{"id":415,"date":"2018-08-01T05:47:22","date_gmt":"2018-08-01T05:47:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/?p=415"},"modified":"2018-08-01T05:52:43","modified_gmt":"2018-08-01T05:52:43","slug":"shine-on","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/2018\/08\/01\/shine-on\/","title":{"rendered":"Shine on…"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

Here’s an interesting story that popped up on my news feed earlier today.\u00a0 It seems an errant scooter rider, a young one at that, was stopped by the Maine State Police riding his scooter on the Maine Turnpike late last night, using only his cell phone for a headlight. \u00a0 There must be more to the story, because after stopping him, the police gave the guy a lift to his destination some 70 miles away. \u00a0 I can’t make stuff up this good, and if you doubt my word, you can read the original story here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

So that story naturally pulled my attention to a somewhat similar experience with my good buddy Baja John and his girlfriend Annie. \u00a0 This goes back to 2006 again, shortly after John bought a place right on the Sea of Cortez in Bahia de Los Angeles.\u00a0 Literally, right on the sea.\u00a0 Oceanside housing.\u00a0 It’s awesome.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Casa Baja Juan, in Bahia de Los Angeles.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"
Baja Juan, probably telling a fish story, in his back yard.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I had just bought a new Triumph Tiger.\u00a0 John and Annie invited me to their new place. \u00a0 Who can say no to an offer like that?<\/p>\n

\"\"
My Triumph. On the ride down to Bahia de Los Angeles, we hit very dense fog. We stopped and waited for it to lift.\u00a0 At one point it was so thick I couldn’t see the ground.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Here’s where the story gets interesting.\u00a0 When John bought the Casa Baja Juan<\/em>, it came with a VW bus. \u00a0 John worked on it for a week and got it running, and it became his get-around-town wheels.\u00a0 He never registered it, so it had no plates, but it was cool.\u00a0 I love old VWs, especially the buses.<\/p>\n

\"\"
The VW bus that came with Baja John’s oceanside estate.\u00a0 Lights?\u00a0 We don’t need no stinkin’ lights!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

That night, we took the VW and went to dinner at the best taqueria<\/em> in town, just a short distance away…<\/p>\n

\"\"
A typical Baja roadside restaurant. You can get some mighty good food in these places.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

John, Annie, and I had a great dinner, a few Tecates, and then it was time to head back to his place. \u00a0 There was a problem, though.\u00a0 The sun had set, and the VW had no headlights.\u00a0 The three of us pondered this situation a while, and then John remembered he had a flashlight.<\/p>\n

John handed the flashlight to Annie and she hung out the passenger window, lighting the way as we rolled down a dirt road to John’s house. \u00a0 We couldn’t see squat (the flashlight was pitifully weak), but we were laughing so hard we didn’t care.<\/p>\n

Then we drove past another restaurant on that dirt road.\u00a0 Imagine that: Another restaurant on that same dirt road.\u00a0 Then I saw who was sitting under the veranda as we went by.\u00a0 Uh oh, I thought.<\/p>\n

There were three Mexican police officers having dinner, sitting out front, just a few feet away as we passed.\u00a0 The police officers saw us, we saw them, and Annie waved, using the flashlight, which I thought would only accentuate the obvious:\u00a0 We had no lights and the VW wasn’t registered.<\/p>\n

The police?\u00a0 They waved back, holding up their cervezas<\/em> in a salute to our ability to adapt, improvise, and overcome.<\/p>\n

Ah, Baja….<\/p>\n

\"\"
Sunrise, the next morning, looking east over the Sea of Cortez.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here’s an interesting story that popped up on my news feed earlier today.\u00a0 It seems an errant scooter rider, a young one at that, was stopped by the Maine State Police riding his scooter on the Maine Turnpike late last night, using only his cell phone for a headlight. \u00a0 There must be more to … Continue reading “Shine on…”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_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":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[63,89],"tags":[93,3,59,94,95],"class_list":["post-415","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-baja","category-motorcycle-adventure-ride","tag-bahia-de-los-angeles","tag-baja","tag-baja-restaurants","tag-triumph","tag-vw"],"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\/415","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=415"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":431,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415\/revisions\/431"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}