Posted to the BMW-GS mailing list January 10, 1995
[ written yesterday (Mon 1/9/95 but snafu did not send so I'll send today as is. ]
We're back! We're back! We're back!
Aren't you all thrilled? :-)
"We" means Doug and I just returned from our 3-week GS trip to Mexico. And I mean *just* -- I'm running on hyper-wired energy after an aw[ esome | ful ] 1126-mile ride from Hermosillo, Mexico starting yesterday (Sunday) AM, that ended two hours ago when we arrived at 6:30 AM [ well now it's 2:30pm, still no sleep ]. Doug is now in the coma I will be in in a few hours. I took a shower and came into work and will go home when the sleep-deprivation hallucinations start.
But first, in answer to all your questions:
Did we do any off-roading?
Bigtime!
Did we have any mechanical troubles?
Bigtime!
Did we have any weather troubles?
Bigtime!
Did we get to Baja?
No. See "mechanical troubles" and "weather troubles!"
Did we have an amazing experience?
Yes!! You can't enter Mexico on a GS and NOT have an amazing experience, or at least a great story to tell.
Did we have any trouble in Mexico?
No! No bandits, bribes, thieves, attacks, ripoffs. Nada. In fact, we were shown much kindness. Which, as it turned out, we needed a fair amount of. Just one brief drug search by officials was all. Smile at everyone and wave as you go through towns -- most everyone waves back, and you start to feel a *lot* better. It's neat, I got into the *habit* of smiling at someone when I walk up to them. Good habit to have.
I will write a real report including logistics and such for others who might want be interested. For now, I'll attempt to jot-report the off-roading part of the trip, rather than *write* it as I always do. (However, "writers" often make lousy reporters.)
[ again I must apologize for my weird state as I write, I'm wide awake but probably exhausted from riding 24.5 hours the last ten in rain & fog ]
Our 3-week trip was intended to explore the Copper Canyon area, a system of 6 or 7 canyons depending on which guidebook you read. You might have heard of this area from the famous Chihuahua-Pacific railroad that goes through it, a RR that took 90 years to build and has some unusual engineering feats like a loop over itself in the track. Copper Canyon is populated by the indigenous Tarahumara Indians. We originally intended to find roads through the canyons to Los Mochis, then take a ferry to Baja and ride home through Baja, but did not have the time.
GS-type highlights & lowlights of our trip; the sorts of things GS riders would be interested in....:
We had snow for two days in Creel, Chihuahua (7000 feet). One of those days, it started to snow HARD after we'd parked the bikes on a dirt sort-of-road for a hike. On the way in, the road had had a light layer of snow and MUCHO puddles, some rocks & mud, all of which we'd carefully picked our way around. But after two hours of serious snowing, we came back from the hike and found that everything except the puddles was concealed by 6-8" snow! A completely different road.
It took us almost 2 hours and countless drops to get the bikes out. It was easier to make my own fresh snow track than follow Doug's, and we both found that the puddles we'd so carefully avoided before were usually easier to ride through than around. Of course, you never know which ones are the cylinder-deep ones, until so much steam rises from the bikes that you can't see! Often the puddles were in succession, so once you went through one, you were committed to the others. We'd crossed a small flood plain on the way in, carefuly choosing the solidest line around the puddles and bogs, but on the way out, the best route -- any route -- was concealed by snow, and we had only a succession of puddles disguising a flooded road to go by. Also, we might ride right over a loose rock hidden by snow, then the wheel would slip into tractionless snow and the bike would tip. Uphill even a slight slope was much much harder.
Anyway, the snow excursion was quite an unexpected adventure! We were pooped at the end, especially Doug since I never once succeeded in righting my bike myself.
HOW, you might ask, did two old boxers start in those conditions?
Well, we finally found a good reason for the kickstarters: cold starts, a known boxer weakness. The morning of our snow ride, our front wheels were frozen and we'd had to pour hot water over them to free the brakes. But we'd kick our bikes over about 10 times before trying the electric start when it was cold overnight, which it almost always was, and found that they'd start every time, even on perilously low batteries.
The snow stranded us in Creel for two days. Snow offroad is one thing, but onroad it turns to ice. I'd rather be on a dirt road in snow than pavement, but it's very dificult to travel in!
When the weather broke, we headed south for Batopilas on a road that would turn to dirt. 8 miles out of Creel, Doug's bike died. Pulled the plugs, tested spark, all was well, we moved on. This happened one other time on the trip too, and we've never figured it out.
5 miles later, Doug's bike stopped again. This time the engine was running and the tranny shifted, but the engine & tranny had ceased diplomatic relations.
A roadside diagnosis revealed a sound like baseball cards against spokes when the rear wheel was turned with the bike in gear. Our hearts sank when we saw that the flywheel did not turn with the rear wheel.
We hired a van to take the bike back to Creel, and spent the night pulling the tranny. The problem turned out to be a broken clutch plate -- actually a relief since we suspected stripped splines. The sheet metal "spokes" had broken, leaving the riveted center spline part free of the outer circumference of clutch material.
Doug called Iron Horse Motorcycles (Tucson) and had them Fed-Ex a clutch plate, spline lube, driveshaft bolts and a few shop rags to El Paso TX. Fed Ex goes to Mexico, but the service is less reliable and we had not much else to do anyway. So we rode to El Paso two-up on my bike, leaving in the afternoon and with an overnight in Chihuahua City. The motel had *garages* and a TV with a 24-hour porn channel -- with Spanish subtitles!! Like porn really needs subtitles. Very amusing: "Vamos! Vamos!!"
90 miles from the USA border, my bike kicked up a horrific howling noise at a toll booth. I thought a semi had its brakes locked and was ready to slam into us! We determined it wasn't an engine bearing since the noise changed with clutch & shifting action and mostly stopped at idle. I was so annoyed at it I said fuck it, we're riding it to El Paso to get Doug's bike's parts! We'd agreed to get Hondas if both bikes failed us on this trip.
We picked up the Fed Ex box in El Paso & schmoozed with the EZ Rider guys (the moto shop where the Fed Ex was sent to). I called Cal BMW, Iron Horse & Deming Cycle in New Mexico, and the consensus on the noise was: throwout bearing. So we spent some time at a gas station in El Paso pulling & inspecting it, lubing it with the only grease we had: spline lube.
The bearing looked fine, and the only suspect part was the throwout bearing piston. It has a little race in it which rotated in the piston, but it shouldn't.
In total paranoia, we arranged to meet Ralph from Deming Cycle in Anthony TX, 20 miles from El Paso and about 100 miles from Deming. Ralph commutes from Anthony anyway, so we met him and bought a used throwout bearing piston, bearing, and rear main seal parts in case the noise was really the rear main (I need to [re-]do it anyway). So now we had our safety, a box of parts. The noise has not re-appeared since.
[ Kudos to Ralph & Deming Cycle, Iron Horse & Cal BMW for going WAY out of their way to help us in all this. ]
We spent the night in El Paso and cranked the 400 miles back to Creel the next day. This cost us over $20 in tolls EACH way! Another day was spent putting the new clutch in and putting Doug's bike back together. All told, four days spent with the broken clutch. It seemed like we had been working four straight days.
What's odd is that the clutch plate was nearly new, only 3000 miles old, installed before Doug bought the bike. Marty at Iron Horse told us of a transmission-centering technique, so perhaps the bell housing was not properly in place?
Finally, time for off-roading!
Which we got, six days straight of it (plus a little before the snow).
The road south of Creel to Batopilas had been described to us by other gringos as "impossible without 4-wheel drive" to "eh, no prob on a bike." The scenic canyon road indeed it had its moments; it descended Alpine-style into the canyon, then ran along the Urique river, and eventually to the town of Batopilas. The ride from the bottom of the canyon (La Bufa) to Batopilas is especially beautiful, but not as rough as the descent into the canyon. The worst parts of the road were rocky rutted sections where the smoothest line wasn't level, and always steep. Dropoffs abound, naturally. GS riding in Mexican mountains is not for the faint of vertigo. Cars can make it to Batopilas, but the silly gringo driving it will have a story to tell. I can see this road wouldn't be easy in wet weather, but we saw no signs of bike-swallowing vados.
We were also told that a 7km trip from Batopilas to the beautiful mysterious mission in Satevo was a "straight shot" but this turned out to be rockier, more uneven and narrower than the Batopilas road. You just can't believe anything anyone tells you, especially a gringo! :-) We saw Satevo in the morning, hiked the road past the mission a little, then headed back up the canyon road back to Creel. On the way back up I had my first true crash on the GS, on an extremely easy hard-packed section of road with a centerstrip of gravelly rocks. Duh! For the record, two drops too. Uphill rocky ruts are harder for me than downhill rocky ruts.
Doug wanted to get out of the Copper Canyon area by taking dirt roads east back to Mex Hwy 15 from Creel. We allocated our four precious remaining days for this. The first week had been spent getting oriented, riding the longest twisty road I've ever been on, getting seriously rained on, visiting the fabulous Basaseachi falls, and some dirt. The snow & clutch had taken up 6 days of our 3 weeks, and after our trip to Batopilas, we had four days to play, plus one (urg) to get home (urrrrg).
Two maps we had indicated there was a dirt route across the mountains to destination Alamos. From from Creel to Bahuichivo, a stop on the famous "Copper Canyon Railroad," we knew there was a road, but it was less clear from Bahuichivo through Chinipas. The maps didn't agree on the towns along the way, and our topo map indicated parts of a route existed at one time or another, but the placement of towns was different from the other maps. Close enough.
Asking people about the road, we were told "Can't be done" and "Maybe can be done" and "There's no road" and "There's a road but no bridges" and "There's a new, better road south from Bahuichivo that comes out in Choix" and "There's no new road" and "There's a new road to Choix but it's worse than the other one." So much for a consensus.
Most of the road from Creel to Bahuichivo, up to San Rafael, was hard-packed and trivial, with a gawk-stop at the awesome Divisadero lookout over the Copper Canyon. But despite all we'd heard about the road from Bahuichivo, no one prepared us for the road TO Bahuichivo. It turned tough getting out San Rafael: a mud puddle at least 10 meters long and deep enough in places to cover a car tire (we watched), with 5 Mexican men standing around watching people plug their way through (we both made it OK). And the road go worse from there.
The 12 miles from San Rafael to Bahuichivo took us over 4 hours, due largely in part to my new nemesis: river crossings!!!! Eight of them. The riverbeds were filled with smooth rocks of varying sizes, and underwater they got loose and bogged down motorcycles ridden with pick-my-way finesse (me) instead of balls-out speed (Doug). Every crossing had to be scouted for the best (any?) path across. They were never simple: the best line might put you in a deep hole at one end, or it would get indeterminably deep at a point, or the exit had lots of loose rocks, or the crossing was very long. One crossing went around a bend; very hard to blast your way through that! The length and complexity of these crossings made me drop my bike in 3 out of 8, and Doug had to take over mid-stream (literally) once. There was evidence of former bridges, and when we came across an intact one, I celebrated, even though the bridge had huge holes on either side of it, filled with rocks. Doug made it through all the river crossings vertically, with shows of splashing and revving, except the one with the bend, where we both dropped. (Bay Area locals: all the crossings were more difficult or complex than Old Hernandez road's river crossing at high water, though not all were that fast or deep. All were _much_ rockier.)
Mud puddles on this road were frequent as well, but by now anything less than two or three meters long didn't deserve a pause, just blast through. Another obstacle was a downhill coated with pure, slimy clay, where I slid out before realizing that I was essentially skating. Other parts of the road were excavated from a hillside and didn't look like they'd bothered to remove the rock. Much of the road was marred and mangled from weather and falling rock and tracks of heavy vehicles and was very rough and slow going. And you just never know what's around te corner. We also encountered a bridge made of railroad rails, which was uneven and bouncy enough that we walked the bikes across. Thank god for the bridge though.
We spent the night in the dusty burg of Bahuichivo (originally the lunch stop), then rode the next day in the direction of the "old" road through Chinipas, through a railroad town called Temoris, then to Chinipas. These roads proved to be better, we could ride without constantly getting banged around. Though still rough, I even got into 2nd gear every now and then! It went over mountain passes and across ridges, and the part from Temoris to Chinipas was absolutely beautiful. It was lower than Creel, so the vegetation was more delicate and there were flowers. It was such a lovely ride that we mistook a small town we went through as Chinipas, our midway point, and stopped a lot for pictures. Toward the end of the day, we came across a town we believed to be Milpillas, a milestone on our route, but it was actually Chinipas.
Getting in and out of towns is often the toughest part, and no town illustrated this better than Chinipas. There were two major mudholes between us and the town; long, deep and soupy enough that I didn't dare attempt the ride myself. Usually, riding in the car tracks is the best way to go through mudholes, but the first one had lots of deep mud between and around the tracks. Doug got both our bikes through the deep holes in the car track, covering both bikes with mud. The second mudhole was even worse, and we watched a pickup go into it fast, then get bogged down, and then slip all over. The car tracks were really deep this time, so Doug rode both our bikes through a soupy mud area on the side running his (harmlessly) into a fence. Riding mine, he also kicked around the rear end but a miracle of dabbing kept it up. Globs of mud were on the seat, saddlebags, gas tank; all over *everything*. These mudholes __cannot__ be finessed, else you sink! Speed and quick maneuvering were the only way, as we saw with the pickup.
Getting out of Chinipas the next day was even tougher. There was no bridge to cross Chinipas' river. Instead, there is a lancha (boat), but it is a passenger boat with no ramps. To get a bike on the boat, we'd have had to push it up a 45-degree ramp and then hold it up on a board placed across the two sides of the boat, while two men rowed it across!
Several young men intrigued by us (we attracted a LOT of attention) showed Doug another place to cross the river that never got deeper than his shin. However, the crossing was really long, over 100 meters long, and the water was fairly fast-moving, and deep just off the faint truck tracks, and of course it had the smooth loose rocks to plow wheels into. No finessing through this either, not on a loaded GS.
With my poor record with water crossings, I didn't *dare* attempt this. Doug rode his bike through first with the usual impressive roost-show, though it stalled once in a deep part and he had to do some fancy footwork to get it out. I crossed the river on foot, trudging through the nearly knee-deep water carrying my riding gear and Doug's tankbag, this took about 10 minutes of laborious walking in leathers & boots (we'd long since given up on dry socks for the day).
Doug walked back and then took my bike across, and got bumped off the shallow line by a rock early on. Disaster! The bike's front wheel sank into sand & rocks up to the axle where the water was past knee-deep. The right cylinder was completely submerged, with water streaming over it. Doug struggled to free the front wheel while I pushed & balanced from behind. We struggled frantically for about five minutes to rescue the drowning motorcycle, yelling and heaving in our immense effort, but made little progress and were tiring quickly.
Then three Mexican men appearing, running through the water! They grabbed the bike and in a few minutes, it was back on dry ground. What heroes! They'd been watching, and apparently took off their shoes and ran across the river to come help us, getting soaked in the process. This time, "muchas gracias" was a SERIOUS understatement.
The next hour and a half was spent drying my poor bike out. With the sparkplugs pulled, we took turns kicking it over (love that kickstarter) and cranking it, and watched as the waterlogged engine coughed and spat out the water. The airbox had a huge puddle in it and the float bowls were filled with water. Eventually we jumped my ailing battery from Doug's bike, cranking it until no more water came out. New plugs, lots of drying off, then a lot of cranking while jumped from Doug's running bike, and bike eventually choked to life. Yay!
[ Interesting that the times Doug rode both our bikes through something, he had an easier time on his, though it was significantly heavier than mine. Mine came out much muddier, and in one case, wetter. He guessed that the lower seat on mine made it feel funny to him. ]
3PM and we'd only gone two miles.
We'd gotten a late start because we'd had Doug's broken BMW saddlebag mount welded that morning. Later it broke again, allowing the saddlebag to rub against the wheel and creating a 4" hole in the saddlebag.
Taking advantage of the daylight, we rode on despite being pretty wiped out from the river crossing, hoping to make it the mere 40km or so to Las Chinacas. But the road turned into one of the roughest, steepest, rockiest, tightest, hairest roads I've ever been on. I can handle rough, steep, rocky, tight or hairy, but this was all of the above combined, and it continued relentlessly. The road climbed _very_ fast, with hairpins tight enough that a screwup (mine as always) meant I had to back up and start again on a camber. Note that Doug did not find it to be the same first-gear peg-stander as I did, so please adjust for my fear/inexperience, but he wasn't sniffing the roses, either. This was the "adventure" in adventure-touring.
We stopped for a late lunch and a break, and a Mexican man with two daughters stopped his truck and chatted. We verified our direction (ask EVERYONE, get a consensus) and answered the usual questions about where we were from and where we were going -- and then he gave us two oranges! We NEEDED them, dealing with a submerged motorcycle had really drained us. How kind of him.
The road kept climbing, with more rocks, loose sections, ruts of rocks; frazzling me to tears. There was no section to rest, there was just one pummelling steep rocky uphill and 5mph steeply cambered hairpin after another. (No, I do NOT slide a fully-loaded GS that weighs four times what I do around a steep rocky corner with huge plunge at the edge!) Both of us dropped on this road, actually. When we reached the summit at sunset I was screaming in frustration, and now relief, at how cruel the road had been to my psyche and physique. Whew!
It was too dark to continue, so we camped (first and only night) at a perfect campsite next to the road. The next day the road descended slightly and smoothed out in places into Las Chinacas. But the real descent was after Las Chinacas. This descent was the roughest, bumpiest, rockiest, nastiest road I have ever been on, sections of it rivalling my fading memory of the hard parts of Moab's White Rim trail. It was even worse than the uphill parts had been since in places there was no semblance of levelness. I'm not sure I could ride up that (I'm weird, most of my troubles are uphill). The road was even narrower with sheer dropoffs, and often it was not a matter of choosing the best line, but finding *any* line! Vehicles *must* have a fair amount of ground clearance. Neither of us dropped, and by now this wasn't as frightening, but it was slow, rough, bouncy going. Doug stayed behind me in case I had trouble, which probably made it harder on him to go slower than he would on his own, but it was easier than checking his mirrors all the time. I think there were nice views, I only glanced occasionally inbetween the rocks, craters and ruts.
I wish I had taken a picture of the road, but it was very hard to find a good place to stop. The road to Batopilas that the cager gringos had warned us so carefully about now seemed easy! Las Chinacas to Los Camon was way rougher. Soon the road evened out, and we were treated to a few last puddles to coat our bikes with the proper mud splashes before the road turned to sand, and then pavement in Alamos.
When we got into the USA the next day (er, yesterday!), at *every* stop, people came up to us to talk and ask where we'd been and how long we'd been travelling. I realized then what a sight we were with our riding suits and bikes covered with mud and dirt spots. We'd gotten used to our advanced state of filth, I guess. My hands were constantly dirty from my gloves, I guess, since in one pretty easy mudhole I'd dropped and landed hands-first in the mud, immersing my gloves beyond the gauntlet and filling them with muddy water. Later the bikes got rained on and so just look dingy instead of cool :-).
We made it to Hermosillo that night, then left in the morning (Sunday, 1/8/95) for home, arriving 6:30AM. I started typing this about two hours after that. It's hard to believe that just last Saturday I was on a pretty tough dirt road in Mexico!
So that's the jist of it, leaving out details of the first week. When I've slept someday I'll type in the journal I kept which (I hope) has a fresher as-it-unfolds perspective. And logistic details.
A few other notes from what's left of a nearly hallucinogenic rider:
Ever see Superman III, where the three people from Krypton land on Earth and walk down the street of a small town, looking incredibly foreign, horrifying and awing the citizens? Sometimes I felt like one of those Krypton residents. As soon as we went into towns accessible only by dirt roads, we attracted stares and groups of children watching us. Which we greeted with smiles, waves and "Buenas dias." There are not a lot of gringos out there, let alone on motorcycles, and especially not a mujere! (woman)
Two people, including a USA border guard, guessed we were Germans.
The AAA map of Mexico, atypically, sucks. It is full of inaccuracies and misrepresentations. It's OK for general-purpose where-is-this but I'd use a backup map for route-planning.
Doug's R80 PD rack is attached to the seat, so you can't pop the seat without taking off the rack and all the crap strapped & bungeed to it. BEEG pain, which BMW fixed with the R100 PD pop-off seat. Roadside fixits were done using the toolset under my dual seat. Doug lamented his R100's plastic dipstick, the R80's metal one gets hot for oil-checking.
Two people asked Doug if he'd been in the Dakar rally, because of the Paris Dakar decals on his PD gas tank!
Sometime during this trip I thought of Mark Twain's ironic comment that the coldest winter he'd ever spent was a summer in San Francisco. Similarly, the toughest off-roading I've ever done was ON roads in Mexico.
That is, the roads might have merely entertained any of you studly GS dirt riders without being terribly difficult on a dual-sport ride, but it's an entirely different matter on a loaded-down bike, in a foreign country where you can barely communicate, depending on only one other person, not being sure this is the right road, not having any idea if it's passable up ahead, your maps don't agree, not being sure your lame Spanish really asked the right question or you heard the right answer, not knowing how long it will take to get somewhere, where you'll spend the night; and where an injury to person or motorcycle could turn into a hassle of immense proportions. In Doug's case, add having to keep an eye on his weenie girlfriend who drops bikes with the brush of a feather. Also, the roughest parts we did I would say were rougher than the rockiest parts of the RR500, plus being much steeper, twistier and narrower.
I will adamently agree with Mike McQuiggan that there is *lots* of excellent off-roading in Mexico, because there are a lot of dirt roads. It seemed to me that pavement is still the exception instead of the rule, and the "roads" to the many towns have been around for years. There is an abundance of dirt roads that actually go places, wonderful places most gringos don't even know about.
I think both of us will park our G/Ss for a while before facing the countless things that need attending to. Tweety Bike is leaking from just about every place it can leak from, and then some. The shock leaked all the way down the driveshaft, final drive and onto the rear wheel. Both [arg, new] fork seals leak. Rear main, of course. Final drive, but I'm learning they do that when bounced around. Slightly weepy pushrod seals turned into near gushers. Base gasket. Carbs. Name it, it's leaking.
Doug's tighter bike did better, but I think he's going to scrap the BMW luggage mounts, they just can't handle the bouncing around. My Reynolds held up fine, but they're new so they'd BETTER have held up. The R80 PD seat & rack combo is a nuisance though he likes the R80's Corbin PD seat.
Luckily I happened to have the BMW tool with the 27mmm swingarm-locknut wrench (at the fortuitous recommendation of Sir Flash), and this made pulling the tranny possible with the stock toolset (plus a few other handies like vice grips and needle-nosed pliers). However! That tool has a 36mm box end on one end, and a 27mm box-end that sticks out on the other. Both the things those wrenches take off (steering bearing locknut, swingarm pivot bolt locknut) have torque values over 75 ft-lbs. The tool is a mere 6" long and since it has a wrench on either end, it's impossible to get a cheater bar on it. It was NOT easy taking off the swingarm pivot bolt locknuts with it!!! It kept slipping out, so Doug got creative with hinges and safety wire to hold the tool in while prying against the frame to loosen the nut. That accounted for a few hours of work.
What I will do, and recommend to others is: buy two of those tools and cut off one end of each, so that they can both be used with extenders, and keep them with the bike.
What else. Not a day went by that we didn't use Doug's Leatherman tool, and it was handy-to-critical for the tranny pulling (small screwdriver).
Glove liners were essential to wrench in the frosty temps.
Phew. Breath. Wow. What a trip.
The growth I continue to experience from motorcycling, especially dirt riding and travelling, and the two combined made possible by GS-ing, is remarkable. Plus I'm incredibly fortunate to have a totally cool, easygoing, compatible and enthusiastic (and handsome even if he hasn't shaved in weeks :) ) travel partner in Doug.
What a great way to start off the year!
(Now I'll catch up on mail and see how the rest of the world is. Nice to come home and find the Bay Area flooded!)
noemi
1/9/95
Back to Copper Canyon.