Not All Rides Go As Planned!
Have you ever been on a ride that everything that happened was pretty much unexpected? I recently went on that ride. Usually when I go I have some sort of plan, it can be a short ride, a long ride, an exploring ride or just a leisurely day on the bike. This time I didn’t have any plan because I was invited to go on a ride that started in Tecate, Mexico and went south toward Mikes Sky Ranch.
I was an add on, the third wheel and that suited me just fine. It saved me from doing all the preplanning, worrying about gas, food, lodging and whatever else might require thought. I was looking forward to just following along and not making the decisions. The ride was planned by a couple of guys that are right on the 70 plus mark in birthdays, Phil and Peter. These guys are pretty impressive taking on multi day rides and not exactly poking along on the trip!
A little background on these Super Geezers, Phil is a retired Podiatrist so I guess that makes him ‘Dr. Phil’. Peter is originally from the United Kingdom and is now a Canadian citizen. That is a real treat to hear the guy tell you he is from Canada in an English accent! The first time I did a double take to see if he was laughing while he was pulling my leg. But he was serious, I just never get used to that accent coming from the Canadian.
The trip started out with a text on Phil’s phone from a buddy telling him to stop at all the stop signs and lights in Tecate. Apparently the local Policia make pretty good money on the visiting Americans for their California stops. Well we made it about 10 seconds across the border and Peter’s WR 250 was reluctant to keep running. He had to bump start it in the first block and it just so happened the end of the block had a stoplight that Peter failed to notice and he rode right through it! Phil started to follow him until I yelled “Stop” and he did, just in time to see it turn green. No cops showed up so I figured we were in the clear.
We went another7 or 8 blocks and I heard a siren behind us, I thought great, they are going to throw us in jail for running stop lights! At a stop light I pulled to the right as the cop pulled up behind Phil and Peter with the red lights going and occasionally hitting his siren and speaking Spanish into his microphone. The boys sat frozen at the light until the cop got impatient realizing that we were dumb Americans and spoke in English into the microphone, “Go Right, Go Right!” Once they finally moved the cop sped through the intersection and away he went to a call. I was thinking ‘Awesome!’ We don’t have to go to jail or pay a fine!
Now I am thinking let’s get out of this town before something else happens. It didn’t take long, as we started out of town toward the motel it started to rain. We got to the motel and got our rooms, cabins actually and headed in to take off our wet clothes and warm up. It was a bit ‘unexpected’ to see our rooms had no sheets, blankets or pillows on any of the beds. I thought maybe they just forgot to prep the cabins so I went to the office to inquire. No Senor there are no linen in the rooms, you must bring your own! I politely pointed out that we were riding off road motorcycles and not carrying any linen. She was nice enough to round up some extra blankets and sheets for us.
There was no place nearby to get anything to eat and since it was raining we were not getting back on the bikes to go find food. It was a bit ‘unexpected’ to have a motel with no place to eat so we made a beeline for their little ‘Tienda’ or store to see what we could scrounge. We found breakfast type rolls, chips, tuna, soda and a few other things to hold us over.
The next few days had some great riding due to the rain that soaked us on the way in. We rarely saw dust until the last day and explored some areas I had never been in before. Unfortunately Peter’s WR 250 had an ‘unexpected’ issued with the carb and the throttle stuck open. We spent a little over two hours disassembling and looking for the problem while trying to make tools work that didn’t quite fit. We got back on the road and encountered another throttle problem on the little WR, but this time the throttle stuck closed. It was getting late in the day and Phil ended up towing Peter into our stopover in Valley La Trinidad. We rolled in just about dusk and were lucky to get a couple of rooms.
The following day Peter decided to stay back and work on his bike while Phil and I went over the hills to Rancho Meling. Thanks Peter! Did I mention that it was about the best day of riding I have ever had in Mexico? The weather was good and the roads and trails were wet from the rains. No dust all day long, Phil and I rode anywhere we wanted wheel to wheel and never saw dust. Including the sand washes. That day we covered about 100 miles and you couldn’t wipe the grin off our faces.
The final day Peter has his bike back in shape and we head back toward the border because now we are not sure how long the little WR is going to cooperate. As we head north the boys put me in front and I am so busy looking for a road we can use to get to another area I take an ‘unexpected’ trip off the road and into a very large boulder that I luckily use as a berm and avoid a crash. I tell myself to stop being a pinhead and pay attention instead of looking around. It worked for about 3 minutes then we came to a cool little town I had never seen and I was so busy looking around again I almost rode into a local driving an F-150 pickup. Completely ‘unexpected’ since I don’ think there were more than 3 cars in this whole town and 2 of them probably didn’t run. Second note to self “Pay attention Dumbass!”
The rest of the trip was fairly uneventful except for the ‘unexpected’ truck full of Federales I went whizzing past in an area that may have been questionable as to whether or not we were supposed to be there. I waved, immediately broke eye contact and got on the gas. I think I heard a few muffled shouts but I can’t be sure. My bike seemed kinda loud for a moment. Since I was leading I figured it would be crazy to stop since the fellas were somewhere behind me. The military dudes would probably tell them whatever they were trying to tell me. Besides, one of us had to be available to bail the others out, right? It took an awful long time for the boys to catch up as I waited down the road for them. It seems the Military guys got out in the road to stop Peter and Phil and proceeded to make them open all of their back packs, fanny packs and rolls they were carrying. Sometimes I do like leading.
We explored our way back to the border in Tecate and an ‘unexpected’ treat was that there was no one in line when we got there. I have never gotten that lucky when crossing back into the USA. We were loaded up and heading for home in about 30 minutes. I may have found a new starting point for my rides south!
#33
“Do not follow where the path may lead – go instead where there is no path and leave a trail”
Saturday, March 28, 2015 at 9:20PM 
My evaluation is that if you are a “trail racer” you may have to run higher pressures than the 12 psi I tried. But if you are a let’s have fun and go anywhere type of rider, you should never have a problem. The Pirelli made it 1100 miles before I got too carried away and got my first flat. Now for the bad news, I know a lot of you have ridden out of places on a flat tire before. You will not do this on a trials tire, if you get a flat you must stop and fix it. There is not enough sidewall support and you will ruin the tube and tire if you continue. Besides being a real pain to ride on or get up any kind of hill.
