Film Overview

The Motorcycle Diarrheas

The plan came together after my son, Steve, and I saw the movie, “The Motorcycle Diaries”. Like the character in the movie, my son was soon to be 30 years old and was eager for the last big adventure of his youth. Having just retired, I am always ready for any adventure involving motorcycles. We picked November as the best time for us to make the trip, fortunately it is also the best month for traveling in Mexico. This would be the first motorcycle trip that my son and I had taken together.
Riding two 25 year old Hondas was a little unusual choice for a month long trip though Mexico. The idea was that the bikes did not look like they were worth stealing and if one of the bikes broke down, we would just leave them in Mexico and take a bus or plane home. Living in the San Francisco Bay Area has the advantage of having access to a large selection of used motorcycles (thank you Craigslist.org). Within a few months, I bought a 1980 CX500c for $300, a 1981 CX500c for $150 and picked up a free 1980 CX500c parts bike used to get the other two bikes running. In order to have at least one locking storage compartment, I bought an Igloo cooler, mounted it on the luggage rack and installed a lock. After all, this was a fun ride, not a show of elaborate motorcycles, so I installed a bogus Briggs & Stratton pull starter over the missing side cover of my son’s bike.
We never did get a chance to take a short shake-down ride before embarking on this major trip. So to prove the bikes worthiness, we rode the bikes hard for the first 500 miles to the Mexican border. If the old Hondas could stand cruising at 80 MPH, which translates into 7000 RPMs for hours at a time, the bikes would survive our time in Mexico. A quick stop at a motorcycle shop before the border was needed to replace the rear view mirror that came off in my hand when I tried to adjust it. The last stop before the border was to buy a second gas can. We determined our gas mileage was not as good as we hoped for, leaving us with only 120 mile range on the little Honda gas tanks.
Crossing the border was interesting. Because we were going so far into México we had to register the motorcycles and ourselves. This process included going to the immigration office to fill out forms, then to the bank to pay for customs, then back to the immigration office for a stamp confirming that they saw that we paid, then back to the bank to confirm that we got the stamp, then to the copy office to copy our documents and registration forms, then back to the bank to pay for the temporary Mexican vehicle permit where they made more copies of what we just copied. Fortunately there were no lines and it only took 2 hours. Looking at the USA through the fence of customs, I got a nervous feeling thinking about all of the things that could go seriously wrong and now that we were on “the other side”. We would be traveling very far away from the USA border, all the way to the other end of Mexico, a distance that is equivalent to riding from California to New York. The question in my mind was, were we really going to make it back to the USA in one piece? Were the bikes going to make it? All this uncertainty went away after a few days in the saddle.
Our 4 week journey included a ride down the Baja peninsula to La Paz where we caught the ferry to Mazatlan. Heading southeast for 1200 miles along the coastal road brought us to Puerto Escondido before starting a journey homeward. Bearing north took us through the ancient city of Oaxaca to Veracruz on the Gulf of Mexico. An extremely strong storm axed our plans of riding north along the Gulf of Mexico, so we headed east on a track that would take us through the heart of Mexico City and Guadalajara. Continuing east brought us back to Mazatlan where we began a coastal ride north along the east side of the Gulf of California eventually reaching the border near Yuma, Arizona. The total trip from San Jose, California, and back was 6020 miles.
In general, the people of Baja are extremely friendly to motorcycle riders. Once you clear the border towns, almost every kid in Baja waves to the motorcyclists. It is also a place were we met the most non-Mexican travelers. A good number of Snow Birds, who have made Baja their winter home for years, are heading south from Canada and the USA. It is always interesting and informative to talk to these veteran “part time” locals. One of the many oversights of the trip was not realizing that North and South Baja are in different time zones. This oversite resulted in a mad hyper speed ride through the entire city of La Paz to catch the ferry for Mazatlan.
“Do not ride in Mexico at night!” We heard that advice from quite a number of sources. Underestimating our travel time, we pulled into San Quentin an hour after sundown. Now we know why this advice was given. There were cars and trucks with missing head lights, tail lights, turn signals, and some with no lights at all! Then there were times that our view was nothing but fog dust, lighted up by the oncoming traffic which made it tough to dodge the dogs and cows on the road. The best way to negotiate one’s way at night was to follow a car with working brake lights that was traveling at a safe speed. Bottom line, do not ride at night! It turned out we did not follow that advice a few more times during the trip. After the first travel day, I would rate the Mexican truck and car drivers as very good compared to anywhere in the USA. On the other hand, many of the Mexican vehicles are in poor shape.
The road conditions in Mexico are a little different from those in the USA. In Mexico there may be up to 3 different signs telling you that a slow curve is coming up. I found out the hard way (don’t ask) to pay some attention to these signs because there are more than a few blind curves with a descending radius. On the negative side, there are no shoulders (except for the toll roads). The lanes are narrow, and there are no passing lanes. With the large the supply of slow moving vehicles, especially in the mountains, passing becomes dicey at times. The Mexican truck drivers with, their optimal view ahead help out passing vehicles by switching on their left turn signal when it is safe to pass. That brings up the question, “What if the truck driver is actually turning left?” Simple, the driver will put on his emergency flashers indicating DO NOT PASS. This signal technique is on rural roads but not used in the cities, towns, or villages.
Another unique feature of Mexican roads are “topes” or speed bumps. With the exception of large cities, there are no traffic lights in Mexico, just thousands of topes. Topes do an extremely good job of slowing traffic. Buses and trucks must crawl over them. But, all topes are NOT created equal. The smooth ones are not too bad but, there have been many times when I came up too fast on what I thought was going to be a smooth one but proved to be more like a curb. After bottoming out the suspension hundreds of times, I felt like a chicken on a pogo stick. I am completely amazed that we still had any suspension left at the end of the trip.
The first few Mexican Army check points were a little intimidating. But after awhile, we got used to them. We made it a game to try and get these serious looking soldiers with big guns to crack a smile, impressing them by pulling the Briggs & Stratton pull starter rope while secretly pushing the starter button or doing some other kind of antic. I always had it in my mind to ask them for their badges (I did not see any badges)….but it was probably not a good idea to mess with these soldiers too much.
Some cell phone services will work in parts of Mexico. Changing yoour cell phone plan to incorporate all of North America works out to be cheaper than buying phone cards that end up costing about $1.00 per minute. The walkie-talkies that we brought were a real benefit. After we got separated in the ancient town of Patzcuaro, the maze of narrow streets made it impossible to find each other without the walkie-talkies.
If you need to make time, take the toll roads. The Mexican toll roads rival the best superhighways you will find in the USA, with one exception; there is no traffic on the Mexican toll roads unless you are within 100 miles of the US border. It costs the average Mexican a day’s wages to travel on these money suckers. Here is the real killer; they charge a motorcycle the same price as a car. In one day of toll road travel, we laid out $100 (yes, that is US dollars) between us.
Our highest mileage day was the last day in Mexico. Leaving Santa Ana, Sonora, way before day break, we rode 575 miles to Chula Vista, California, for Thanksgiving dinner at my other son’s apartment. We navigated the predawn roads by following a bus most of the time. Remember, never drive in Mexico at night! In places where there were no center lines, the on coming headlights made it almost impossible to navigate, hence the reason to stay behind a fast bus.
The morning after our Thanksgiving dinner, I got sick for the first time of the trip, nonetheless, we made the 500 miles back to San Jose hung over and all…. just one day before my son turned 30.
November is a poor time to ride in most of the USA, but a great time to ride in Mexico. Let’s see, maybe my son can take a couple of weeks off…I think I can get a deal on my friends 96 Triumph Tiger and with my 01 Tiger, we could hit more of the Baja back roads…… maybe we can just grab some more life!
You can see more pictures and read about the adventure online. See: http://www.themotorcyclediarrheas.blogspot.com/