It’s time. It’s been five years since my first surfmoto trip to Baja, and it’s been five years since my last surfmoto trip to Baja.
Everyone wonders where the time went, but for me, it’s no mystery. Starting and running a new business took up much of the time. Spare time went to 5-day rides to and from LA and Monterey, CA, for the races at Laguna Seca, Ducati events like the 20th Ducati Monster Anniversary ride, and the Quail Motorcycle Gathering. My two- to three-week trips were to Nicaragua, where I have a home at the beach in front of great surf breaks, Colorados and Panga Drops. (And of course, I have a motorcycle there, a Yamaha XT125, and a garage.) And lastly, getting a new house and building out the garage for my growing stable of motorcycles was a big time-suck as well.
Since that first trip, when I tell friends about that ride they always say they want to do it, too. “When are you going again?!?” “Let’s do it!” But in the end, they really don’t want to do it, at least they don’t want to do it enough, so nothing happens. I’m used to that. It’s why I did the first surfmoto trip alone; I couldn’t find any takers. So when folks talked about wanting to go, I’d say, “Sure, let’s do it.” And I would wait for their follow-up. It never came.
Until last week. My riding buddy, business partner, and fellow Ducatista, Steve (we both have Monsters – he an S4r1000 and me, an S2r1000 – and 1198’s – his the Corse1098 and mine the 1198sp) texted a link to an organized Baja ride. One where you buy one of their 250s and the ride is free except you to need to pay for your personal expenses – hotel, meals, gas, insurance, etc. In other words, there’s no tour or organizer fee.
I generally don’t like organized tours or group rides. The Ducati Monster ride mentioned above is the only one where I ever enjoyed myself. (The worst was a bike magazine sponsored ride at Quail.) And that was because we broke into three groups, from fast to slow, as soon as we got into the twisties. But I am not interested in joining a group ride through Baja with a bunch of folks I don’t know, especially on a bike I don’t want to buy. Besides, I know Baja pretty well. I traveled it enough to write a surf travel guide for Baja awhile back, and of course, I did the surfmoto thing, too. So why would I want to get shackled by a group tour?
So, I talked Steve out of that and into us planning our own trip. We’ll invite some friends, like our other business partner and riding buddy, David, fellow Ducatisti like Arrick, aka DIYMotoGuy, and designer/builder Alex of Earle Motors, and whichever competent rider-friends we can trick into a “fun” Baja ride.
I started working on itineraries. Will update from here. Baja here we come!
SurfMoto 