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San Felipe
2005
The 80th
Anniversary
What a ride
this turned out to be!
We thought we
were just going to do the Mexicali - San Felipe -
Ensenada - Tecate run again, but wow, were we in for a surprise
when we reached San Felipe! |
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| My friends John and Marty rode with me on this run...here's
Marty and John taking a break along Mexico Highway 5, about halfway
between Mexicali and San Felipe. |
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John and Joe at the same
spot. These are the bikes we did the 1997
Mexico tour on, and that ride was a hoot! |
| Carlos and Jesus, two of our new
friends on the road to San Felipe. |
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And here's a shot of Highway 5,
on the way to San Felipe. The roads are in great shape. One of us
saw 140 mph on the speedo near this very spot... |
| John relaxing with a brewski... |
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Marty enjoying a soft drink. |
| San Felipe, just as the
festivities were getting underway... |
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What a weekend we picked,
without even knowing it! San Felipe was celebrating its 80th
anniversary that very night. |
| Some of the parade participants. |
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| One of the dancers in the
parade. |
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Oh yeah, this was fun... |
| Lots of fun. |
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Can you believe our luck?
We had no idea the celebration was scheduled for the weekend we
picked for this ride... |
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A wannabee moto-Xer. There
are lots of dirt bikes and quads in San Felipe. |
| Another parade participant. |
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| And another...
That's our hotel in the background, the
Costa Azul. |
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Shrek and Mrs. Shrek were there. |
| This was a cool hat on the
bumper of a very slick tow vehicle. |
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San Felipe has an amusement
park, too. These kids are having a good time. |
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Night photography in San Felipe. |
| Check out the colors on these
blankets. |
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| Fried bananas...this guy was
doing a brisk business. |
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One of the bands on the beach at
San Felipe. |
| A low-cal, low-cholesterol, low-carb
dessert...fried bananas and churros. |
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One of the street vendors.
I asked this lady if I could take her picture and she initially said no,
then she said I could for a dollar. When I whipped out the dollar
she started laughing... |
| A dancer celebrating San
Felipe's 80 years. |
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Another street vendor. |
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Back on the road, early Sunday
morning, on the first of several pit stops. This is Mexico Highway
3, on the way from San Felipe to Ensenada. The day started out
sunny, but that would soon change... |
| Another break on Highway 3. |
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John and his Virago. |
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You can see the weather started
to turn in this shot. When we moved up into the mountains, the
temperature started dropping. We were hoping it wouldn't rain, but
it sure did later that day. |
| Our breakfast stop outside of
Valle Trinidad in rural Mexico. |
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Rock art in northern Baja. |
| Taking a break along Highway
3. That Harley is now 14 years old and it still runs great. I
had put new Metzlers on it just before this trip, and that turned out to
be a good thing. |
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Another photo on Mexico Highway
3 about halfway to Ensenada. |
| We made it all the way to
Ensenada before the rain started, and when it started, it really came
down. John split off to reenter the US through Tijuana; Marty and I
wanted to cross over through Tecate. We had rain more or less
steadily for the entire ride from Ensenada to Tecate.
The only close call on this trip involved a
very frightened cow. We almost hit old Elsie when she spooked and
jumped directly in front of me, turned away, and then ran right back in
front of Marty's Beemer. Neither of us hit that poor cow, but she
slipped and fell anyway after Marty swerved around her. I've never
hit a cow on a motorcycle, and I'd like to keep it that way.
The border crossing at Tecate was
uneventful, except for a Mexican cop who didn't want us to split lanes
going up to the border. We just kept telling him that we didn't
speak Spanish, he got frustrated, and we moved up along side and between
the cars anyway. We stopped at a Denny's just over the US border,
had a late lunch, and rode all the way back to Upland with almost no
rain. Marty's BMW and my Harley ran flawlessly, as did John's
Yamaha. We covered about 800 miles in two days, we grabbed a lot of
great photos, we had a great dinner at Chuy's in San Felipe, and we had a
wonderful weekend during San Felipe's 80th Anniversary celebration. |
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