POLO AT MASHOMACK, NY

9 OCTOBER
PINE PLAINS, NY
I intended writing a travel article on New York's horse country. I meet two Argentinians in the Mountain Cafe, Pine Plains. Polo players, they compete in tournaments at Mashomack Polo Club through the Summer season. The season is over. They have shipped the ponies south. The older of the two, Juan Olivera, will fly to Palm Beach on Sunday. He is a small, compact man with a firm handshake, sun and wind tanned and beginning to grey. His younger companion is tall and younger and strikes me as somewhat languid and less the professional horseman - perhaps because he is returning to Buenos Aires. Though that could be to visit his fiance or a sick parent. What do polo players do as they grow older? Is there a downward spiral, less important tournaments? Do they date older, wealthier women? How many professional polo players are there? Surely not that many. Though what do I know...?
And my son-in-law advises that the August sales and race meeting in Saratatoga are the heart of New York's horse year. I am a little late!

FIVE SMALL PIGS

My grandson, Shane, will have his third birthday in January. He says Good morning to me this morning and only then yells to his mother (my daughter) that there is a monster in the house. I comb my hair at the bathroom mirror above the hand basin. Shane decides that I look less of a monster and demands that I play piggy with his toes:
This big piggy went to market.
This little piggy stayed at home.
This little piggy ate pastrami.
This poor little piggy had none.
And this little piggy cries wee wee wee wee as it runs all the way home.
Shane prefers to play piggy on the carpet. Grandpa finds getting down onto the carpet comparatively easy. Getting up is tough. Shane pulls, I groan...

SPOILED

This is my last day on antibiotics. I take one pill in the morning and one in the evening. Having to take the pills with meals is an excuse for a cooked breakfast - this morning a mushroom omelet with two slices of toast. I feel comfortably full and totally spoiled...

LATE WITH PICS

I uploaded a few pics today onto the Baja Run Blogs

CATS, CATS, CATS

8 OCTOBER
DUTCHESS COUNTY, NY
A stallion snorts close by in a paddock to the rear of the house. Horses are messy eaters. Rats and mice would thrive but for the cats. A striped grey cat sits on a small grey plastic children's slide. A black cat preens itself beneath a bigger yellow slide. A marmalade cat washes its self on a chair. A fourth cat eats at the feeder on the table. I sip excellent coffee made in a wondrous machine that grinds fresh beans for each cup.

PIGEONS ON THE ROOF

8 OCTOBER
DUTCHESS COUNTY, NY
Friday and a crisp clear Autumn morning on the horse farm in Dutchess County, New York. I count seventeen pigeons sunning themselves on the barn roof. Why count? Why not?

END OF JOURNEY

17/18 SEPTEMBER
LA VERNE
A stiff head wind along the coast slows us. Turn inland and we ride through a splendid hill country of vast commercial vineyards and acre upon acre of plastic tunnel. Big John is expert in navigating the border with the US. Joe and I follow as he weaves and squeezes between long lines of waiting cars and trucks. The US immigration officer examines my passport. Mexico doesn't register as having left the US. “You entered in New York?” he says and waves me through. We load the bikes onto a California Scooter Company truck and the journey is done.
A night in a La Verne motel, a late brunch with Joe and his wife, then off to Ontario airport in joe's Corvette – Wow!

FIT FOR PURPOSE

j indiana jonesing


17 SEPTEMBER
TO TIJUANA
Here are a few musings from the road. J's modern Power Wagon is a powerful and effective off-road vehicle and delightfully comfortable. My opinion, it is not a vehicle for what I think of as an expedition. It is too complicated.
The rule for an expedition vehicle: Something breaks, can you fix it?
In my early twenties, I spent three months at a time in the Ogaden desert of Ethiopia, Northern Frontier District of Kenya and what is now northern Somalia. There were no roads, not even dirt roads. Transport was an early model Landrover and the original bright yellow Dodge Powerwagon – by today's standards, primitive vehicles. Crew were a Somali driver for the Dodge, a Somali interpreter and an elderly Ethiopian cook. A ten-ton Thornycroft truck brought supplies every fortnight (if it could get through). I carried spare leaf-springs, plugs, petrol pump, points, rotary arm and a distributor cap, a dozen or so inner tubes and boxes of hot patches (ten punctures a day in thorn country was common until a genius invented the gaiter). Communication was by radio early mornings. The radio was a heavy 19 Set used in Centurion tanks. Rig up a long aerial between two trees and I could usually get through to base. The radio was too heavy to carry in the Landrover when I was away from my camp – often for two or three days when exploring the territory - and I would leave the Powerwagon; it used too much gas.
My Landrover beat the hell out of me. I cursed it often, cursed the designer. However it was fit for purpose. It got me in, enabled me to do my work and got me back – and when it broke I could fix it. Same went for the Powerwagon.

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!

APOLOGIES

Apologies to readers: I have been struggling with bronchitis for the past ten days, dosed with antibiotics, depressed and writing slowly. I am on the mend and will write more and faster....

LANCHERO

beautiful

16 SEPTEMBER
NORTH
Lanchero is border Mexican-Spanish for a diner. We pass one every forty or fifty miles. Normally the lanchero is a lone building beside the highway. There is no apparent reason why the builder chose this site. Why not a hundred yards south or north – or 500 yards in either direction?
We pull in at a lanchero on the left. Intricately worked saddles and splendid chaps hang from the ceiling. Smaller pieces of harness fill a glass-fronted display cabinet. Probably thirty miles or more to the next house in either direction, a hundred miles to the nearest town – quite a drive for horsemen in want of spare stirrup leather.

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...