BIKER HEAVEN

15 SEPTEMBER
CABO SAN LUCAS NORTH
The road swoops down from the plateau to the Sea of Cortez through narrow gorges of rose red stone. The descent is biker heaven. A shared joy draws us together as we lean into perfect curve after perfect curve, shed years, shed worries, become children in a playground. Then comes the sea, a shimmering sheet of lapis. Not to bathe in such beauty insults its creator. Yet on we ride, on and on and on...
And, rather than cool ourselves in the sea, stop for lunch at an air-conditioned Chinese restaurant.

TERRIFYING LAUGH

big john

14 SEPTEMBER
CABO SAN LUCAS
I have followed Big John for four days. John on a California Scooter Company bike is kin to a father riding his five year-old's tricycle. That the bike holds up is a fine advertisement for the bike. Big John and I in the Hollywood mansion's infinity pool is a sight for nature lovers sufficiently short sighted to mistake us for a pair of captive white whales. John wisely keeps to the shade. I am in the sun and thus the more gruesome.
However not the more terrifying.
Terrifying is John's laugh. The laugh is deeper than the deepest coal mine. Even his gentlest chuckle would make old ladies limp for shelter. Sell it to a Movie Company and John's fortune is made.
However John possesses something deeper than his laugh – his heart. Four days of his company and here is my one-word summation of his character, kindness. Extraordinary kindness...

FULL OF COLOUR

14th SEPTEMBER
SOUTH VIA LA PAZ
The desert is full of colour at dawn and dusk. Midday and it is sun-bleached. The sky to the East over the Sea of Cortez is a dark lapis fading to pale turquoise over the Pacific Ocean. The Pacific sleeps under a thick blanket of sea fog or low cloud. At altitude, the fog condenses on the tar and trickles to the verge. The road is a black strip between narrow ribbons of emerald green.

SEA OF CORTEZ

13 SEPTEMBER
SEA OF CORTEZ
Midday and the sun is a killer. The road dives down from the plateau to the Sea of Cortez. We pose for silly pics above water the blue of dark turqoise. The sky is a pure blue marginally paler than the sea. Islands of stripped rock and quartz glint pale in the fierce light. The road climbs above the coast. A fish rises, rings spreading across still water. An enclave of foreigners' houses and a hotel stand at the head of a bay. The golf course is obligatory, grass green as our lawn back home. From where comes the fresh water and at what cost?

BIKER HEAVEN

12 SEPTEMBER
DAY THREE SOUTH FROM CATAVINA.
The desert here is a vast up-and-down jumble of immense grey boulders, candelabra cactus, Judus trees and skinny scrub. To the south and west lie mountains scrubbed to their stone core by a few million years of wind and ocasional rain. To the east a long roll of cloud or fog lies low over the ocean. The dawn light washes the mountains a pale chalky blue. The cloud bank is touched with pink.
I have ridden on ahead. I haven't met another car or truck in twenty minutes. Cut the engine and the silence is total. Two buzzard glide overhead. Nothing else moves. I am absorbed into the stillness and the quiet and the beauty and find myself shivering, not with cold, but with that exultation that comes sometimes when, tired yet wonderfully content, you get into a bed spread with Egyption cotton sheets stiff from the laundery and wriggle in minor ecstacy as you clutch yourself in your own arms. Never done that? Never slept between Egyptian cotton sheets? How sad...
And if you have never visited Baja California, start planning. Right now this is about as close as you can get to heaven without a one-way ticket.

MEET THE POSSE

12 SEPTEMBER
We are five on this adventure – the length of the Baja California peninsular and back – 2000 miles.
Four riders and J in support. J is Nevada based, aids businesses in the Adventure Tourism field market their products and drives a double-cab (leather seats) three million horse-power Dodge PowerWagon laden with everything bar rockets and a cappuccino machine.
Joe and I are given. John is a 50s-something jet engine engineer, six-six and weighing in at a few tons. Arlene is slim, classy, Gay and designs, manufactures and markets biker clothes for style-concious biker ladies (and for Real Men). Check out her sight: