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HadesOmega's BARF Baja 2016 Ride Report

It's time to introduce most of the players for today's ride.

Anytwowilldo aka Dr. Baja
XR400
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Impish9090 I just call him Ian because I found his username today :p
690enduro
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EricB (thanks for getting us to Bola!)
KLX250
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w

Fran Tully aka DualSportSchool aka Professor Dual Sport, he is our guest of honor today from Utah!
R1200GS
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I guess I got two pictures of Fran, also let me tell you I've always wanted to see someone ride Baja on one of these big adventure bikes. Today I will get to witness this!
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Norcalslowpoke aka Scott
Beta 520RS
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Leo_JB aka Leo
XR400
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1962siia88 aka Daniel
XR650R
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Unfortunately I didn't get a picture of OaklandF4i and his bike but here he is in the picture, he's in the middle with Norcalslowpoke gearing up and Lunchbox on the right who will be taking off later because him and Dmitry had a long excursion the day before.
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Here's a picture with his bike in it an XR650L with the round headlight. You can call it Bubbles!
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It's time to introduce most of the players for today's ride.

Unfortunately I didn't get a picture of OaklandF4i and his bike but here he is in the picture, he's in the middle with Norcalslowpoke gearing up and Lunchbox on the right who will be taking off later because him and Dmitry had a long excursion the day before.
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Here's a picture with his bike in it an XR650L with the round headlight. You can call it Cyclops!
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Awesome pics and RR thus far Merlin. You never fail to amaze and I am looking forward to more.

My Bike is Bubbles.... like a trailer park stripper! :twofinger
 
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Before we set out more pictures of the bay!
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This bird seems to have been munchin on a fish head. Fish heads fish heads rolly polly fish heads...
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Here comes the sun!
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Ok and before we set out here is today's goal. Ride from BOLA to San Francisquito
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Here is the START POINT Daggett's Campground
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Off to the center of town we go!
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Here we go set off from Daggett's Campground
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As you can see most of the pack has set off already. They went to go get coffee.
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Bay of LA!
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Slab it over to the center of town. This is the last of the slab we'll see for a bit.
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Before we get to the coffee shop I want to snap some pix of this town most notable feature. Its hard to see but there some pretty loose sand where I stopped good thing I didn't get stuck =P
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Leo airing his tires.
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Heading to the coffee shop where everyone is staged at.
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The coffee shop
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Coffee drinkers
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Lot's of dogs still nap nap time for them
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And we're off!
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Eric is motioning me to move ahead of him. I wanted to hang out in the back because I'm going to stop and take pictures. I think Eric has the same idea.
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Off the slab and onto the dirt, no pavement for a while unless you count the concrete vados along the way =p
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Off we go, little warm up pace of 30-40mph. It's very windy right now see how the wind just carries the dust towards the water.
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I wanted to get a good picture of BOLA before we left it from this way. I stopped before this corner to do just that, unfortunately it was kinda far.
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ONWARD! Now that I am sufficiently behind Ian I can open the Cactus Puncher up a bit and I'm not choking on dust anymore. Let me at that I'm riding with face shield down and not goggles. Hard to see with the face shield down in all the dust and the sun is in my eye so I gotta use the weak dual sport visor to keep it out of my eye and sun shield on my helmet.
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Blasting right along and I run into Daniel and Ian waiting for me. I think they want me to sweep and wait for Eric but I told him he's way back there. I took a photo break and he still didn't catch up so I told them we should just go.
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Here where we're about right now
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Here's where we're going soon
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Daniel making a nice dust cloud, I'll wait a bit.
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Off we go I notice this little offshoot on the road that's all rutted and tore up.
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Moving right along endless cactus and desert away us as we fly down this road of speed up to 50mph. At least thats about as fast as I was going. This first sections are actually pretty easy.
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Even out on the dirt though there are still roadside memorials =(
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More endless desert the cacti are thinking out a bit
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Thumbs UP :thumbup
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Finally something that's not just straight line stuff
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Sun and dust in my face
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Turning what a great road to ride a dual sport on!
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What I love when your climbing and going around a mountain is when you emerge on the other side your greeted by an awesome view gotta stop and take it in or in this car digitally capture it! What a great day for a ride :thumbup
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So you can see I'm lagging behind quite a bit. They're a few miles ahead of me.
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More straight desert road
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I run into Scott along the way and he's looking for a GPS he lost. I hope I didn't run it over.
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Moving right along down this straight road and it looks like I should stop soon
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Las Animas?
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And like I said the group has stopped ahead.
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So here we are in the middle of the desert stopped for a break to regroup
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The road ahead
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Leo_JB
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So Anytwowilldo comes rollin in, (I missed a picture of him but he's in the video if you are Anytwowilldo fans) and he decides to go off the road and park his bike on the road and he becomes the first victim of BARF Baja 2016 to get a flat and quite a flat it is. It's all part of the adventure! :cool
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Fran rolls in and haha I didn't intend for this to happen but I had my helmet cam recording and it was sitting on my seat pointing at the road. So I got shots from two different places!
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So... it's gonna be awhile. The tube was slimed and I'd imagine since the puncture was pretty fresh the slime may have sealed it. But.... that's a pretty big branch stuck in there so Anytwowilldo elects to change the tube out.
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Takes some time and everyone catches up but Anytwowilldo takes care of it
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1962siia88 and OaklandF4i give Anytwowilldo morale support.
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I now present to you the first two videos of Day 1. I actually got too ahead of myself I didn't mean to catch up to the second video yet. Oh well.

Day 1 Part 1 - Daggett's, Introductions, Coffee Breaks, and Embarking on our journey along the Bay of LA.
https://youtu.be/p6vZo26xSU4

Day 1 Part 2 - Complications its all part of the Adventure!
https://youtu.be/iAcWlQIJIFk
 
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Merlin, You never fail to deliver. Thanks again!
 
:x Whats up Merlin? Jonesing for the next installment buddy.
 
Sorry been busy with the game of life plus I used up the head start I had.

So here is where we left of in the middle of a VERY straight long dirt road after Tom fixed his flat, OaklandF4i suggested I take off because they'll probably catch me real easily. So off I go!
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If you look at these tracks the long straight section comes to an end starts twisting a bit. Not only that it begins to go up too!
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What's this concrete!? Yeah not for long and these vados or watercrossing are going to kick my ass later.
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Moving right along at a good speed
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More concrete
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Hey look it's Leo, I was flyin pretty good and he just blast past me but wait he's motioning me to slow down.
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He points to my bike where my side bag is in particular.
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Oh crap that doesn't look right, I forgot to tighten the straps on my sidebag and it probably flopping all over the place, whew good thing it didn't tear. I do this quite often its embarrassing. So I fix it.
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All squared away time to ride. Leo makes a big dust cloud yuck.
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So I let him get ahead a bit.
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Remember I mentioned it will be getting twistier and start going up?
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Here we go getting more rockier
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But wait Leo and Fran have stopped and they seem to be going something to the GS
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So there's Fran trying to take this skidplate off because the clamps that hold it onto the bike have failed.
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So being the trail medic that I am I lend him some wrenches and pliers to get it off
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Yep more complications but we have persevered in the face of adversity for now...
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Continuing on the way there's a nice little twisty hillclimb :ride
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Still some vast desert to cross
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Having a good time here :thumbup
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Climbing a bit
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No turning and climbing a bit
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Another straight section
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Up we go towards the mountain
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Up around the corner and I can see the Sea of Cortez again
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More climbing more rocks
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This damn GPS likes to turn itself off sometimes.
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And I've made it to the top. This is where we took at break last year, but nobody was around so I just blazed on through. But if you stick around here there's a nice view of the ocean. Since we are behind schedule I press on.
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Another long straight section on the top of the plateau
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Little twisty for a bit
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!

So uhhh somewhere along this track I see this somewhat familiar sight...
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So what's happening here is Fran's R1200GS has a flat tire :(
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This couple show's up on twin WR250Rs. Ahh yes I've always wanted one of these and they've got them all setup for Baja.
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And there they OaklandF4I and Bubbles riding off into the desert
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There's go OaklandF4i. It's not too far to San Francisquito so he goes on ahead and let's them know we'll be arrivin in full force and we need TONS of beer! I'm actually stopped here because my camera has been constantly vibrating and went to switch to my 2nd camera. I will troubleshoot the vibrating on later, turns out all it need was to be reset. Might as well snap a few pix while I'm here.
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So here is the BIG problem we have right now. The problem is that the R1200GS has tubeless wheels and the tire kind of has a gash on the side probably the size of a dime. Here is the plan! Dr. Baja is going to do some surgery and I am going to assist him! The plan is to take the tire off the wheel and apply an automobile tire patch to the gash and hope it holds air.

Time to get this wheel off. I've never seen this done so it's actually quite a treat for me. It is actually very easy to take the wheel off a R1200GS as Fran shows us right here. He's even got a handy seat!
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And VOILA! Its pretty much like taking a car wheel off.
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So Fran has this awesome tool called a Beadpro by Motion Pro. I've never seen it before but it can pretty easily pop the bead off a wheel and it doubles as tire irons. I think this tool was so trick I just ordered one for my toolkit!
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Tire is off time for Dr. Baja to start the surgery!
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There's the gash, Fran is just riding the piss out of this bike.
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So what Dr. Baja is doing is he is trying to make a nice smooth surface to apply the patch. This is proving to be very difficult because this TKC tires have these kind of ribs that we now need to sand off with a knife. Sshhh don't tell any of the soldiers we have a knife it's a tool.
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So about this time our friends in the WRRs show up and Anytwowilldo and Fran switch out.
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I take this opportunity to get pictures of the little circus we have going on right now.
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WANT TO CROSS A DESERT!? USE A HONDA XR400R!
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But seriously look at that beautiful scenery that we just rode through, isn't it epic? :cool
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Back to the task at hand.
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So Dr. Baja has smoothened it out enough where we are going to apply the rubber cement! Don't worry Dr. Baja is a pro at this!
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