Whethefakawe
Race Dog
- Joined
- Jun 21, 2006
- Messages
- 621
- Reaction score
- 2
- Bike
- KTM 950 Adventure S
My friend from Cape Town, Notscheckter and I had planned for months to go watch the Baja 1000 desert race, which is the biggest and longest off-road race in this part of the world. The race was the subject of the excellent 2004 film "Dust to Glory" and also featured in "On Any Sunday" back in 1971. My parents took me and my siblings to see OAS for my 10th birthday in 1972, in lieu of a party, so I've known about it for a very long time!
Notscheckter is the parts manager at the biggest bike shop in Southern California, which says a lot, if you keep in mind that California has more bikes than the rest of the US plus Europe COMBINED!!!. Needless to say, he has all kinds of connections and gabbas who inundate him with free stuff and "deals", and not being all THAT dumb, I benefit form this arrangement quite often.
Two of his sales rep connections had recently bought KTM 950's and long story short, 5 of us headed to Ensenada for the start on the 16th November. I had a 600k ride from Phoenix to San Diego on day 1, left my house before 0600 to avoid morning traffic, which is murder - kinda like Joburg but 4 and 5 lanes wide. Once away from the city it was a nice ride through the desert - it looks a lot like the Karoo in many places.
Along Interstate 8 in Arizona, headed towards Yuma
I was doing an easy 85 mph/135k's and was passing a long freight train parallel to the road when I noticed this:
The best of last year's Cape wine crop, no doubt
This was really only my second long on-road ride and I was surprised that it took me an hour longer to get to San Diego than driving my Nissan bakkie with bikes on the back! I stopped about 6 or 7 times for photos, p-breaks and petrol, so that explained it. We had a leisurely lunch on the waterfront in SD and headed for Mexico. Now I know SD like the back of my hand, lived there for 16 years on and off, so I noticed right away that our fearless leader, Penis, (that's what his friends call him, his surname is Small!) was a bit rigtingbefok, so I blamed it on the 2 beers he had at lunch.
We stayed at one of the guys' girlfriend's aunt's place about 20 k's south of the border the first night This hospitable couple went out of their way for us, cracking the cold beers as soon as we got off the bikes and having an excellent braai Mexican style, complemented by the 2 flats of beer and the expensive (outside of Mexico) bottle of Tequila we went and bought. Here are the 950's in front of the Mexican couple's house:
The evening going well, notice the two fisted style, with little clay pots full of good tequila. That's Penis, Notscheckter and me. Bad shot, sorry, but you get the idea.
0430 the next morning came waaaaay too soon, we moved in slow motion for a while but were determined to see the start of the race, which was in Ensenada 80k's down the coast. Penis and Tommee rode like they were racing themselves, and I was nervous at times, Mexico is a lot like Africa as far as road usage goes, and you can get a nasty surprise if you're not wide awake all the time and ride at speeds suited to the conditions.
Anyways, we got to Ensenada a few minutes after the bikes started leaving at 0600 - they start at 30 second intervals, one at a time, and run along a riverbed right through town for about 8 k's or so before heading into the hills. We missed the top riders but still saw some fast guys, mostly Honda XR 650's but we counted 5 or Husqvarnas and many KTM 525's.
The riverbed less than one km after the start, around 0630
This is a huge event for the town of Ensenada, people spend half the day
watching, with food- and pirated t-shirt vendors doing brisk business all along the course. We rode a bit further down, around a corner and waited to see the "Trophy trucks", the off-road versions of Formula 1 with 800 to 900 horsepower and 1m of suspension travel! Bikes were still coming by every 30 seconds. At this corner was a very stubborn chicken that just HAD to cross the bloody road. Every time he was about to step into the riverbed, a bike would come around the corner and he'd run for his life, back to where he started. This happened 6 times, I'm not kidding, I was in friggin stitches. You can just see him to the left of this bike:
He eventually gave up, found something to scratch at on his side of the riverbed. We then found out that the trucks wouldn't start for another hour or more, so decided to head out of town to a little place called Ojos Negros, where the course would cross the main road again.
OK, must go sleep - more later.
Notscheckter is the parts manager at the biggest bike shop in Southern California, which says a lot, if you keep in mind that California has more bikes than the rest of the US plus Europe COMBINED!!!. Needless to say, he has all kinds of connections and gabbas who inundate him with free stuff and "deals", and not being all THAT dumb, I benefit form this arrangement quite often.
Two of his sales rep connections had recently bought KTM 950's and long story short, 5 of us headed to Ensenada for the start on the 16th November. I had a 600k ride from Phoenix to San Diego on day 1, left my house before 0600 to avoid morning traffic, which is murder - kinda like Joburg but 4 and 5 lanes wide. Once away from the city it was a nice ride through the desert - it looks a lot like the Karoo in many places.
Along Interstate 8 in Arizona, headed towards Yuma
I was doing an easy 85 mph/135k's and was passing a long freight train parallel to the road when I noticed this:
The best of last year's Cape wine crop, no doubt
This was really only my second long on-road ride and I was surprised that it took me an hour longer to get to San Diego than driving my Nissan bakkie with bikes on the back! I stopped about 6 or 7 times for photos, p-breaks and petrol, so that explained it. We had a leisurely lunch on the waterfront in SD and headed for Mexico. Now I know SD like the back of my hand, lived there for 16 years on and off, so I noticed right away that our fearless leader, Penis, (that's what his friends call him, his surname is Small!) was a bit rigtingbefok, so I blamed it on the 2 beers he had at lunch.
We stayed at one of the guys' girlfriend's aunt's place about 20 k's south of the border the first night This hospitable couple went out of their way for us, cracking the cold beers as soon as we got off the bikes and having an excellent braai Mexican style, complemented by the 2 flats of beer and the expensive (outside of Mexico) bottle of Tequila we went and bought. Here are the 950's in front of the Mexican couple's house:
The evening going well, notice the two fisted style, with little clay pots full of good tequila. That's Penis, Notscheckter and me. Bad shot, sorry, but you get the idea.
0430 the next morning came waaaaay too soon, we moved in slow motion for a while but were determined to see the start of the race, which was in Ensenada 80k's down the coast. Penis and Tommee rode like they were racing themselves, and I was nervous at times, Mexico is a lot like Africa as far as road usage goes, and you can get a nasty surprise if you're not wide awake all the time and ride at speeds suited to the conditions.
Anyways, we got to Ensenada a few minutes after the bikes started leaving at 0600 - they start at 30 second intervals, one at a time, and run along a riverbed right through town for about 8 k's or so before heading into the hills. We missed the top riders but still saw some fast guys, mostly Honda XR 650's but we counted 5 or Husqvarnas and many KTM 525's.
The riverbed less than one km after the start, around 0630
This is a huge event for the town of Ensenada, people spend half the day
watching, with food- and pirated t-shirt vendors doing brisk business all along the course. We rode a bit further down, around a corner and waited to see the "Trophy trucks", the off-road versions of Formula 1 with 800 to 900 horsepower and 1m of suspension travel! Bikes were still coming by every 30 seconds. At this corner was a very stubborn chicken that just HAD to cross the bloody road. Every time he was about to step into the riverbed, a bike would come around the corner and he'd run for his life, back to where he started. This happened 6 times, I'm not kidding, I was in friggin stitches. You can just see him to the left of this bike:
He eventually gave up, found something to scratch at on his side of the riverbed. We then found out that the trucks wouldn't start for another hour or more, so decided to head out of town to a little place called Ojos Negros, where the course would cross the main road again.
OK, must go sleep - more later.
