You can click on the two panoramas above to enlarge them. The top one is from the Canon 40D, the exposure stayed pretty much dead-on between frames. The moving clouds and the lens flare (forgot to put the hood on) kept it from being perfect. The bottom one is from the Canon SD 700, the exposure jumps around between frames. I compensated by blurring the sky a lot but you can still see the variations in darkness.

I thought the waves would sooth me to sleep but instead they served to mask every imagined sound I heard so that throughout the night I'd wake up and strain to hear beyond them. I think I like sleeping near people more than in the middle of nowhere... I kept worrying I'd hear a truck coming down to the beach full of banditos.

Completely unfounded, of course, but sometimes you can't help but worry... I did manage to wake up at 6:00am. I took some pictures of the sunrise and the camp and will try to upload those next. I also took some panoramic shots of the mountains and valleys along the drive today as well as some of the other scenery.

I was taking pictures of cacti when a couple from Vancouver, BC pulled up alongside me in a van and asked if I was having fun. They have a place down near Cabo and were on their way back up to Canada. They told me about some of the pitfalls of buying real estate in Mexico and I gave them a business card. They had a cute little dog with them, I wonder how it felt about the trip down and back.

I'm staying at a cheap hotel in Guerrero Negro. There's an Internet cafe next door that I'm currently sitting at, 20 pesos for 1 hour. I was surprised by the weather today, it was colder than I thought it would be. I tried using the heated vest but I managed to short out something in the electrical system of the bike and now the clock resets every time I take the key out. Awesome. I've passed through 3 military checkpoints now and every time they just wave me through. Passing through the border to Baja California Sur today was easy too, they just asked for my tourist card and wrote down some information from it.

Tomorrow I'm going to try and make it to Loreto to stay at the La Damaina Inn.

Written 04/02/2008.

I’m in my tent at a beach North of Rosario and it’s just gotten dark. I pulled off the road at a dirt road that looked promising. It rapidly turned into ruts and rocks but the bike made it through OK. I setup the tent, cooked some beef broth with the Primus stove, and took some pictures of the sunset. I think this is a public beach due to the trash can and signs admonishing people not to litter. I’m not sure how much use it gets because there was no sign announcing it. The trash can is nearly full, though, and there are tire tracks everywhere.

It’s a little spooky to camp in the middle of nowhere by yourself. I’ve done it in a car before but that’s different, you feel protected by the steel and glass and you can pretend that no one can get in. You can’t beat the view from my tent right now though, the stars are the brightest I’ve ever seen and so beautiful. I’m hoping to wake up early tomorrow and head towards Guerrero Negro. There’s a hotel in Santa Rosalia with Internet access that I’d like to stay at too the day after.

Driving today was nice. I ran into lots of topes (now called reductors apparently) which are Baja’s giant speed bumps that live in inhabited places. I either haven’t gotten to the pot-holey section of the 1 yet or they’ve fixed them all, but either way I’m thankful. The rocks on the beach were all the bumps I needed today. There was one scary moment as I headed down a mountain pass. A semi truck was passing another semi in my lane and my heart stopped when I came around the corner and he was right there. He was just starting to move back into his lane but as I passed him he was half-way in mine.

I got to use more new Spanish today at the Pemex (the only gas stations in Mexico). I topped up a couple of times on the drive because I was worried about encountering a gas shortage or a closed station further on. Each time I said “Lleno, por favor”, which means fill ‘er up please.

I remembered something else I wanted to write about. I was taking pictures of flowers up in Agoura Hills, CA and I saw some kids on dirt bikes. I walked around the lot they were riding around saw their father, who I talked to and told about my trip. He told me he was friends with Jeff Kaplan who had just won the Baja 1000 for Honda. On the way home I kept thinking about the setup he had for his kids though. They’ve got access to an empty dirt lot next to their house that they’ve added trails to. It’s the perfect playground for a kid who likes dirt bikes.

I’m going to try and calm my nerves enough to sleep now. I use a program called Sun Times to predict sunrise and sunset while I plan my rides. Tomorrow is supposed to be at 6:17 so I’m setting my alarm for 6:00am. Those who know me will probably think this is impossible… I’ll report back with the results.

I forgot to write about a few things yesterday. First was the “LUPE TE AMO” I saw written on a rock just before Ensenada, it made me smile.

Second were the thoughts I had about Baja after driving this far. It seems that there is a ton of development going on, mostly in beach condos. I passed a gigantic Donald Trump billboard advertising his real estate here. It seems like even in this state of high development there’s a large amount of volatility; there are many half-built structures that have been abandoned. I saw the cement remains of someone’s mega-mansion with a “FOR SALE” sign on it. I also saw a house with metal poles sticking out of the top with bottles on them. It looked interesting enough but then I realized the poles were rebar and the house was supposed to have been two stories high instead of one!

Third is the revolution that has swept through the bath and shower curtain industry like wildfire. I’m talking about those ringless shower curtains with the hard plastic that splits in two to be hung on the bar. They are ubiquitous in America now and probably made the inventor rich. I don’t think they’ve made it to Mexico yet, though…

Today I’m going to try to camp by the beach near El Rosario de Arriba. The day after that I’ll do the same by Guerrero Negro (just after the border to Baja California Sur).

I’m sitting here in my hotel room just South of Ensenada, Mexico listening to Black Sabbath and thinking about the last two weeks. I’m on a touring band schedule, each night a different city. I was delayed for a couple of days due to some drunk navy kids who knocked over my bike in National City, CA and broke the end-weight off the right side of the handlebar. I went North to Orange, CA and stuck around for a couple of days to get the insurance aspect figured out and discovered some other errands I had left to run, like mailing out rebate forms from my camera purchase and sending letters out to family & friends.

My dad strongly suggested I go to Disneyland to get the sour taste out of my mouth from the bike damage and I decided that would be a good idea so yesterday I spent the day in the Magic Kingdom. Disneyland has always been imbued with magic for me, and I think it’s in no small part due to how my mom always presented it to me and seemed to believe in that magic too. Real magic just comes from belief and in many cases we just have to be shown that belief by someone we trust. I made it a point to go on the new submarine ride; it started off exactly the same as the old one but they gussied it up with underwater screens and three-dimensional Nemo characters and it was actually pretty seamless.

The passage into Mexico went extremely well. I saw a lot of bikers splitting lanes up through the line. I considered it but it felt too much like cutting to me. In traffic it’s different, and I did follow some Harley riders through stopped traffic on I-5 for a while before I got too nervous. I eventually had to split when a van merged into my lane and I had nowhere else to go. I cut in front of a man who had asked me “What part of Mexico are you going to?” five minutes earlier. I told him I was headed towards La Paz (at the Southern tip of the state of Baja California Sur.)

I eventually branched off for the declarations lane and asked the declarations officer where to get the FMT (tourist card) and temporary vehicle permit. If I had not asked him for directions I would never have found it. The immigration officer asked me for my passport, sent me to the bank to pay the fee (~$27) and then stamped my FMT and passport, bringing the number of total stamps in my passport to 1. After this speedy process he said “Finito.” I got back on the bike and headed around to where the vehicle import office was located. I got honked at for going too slow and took forever to get through a roundabout. At the vehicle import office I had to make another copy of my passport (word to the wise: don’t cut the edges off like I did) and a copy of my FMT. I tried to use as much Spanish as possible, and so after it appeared that everything was done (and I was charged ~$31) I asked, “¿Finito?” and the cashier (caja/cajero?) replied “Si.”

From there I got on the freeway South and found out I was going towards Highway 2. I accidentally took an unmarked left exit and found I was now on Highway 1-D, the scenic toll road South. This was apparently a good introduction to Baja roads. I’ve been reading all night about the roads South of Ensenada and they are supposed to be much worse, with gaping holes, no lines, and lanes that just stop.

The last couple of weeks I’ve felt a kind of growing fear about leaving the country and I could tell it was affecting me by how little I wanted to talk to anyone but the people that were right in front of me. For the last couple of days I was really worried about crossing the border, about thefts, corrupt officials, and all other manner of things that could go wrong. But I think it’s important to remember that the human mind tends to remember the horrible stories rather than the ones that turn out fine, so it’s hard for our brains to calculate the likelihood that something bad will happen to us.

It’s like the lottery—you see the winner ecstatic about winning. But if everyone who lost during that same drawing also got their 30 seconds you could fill 9.4 years with their disappointment. That’s from a talk by Daniel Gilbert at SXSW that you can and should listen to here. He talks about how the ease with which you can imagine something is the reason why you do it—I’d posit that that is precisely the reason why I’m here now instead of someone else. I have an easy time imagining a journey in which I have a great time and learn a lot and a hard time imagining one in which everything goes wrong and I end up kidnapped and held for ransom. One other telling statistic he gives is that people say it’s more likely to be mugged in Detroit than it is to be mugged in Michigan. This proves once again that the horrible stories we hear affect us so much that they override our common sense: last time I checked, Detroit is in Michigan.

The last couple of weeks in pictures.

I checked the weather all day, making sure the pass between Reno and Sacramento was as warm as possible and that it wasn’t snowing. I left and as soon as I got into California there was a light snow but the road was dry and I drove slower to compensate. By the time I got to the agricultural checkpoint the road was wet and I was driving 30mph. At the checkpoint the worker said, “Man!” and then waved me through and said, “Good luck!”

It got better for a couple of miles and then drastically worse just past Truckee, CA. Truckers on the side of the road pointed and stared and a Hummer H3 passed me and the passenger looked incredulous. There was packed snow on the road and I got off at the chain-up area to find a hotel. There was a Holiday Inn but they only had a room available for that night and the weather was supposed to be bad the next day as well so I decided to turn around and head back down the mountain. I got about a half mile and hit a pothole and did a 180 at about 5 miles an hour. I only suffered a small amount of rash on my left Pelican case, they’re pretty solid. A man stopped in a truck and asked if he could help and we worked out a plan where he would take my luggage down in his truck and I’d follow him. This later changed to me meeting him in downtown because I had to go so slowly. Soon after this a police officer forced me off the road and offered to call me a tow truck, which I gratefully accepted.

The officer told me he’d call Steve, who he said was a good guy. He had me wait by a Forest Service building and Steve showed up soon after. I rode my bike onto the bed of his truck and we went farther up the mountain to collect a damaged car that he was also bringing into Reno. We talked about towing and close calls on the way down, and he told me he grew up in Culver City, CA where my previous employer, Zoic Studios, is located. The last picture above is my bike on the back of Steve’s truck.

I hung out in Reno for a few extra days with Vibeke and worked on getting my banking in order before I leave the country. I also made an appointment to get my chain and sprockets changed out in Roseville, CA. The second try through the Sierra Nevadas went fine, as did the service appointment. I had my rear wheel changed out because it was past the wear mark. The service adviser recommended I stop using the chain oiler I bought as it seems to just attract grit and wear the chain faster. He also told me to switch out the stock shock with something that can handle more weight, which I think is kind of ridiculous as the weight on the bike is less than a passenger my own size.

Vibeke and I watched a ton of movies while I was in Reno:

• The Terminal
• Vantage Point
• Casablanca
• Garden State
• Dan in Real Life
• The Bank Job
• The Thomas Crown Affair
• Broken Arrow
• Miami Vice
• Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle
• In The Valley of Elah

The ride to Reno was filled with small adventures. I stopped to get gas at a Chevron in a small town. The only restaurant was a McDonald’s so I stopped in there for some food as well. As soon as I sat down a Navajo man started talking to me from his seat a few tables down. I am always getting into trouble for not ignoring people like the majority seem to do.

I never got his name, and he never asked for mine, but he saw my riding gear and used that to start a conversation. At one point he said, “You know what I like about riders? They tell the truth.” He followed this with, “You know what I like about alcoholics? They lie.” This man was completely inebriated but through (I can only assume) years of practice he was still able to function at close to a normal level. When I first sat down he was drawing a picture of an eagle, and he asked me if I had heard of a motorcyclist named LA Rabbit. He drew me a picture of what I assume is LA Rabbit on a napkin along with the captions “I LIVE TO RIDE” and “DEATH IS EASY”. The way he drew the picture was very interesting—he did not finish one shape at a time and move on to the next. It was all small dots and lines and he skipped around and at the very end the final shape emerged. This reminded me of a study I saw that measured the effects of different drugs on the way spiders weave their webs. At one point he told me that Husvarnas are the best dirt bikes. BMW just bought Husqvarna, which lends credence to this statement. At one point he said, “You know what I like about myself? Nothing.” He followed it up with, “You know what I like about everyone else? They’re still alive.” Several times he said he was going to die of alcoholism, which is probably what will happen if he continues on the same course. He tried to talk a man that walked by on the way to the bathroom and the man looked away disdainfully. He blessed my helmet in Navajo and asked for my protection and then bragged about his Frye brand jacket—he told me it cost $600. His smell was strong, an awful kind of sweetness. He came outside to see me off. After I put my balaclava on he said, “Don’t kick anyone’s ass, you look like a ninja.”

I finished reading On the Rez while I was staying in Albuquerque with Keir’s parents and the book reaffirmed a lot of how I feel about our government and our country’s treatment of those who were here before we were. The Black Hills are a recent, egregious example of our government’s mistreatment of the Oglala Sioux tribe. Stolen from the tribe after Custer trespassed and found gold, the Black Hills contain North America’s largest and deepest gold mine, the Homestake Mine. This is the mine that financed the start of William Randolph Hearst’s newspaper empire. The United States Supreme Court decided in 1980 (60 years after the case was brought) that the United States was guilty of stealing the land and offered ~$145 million dollars in restitution on land that had produced more than $1 billion dollars in gold alone. The Sioux were refused the payment (and still refuse it to this day)—they want their land back plus trespass fees. The money has been in an escrow account for the last 28 years and now totals almost $900 million dollars. Justice Harry Blackmun said, “A more ripe and rank case of dishonest dealings may never be found in our history.”

The Sioux refuse the money because the land is sacred to them. Shannon County, where the Pine Ridge Reservation is located, is the second-poorest county in the United States (and in fact 8 of the 10 poorest are reservations). That the Sioux who live in that county would refuse their share of nearly $900 million dollars shows the strength of their convictions. According to Ian Frazier, “I’ll pay you when I get my Black Hills money” is heard often in Pine Ridge.

Bill Clinton was the first sitting president to visit a reservation since Franklin Roosevelt in 1936. In August of last year there was an event called Prez on the Rez that neither Obama nor Hillary attended. The only candidates who did attend were Mike Gravel, Dennis Kucinich, and Bill Richardson.

What can you do? At one point there was a bill written to return the uninhabited parts of the Black Hills but it died before it was enacted. It’s not only in the past that land has been stolen from Indian reservations, it’s going on right now near the U.S.-Mexico border. Our government is threatening to use eminent domain to take back Apache land to build a border fence. There are gaps in the fence to allow golf courses and the property of affluent people who have donated to the Bush Presidental Library to stay intact, however. I don’t see how a border fence can do much good with holes in it.

In Arizona I saw “THE YANKS ARE COMIN LADEN—KISS YOUR BUTTS GOODBYE” painted on a blue shipping container. At the gas station just past it someone had written “Oil War” on the pump.

I passed a beautiful hand-painted billboard for Ron Paul that someone had written “Presidend” on instead of “President”. I have seen hundreds of signs for Ron Paul and one each for Hillary and Obama. I haven’t seen signs for any other republican candidates.

At a gas station in Tonopah, NV I ran into a man named Kevin who was very interested in my trip. He told me about Two Wheels Through Terror (already on my list) and recounted the story of Striking Viking. We talked about bikes and long trips and he mentioned Adventure Rider, a community for adventure motorcyclists that I have been spending more time on lately. He is the second person at a gas station to mention Adventure Rider to me. The first was at a Love’s in Texas. He asked if the bike outside was mine and then asked where I was going. At one point he asked me if I knew about Neil Peart’s books and I showed him my Rush belt buckle. He told me that he was a huge Rush fan and that he was a professor at a college. For every test he always adds in a question about Rush.

After Tonopah I went through a tiny town next to a naval base and a helicopter flew directly over me about a hundred feet in the air and then landed off to the side of the road.

I finally stopped at a Ramada Limited which I gave a horrible review on Yelp after staying there.