JUMP START

17 SEPTEMBER
TO TIJUANA
6 a.m. and we breakfast at a restaurant next door to the hotel. A half day will bring us to the border. We pile our gear into the PowerWagon. Luxury creates its own problems: the PowerWagon's battery is dead. Someone must have forgotten to switch off the microwave or the espresso machine or the ice maker or the water heater in the 2nd bathroom. The kindly restaurateur jump-starts the PowerWagon from his beat-up pickup...

MAMA ESPERANSA

SEPTEMBER 16
ONWARD NORTH
Visiting Mama Esperansa's restaurant in El Rosario is a right of passage for California's bikers. Biker memorabilia cover the walls and ceiling - cards, group photographs, insignia caps, sweatshirts. Joe calculates that the present owner is third generation. She is an ample woman in her fifties. We have had a great ride. In adolescent mood, I tease the waitresses and have them giggling. What's good in sea food? Crab soup, fresher than fresh...
A large crab chopped in quarters swims in a big bowl of broth. Delicious.
I finish and the owner comes by. How was it, grandfather?
Perfection.
There is more broth in the pot, she says and has the waitress serve me a refill.
Such is the reward for speaking Spanish!
Onward a further sixty miles to San Quentin and a modern hotel on Main Street. We have been on the road twelve hours and traveled 325 miles – good going for a mini motorcycle. This old man heads for a hot shower and bed. Big John, as ever kind, brings me ice cream and a choice of sticky cakes!

VULTURES

16 SEPTEMBER
NORTH
I am a follower on this journey and must concentrate on the riders ahead. Riding alone, my mind is free. I chase the same thought day after day, worrying at it as a terrier does a hard rubber bone - and small details of the countryside, of fauna and flora awaken memories. Today has been better - perhaps because I have become more accustomed to the group. Temperature exceeds 100 – a 60 degree rise since we left the hotel this morning. We have ridden north beyond the boulders and cross a seemingly endless plane circled by mountains. Small, pale yellow butterflies zigzag on the breeze. Flowers on two small roadside shrines to the dead are the gifts of love. The flowers are already desiccated. A dead cow rots in front of the shrines. Gorged vultures perch on the candelabra cacti. I recall, from my early twenties, vultures as signals of suffering in a desert where nomads, trekking from dry well to dry well, abandoned their children and the aged so that the breeding stock of the tribe could survive...And where I could do nothing other than extend the suffering of a chosen few with a few cups of water.
There was a further guilt: that, for me, the desert was an immense playground, a marvelous land alive with great herds of gazelle, where majestic oryx and kudu grazed, where lions sprawled in the sun, giraffe nibbled the treetops, elephants were king. To be shot at on occasion was part of the adventure in those glory days of tribesmen armed with single shot rifles, relics of the First and Second World Wars and often loaded with the wrong gauge ammunition.
Now every teenager in that desert wields a Kalashnikov or an M16 – such was the strategy of the Cold War: arm your enemies' friends' enemies with no thought for the future.
The future is now. Animals are gone, vicious chaos rules, refugee camps line the frontier.

ROADSIDE SHRINES

16 SEPTEMBER
ONWARD NORTH
Finally the sun melts the cover and paints small curls of pale red gold on the underside of small puffs of white cloud high above. Never in my travels have I seen mountains so blue. We pass three small shrines to the dead on a straight stretch of highway. A hundred yards or so separates the shrines. Surely not casualties of three separate accidents? Yet, if the same accident, why the separation? Anger between the families of the dead? The blame game? Three kids racing down the straight on Saturday night? A drunk driver? Or high on dope? Or was he driving one-handed while hugging his girl and lost control? Was there a quarrel between the three? Did one of the passengers strike the driver?
Were I alone i would stop a moment, read the names, presuming the dead were Catholic, murmur a Catholic prayer. A local driver, curious, might stop. We would talk a while. Such is traveling...

BREAKFAST

16 SEPTEMBER
NORTH FROM CONSTITUTION
Dawn approaches as we ride out of the Hotel Oasis courtyard. Sea fog rises from the ocean and spreads across the desert. We ride for two hours in chill air beneath the low grey canopy to breakfast at the Desert Inn, San Ingnacio.

HORSES FOR COURSES

main highway
sikkim,india

15 SEPTEMBER
COSTITUTION

J is keen to organise joint off-road and bike trips on the Baja peninsular using California Scooter Company bikes. Joe and Big John are enthusiastic. I am an outsider and keep my thoughts to myself. However, the main highway is about the only tar road in Baja. Surely dirt bikes would be more suitable?
Coco Chanel is very different from the pre-production bike I rode south – not in looks but in feel. Coco purrs and the vibration from the unitary chassis seems less. The seats on both bikes are mounted on coil springs. They are wide seats for wide butts. I love them. They are the type of seat I dream of on my travels. And the riding position is ideal for my build. Sit upright and my hands rest as comfortably on the controls as they did on the Brazilian Honda Cargo I rode round the Americas – as they should on a work bike or a touring bike, bikes on which the rider will spend hours each day. The Indian manufactured Honda Stunner was more a cafe racer for teenage posers. The rider's weight was on his hands and on his crotch. Longer than half an hour in the seat was cruel punishment.
Mechanically, both Hondas were perfect: 40,000 miles on the Cargo without a mechanical fault; 10,000 miles round India, not even a puncture. The Cargo averaged over 120 miles to the gallon while the Stunner maintained a remarkable 160. The Stunner was stable on mud and gravel and on river beds marked as roads on India's road atlas.
Coco isn't a dirt bike. For transport I would chose Honda. Coco wins on charm. It is a bike to love. It is the bike I would chose to ride to the Malvern spa of a Sunday morning where it will attract a crowd of admirers. Even my youngest son, Jed (20), would be proud to show it off to his friends and he doesn't like bikes. As to reliability, the few faults we have found on this journey will be cured. Future complaints will a rarity.
So there you have my judgement – as always, Horses For Courses...

GRILLED CACTUS

15 SEPTEMBER
CONSTITUTION
We are back at the Hotel Oasis, a modern building devoid of charm but with air-conditioning, comfortable beds and a small square of water advertised in the hotel brochures as a swimming pool. Swim two strokes and you would break your wrists or concuss yourself at the far end. We stand in the pool and talk of our journey and the beauty of the ride down to the sea and of the heat and of where to have dinner. A taco stand on main street wins the food stakes. We sit in white plastic chairs on the sidewalk, eat tacos with parboiled, grilled cactus and roast shallots. Party night in Constitution and quad-bikers parade on Main Street.

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.

GOODBYE TO HOLLYWOOD MANSIONS

below the pool

15 SEPTEMBER
CABO SAN LUCAS NORTH
7 a.m and we are on the road again. Goodbye Hollywood Mansion, goodbye glorious beach that we didn't visit. Goodbye Cabo San Lucas, town that remains unknown. Arlene flies home this morning - business. Wonder woman, she has leant me her bike. The bike is a production model with a custom paint job. The bike's name? Coco Chanel, naturally.
We race north two hours to Todos Santos for breakfast and find the bypass round La Paz. The road cuts inland beyond La Paz and climbs 1500 feet to a wide plateau encircled by mountains. The sun bleaches and paralyses the desert. The dark grey road is an interloper. It runs straight as a steel yardstick between fluffy borders of dew fed emerald. Two glow-yellow bugs speed down the road - Joe and Big John in their biker jackets. The temperature at noon tops 103 degrees.

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...

NAKED, SHAVEN-HEADED GIANT

joe not seeing big john in the pool

14 SEPTEMBER
CABO SAN LUCAS
The pool is small and tiled in the obligatory blue Italian mosaic. Look down across (gated) roof tops to a wide golden beach on which Pacific rollers break in obedience to the tourist brochures. J and I are in desultory conversation. Four seagulls sit on the roof. Two pink bougainvillea blossoms drift across the surface. Such tranquility...
Big John's swim suit is locked in J's truck. Imagine a naked, shaven-headed giant. Elegant is not a description that comes immediately to mind. The four seagulls screech and take flight.

MILE-WIDE TV

14 SEPTEMBER
CABO SAN LUCAS
The Hollywood mansion is a rental property. It could sleep a dozen with ease which would make for a moderately priced holiday if you knew twelve people with whom holidaying would be a pleasure. The twelve need to be adults. This is not a house for kids. The floors are polished marble. Fall off the outer edge of the infinity pool and the servants would scrape the scraps off the rocks. The scraping wouldn't be an extra as the house is staffed with two housemen and a major domo. A mile-wide TV dominates the open-plan living room. A wall to wall mirror above the TV doubles the size of the room from big to mega and roller-blades would be convenient for exploring the kitchen/dinning area.

HOLLYWOOD MANSION

j

14 SEPTEMBER
TODOS SANTOS TO CABO SAN LUCAS
A year or two and the four-lane highway south from Todos Santos to the tip of the Peninsular will be complete. Stretches remain under construction. Dirt deviations are tough riding on a small bike with a unitary frame. The bikes buck and vibrate and shake the hell out of you and the afternoon temperature exceeds 100 degrees.
Cabo San Lucas exists for tourism. J has arranged for us to stay in a Hollywood mansion in a gated community on a steep hill overlooking the Pacific Ocean. The mansion is near the top of the hill. The roads up through the gated community are granite pave. Cobbles would be marginally tougher on our already tender rear ends.

ISLAMIC-HISPANIC ARCHITECTURE

14th SEPTEMBER
TO TODOS SANTOS
La Paz is on the Sea of Cortez. An excellent four lane highway crosses the Peninsular to Todos Santos. Todos Santos is a neat clean town on a rise above the Pacific. Truck traffic is banned - as are high rises blocking the sea breeze. The town has charm. It is attractive to tourists without being touristy or over-run. Townsfolk are courteous. We take lunch under a palm frond roof. A triple deck fountain cools the breeze - natural air-conditioning typical of Islamic-Hispanic architecture.

LA PAZ

14th SEPTEMBER
LA PAZ
La Paz is a hot sweaty city on the Sea of Cortez. We are hot and sweaty (other than J who travels in air-conditioned splendour). We miss the bypass and are lost. I ask a lady for directions. She begins describing the route. I understand individual words, even entire sentences. The whole becomes a jumble. My eyes betray a fatalistic acceptance of inadequacy. The woman halts her instructions. Her smile is familiar. It is the generous female's smile of understanding when faced by male incompetence. Men are men. They have their uses. However rational thought is not the male's strong point (expect even vaguely mature thought and you will be disappointed). Humour them. Lead them by the hand. Such is the Latin way...
In brief, she stops giving directions and says, “It will be best if you follow me...”

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.

SENIOR MOMENTS

SENIOR MOMENTS/PERIODS
Senior moments are becoming the commonplace of my life. And they extend in length. Whilst writing during the past two days I have been attempting to place our journey into the calendar. We departed Los Angeles on the 10th, sleeping in San Vicente. The night of the 11th was the Desert Inn, Catavina. The Desert Inn,San Ignacio would have been the night of the 12th. We stayed overnight at the Oasis Hotel in Constitution on the 13th and reached CaboSan Lucas on the 14th.
I have checked this itinerary on paper, drawn diagrams, calculated mileage and hours on the road. It is correct.
Much of my journey south was filled with worry. The preproduction bikes developed electrical faults. The welds failed on the muffler supports. Would the production bikes hold up? I have flown from London to make this ride. Failure would be a major disappointment, not only to me, but to two editors waiting for me to file. Joe has more pressing concerns. This ride was conceived by him as proof of the bikes' reliability. Potential customers follow his Blog. And his leg hurts (“No it doesn't,” I hear him say). Ouch...

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.

A MOVING MICRODOT

12 SEPTEMBER
Joe and Arlene ride production bikes. John and I ride pre-production bikes. These are small bikes, pretty babies to treasure. The average owner will ride down to the store of a Sunday or drop by a neighbour's – say twenty minutes max. Steve wants the bikes tested to destruction. John is massive and I'm no light-weight. Steve wants destruction, we're his men.
Day one south from Tijuana is horrific coastal-strip development on the cheap side of cheap. Pass Ensenada and I begin to understand Baja's magic: clarity of light, range upon range of mountains, immense spaces across which merely to travel is an adventure. Even Big John becomes little more than a moving microdot.