Off Road Memories

California Motorsport Adventours has gathered extensive knowledge in the off road, motorcycle tours, ATV tours and world wide travel over the years. Sharing this information has always been one of the trades that our adventure loving customers like about us and that makes them keep coming back to us. On this page we are sharing some of our knowledge and partners in the motorcycle and travel industry. Some of them might be right here in San Diego others might be half way around the world.

Motorcycle Travel:

Traveling to Costa Rica is exciting to begin with, but going there to go riding motorcycle is amazing. While exploring Costa Rica on a motorcycle from the north to south we have found the the guys from Wild-Rider very helpful and reliable, You can find their tours and rentals here.

Peru and South America has blew our mind when we first where down there to handle a large project for a client. Searching for the right partner there has lead us to the guys from Peru Motors the place to go to. Located in the south of Peru and allow you to travel in Bolivia is just one of the reasons we would go to them first.

Spain, When going to Europe we like to point you to one company. Red Treat got what we would want… bikes, service, trails and a passion for riding that shows in every of their tours.

When we went to Morocco in 2007 for a clients trip we had to ship all our motorcycles and ATV’s into the country. Now while there we have seen a very different country. Traveling from Casablanca south east over the Atlas Mountains then into the Sahara desert was an amazing adventure. Today you can just call and book a motorcycle tour in Morocco.

If your same old motorcycle tour will not cut it, if you have been everywhere and now looking for the next “kick in the butt” then you may want to look these guys up. SASVE Internationals Global Travels department is making World Wide VIP Adventure Trips possible.

PART 3 – My impression on maps and my current height As I’ve established, there were no Baja maps back then, and the AAA map caused way more pain than not. The small village of Sawmill, aka Aceradero, near Laguna Hanson was still turning out lumber back then and I remember it was one of the most picturesque places I’ve ever seen. It’s just about all gone now, but then, as now, it wa a place to might be able to get gas, so we were determined to find it. The only problem being good ol’ AAA placed it about thirty miles from where it really was. Making it hard to find Sawmill was only part of the problem, because it then put everything else in the wrong place, at least in our minds. Navigating Baja has always been trouble, and AAA did nothing to help. Remember those days, and those places, makes me think more specifically about the trails. They were consistently gnarly, washed out, and if you were lucky a truck or two used these trails. That meant the tires rounded off the nastiest segments just a little. Add to all of that that bike suspension back then wasn’t more than four or five inches. No wonder I am two inches shorter than I used to be.

PART 4- Who needs suspension when you’re young? The old Puertocitos road from San Felipe was about forty miles of continuous whoops and rocks – but it was straight, so we’d fly. Now my friends and I are lazy, so for years now we have used the paved road that parallels the old roads by about one to five miles. One time we had decided to ride on the old road and since my friends had never used it, they really didn’t know what they were getting into. We had gone about three quarters of the way and inevitably someone started bitching, so I led the group left and we picked up the paved road not far away. THEN they were bitching because we had been riding over that nasty old road when the good one was so close. It’s been a good reminder to me of how well youth could offset the lack of suspension. I don’t remember that road being anything but fun and a good challenge, but on this modern day ride we were all eager to get off of it. Keep it tuned for part 5 of these Baja Trips stories.

On an earlier trip we left Ensenada and headed out to San Felipe, forty riders strong. At the time paved roads that led to Ojos Negros ended at the pepsi stand about 10 miles east of Ensenada and quickly became two track trails. The SCORE races often use it for some current races, but back then it was a much longer route that took you up a mountain over looking Ojos, and it didn’t cut through any ranches, it was really remote, even more so than today. Once we reached the overlook we had this overwhelming ‘HALLALUJAH! Civilization!” feeling.

A little premature celebration. For the decent down we broke into smaller groups, hoping it would increase our survival rate. I selected a group of compassionate looking riders, those who might not leave me if I did break down. That was how I met Rich Rowell, and we’ve been long time friends ever since. Anyway, all of the seperate groups were now scattered all over Baja, and if there was someone who actually knew the way he was quickly long gone. Together, my group and I were trying to find out way to Independencia, short for Los Ninos Heroes de la Independencia, where we could fill up on gas. We were somewhere west of our destination, and well into our reserve tanks and getting nervous, when we came upon a small dried out lake bed- about a mile in diameter with a ranch building in the middle. Desperate for gas we rode up and called to the possible owner, but it seemed that no one was there. Sitting out in the open was a fifty-five gallon drum- with gas inside. So we siphoned some gas, terrified the entire time that the owners would show up with guns blazing. I dumped some oil in the gas tank, left five bucks sitting on the drum under a rock, shook my bike a few times to mix the oil and gas and took off in a panic. I got about 400 yards and, “Glub!”. That’s when I learned that if you are going to add oil right into your gas tank you better remember to turn off the gas tap first.

So we sat in the middle of this dry lake, under the blazing sun, for about an hour while I stripped the carburetor on my Husky. I had just bought it from Malcom, a few years before “On Any Saturday” ever came out. He was just as friendly and modest then as he is today. Of the group that had started out riding, only about twenty, roughly half, actually showed up in san Felipe. I was one of them. I just wasn’t riding. My bike had seized and spent the last forty or so miles in the back of a truck with wooden stakes for sides. And of those twenty only three or four actually tried to ride back to Ensenada. I never heard of them again, so either they made it, or they didn’t. My first two memories of San Felipe are really polar opposites. My first flight to Baja I flew over it and thought, why would anyone ever want to go to that sunbaked, two block square piece of nothing? My second encounter was when I arrived on this bike trip, and let me say, paradise never looked better.

Nicole called to ask me whether I had any Baja memories and I told her I was drawing a blank. Now, at four in the morning I can’t sleep because my mind is going a mile a minute. That denoted real fast, but I guess only to us old timers I can’t remember hearing it from the mouths of you young whipper snappers. When I first moved out to California from Philadelphia in 1964 I discovered Baja, at the time it was basically only Tijuana and Ensenada. I got myself a plane and found out there was a little more down there. One of my earliest trips abroad was to Bahia de los Angeles with my wife in my Convair L-13, a plane nobody remembers. I was still a student pilot and technically it was illegal to have anyone with me, but I’ve been known to break a rule or two. Lucky for me she thought I could do no wrong. think of those girls who recklessly go para sailing. They faithfully allow themselves to get towed behind a speedboat because of their memories of being safe with daddy. We guys know better and stay away from the parachute rides. continue