Most of our time riding Royal Enfield motorcycles through Baja is spent eating. We have breakfast then ride a while. Any time between 10am and 2 pm is lunch time followed by a rolling dinner that lasts several hundred miles.
My T-shirts have stopped buckling and my pants no longer fit over my head. It’s a mess. Take today, we had Chorizo with eggs then cheesecake then chips and guacamole then tuna. Wash it all down with a nice, cold Mexican Negra Modelo beer and call it a moveable feast.
We eat so much so often that our awesome bellies have crushed the Royal Enfields down to Well-Respected Enfields. It’s a shame.
Between meals we managed to knock out a few hundred miles. The Bullet is averaging about 1000 calories per mile while the thirstier 650 twin Royal Enfield is showing signs of early onset diabetes. Pass me another Moon Pie will ya?
I spent the entire day riding the Bullet and it is much improved. Not exactly like it should be but running about 75% better than the last time I tried it. Berk will explain all in his blog.
We are slowly eating our way back to California and if our hearts and livers can hold out, should be home tomorrow.
When we started off on this trip I hated the Bullet. It was too old fashioned, too slow and it ran terribly. The Royal Enfield 650 in comparison was flawless. The twin ran smoothly and never stumbled. It was plenty fast and I couldn’t imagine anyone buying the Bullet over the Enfield.
The Bullet has broken down repeatedly on our Baja ride. When I’m aboard the 500cc single I never know if I’m going to make it around the next curve. I never know which thump will be the last thump.
And therein lies the Bullet’s appeal: The Bullet needs me. The Bullet needs an experienced rider with an ability to adapt to ever-changing situations. Anyone can ride the new 650 twin.
As this trip has progressed I’ve become more enamored of the Bullet. The Bullet appreciates my attention. It never got any before. I get the feeling that if I died the Bullet would lay atop my gravesite and mourn, not taking gasoline or succor from any others. The bike would lay there and waste away, broken-hearted. Much like how we found it when we rescued the old motorcycle from the dealership that had it chained to a post outside.
We’ve bonded; me and the Bullet are a team. Sure, the Bullet is the weakest member of the team but that just makes me feel like a star player.
And that’s another Bullet attraction: The motorcycle is never better than you are. You don’t feel outclassed or suspect you are leaving untapped performance on the table. What you see is what you get with the Bullet and the more time we spend struggling across the Mexican desert the more I like what I see.
After a great dinner at a newly discovered restaurant in Guerrero Negro two nights ago (the San Remedio), we started the trek north yesterday. We rode from Guerrero Negro to San Quintin through Guerrero Negro’s coastal plains into the desert, then into the beautiful Catavina boulder fields, and then the Valle de los Cirios mountains. We’re arrived back in the Old Mill Hotel on San Quintin Bay last night.
The San Remedio in Guerrero Negro. It’s tucked away a couple of blocks away from the main street on a dirt road. It was good.A whale skeleton on the road out of Guerrero Negro.Joe Gresh on a Baja Bullet.A photo inside a geodesic dome abandoned in the Catavina boulder fields.On the road in Baja.
I’ll give you the lowdown on both bikes in more detail in a future blog, but it looks like the bottom line is going to go like this: The 650 Interceptor is an amazingly competent motorcycle, and if Royal Enfield handles the marketing right and somehow manages to keep the dealer freight and setup fees in check, this bike will sell extremely well. It’s a great value for the money and it’s a good motorcycle, perhaps approaching even the CSC motorcycles in terms of value.
The Bullet has been fun, it’s got tons of character, but our bike has been a disappointment. Don’t get me wrong: I wanted to like the Bullet. It’s just that this particular sample (a 2016 press bike) was sent to us suffering from a severe case of neglect. There was almost no oil in the bike, the battery was shot, the chain was rusty, the spark plug lead was defective, probably other things were out of adjustment, and the bike still has a nagging stumble. Gresh and I have been massaging the Bullet since we left (we repaired the spark plug wire, we removed the kickstand interlock to keep the bike from dying on the open road, we bought and installed a new battery in Guerrero Negro, and we had a few good laughs while doing all of it on the side of the road in Baja). If the adventure starts when something goes wrong, the Bullet (at least this particular one) is every inch an adventure bike.
Joe Gresh, inflight missile mechanic.
I doubt all Bullets (or even the rest of them) would have performed this poorly and if you own a Bullet, my apologies if what I write here offends you. I wanted to be positive about both bikes and I really wanted to love the Bullet, but of the two bikes, the one that I would purchase would be the Interceptor and the one I would avoid is the Bullet. I can handle the vibration and the 72-73 mph top end; I can’t handle the reliability issues. To be fair, I doubt anyone purchases a Bullet to do Baja, and that’s what our trip is. But the reality is we are doing a couple of hundred miles a day on asphalt, the weather is moderate, and the Bullet isn’t cutting it. Like I said above, this particular Bullet just had not been maintained. The Bullet deserves better, but it didn’t get it. There. With that out of the way, let’s get back on the road and continue the trek north.
Most of our time riding Royal Enfield motorcycles through Baja is spent eating. We have breakfast then ride a while. Any time between 10am and 2 pm is lunch time followed by a rolling dinner that lasts several hundred miles.
