{"id":1206,"date":"2018-10-01T00:23:47","date_gmt":"2018-10-01T00:23:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/?p=1206"},"modified":"2019-01-27T14:16:07","modified_gmt":"2019-01-27T22:16:07","slug":"baja-150cc-at-a-time-part-iii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/2018\/10\/01\/baja-150cc-at-a-time-part-iii\/","title":{"rendered":"Baja, 150cc at a time: Part III\u2026."},"content":{"rendered":"

So we\u2019re back on the story about our trek to Cabo San Lucas on reborn Mustangs, the little CG clone 150cc hardtails. \u00a0 We’re doing this story in installments.\u00a0 This is the third, and if you are new the ExNotes blog, you might not have seen Part I and Part II. \u00a0 My advice? \u00a0 Take a few minutes and read them before continuing with Part III (this part of our ongoing 150cc adventure ride)…<\/p>\n

Part I:\u00a0 Baja, 150cc at a time…<\/a><\/p>\n

Part II:\u00a0 Baja, 150cc at a time…<\/a><\/p>\n

And with that,\u00a0I\u2019ll pick up where I left off at the end of our Part II Colonet coffee stop. \u00a0After our coffee stop, we rolled on for another hour and stopped for breakfast. Here we were, in this little Baja restaurant, and they had wireless Internet access. That\u2019s where I posted the first CSC blog entry on our Baja trip (and we wanted to keep moving, so it was short).<\/p>\n

Check this out…Simon Gandolfi checking his email on my laptop!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

What is the world coming to, though? Wireless Internet access in Baja.\u00a0 I was surprised. \u00a0 That trip was the first time I had Internet access in Baja.\u00a0 I knew the peninsula was changing.<\/p>\n

Breakfast was good, and after that, it was a short hop down to El Rosario to top off the tanks before climbing into the Valle de los Cirios<\/em>. Our bikes climbed, and so did the temperature. I\u2019ll bet we had a 60-degree temperature swing that day. It was right at about 100 degrees in the desert. September is the hottest month of the year in Baja.\u00a0 Why make it easy? \u00a0We stopped several times to peel off our layered riding gear as the temperatures continued to climb.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Arlene, dropping layers and trying to stay cool.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

When Catavina came into view, we decided to call it a day. We might have pushed on to Guerrero Negro, but there is literally nothing between Catavina and Guerrero Negro, and it\u2019s another 140 miles or so down the road. Too hot, too far, and we didn\u2019t want to ride after dark.<\/p>\n

We had a lot of fun with Simon, and we quickly dubbed him \u201cthe world\u2019s most interesting man.\u201d Do you remember those Dos Equis commercials? You know\u2026the ones where a guy holding a Dos Equis beer is proclaimed the world\u2019s most interesting man\u2026with descriptors like \u201che never uses lip balm\u201d and \u201chis mother has a tattoo that says \u2018Son.\u2019\u201d \u00a0We really enjoyed getting to know Simon, and he most definitely is the world\u2019s most interesting man. Before I left, someone gave me a list of \u201cworld\u2019s most interesting man\u201d descriptions he grabbed off the Internet, and I dribbled them out to our group as we journeyed through Baja. The one that got the best laugh was \u201cSimon Gandolfi is the world\u2019s most interesting man\u2026he once called a psychic\u2026to warn her.\u201d<\/p>\n

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I grabbed this shot of Simon with his California Scooter in the Valle de los Cirios south of El Rosario. It’s one of my all time favorites.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Simon was also keeping a blog for his readers. Here’s an entry from Simon’s blog…<\/p>\n

The bikes are small and pretty, surely an unusual description of a bike. Best of all they make people smile, not with scorn but with pleasure – as does watching your children play out in the yard.<\/em><\/p>\n

The bikes were performing well. We had two current production bikes (mine and Arlene\u2019s), and two preproduction bikes (Simon\u2019s and John\u2019s). During development Steve and the boys found a few improvement opportunities on the preproduction bikes, and these resulted in upgrades on the production bikes. Simon\u2019s and John\u2019s preproduction bikes have had some of the problems we found earlier, but the production bikes performed flawlessly.<\/p>\n

We didn’t coddle the little Mustangs. We ran on some pretty rough roads, and the speed bumps (topes) in every little town we pass through were brutal. The Mexicans don\u2019t just use one speed bump. They use about 20 of the things in a row, maybe 30 feet apart, one after the other. When they tell you to slow down, they mean it. We\u2019d slow down for the speed bumps when we saw them in time (which didn\u2019t always happen), and then we\u2019d speed up after the topes. As I said earlier, the bikes liked running around 45 mph. We occasionally cranked them up to over 60 mph, but then we’d settle into a relaxed putt to enjoy the scenery and the ride. It\u2019s a sweet way to see Baja.<\/p>\n

Here’s another cool entry from Simon’s blog…<\/p>\n

The desert here is a vast up-and-down jumble of immense gray boulders, candelabra cactus, Judas trees and skinny scrub. To the south and west lie mountains scrubbed to their stone core by a few million years of wind and occasional rain. To the east a long roll of cloud or fog lies low over the ocean. The dawn light washes the mountains a pale chalky blue. The cloud bank is touched with pink.<\/em><\/p>\n

I have ridden on ahead. I haven’t met another car or truck in twenty minutes. Cut the engine and the silence is total. Two buzzard glide overhead. Nothing else moves. I am absorbed into the stillness and the quiet and the beauty and find myself shivering, not with cold, but with that exultation that comes sometimes when, tired yet wonderfully content, you get into a bed spread with Egyptian cotton sheets stiff from the laundry and wriggle in minor ecstasy as you clutch yourself in your own arms. Never done that? Never slept between Egyptian cotton sheets? How sad…<\/em><\/p>\n

And if you have never visited Baja California, start planning. Right now this is about as close as you can get to heaven without a one-way ticket.<\/em><\/p>\n

We rode into the Catavina boulder fields, one of the prettiest parts of Baja.\u00a0 It’s a surreal region with huge white boulder and enormous Cardon cactus.<\/p>\n

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Headed toward Catavina.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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You’ve seen this photo before. It’s another one of my favorites. I shot it from the saddle with my old D200 Nikon and 24-120 lens as we rolled through the Catavina boulder fields.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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The Catavina gas station. No kidding.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Our destination that night was Catavina, where we would spend the night in the Desert Inn. It was a grand day and a great place to call it a night. I\u2019d stayed there many times before on prior Baja adventures, and I knew it was good. The Desert Inn is nice. It\u2019s 100 miles from anywhere.<\/p>\n

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The courtyard in Catavina’s Desert Inn Hotel.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Our bikes parked in front of the Catavina Desert Inn.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

They turn the generators off from 12:00 to 4:00 at the Desert Inn, so there\u2019s no electricity in the afternoon.\u00a0 The desolation and the surrounding landscape just make it a cool place to be, even if was 100 degrees (as it was when we stopped that day). We ate in the Desert Inn\u2019s restaurant, we sampled their Tequilas (hey, our riding was over that day), and then we hung out in the pool. Wow, that sure felt good.<\/p>\n

To be continued…stay tuned for Part IV!<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

Want to learn more about riding in Baja? \u00a0 Check out the ExhaustNotes Baja page<\/a>!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So we\u2019re back on the story about our trek to Cabo San Lucas on reborn Mustangs, the little CG clone 150cc hardtails. \u00a0 We’re doing this story in installments.\u00a0 This is the third, and if you are new the ExNotes blog, you might not have seen Part I and Part II. \u00a0 My advice? \u00a0 … Continue reading “Baja, 150cc at a time: Part III\u2026.”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[63,57,89],"tags":[27,23],"class_list":["post-1206","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-baja","category-baja-cuisine","category-motorcycle-adventure-ride","tag-adventure-riding","tag-adventure-riding-cameras"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1206","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1206"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1206\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2249,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1206\/revisions\/2249"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}