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Old 03-15-2010, 04:37 PM
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Rick Rick is offline
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Default Baja San Felipe 250 Part #1

I just returned from a very cool extended weekend...first off, I am a gear head and I love a most all motor sports, but those that take place in the dirt...is that much better. My little story starts off with my bro-in-law transporting my GG EC200, my sons KX100 and his CRF450 down to San Felipe, BCN. My in-laws were already down there for the last 3 weeks enjoying retirement…well, sort of. My in-laws have a very nice casa so accommodations were taken care of. We stayed in a very nice 3 bedroom 2 full bath home with a two-car garage. My bro-in-law left last Wednesday with all bikes in tow on his three-bike trailer. My wife and I departed Sacramento, Ca early Thursday morning via SWA for a short hop into San Diego, Ca. We pickup the rental van and headed north to Oceanside to nab my son and headed south!

The trip from San Diego was to Calexico gone off without a hitch; we crossed the border into Mexicali and headed south on the BCN #5 highway towards San Felipe. We arrived in San Felipe around 5pm and were greeted by the family to direct us into the casa. When I arrived at the casa, I was stunned with the place, very nice modern adobe style home, 3 bedrooms 2 full bath with a 2-car garage. Of course the first place I headed for was the garage to see if the Gas’er and Kawi made the trip….safe and sound! Dinner was next, we all piled into the rental Mazda 5 van and headed for town for those fish and shrimp taco’s and an ice cold Sol. You gotta love Baja! We were sitting down to eat in the outdoor patio I noticed the Monster Energy Off-road racing team, and there sat Robbie Gordon, you know, NASCAR, Dakar and SCORE racer Robbie Gordon. I am not a huge NASCAR guy, but Robbie Gordon is a driver of many talents and he can get down in the desert with a Trophy Truck. A quick “hello and good luck on Saturday” was all that was said. Dinner was off the hook; I am a sucker for shrimp tacos. After dinner a stroll though town and my next stop was to find a Mexican bakery……must have fresh pastries in the morning. Bingo….found a bakery and stocked up for the weekend. The evening air was SO FRESH, cool breezes and street was buzzing with excitement. A short drive back to casa and we were home. The casa has an oberservation area on the roof, which is flat, I sat up there with a cold beer and gazed into the sky….only to see millions and millions of stars, it was a crystal clear night, I was happy just to be here and away from the office.

The next morning (Friday) I woke to the sound of a 2 stroke motor….some time around 7:30am. My son Brent dressed, and ready to go explore the area….not so fast Trigger! Can’t hit the brush on empty. After a couple of fine Mexican pastries and coffee, came the real deal, fresh home made flour and corn tortilla’s with chorizo and scrambled eggs, and fresh pina…pineapple juice. The rest of the family had a great day planed. They were headed into town to check out the vendor’s row, and checkout the trickery of trucks and buggies. They pretty much had a full day planed. I was really on the fence about riding, I really wanted to check out the clean equipment that was going to get thrashed out on the 232-mile course, but I came here to ride…just a little. For those of you who have no idea, anything goes in Baja! I mean, ride through town, down the highway, lights, no lights, plate, no plate or the beach…you name it, it pretty much flies! Brent and I rolled out and headed west, we wanted to go and checkout Saturday’s racecourse…or a little bit of it. Once we rode out of our gated community through a couple of checkpoints, it was the wild, Wild West! It was a ZOO! More on that later. We rode at a pretty good clip, down a road called the “ZOO ROAD”…which runs east to west and connects several valleys together, one of which was a flat, empty dry lakebed…very cool! I was leading the charge, going west; I jumped off the road and headed cross-country, making our own tracks across the thorny sandy desert. I was paralleling the Zoo Road going west. It was like a down hill skier, dodging in and out of bushes, like going around the poles on a ski slope, the sand was packed, yet soft, you could rail turns like no other! We played that cat and mouse game for about and hour or so. We came upon an open flat area and it was the makings of a pit area for many race teams, Honda Racing, BFG and others had banners and staked in the ground marking their area. I looked for a big Ocotillo tree for some shade to rest and go over our game plan, and check our fuel tanks. Brent’s KX was at the plus side of about 1/2 and my 200 was right at ¾ of a tank. No worries. We could just hit the hardball and head home if we needed to. Brent broke out his camera and snapped away. On the way back I found a massive sand wash, I jumped into it and what seemed like miles of smooth sand with the walls closing in on us. The wash went from about 50yards across to now single track, with 5-10feet walls! The base became very rocky, like bowling ball size cobblestones, but we managed to continue east. The pace grew slower and slower and it became more narrow and rocky. Brent was behind me using every ounce of clutch and second gear just to get over the rocks, I could hear him spinning trying to get over the polished cobblestones, yet I continued to look back waiting to see a cloud of steam coming pouring out of his little KX100. I was starting to think that this was a bad idea…really bad! I could not see what was ahead of me, it was very tight, and I just kept bounding forward. The wash began to open up a bit, and the walls were starting to get a little more slope to them. I continued to push forward looking for the first opportunity to try and climb out. I made several attempts, but the dirt and sand was too soft, to we pushed onward, then out of no ware it opened up, we crested up out of the valley to find open terrain again. I stopped and wanted Brent to get out his camera, which he did, only to find that he left it on from our last stop and it was dying quickly. We were bummed that we had no pictures of this part of the ride. Oh well.

We rode cross-country for what seemed like ¼ to ½ mile back to the Zoo Road, a quick check of the watch and it was pushing noontime, we both were hungry so he headed for the casa. When we arrived home, no body was around; the rest of the family must still be in town checking out the hardware. So we topped off the bikes, and motored towards the “El Colorado” for lunch. Which were about 4 clicks south of the casa. We leaned the bikes up against the wall, and headed in for some lunch. We both ordered chicken tacos and Brent had a sugary orange soda and I had a couple bottles of water. As we ate our lunch one of the buggy race team members stopped in for lunch. It’s was the COPS TEAM, it looked like the team owner and couple of mechanic’s. They had a nice Toyota Tundra pre-runner parked out front. Within 10 minutes or so, two of the COPS team buggies went flying side by side down the #5 highway hauling butt! The team manager ran out of the restaurant reach inside the Toyota and grabbed the mike to the team radio and was yelling at the guys…..it was a crazy…but cool. When he walked back into the restaurant he stopped by our table and said “those kids are going to tear up the car before the race” Brent and I just looked at each other. We finished up lunch…paid the $7.00 USD tab and mounted back up for another ride.

This time we headed towards town, a few miles to where the start of the race was we jumped off the highway and rode west. The first part of the course followed a high voltage power lines that were running northwest, as far as you could see. The terrain was rocky, and full of whoops, like knee to waist deep. We rode through this crap for what seemed like miles. I decided to hit the bush for much smoother ride. The power lines intersected with the Zoo Road. When we reached the intersection it we noticed there was about 6-8 teams of Trophy Trucks and buggies out there doing some testing. It looked like a nice time to take a break. The teams must have been working on suspension adjustments. They would driver down the whooped out power line road and turn around and come down through the whoops WFO!!! There was a slight rise where the power line road meets the Zoo Road and off they went….airborne, with what looked like a gently landing, hard on the throttle and kept charging! The driver would then turn around and come back to the stage area for some adjustments and nail it again. The crews would breakout a computer and plug it into the truck and look things over. I had never been this close to this type of action, and I knew that come Saturday morning, it would be on! So we sat there for most of the afternoon and watched, the shadows were starting to get longer and some it was time to head back to the casa. Brent and I rode back on the Zoo Road home. We checked in and still the family was not home. Brent wanted to go to the beach, so we jumped on the #5 and rode North to Pete’s Place. We rode down through Pete’s Place and rode down to the Sea of Cortez. It was low tide and the water was out about 1/8th to ¼ mile or so. There were quads and trucks all down on the beach, it was pretty cool to ride on the beach again, and I had not done that since Pismo Beach many moons ago. After about an hour of making figure 8’s we headed home. When we arrived, the rest of the family was there, and it was getting close to dinner. We fired up the grill and throw on some carne asada, onions, and those fresh tortilla’s, and a few ice cold Sol’s! After dinner we gathered and came up with a game plan as to where we would watch the race. Based upon what I seen today, and given the amount of people we had, we chose to go to the power line to watch the start.

Here is an old clip, but if you do a search on the Zoo Road, San Felipe, not the best clearity
http://www.blip.tv/file/758178

End of Part#1


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Last edited by Rick; 03-15-2010 at 09:29 PM. Reason: Ooops
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Old 03-17-2010, 01:54 PM
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roostafish roostafish is offline
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Coool. Nice account.
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