To continue our Utah exploration, this blog is on the Golden Spike National Historic Park in Promontory, Utah. This is where the Transcontinental Railroad came together, with the Union Pacific building from the east, and the Central Pacific building from the west. The Transcontinental Rail Road was completed on 10 May 1869. It’s quite a story, and Golden Spike National Historic Park does a grand job in telling it.
Heading into Gold Spike National Historic Park.The National Park Service advises not listening to your GPS, but to instead watch for the signs.Jupiter and No. 119. Both locomotives were built in the eastern, industrialized US.Keep going in one direction, and these tracks would lead to Council Bluffs, Iowa. Head in the opposite direction and you’ll arrive in Sacramento.Jupiter and its coal tender. Both this locomotive and No. 119 (see below) are not the originals. They were reverse engineered from photographs and completed in 1979.No. 119. Neither Jupiter nor No. 119 were supposed to be the locomotives that met at this site. Antelope was replaced by Jupiter when it hit a fallen tree trunk along the way to Promontory. No. 119 replaced another locomotive when the first one was chained to the rails in Piedmont, WY, by workers who had not been paid.A reenactment of a famous cowcatcher kiss.Another view of Jupiter.And another. If you are a photography enthusiast, Utah is a target-rich environment.No. 119 basking in the Utah sunshine.I had a new wide-angle lens when I shot these photos.Colorful Jupiter. Both originals, Jupiter and No. 119, died a death that didn’t quite fit their historical significance: They were both sold for scrap (at less than $1000 each) in the early 1900s.And finally, headed back to Ogden, Utah, on State Route 183.
Susie and I arrived late in the afternoon at Golden Spike National Historic Park to catch their last presentation of the day. We hung around for a bit taking a few more photos and were about to leave when one of the docents suggested we stay a little longer. They were about to move the locomotives back to their garage, or barn, or whatever you call the structure where you park a locomotive. We were glad we did, and I grabbed this video.
This was exciting…Susie and I were tooling through New Mexico on our way to Mesa Verde in Colorado when we spotted a sign for Aztec Ruins National Monument. We’d never been there. In fact, we had never even heard of the place. But it’s there, it’s real, and it’s a grand destination. The result? Well, hey, check this out!
You guys and gals will remember my good buddy Mike, whom I met on one of the CSC Baja runs a couple of years ago. It was a chance meeting…we stopped to buy bottled gas from one of the roadside entrepreneurs in Catavina and I noticed one of the bikes had a set of jump wings on the tail box. We had been on the road a few days already and I wondered why I hadn’t noticed the Airborne insignia before, and then I realized it was because I hadn’t noticed the bike was a BMW GS, not a CSC RX3 (that’s how much the bikes look alike, I guess). I looked around and there was Mike (a new face in the crowd), waiting for fuel just like the rest of us. You meet the coolest people in Baja, and you meet the coolest people on motorcycles. I liked Mike immediately.
Mike is a former US Army Paratrooper (my kind of Amigo), an adventure rider, a good friend, and one hell of a guy. You’ve seen him here on the ExNotes blog before. Mike lives on his motorcycle (a big BMW GS) and travels all over, working as an untethered project manager and writing regularly. It’s a cool (and an enviable) lifestyle.
I received an email from Mike yesterday offering this guest blog, and I wanted to share it with you.
Joe,
Thought this would make for an interesting story for your blog. I know its been an interesting story for us! Let me know what ya think. Few colorful pics for it as well.
Hope you are doing well. I am sure you are fully prepared. 🙂
Mike
PS. Be cool if we could get Chris Hansen to read the blog “take a seat over there, would you like some lemonade” HAHAHA
Locked OUT Abroad- Mexico- Extended Stay
My girlfriend, Bobbie Surber and I both work remotely, so in late February we thought a 4-6 week adventure moto trip through Baja would be a great way to kick off spring. We could get some great riding in, explore camping along the beautiful beaches, and really just clear out the cobwebs from any winter blues and lack of activity we had been experiencing.
The trip started out great in San Felipe in a wonderful off grid solar AirBnb casita, with a lovely host (we only travel Saturday and Sunday as we are heads down working Mon-Fri in AirBnBs). We continued camping, riding, and staying in AirBnBs all through Guerro Negro, Muleje, La Ventana, Todo Santos, and Loreto. We were spending a week in each location to fully absorb the unique cities, people, and culture while soaking up the incredible desert roads, ocean views, and all while meeting new riders that will become lifelong friends along the way.
As we had just arrived in Loreto on March 15th we really began to notice the COVID-19 virus was really starting to ramp up in the United States to the point travel alerts were being issued globally and we began to see fellow travelers from Canada and the EU being requested to return home by their countries.
In Loreto, we were still a solid 3-day ride away from the US Border when on March 19th a Level 4 travel advisory was issued to either return to the United States or hunker in place for an indefinite period. At the same time people in America were hoarding toilet paper and individual states were beginning to “shut down” one by one. We took this quite seriously and given what information was being provided at the time a team decision had to be made by us. It was a long 2-3 days of going back and forth in open dialogue between both of us on different ideas, plans, and solutions. None of which either of us were thrilled with.
We both agreed returning to the United States was not a wise decision, however, we did not want to stay a 3 day drive away from a border crossing in the event there was a health emergency for either of us. We decided to reach out to our 1st Baja AirBnB host in San Felipe and she graciously offered her casita up for us to hunker down in which would place us within a 2 hour drive from the US Border should there be an emergency where one or both of us may need to return home. This seemed like a perfect staging area. The virus seemed to be less in the Baja, perhaps due to lack of testing, but nonetheless it was a peninsula so geographically it made sense that the impacts would be less. There was also an abundance of supplies (to include toilet paper, which I am still confused as hell on why there was a run on that particular item).
So now to our current state of affairs. We are in self-quarantine in San Felipe with our new AirBnB friend, Victoria and are continually evaluating the situation in the United States looking for a safe opportunity to return home, and are quite frightful for the new reality we are returning to. Confident in both our analytical and decision making abilities I am looking forward to writing Part II of this, hopefully sooner than later.
Mike, that’s an awesome input and we sure appreciate hearing from you. Thanks very much. Your photos and descriptions made me realize just how much I miss Baja. Sue and I would have been down there this month had it not been for this CV19 business. As soon as we return to normal, I’m headed south and we’ll be down there. Ride safe, take care, and thanks again!
Sergeant Zuo on our 2016 ride across China, somewhere along the Silk Road.
I recently wrote to my good buddy Sergeant Zuo, who led our 2016 ride across China. Zuo lives in Lanzhou, a huge refining center we visited on the China ride. He and I became great friends on that 38-day adventure. Zuo is a former Chinese Army senior NCO and in an earlier life I was a lowly lieutenant in the US Army. But hey, a lieutenant outranks even a senior noncommissioned officer, and every morning (even though we served in different armies), he’d snap to attention and salute me. And I would then return the salute. It was cool and it added to the good nature and relaxed camaraderie we all felt on the China adventure. Zuo is that rare natural leader you sometimes encounter when groups gather and he was perfect for the China ride. He made what could have a been a scary undertaking into a grand adventure. I would follow him anywhere, and I imagine the troops in the Army units he led felt the same way.
Sergeant Zuo along Qinghai Lake, one of the largest salt water lakes on the planet. We were about a third of the way into our ride when I took this photo.
Zuo owns an RX3 (he was one of the very first people to buy an RX3 in China) and it is his daily driver. He doesn’t speak English and I don’t speak Chinese, but that had no impact on us. We spoke RX3 and riding, I guess, and we formed an immediate bond. A good motorcycle can do that, you know.
Sergeant Zuo on the ferry ride to Qingdao. Qingdao was our final destination on the China ride.
Our trip started in Chongqing, we rode to northwest China (the Tibetan Plateau and the Gobi Desert), then back to central China, and finally over to Beijing and then Qingdao. Qingdao was a name that stuck in my mind. Nearly 50 years ago I was on a US Army missile site in Korea and our primary target line pointed straight across the Yellow Sea at Qingdao. And now, here we were at the end of our China ride five decades later in that very same city.
Zuo, Gresh, I, and a dozen others rode our motorcycles right onto the beach at Qingdao, stripped down, and went swimming in the Yellow Sea’s cool waters. Damn, that felt good. After fighting the oppressive heat and humidity of a damp Chinese summer, I could have spent all day in that cool ocean water. Back in the day I was ready to launch missiles at bad guys coming from Qingdao; 50 years later I swam in the Yellow Sea with Zuo at that very same spot to wrap up the grandest adventure of my life.
Our route on the ride across China.
With that as a backdrop, here’s the note from my good buddy Zuo:
Yeah, I know, you don’t speak Chinese. That’s not a problem; we’ll just turn to Google’s translation site:
Joe (big uncle):
Thank you for your letter.
Seeing the spread of the new coronavirus (CV-19) in the United States from the Internet, this terrible guy has become a common enemy of humanity, but we should believe that it will be defeated! Although the epidemic situation here has been controlled and alleviated, the epidemic alert has not ended.
J, I’m fine, thank you.
Reading your and Erji’s blog is the biggest joy in my life, and it’s great to see you playing happily. Because you have always believed that there is a good friend who cares about you on the other side of the ocean, has you been paying attention to you.
When the epidemic is over, it will be my happiest waiting if I can travel with you.
I miss you so much–my mentor.
Say hello to your friend.
I wish you and Erji all the best.
—- Zuo Zhenyi in Lanzhou, China, March 20, 2020
About that “Erji” business…the Chinese quickly gave Gresh and me Chinese names. I was Dajiu (big uncle), and Joe was Erji (little uncle). After that initial christening, those were our names for the entire trip. It was cool.
You know, when this CV19 business is over, it would be grand to get Zuo over here for a US and Baja ride. It’s something to look forward to, and I promise you it’s going to happen.
Edit: Just in case you haven’t seen these videos, here you go. The first is Gresh’s China Ride video, the second is the one released by Zongshen. They’re both great.
So you’ve probably noticed I haven’t been riding too much lately. You know how it goes…it gets cold, you have other things going on in your life, you want to send some lead downrange, and on and on it goes.
I needed to break that pattern, and there’s no better way to do that than to buy a motorcycle. Yeah, I know…I already have two motorcycles (what has to be the world’s most well-traveled RX3, and a pristine, low miles TT 250). I like CSC motorcycles. But you may recall that Uncle Joe Gresh and I road tested two Enfields last year and I fell in love with the 650 Interceptor.
Down Mexico way…dinner at the San Remedio in Guerrero Negro. Life is good, folks.
I was primed to buy a Royal Enfield when I returned from Mexico, but the Enfield dealer in Glendale had done a God-awful job prepping the Bullet (I wouldn’t buy squat from those guys now), and the Enfield dealer in Brea was doing the normal bend-you-over-a-barrel, here-comes-the-setup-and-freight-charges routine. Folks, I’ve worked in the industry, and I know what setup and freight costs actually are. Trust me on this…they ain’t $1500. So I didn’t buy an Enfield.
Then an amazing thing happened. One of the few dealerships I trust picked up the Enfield line last week. It’s Art Guilfoil’s Douglas Motorcycles in San Bernardino. I asked Art what he could do for me on a new Enfield, I was shocked at how low the number was (don’t ask, because I won’t tell), and, well…
I think this is No. 42 or No. 43 or something. I’ve owned a lot of motorcycles. This is the latest. Sue is cool with it, too!
I’m picking up my new 650 Royal Enfield on Thursday, and to say I’m excited would be an understatement of immense proportions. It was a tough call for me between the Enfield and the new CSC RX4, but truth be told, I love my RX3 and it checks all the boxes for what I want in an adventure touring motorcycle. Arguably, the RX3 is the finest adventure touring motorcycle in the world if you’re going places other than the corner burger joint (for all the reasons I explained in my piece titled Why a 250?). I know. I’ve been to places other than the corner burger joint, and I’ve made most of those trips on an RX3.
So with my new Royal Enfield coming in, it begged the question: What should I do with my RX3 and TT 250? My first thought was that I’d sell them. Then I got to thinking about the RX3. I’ve done some miles on that thing, folks, and we’ve bonded. Nope, I’m going to hang on to it. Baja beckons, and all that. The RX3 is perfect for poking around the peninsula. And next, month, that’s where I’m headed. Susie’s going with me, and we’ll share a Tequila or two with Baja John. You can read about it here.
That leaves the TT 250. Hey, I was involved in bringing the TT 250 to America, and it all started when I eyeballed the 150cc version on display in Zongshen headquarters. It was a bit of an uphill struggle…you know, getting Zongshen to make a 250cc version, and then selling the idea in Azusa. I got the powers that be to go along and then I was out of town when the prototypes arrived in California. A couple of the CSC underlings didn’t like the bike, and I had to sell it in Azusa all over again. But it worked out, and the TT 250 is one of CSC’s best selling motorcycles ever. It should be…it is a hell of a bike for a stunningly low price.
My TT 250 on the road at La Rumarosa in Baja.
With the Enfield coming in, I thought I would sell my TT 250. Hell, it’s pristine, but because I don’t ride it too much, the carb gummed up on me. I thought maybe I’d bring it to CSC and have them make it perfect again, and then another serendipitous thing occurred. A few days ago, a post popped up on Facebook (why do I spend so much time on that moronic site?) from Revzilla, and what do you know, it was about doing your own maintenance on a CSC motorcycle. In this case, it was the San Gabriel (a wonderful name for a motorcycle if ever there was one), and the guys from Revzilla said the CSC shop manuals were wonderful. I thought that was great for a lot of different reasons, including the fact that, along with help from Gerry Edwards and the guys in the shop, I wrote many of the CSC manuals. Then I realized…hey, I wrote the TT 250 manual. I can fix my own carburetor. I looked up the carb stuff and this afternoon I took mine apart, I cleaned the low and high speed jets, and now my TT 250 is running great. There’s something uniquely satisfying about fixing your own motorcycle, and the Revzilla boys were right: Those CSC manuals are amazing. So are the motorcycles. And so is the 650 Enfield. I know, because I took one on what had to be the longest demo ride ever…all the way to Baja and back!
More good times coming up, folks, on the Royal Enfield 650 Interceptor!
This is going to be one of those rambling, topic-hopping blogs that flits like a butterfly in a bed of flowers. You know, touching lightly on a variety of topics and then flitting to the next one for a pollen fix.
First up: Do you have a favorite family restaurant? We’ve got two. One is Rancho Las Magueyes, a Mexican place right around the corner. I know everyone there by their first name, and they all know Susie and me. And my shooting buddies (we always have lunch there after a day on the range). The other is an Italian restaurant. It’s Di Pilla’s in Rosemead, and I’ve been going there for thirty years. Susie and I always get a small pizza and a pasta dish, we share some of both while we’re there, and we’ll bring the rest home (it’s good for another two meals for both of us). I was in Los Angeles last week to renew my passport and we stopped at Di Pilla’s for exactly what I described above (a small pizza with olives and mushrooms, and Dante’s angel hair pasta). It’s just wonderful…the closest you’ll ever get to Heaven without a one-way ticket. If you stop in there, tell Claudia Joe sent you.
Next topic…the Superbowl. I guess the game was okay. It used to be I would occasionally watch the Superbowl just for the halftime show and the commercials. I’m not much of a football fan (never have been), but the commercials and the halftime show used to make the 4-hour slog worthwhile. Not any more, though. At least not to me. I thought the halftime show was revolting, and if my kids were at home, I would have changed the channel. Is it me, or was it like going to a strip club? Maybe I’m just getting old. I don’t like twerking coming into my family room on a widescreen TV, and I didn’t understand a good 70% of the commercials. They weren’t clever or entertaining, and I wasn’t sure what most of them were advertising. The commercial would end and I’d wonder: What was the product? Ah, there’s no maybe about it…I am getting old. But hell, even old people still buy stuff. After four long hours of Superbowl LIV, there’s nothing I’m going to purchase as a result of watching any of those commercials. Color me cranky, but I thought the whole thing was a stupid waste of my time. That’s four hours I won’t get back. It won’t happen again.
I do buy stuff, though. Lots of it. In fact, my new goal as a senior citizen is to make sure my outgo equals my income (I keep telling the kids if there’s anything left after I’m gone, it’s strictly the result of an computational error). And to help me meet that goal, I think I’m buying a new motorcycle. One that has no fraud associated with freight and setup, as is typically encountered at most dealers. Maybe around the end of this month. Watch for more details. Before I do that, though, I want to get my TT250 running. I don’t ride as much as I should, and my TT250 carb gummed up from disuse. I’ll have to refer to my free CSC TT250 shop manual (why don’t all the manufacturers do that?) on how to clean the carburetor, but I’m not worried about the job. I hear the TT250 manual is pretty well written. I’m thinking I’ll get around to the TT250 this week or next.
More rambling, this time about Facebook and the endless supply of brainless memes that flow from its feed. I like Facebook and I like to keep up with my friends and my memories, like that photo above of good buddy Carl and me up on Glendora Ridge Road with the CSC 150 Baja Blaster I rode to Cabo and back. But the rest of the Facebook schtick…wow, it gets old fast. Is anyone else here tired of the mindless political ranting on Facebook? Look, who I vote for is a decision I’ll make without any help from CNN, MSNBC, the NY Times, the Russians, or you. It’s my vote, and all the breathless exhortations by Don Lemon, Anderson Cooper, and Sean Hannity will matter not one whit. It’s what happens in a free country. Mindlessly sharing memes on your Facebook feed (I know, there’s a lot of redundancy in that phrase) isn’t going to change a thing. Folks, get a life. Grow up. Vote, and then move on. It’s what we do in America.
On to a new topic…I’m afraid this coronavirus business is going to get a lot worse before it gets better. I have good friends in China from my Chongqing and Riding China adventures. I recently wrote to one of them to see how things were going over there. In a word, it’s bad. Real bad. The streets are deserted in China, no one is going out, companies are shutting down, travel is severely restricted, and the market is plummeting. Their economy is tanking. Approximately 2000 people a day are getting infected (and that number is likely going to increase). I loved my time in China and I love the Chinese people. I respect their engineering and manufacturing prowess. I hope things get better for them soon.
A happier topic…I’ve been spending more time on the range. If you didn’t see the 9mm cast bullet comparo, you might want to take a look at it. I’m going to start shooting the 9mm jacketed bullet series in another week or two. Jacketed bullets are frequently more accurate than cast bullets, so I’m excited about how that’s going to go. I was tremendously impressed with the Sig Scorpion and how it handled cast bullets. We’ll see if it brings home the bacon with jacketed bullets.
One of my shooting buddies is a California Corrections Officer, and he told me about their qualification course with the Mini 14 (the California Department of Corrections uses the Ruger Mini 14, one of my favorite rifles, as an issue weapon). They qualify with the B-21 target, and when I was at the target manufacturing operation where I buy all my targets I asked if they stocked that one. The guy behind the counter was surprised, and he told me the only folks who ever want that target are CDC officers. But they had it, and then it was my turn to be surprised. The B-21 target is huge. I’m going to have to make a bigger target stand for it. I’m thinking maybe our next informal milsurp match will be with it. My objective is to shoot a higher score than my CDC buddy, and he’s real good.
And on that subject, we’re still toying with the idea of a postal match. You know, one where we specify the course of fire and the target design, you mail your targets to us, we score them, and there’s some kind of a prize for first, second, and third place. We’d make it for handguns only and spec the distance at 50 feet, and we’d make the prizes significant enough to bump up participation. Like maybe a Gear’d Hardware watch for first place, with a book and a T-shirt for second and third place. Let us know…if we did that, would you participate?
Last topic for today, folks: Baja. Yes, Baja beckons. I aim to get down there sometime soon and then again later this year. Maybe stop in to see Baja John in Bahia de Los Angeles. See the whales in Scammon’s Lagoon. I’ll be on my motorcycle, and of course, I’ll be insured with BajaBound. Gresh will be along, maybe even on Zed now that his Kawi 900 resurrection has resumed. Whaddaya think?
Susie and I were up in the Santa Clarita area last week and we thought we would attempt to find the St. Francis Dam site. A quick Google search brought us to a map, we took a right off I-5 at the 126, and we soon found ourselves on San Francisquito Canyon Road. Wow, after a bit of the burbs it grew rural real fast. I know great roads, and folks, this is one. San Francisquito Canyon Road is an awesome set of twisties, one I plan to return to soon on my motorcycle.
An amazing road, San Francisquito Canyon Road was, and there was a lot more of it. I’ll be back, and I’ll be back on two wheels.
We were only traveled a few miles when we came upon a large art deco building (an LA Department of Water and Power plant). We had arrived.
LA DWP’s Plant 2, an art deco hydroelectric generation facility on San Francisquito Road. The three huge pipes behind it carry water from the California aqueduct system.
The DWP building was magnificent, and when we parked, we found this plaque:
There you have it: The story, the plaque, and the location. We had arrived. Everything was behind a chain link fence, but it was still very cool. I’m going to guess the concrete behind the plaque is from the St. Francis dam. We were standing where the wall of water released by the dam had passed.A timeline of events leading up to the St. Francis Dam disaster of 1928.
As the plaque said, we were a mile and a half from where the actual dam had stood, so we continued north on San Francisquito Canyon Road. The building (the one in the photo above) is a replacement…the original power plant was swept away when the dam collapsed. I would think so; when the dam collapsed it released a 10-story tall 12 1/2 billion gallons of water.
We didn’t see the actual dam; the Internet told us it was a 5-minute hike east of the road (you can’t drive to it), and according to what we read, there’s not much of the dam left. We drove north a little further and saw the dirt road leading to the site, but there was a gate and it was closed. Maybe next time.
I was very intrigued by San Francisquito Canyon Road, and I wanted to know where it went. I found this satellite photo map on Google:
The bottom arrow points to LA DWP Plant 2, the building you see in the photo at the top of this blog. The upper arrow points to our turnaround point. The site I found on the Internet said you can park there and hike to the actual dam site. The distance from one arrow to the other is about a mile and a half. The other roads shown in this photo are all dirt.
From the map, I could see that continuing north on San Francisquito Canyon Road would brings us to Elizabeth Lake Road, and from there it’s Lake Hughes Road south to get back to Interstate 5 near Castaic. The little bit we did on San Francisquito Canyon Road showed it to be a great road. I had ridden Elizabeth Lake Road on previous motorcycle rides (without realizing how close I was to the St. Francis Dam disaster site). On the map, Lake Hughes Road appears to be even twistier than San Francisquito Canyon Road, and it looks like it would be a great ride.
My planned motorcycle ride: East at CA 126 off I-5, northeast on San Francisquito road to Elizabeth Lake Road, and then south on Lake Hughes Road. It’s going to be a good one.
I’m going to return to this area on my motorcycle and do the ride you see above. It’s going to be great, and you’ll read about it right here.
Yours truly with my Triumph Tiger in Palomar, about 200 miles south of the border along Baja’s Transpeninsular Highway. I had a little bit of hair back in the day, and it was still brown. What’s left now is mostly gray.
Wow, here’s a find…a bunch of older print photos from a Baja trip my old Baja buddy John Welker and I did back in 2006. Man, times were different back then. We both rode big road bikes and we were both working for a living. What a difference 14 years can make. It was a quick 1100-mile weekend ride to Bahia de Los Angeles in the Baja peninsula. John has a house on the Sea of Cortez down there. He still owns it, and he spends several months each year in Mexico. I took my Triumph Tiger for its first long ride, John took his Yamaha Virago, and we had a great time. I guess that goes without saying. Any motorcycle trip to Baja is going to be great.
A Mexican truck driver on the Transpeninsular Highway, who was actually pretty friendly.
We stayed in San Vincente on the way down. It’s a cool little agricultural town along the Transpeninsular Highway, one of many in the agricultural district north of El Rosario. We saw a guy trying to buy beer in the restaurant in San Vincente that Friday night. There was a BMW GS in the hotel parking lot and I asked if it was his. Yep, it was, and Peter introduced himself to me. The restaurant didn’t serve beer, but I went across the street to pick up a couple of sixpacks of Tecate. I asked Peter to join us for dinner, and he did. He’s from Canada (eh?), and he was touring Mexico and the US for a month or two.
Our new GS-mounted good buddy Peter in San Vincente, along with good buddy Annie. Peter said he was looking for a Starbuck’s and got lost. I think there may be a Starbuck’s down there now.That’s Deema, Annie, John, and Peter. It was a grand dinner. Deema and Annie drove down in Annie’s car on this trip.
On Saturday, the next morning, John and I ran into a fog bank about 250 miles south of the border. Visibility was so bad I couldn’t see the ground beneath me, so I pulled over to wait it out.
I grabbed this shot of my Triumph in the fog.And another. There was nothing else to do until the fog lifted. The Tiger was a very photogenic motorcycle.
Mexico’s Highway 1 (the Transpeninsular Highway) follows the Pacific coast and then turns inland at El Rosario. Mama Espinoza’s is a classic Mexican restaurant known for their lobster burritos. I had a chicken burrito for lunch and, as always, it was the best one I ever had. I made it a point to stop there on the way back the next day and I had the same thing.
We always feel welcome at Mama Espinoza’s.A sculpture outside Mama Espinoza’s.
South of El Rosario, it gets real desolate real fast. That’s the Valle de los Cirios, and it’s one of the prettiest spots on the peninsula. The roads are spectacular. Fast sweepers, long straights, and no traffic. There’s just the odd cow or wild burro in the road.
A typical view in the Valle de los Cirios.Another stop along the Transpeninsular Highway. The Triumph Tiger was a great machine for this kind of riding, especially with its comfortable riding position and a range exceeding 200 miles.
After the Valle de Los Cirios, it was desert down to Catavina and beyond. There are remote truck stops, lots of desert, and just great riding. I’ve got to get back down there again sometime soon.
A truck stop out in the middle of nowhere.We stopped briefly in Catavina, where John couldn’t tear himself away from this rather talkative guy. John and I have put a lot of miles on our motorcycles in Mexico. The scenery is great. The people you might are even more fun.
At Punta Prieta, after traveling on Highway 1 for about 360 miles, we made a left turn and headed east across the Baja peninsula.
This was our destination…Bahia de Los Angeles.Triumph called the Tiger’s color Caspian Blue, presumably named after the Caspian Sea. This wasn’t the Caspian Sea (it’s the Sea of Cortez), but I’d say the color match is pretty good.
John’s house on the Sea of Cortez. John picked a moonless weekend so that we could take in the stars, and the night sky was awesome.
Every motorcycle trip needs an obligatory artsy fartsy shot. This was mine from our 2006 Bahia de Los Angeles ride.
John’s house is literally right on the Sea of Cortez. It’s a pretty cool place.
Casa de Welker, on Bahia de Los Angeles.John telling a fish story in his front yard.Our dinner choice that Saturday night. The fish tacos were impressive, as was the Tecate. Life is good down there in Baja.
John keeps an old VW microbus in Bahia de Los Angeles that came with the house when he bought it. The lights on the VW didn’t work back in 2006 (I imagine John has them working now). We had dinner in town and realized the sun had set. No lights. No moon. Dirt roads through the Baja desert. We realized we were in a pickle. But, John had an idea. And a flashlight. Annie hung out the window with that flashlight and sort of lit the way. It was an old flashlight with a limp battery, and it didn’t really light up anything. But we didn’t care. It was a fun evening.
The original Baja bug. LIghts? We don’t need no stinkin’ lights!Candy, the Chihuaha from Peru. In Mexico. That little pup ran the show.A sculpture on John’s house.
There’s no light pollution down there in Bahia de Los Angeles. I slept on the roof and it was magnificent. I’ve never seen stars as vivid nor as plentiful as they were that night. And the next morning, I was up before sunrise, so I was able to set up my camera and get a cool photo of the sun rising over the Sea of Cortez.
A shot from John’s roof looking east over the Sea of Cortez.
I rode back the next morning by myself…John was staying at his place a couple of extra days, but I had to get back for work. Work. Man, those days seem so far in the past now.
The ride back was a good one. It’s nice to ride with friends; it’s also nice to ride on your own. I do some of my best thinking when I’m riding by myself. I need to do more of it.
I grabbed this shot in one of the agricultural towns along Highway 1 on the way back to the US.
I shot all of the photos on this page with my F5 Nikon, and the 24-120 Nikon and 17-35 Sigma lenses. Back in the day, as film cameras went the Nikon F5 was a good as it ever got, and I got a lot of great shots with that camera. The thing was a tank and I don’t think I would want to lug it around today, but back then it was really something.
So there you have it. I’ve got a standing invitation from Baja John to ride down to Bahia de Los Angeles, and as I put this blog together and looked at these photos again, I think that’s what I’m going to do.
The 1956 Mustang Colt. I had posted this on Facebook several years ago and forgot about it. Mr. Zuckerberg jogged my memory.
I’ll bet with that title you’re thinking I’m going to write about a couple of guns.
Nope. The subject is Colts, but these are Colts that were manufactured by the Mustang Motor Products Corporation. And the few of us who know what that means would just call the company “Mustang.”
The idea popped into my mind with one of those Facebook photos on my feed. You know, it’s one of the things Facebook does when they’re not spying on you…they suggest you repost a photo you posted in the past. They did, and that beautiful turquoise 1956 Colt you see above popped up on my Facebook account. I had posted it 6 or 7 years ago. Mark remembered.
Mustang is the company that made the hottest mini-motorcycles back in the 1950s. There were a lot of companies making small motorcycles in America back then, and then they all disappeared by the early 1960s. Mustang hung on into the 1960s, but they were done in by all those nice people you met on Hondas. And when Mustang went out of business, a young Ford exec named Lee Iacocca swept in to grab the Mustang name. A lot of folks thought that was weird in 1962. What was Ford going to do with a name like Mustang? What were they thinking?
The very first iteration of the Mustang…the 1946 Greeves-powered Colt.
There were actually two Mustang Colts. The first was the very first bike Mustang made in the late 1940s. It was a tiny little bike with a tiny little Greeves two-stroke motor, and that’s what did it in the first Colt. In those post-war years, Greeves needed every engine they could make for their own bikes in merry old England, and they cut Mustang off. Undeterred, Mustang bought the Busy Bee engine company in the US and they redesigned a new Mustang around the larger Busy Bee 322cc flathead 4-stroke single. The Busy Bee engine was actually used to power cement mixers before that, but Mustang wanted Busy Bee engines for their motorcycles, unaware of and uncaring about any future impact to Joe Gresh’s future concrete endeavors.
Another view of the ’46 Mustang Colt. It’s stunning, isn’t it?
Mustang revived the Colt moniker for the ’56 model (the one you see in the photo at the top of this blog and in the photo below), but it didn’t sell well and the folks who made Mustangs in California didn’t like the bike. The Mustang was a premium product, and the idea of a cheapened Mustang (no transmission, a centrifugal clutch, and no telescopic forks) didn’t set well with the customer base or the folks in the Mustang factory.
The ’56 Colt again. I love the colors and the look.
You might be wondering how I know the folks in the Mustang factory didn’t like the ’56 Colt. I heard it straight from the late Jim Cavanaugh, who was an advisor to CSC Motorcycles and the Production Superintendent at the original Mustang Motor Products Corporation.
A young Jim Cavanaugh in front of the Mustang factory.Another view of Jim and his crew back in the day…Jim is on the left in the second row.Jim Cavanaugh a few years before he passed away. Jim is on a custom CSC 150 Mustang replica, his personal bike.
Steve Seidner revived the Mustang concept with his line of CSC 150 and CSC 250 motorcycles. They were awesome. I rode mine along with a few of my friends (including Baja John) to Cabo San Lucas and back. Many of the CSC bikes were highly customized, including this 250 Steve thought was going to be his personal bike:
CSC called this one the P-51. It fit the motorcycle’s aviation motif and Mustang lineage.World War nose art on the P-51’s fuel tank. This motorcycle was going to be Steve Seidner’s bike, but when we put this photo on the CSC blog a guy called within minutes and made Steve an offer he couldn’t refuse. The CSC Mustangs went for high dollars. Folks would point out you could buy a Harley for that kind of money, but they just didn’t get it.
So, back to the original Colt Mustangs…I think both Colts are stunning motorcycles. What do you think?
Want to read about our trip to Cabo and back and CSC 150 motorcycles? It’s right here. And would you like to read the article Jim Cavanaugh and I wrote for Motorcycle Classics magazine on the original Mustangs? You can get to that one here.
Fifty or so miles north of Las Cruces, New Mexico and just over the mountains from White Sands Missile Range lies a huge bet on the future. The bet was placed almost 20 years ago and it’s been a 200 million-dollar, back and forth political football game to get to where we are today: Spaceport America, New Mexico.
Depending on which major party was in charge of New Mexico’s state government Spaceport has been alternately starved, funded or sabotaged. Some politicians hoped the thing would fail and worked towards that goal. Other politicians hoped it would put New Mexico on the front row of the commercial space race and threw taxpayer money at the project. If that wasn’t enough a well-publicized disaster with major tenant Virgin Galactic’s space plane and the collapse of oil prices (New Mexico gets huge sums of tax money from the oil industry) only increased the headwind.
The very access road to Spaceport is an example. Paved only in 2018, 10 years after construction began. Before that, heavy equipment and materials had to be hauled to the job site 50 extra miles via the town of Truth or Consequences or attempt a direct route from Las Cruces over a rough dirt road impassable during the wet. As usual, political gamesmanship made the project harder, costlier and take longer.
Hopefully all that is behind us. Virgin Galactic plans on moving its headquarters to Spaceport in 2020. The White Knight, first stage of Galatic’s commercial flight system, rests snugly in Sir Richard Branson’s curvy-sexy Spaceport hanger. Boeing, UP Aerospace, EXOS Aerospace, HyperSciences and SpinLaunch have become tenants. At least 20 successful launches have flown from Spaceport. These enthusiastic space pioneers are basically wealthy kids, the same as we were with our Estes model rockets except they are using real rockets.
While the site is “substantially complete” at this time and ready for business you get the feeling there are a lot of loose ends to tie. The public has access to Spaceport but you’ve got to be with a tour group as they don’t want idiots wandering around falling into drainage ditches or accidentally pushing flashing red buttons and causing rockets to launch. Tours start from Las Cruces or Truth or Consequences. We took the Las Cruces tour because we were going to Deming’s Tractor Supply for a 3-point box blade. I like to mix cutting-edge Aerospace facilities with dirt moving equipment whenever I can.
Once past the security gate you wonder where that 200 million dollars went as there are only two buildings of any size on the property. My guess is the lion’s share went into the 2-mile-long, 200-foot-wide, 42-inch-thick, multilayer runway. This thing has crushed rock, several courses of varying density concrete, a layer of asphalt and a thick topcoat of concrete. It looks like you could land a battleship on Spaceport’s runway.
The first building we visited was the main office and flight control tower. This domed structure was constructed using an inflated bladder, which was then shot with sprayed concrete material. After the dome mud set up the bladder was deflated and the interior shot with more sticky goo. You can build a high ceiling without internal supports using this method but the ones I’ve seen in the past all cracked.
The entrance area shows signs of deterioration already. High overhead, ill fitting, water damaged sections of patched drywall look like a buttery layer cake that has slipped a layer. Gaping holes on the exterior of the building reveal wires and skeletal metal studs. It’s sloppy work that people like me notice. I mean, this is the very first place visitors to Spaceport see. I’d appreciate it if management pulled the maintenance crew off of life support projects and tidied up the front door.
The flight control room is a fairly simple set up. It’s nothing like Mission Control in Houston. One 3-dimensional curved desk with computer monitors spanning the width of the desk sits a few feet back from a large window. I find it amazing that there is no radar but the restricted airspace over Spaceport America means there are no obstacles to hit until you smack into the Andromeda Galaxy. Launches are easy here; no need to re-route airplanes or alert the local populace. They tell me flights can be scheduled in a couple days rather than months. That’s a big window of opportunity and one of the selling points of the joint.
We like to say you get the first mile free when you launch your spacecraft from New Mexico. At 4500 feet Spaceport is close enough and it’s a real fuel savings when you consider gravity is stronger the closer you get to the concrete I’ve poured in my backyard. There’s also a zillion acres of vacant land surrounding Spaceport so collateral damage from explosions and failures to launch will be limited to sagebrush and bunnies.
Behind the visitor center and incorporated into the same concrete dome is a 24-hour-a-day, 7-days-a-week fire-rescue operation. There are a lot of things that can go wrong with space travel before you even leave the ground so these guys are on call even when no flights are scheduled. The fire guys gave a great talk on their various duties and let us sit in the Big Mama fire truck. All their gear was spotless and ready to go. Full EMS capability with a beautiful 2-bay ambulance is on site. If I ever sever a limb during a routine training mission I want these guys taking care of me.
Sir Richard Branson’s space tourism company takes up most of Spaceport’s futuristic, crawling-out-from-the-earth hangar structure. We couldn’t see inside because the electrically controlled windows were set to opaque and our guide didn’t have access to the switch that makes them clear. Blurry photos of the Mothership were all I could get. A secret panel blended into the steel-walled entrance walk opened, leading us to a kind of waiting lounge/museum. It was real James Bond super-villain stuff. Here was the G-force spinner that takes potential astronauts up to 6 Gs in preparation for their flight. Passengers who fail the spin test can’t fly.
I didn’t take the spin test because I wanted to digest my breakfast in peace. At 2 Gs older folks crawled out of the machine slowly and appeared a little disoriented. A tall, skinny 14-year-old was having a ball in the machine wanting more speed all the time. You could have taken that kid to 12 Gs no problem.
Listen, lots of people think space flight is a waste of money. They believe that all earthbound problems should be solved before we wander off into space. Complaining about the government or rich folks spending their money on space adventures instead of those less fortunate is a popular pastime. I’m not one of them. I figure the rich can spend their money however they want. Helping the unfortunate is what taxes are for. Whatever is left over is yours to invest in cocaine, prostitutes or space travel.
By now you know I dig all things space related and believe the faster we blow this joint the better off the Earth will be. 2020 should be an exciting year at Spaceport because Virgin Galactic claims they will be firing some spacecraft high into the sky.
You guys and gals will remember my good buddy Mike, whom I met on one of the CSC Baja runs a couple of years ago. It was a chance meeting…we stopped to buy bottled gas from one of the roadside entrepreneurs in Catavina and I noticed one of the bikes had a set of jump wings on the tail box. We had been on the road a few days already and I wondered why I hadn’t noticed the Airborne insignia before, and then I realized it was because I hadn’t noticed the bike was a BMW GS, not a CSC RX3 (that’s how much the bikes look alike, I guess). I looked around and there was Mike (a new face in the crowd), waiting for fuel just like the rest of us. You meet the coolest people in Baja, and you meet the coolest people on motorcycles. I liked Mike immediately.
The trip started out great in San Felipe in a wonderful off grid solar AirBnb casita, with a lovely host (we only travel Saturday and Sunday as we are heads down working Mon-Fri in AirBnBs). We continued camping, riding, and staying in AirBnBs all through Guerro Negro, Muleje, La Ventana, Todo Santos, and Loreto. We were spending a week in each location to fully absorb the unique cities, people, and culture while soaking up the incredible desert roads, ocean views, and all while meeting new riders that will become lifelong friends along the way.
I do buy stuff, though. Lots of it. In fact, my new goal as a senior citizen is to make sure my outgo equals my income (I keep telling the kids if there’s anything left after I’m gone, it’s strictly the result of an computational error). And to help me meet that goal, I think I’m buying a new motorcycle. One that has no fraud associated with freight and setup, as is typically encountered at most dealers. Maybe around the end of this month. Watch for more details. Before I do that, though, I want to get my TT250 running. I don’t ride as much as I should, and my TT250 carb gummed up from disuse. I’ll have to refer to my free 
