Hot on the heels of my foray into the world of the insta-famous and group-touring (dfl the divide) I was invited to a sort-of-exclusive bike party/tour on a new route called the Baja Divide; In celebration of the completion of the route. A pair of adventure-bike-world luminaries and acquaintances of mine; (Nick Carman (@nicholascarman), and Lael Wilcox (@laelwilcox) had spent a couple of winters riding circles in the desert scouting out a not-too-sandy, off-road route, with reliable water sources every few days; the length of the Baja California peninsula.
The route (gps coordinates and such) is freely available on the internet, and several people had already completed it, or were enroute. So I wasn’t being invited to ride the route as much as to ride it with Lael and Nick and 100 or so friends including a bunch of the dfl-the-divide crew. Or at least, to start the ride on new years day, with the rolling party — the first two nights had planed camps, after which we were on our own, so to speak. The route starts in San Diego CA but crosses the border in Tecate rather than Tiajuana, so it parallels the border on the US side for awhile and our first camp was at a road-side tourist restaurant still on American soil. But the merriment started long before that, at least for the DFL crew.