A.J. Baime writes a weekly “My Ride” column for the Wall Street Journal. It’s something I greatly enjoy. The stories are always interesting. Most of the time, the Baime columns are about cars. This week’s piece was about a motorcycle; to be specific, a 650 Royal Enfield twin. That’s a marvelous motorcycle. I know. I ride one. Mine is the orange one you see above.
Marc Forgione on his Royal Enfield 650 INT in New York City.
This week’s story was about a chef (Marc Forgione), a man who owns three restaurants in New York City. Mr. Forgione appropriately concluded that a motorcycle is a great way to navigate New York City’s traffic and parking challenges. I think that’s pretty cool. New York law does not allow splitting lanes, but my guess is that Forgione is a well-known guy and local police officers look the other way (Lord knows they have enough real crime on their beats). Lane splitting is legal here in California and I do it all the time. It really makes a difference in getting through congested areas; it was a way of life for us in Colombia and China.
Mr. Baime, our compliments on your Wall Street Journal column, and especially on the one you wrote for yesterday’s edition.
I think most motorcycle videos are silly, including the ones I’ve done (and I’ve done a few). It’s a personal preference…videos (compared to the written word and good photography) dumb down whatever they cover, and I would much rather read a good article with great photos than watch a video. But on occasion I’ll stumble across a video I enjoy. I recently encountered a couple that hit home for me. One compares the Royal Enfield 650 to the Kawasaki W800, and the other compares the Enfield to a Triumph Bonneville.
Back in the day (the 1960s), British vertical twins ruled the roost, and of those the Triumph Bonneville was the king. My father rode a 1966 Triumph Bonneville, and I’ve owned a number of Triumphs from the ’60s and ’70s. They were (and still are) awesome motorcycles. It just makes sense to me that ’60s-era British vertical twins are a platform deserving of the sincerest form of flattery (i.e., copying), and apparently, the modern incarnations from Kawasaki, Royal Enfield, and Triumph do exactly that. Well, maybe not exactly, but enough to let you imagine you’re Steve McQueen.
These videos are fun to watch. The narrators are funny as hell and there are some great quotes. One was, “I’m not even going to try to keep up with you on the way back…you just take care of yourself and watch out for buffalo.” That quote reminded me of Gresh’s video when he entered a corner a bit too hot on a Harley Sportster and famously said, “It handles pretty well when it’s out of control.”
The video editing and imaging in these two videos are superior (way better, in my opinion, than what you see from the self-proclaimed videomeisters here in the US). And the tech content is light years ahead of the typical vlogger tripe clogging up our bandwidth.
Enjoy, my friends.
Here’s a fun fact: All three of these bikes (the Royal Enfield Interceptor, the Kawasaki W800, and the Triumph Bonneville) purport to copy British vertical twins, yet none of these bikes are British. The Enfield is made in India, the Kawasaki is made in Japan, and the Triumph is made in Thailand.
I ride a Royal Enfield 650. I like my Enfield, and for the money, the Enfield has to be one of the best buys ever in motorcycling. Gresh and I already did a road test of the Enfield in Baja, and you can read our reports on it here. One of these days in the near future I’ll do a road test my current Enfield and tell you what it’s like to own one of these grand machines, but I’ve got another road test I’m going to post first. That’s on the 250cc CSC RX3, 5 years in. Good buddy Sergeant Zuo over in Lanzhou has 50,000 miles on his RX3 and it’s still going strong.
I am enjoying my Enfield, and I just found a bunch of Enfield accessories available online through Amazon. I’ll poke around on there a bit later today.
Stay tuned, folks. More good stuff is coming your way.
My Bullet, loaded this morning at the hotel in Tecate. There’s a motorcycle under there somewhere.
We had a glorious ride today, from Tecate along the Ruta del Vino to Ensenada, and from there down the Transpeninsular Highway to San Quintin, which is where we are spending the night. The weather has been perfect. The Bullet, no so much so earlier, but I think we’ve got it wired now. More on that in a bit.
Joe and I swapped bikes today, so I was on the Bullet and he was on the 650 Interceptor. He’s in love with that 650, and it’s easy to see why. The 650 is a home run for Enfield, I think. Like me, Gresh is wanting to buy one, too. But I’m finding I really love the Bullet as well. Yeah, it was missing a bit, but like I said, I think we found and fixed the problem. You know, it’s not an adventure until something goes wrong, and then a big part of the fun is figuring out what to do about it. I’ll get to that shortly.
The photo ops along the Ruta del Vino were awesome, and we took advantage of them…
The Royal Enfield 500cc Bullet on Mexico Highway 3.Uncle Joe hogging the Interceptor on the Ruta del Vino.Dos Amigos reflected in an Enfield engine case.
Another cool thing….with all the rain we’ve had this winter, I’ve never seen Baja so green. As we rode through the old wine country south of Ensenada, the green mountainsides were blanketed with bright orange wildflowers. It really was quite a sight. I didn’t get any photos of that, but I will on the return leg of this trip.
So, about that Bullet missing deal. The bike only did it when decelerating and then accelerating, and it felt to me that it might be a clogged injector. It doesn’t take much to mess with a fuel injector. Gerry Edwards, my good buddy at Brown BMW, used to work on my RX3 and he’d always dose it with Lucas injector cleaner. Gerry thinks the stuff is great, so Gresh and I found a Mexican AutoZone store in Ensenada and I bought some. We put a little bit in and it didn’t really make a difference (if anything, it felt like the Bullet was missing more). As we continued to ride south, I thought about what it could be and concluded it might be related to a spark plug. We stopped at a Pemex station and pulled the plug. What happened next was interesting. The plug body looked like it had been arcing, but even more interesting was the way the sparkplug cap literally fell off the lead to it. When we looked inside the cap, the screw that turns its way into the lead was covered with green corrosion. Joe got a wire brush and cleaned the connector well, we put it back on, and the bike is running way better. We’ll know for sure tomorrow when we pile on the miles to Guerrero Negro, but I think we’ve got it. I felt a noticeable improvement as soon as we put it back together.
Pulling the Bullet plug. The Bullet actually has a pretty nice tool kit.The spark plug cap. The little green thing is the screw that screws into the spark plug wire. It had corroded. We’re pretty sure this is what was causing the missing, and we’re pretty sure we’ve got it fixed.
You know, you’d think that I’d not like a bike that’s missing, but I am loving that Bullet. I love the vintageness (if that’s a word) of it, and I’m enjoying racking up the miles on a big single. It’s cool. It’s kind of a Lawrence of Arabia feeling, floating along at a steady 65 mph and listening to (and feeling) that big thumper thumping away. I can’t really describe it, but I’ll think about the right words some more and give it another go in tomorrow’s blog. I like it. A lot.
I’m happy to report that the Old Mill Hotel in San Quintin is going strong, and they’ve opened a new restaurant (the Eucalipto). We had a couple of beers after the bikes were put away (Lucia took good care of us), and then it was on to a fabulous dinner (Gresh bought!).
Lucy, the lovely young lady who brought us beer and dinner tonight. Life is good.You have to wonder: What is she thinking?Seared tuna, as served by the Eucalipto. Like I said, life is good!Uncle Joe Gresh, wiring analyst extraordinaire!The 650 Interceptor, covered for its Baja jaunt by our favorite Mexico insurers, BajaBound!
Tomorrow, we’re headed through the Valle de los Cirios, and then Guerrero Negro. Stay tuned, folks. Good things are happening.
available online through Amazon. I’ll poke around on there a bit later today.
