Tres Changolitos en Baja
The bikes and riders - Phil
Phil on his 05 BMW 650 Dakar. A very nice bike and well suited for this trip. The durability, power, and fuel injection make this bike an excellent adventure touring or dual sport bike. This was Phil's first dual sport trip so he was a bit nervous at first. He quickly got into the groove through. Before we knew it, he was flying down the dirt roads and trail at mach speed!
The bikes and riders - Paul
Paul with his two favorite things, his Husaberg Fe550 and Tequila! Paul did some serious modificating to turn his off-road race bike into an adventure tourer. He built custom mounting brackets for the saddlebags, made a custom windshield, fabricated highway pegs, etc. I'll bet Sven and Olly over at Husaberg would keel over if they saw the metamorphysis that the bike made.
The bikes and riders - johnny mac
And of course, yours truly, johnnymac with the burrolito negro. My KLR650 proved to be an excellent mount for the trip. My only complaint was the mounting system for the aluminum panniers. The quick-lock system was not up to the brutal embedded rocks of the Baja dirt roads.
Back in February of 2009 Phil, Paul, and I were on a trip to Costa Rica. While there, we rented a small truck and drove across the country to visit a good friend of our. While we were driving, we began to talk about how much fun it'd be to be riding motorcycles. As we talked about this the idea came to mind that for the next trip we should ride our own bikes into Mexico rather than take another prepackaged canned vacation.
Once we returned to the States we got a bit more serious about the idea. Since I do quite a bit of dual sport adventure riding, I was assigned the task of trip planning. I also did a number of short trips throughout the summer to prepare myself. I got some decent maps of Mexico from an online company out of Texas who retails International Travel Maps that are published in Canada. They turned out to be great maps. Site Link http://shop.itmb.ca/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=1_18
I took the precaution of making color scans of all our important documents and emailing them to each of our email addresses as well as saving a draft in my account so I could access them from anywhere there is computer internet access.
Paul had done a number of modifications to his bike for our trip to Sturgis, S.D. last summer for the annual biker rally. Unfortunately, once we arrived at Sturgis his bike broke a piston ring and had to be trailered home. He took the bike in to the dealer to be rebuilt and it seemed fine all summer. So he was a bit trepidacious about taking it on such a long trip as Baja. Terry, the lead mechanic at Extreme Power Sports, felt confident that the bike would make it without failure so long as Paul changed the oil once we hit the turnaround point.
Phil did not even own a dual sport bike prior to the this trip and waited until a couple of months before the departure date to get one. His choice of the BMW F650GS Dakar was an excellent on though. We had quite a bit of work to do to the bike to prep it for the long trip. We ordered a plethora of guards and upgrade parts from Touratec and SW Motech as well as having a new front wheel built at Woody's Wheel Works in Denver. The bike prep had Paul and I scratching our heads trying to dechiper the German installation instructions for many of the parts. But with a few beers and plenty of swearing, we made it all happen.
Photo interlude of bike prep:
Departure for California
We left just as a snow storm hit. We had about a foot of snow the day before we left and the storm had just let up as we departed. We hauled ass south to get ahead of the storm that was centered over the Rocky Mountains. We made it to Vegas the first night and stayed at a hotel/casino. We talked to the security guard who told us where to park to ensure the safety of the bikes and equipment. The next morning we headed out after a quick breakfast and turned south through the Mojave Desert just west of Vegas. At a gas stop we noticed the fork seals on my KLR were leaking from the tight tie-down and change in altitude and temperature. This would require attention before we left the States. As I like to say "es siempre algo" (it's always something).
The Mojave Desert
The Mojave has some truly stunning scenery. The Joshua Trees are really neat looking. We only stopped for a short while as we needed to make it to Yucca Valley in time to do a test ride of the bikes to check jetting and to see how they handled with the additional weight of our gear.
The infamous "shoe tree" on Route 66 just outside Amboy, CA
We don't know why, but people throw shoes tied together up into this tree, go figure.
From the movie "The Hitcher" with Rutger Hauer
For anyone who saw the cult classic. The cafe is still in operation today.
Yucca Valley - The starting point.
We made it to Phil's parents' house by about lunch time. Phil's brother Marty came over and wanted to take us out to his new property he bought that is out in the desert. Marty got his XR400 and led us on a short ride into the desert. We made it to the property with little trouble but as we left, I noticed that I had a rear flat on my KLR. I used my trusty Wal-mart 12 volt air pump to air the tire up and did not see any noticable leak. I managed to ride back to the house but found the tire nearly flat again. Paul and I pulled the tube and found a sidewall pinch. The mechanic must have pinced it during installation of the new tires. Paul and I replaced the tube in about a half an hour. This would prove to be the only flat of the trip. The next morning we felt it would be prudent to replace my fork seals if we could find some replacements. We went to the local Kawasaki shop but found little assistance there. Paul pointed out a small motorcycle accessory shop down the road a ways and we gave it a shot. After a bit of rooting around in some boxes, the shop owner produced a pair of 38mm fork seals! Gotta love the old school bikes!
Seal Replacement
I showed Paul a trick I found on a KLR website to remove the fork seals with air pressure. The trick worked great and we used a piece of 11/2" pvc pipe as a seal driver to install the new seals. A couple of beers worth of work with help from Phil's dad, Marty, and Paul and I was back in buisness. We later discovered that the leaking fork seal had saturated my front brake pads with oil rendering my front brake all but useless. Es siempre algo!
Test ride - Joshua Tree N.P.
Yours truly in Joshua Tree NP
Overlooking the San Andres Fault in Joshua Tree
The tres changolitos (The three little monkeys)
Overlooking the San Andres Fault in Joshua Tree
The fault line can be seen in the distance.
