Three Women, Three Motorcycles, Three Weeks to Mexico

Here's the plan:

Three friends take their well prepared enduro motorcycles from San Francisco to Mexico and back for about three weeks over Christmas and New Year.

Here's the outline:

Through California and Arizona in two days. Down to Copper Canyon, for four days, through Batopilas, to Los Mochis, take the last ferry before Christmas to la Paz, then criss-cross the Baja California peninsula back up for two weeks.

Items on our to-do-wish list, in no particular order, and not even firm: Find the nowhere spots, camp in the desert, watch the whales, drive on the dry lake beds in Baja. Do as much dirt as possible. Get up at the crack of dawn, ride into the sun rise. Look at natural wonders, go diving and kayaking in the Sea of Cortez. Find the beach on the Pacific side of Baja where the ocean currents from Alaska turn around and hunt for treasures deposited there, fireworks for New Years, ride down sandy roads through beautiful scenery. Sleep in, eat fish tacos and drink margaritas. Look for hot springs to soak our shaken bones and sore muscles. Find a good spot to hang the hammock.

Here are the weapons of choice:

Two KTM 950 Adventures, and one BMW F650GS.

Here are the culprits:

Paige Boger, Alex Ries and Jennifer Bromme. Didn't make a group picture yet to post here. Alex, as a matter of fact, is still in Germany as I write this, so the picture will have to wait till then. I prepared a BMW F650 for her. She'll arrive Tuesday night for this trip, and we'll leave two days later.

Here is:

To us. To fun. To good times, and may the travel gods and godesses keep an eye on us.

I will try to post an entry every day, internet access permitting. Keep posted! This will be an epic trip, I just know it. Haven't done a trip like this since I lived in Europe. The first one of many there me being 18 years of age, on an ill prepared Yamaha XT500, with just a sleeping bag and a change of clothes, breaking down a lot (I wasn't even a mechanic then but quickly becoming one), going for six weeks from Germany to Italy and Greece and back.

Some things will be different this time: I grew up, I have more skills and knowledge, and a better prepared motorcycle, a credit card to get me out of dodge easier, and a tent.

But most things on this trip will be the same: the sense of adventure, the gratefulness of being able to live my life to the fullest, the beauty of camaraderie, the knowledge that any problem we might encounter we will be able to tackle, the understanding that everything is relative in the big scheme of things.

Big trips like that do that to you.

Hasta manana. Gotta go, my bike is screaming for help...still deep in preparations.

Jennifer