The distance from being read in the crapper and actually being in the crapper is a short one. According to Dealer News, Motorcyclist magazine crossed that span this week. I’m not happy about it. In fact, I’m well pissed-off. Over 100 years of print publication down the tubes. I was a part of that glorious history for 10 years. MC mag was always my favorite. They had Burns, they had Boehm, they had Frank and they had that crazy kid that kept crashing GSXR’s. MC mag was way cooler and funnier than stodgy old corporate-Cycle World. When I first decided to submit motorcycle stories for publication MC mag was the only place I submitted to.
Bonnier bought most of the USA’s larger motorcycle magazines a few years back and instead of finding a way they have shuttered magazine after magazine. They’ve managed to turn the largest motorcycle enthusiast’s print group into a damn Internet blog. What a stunning waste of money. Bonnier is supposed to be the experts. The much-touted single-source vertical integration has become a major horizontal screw-up. Thanks guys. Thanks for screwing up nearly everything I liked about your books.
Not that there’s anything wrong with a blog (you’re reading this one), but a hard copy is forever and we motorcyclists need a permanent record of our existence. Besides, Motorcycle.com does the Internet better than anyone and they have Burns to boot. Vendor sites like Revzilla and Twisted Throttle are doing a great job reviewing what they sell and in-house sites like Indian, Hog and BMW keep us up to date on the latest models. I’m saying we’re covered: The world does not need a rump-Motorcyclist magazine spewing cheesy sponsored content on the Internet. The world needs the real thing.
Bonnier’s press release tries to spin the magazine’s closure in the best possible light citing MC’s huge social media reach. Most of those puffy numbers are a direct result of Brian Hatano’s work years ago and Ari/Zack’s well done YouTube channel. Anyway, as Berk and I have learned, Facebook friends do not equal views. When a page with a million-plus followers puts up an interesting post and gets two comments, I’m telling you the reach is just not there. I get more response from a post about adobe blocks.
Yeah, I’m angry at Bonnier. Not only for firing Jack Lewis and me (in their defense, we weren’t exactly killing it) but also for doggedly sticking with a failed process. Chris Cantle and the new crew were doing a good job with the magazine’s content but the masthead was bloated with salaries and middlemen making it a struggle to pay off the ossified blob smothering their best efforts. You could have given Cantle three guys, an art director and one ad salesman and they would have done just as well, and maybe even turned a profit.
Mixing Cycle World and Motorcyclist diluted both brands and the titles became a slurry of interchangeable writers. Competition between the two formal rivals became cooperation: It didn’t seem to matter who wrote what. The magazines lost their personality and sense of humor. They wrote like they knew they were doomed.
Instead of charging what it costs to produce the magazine like American Iron and other smaller operations, Bonnier stuck with trying to pay for the magazine with advertising and giving the book away free to create a large subscriber base. This stupid-ass method changes the customer base from the reader to the advertiser. And the readers knew it. Charge $29 a year for 12 issues and write to me, damnit!
I don’t know. Maybe nothing would have worked. To me it seems like Bonnier gave up. Instead of raising rates they gave up. Instead of publishing 12 times a year no matter what they gave up. Instead of building reader loyalty with old school give-away items like stuff bags, key fobs and T-shirts they gave up. Readers, just like writers, love to see their stuff in print. That positive interaction was killed when they got rid of the letters to the editor page. If Bonnier group doesn’t care what we think, why should we care what they think?
Nimble, focused magazines that charge what they cost to produce seem to be doing ok for the moment. Their subscriber numbers might be lower but the numbers are real and they make money. It might be as simple as charging more for the product. The hated Cycle World is still publishing today, barely, and what they are doing is not working. Unlike Motorcyclist, it’s not too late for Cycle World. The question is whether Bonnier Corp has the will power to attempt something different and well proven, or give up like they have done so many times in the past.
This is a story about a 2009 Baja KLR ride. In Part I, we covered the ride from southern California to Rosarito Beach.
The breakfast at Velero’s in Ensenada was impressive (it always is), and it was a glorious morning as we rolled south.
Two KLRs headed south in Baja. John forgot his toothbrush, and I wasn’t going to let him use mine, so we stopped at a farmacia so he could buy a new one.
We had several offroad explorations in mind as we rode deeper into Baja that morning, but our first stop was at a farmacia. I like Mexican pharmacies. Here in the US in 2009, all the stories in the news media were about the drug wars in Mexico. Right church, wrong pew, as they say: The US news media had the wrong story. The real drug story in Mexico was (and still is) how cheap prescriptions are down there. You don’t need a prescription in Mexico for many of the drugs that require prescriptions in the US (like penicillin, and prednisone, and Lord knows what else), and meds are trivially inexpensive. The drugs are the same as what we get in the US (literally, the same, from the same US manufacturers in many cases). I wish our so-called “investigative journalists” would write an expose on that topic, but they were too focused in 2009 on killing the tourism industry in Mexico with distorted news about the drug wars. Go figure.
We continued south on the Transpeninsular Highway. There’s about a dozen miles of traffic leaving Ensenada, and then Baja switches suddenly from squalor to splendor as the road climbs into the mountains and descends into Baja’s wine country. It really is spectacular. If you’ve never made this ride, or if you’re idea of going into Mexico is TJ or Ensenada, you need to venture further south to start to get a feel for the real Baja. Trust me on this.
John and his KLR on the Transpeninsular Highway in Baja’s wine country. This is where the beauty of Baja begins to emerge.
Ah, Baja. It was beautiful. It always is.
Our first excursion in the dirt would be to the abandoned mission in San Vincente, well into the desert and well south of mountains. We saw a sign for the mission and took a dirt road heading west from the Transpeninsular Highway. As it turned out, there was a lot more out there than just an abandoned mission.
The sign pointing to the Camino Real mission ruins.
We first saw a building we initially mistook for the mission. It was a private home (one of several). We were stunned. The homes were magnificent, tucked away in the hills down a rough, soft sand road. I’d been by San Vincente on many prior Baja rides, but I had no idea the hills held such secrets.
Wow. Who knew this was back here?
We saw a young lady and asked her for directions to the mission. She pointed and told us to go over a hill. We did, and the first thing we found was a well-maintained rural cemetery.
I’m in no hurry to be buried, but when it’s time, this might be nice. If there’s such a thing as elegance in a graveyard, this place had it.
There was something about the cemetery that was simultaneously captivating and tranquil. It seemed to come from another era, and after reading the headstones we saw that it did. It was meticulously maintained. It’s always nice to see that.
Impressive. A family plot. The wife lived to be 100. Imagine that.Magnificent. I shot all the photos in this series with my old Nikon D200 and the first-generation 24-120 lens. It was state-of-the-art in 2009. I took a lot of pictures with that camera.
After the cemetery, we found the San Vincente Mission. The local folks are restoring it. I’d seen signs for the mission on the Transpeninsular Highway, but this is the first time I’d ventured off the asphalt to see it. John and I were the only folks out there that day.
The San Vincente Mission was built about 300 years ago. It’s one of several that run the length of the Baja peninsula. I’ve been to several, and a few are still working churches. What’s left of the San Vincente Mission is not.
What’s left of the San Vincente Mission. The restoration was a labor of love. The mission’s adobe walls were being resurfaced. I need to get back there to see how it looks today.The mission walls underneath the restoration.
We rode through the soft sand back toward the Transpeninsular Highway to the town of San Vincente’s contemporary church (which is visible from the highway). It offered great photo opportunities and we took a bunch. We wanted to enter the church, but it was locked.
San Vincente’s church in 2009.John relaxing in front of the San Vincente church.John yanked on the cord, and that bell was loud. We stopped. We didn’t want the San Vincente residents to think they were being summoned.
It was fun being out in these remote areas on the KLRs. The experience was a lot different than seeing Baja from pavement only, and John and I were enjoying it. I’m normally not a guy who likes riding dirt, but John had talked me into getting off the highway and I’m glad he did.
Shortly after leaving San Vincente, it was time to check off another item on our wish list, and that was seeing the Isla Del Carmen shipwreck. I wanted to see it, but I didn’t know exactly where the wreck was other than that it was somewhere off the coast near San Jacinto, so we took another dirt road due west for about 8 miles and hit the Pacific coast. Our plan was to intersect the coast several miles north of San Jacinto, follow it south, and find what was left of the Isla Del Carmen.
The dirt road along the coast was rough, and I’m being charitable when I call it a road. It was mostly soft sand. At one point the sand was so deep it was nearly impossible to control the KLR, so I wrestled the Kawasaki up into the weeds. It was a marginal improvement. I couldn’t see where the wheel was going, but at least the sand wasn’t calling the shots anymore. And before you tell me the trick is to get up to speed and float on top of the soft stuff, all I can say is hey, I was there. You weren’t.
Then we encountered something we hadn’t expected: Dogs. A pack of dogs, actually. And they were pissed. At us.
Well, that’s not quite accurate. Their anger was focused on me. Specifically, me. At least that’s how I felt.
In California, you almost never see a dog off a leash. In rural Mexico, you almost never see a dog on a leash. Those things are aggressive, too. We were chased by more dogs on this trip than I have been chased by in my entire life. They weren’t just interested in scaring us or getting a good laugh. Those things wanted us for dinner. Or rather, they wanted me for dinner. I’ll tell you more about the angry dogs of Baja as this story progresses, but one dog story at a time for now. And this one was enough.
I don’t like dogs. I was mauled pretty badly by one when I was kid, and I still have the scars to prove it. I know that those of you who have taken the Motorcycle Safety Foundation course or who have read about such things are thinking that being chased by a dog is no big deal. I know about slowing down, letting the dog calibrate his intercept based on your reduced speed, and then accelerating to confuse the cantankerous canine. That works on pavement if there is one dog. Try doing it in soft sand when there’s pack of four or five that are fanned out along your flank. In that situation, you are not just a motorcyclist. You are a potential meal. And that was the situation I found myself in that fine Baja afternoon.
A tranquil scene, don’t you think? It was right after I shot this photo that the dogs descended on us.
We were approaching a rinky-dink little fishing village, eyeballing the coast for the shipwreck, when the pack of dogs came after me. I think it might have been my green fluorescent riding jacket. Maybe they had an unhappy childhood. Maybe someone unfriended them on Facebook. Who knows. Whatever the reason, they were snarling and spitting and literally smacking their jaws as I tried to fool them with the slow-down-speed-up maneuver. In soft sand. Trying to keep the motorcycle vertical. Wondering what the hell I was doing down there.
Then it happened. One of the dogs got me.
I felt him crash into my right leg, and when I looked down, the thing had clamped down on my motorcycle pants just above my ankle. The dog was literally being dragged along for what seemed like an eternity. It locked eyes with me, and if there’s such a thing as telepathic communication, or maybe interspecies body language, the dog’s eyes said it all. It was not a pleasant message in either direction. The dog might have thought I was a sonofabitch; I had no doubts about him being one. I’ve known some SOBs in my life, but this bastard was the real deal. I didn’t feel any pain, but that’s normal in a traumatic situation. I didn’t know if the dog’s teeth broke the skin around my ankle, but I knew what it would portend if it had.
“Not good,” I thought.
I could see it all the while that miserable sonofabitch was clamped down on my leg, as he was being pulled along at 30 mph. What I saw was me making a beeline for the border to get medical treatment. Rabies shots, and who knows what else.
To be continued…
Hey, check out our other Epic Motorcycle Rides, and watch the ExNotes blog for the next installment of the Baja KLR Khronicles!
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The distance from being read in the crapper and actually being in the crapper is a short one. According to Dealer News, Motorcyclist magazine crossed that span this week. I’m not happy about it. In fact, I’m well pissed-off. Over 100 years of print publication down the tubes. I was a part of that glorious history for 10 years. MC mag was always my favorite. They had Burns, they had Boehm, they had Frank and they had that crazy kid that kept crashing GSXR’s. MC mag was way cooler and funnier than stodgy old corporate-Cycle World. When I first decided to submit motorcycle stories for publication MC mag was the only place I submitted to.
Bonnier bought most of the USA’s larger motorcycle magazines a few years back and instead of finding a way they have shuttered magazine after magazine. They’ve managed to turn the largest motorcycle enthusiast’s print group into a damn Internet blog. What a stunning waste of money. Bonnier is supposed to be the experts. The much-touted single-source vertical integration has become a major horizontal screw-up. Thanks guys. Thanks for screwing up nearly everything I liked about your books.
Bonnier’s press release tries to spin the magazine’s closure in the best possible light citing MC’s huge social media reach. Most of those puffy numbers are a direct result of Brian Hatano’s work years ago and Ari/Zack’s well done YouTube channel. Anyway, as Berk and I have learned, Facebook friends do not equal views. When a page with a million-plus followers puts up an interesting post and gets two comments, I’m telling you the reach is just not there. I get more response from a post about adobe blocks.
