Category: Feel Good Stuff

Wild Conjecture: BMW R18 Concept

BMW’s R18 Concept is that rare thing in the motorcycle world: a BMW that doesn’t look like the contents of the junk drawer in your kitchen. Most of the GS series have a rubber band, plastic-handled corkscrew and expired AA batteries look about them. Cluttered and stolen-valor-military-ish, the big GS’s take a concerted effort to look at without smirking and feeling superior. Except for the very first ones. The early GS800 was much cleaner and actually was pretty good off road.

Concept bikes are a great way to get the reaction of the riding public without spending a bunch of money on a bike nobody likes. It’s smart to ask your customers first. Personally, I love the thing. It has a vibe that goes all the way back to the beginning of BMW. Back when they were still trying to kill us all.

The engine is huge and air-cooled because that’s what cruisers are supposed to be. Liquid cooling on a cruiser is a negative. Four cylinders on a cruiser is two too many. The whole point of a cruiser is laid back and relaxing. This is not to be confused with comfortable.

The seat on the R18 is a concession to the Brat trend that is slowly but surely vandalizing Honda’s entire production output from the 1970’s. I would prefer a dual seat more like the old R69 came with. It seems a waste for such a long bike to neglect the pillion accommodations. The long reach to the bars is another styling cue that will probably make it into production. Motorcyclists have proven time and time again that they will put up with any silly riding position as long as it makes them cool.

And you will be cool on the R18. It’s long and low and black, all these are good things to be. I hope the exposed driveshaft makes it past the product liability wonks at BMW. I like a dangerous spinning bit on a motorcycle.

The front end has about 1-inch of travel, generous for the cruiser segment. I hope BMW replicates that crazy-huge, aerodynamic skeleton key when they design the keyless proximity fob for this bike. Come to think of it all those keyless entry thingies are too big to fit in the skintight leather rockabilly pants you’ll be wearing on the R18. Maybe a plain old key would be better. The headlight nacelle looks great if a bit Royal Enfield Bullet-ish. Hey, that’s ok.

My biggest concern about the R18 is not the bike itself but the manufacturer. BMW puts entirely too many electronic doodads on their modern bikes. The excessive reliance on E-trickery to protect the rider from himself has created heavy motorcycles. BMW used to pride itself on lightweight motorcycles. It was in their advertisements! The damn things may be safer as long as they don’t land on you but reliability has suffered with the additional complexity.

Here’s hoping BMW can pull their heads out of their…ahem…you know, and build a strong, simple machine that won’t cost a fortune to buy or maintain because it would be a crime for such a pretty motorcycle to be restricted to Starbucks parking lots and BMW service centers.

The Crimes Men Do

Glenn sent me a few photos from the old days and one that got my attention was a shot of us building a Sportster in the living room of the shack we used to live in. Having a living room to work in was a luxury because prior to renting the shack I was homeless. I had an old Chevy truck with a bench seat that I could stretch out enough to get some sleep and I had a job that let me take a dry bath in the restroom after work. But when Admiralty Marine closed its doors for the evening I was on my own until the next morning. The boss let me know that the situation couldn’t go on forever and that I really needed to find a place to live.

It wasn’t so much lack of money.  I was working a lot of hours, but I was only 19 and landlords didn’t want to rent to a greasy, punk kid. I can’t blame them. I would do the same thing myself. Finally a co-worker who was a full-fledged adult vouched for me when his landlord had a vacancy next door. I shaved, dry-bathed, put on clean clothes and did everything I could do to look like a respectable young man with a future. I’ll be dammed if it didn’t work. I was in after paying first, last and a deposit. Cash.

After waiting for the dust to settle the first thing I did was to rebuild my Sportster in the living room. When I bought the 1968 Sportster I was kind of shocked at how archaic the motorcycle felt. It was cool and all but the front end was so wobbly it felt like silly string and the front brake might as well have been deleted and an AM/FM radio installed in its place for all the stopping it would do.

The engine seemed to run well but I was going to ride across country on the thing, so a freshen-up was in order. I don’t know if it was a good idea because the 900cc V-Twin had some strange things going on inside and I was destined to do even more stupid stuff to the poor bike.

Someone had replaced the stock Harley intake valves with huge, unknown-origin valves. The valves were so big they had to cut the seat into the dome of the combustion chamber. Once the giant valves were removed the old seats were revealed along with the stock porting. The only advantage I could see to the big valves was a bump in compression ratio due to the valves occupying more space in the combustion chamber and the circumference increase giving slightly more flow when the valve first popped open. Once into the lift though the stock ports would probably be the limiting factor.

I wasn’t having any of it. I bought standard Harley valves and guides and set about putting things right. Admiralty Marine had a Sioux valve grinding kit so I could do all the work myself. After the seats were re-cut to fit the new valves the installed height was wrong so I had to trim the ends of the valves and shim the springs. The heads were a mess.

The Sportster’s high dome pistons were ok so a quick hone job and a set of rings finished off the top end. After that you’d think I’d leave the engine alone but I had to have a tin primary cover like the XR750 flat trackers ran.

Opening and consuming a whole ‘nother can of worms, I had to get rid of the crankshaft’s spring and ramp style compensating sprocket. The compensating sprocket absorbs the 45-degree V-Twin’s power pulses before sending smooth, less spikey power on to the clutch basket, gearbox and rear sprocket. This vital part stuck out way toofar for my tin primary so into the trash it went.

A solid front sprocket was fitted to the crankshaft and the tin primary would still not fit so I had to make a 3/8’ aluminum spacer the same size and shape as the primary cover gasket. The ’68 XLH was electric start but I wanted to eliminate as much weight as possible. At an independent Harley shop I swapped the starter motor, big battery box and oil tank for a kick-start shaft, gears and kick lever. You can anticipate the next problem: the electric-start primary case had a square-ish hump on the back to accommodate the starter Bendix. I had to weld a flat metal part onto the tin primary to cover the hole.

Without an XLH-style starter motor there was another gaping hole on the other side of crankcase. I blanked off the hole where the electric starter fit with a large chunk of angle aluminum that doubled as a battery box for the much smaller kick-only battery. Now the engine was ready to slot back into the frame. And that’s yet another can of worms I’ll write about later.

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Sticker Shock

We’re trying to enlarge the subscriber base for the ExhaustNotes.us website. Our marketing efforts so far have been focused on sharing links on Facebook and posting links on various chat sites. It’s a hit and miss method that works okay and you can boost sponsored posts from Facebook but an email subscriber list may work even better. A subscriber email list would be by definition readers who are interested in our content.

In their heyday motorcycle magazines used to give away all sorts of cool gear plastered with logos. It built loyalty in an era when motorcyclists had many magazines to choose from. Today, with the zillions of websites to choose from will that kind of marketing work again?

I guess we’ll find out. The first rough draft of the exhaustnotes.us sticker was a simple design using the popular, exhaust-pipe-streaming-off-a-letter style. This is not a new innovation but then neither is a motorcycle blog. The design needed to work with T-shirts and other future swag projects. We wanted it hand-drawn because Berk and I are old school and we are not wasting your time trying to appear otherwise.

Next we applied a little color to the design, not too much to keep costs down later on in the life of the logo. The chrome reflections and sky blue harken back to the Cycletoons/Cartoons magazines we read as whelps.

After we agreed on the layout the design was tightened up. The “E” fitted to the pipe better and the pipe was fatter and curved down more. We eliminated quotation marks on the motto and straightened out the lettering a bit.

Now the real work began: Inking the outlines and making every bold line pop out. We needed to make the design strong enough to survive shrinking in size or enlarging. A cheerful children’s watercolor set brightened things up without being hard to duplicate on clothing, stuff bags or tramp stamps.

The final design was sent to www.JimmyMacDesigns.com for more refining, clean up and changing the whole jpeg mess into a vector file to prevent loss of data when resizing. Jimmy is a true artist. Go to his website to check out his fantastic metal and wood creations. You won’t be able to tell from these low-res blog photos but Jimmy got rid of all the tooling marks, made the letter edges sharp and resorted them to be more even without losing the hand-drawn look. He also made it fit into a standard oval sticker and added a ragged outside line on the oval.

Here’s the deal: Sign up for ExhaustNotes.us email alerts and using a well-regulated yet self-funded government letter carrier we’ll send a brand new sticker suitable for framing to you for your effort. Just like in the old days except you don’t have to cut out box tops or coupons and crap. We only have a limited number of these to give away so you’ll need to get on the list before January 1st, 2054. You can email your snail mail address to Berk or me at info@ExhaustNotes.us after signing up. Sure, it’s a clunky process that will take a few weeks, but this is ExhaustNotes.us.  If you want smooth and professional you should subscribe to the real magazines.

Fort Stanton

East of Ruidoso, I steered the Husqvarna off of Highway 70 onto Devils Canyon Road and followed the twisting, smoothly-graded dirt until it dead-ended at Highway 220. Back on asphalt I turned right, rode past the airport and pulled into Fort Stanton, New Mexico.

Fort Stanton dates back to the 1850’s and has been used for everything from subduing Native Americans to a tuberculosis hospital and a German prisoner of war camp. The fort changed hands in the Civil War from Union to Confederate and back to Union where it has remained ever since. It stands today in fairly good shape. The parade grounds are well kept a few buildings are showing signs of neglect. Repairs are ongoing and purchasing a gee-gaw at the gift shop/museum helps with the effort.

The Officers Quarters played host to Lieutenant John Pershing, who made good later on in life as General Black Jack Pershing. The OQ is divided into two story apartments with thick stone walls between. One section of the wall was damaged showing the rubble-filled core of the finished walls. This type of construction took a lot of manpower to build.

New Mexico’s clean dry air was the ideal spot to treat tuberculosis and in the 1930’s a modern hospital was built to care for easterners suffering from the unsanitary conditions prevailing at that time. The hospital sported New Mexico’s very first elevator along with dental facilities and entertainment. The patients however had to sleep outside in a tent city as it was believed plenty of fresh air and good food was the cure. It worked pretty well too.

It’s ok to ride your motorcycle on the paved roads in the fort. On a back street there are more recent buildings and a nice stone church. I’m not into religion but I love to check out the buildings religious people have constructed. The little church at Fort Stanton is a jewel. It was open the day I was there and the place was clean and neat. For all I know believers may still worship here. You’re not allowed to tramp through the brush but behind the church a couple hundred yards are the remains of a swimming pool German prisoners of war built to stave off boredom and have a place to cool off in the summertime.

Right next door to the Officer’s Quarters is the Nurse’s quarters. I don’t know if the two uses ran concurrently but if they did this little corner of Fort Stanton must have been a happening spot. The Nurse’s quarters were in sad shape except for the main entrance, which had beautiful beams holding up the roof.

Fort Stanton isn’t overrun with tourists. Even though it was part of a war machine, wandering around inside the buildings gives you a sense of peace. Sit on one of the benches in the bright New Mexico sun and you can imagine the soldiers marching the grounds in formation; the gentle coughing of the slowly recovering patients and the laughter and splashing of lucky Germans who were spared death in World War 2.

Obsolete Product Review: VX-6

I had a 1954, small-window Dodge truck back in the 1970’s. It’s funny how a 20 year-old truck seemed so much older when I was younger. My 1990 Suburban is the same age now as the old Dodge was then but the Suburban seems modern to me. I can remember new Suburban’s rolling off the dealer lots that looked exactly like mine. I wasn’t even alive when the ’54 dodge was built.

The Dodge had a flathead 6-cylinder engine that sucked gas at an alarming rate. 10 miles per gallon was as good as it got. The truck had a three on the tree and was geared very low. Top speed was 70 miles per hour. On top of the cylinder head was a ball valve tapped into one of the cylinders. The valve had a quick-release air chuck fitting. The idea was to supply compressed air (with a bit of gasoline mixed in) for tire filling or bomb making. I never used that feature.

Besides the clutch, brake and throttle the Dodge had a floor switch for high beams and a fourth pedal that engaged the starter motor when it was depressed. The starter had no solenoid; the floor pedal did it all. You could turn the key off and the starter would still spin the engine. I thought that was a great idea. In 1954 Dodge gave you a horn and brake lights but no turn indicators. I used arm signals like on a motorcycle. It’s a hard habit to break so I still signal the old way in a panic situation.

Underneath the driver’s side floor was a battery compartment. The electrical system on the Dodge was 6-volt but a standard modification back then was to install an 8-volt battery. You didn’t have to tweak the voltage regulator and the lights were much brighter. Starting was a breeze with the extra couple volts. The 8-volt battery in my Dodge was shot. It was weak, even after a night on the charger the engine would slowly crank.

The obvious solution would be to buy a new battery but I didn’t have a lot of money to blow as I was trying to get out to California. A battery was expensive. We lived behind a gas station so I went over there looking for a used battery. The service guy handed me a couple packages of VX-6 battery additive stuff and said, “Try this first, it works good.”

What the heck, Lee Petty endorsed VX-6, he said he’d rather run without tires than his VX-6. That was good enough for me. Lee Petty does not bullshit. So I dumped the stuff in the nearly dead 8-volt battery and let it sit overnight. The next morning I tried the starter and the engine started like it had a new battery.

I was stunned. I mean, that hocus-pocus additive junk has never worked for me. Not only that but the battery worked perfectly from then on. I drove the truck to California and all over San Diego for years. The VX-6 battery was still in the truck when I traded it for a Yamaha 125 Enduro.

Recently I looked around for VX-6 and can only find old stock on Amazon and Ebay. It figures, the Battery Illuminati must have gotten to VX-6’s manufacturers. Maybe they threatened VX-6 employees or their families. Battery sales were suffering. Their stuff was too good. It’s no coincidence that you can’t even access the cells on most new batteries.

Bill Murar appointed to Board of Directors, Antique Motorcycle Foundation

A Bill Murar self-portrait at 60mph while riding the Lake Erie Loop.

In the early days at CSC, when we were casting about for ways to the publicize the new CSC Mustang replicas, we heard from a guy named Bill Murar.  Bill is a retired firefighter, vintage Allstate motorcycle expert, and motorcycle endurance rider, and he wrote to ask if he could ride one of the 150cc Mustangs in the Lake Erie Loop.   That’s a 650-mile endurance run around the periphery of Lake Erie for small bikes and scooters.  It was a godsend for us, and it was one of the things that helped put CSC on the map.

Bill Murar, at speed, on a CSC 150 riding the Lake Erie Loop.

Bill and I became good friends, and we’ve stayed in touch over the last decade.  I was pleased to get this news from Bill yesterday…

Joe,

I’m pleased to let you know I’ve been named to the Board of Directors of the Antique Motorcycle Foundation. Starting a new page in the Murar chronicles.  Yikes, responsibilities!  If you go to their website there’s a photo of all the members of the board along with a short bio.

I helped the VP of the AMF restore his Allstate 175, mostly with hints over the phone, me sharing my personal parts source people, as well as my own stock of Allstate stuff. That and 50+ years of Sears Allstate buying and selling and collecting helped as well. He also used his own unique collection of painters, re-chromers, cable makers, foreign parts suppliers, etc., and he finally had a product good enough to grace the cover of this Spring’s edition of the Vintage Motorbike Newsletter.

With everything I had going for me with my Allstate knowlegde, coupled with almost 15 years as the north Central WERA-Vintage regional race director, and overall general knowledge of small displacement bikes, he thought I might be a good fit to fill one of the Board of Director openings.

So, I was interviewed via a phone conference call and ended up getting voted in by the Board. We’ll have out first meet and greet with the entire board at the Wauseon, Ohio meeting of the Antique Motorcycle Association on July 19th.

My new life chapter begins.

As a side note, I rode to AMF VP Roger Smith’s home north of Pontiac, Michigan where we finally met face-to-face (everything up til then was all via email, texts and old fashioned phone calls) last Thursday. He was kind enough to arrange a tour of the studio of Biker Build Off legend, Ron Finch. What a treat that was! Ron is an unbelieveable visionary with his projects. Do yourself a favor and Google his place, I’m not sure of the name of his shop, I simply entered “Ron Finch Studio Michigan.”

Bill

Bill, congratulations to you!  Thanks very much for letting us know about your new spot and sharing it with us here on the ExhaustNotes blog.  Ride safe, my friend, and best of luck to you in your new assignment.

What Do You Have In Your Project Bank?

There are more ways to measure wealth than money. Sure, traditionalists rely on a strict net worth approach, adding up the figures on electronic statements in a system where the winner is whoever has the highest number. You can count all sorts of things, though. You can count friends, you can count grandchildren, you can count experiences: These are forms of wealth that won’t show up on that balance email from the bank.

When it comes to future projects I am a very wealthy man. I’ve got them lined up out the door and around the corner. And my account keeps growing; with compound interest my Project Bank doubles every seven years. Most of these projects will never see the light of day but they remain secure in my thoughts, if not in my actions.

On of my largest assets is the 4-speed Suburban project. When I bought the ’90 ‘Burb it came with a malfunctioning automatic transmission. I hate automatics and malfunctioning ones even more so. The 700R4 works in Drive and Reverse but not in 1-2-3. The truck runs fine and it will tote a 3000-pound load without complaint but that boring automatic has got to go. It’s a rare Suburban that came with a 4-speed from the factory and even rarer to see a ½-ton version. I’ve only seen one 4-speed ‘Burb and it was ¾-on. This project keeps earning interest and I’ve been training a weather eye on Internet sale sites for a cheap, manual transmission, 4X4 GM truck to steal the guts from. I found a late model, 4X4-IFS 1/2-ton truck with a 5-speed and a nice FI engine that ran well but the transfer case and transmission housing were broken and besides everything was on the wrong side for the old straight axle suburban.

The chalky blue, 1974 MG GT came with Tinfiny Ranch and was listed as an out building on the deed. This car was on the chopping block until I started reading about MG’s with Buick 215 cubic-inch aluminum engine swaps. I really have to stay off the internet. The Buick engine triples the horsepower, doesn’t weigh much more than the iron 4-banger it replaces and sounds cool as hell revved up to 6000 RPM. This is one asset I kind of wish was not in my Project Bank as I’ve never been that interested in cars. Still, it’s there waiting on me.

Tinfiny Ranch itself is a huge source of endless work, but beyond the physical plant The Ranch continues to deposit surprises into my Project Bank. This Merry Tiller project revealed itself as I was hauling away two, multi-panel garage doors. The doors sections were stacked with spacers in the popular rat-paradise fashion and I gave chase to a couple fat rats but they got away from me in the thick brush down by the ravine. The Merry Tiller looks like it will come in handy for the raised-bed vegetable garden (yet another deposit in The Project Bank) I’m planning for the back yard. The engine on the tiller is not stuck and being a Briggs & Stratton I’m sure it will run so I’m leaving it in The Bank for safe keeping.

I will never be bored or lonely. My Project Bank is overflowing with cool things that need time and attention. After I level the back yard I’m going to build a shear wall for the shed, then I need to get back on the Zed. After that I’d like to pop a 6-cylinder + AX15 transmission into Brumby the Jeep. The Suburban needs new paint; I’m going to change it from black to white so it will be cooler inside. Better yet I’ll fix the air-conditioner, it’s all there except for the compressor. I really need a second rain barrel, too, as I’m leaving water on the table with only 2500 gallons of storage.

The projects pile one atop the other and the magnitude of the undertaking gives me a great sense of importance. When I die I want to be buried like a Viking in his ship except my grave will be filled with all the unfinished projects that kept me company while I was alive. You really can take it with you, mainly because no one else wants your junk.

Baja 2009: The KLR Khronicles Part IV

The view, peeking out from the Mission San Velicata de Espana ruins.

Read Parts I, II, and III of the 2009 KLR Baja foray here!

When the Transpeninsular Highway continues south after leaving El Rosario, it crosses a long bridge across the dry Rio El Rosario and then winds into the mountains on the northern edge of the Valle de los Cirios.  The wilderness starts here, and it is awesome.   I love this area. It’s the first place you encounter cardon cactus and the cirios. These things grow only in Baja (you won’t find them anywhere else on the planet). The Cardon are the giant cactus that look something like the saguaro cactus in Arizona, but the cardon are much, much larger. The cirios are the weird-looking thin shoots that grow to heights of around 30 or 40 feet (maybe even more). Someone once wrote that they look like a plant that Dr. Suess would have designed, and I think that’s a good description.  They have this kind of weird, whimsical, goofy look…the kind of thing one might create when under the influence of, well, whatever your preferred mind-altering substance is.

I grabbed a few shots of our KLRs a few miles into the mountains.  You can see the cardon and the cirios in the background.

My KLR 650. I had the Kawi soft luggage on it and a Nelson-Rigg tank bag.
John’s KLR. These bikes just keep going and going. They’re perfect for this kind of ride.
Baja cacti. It’s one photo op after another in Baja.
A shot along the Transpeninsular Highway in the Valle de los Cirios.
Baja John standing by my KLR. The background almost looks like it’s been painted into this scene.

After rolling along the highway a few more miles, I saw something out of the corner of my eye on the road.  At first I wasn’t sure, and then as I was playing back the image mentally, I decided I needed to turn around and take another look…

Yep, my eyes weren’t playing tricks.  I had seen what I thought I saw.  Is that correct grammatically?  Whatever.  The spider was huge.

Wow, that was one monstrous tarantula!  We parked the bikes and started taking photos.   This spider was easily double the size of the tarantulas I’ve seen in California.

John got down in front of the tarantula.   He squatted to get a closer look, and then something wild happened. The spider ran straight at John. We were both shocked at its speed. They normally seem very deliberate and slow, but I have to tell you, that one moved terrifyingly fast.

John jumped up, screamed, and propelled himself backwards faster than a Democrat mistakenly wandering into a Trump rally.  John was paddling backward so fast he looked like an old Warner Brothers roadrunner cartoon.

We both laughed after it happened.  Here we were, two guys old enough to know better, screwing around with a ginormous tarantula in the middle of the Baja peninsula, laughing like a couple of kids.  Baja does that to you.

Look at this fellow’s little beady eyes. And his hairy butt. That’s quite a hairdo. It kind of reminds me of Beavis and Butthead. Come to think of it, those might be appropriate names for John and me.
The tarantula crawled under a plant, I took a few more photos, and we were on our way.

I think I already mentioned that I had my Nikon D200 on this trip and an older (non-VR) 24-120 Nikon lens. I mostly shot at f/8 (the 24-120’s sweet spot) in the aperture mode, which is a mode that works well for me. I also had the 12-24 Tokina wide angle lens along for the ride, but I never even mounted it on the camera. The 24-120 is not a macro lens, but it did an acceptable job here.  The Tokina lens does a good job, too, but the 24-120 Nikon was handling everything for me on this ride.

Our next planned stop was the Mission San Fernando Rey de Espana Velicata. We almost didn’t go. I had been spooked by the dogs, and I told John the night before that I wasn’t too keen on rolling through any more little villages with dogs. John waited awhile and casually mentioned that he really wanted to see some of the sights accessible only by dirt roads. I acquiesced and I’m glad I did.   We saw some amazing things…things we wouldn’t have seen if we hadn’t wandered off road.

Further down the Transpeninsular Highway, we saw the sign for the Mission San Fernando Rey de Espana Velicata and a dirt road veering off to the west.   I took the turn first, and son of a gun, a dog materialized out of nowhere and started chasing me.   This time the dog was so small it was funny.  It was a little Chihuahua, and he looked anything but threatening.   The little guy was behind me yapping up a storm and I was enjoying the chase.   Those little legs were pumping for all they were worth and he still couldn’t keep up.  It was me, the Chihuahua, and John (in that order) rolling down this dirt road.  The pup was struggling to keep up, barking all the while and trying his best to be intimidating.  I could hear John laughing behind me.  I should have grabbed a picture.

On the road to the Mission San Fernando Rey de Espana Velicata

The Mission San Fernando Rey de Espana Velicata was the only one in Baja founded by the Franciscans (the Jesuits did all the others).  It only lasted from 1769 to 1818. It was built to convert the local Cochimi Indians to Catholicism (that was how it was advertised; basically, the missions were labor camps with a touch of that old time religion).  Unfortunately, the Spaniards brought diseases for which the indigenous people had no immunity, and disease soon ravaged the area. The entire mission system in Mexico ended in the early 1800s, when Mexico gained its independence from Spain.  It’s not a pretty story, but there’s a history here and it’s intriguing to visit these ancient places (especially when they are well off the beaten path).

The Mission San Fernando Rey de Espana Velicata. This is all that’s left of it.
Our KLRs parked in front of the mission ruins.

The place was amazing.  I’d seen the sign and the dirt road to get to the mission on each of my prior Baja visits, but I had never been to see it.  Getting there and taking it all in was fun.

After visiting the Mission San Fernando Rey de Espana Velicata, we rolled south along the Transpeninsular Highway a few more miles and took another dirt road (this time to the east) to see the ruins at El Marmol. El Marmol was a world-famous marble and onyx quarry 50 years ago. Like the mission, we’d seen the signs for it on our earlier travels through Baja, but we had never made the trip out there to see it. I always wanted to see what El Marmol was all about, especially after reading about it in several Baja references.  Carole Lombard had a bathtub made from El Marmol marble, you know.

The ride out to El Marmol was exciting.  The road was rough and had deep sand in several spots. My friend Bob had previously told me that the best way to take this stuff was at high speed, and that’s what we did. It made an enormous difference. I could see the rough road beneath me, but the KLR’s long-travel suspension let me fly over it. It was almost an out-of-body experience.   I enjoyed it.  I was in the zone, and suddenly, we were there.

El Marmol. There isn’t much to it, other than a pile of big rocks.  Folks still come out here to get the marble.  We saw a few Mexicans loading some into a tiny pickup truck.
I bottomed the suspension in a few spots on the ride out to El Marmol, and this is what it did to my KLR’s license plate.  Many first-gen KLR owners relocate their license plate up on top of the rear fender. Now I know why.
Two KLRistas at El Marmol. That’s my yellow riding jacket on my KLR.  It seemed to aggravate any dog who saw it.
The KLRs at El Marmol.

We stopped for a break on the way out of El Marmol where the dirt road rejoined the Transpeninsular Highway.  We had a good conversation with Jose, a police officer from Catavina who consented to a photo.

Good buddy Jose, my tocayo.

There were two dogs hanging around the place watching John, Jose, and me.  They seemed friendly enough when John gave one of them a snack.  Then we got on the motorcycles and it was as if someone had flipped a switch.  The dogs instantly turned mean, snarling and going after John, who was accelerating sharply way (a relative term, to be sure, when you’re on a KLR).  There’s a rule in Mexico, I guess.  If you’re a dog and you see a guy on a motorcycle, you’ve got a reputation to maintain.  This time, though, both dogs went after John and ignored me.   They chased John all the way back to the highway, with me following.   Hey, that’s was okay by me.  I’d already earned my combat pay.

The dogs chasing John, though, didn’t seem to have their hearts in it.  They were chasing John like it was part of their job description and the boss was watching.  Going through the motions.  Phoning it in.  You know the drill.

I thought about that as we continued south.  I reasoned and hoped that as went further into Mexico (and we were about 350 miles into Baja at this point), the dogs might be nicer.  Our next destination was Guerrero Negro, 500 miles south of the border.  We would soon find out.

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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Baja 2009: The KLR Khronicles Part III

When I left off with the last post about our 2009 KLR Baja trip, I had a dog hanging onto my leg on a dirt road just north of San Jacinto.  It was terrifying, and what I was mostly scared of was that the thing might have managed to sink its teeth into me.  If that had happened, there was no question but that I would have to undergo the rabies shots.  In order to avoid doing that, I’d either have to know that it hadn’t penetrated my leg or I’d have to kill the dog and get its head to a lab to be tested for rabies (gruesome, I know, and don’t ask me how I know about such things).   That second option wasn’t going to happen, and in any event, I had no idea where I could go in Baja to get the head tested.  Nope, all my bets had to be on no penetration, or I’d have to go for the abdominal rabies shots.

When the dog finally released its grip, John and I slid to a stop a half mile  further down the road and I frantically stopped to check my leg. I didn’t know if the thing had actually bitten me or if it had just got a mouth full of denim and boot leather. I didn’t feel the dog’s teeth penetrate me, but I was too adrenalized to feel anything.

It’s a good thing we were out in the boonies, and it’s a good thing no one was there to see what happened next.  And what that was, well, let’s just say it was picturesque.  It was me frantically undoing my motorcycle pants, and then my blue jeans, and dropping both, with John kneeling in front of me to look for bite marks.  Anyone seeing this might get the wrong idea.  I know, we’re close, but not that close.

I checked my leg and I didn’t see any bite marks. John examined me and it was official:  I was unharmed. Had I not been wearing boots and my motorcycle pants, that probably would not have been the case.  All the gear, all the time.  It’s an adage that holds true.  Dodged a bullet, I did.

So, toothmark-and-rabies-free, we rolled past another little cluster of dwellings, made a sweeping right turn as the dirt road followed the coast, and there it was…

The Isla Del Carmen, off the Pacific Coast near San Jacinto, after confirming I was not going to become a rabid motorcyclist.

We hung out by the Isla Del Carmen for a while and I took a bunch of photographs.  The Isla Del Carmen sank right off the San Jacinto coast during a storm in 1984.  I’d seen the wreck in another photograph, and now I was seeing it in person.  It was awesome being there.

I like these photos, partly because of what we had gone through to get them (the rough roads and the canine assault), but mostly because it was a shot I had framed in my mind before we arrived and the actual photos turned out better than I had imagined.  Indulge me.  I’ll show you a few.

The KLRs in front of the Isla Del Carmen. That’s the Pacific in the background.
John’s is green. Mine was red. Loved those bikes. Simple, fast enough, and fun.
Baja John, at ease along the Pacific coast.
Leave something in salt water long enough…
Coastal stuff.

After spending a while taking photos, we took the direct route out of San Jacinto heading east. It was another sandy dirt road, but it was hard packed and it ran relatively straight to the Transpeninsular Highway north of Camalu.

We stopped in Camalu for lunch.  John and I opted for the chicken fajitas at the Las Brisas, a small restaurant, and our mid-day meal was amazing.  Octavio, the owner and chef extraordinaire, took good care of us.  We had a two-hour lunch, and we spent a lot of that time chatting with Octavio.  It was fun.

The Las Brisas, the hot spot in Camalu.
John enjoying Octavio’s chicken fajitas.
This is Octavio, the propriet0r and Camalu’s philosopher-in-chief. He patiently explained to us that Camalu is the best place in the world. Who knew?
America and Palmyra, two young ladies in Camalu.

We got as far as El Rosario that second night, and we stayed in the El Sinahi hotel. It was an inexpensive, no-frills kind of place (exactly what I like in Baja).

The El Sinahi. Check the spelling.
The KLR, docked for the evening.

We ate at a restaurant adjacent to the El Sinahi, and it was great.  I don’t think it had a name, other than “Restaurant.”  It didn’t need one.  It was wonderful.  You know, folks tell me I spend a lot of time talking about the cuisine in Baja.  Guilty as charged.  I love that aspect of exploring the peninsula.  I guess there are bad restaurants in Baja.  In 30 years of exploring the place, though, I haven’t found them.

Good food, good meat, good God, let’s eat!
John had fish tacos, the quintessential Baja dish. They look great, don’t they?
Maria, our waitress in El Rosario.

I didn’t know it yet, but the rear window to my El Sinahi hotel room faced a neighbor’s yard. A neighbor with roosters. Lots of roosters. The kind that start cock-a-doodle-doodling at 4:30 a.m. Right into my window.
I had visions of making rooster fajitas, but I decided not to. Truth is, those things sounded so strong I didn’t know if I could take them in a fight.

There’s another abandoned mission west of El Rosario about three miles down a dirt road that winds through more small villages. We tried to find it that next morning, but we couldn’t.  While rolling down that road, we encountered more Mexican dogs, and sure enough, the dogs came after us again. We outran them that time. We could have poked around longer trying to find the mission, but the dogs unnerved me. I reckoned that we had gone far enough to pass where the mission should have been, we never saw it, and I turned around.  On our return through the area where the dogs chased us, we blitzed by at 60 mph.  No dogs, no bites, and no problems.

Ah, but the day was just starting.  A little further down the Transpeninsular Highway, in Baja’s Valle de los Cirios, we would be chased yet again.  But this time, it would be by a titanic tarantula.   But that’s a story for the next installment of our Baja KLR Khronicles.

Stay tuned!

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Baja 2009: The KLR Khronicles Part I

What this trip was all about. I grabbed this somewhere in the Vizcaino Desert.  That’s my red KLR up front and John’s green one behind it. These are the perfect bikes in the perfect place.

In October 2009 it had been a year since my last motorcycle trip in Baja, and that was entirely too long.  I was good to go, but most of the guys I hung out with here in So Cal were timid.  They believed what they read in the LA Times.  You know, about Mexico being dangerous.  Me?  I knew better. I needed to get my knees in the Baja breeze.  My good buddy Baja John felt the same way.

My first journey into Baja was with John back in 1994, and it would be good to ride with him again.  Our earlier trips were on cruisers…John on a Viagra (spelling intentional) and me on a Harley.  We’d both be riding Kawasaki KLR 650s this time.  I bought one, and after listening to me rave about it, so did John.

Don’t get me wrong.  There’s nothing wrong with a Yamaha Virago, and if driveway jewelry is your thing, there’s nothing wrong with a Harley (Harleys are the world’s most efficient machines for converting gasoline to noise and self-perceived status upgrades, you know).  But the KLR 650s…those were real motorcycles.  No pretense, all business.  I wish I had kept my KLR.  I let the guy who bought it know that I’ll but it back.  But that will be a story for another time.

The plan for this trip was to explore places off the Transpeninsular Highway. On previous trips, we’d seen signs pointing down rough dirt roads to the ruins of various abandoned Spanish missions, the marble quarry at El Marmol, and a few other places promising adventure.  On those prior trips we quite appropriately opted not to take our cruisers down those gnarly dirt roads. This time, though, we had the right bikes and we would go wherever we wanted.  Dirt?  Soft sand?  Mud?  Banditos?  Rabid dogs?  Hey, bring it all on.  We were ready.

So, here we go.

John rode south from Tehachapi to meet me near the Cal Poly campus, and we left late on a Thursday afternoon (John worked his job at Palmdale AFB, and I taught that day at Cal Poly).

We made it to Rosarito Beach Hotel that first night, my favorite hotel in that town.  It’s a classy joint with a great restaurant, but the adverse publicity and overall economic climate in 2009 were killing the place.   Think unending stories about drug wars and purported lawlessness in Mexico, and the worldwide Great Recession.  My guess is that fewer than 10 rooms were occupied that evening.

The KLRs, rode hard and put away wet that night in the Rosarito Beach Hotel.

Our plans for this trip were purposely vague, other than to head south and consume large quantities of Tecate after the bikes had been put away. We briefly talked about doing a banzai run all the way to Cabo San Lucas, but that would have been a push. It was already dark when we passed through Tijuana, and south of TJ, the Pacific Ocean mist was fogging my faceshield. I thought about Susanna’s restaurant in Rosarito (more on that in a bit), and all thoughts of Cabo vanished. For that night, Rosarito Beach was it.  And that was a good thing.  I love having dinner in Susanna’s.  Susanna’s is the best restaurant in town, and maybe the best in all of Mexico. A stay in Rosarito Beach without dinner at Susanna’s would be a crime against nature and good judgment.

Susanna, don’t you cry for me. I’ll be back.
Ah, yes. The perfect antidote for low cholesterol. The dining at Susanna’s is as close as you’ll get to Heaven without a one-way ticket.

After a five-star dinner, Baja John and I walked around downtown Rosarito Beach for a bit.  It was deserted.

Rosarito Beach 2009. The LA Times was killing this place with its unending negative stories about Mexico. More than half the stores, restaurants, and other places were shuttered. Normally a hopping party town, in 2009 it was dead, and there was really no reason for it other than the US news media’s fixation on demonizing the place.
At a club in Rosarito Beach.  We were the only two people there.  That’s Baja John on the left.

The next morning we rolled south along the Pacific coast to a great breakfast in Ensenada.  Good God, we were packing on the calories.  My favorite breakfast spot in Ensenada is Velero’s, a place near the ocean just  behind the Corona Hotel.  The clientele is mostly local business folks, the breakfasts are great, and it’s the hot ticket.  They bring a large plate of light, delicious pastries as soon as you sit down.  The coffee and the orange juice are superior. That’s followed by a tortilla with melted cheese and salsa. I could have (and should have) stopped at the pastries and the cheese tortilla, but I went for my customary two eggs over hard with the fixings you see below. It was as good as it looks.

Simple, delicious, and filling. Velero’s is the breakfast spot in Ensenada.
Velero’s is on a side street that juts off the road along the coast. The Ensenada sign is gone.  A pity, as it made for a great photo.

After a great breakfast, we were on the road again, headed south out of Ensenada toward points south, including the aforementioned abandoned missions, a shipwreck on the Pacific coast, and more.

To be continued…

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