Most of our time riding Royal Enfield motorcycles through Baja is spent eating. We have breakfast then ride a while. Any time between 10am and 2 pm is lunch time followed by a rolling dinner that lasts several hundred miles.
My T-shirts have stopped buckling and my pants no longer fit over my head. It’s a mess. Take today, we had Chorizo with eggs then cheesecake then chips and guacamole then tuna. Wash it all down with a nice, cold Mexican Negra Modelo beer and call it a moveable feast.
We eat so much so often that our awesome bellies have crushed the Royal Enfields down to Well-Respected Enfields. It’s a shame.
Between meals we managed to knock out a few hundred miles. The Bullet is averaging about 1000 calories per mile while the thirstier 650 twin Royal Enfield is showing signs of early onset diabetes. Pass me another Moon Pie will ya?
I spent the entire day riding the Bullet and it is much improved. Not exactly like it should be but running about 75% better than the last time I tried it. Berk will explain all in his blog.
We are slowly eating our way back to California and if our hearts and livers can hold out, should be home tomorrow.
When we started off on this trip I hated the Bullet. It was too old fashioned, too slow and it ran terribly. The Royal Enfield 650 in comparison was flawless. The twin ran smoothly and never stumbled. It was plenty fast and I couldn’t imagine anyone buying the Bullet over the Enfield.
The Bullet has broken down repeatedly on our Baja ride. When I’m aboard the 500cc single I never know if I’m going to make it around the next curve. I never know which thump will be the last thump.
And therein lies the Bullet’s appeal: The Bullet needs me. The Bullet needs an experienced rider with an ability to adapt to ever-changing situations. Anyone can ride the new 650 twin.
As this trip has progressed I’ve become more enamored of the Bullet. The Bullet appreciates my attention. It never got any before. I get the feeling that if I died the Bullet would lay atop my gravesite and mourn, not taking gasoline or succor from any others. The bike would lay there and waste away, broken-hearted. Much like how we found it when we rescued the old motorcycle from the dealership that had it chained to a post outside.
We’ve bonded; me and the Bullet are a team. Sure, the Bullet is the weakest member of the team but that just makes me feel like a star player.
And that’s another Bullet attraction: The motorcycle is never better than you are. You don’t feel outclassed or suspect you are leaving untapped performance on the table. What you see is what you get with the Bullet and the more time we spend struggling across the Mexican desert the more I like what I see.
After a great dinner at a newly discovered restaurant in Guerrero Negro two nights ago (the San Remedio), we started the trek north yesterday. We rode from Guerrero Negro to San Quintin through Guerrero Negro’s coastal plains into the desert, then into the beautiful Catavina boulder fields, and then the Valle de los Cirios mountains. We’re arrived back in the Old Mill Hotel on San Quintin Bay last night.
The San Remedio in Guerrero Negro. It’s tucked away a couple of blocks away from the main street on a dirt road. It was good.A whale skeleton on the road out of Guerrero Negro.Joe Gresh on a Baja Bullet.A photo inside a geodesic dome abandoned in the Catavina boulder fields.On the road in Baja.
I’ll give you the lowdown on both bikes in more detail in a future blog, but it looks like the bottom line is going to go like this: The 650 Interceptor is an amazingly competent motorcycle, and if Royal Enfield handles the marketing right and somehow manages to keep the dealer freight and setup fees in check, this bike will sell extremely well. It’s a great value for the money and it’s a good motorcycle, perhaps approaching even the CSC motorcycles in terms of value.
The Bullet has been fun, it’s got tons of character, but our bike has been a disappointment. Don’t get me wrong: I wanted to like the Bullet. It’s just that this particular sample (a 2016 press bike) was sent to us suffering from a severe case of neglect. There was almost no oil in the bike, the battery was shot, the chain was rusty, the spark plug lead was defective, probably other things were out of adjustment, and the bike still has a nagging stumble. Gresh and I have been massaging the Bullet since we left (we repaired the spark plug wire, we removed the kickstand interlock to keep the bike from dying on the open road, we bought and installed a new battery in Guerrero Negro, and we had a few good laughs while doing all of it on the side of the road in Baja). If the adventure starts when something goes wrong, the Bullet (at least this particular one) is every inch an adventure bike.
Joe Gresh, inflight missile mechanic.
I doubt all Bullets (or even the rest of them) would have performed this poorly and if you own a Bullet, my apologies if what I write here offends you. I wanted to be positive about both bikes and I really wanted to love the Bullet, but of the two bikes, the one that I would purchase would be the Interceptor and the one I would avoid is the Bullet. I can handle the vibration and the 72-73 mph top end; I can’t handle the reliability issues. To be fair, I doubt anyone purchases a Bullet to do Baja, and that’s what our trip is. But the reality is we are doing a couple of hundred miles a day on asphalt, the weather is moderate, and the Bullet isn’t cutting it. Like I said above, this particular Bullet just had not been maintained. The Bullet deserves better, but it didn’t get it. There. With that out of the way, let’s get back on the road and continue the trek north.
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.
Most of our time riding Royal Enfield motorcycles through Baja is spent eating. We have breakfast then ride a while. Any time between 10am and 2 pm is lunch time followed by a rolling dinner that lasts several hundred miles.
