“Baja Requiem: A Motorcycle Odyssey Through Fog and Fate”
“Everything that kills me makes me feel alive,” blared the lyrics of OneRepublic’s Counting Stars. The song had latched onto me the moment I rolled out of San Ignacio’s dusty town square that morning, my Schuberth helmet muffling the world as I pointed my BMW 1250 Adventure down Mexico 1 toward San Quintin—a grueling 350-mile stretch of Baja’s wild highway. The melody pulsed in time with the thrum of my engine.
The weather and the road had it out for us that day, conspiring like old enemies to test our mettle. Coastal fog rolled in thick and heavy, a gray curtain so dense I could barely see the faded yellow lines beneath me. For once, I stuck to the posted speed limit—not out of virtue, but necessity.
At times, the mist clung to my visor like a second skin, forcing me to swipe at it with leather-gloved fingers, makeshift windshield wipers in a losing battle against the elements. The air smelled of salt and damp earth, and every breath tasted like the sea was trying to drown me from the inside.
Earlier that morning, I’d stopped at a breakfast kiosk in San Ignacio, the kind of place where the aroma of sizzling ham and eggs mingles with the sharp bite of freshly brewed coffee.
Niria, the woman behind the counter, worked with quiet efficiency, folding my burrito with the care of someone who’d done it a thousand times. Her husband, Victor Manuez, a retired garbage collector with a weathered face and a storyteller’s glint in his eye, leaned against the counter sipping his own coffee.
He’d heard a grim tale on the radio that morning—an American driver killed on the road. The guy had been speeding across a bridge near El Rosario when it gave way, a victim of recent floods that had turned Baja’s infrastructure into a game of Russian roulette.
Victor shook his head as he recounted it. “Gringo broke the first rule of Baja,” he said, his voice gravelly with experience. “Thou shalt not drive these roads at night.” The story went that the driver hit a missing section of pavement at highway speed—a gaping hole where the bridge used to be. The car slammed into the jagged edge on the far side, shearing off the roof and the driver’s head in one brutal stroke. I pictured it as Victor spoke: the headlights slicing through the dark, the sudden lurch, the scream of metal against metal. A Baja baptism by fire and steel.
I chewed on my burrito and listened, the coffee warming my hands through the thin paper cup. The fog outside was still thick, but the sun was starting to burn through, casting a faint glow over the town’s crumbling adobe walls. Victor’s story hung in the air like the fog itself, a warning I couldn’t shake as I mounted my bike and hit the road.
The highway wasn’t done with us yet. If the fog wasn’t enough to keep my pulse racing, the road construction sealed the deal. Signs—crude and half-hearted at best—diverted us off Mexico 1 onto a stretch of sandy, packed soil that stretched into the distance. Cars, semis, and my little posse of riders had no choice but to follow, tires sinking into the loose earth. I gripped the handlebars tighter, feeling the BMW’s weight shift beneath me as I wrestled it through the sand. A hundred yards later, we were routed back onto the asphalt, no explanation, no apology.
That’s Baja for you—minimal fuss, maximum faith. God help you if you can’t handle the terrain.
Our group was a motley crew of seasoned riders, each of us astride machines built for punishment. David rode a Triumph Trophy, its sleek lines cutting through the haze like a blade. Todd, our resident speed demon, thundered along on a KTM 1290, a beast of a bike that matched his reckless energy. I held my own on the BMW, its knobby tires chewing up the road with stubborn determination.
The rest of the pack rode a mix of KTM 690s and 890s, their engines growling in unison as we carved our way south. Todd was the master blaster, the one we all secretly measured ourselves against. David and I were “good enough,” competent but not flashy. Then there was Luis, the dark horse who could almost—almost—keep pace with Todd’s blistering speed.
The day before, David had tried passing me half a dozen times, his Triumph roaring as he gunned it on the straights. Each time, I held my line, refusing to yield an inch. It wasn’t pride, exactly—more like a stubborn streak I couldn’t shake. As the miles ticked by, I started to wonder: What kind of person was I being out here?
Was I treating David the way I’d want to be treated? Or was I just piling up bad karma, tempting fate on a road that didn’t forgive mistakes? The song I started the morning with now came back to me.
“Everything that kills me makes me feel alive.” Maybe it was true. Maybe the thrill of cheating death was what kept me twisting the throttle.
We were a day away from wrapping up this two-week odyssey, and the group was starting to fray at the edges. Todd had bailed that morning, peeling off for home on a 690-mile solo sprint. David wasn’t so lucky—he was laid up in Guerrero Negro, nursing bruised ribs and a twisted ankle after a nasty spill at a water crossing towards one of the missions. He was for-warned though. Algae builds up on the cement making it slippery.
His Triumph was a mangled mess, and a Mexican appraiser was on his way to tally the damage. The mission stop in Mulege had claimed two more of us:
Larry, who’d gone down hard on an algae-slicked crossing and needed X-rays for a busted wrist, and Tom, who’d flown over his handlebars and landed with a sore collarbone.
Even Ray, steady on his Dakar-to-Paris BMW, had taken a tumble, though he brushed it off with a grimace and kept riding. The road was thinning us out, one by one.
Back at the San Quintin fruit stand, I lingered with Victor, killing time until the fog lifted enough to ride safely. We talked garbage—literal and philosophical—his years hauling trash giving him a quiet wisdom I couldn’t help but admire.
As the sun climbed higher, he shared another story, this one about two monks trekking to the mission in San Ignacio.
They’d reached a swollen stream when a prostitute appeared, lost and desperate, her dress too fine for the muddy water. She begged to be carried across.
Without a word, the first monk hoisted her onto his shoulders and waded through the current, setting her down on the other side. She thanked him and hurried off toward the highway, hitching a ride with a trucker bound for Tijuana.
The monks pressed on, but the second one couldn’t let it go. “How could you touch her?” he snapped, his voice tight with judgment. “An immoral woman like that?”
The first monk turned to him, calm as the desert at dawn. “I carried her across and left her there. You’re the one still carrying her.”
The story stuck with me as I straddled my bike and fired it up, the engine’s rumble chasing OneRepublic out of my skull at last.
My mind was always chattering on these rides—warnings, songs, half-formed thoughts—but Victor’s tale quieted the noise. I wondered what tune was playing in that trucker’s head when he picked up the woman, or in the gringo’s when his car sailed into the void.
Maybe it was something about feeling alive, right up until it wasn’t.
The fog was thinning now, the road stretching out like an invitation. I twisted the throttle and leaned into the wind, the Baja sun warm on my back. San Quintin was waiting.
Ralph (written sometime ago)
Trawlercat Chronicles 