Day: June 8, 2023

Mike Huber Stops By

By Joe Berk

Good buddy Mike Huber rolled through So Cal a few days ago and spent the night at Casa Berkowitz.  It was a fun visit.

Mike Huber on the UberMoto. Mike’s current GS is his second one.

I first met Mike on one of the CSC Baja expeditions, and the circumstances of our meeting hit on shared interests (motorcycles and Baja) and a shared background (we are both alums of the Benning School for Boys).

An August 1972 jump school postcard purchased at the Benning School for Boys Post Exchange.

The CSC crew (me and maybe a dozen fellow RX3 riders) had stopped for gasolina on the 200+ mile stretch between Baja’s El Rosario and Guerrero Negro.  Cataviña is about 130 miles south of El Rosario, and for a long time it has been the only place to buy fuel on that section of Mexico’s Highway 1.  There were no gas stations then; enterprising Mexican capitalists sold it from bottles on the side of the road (capitalism rules, my friends).  Today there is a Pemex in Cataviña, but that’s a relatively recent development.

Refueling in Cataviña. That’s good buddy Tuan, an RX3 rider and one of my former students at Cal Poly Pomona.

You can imagine the scene…a dozen bikes crowded around a handful of people selling fuel out of jugs.  Or maybe you don’t have to imagine it; just take a look at the photo above.  It was a hot day, we’d been on the road a while, and we were two days into a seven-day trip.  I looked at the other bikes around me and on one of the motorcycle tailpacks I saw a decal that commands instant and profound respect from anyone who’s been there:  The winged parachute emblem showing that the bearer graduated from the US Army Airborne School at Fort Benning, Georgia.

Mike’s jump wings on the back of his first GS. It was this emblem that first alerted to Mike and his background. Mike’s done 19 jumps (5 in jump school and another dozen when he served with the US Army’s 82nd Airborne Division).
When the jump wings fell off, Mike replaced them with an 82nd Airborne Division decal. The “AA” stands for “All American.”   I learned that when I asked one of my jump school instructors; he first told me that for us trainees, it stood for “Almost Airborne.”   Then he told me the real story.

That’s weird, I thought.  I had only known the guys on this ride for a few days, I’d seen all of their bikes, and if any had been adorned with jump wings I would have picked up on it immediately.  I was pondering how I had missed that when I looked at the guy standing next to the bike.  It was Mike Huber, whom I had not met yet.  My next befuddled thoughts were that I thought I had met everyone.  Where did this guy come from?  Then I looked at the motorcycle.  It wasn’t an RX3.  It was a BMW GS 1200.  The two machines looked enough alike that I had not noticed the difference when Mike worked his way into our herd of turtles at the gas stop in Cataviña.  I looked up at Mike again and he was grinning.  He knew I was confused and I think he was enjoying my being perplexed.

Mike’s current GS 1200. It’s a stunning motorcycle.

Mike and I hit it off immediately.   He stayed with us a couple of nights later in Mulegé (at good buddy Javier’s magnificent Las Casitas Hotel), and we’ve kept in touch ever since.   Mike did a guest blog or two for us here on ExNotes, and he became one of our regular writers last year.

When Mike told me he would pass through our neck of the Peoples Republik, I told him we wanted him to stay the night and enjoy a barbequed salmon dinner with us.

The port saddlebag on Mike’s GS.
And the starboard pannier. Mike gets around, as you know from his blogs here on ExNotes.

We had a great visit.  The Tecate cerveza (and later, the Spanish wine) flowed freely.  Sue crafted a desert we recently learned about on an olive plantation in Spain (see our most recent blog), and it was awesome.

The post-dinner treat: More vino, and chocolate gelato topped with orange-infused olive oil from the Basilippo plantation in Spain. Olive oil on ice cream sounds strange, but take my word on this: It’s wonderful.

As always, it was great to spend time with my good friend and fellow scribe Mike.  The next morning after a good breakfast Mike was in the wind again, headed north toward Ojai, the Bay area, and beyond.  You will be able to read about those travels right here, on your favorite motorcycle blog.

Good times and good friends, folks.  It’s what life is all about.  That, and clicking on the popup ads.

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