2017 Baja Barf - its on and its happening... now!

[krongsak]

Just fixed the link

Tags are your friend: #BarfBaja2017

 

[OaklandF4i]

We had two riders go down this year. I decided wrestle with a cactus and lost.... badly. Lesson here, never ever ride anywhere without goggles again. Just plain stupid. It didnt take a crash for it to happen either. Just get close enough and those evil devils throw needles at you. Jumpin something I say. I got VERY VERY lucky and could have easily lost eyesight. I am supposed to regain full vision, but it hasnt happened yet. A hard and painful lesson. In the interim........ AAAAAARGH. Its Captain Bubbles, the Baja pirate.

Ian went down south of Bahia De Concepcion with a broken leg. His group was lucky it happened reasonably close to a main road where a local could recover him and bring him out to the pavement where he was then taken to the hospital in a Sprinter. Other wise it would have been a field splint and riding bitch to the road. Big thanks to MotorcyclerRN for going down to help and Wayne for driving.

Ian has won the lifetime irrevocable man card subscription. He endured the pain and inconvenience for days before returning north via a truck. Even if we dressed him in clogs, speedo, and construction hard hat while left in downtown Ensenada... he will still retain his man card.

Thats all I have to say about that.

Two bikes, and two riders down.

 

[OaklandF4i]

Big thanks and shout out to the SFMC members on this trip. John and Kalle are both fantastic folks. Another SFMC member Phil took over for me leading the fun routes after I first lost my key to Bubbles on the first day resulting in an embarrassingly late start, then held on to the position after another silly blunder on my part encountering a cacti unprepared.

With his help, riders successfully completed the Green Door trail (a notoriously tough Baja route) and linked up Viscaino with San Ignacio offroad. For folks looking for a challenge, I think the fun routes did just that. Thanks Phil, you rock!

A couple of pics of Mark and Tom when we "lost" the Green Door trail and began following a cow path.

 

[Lunch Box]

I didn't get to see everything I had planned to see....

Based on the situation, I would wager that you got to see about half of what you wanted to see. Specifically, the right half.

 

[Brokenlink]

Good pics guys.

 

[Saltwater]

Great pictures CJ, that was a fun trail. We'll find Green door next time.

 

[Mistico]

Would be nice to still be there.

Thanks to everyone who spent time organizing. Things turned out really well.

 

[oobus]

I want to be like Tom when I grow up.
Most of the pictures of him are helping someone else up/down a tough section. Not only this trip, but the others that I've seen him on. Been lucky enough to meet him in person a couple of times. What a great guy to ride with!

A couple of pics of Mark and Tom when we "lost" the Green Door trail and began following a cow path.

 

[Lunch Box]

I want to be like Tom when I grow up.
Most of the pictures of him are helping someone else up/down a tough section. Not only this trip, but the others that I've seen him on. Been lucky enough to meet him in person a couple of times. What a great guy to ride with!

Why do you think we keep him around?

 

[Motorcycle RN]

Group foto! (Outside San Franciscito)

 

[HadesOmega]

I am still up in the air if I am going to do a 2017 ride report because its so time consuming if I start it I will be committed to finishing it and I have a bunch of other projects but here are some of the pictures I took. I may add caption and a summary of the days events also after the bombardment. Where a professional photographer will charge you $15-$30 per photo I give you for FREE! (Believe me LAB2V they were charging $30 just to download a crappy photo) Sit back because I have hundreds of pictures!

Day 0A PHOTOBOMB - THE COMMUTE:
EricB at my place loading up the mighty Cactus Puncher for our journey to Baja

Met up with BicyclePhil and Dmitry enroute to Baja and had some lunch. These two were going to head straight to BOLA!

Yuck traffic

Jesus statue near Ensenada

Cactus Farm

Lunch at Mama Espinoza's

We got flat after El Rosario, we had to deploy the spare. That jack has like the longest externsion bars I've ever seen!

Not far from where we swapped the spare there was a roadside memorial. These are littered throughout Baja, it's a dangerous place to drive!

Sun is setting

Finally made it!

 

[anytwowilldo]

I want to be like Tom when I grow up.
Most of the pictures of him are helping someone else up/down a tough section. Not only this trip, but the others that I've seen him on. Been lucky enough to meet him in person a couple of times. What a great guy to ride with!

Thanks for the good words Matt! What is tough to see in that Pic is that it was uphill through a rocky pinch point that could easily toss you in the wrong direction. It would be easy to fall into the hole I was standing in and break your arm.

Now, if I could have kept CJ out of the cactus half an hour later, I would have really contributed to the Baja Trip.

 

[HadesOmega]

DAY 0B PHOTOBOMB - LAS ANIMAS
So the plan today was to get some riding done around BOLA. Everyone else had gone to Mision de San Borja the day before. We were suppose to ride to Window Rock today but decided we would wait till more challengers came first. So the group decided we will ride to Las Animas, at some point BicyclePhil and Dmitry were going to branch away from us and ride the Green Door trail.

First Sunrise in BOLA

KLRs at sunrise!

Not in any particular hurry to go riding we hit up one of the local shops for some fish tacos!

On the road! Having a great time bombing down the roads south of BOLA. Man those KLRs really rip on this kinda stuff!

This is where Dmitry and BicyclePhil split from us.

We had some trouble finding the road to Las Animas and SFMCJohn kept riding on. We were hoping he would turn around and he didn't until quite some time later.

So the road to Las Animas was quite a bit more challenging than the main dirt road towards PSF. It was great fun though. It was a mixture of sand, twisties, roacks, and beach. I needed to charge ahead because the DR650 is not stable riding in the sand at lower speeds, I think raising the rear has something to do with it also. We were riding along and the map shows we're pretty close to the beach but where is it!? Turns out it was right next to us, we walk over the berm and there it is! Also it was INCREDIBLY windy today speeds of up to 50knots! Made it real interesting on the ride back.

Kalle's bike took a dirty nap when the kickstand sunk through the sand.

 

[HadesOmega]

I kinda ditched everyone on the way out and rode to the beginning as fast as I could ride, maybe a little too fast in some sections. I had some time to admire these kind of explosion cacti. It looks like they exploded from the ground and they were all over. Upon further inspection they've got some nasty thorns =O

After we got back EricB and I road to Los Vientos a hotel resort down the street from where we were camping at Daggett's. We scouted it for a possible place to stay at next year. It was actually very nice and only a little more expensive than Daggett's. They were very welcoming and it has pretty much everything in one place. Hotel, parking, beach, pool, bar, and restaurant. The rooms were also very nice with multiple places for people to crash.

 

[HadesOmega]

Nice pool at Los Vientos

Riding in the back of Lunchbox' cargo van totally illegal in the US totally not illegal in the Mexico

Dinner at Alejandrina's

 

[kalle]

Thanks for posting your photos Merlin. I like this one.

Kalle Hoffman
San Francisco, CA

 

[Butch]

Jesus Christ in the Center of the Universe

We live in a place where we can... "Just do this". I call it the Center of the Universe

 

[Motorcycle RN]

A few more pix.

 

[HadesOmega]

DAY 0B ATTACK ON WINDOW ROCK PHOTOBOMB:


Today Saltwater, Anytwowilldo, and Lunchbox join us for a ride to Window Rock. Window Rock is a very famous singletrack trail near BOLA. I was up in the air if I wanted to do it, Dmitry later told me that he knew I was going to have trouble here but he needed me to come along to get pictures and videos of the ordeal. It was definitely a tough trail to tackle in the Cactus Puncher. It had everything, deep sandy washes, single track, Cactus Punching extravaganza, sand whoops, sand climbs and descents, rock hopping, highspeed lake bed action, and more! I definitely will not take the Cactus Puncher on this one again at least not the way it is now. The lighter and smaller the bike would be ideal for this. I can't believe the stuff I had to squeeze the DR650 through! My KLX would rip on this!

Cactus handgrenades everywhere! Luckily BicyclePhil was running mooses!

Goal Achieved! WINDOW ROCK!

Window Rock Group Picture!

The Ox memorial

Window Rock Panoramic!

Saltwater is the first victim of a flat

 

[HadesOmega]

Guess who is the second victim of a flat? Yep you guessed it HadesOmega! First Baja flat. Just as I pulled into town to get gas the guys pointed out my bike is flat. Just my luck I picked up a nail just as I entered town. Luckily I was at the gas station I pumped it up and rode it back to camp and was able to deal with it there.

If your wondering why there are 2 different patches on that tube is because the nail actually punctured the tube twice, it must've folded over and puNctured it twice. It's kind of like an entry wound and exit wound if your not familiar with ballistics and people getting shot, the exit wound is usually bigger than the entry wound. They teach you that stuff in basic training. So I must've plugged the exit wound and overlooked the entry =O. I put one patch on thinking the patch wasn't sealing and then put another patch on and still no dice. Then I found there were 2 holes and said F it just install your spare tube. So I go to install the tube like 3 times at least I got to do it at the campsite. Thanks for Kalle for giving his spare tube he unknowingly brought, good thing I didn't need it =) So note to self check to see if your tube holds air before you put it back in the wheel first =P

Dinner was not the most enjoyable tonight because my fingers hurt from putting the tube into the tire so many times and I was pretty beat from the window rock and dirty.