August 1, 2018 – The ExhaustNotes Blog

Here’s an interesting story that popped up on my news feed earlier today. It seems an errant scooter rider, a young one at that, was stopped by the Maine State Police riding his scooter on the Maine Turnpike late last night, using only his cell phone for a headlight. There must be more to the story, because after stopping him, the police gave the guy a lift to his destination some 70 miles away. I can’t make stuff up this good, and if you doubt my word, you can read the original story here.

So that story naturally pulled my attention to a somewhat similar experience with my good buddy Baja John and his girlfriend Annie. This goes back to 2006 again, shortly after John bought a place right on the Sea of Cortez in Bahia de Los Angeles. Literally, right on the sea. Oceanside housing. It’s awesome.

Casa Baja Juan, in Bahia de Los Angeles.

Baja Juan, probably telling a fish story, in his back yard.

I had just bought a new Triumph Tiger. John and Annie invited me to their new place. Who can say no to an offer like that?

My Triumph. On the ride down to Bahia de Los Angeles, we hit very dense fog. We stopped and waited for it to lift. At one point it was so thick I couldn’t see the ground.

Here’s where the story gets interesting. When John bought the Casa Baja Juan, it came with a VW bus. John worked on it for a week and got it running, and it became his get-around-town wheels. He never registered it, so it had no plates, but it was cool. I love old VWs, especially the buses.

The VW bus that came with Baja John’s oceanside estate. Lights? We don’t need no stinkin’ lights!

That night, we took the VW and went to dinner at the best taqueria in town, just a short distance away…

A typical Baja roadside restaurant. You can get some mighty good food in these places.

John, Annie, and I had a great dinner, a few Tecates, and then it was time to head back to his place. There was a problem, though. The sun had set, and the VW had no headlights. The three of us pondered this situation a while, and then John remembered he had a flashlight.

John handed the flashlight to Annie and she hung out the passenger window, lighting the way as we rolled down a dirt road to John’s house. We couldn’t see squat (the flashlight was pitifully weak), but we were laughing so hard we didn’t care.

Then we drove past another restaurant on that dirt road. Imagine that: Another restaurant on that same dirt road. Then I saw who was sitting under the veranda as we went by. Uh oh, I thought.

There were three Mexican police officers having dinner, sitting out front, just a few feet away as we passed. The police officers saw us, we saw them, and Annie waved, using the flashlight, which I thought would only accentuate the obvious: We had no lights and the VW wasn’t registered.

The police? They waved back, holding up their cervezas in a salute to our ability to adapt, improvise, and overcome.

Ah, Baja….