Coastal Traveler - Fall 2008 - (Page 58)

I made small talk with the Bahamian, with whom I would share a hotel room throughout the trip. Thus began the forced camaraderie of the guided tour—the gritted bonhomie, the suspension of judgement, the hearty handshake and elevating tone of speech. And then, under the surface, pack hierarchy forming like the bones of a fetus beneath its mother’s skin. I knew that eventually I would become the outcast, and savored this early egalitarian period. We rode down the highway between Tijuana and Ensenada, looking at the new condos along the ocean. Our driver Ken, a courtly older man with white hair, began to guffaw with Pepe. “Get out your cameras,” they said. The truck slowed and the windows came down as we passed a house on a hillside shaped like a pair of tits. And they were definitely tits and not breasts. The whole place felt titty. We had left breasts behind with our wives. We arrived in Ensenada and an officious immigration officer had to be bribed before we could get special permits. We went to the hotel and waited until dinner where we would meet the Canadians. Dinner had its own ritual, as all the food on the $3,300 trip was included. We were told to order whatever we wanted, but the effect on me was one of limitation. I didn’t want to appear like a golddigging date, ordering the lobster. Whereas if I had been paying, I may have ordered more richly. Off the bike, it was supposed to be luxurious: our bags were carried by Ken, the hotels were the best in town and whenever we took a break along a dusty trail, Pepe and Santana would walk among the bikes, wiping the dust from our goggles. We were in a foreign desert, treated like bwana on an Abercrombie and Kent dirt bike safari. Lance Armstrong, Sandra Bullock and Lyle Lovett had all chosen to dirt bike with Hains. I asked what happened if we were injured, deep in the mountains, far from the highway. Santana, our lead guide, said that they carried a satellite phone and that the US Coast Guard would helicopter us out if it was really serious. But even that could take up to 12 hours. We were promised a go-go club after dinner, because there wouldn’t be any more partying until we reached Loreto. Our days ahead would be long and testing. The pack of us walked down Avenida López Mateos. A man called from the door of a small pharmacy. “Get any drug you want without a prescription. Come on boys, get your dicks hard for the ladies. Get something to kill the pain.” I went inside and asked the man for his strongest painkiller. He removed a vial of liquid morphine. “How do I take it?” I asked. “You have to use this,” he said, taking a needle down from the shelf.” It felt a little too close to shooting up, so I bought some “super-Percosets.” Already, that feeling was setting in, a feeling of colonial lawlessness. The country seemed as if it was there to let us run wild, to act and speak with machismo. The land was there to be ripped by knobbies, the women to be groped and the men to carry our equipment. Already, walking down the streets of Ensenada, the boys had begun to go wild. We bought sticks of explosives that were as big as a fat arm, and a quiver of rockets that stood six-feet-tall, mounted on the ends of sticks, like primitive, explosive javelins. We walked down the street with our drugs and explosives to the Paris strip joint. Pepe turned to us and said, “This is the best titty bar in Ensenada. Here you will find some CR250rs, or maybe even a Ducati,” using motorcycle metaphors for the quality of the dancers. A parade of women emerged from the back and took places on our laps. Mine was an Amazon and my leg began to ache, so I asked for a lighter one. I modeled the other men and placed a proprietary arm around ungiving skin. The bar was unexpectedly clean; men emerged after each show with disinfectant to wipe the stage and pole. We were led upstairs to the lap dance stalls. My girl wiggled all over me, turning upside down, pushing herself off the floor. The next morning, when we were led out to our red Honda dirt bikes, I had a hard time getting a leg over the bike. It was lofted by two foot shocks, for which I would soon be grateful. They were CR450Fs, and are among the most powerful dirt bikes on the market. We mounted and made our way along wide, dirt roads, getting used to the bikes, drinking from our Camelbacks. We made our way to some cliffs until the trail stepladdered down a hillside. I dropped the bike for the first time. Pepe came up behind me and helped me pick it up for the first of 17 times. I went off the first step at a 45-degree angle and the front shock smoothly absorbed it. Strange. The rest of the day was spent riding down the coast to San Quintin, increasing the pace, crashing at higher and higher speeds, and staying off the brakes, which caused the bike to slide on the gravelly trails. We stayed at an empty hotel on the beach, where the pool had been removed by storm surf. The next day was the hardest of the trip. We crossed the mountains separating the Pacific from the Sea of Cortez. The Canadians were experts, flinging their bikes across rocks, skipping over obstacles on their rear tires, nose up, bounding from high point to high point, like they were atop atomic pogo sticks. We reached pockets of deep sand, which required high speed, sitting far back on the seat so the front end wouldn’t submarine, the whole bike wiggling along its central axis in a constant, gyroscopic sluice. Riding a dirt bike was all about being loose in the joints, allowing the bike to dance and skit and slip underneath, bounding its movements so it averaged the path you intended to take. We rode up ravines filled with two-foot rocks. At first, I fell into their gaps, gouging my helmet on rocks as I fell face-forward, my neck protected by the Leatt. I grew so frustrated I followed Pepe’s instructions and just gunned it. And with this pain-induced aggression, I discovered my bike. It rose above the gaps and carried me across the rocks like an expert on the moguls, popping its bionic knees. I learned that whenever I was in trouble the answer was gas. It felt like I had a giant hand gripping the front tire and pulling the bike straight. The more gas the easier everything got. I fell off less and less until I crashed on a tight, dipping u-turn and tore the ligament in my right hand. I iced it during lunch and started a Percoset regime that would last the rest of the trip. I was persuaded to sit out the second half of the day in the support truck and was glad I did. When the rest of the guys stumbled into the hotel, they could barely lift their arms, having spent four hours crossing endless sand whoops. After dinner the Canadians launched some of their rockets off the beach before going to sleep. The next day was a different challenge—speed. We rode at 80 mph, along open roads lined with giant cactus. My injured thumb was painfully jounced throughout the day, but I wanted to finish the ride, to say I had done it, to conquer pain like I was in the Paris-Dakar. So I entered a zone of commitment, where each shock of pain commended my fortitude, each crash recommended me for valor. We stopped along the way for the Canadians to stuff a 25-foot cactus with explosives. We hid behind rocks to protect us from flying needles, but the cactus absorbed the detonation with a soft thump that left a smoky hole. The last day was spent buzzing along salt flats and wide, washboard roads. We stopped for lunch at a beach and went to a shack where gas was siphoned into our tanks. By this time my crashing had begun to wear on the more expert Canadians. I was popping painkillers at every stop in order to temper the pain from my hand. We passed through a series of oasis towns. Boys lined the dirt streets and made wheelie motions with their arms. One of them threw a lemon at a Canadian. In my stupor, I failed to stop at a some checkpoints, angering the rest of the riders. I just wanted to make it, to finish, to survive and enjoy the trip in its telling. It was a test I didn’t want to fail. I wanted a D-minus. When we reached the support truck the Canadians set off the final rockets. One began to list after it was lit and fell parallel to the ground, rocketing straight at the Bahamian. He scrambled on all fours and flung himself down, barely eluding death. That final night in Loreto, we went for a celebratory lap dance. When we approached the club Pepe said, “Now this is not the Paris. Here you will be lucky to find some XL250s. Maybe there will be some Harley Fat Boys, if you are lucky.” 58 coastaltraveler fall

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Coastal Traveler - Fall 2008 Contents Coastal Connoisseur Coastal Picks Coastal Flyer Coastal Driver Coastal Eco Coastal Sociologist Coastal Biker Coastal Snaps Coastal Valet San Diego La Jolla Laguna Beach Malibu Santa Barbara San Luis Obispo Big Sur Carmel Monterey Santa Cruz San Francisco Sausalito Mill Valley Stinson Beach Bolinas Sebastopol Olema Point Reyes Station Fairfax Inverness Marshall, Tomales Petaluma Sonoma Coast Redwood Coast

Coastal Traveler - Fall 2008

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