Ahhh, Baja on motorcycles! Unspoiled beaches, abundant sunshine, cheap beer, fish tacos, and amazing off- and on-road riding. It is an adventure rider’s dream. And riding there was exactly that for us for three awesome days until we found ourselves monumentally screwed, with a blown engine on a deserted highway somewhere in the middle of Baja.
But this story is best told from the beginning.
As a transplant to Southern California, a motorcycle trip to Baja has been high on my list for a while. A couple of buddies—Alex (Snake) Cobb and Beau (Limbo) Limbocker—had equally strong desires to explore the Baja peninsula on bikes, and we have been planning a trip for two years now. Last year, insurance restrictions on a couple of the press fleet bikes we were using and COVID knocking out Snake derailed the trip. That trip shifted into Limbo and I doing a desert scramble in the southwest United States, which was fun, but not the Baja trip we imagined.
This year, we were all dialed in for the Baja adventure. The virus was safely behind us, and our bike situation was squared away. I had sold my pristine and impeccably maintained—this is important for later—2017 Ducati Desert Sled to Snake a year earlier. I also purchased and modified an Indian FTR for off-road travel for this trip. Limbo, who grew up in Venezuela riding dirt bikes and is fluent in Spanish, would be riding my 2019 BMW R 1250 GS. There were no press bike insurance restrictions to deal with this time.
Limbo booked his flights, and Snake handled the planning. Putting a trip together is always a bit challenging with different personalities and approaches to riding. Having successfully traveled to Sturgis with Snake and Limbo, we knew we were a compatible riding trio. Limbo is as laid-back as can be, and his Spanish skills would be fantastic on the trip. Snake is a master planner. For me, “plan” is a four-letter word. Oh, wait! It is a four-letter word! So, having Snake take on that responsibility and do a great job was a big relief.
Besides the route planning and motorcycle preparation, there was a flurry of discussion about riding luggage. We were trying to go minimalist, as we knew we would be off-road a fair amount. So, I wanted something durable.
Fortunately, Giant Loop has some terrific gear to load up the FTR. I chose the 48L Tillamook duffle bag that was a perfect fit on the back of the Indian. The Giant Loop Tillamook has openings on both ends for easy access, and it features a variety of mounting points that allow easy installation on almost any bike.
In addition, I mounted up a Giant Loop Diablo waterproof tank bag. It has a very smart and convenient zip-off feature that lifts the bag away from the gas cap for easy refueling and removal at the end of the day. It’s a fantastic feature that pays for itself the first time you gas up.
Given the potential for long distances between fuel and the small tanks of the FTR and the Desert Sled, we needed a fuel bladder. Giant Loop came through again with their one-gallon Armadillo bags. The Giant Loop Armadillo has a fuel hose for an easy, mess-free refueling experience. It’s clear that the people at Giant Loop actually do adventure rides because their stuff is so well thought out.
Day One
All packed up and ready to go, we left Los Angeles and headed south on I-5 to Tijuana. A few days before departure, a work colleague and friend asked if I was interested in selling my BMW to him. Having owned it for four years, it was about time to replace it, so I agreed to sell it after the Baja trip. Because of this, I decided it would be best if I rode the GS and put Limbo on the FTR just to make sure nothing happened to my BMW. This decision turned out to be a good one!
Before getting into Mexico, we stopped for gas. In the gas station’s parking lot, Limbo totally bombed a U-turn and dropped my beautiful FTR! Thankfully, I recently installed sliders on the FTR to reduce the impact of a tip-over. A year ago, Limbo dropped a brand-new BMW R nineT on the side of the road. Although Limbo is an excellent rider, we changed his biker name to “Drop” with this second incident.
Crossing the border into Tijuana was remarkably easy and quick. We rode down the coast for a while before following Carretera Federal 1 inland. At first, I questioned my decision because we would miss some of the coastal routes. The inland roads were empty, curvy, and beautifully paved.
When we arrived in Ensenada, we were disappointed that it was a much larger port city than anticipated. The main drag was littered with touristy gift shops and cheesy motels; there was even a big cruise ship sitting out in the harbor.
We wound our way through the old town area, and found an outdoor table at a bar. We stopped there to regroup and have a cerveza. Given the touristy feel of Ensenada, we decided to head out of town and spend the night at the highly rated Horsepower Ranch. We couldn’t get anybody on the phone there, but we headed out anyway.
With Google Maps messing us up a bit, we quickly found ourselves on a dirt road that looked reasonable, but quickly turned out to be much more technical, ruddy, and steep—a harbinger for the next day’s ride. After a wrong turn, we ended up in a very surprised guy’s driveway.
Luckily, Spanish-speaking Drop (aka Limbo) got it straightened out. We ended up at the gate at Horsepower Ranch not much later, only to find it locked up. Clearly, it was closed for the season! So, we returned to town and stayed at a nice hotel off the main tourist strip.
Fantastically thirsty for cerveza and tequila, we wandered through town, looking for dinner and drinks. We were amazed to find old town Ensenada virtually empty! After a bit of exploring and internet searching, we found a ceviche restaurant that was delicious but also empty. It seemed our plan for tearing up the town was in jeopardy!
Fortunately, Drop made some inquiries with the locals. After a bit more wandering, we ended up at Hussong’s Cantina, a well-known 132-year-old local establishment filled with locals and was thumping! We grabbed a table, immediately met some friendly elderly local gentlemen, and settled in for a fun night of music, beer, and tequila—followed by more tequila and a little bit more tequila.
Day Two
It started slowly, I’m not gonna lie. Stumbling down to breakfast while trying to clear the tequila from my brain, I found Snake and Drop surrounded by waiters delivering everything from freshly squeezed juice to delicious huevos dishes. It looked like I might just be able to survive the morning.
With full bellies and renewed excitement, we headed off to the famous Mike’s Sky Rancho, a place Snake had talked about for months before the trip. Around since 1967, Mike’s is a must-see for anyone traveling Baja on bikes. Leaving Ensenada, we had a beautiful ride through deserted winding roads towards the interior of the peninsula.
After a couple hours, we stopped to gas up our motorcycles and get something to eat in Lázaro Cárdenas—population 16,294—not far from the turn-off to Mike’s. We couldn’t find a place with food and beer, but eventually stumbled on an open-air garage that turned out to be a seafood restaurant.
Our first question was if they had cerveza. They said sure! And then promptly ran across the street to the liquor store and picked up a six-pack of cold beer. LOL.
We weren’t very hungry, but the owner brought us tortilla chips with delicious fresh pico de gallo and avocado, some samples of fried fish, and a coconut with three straws for some rehydrating coconut milk. Mexican hospitality is truly amazing. This place would give even a Mexican health inspector a heart attack immediately upon entering, but you can’t argue with the food. It was delicious! Filled up and excited to get to Mike’s, we took off down the road.
The rest of this story is best told by my boy Snake:
Woody, Drop, and I arrived at a fork in the road about 45 minutes into our off-road trek to Mike’s Sky Rancho in Baja California. So far, the ride to Mike’s was way more technical than all the blogs and forum posts I read led me to believe. “A little dirt at the start,” “small patches of sand,” and “loose rocks here and there,” they said.
In reality, there were miles of dirt to start. Most was hard-packed, but a lot of it was loose. Then came the sand—essentially quicksand—that tried its best to take all of us down. The bikes we chose to ride on this trip definitely added to the difficulty.
Woody rode his BMW R 1250 GS, and Drop was on the Indian FTR—both heavy bikes that battled the loose terrain. I was riding the Ducati Scrambler Desert Sled, which I had purchased from Woody, and it was running fantastically. The Sled is significantly lighter than the other two bikes, making the deep sand a little easier for me, though not by much.
Now we faced our next big obstacle—The Fork—and we weren’t even halfway to Mike’s yet.
The fork naturally offered two paths. The one to the left was a hill going straight into the clouds. The other was a flat path headed around a cliffside. Neither route looked easy, let alone safe. I was the straggler of the group because my off-road riding experience was basically zilch. I had maybe a total of four off-road rides under my belt before this moment. By the time I arrived at the fork, Woody and Beau had already made their decision—the near-vertical road to the left.
They motored off and bombed up the hill with no problem. They left me there, staring straight up at the menacing mountain I was now supposed to ride up. Rather than think about it, I hit the gas and rocketed skyward.
The road started as gravel, which became rocks, which blossomed into a sheer rock face, complete with tire skid marks left by previous motorcyclists. I pondered for a moment if the marks were those of successful mountain climbs, or the last-ditch flail of attempted climbs that soon ended gruesomely back at the bottom of the hill.
When I hit the rocks, I hit them hard. My helmet’s chinbar crashed into my windscreen as the bike bounded up the rock wall. Amazingly, the blow didn’t knock me out or make me lose control. Before I knew it, I was at the top. Little did I know that this was the first of many such challenging and rutted climbs up and down on the road to Mike’s.
After an hour of brutal, technical riding, I could finally see the buildings that made up Sky Rancho. I was euphoric, realizing that my dirt bike death march was nearing its end. As I coasted the final descent, I saw Woody and Drop waiting for me. Woody looked back and pointed me straight ahead to the 100-foot sandy river crossing that runs right in front of Mike’s.“You have got to be f#&king kidding me.”
Woody and Drop went first and made it look easy. Once again, I chose not to think about it—I just took off. Amazingly, I made it, no problem.
Arriving at Mike’s was anticlimactic, to say the least. The place was empty except for some stray dogs and two guys painting the empty swimming pool—a far cry from the bustling party scene I had seen online.
We had called ahead so they knew we were coming, and they had rooms because no one was there. Some convincing of the staff got us some cold beer, but that was the extent of the hospitality. Fortunately, Mike’s being empty allowed us to negotiate individual rooms rather than the three of us getting stuffed into one room together, which was their original intent! With only three hours of electricity available, we made the best of it and bunked down for the night.
Day Three
We left Mike’s, taking the same route we had done the day before. My off-road skills were at a new high, as was my enthusiasm for the dirt. Naturally, my newfound confidence gave me an irrational belief that I was better than I was.
Coming down a particularly steep and rocky section, I lost control of The Sled. To my right was a big dropoff. To my left was the bedrock of the hillside. I veered left. My tires stopped dead in their tracks on two big rocks, and the Ducati crashed into the rock wall.
The Sled toppled onto its side, its windshield sheared in half and the left-hand guard shredded by the rock. Miraculously, I was unharmed. I got the bike back upright again and hopped on. I sat there for a minute, pondering my luck and offering a quick prayer that the motorcycle could continue. I hit the starter, and The Sled started right up! Once again, I didn’t think too long. I just rode on.
After surviving the Road to Mike’s without further incident, we continued to San Quintín—population 5000, maybe—on a long, well-maintained dirt road.
At one of our stops along the way, I was chatting with Woody and Drop when they noticed that my front and rear rims were bent. My crash into the rock had evidently wrenched them both. Thankfully, the rims were true, and the Sled has tubed tires. I was able to continue riding for hours without issue.
Shattered windshield. Two bent rims. The repairs and the costs were piling up. Remember, this is an Italian bike.
That night, we stayed in San Quintín’s big resort hotel on the beach—the Hotel Misión Santa María. It was a needed splurge on accommodations after a night at Mike’s Sky Rancho, which is in dire need of a refurbishment, as well as a basic interest in hygiene standards.
After settling into our cleaner, fully electric rooms at the Hotel Misión Santa María, we made a new friend, Tonio, who captained the hotel bar. He made very, very tasty margaritas.
Day Five
We woke to find the Sled’s tires had held their air. Crisis avoided, or so we thought. Our route continued south until we finally left the built-up towns on the Pacific side of Baja and cruised to the countryside.
We rode through beautiful rolling hills on the best road surfaces we had found thus far in Baja. The highway gently curved and undulated as we flowed along. Baja is spectacular once you get fully clear of civilization, and we were miles away from everything on this backcountry road.
Woody and Drop were ahead of me as we approached the crest of a hill. Woody blasted off over the top with Beau hot on his tail. With their open-class motors, I spent the whole trip chasing after them on my air-cooled 803cc L-twin. I crouched behind the windscreen, adjusted my throttle hand placement, and prepared to catch up.
The moment I twisted hard on the throttle, The Sled lurched violently and then lost all power. I was only 50 yards from the top of a hill, but the engine couldn’t keep the bike’s momentum going enough to make it.
About 25 yards from the top, The Sled conked out. I rolled it onto the side of the road onto the only patch of dirt I could see. I turned the bike off and then turned it back on. The Sled’s single gauge lit right up, so the battery was fine.
Then I tried to start the engine.
From deep inside the motor came the sickening sound of metal banging on metal, along with something loose and rattling inside. I immediately stopped trying to start The Sled and waited for Woody and Drop to realize I was farther behind than they thought. After 15 minutes, they reappeared. They had been racing each other for a while before they noticed I was gone.
There we were in the hinterlands of Baja, with no cell service and some 25 miles away from anywhere. Lacking a purpose-built tow strap, we used luggage straps to tow my Sled behind Drop’s FTR to San Quintín.
Getting towed behind another bike is a very unsettling experience the first time you do it. It is also not as simple as you might think. Towing a motorcycle sounds easy enough to do, until you realize that the lead bike is the entire throttle for both bikes and the trailing bike is a braking system. That takes some getting used to, for sure.
The hardest part of being towed by another bike is that everyone has their own riding style. Drop’s entry points, lean angles, and lines are just different enough from mine that every turn feels strange, and a horrible crash is imminent.
Fortunately, after 15 minutes, we settled into a rhythm, and the threats of true disaster faded. Two hours later, we arrived back at Hotel Misión Santa María and into the waiting and capable arms of Tonio. He helped me drown my sorrows with a few too many margaritas.
Sadly, I had opted for liability-only coverage over complete coverage in a misguided attempt to save $20 when buying the required Mexican motorbike insurance policy. We had quite a debate about whether the full policy would’ve covered the damage to the Sled. However, in the end, the point was moot because a full coverage policy doesn’t cover mechanical damage.
Thankfully, my Mexican motorbike insurance policy did offer roadside assistance. More thankfully, Drop speaks fluent Spanish. After two hours on the phone with the insurance company, he had arranged for a tow truck to take The Sled back to the Tijuana border crossing, which was hours away.
The first and most challenging step—transporting The Sled back to the United States—was now in place.
Our plan was to get The Sled to Tijuana and tow it across the border—provided U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents would even allow a motorcycle to tow another motorcycle across. Once across, we would call AAA to haul my bike to the local Ducati dealer. I was hopeful that the tow truck would show the next morning, but realistic enough to know that it could just as easily not appear.
Day Six
At 11 a.m., an hour earlier than planned, we were overjoyed to find Pablo and his brother, Joel, arriving at the resort with a flatbed truck. The Sled was loaded up, and I jumped into the truck’s not-exactly-roomy cab with the two brothers. It was approximately the size of a 1980s-era Toyota Tacoma SR5. Worse still, Pablo, Joel, and I are all pretty big guys, and we would be sitting shoulder to shoulder to shoulder for the five-hour drive to Tijuana. Woody and Drop waved goodbye and headed off to Tijuana on their bikes.
Pablo and Joel don’t speak a word of English.
I don’t speak Spanish.
I looked down the road to find Woody and Drop, but they were already two specks far off on the horizon. That’s when the reality of my situation hit me. I was a long way from home with a very broken motorcycle and I was all alone, except for Pablo and Joel. The first hour of the ride was very dark, indeed.
I could have easily let depression take over for the entire ride, but I snapped out of it. I mean, I was on an adventure. No, it was a quest—an epic odyssey that started at that fork in the road and led me through an unbelievable series of events to the very moment I was squeezed into the cab of Pablo’s mini tow truck. This was no time to mope. It was time to keep the experience rolling along its astounding path.
After a few stabs at communicating in broken Spanish—Me llamo Alejandro. Soy Americano—I remembered the most magical iPhone app I always use when traveling: Google Translate!
For the next four hours, I would dictate what I wanted to say in English and hand my phone to Joel, who would read the Spanish translation to Pablo. Pablo dictated into his phone in Spanish, and Joel would pass it to me to read in English.
It turns out that Pablo rides motorcycles, too. He used to ride two-wheel bikes, but he had to ditch them for the four-wheeled variety after his fourth major accident. His last big accident left him with a broken arm, a broken leg, multiple broken ribs, and in a coma for a week.
Pablo: Mi esposa dijo que no más motocicletas!
Me: I think she makes a fair point.
I also learned a few other things on our ride. A Coke can could be used to replace a faulty battery terminal and restart a stalled tow truck—thank God. I also learned that Pablo knows every police officer in Ensenada and waved to all of them as we passed through town. Why?
All of the Ensenada cops call Pablo on Saturday and Sunday mornings to tow all of the cars they impounded from the previous evening’s DUI arrests. I also learned that not being able to understand what was being very humorously said about me by Pablo to everyone we encountered has inspired me to study Spanish.
Incredibly, Woody and Drop were waiting for us at the meeting point we had decided upon many, many hours before back in San Quintín.
With Phase 1 accomplished, we unloaded The Sled and attached it to the back of the FTR. We were ready to head to the border for Phase 2 of The Big Tow.
Approaching the border, we were greeted with a massive line. Thankfully, a helpful local pointed us to an empty lane that only our bikes could fit through. We flew by nearly the whole line of cars because of this convenient motorcycle lane. Or was it a footpath?
As we neared the border, we saw two agents with dogs and machine guns patrolling the perimeter. We waited as they gave us a long look, assessed our towing system, turned away, and went back to their conversation. I guess they have seen it all at the Tijuana border.
We sailed through the border guard station, though not before we noticed a large, red alarm button with the word “Runner” above it. I desperately wanted to push it to see what would happen, but I was already playing with house money. Why tempt fate now?
The only thing required was a picture of our license plates to ensure registration was good. Woody later informed me that mine had expired! It’s a miracle we made it.
After connecting with AAA to arrange The Sled’s tow to the Ducati dealer in San Diego, we sat on the third-floor walkway of the San Ysidro Motel 6, breaking out the Norse drinking horn with a bottle of tequila to toast the odyssey. Phase 2 is complete.
Day Seven
Phase 3 passed without issue. It was a Monday, so the dealer was closed. Woody and Drop took off to LA, and I parked the Ducati outside the dealer’s garage and tossed the key under the door. I headed to the airport to fly home and wait for the dealership to call with some news, which I knew could only be bad news.
Day Eight and beyond
The dealer called me in the afternoon. The tech had dug into the engine and discovered a worst-case scenario. The timing belt rollers in the vertical cylinder had worked loose. One of them broke free, shredding the belt and damaging the cylinder. To get the full picture of the damage, they would need to take apart the entire engine. That diagnosis procedure would cost $1500. Naturally, that’s before any repairs. I declined and was told they would put together an estimate for the damages they found so far.
Two days later, the estimate arrived. Repairing the Sled would cost $11,500, and that’s the price if they don’t find anything else wrong. A 2017 Ducati Scrambler Desert Sled is currently worth about $6500. To paraphrase the famous t-shirts, “I took my Ducati to Baja and all I got was a catastrophic engine failure.”
The Sled was sitting in the dealer’s garage down in Chula Vista, waiting for me to pick it up with a U-Haul, sell it to a salvage yard for less than $1000, or leave it in a seedy, industrial area near the harbor and hope that it gets stolen.
Anyone interested in an inexpensive, gently used, retro scrambler?
I’ll hand you back to Woody:
This trip was a great reminder that motorcycle adventures aren’t always smooth, but that is part of why they’re so great. Yes, poor Snake is taking a financial hit with the loss of the Sled. Still, sitting on the porch of Motel 6, laughing and reliving all the events of the trip, I felt more accomplished and fulfilled than if everything went smoothly. We have stories that will be with us forever, and I can’t wait for our return trip!
