It was an awesome trip. The "holed" piston on the XR only started the process of meeting several extremely great people that helped us out.
The roads in and out of Coyote Cal's were great well graded roads with nice views.
Coyote Cals is clean, well organized, great food, right on the ocean, and reasonably priced.
After a great morning of riding, my beloved XR650L went to sleep....no knocking, not exhaust sputter, no strange sounds at all. It just lost power and quite going down the highway before the turn off to BDLA. My first thought was that, I was out of gas; but I thought it was strange that switching to reserve didn't work. So I look in the gas tank and it's low, but not too low.....so now I'm thinking...please just be out of gas, please just be out of gas....because we're 300 miles south of the border.
Anyway, I pour my rotopax into the tank and hit the starter....and it sound very strange. Also, there's a little blue smoke coming out the tail pipe.....so we're done.
I ride with Eric Hall 2-up to BDLA and meet are hostel hosts, really awesome people. I'm a little anxious because I have a bike sitting out on a remote highway.....and it's not that exotic....it would make anyone a great parts bike if you know what I mean.
I call ACE Insurance booked through Baja Bound. I get transferred to a Mexican call center, the representatives English is very good, but something was not clicking with this guy. He couldn't even find BDLA on the map, he could not understand anything. After 20 minutes of me say "Bahia de Los Angeles" and him repeating back "Los Angeles" I said, hold on.....do you think I'm Los Angeles USA or Los Angeles Baja Norte? "USA Sir" this guy is clueless....so one of our hosts gets on the phone to speak Spanish.....this doesn't improve anything. Finally, he says he'll call back when a tow truck is set-up. He calls back and says the tow truck will call me in 3 hours. At this point, I just said, that isn't going to work, I'm going to hire a local and ACE will reimburse me. Strangely, the guy sounded relieved and said just call me back to get the reimbursement information.
Our wonderful hosts at Mauro's Posada had a pick-up...I bought them a tank of gas and we went and got the bike with no problems. Patty, Mauro's wife introduced us to Marcos and Marcos Jr. who are local mechanics and fishing guides in BDLA. Marcos pulls the plug and I can see the look in his eyes as soon as we turn the engine over.....no compression....and there's aluminum dust all over the spark plug...piston is toast.
As I'm sitting there wondering how I'll get back home and when I can come back down with a truck to pickup the bike, Marcos Jr. speaks up and says there's a Canadian headed to San Diego tomorrow, he might haul me back. So we go meet Paul the Canadian.....Paul doesn't even hesitate...."Sure, let's load it up now, and we'll meet for breakfast at 7am".
At the end of the conversation....Marcos doesn't want to take any money because he could do anything to help the bike and Paul doesn't want to take any gas money for the ride north.....what hell just happened???
Here's Paul...my savior with his KTMs.
So, 6:30 am, Eric Hall and I say goodbye and good luck....and I'm headed north with Paul the Canadian.
The bike is home and I've started disassembly.....I can't wait to go back and see my new friends in BDLA!