{"id":3414,"date":"2019-03-19T06:34:07","date_gmt":"2019-03-19T13:34:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/?p=3414"},"modified":"2019-03-19T06:36:54","modified_gmt":"2019-03-19T13:36:54","slug":"the-bullet-in-baja","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/2019\/03\/19\/the-bullet-in-baja\/","title":{"rendered":"The Bullet in Baja"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\u2019s coastal plains into the desert, then into the beautiful Catavina boulder fields, and then the Valle de los Cirios<\/em> mountains. We\u2019re arrived back in the Old Mill Hotel on San Quintin Bay last night.<\/p>\n

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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.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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A whale skeleton on the road out of Guerrero Negro.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Joe Gresh on a Baja Bullet.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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A photo inside a geodesic dome abandoned in the Catavina boulder fields.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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On the road in Baja.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I\u2019ll 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.\u00a0 It’s a great value for the money and it’s a good motorcycle, perhaps approaching even the CSC<\/a> motorcycles in terms of value.<\/p>\n

The Bullet has been fun, it\u2019s got tons of character, but our bike has been a disappointment.\u00a0 Don\u2019t get me wrong: I wanted to like the Bullet. It\u2019s just that this particular sample (a 2016 press bike) was sent to us suffering from a severe case of neglect.\u00a0 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. \u00a0 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).\u00a0 If the adventure starts when something goes wrong, the Bullet (at least this particular one) is every inch an adventure bike.<\/p>\n

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Joe Gresh, inflight missile mechanic.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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.\u00a0 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. \u00a0 I can handle the vibration and the 72-73 mph top end; I can’t handle the reliability issues. \u00a0 To be fair, I doubt anyone purchases a Bullet to do Baja, and that’s what our trip is. \u00a0 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.\u00a0 Like I said above, this particular Bullet just had not been maintained. \u00a0 The Bullet deserves better, but it didn’t get it. \u00a0There.\u00a0 With that out of the way, let’s get back on the road and continue the trek north.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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\u2019s coastal plains into the desert, then into the beautiful Catavina boulder fields, and then the Valle de los Cirios mountains. … Continue reading “The Bullet in Baja”<\/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":[235,63,610],"tags":[619,419],"class_list":["post-3414","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-amazon","category-baja","category-royal-enfield","tag-bullet","tag-royal-enfield"],"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\/3414","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=3414"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3414\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3426,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3414\/revisions\/3426"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3414"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3414"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3414"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}