I’m pretty sure it was in 1985 that Cycle World Magazine invited me to ride along on their legendary Baja Trek to Mike’s Sky Ranch in Baja, Mexico. At the time I was working at American Honda in the Product Research department. One of my duties was press relations so I worked very closely with the enthusiast magazines.
All of the riders met at a nice hotel in Baja near Tecate, I think. Now the Baja Trek was an off road ride to the famous Mike’s Sky Ranch which is about 160 miles south of the border. It is a great event and a long dirt ride. We rode past banditos carrying AK47s and negotiated lots of terrain but finally got to Mike’s.
This is where my weekend took a turn. Right after I arrived, I came down with the flu. While everyone else had a glorious time I spent the rest of the time there in bed with fever and chills. When it was time to ride back I was barely well enough but rode anyway. Needless to say I was pretty miserable riding that long dirt ride back.
Finally we made it to the road leading back to the original hotel. It was a flat dirt road, and we were just cruising because it had been a grueling ride and personally, I was still sick. I was riding along on a new Honda XR250 when around a blind corner came a car and I had nowhere to go!
I hit the car at the left headlight. My bike careened along the left side of the car, and I flew right over the top of it and landed some feet away behind the car. Of course I was very dazed and remember my friends around me asking me how I was. Fortunately, I had all of the proper protective gear on, and was young and indestructible, so I was OK. The bike I was riding was not ok as you can see by the forks in the first picture above. After we fixed the flat tire on the car, I rode back to the hotel in the car I had just hit.
Getting into a vehicle accident in a foreign country is no joke, and I was worried I may wind up in jail. Turns out the car was new and belonged to the owner of the hotel plaza that we were riding to, so we made financial arrangements and were able to go home with no more issues.
You just never know when life is going to give you more adventures than you were counting on.
EVENTS
RESCUE OF THE WEEK
MOTORCYCLE NEWS
2025 Royal Enfield Bear 650 First Ride Review
RE’s new scrambler is fun and comfortable, but is it ready for a thrashing?
Scramblers are often seen as streetbikes that compromise on-road performance for off-road style, and most of the time, that’s a pretty accurate description. Royal Enfield’s Bear 650, however, is promised to be more than a brown seat and some knobby tires. Compared to the INT 650, the Bear sees new wheel sizes, updated ergonomics, a taller subframe, updated suspension, and overall reinforcements to the frame to help handle bumpy trails. But as always with scramblers the question remains: How much of the scrambler modifications are just style, and how do these updates really affect on- and off-road riding?
Royal Enfield had intended to launch this bike in the mountain town of Big Bear, as the name just fit, but fires around Southern California spurred a shift to the desert city of Palm Springs. Wind turbines, golf resorts, and mid-century architecture—Palm Springs is a desert oasis and popular weekend getaway for Los Angeles residents.
Ducati dominates the MotoGP™ and wins the World Title for the third consecutive year
On Sunday in the Solidarity Grand Prix of Barcelona, Ducati wins MotoGP™ World Title for the third consecutive season with Jorge Martín aboard the Desmosedici GP24 of the Pramac Racing team.
The Spanish rider secures his first World Title in the premier class of the top international two-wheel racing competition, in a 2024 season marked by an absolute domination of the Ducati bikes and its riders with Francesco Bagnaia (Ducati Lenovo Team), Marc Márquez (Gresini Racing MotoGP) and Enea Bastianini (Ducati Lenovo Team) making up a dream Top-4, all Ducati, in the overall classification.
SALES & PROMOTIONS
*PLEASE NOTE - THE 20% OFF SERVICE VOUCHER IS GOOD FOR ONE USE ONLY AND IS PER CUSTOMER, NOT PER BIKE.