friends. I did find a really cute B&B in Florence, AZ just outside of Phx they were awesome. It also helps that they are riders too! The breakfast then next day was really good too, this time it stayed down… bonus.
It was a really pleasant ride too, until I got to the Pine Valley area on I-8. It started to rain, not an issue, rain doesn’t bother me. What became an issue about 30 min into the rain was my fogging visor and the fog on the road. Visibility was horrific, at one point the visor fogged up so that I wasn’t able to read my gauges. Opps. I also found out that my visor needed to be adjusted so it would stop leaking. Opps, again. Those things slowed up the trip a bit. Call me crazy, but I like to be able to see where I’m going.
Once I made it to La Mesa, I just had to wait for the room to be ready. I wasn’t the first of the group to get there. So we all ended up waiting in the lobby for over an hour. Russell was kind enough to give up his and Dusty’s room so that I could go get dried off before we all met for a pre-tour briefing. He had driven there, so he wasn’t dripping all over the lobby. That flooring in the lobby was hazardous when it was wet too.
We all got to meet each other for the first time in the lounge. For the trip there were to be 12 of us with 11 riders and one person driving the truck and trailer for support. After introductions and a tour over view it was off to dinner, then off to an early bed time so we could be ready to roll at 8am. Ohh, the best laid plans..
Day 1 of the Tour: The part below in Italics is part of the description from the W38M site, for reference.
(Day 1 = La Mesa, California to Mike’s Sky Ranch — ~178 Miles
After a night of getting to know each other and preparing for the tour, we will set off as a group and head for the Tecate border. At the border crossing we will take turns as a group getting our tourist visas and exchanging money. Once we finish with this process, we will make our way through Tecate and link up with the Old Compadre Trail. Wide open vistas and mountain dirt roads will lead us back to Hwy 3. We will stay on pavement and top off with gas on our way to the dirt road entering Mike’s Sky Ranch. Today will be a mix of pavement and dirt at about 50/50.)
This just struck me as so, odd. Or maybe, it was just sad. Why would someone do this to a McLaren?
Our fearless leader, rolling into the parking lot:
So we all surprisingly on time, in the right spot, ready to go. Anyone who’s done a group ride knows just how rare a thing that is. It was from there we headed toward the border crossing with a gas stop on the way. It was leaving the gas station, that we noticed that we were a couple of bikes short. So, we pulled over waited a bit. Then headed back to find out what was going on. First issue of the trip, within the first 30 minutes of hitting the road. LOL. Totally, not the tour leaders fault. It was more that one of the riders didn’t realize that the stator on his bike wasn’t large enough to power all the farkles, he’d added on to his F800 so his battery was DEAD. It didn’t take too long really to figure out why the bike wouldn’t start, find a replacement battery, head to the store, pick it up, get back and install it. Still it set us about 2 hours behind schedule.
Once back on the road, it didn’t take us long to get to the Border Crossing at the Tecate Port of Entry. Now 12 vehicles crossing the border takes some time, there was also the exchanging of currencies, and the purchase of insurance for Mexico that we all had to have. I had gotten mine before I left, but a couple of the riders had to get theirs.
Next up was the navigation out of Tecate, along with finding some lunch. We stopped a lil place in El Hongo called Taqueria Lety. Since my stomach wasn’t 100% yet I stuck to the Quesadilla. Always a safe choice. One of the guys, saw some stuff that looked tasty and had a taco made with that…. He took a bite and then asked what we thought it was? LOL. I told him it was menudo, he asked what that was, I told him Tripe. He asked what that was, I told him beef stomach. He was done with lunch at that point.
After he decided not to eat anymore of tacos, a few others tried it.
Outside of the taqueria, a couple of riders on dirt bikes came over to chat with us. They wanted their pictures taken with the group.
It was after being well fed, that we headed back up the road to our dirt section that cut down from Mex2/3 down to Mex3 and to the road that would take us to Mike’s Sky Ranch, that was to be our stopping point for the day. Now even though we made good time on the dirt roads there was a number mud crossings to deal with, as well as a couple dropped bikes. The picture below is Russell dealing with the worst of the mud pits we rode through that day.
The day was stunning, we couldn’t have asked for better weather.
My bike was pretty dirty by this point.
It was just a few miles of dirt to get back to the main road (Mex3)
From here it was a few more miles to get to the road that lead to Mike’s:
As you can tell, we were losing the light pretty quick. This was new experiences 3-9, (riding on dirt in the dark, as well as, mud, puddles, sand, rocks and doing a water crossing)
I was just so happy that I made it without dropping the bike.. I didn’t care it was pitch black out.
We got roughly sorted out, then we were told that we could park the bikes by the pool. Another couple of new things. It was a narrow ramp and weaving up the walkway to get the bike there. Again, I didn’t care if it wasn’t pretty, I made it and I didn’t drop the bike.
After a shower, there was beer by the pool, followed by dinner.
