Peenie Wallie

"Yeah, but I get 50 mpg and I've got a 4.6 gallon desert tank, so I can go 250 miles no problem." I replied. Like, ho hum. Been there done that. Move along, tourist. If I wanted information from you I'd beat it out of you.

Now, keep in mind that I really don't have any idea what type of gas mileage my motorcycle gets due to the whole liters/gallons/km/miles fiasco. So, I'm assuming that I get 50 mpg, but that's basically little more than a hunch.

I rolled out of the parking lot and I've have been the last one if I didn't beat those two out by about 9 seconds.

I hit the Pemex station, which I've heard pronounced "Pee-mex". Not clear on this one. I always said "pemm-ex". I checked the air in my front tire. It was at about 20 pounds, so I let it down to 15 so it wouldn't be so stiff on the bad sections of the road. I also checked the oil, and the oil is essentially over-filled. So, good enough, I suppose.

For the record, I do not have a map of Baja. By this, I mean the old-school printed version. I have the GPS maps in my GPS unit, but these are worse than useless. They don't even have the town I'm staying in. So, there you have it.

I don't have a clear plan of where I'm going. I'm just following Mexico 1 south. That's the plan. Follow Mexico 1 South until you hit the ocean. Then stop. That's all.

So, I don't really know where the Pemex stations are or how far apart they are, but I've noticed that they seem to appear sporadically, but never more than about 40 miles apart or so.

I do know that I need to drive roughly 1,000 miles to get to Cabo. So, if I'm going 250 miles a day, it will take me 4 days to get there, and that's too long. So, I know that I need to cover about 333 miles a day to get there in 3 days, which means that at the end of Day 1, I'm in the hole by about 83 miles, which sucks. Worse still,

And I roll out of town.

Now, south of El Rosario, Mexico 1 leaves the coast and starts turning into land so arid that a cactus wouldn't grow there in the rainy season. And of I'm blowing through like mad, but stopping to photograph the cacti a lot because I'm furious that I didn't take enough photos yesterday. So, my plan for today is to a) drive further and b) shoot more. So, that's what I'm trying to do, and I get to where I can shoot while I'm driving down the road fairly well.

As we leave the coast, I begin to see the most bizarre cacti I've ever encountered. Some, tall and slender and 20 feet tall with little odd protrusions from the top. Short fat red ones. Giant sugarro cacti. Little skinny fern shaped ones. And, granted they're just cactus, but I'm appreciating the baja desert for what it is and I stop and shoot occasionally.

After I've been driving for about two hours, I begin to realize that the trip is markedly different south of El Rosario. I'm noticing that, about 100 miles into the day's journey, that I'm not driving down the coast through little villages ever few kilometers. Instead, I'm rolling across the surface of Mars.

There are no cars out here. One car or 18 wheeler comes by about every 20 minutes or so. But it's an empty barren wasteland, essentially. Devoid of human habitation. People scurry across the playa at odd intervals, like cockroaches running from the lights.

I'm racing down this paved ribbon bisecting these enormous barren playas, bordered by distant mountains. I think how odd it is that, in California, I couldn't imagine the stories that people told me about Baja were true. How they just ran wild down in Baja, basically ignoring the laws like Mad Max. But now that I'm down here, I realize that the laws are not enforced and going 80 km/hr is just a joke when the towns are hundreds of miles apart and there are no police and I'm just driving like mad, tearing down the road at a blistering pace.

When I round the next curve, I see a truck parked on the side of the road. It's a speed trap and of course, I'm running 80 mph instead of 80 km/hr, and I'm flat busted. Suddenly all of those crazy baja stories come into focus and I'm going to have to make my peace with the federales, one way or the other.

But then, as I get closer, I see it's just a regular truck and there's a guy standing beside it and when I come by he's waving a white plastic jug. He's not a cop. He's just some guy run out of gas.

And I'm thinking how nice it is that I can go 250 miles at a time when I come to a Pemex station. Now, I've already gone 100 miles this morning and I'm sure I can go further, but I figure I'll stop and just top off, just to be on the safe side. So I roll up to the Pemex store to see that it's closed. Shuttered. Pumps are broken and abandoned. But, by chance, as I pull up to the pumps, I see some Americans waving at me from across the parking lot and I roll up to them.

"Do you want some gas?" the guy asks.

He's in a big truck with crew cab heading the other way and he offers me a jug of some liquid which I look at suspiciously.

"Is it verde or roho?" I ask, suspiciously. Like, I can tell you in all my life I've never had a stranger.offer me a jug of some vile liquid. And, people told me to carry gas through the desert. They warned me about this. And I just never seriously considered it since I bought the 4.6 gallon tank and installed it on Monday and I knew that there were at least 2 to 3 times as many Pemex stations as people claimed. Plus, carrying gas would mean it would leak onto me and my gear and it's dangerous. There's a lot of good reasons to not carry gas.

But, as he offered me the gas, I began to think that I should take it. I knew that I'd regret it if I didn't and it was in a pretty solid white plastic jug. Like, if you have to carry gas, it was a pretty serious jug. Much better than a milk jug. Close to being as good as a gas can. So, I took it and tightened the lid on it. I didn't pour it into my gas tank though, because I didn't honestly have any idea what it was. It could have been urine for all I knew. So I said thanks and then he said this:

There's a guy across the street selling gas, just over there.

"Nah, I'm good. I can go 250 miles no problem, so I'll be fine."

"OK, but, if I were you, I'd stop and top off at the exit for Bahai Los Angeles. There's a closed Pemex station there, and two guys are selling gas out of 55 gallon drums from the bed of their trucks."

And I'm like...uh...ok...thanks.

And I think about that. Necessity is the mother of invention and I'm starting to learn how Baja works. This is what it's like in the desert, I think. You have to be creative and learn where to get gas. There isn't always going to be a Pemex station when you need one, and if the station is closed, you need to start asking around. "Ola, amigo. Necessito gasoline, por favor." Something like that.

So, I caught his story. I understand that he thinks I should top off my tank at the exit to Bahia Los Angeles, but he didn't say where the exit was. And it's 300 km to Bahia Los Angeles. I have no idea where the turnoff is. It could be 1 km or 299 km. I have no clue.

So now, I'm riding across the surface of mars, and, it occurs to me that this would be a very bad place to break down. Or run out of gas. Or crash. It's warming up some now in the desert. Not hot so long as I'm moving, but when I stop to take photos, it seems warm. And there is no shade, of course. Not for hundreds of miles. Not a tree. Not a blade of grass.

I think about accidentally leaving the road at 80 mph. It would not be fun. In some cases the road drops off a few feet on the shoulder. If I crash, I don't want to be maimed. I don't want to go from riding a motorcycle to being in a wheelchair like Bubba.

I'd rather die, I think, than be paralyzed for the rest of my life. I think about what would happen if I crashed. I'd probably lose consciousness and then, if I lived, wake up. I think about that. Waking up the desert with the bike on top of me and wondering what happened. That would be bad.

And then, my motorcycle starts to cut out. And that can only mean one thing. I'm out of gas. So, I switch over to the reserve tank while I'm rolling down the road. I know this trick. So, I'm still driving, but now I'm drowning in fear. My mind goes into overdrive. All of my most basic assumptions are completely wrong. It can not get 50 mpg. Why did I ever think that? I do not know. I think that I was comparing it to my XR400, which might get close to that. But this is an XR 650. I've never checked the gas mileage because I was so confused by the liters/kilometers instead of gallons and miles that I never actually took out the calculator and ran some basic numbers.

I do this now, as I'm racing across the surface of mars, close to death. I mean, I've driven a hundred and thirty miles and I haven't seen anything remotely close to a town. I've not passed a single open Pemex station in 130 miles. And now, the landscape is totally different. The mountains are so far away. Where is the next town? Where is the next Pemex station. The brain doesn't know. How much gas is left when I switch to reserve? These are all unknowns. I didn't get a manual with the gas tank. It was a floor-model demo. I have no idea how much gas is left in the tank. And, true, the guy did hand me about ¼ of a gallon of gas in a white plastic jug. But so what? How far will that get me?

The brain runs some numbers. If I hit reserve at 130 miles, then it's reasonable to assume that I've burned through approximately 4 gallons of gas. 0.6 gallons would be a good guess as to how much gas is left in the reserve tank. 130 miles/4 gallons = roughly 33 mpg, which means that, on reserve, I'll only be able to go about 17 miles. Death. Death. Death.

I drive by a group of vultures feeding on the carcass of a hawk. I'm in the center of a cactus forest that extends in all directions for as far as the eye can see. Death. Death. Death.

Nothing to do but drive and pray so I'm driving and I'm praying but I'm so scared that I'm about to wet my pants This is a nightmare.. This is not funny. Life out here requires water and gas. Without these, death comes quickly. The sun is directly overhead.

My thoughts about carrying gas change radically. What had seemed an ill-conceived, dangerous, messy enterprise now seemed to be sheer genius. I thought about how I'd turned up my nose at the stranger when he offered me a jug with some gas in it. How I'd been afraid it would make my clothes smell funny. Now, I wish I could bathe in gas.

At first, I questioned the quality of the gas, and wondered how it might affect my carburetor. Now, I was ready to pour anything into the gas can. Rubbing alcohol. Listerine. Anything.

I'm going to run out of gas out here in the middle of the playa and who knows what will happen then? There is no shade. Zero. No place to seek shelter. The plants here are not anything you'd want to go near. They all have horror-movie style thorns.

This all goes back to the mistake I made last night at the hotel. I didn't see how much gas he put in the tank. It was to be my best test yet, and I blew it. All of my lack of preparedness comes to this and now my story will include "did I ever tell you about the time I ran out of gas in the center of the playa of Baja California Norte?"

I drive for about 10 more miles and just before before the bike runs out of gas and dies in the desert, I round a bend and there is the closed Pemex station and the exit to Bahia Los Angeles and I pull into the Pemex station and there's a man in a pickup with two hand-painted signs that read "GASOLINA". And I'm like..."necessito gasoline, por favor...diez y seis liters, mas or menos.

He pumps gas into a 5 gallon can and I say "Roho o verde?"

"Verde, solomente."

"Comprendo. No hay problemo."

Like, I'd like the red (premium), but I'll take anything at all. He says he poured 17 liters into my tank, though I'm not clear how he determined that. He said I owed him 170 pesos I gave him 200 peso note and then he pretended that he didn't have change, so I was like...OK. Fair enough. Put the rest of my gas in this, and I produced the white plastic jug that I was so proud of suddenly. And he filled the white jug as well.

There was certainly no meter on the gas, and it wasn't like I got a receipt, but I didn't care one bit. I was so glad to be alive. It's hard to describe how that feels, when you go from facing a certain death - and a slow and painful one at that, in a vast lonely desert, to having a completely full tank of gas, plus another gallon now just for backup.

So, I start rolling south, glad to be alive.

The bike now has a 4.6 gallon tank of gas, plus a gallon jug in my black backpack as well. I keep this black backpack loosely strapped on top of the desert tank and centered with my knees. The bike is basically, at this point, a rolling bomb. Like the Hindenberg rolling down Mexico 1, waiting for a spark.

Now, I don't know what this guy put in my gas tank, but I promise you that bike started running like a scalded dog. It idled better. Ran faster. You name it. I have no clue what was in it, but my guess is that it was the best fuel on earth because it didn't have all those tree-hugger California additives.

At the next checkpoint I came to, I saw my buddy again. I'd first seen him last night outside a restaurant in El Rosario. He was driving this crazy BMW enduro with a bunch of flags on it from countries I couldn't even pronounce. I passed him once earlier this morning, and then he passed me when I was getting gas. So, I'd seen the guy a couple of times and I figured we were on about the same plan.

By this, I mean we probably had the same objective. He was clearly more prepared as he had two spare tires, 3 saddle bags, and a heads-up GPS on his 1100cc bike. I, on the other hand, am driving a 300 pound dirt bike with a kick starter.

When I got to the military checkpoint between the two Mexican states of Baja California Norte and Baja California Sur, he was sitting there on his bike, smoking a cigarette and talking to one of the soldiers in the smart fatigues.

So, I stopped and struck up a conversation with him. His bike said he'd ridden across something crazy like 5 continents (or all 13 as Obama would say). He recognized me and I say "where you headed?"

"La Paz"

"Want to ride together?" I offer. Like, after my near-death experience, a riding partner that's crossed every continent is sounding like a good idea, all things considered.

"How fast are you driving?" he asks with a heavy European accent.

"About 75...80" I reply.

"Kilometers?"

"Miles."

"Good. OK. We can ride together. Sure."

And then, I ask him this. How far are you going to ride today? What's the plan? Like, I know I didn't plan this out well, but I know I need to cover about 400 miles, and I've only covered about 130 at this point and he says "I'm going to spend the night in Mulege. That way I can make it to La Paz tomorrow."

And I'm thinking...great. That works. Like, if I'm not capable of making a plan or buying a map on my own, then I can certainly latch onto this guy and just ride with him.

So, I take off first, hell bent for leather and we're just rolling across the desert Occasionally, we'd each slow down and drop back to take a photo while rolling down the highway, but mostly we rode like mad because we had a lot of ground to cover.

We did not pass on open Pemex station for the first 250 miles of the ride. That is the god-honest truth. He can ride 500 miles on a tank. I now know that I can got about 150 miles on a tank. Of course, I've still got my spare gallon.

And we ride and ride and basically, I tell him that I need to stop every hundred miles for gas, and this is what we do. So, when we've gone a hundred miles, we pull over and I top off and then we ride again.

Now at first, I'm taking lots of pictures, but after a while, we're just stuck in this desert scene and it seems to have no end. And Igor, my new friend, gets stuck behind this truck with a light bar on top and some official looking slogan on the back. The logo says something like "Baja California Velocidad" or some such gibberish and he's afraid to pass him and I pull up beside the truck because I think I recognize the truck and I pull up beside it and sure enough, the door says "Los Angeles Verde" and I'm laughing my ass off and I just floor it. I pass the guy like he's sitting still. I have it skint back and I'm running 82 mph if I'm moving at all and eventually, Igor follows my lead and later I explain to him that they're not police. They're just like AAA. Rolling tow-trucks to assist stranded motorists.

I look at all the road signs and try to guess what they mean. Eventually, I determine that one of them is an indicator that there's a swale in the road ahead. Like, instead of bridges, in the desert, if there's a place where there's a chance water could flow once every 9 years, what they do is just lower the road. It drops down to allow the water to flow across it unimpeded. I'm sure it's a cost saving feature. So, I figured out what that sign meant. I got that much.

Most of the rest of them are still a mystery to me, quite honestly.

We rode together for several hours, and really didn't talk that much. We didn't have radios or anything. Occasionally, I'd pass him and run first, and then we'd switch off and I'd drop back. I much better at leading than at following, because my mind tends to wander and I end up getting too close behind him, so I'm basically following him like a slinky, with the distance between us constantly contracting and expanding because I'm so stupid I can't focus on anything for more than like 11 seconds at a time.

Eventually, after about 300 miles of riding through the desert, we came to the little town of San Ignacio and things began to green up slowly. Presently, we found ourselves on a little hillside overlooking the Sea of Cortez, and I can tell you that, if you'ved ever driven through the desert all day across Baja California, the ocean is a beautiful sight.

Then, we started rolling south through some little sea side fishing village and I stopped to get some shots of the painted boats in the harbor. Igor went ahead. We didn't talk much, but we did each stop whenever the one stopped. So, this is a marked improvement over my initial "Gringo Loco Solomente" approach.

It's nice to know that, if you run out of gas, someone on earth will know besides Los Angeles Verde and the federales.

As I'm trying to catch back up to Igor, I'm blowing south along the Sea of Cortez through town at about 7 times the posted speed limit and I pass a federale and he flips on his light bar and I'm toast. This is it. Now, I'm going to prison. Or worse.

But actually, it was just a warning. He turned on his light bar and then just kept on going the other way. I've had cops do this to me in Mississippi. So, this was nothing new.

What I really learned today is that there are no speed traps in Baja to speak of. In the United States, the police lie in wait to write up tickets to the poor luckless drivers that are x mph over the limit. In Baja, so far as I can tell, that does not go on. Every time I saw a vehicle in the desert that I was sure was a speed trap, it was either broken down, out of gas, or just some locals screwing around.

Tomorrow, on to La Paz. Igor will take the ferry across to Mazatlan. I'm not sure what I'm going to do. Maybe I'll go to Cabo. Maybe I'll take the ferry. I've not decided yet. We'll see what tomorrow brings.