Tres Amigos y Puppy Porno

I heard it was fun to go riding in baja, so we decided to go. Bikes prepped, loaded and away we go. Ryman, Erock, and Hick........Tres Amigos.

Day 00. We drive to Vegas and meet up with hick. We spend the night in a dive hotel on the strip. Slot machines, shit buffet, waitresses with big fake boobs, typical "I'm stuck in hell" activities. No pics.

Day 0. We drive to Tecate and we're surprised by the wicked cool mountains we are traveling through. Very green.....nice.....chill. We cross the border and it is very easy. No passports. The Mexican border guard politely asks to see the registration for the "orange bike" .

For me, the sense of chill we were in immediately turns to a mind full of paranoia. A new place, new people, new culture. Is everyone looking at us? Is it safe to park here? My sense of awareness is off the charts. Chaos ensues. Traffic rules disappear.

I get into the traffic game and we head to rancho OJAI where we are to leave the pickup while we ride. Dark clouds are pushing down on us and it is starting to rain. WTF...I thought this place was supposed to be a desert. We load the bikes and try to prepare for the adventure ahead.



We ride through the rain for an hour or so. Toll road. Mexican twisties. Dry lake bed. The bad weather disappears and the sky is blue. Let's ride bitches!


I forget my paranoid self absorption and we start to play. We're in the desert now and I feel at home.


Lots of open space. We race around on the lake and generally head south.


Life is good.


More to come. I have lots of great pics and fun stories to tell. I'm sure hick will chime in with some more.

Looks like a good ride. Subscribed.

swingarm.........pegs..........next?

Just made it back into Lubbock. Long ass drive back with lots of wind. Damn I miss Baja.

After working 12 days straight, and being on call 24/7 during that time, I got out of West Texas early in the morning.

After 14 hours on the road, I drive into the sun setting over highway 93 in Nevada.



Plan was to meet Ryman and Erock in Vegas. An inmate let us store my truck at the car lot where he works.


Leaving Vegas the next morning with a truck full of sin, headed to Mexico.




Driving through SoCal...almost to Baja. The clouds are foreboding.



We crossed at Tecate. A pretty chill crossing. We bought our insurance on-line prior to leaving. The truck got parked at Rancho Ojai, and finally, at about 6PM, we rode off in a cold rain.

So I am not the brightest guy out there. Rather than take a newer bike I knew well (my 950 SE), I opted to take a beat up old XR650 R. Did I mention that I had never even thrown a leg over this bike until we were in Baja? Did I mention that I have never owned a 4-stroke kicker? In my mind, the XR had been whipping the competition in Baja for years, so that was good enough for me!

The first hour of the ride on that bike was through a freezing rain in a foreign country. I was pretty gripped imagining all the things that could go wrong with an untested bike.

We rode one of the most amazing slab of twisties I have ever ridden to Laguna Salida, the temperature rose, the sun came out, and I think all of us were like an ice puddle in the sun...relaxing.





We rode until dusk, then camped in a dumpyard with a murder of vultures watching us from the treetops. Dinner consisted of a handful of trailmix. Breakfast was another handful of trailmix...and a shot of 5 Hour Energy!

Wazzup Hick!

It's all good! We all had Giant Loops and they all performed flawlessly...as per usual.

We rode until dusk and then pulled into some weeds to lay down and rest. In the weeds we find a dump. Old car parts, old moto parts, old baby seats......Garbage. Whatever. We lay down and sleep. During the night hick gets up to pee and it seems like a good idea, so I get up to do the same. I can tell he still has is earplugs in because he doesn't sense me standing twenty feet away. I let out a long loud howl like a coyote, and I see hick in the starlight totally removed from his skin.

Hick: Damn dude! You scared the shit outta me!
Me: (Evil Laugh) He He He.

Hick goes back to bed and I lay on my back and swim in the milky way. I cannot sleep. After all, as soon as the sun comes up we get to ride! I notice Erock is not sleeping either, so we talk until the horizon starts to change color.

Life is good.

DAY 1:

F you buzzards.....we are NOT breakfast!


Early morning and we're hitting it hard.


The trails are great. New tires are getting good traction in the sand. Every corner is dished out, and the whoops are small.

Plenty of open space, and my bike it trying to tear off my arms.


On and on. I'm riding fast and having a lot of fun when Baja makes itself known. I come up on a wash crossing and from out of the shade comes a desert wildcat! His ears are back and he's taking long strides. I'm totally in a race with this gato, and I think he is winning! I wring the throttle a little and close the gap between us. Without breaking stride he chooses a line on the right side of the trail and takes a look back over his shoulder at me. I see his eyes and for a brief second I'm not sure if he intends to pounce on me, or flee. Then as quickly as he appeared..........he's gone........ This place is crazy.


Some sick wash riding leads us to some rocky hill climbing. The wind is blowing very hard. So hard that it's difficult to keep my bike upright. Erock gets stuck on a difficult section of the climb, and loops his bike over on top of himself in a big pile of boulders. I rush to help him and I'm relieved to find him unhurt. I jump on his bike and ride it to the top.

At the top of the pass I notice hick struggling to get his bike started. This would become the theme for the rest of the trip. Jetting not right? Valves? Who knows....none of us know this bike. Oh well ride on!


We ride some awesome two track and then screw around for a while trying to negotiate some private land without getting shot. Then it's gas at the PEMEX and lunch with hooters on scooters.


After lunch we ride some more killer sand track and head south across another dry lake bed. Hick makes comments comparing the riding to a Utah powder day. I have to admit, I'm feeling the same way. Then we hit something called zoo road and head into San Felipe.
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/ktm530/5593518503/" title="IMG_2352 by ryanrunolfson, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5144/5593518503_8bbc36fac0_b.jpg" width="1024" height="768" alt="IMG_2352"></a>

XR: gotta know the secret handshake!

A1 and i crawled out of the mtns at 4am when i first had my XR and didn't know how to clear it out! Middle of summer, but he was wearing mesh armor and had to wrap stolen cardboard around under it to prevent hypothermia! too good. That was on his b-day.

I should have tagged along on this one it seems!

Who knows. Hicks XR was jetted for SLC and higher elevations, might have been running lean and hot (cue Pluric). When I bought it, I checked the valves, but never had the engine apart. It's entirely possibly that they were sinking into the head. Although when I owned the bike, I only adjusted them once, when I first brought it home, then they stayed in spec.

FWIW...On mine for Baja, I only changed the main to a 180 from a 165 that I run here. The bike ran perfectly. Not sure what that bike had but...You're right. Slightly leaky valves definitely impact easy start up on a BRP.

If I remember right, 165 main jet, 68 pilot, needle clip position 2nd down.

\
\
Probably works

I run 165 main, 65S pilot, center clip for here in Zion

Also, my engine refresh of new piston / rings / valves really perked up the pig.

I also run tall gears...15 / 45. I find that to be perfect. The motor sings at 75 mph & still climbs walls. Can not beat that torque.

Only with a pig.

I awoke to the sound of Ryman revving his motor. Bastard was up at the butt-crack of dawn. They just stood and looked at me like, "Are you here to ride or what?"

Alright, let's ride bitches!


This was the last of the GPS for me. We thought we had the electrical demons exorcised from the BRP before we started. At some point we re-grounded some stuff and that got the lights working again, but the GPS was on-off-on-off all morning, so I finally just put it in my bag. Now I was riding a bike I hardly knew, in a foreign countries, with no maps. All I needed to do was follow the dustcloud in front of me.

At some point we started climbing. We wanted to go from Laguna Salida to the West side of the range.


Erock doing the walk of shame after Ryman got his bike up a particularly gnarly hill.



The BRP was running well, but not starting easily. This was really the BRP's theme for the trip, "I will either start and idle, or I will run...but not both."

Once I got la porcina roja started again, I went out ahead, so I missed Erock's attempt at a backflip on the XL650. However, I did find the hardest way to climb the pass. After 2 drops and 4 or 5 re-starts on the XR, I came back down with my tail between my legs thinking, "If this is Baja for the next 7 days, I'm fooked."

We opted for another route through the pass that was much easier.




Once atop the pass, the roads got much easier:

While in the techy stuff, my neck brace was interfering with my ability to look up and down, so I removed it and tied it to my bag. By the time we stopped for lunch, I had lost my neck brace, and flip flops. Neck braces are nice when flying head-on into a side of beef, but they are a HUGE pain in the ass to wear, store, carry, attire....etc, etc, etc.

At some point, we reached the San Felipe whoops. We rode them for about 5 minutes, then decided removing our toes with a butter knife would be more fun.

We headed a different direction and found...I shit you not...untracked sand that was like making turns on a powder day. Fucking exquisite!

I was in front so it was mine, all mine (insert evil laugh). At the end I did stop for a gratuitous sand shot of Ryman:




Our lunch spot, notice Da Bird sticker on the window?

Was this only occurring when the engine was warm?

The starting issue was at all temps, all altitudes, but was made worse by heat and lower altitudes. We changed the idle jet on the beach one morning and it started easily, but ran like shit. So we changed the main jet. It ran better, but no longer started easy when hot

To be completely honest, after day 2, our kicker-legs had had it and we kinda gave up on kick-starting unless we absolutely had to. Tow-starts, push starts, and gravity-assisted bump-starts became the norm. It was better to have her run like a raped ape than be easy to kick.