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Eric L and I spent a few days south of the border. Great time. Great food. A little unexpected bike trouble, but it all worked out great. Day 1 saw us leaving Orange County headed south around 6:30 am. We stopped in Chula Vista to top off on gas and so I could go to a Kinko's and print my Mexican insurance docs and sign a few online documents. We went through Tijuana, which I usually never do, or only in the daytime. We took the toll road south to Ensenada and ran across this group of riders on the new CSC Chinese adventure bikes headed down. Lunch in Ensenada was awesome. Eric on his phone We hit the dirt at Santo Tomas and made our way down to Erendira. That road is quite easy. Very big bike friendly! Got to Coyote Cal's quite early, maybe 1:30. We clearly didn't do enough riding! We ended up just relaxing, had a cigar, few happy hour drinks and then a great dinner of fried ling cod.

Day 3 we woke just before sunrise and got to enjoy this great view with our coffee Eric L's plan was to ride back with Bob the Canadian and mine was to ride back via San Felipe and figure out from there. I made great time and got to San Flippy by 10:30 for an early lunch. It was so good I just stayed there for awhile checking up on my phone using their wi-fi until I got hungry again and had two more tacos! I was thinking of staying the night there but it just seemed so early and I wasn't sure what to do with myself. I decided just to ride home. It got pretty hot too: 102 in Mexicali. Got into San Diego around 4:00 just in time for a bbq at John's house w/his wife, Franco and his wife, etc... Really good way to finish a trip!

Day 2 we got an early start and headed south on dirt to the highway. I've been testing these Hemisphere panniers out for AltRider and they've been doing very well so far. I'll have a review up soon. This is my second trip with them (first was in Death Valley) I'm liking the new gear from ICON Raiden too. This is their Arakis pants, jersey and gloves I'm wearing. These pants are perfect for warmer weather, especially Baja. Review here. You can see Rick has a chicken coop for fresh eggs and sells gas too. There's gas in town out of a barrel but you never know how clean it is. Definitely give Coyote Cal's a visit when you're down there. Be sure to get the Thai massage from Ta. It's the best one I've ever had by far! Had to put the new sticker up right below another popular one It may have been a bit too ambitious on our part, but our plan was to make it to BDLA and we were making good time to do that until Eric's 650 broke down about a mile north of the turnoff to BDLA. He thought he ran out of gas but after he put a gallon from his Roto-Pax in, it still wouldn't start. There were puffs of white smoke that smelled of oil and no compression! We put his stuff on the back of my bike and I rode him on the back the remaining 45 or so miles to Mauro's Posada in BDLA. He said it was more comfortable on the back of my bike than riding his! We got to Mauro's and were greeted by his lovely wife, Patty, and their two children Maxine Rose and Giuseppe. We tried calling roadside assistance which Eric has as part of his Mexican insurance, but they were clueless and said it would be three hours before they could even get back to us on who was going to go out to get his bike. Patty was kind enough to ride us back there in her truck and we just got it ourselves. We brought it back to a mechanic friend of Patty's by the name of Marcos and he and Eric spent some time looking at it while we went to grab some fish tacos for everyone. While at the mechanic's Eric met a Canadian guy he's calling "Bob" (because he said "bob's your uncle") who said he was driving back up north the next day and offered to haul Eric and his bike back! Very cool. You definitely need to stay at Mauro's the next time you're in BDLA.