Dennis Hopper Buys Stovebolt a Marguerita
I crashed my KTM 640 Adventure in a
sandwash on a Baja adventure, on the morning of Day 4 of a 10-day
off-road ride, just West of San Francisquito, Baja California Norte.
Dislocated left shoulder, busted up some ribs - same shoulder I had
previously dislocated twice, same ribs 2x. El Bummer-o.
I barely
managed to get out of the dirt, and back onto some pavement by the end
of the afternoon, and by late day, I began to see some light at the end
of a fairly fuzzy, pain-filled tunnel, in the form of a place to stay
for the night, and get off the damned bike. Traffic was at a standstill
at Checkpoint Charlie, and my peeps - 4 other rejects from Clown
College, had preceeded me through the line, after a long day of nursing
me through unGodly washes and terrain as inhospitable as any I had seen
before, save for Moab. I had hallucinated several times through the pain
and dehydration of the day, after the crash, that although still
strikingly beautiful, the area called to mind what it must be like to
ride a motorcycle down the crack of Satan's ass after an all-night
Buffalo Wing eating binge in Hell. I digress....
So, for those
folks who haven't really ever gotten the dirt bike or dual-sporting bug,
realize that a KTM 640 Adventure is a tall bike - seat height of over
37 inches. Okay, Stovebolt has a 29-inch inseam. Time for the cubicle
nerd to erase the whiteout "X's" off his glasses and do some real math
there..... fully loaded with camping and survival gear, some fuel, water
and a couple of pesos, the bike weighs approximately 1 each !#@$-load.
Multiply that x a wounded shoulder that is worse than useless, and
divide by 4 (the number of times I would have stopped to pee if I could
have....) and it adds up to - pretty much a blivy. By the time I "tried"
to stop for the good authority figure at Checkpoint Charlie, I was
pretty much 6 pounds of sheeyat in a 5-lb bag, and warm.
So,
thankful to think I was a mere few miles by pavement to a place I could
permanently dismount and assess the damage and reconnoiter my situation,
a small sense of the kind of relief you might get right after yarding
on a big booger began to come over me. It was just enough to let my
guard down, and I was about to mow the guard down. Guard down?
Guard...... down? WTF? GUARD!!! @#%!@#%!%#!!!!!
WAKE UP STOVEY! -
YOU'RE HALLUCINATING! CHECK/CHECK/CHECK
I come sliding in to
the military checkpoint with my head implanted into a rectal area with
red loctite..... condition WHITE - oblivious to my surroundings,
peripheral vision collapsed from too much effort spent and re-spent all
day long, again and again trying to pilot that boat through a sea of
deep sand with scorpions in it - cactus from the Devil's nether regions
thrown in for good measure. I wasn't going fast, only second gear, when I
came out of this Fog of War, and began processing real time visual data
coming at me lighting fast through the dusty faceshield of my Arai XD.
In a real sense, things got real easy all of a sudden, because my
choices were so limited - there wasn't much I could physically do any
more, I was just about completely locked up. Anybody who has been
injured can relate to the phenomenon of compensating for the injured
part of the body with other parts of your body. It took for me, my whole
being to compensate for being injured like I was, and it just tapped me
to near nothing. As I rolled in toward a line of parked cars, me going a
little too fast to be graceful and way too fast to just roll to a stop
in line - I would have hit the back of a parked delivery truck about
five cars back from the STOP area for inspection - thus possibly causing
undue attention to be drawn to me..... I pretty much just wheeled
around the obstacle to the left, and while not having the speed to cause
any serious concern, at least to what was left to my mind in that level
of consciousness, I just leaned it over lowside and dropped the bike.
Stepping
off wasn't as bad as you might think, I never actually fell onto the
ground.... I ran, tripped, wobbled and grunted a little, but STOVEY was a
gymnast in High School and a diver in College.... so I was tapping that
remnant pretty hard right there, pretty much bangin' away on those old
muscle memory cells..... and sort of just skipped to a stop on my own
two feet, about 3 feet from my sliding Pogo Punkin. (KTM's are all
orange - I had completely blown my rear shock the day before after
crashing my way up Callamajue Wash out of Coco's Corner.)
So I'm
now standing about a car length away from the young soldier at the
checkpoint, a fine young man in his teens, dressed in dusty BDU's and
sporting his Hechler and Koch G3 at port arms, and who is now engaging
me and closing our distance to approximately bad-breath plus 7 feet or
so. I remain standing, turn and look down at my Punkin'.... My posse was
gone ahead, nowhere in sight, and I recalled my Spanish language skills
to comfort me. Ahh, yes - I can't speak Spanish worth a chit - so I got
that going for me...
So, anyway, to draw this short story out
even further before I get to the point, we had made a deal out on the
trail after my tumble, and it was agreed (after a time or two when I
fell down again and tried picking up my bike - I just couldn't do it by
myself any more....) that I was not to even TRY to pick up my bike if I
dropped it. Sort of like the snowmobiling deal if you get stuck (when
not on the hill) in the deep - don't get a hernia or a heart attack or
wreck your back - wait for help. So I pretty much just stood my ground,
hovering over my behemoth, waiting for the cavalry to come over my hill,
and pick up my bike for me. After all, I had done MY job, and nobody
was hurt at the checkpoint - countless lives were saved, paperwork
averted, catastrophe completely avoided on account of me being on top of
my game and saving the public from certain harm, and laying my bike
down in such a righteous act of self-sacrifice. Now where were my bike
tenders at? Sabu - Sabu? Come hither bike boy.... I looked around, and
everyone in stopped traffic was staring at me.
WTF....?
Well,
sensing that the young lad sporting the G3 (the G3 is a military
firearm chambered in a NATO caliber of 7.62mm, approx .308. It is made
of stamped aluminum, steel and plastic, fires in semi-automatic and
select-auto, comes with iron sights and has a sling and a loud, smoky
end attached to it...) was not about to assist me, the driver of a
delivery truck opened his door and exited his vehicle and came over to
me. Without taking more than a second to make eye contact with me, as is
the custom to acknowledge one another down in Baja, the man in his
mid-thirties leaned down and pried that 400-plus pound bitch right off
the searing Mexican pavement, and with one or two mighty heaves of that
spindly stick figure of a physique, he got that bike upright and leaned
into for all he was worth to prop it vertical - standing there smiling,
holding it for me like a gentleman. Yes, like a true knight, he had
helped one less fortunate than himself, and I was, and still am,
grateful.
Soldier boy wasn't so amused.
At this point,
like I had mentioned, my body was pretty locked up - stiff, sore, I
could barely move. This information was actually still being processed
as I reached across the cockpit of my KTM 640 Adventure Rally bike with
my one good hand/arm/side and grasped a bar end, holding the bike
upright by myself after my new young friend who drove a delivery truck
in Baja for a living just handed it off with a sincere grin and gestures
of compassion, and a final "thumbs up" to a sad, sad gringo. I flipped
my tan crusted faceshield up and looked over at the checkpoint - I was
being waved in ahead of other cars now being passed over in line to get
me to the head of the line. Somehow, despite my best efforts, I had
managed to call undue attention to myself for one thing, and I was
apparently, despite what I would have liked at the time, being given
"EXPRESS" treatment. I had tried so hard to blend in too. Being as
wounded as I was - my self-assessment had caught up in real time, and I
had processed the data - I was almost F#@!$ed.... I could either turn
and run, fight or cooperate. I eyeballed the only thing of interest to
me at all at the moment, and that was the 4-inch concrete curb along the
inside lane of the checkpoint, closest to my soon to be, new to me,
friend within the Mexican Military establishment, and began heaving the
bike for all I was worth over that scorching blacktop, toward the kid
with the deadpan look on his face, now presenting the G3 at the Low
Ready....
Part 2
Since this whole thing transpired over
the course of only less than a minute or so, let me accelerate. As I was
on foot now, and walking along side (stumbling?) my bike, approaching
the "ALTO!" stop line - hanging on for dear life actually - it was all I
could do to hold the bike up, because it was ALMOST all I could do just
to hold me up by myself..... I stayed the course and kept eyeballing
that curb. That curb would set me free, if I could only get to it. It
stood alongside my stern looking young passport examiner, and I had to
get through him first, before I could reach that 4-inch concrete
salvation. Things began rushing forward from the back of my mind, things
like; 'where is my passport?' and 'can I remember where my insurance
info is?' and did I bring my bazooka with me on this trip, and so forth.
I gathered up what little intel I could before he stopped me before
reaching the line with a gesture of "STOP" - hand held forward from his
center of mass toward me, his feet squared off to me, and shoulder width
apart. A real Dennis Rodman athletic stance, about half as high off the
ground, and topped with a Kevlar pot instead of blond and blue knappy
hair. Still, I understood and respected his command. This was it,
another moment of truth in Baja, I had already had many and this trip
was only on Day 4.... hadn't even reach San Ignacio and been tried by
the fire of the "bathroom dog" yet.... here it comes..... all I need is
the curb. Got to get back on this bike.... can't do it without a step
up, and even that's not going to be easy. I want THAT CURB, and I want
it next to the guard shack. I can lean the bike into the wall of the
guard shack and use the curb to try to remount.... if only.... must get
to the curb - and that wall would be so sweeet. Dear God, please
let...... "Adonde Vas!"
"What?"
"Adonde Vas?"
"aaaaahhhh
- Idaho. I mean, uh - Rice and Beans?"
Soldier boy is waving and
I am beginning to unfold the mapcase on the bars of my roadbook holder
in the cockpit, and begin "my cooperation" for all I'm worth. I noticed I
had a hard time speaking - not just Spanish, but my mouth didn't seem
to want to work - there was dust in it. My lips were a little dry and
cracked and my tongue was a little swollen. Never mind I couldn't
understand what this soldier was saying because my ears were slammed
shut inside a form fitting Arai XD, that I didn't understand my own
language at that point, let alone his - and that I didn't know if he was
asking me where i was from, or where i was going. Either question way
beyond the reach of my fried brain at that point, in any language - but
good questions nonetheless.
Well, soldier boy gestured again, and
stepped the other side of my bike, in front of me. I had spoken enough
"humanitarian" in my lifetime to begin recognizing a small flicker of
compassion from a candle of kindness, and he seemed to be waiving me off
from the "project" I had started to get out my papers and surrender to
whatever form of questioning they might have wanted to do with me - it
had not escaped my peripheral vision the two other vehicles - both with
Mexican plates - were parked, stopped and being THOROUGHLY attended to
by a small army of the well, Mexican Army - two lanes over and off to
the side of the road. Some of the people involved in administering to
the needs of the occupants of those vehicles now sequestered by many
soldier boys didn't seem happy, from the facial expressions, movements,
"luggage" and car parts that I saw.....
"Passado...."
"Passado...."
He was waiving me through..... is that what he's
doing? What? I was not sure, but I couldn't believe my body was doing
stuff without my mind's permission.... Even as I was questioning what
the soldier wanted, in my mind I just wasn't certain, "JESUS IS THIS
HOT!" and all I could think of was trying to hold this bike up and get
the nipple from my Camelbak into my mouth and not fall off the curb
while leaning off from the wall with the bad shoulder.......
Far
off ahead were miles of hot pavement - not a car in sight, and the faint
sound of several motocycles..... One engine sound getting louder as the
seconds ticked by, the heartbeat thumping ever louder inside this
damned black helmet. I got the bike steadied, but with only one foot
touching "ground" and that was my savior curb, and the other on a
footpeg so high off the ground it'd never save me if I got the bike off
center and lost my balance - she'd thud to the pavement and I'd be back
to square one, hunting up that delivery driver to help me again; I
needed to roll off right. No second chances. The starter began to light
it, and I heard another bike nearby as mine roared back to life at the
"STOP" line, and I looked up to see something wobbling toward me through
a heat mirage, waving at me over the blacktop. One of my peeps had come
back for me, and the military guys were just waiving me through. One of
them in the guard shack gave me a smile and a "thumbs up" while the
frown seemed to have neutralized on the face of young soldier boy who
had engaged me during my check. He was waiving me through while another
soldier held traffic from both lanes to maintain their standstill "until
further notice" I think was the message. I got the bike rolling despite
painful effort with the clutch side - anything including an eyelash
being asked to move by my brain - just hurt like hell, especially if it
was on the left side of my body. I rolled forward toward an image
embedded in the mirage, and kept shifting gears. It was about 4pm, BCS
time, and what seemed like an eternity at the gates of hell was in
reality only about a minute and a half. I had cleared Checkpoint
Charlie, and was on vacation in Mexico. It was everything that I had
dreamed....
We're not that far from our stop at RICE AND BEANS in
San Ignacio, where food, water, shelter and parts are waiting for us.
None of us knew what else was waiting there, but since i was about to
get dumped by my posse, and left to tend to my wounds and reconnoiter my
next step, I would have extra time there to figure it out. The four
remaining long riders would have a quick bite and rehydrate, check to
make sure I have what I need, a room, my bike and belongings secured - a
plan.... everything. Everything is fluid on a trip in Baja, and were
were fluid at that point. We came into the oasis en masse, the guys
having formed up on the side and waited for me catch them. It seemed
that after Berg had wheelied out of the checkpoint, much to the delight
of the attending military personnel - AND at their behest as it turns
out - our posse was elevated in status to some form of instant local
hero status, if for only a few fleeting moments. Probably why I was
waived through without so much as a passport viewing - they know I was
with "them!" So now, we were all back together, formation flying to a
landing in the middle of a huge crowd of people and vehicles and traffic
at the "resort" oasis that is Rice & Beans in San Ignacio, just
outside of town to the North. What can all of this be? I can barely
navigate......
There were RV's and dune buggys and trophy trucks
and all manner of high speed-low drag desert conveyances all over this
patch of sand they called a parking area, and people just scattered
EVERYWHERE! There was a nice long veranda just loaded with people
sitting at tables in chairs, talking, laughing, eating, drinking. Guys
in nomex suits walking around, back and forth from their trophy trucks
who were down prerunning for the BAJA 250, all manner of hubbub and
commotion.
I found the nearest wall and maneuvered toward it,
noticing now nice the flower bed looked that was planted on the top, and
crashed into it, plain and simple. Just like the wall at the Checkpoint
guard shack, I angled in to the side and just brushed in hard and
chopped everything off, coming to simple slide-stop-thud against the
wall. Leaning there against my bad shoulder and my feet still on the
pegs, I just pushed my faceshield up, and waited for help - I wasn't
going anywhere. A sense of relief came over me, and I realized that for a
short time anyways, I might be safe here and I didn't have to try to
ride anymore. Not until further notice. We were "here" wherever this
was, and we had just rolled in from deep in the heart of nowhere, just
outside the back of beyond....
Part 3 - Final
The Russian Whore is not my
girlfriend
(....but she is beautiful.....)
.....when last we left our intrepid hero, he
was leaning against a wall, engine off on the Pogo Punkin - feet on the
pegs and slumping for all he was worth..... the inside of his riding
clothes was hotter than the hubs of hell and he was pretty much just
leaning and blowing bubbles...
So I've got a good lean on the
wall, enough to keep me up, and waiting for a hand to help stabilize the
bike real solid so I can climb off this bike like a nancy boy, and
slide to the ground under my own power, without all the extra help that
gravity is just waiting to send at any second, and somebody comes over
and grabs on and asks how I'm doing. Another guy comes and two or three
people are anchoring my steed so it doesn't highside down the driveway
when it gets righted, and give a couple hundred people a good show to go
along with their dinner hour. I get off the bike, and get the helmet
off and we're at Rice & Beans. Cool. The team owner on a Baja race
crew comes over with a couple of guys and treats me like a celebrity -
which of course I'm not, just a wayward gringo happy to stand up - and
simply "hosts" me into position. He is taking my gear off me and
instructing his crew where to put my bike and in general just making me
feel like I'm going to be alright. My guys are making contact with the
establishment, making sure that our tires are around somewhere for the
return trip, and Ricardo the owner is handy and reassuring and says our
stuff had arrived weeks ago in good order, and that he'll get me taken
care of. So I've got a room, and my bike is parked right outside the
door on the tile patio - I've gotten my gear off and had help getting an
outer layer or two off - which was excruciating, but better now than
later. I'm pretty much good to go. (I had reduced the dislocation
immediately upon standing up right after the crash, small consolation
but a big plus at that point nonetheless.) We're all sitting on the
veranda for a few minutes, being "fluid", and the plan is for them to
keep on riding, head South for a couple days, swing back through and be
back at Rice and Beans for the tire changes and maintenance day planned
for the return ride. If Stovebolt is still here, we'll figure it out
from there. Time's a wasting, hasta luego and vaya con dios - off they
go. I settle in and start licking my wounds, the lone rider down, but no
longer puffing smoke and feeling like a dirt nap is just around the
next bend in the river.
We had no working cell phones and no SAT
phone. That was fine, don't really need them. So they wouldn't know if I
was going to be around when they got back until they got back. The plan
had been to service the bikes at Rice & Beans anyway, and we'd sent
rear tires down there and planned on servicing the bikes there, calling
it a midway mark for the trip. If I had to evacuate, with or without
the bike, they'd know it when they came back from a few more days of
riding on their return leg. I wasn't going anywhere further South at
that point. C'est la vivre.
The next day I wake up - if you could
call it that, didn't get much sleep, and the place is deserted.
Literally. Last night the place looked like Mardis Gras, and the next
morning there wasn't even a car in the parking lot. I walked down the
veranda into the bar, and in about five minutes, somebody came around
and reminded me how much I needed to learn Spanish. Oatmeal and cafe was
inbound, and I started getting sorted out. There was a phone and
internet - things were looking up. For now, I just needed to figure out
how bad I was, and what, if anything, I might be capable of "doing" in a
day or so on my own. My thoughts centered on self recovery, perhaps a
lone-star hero ride on the slab on Mex 1 into Algodones, and crash and
lean on somebody's wall so I could get off the bike and push it through
Customs and throttle off into Yuma, and drop the bike on the sidewalk at
the hotel. And take it from there. Just making things up as it played
out. Where's the coffee? Hola Ricardo, pleasure seeing you, thanks for
helping me.... (glad you speak English.)
I entertain myself by
eating ibuprofen and listening to an MP3, sitting at a table on the
veranda and making contact with the outside world, and establishing a
lifeline with my wife, Dorothy. She kept me alive and re-sync'd during
this contemplative phase of my personal reconnoiter. Thank God I had
her, wind beneath my wounded wings. Although she was ready to go right
then and there to get in the Dodge with the dogs, and head South from
Idaho and come and get me, I assured her that staying put for right now
was the best thing, and that I appreciated the option. I was going to
wait and see what a day or two would bring, and I knew if I could just
handle the bike - if I could manage a way to mount and dismount on my
own, or even with a little help - I could ride that thing out. That was
my singular purpose, to be able to manage the Punkin without dropping
it. Tough enough on steady level ground, but the return trip as planned
would put my wheels over anything but that kind of terrain, and I feared
and respected what I would have to be able to do in order to try to
take that on. As it was, I had to take a shower that first day in the
room with my tee-shirt still on, because I couldn't get it off by
myself. I finally got some help at the end of the day, and grabbed
another shower, and continued that journey down the halls of pain in a
Mexican shower stall. Nice tiles though.
So the place is a ghost
town, and I'm sitting at a table, watching a Baja cat prowling for mice
in the courtyard, all fresh in some relatively clean clothes while my
laundry is hanging to dry on the motorcycle parked outside my room.
There is absolutely nobody around save for the housekeepers and the bar
guy, and once in awhile Ricardo comes by to say "Hi." What a great guy,
Ricardo. Anyway, I'm sitting there, and reading maps like there is no
tomorrow and playing with my GPS, running through different solo
navigation options. Fuel was my main concern, and how far I could get
before having to stop and refuel, and where I might land before dark to
get hidden so the night creatures of the dark side wouldn't find me and
rob me and kill me before I made the border. I would be on my own, so
dropping the bike in the middle of nowhere - including stretches of slab
where a friendly wasn't available to help me pick that bike back up -
would be an issue. With a wounded wing, the 640 was heavier than a dead
priest, and I needed to have a plan if I decided to solo out.
I
hear voices all of a sudden, and along comes this guy and a stunningly
beautiful dark-haired woman walking down the veranda, and they take
seats across from me. They are really going after it in this
conversation between the two of them, and I make out that she is quite
unhappy, and the fellow is being very polite and trying to console her
for some reason. they are speaking English, but she has an accent, and
as the barkeeper comes to greet them, he orders some things, and she
orders several times, not getting what she wants from the available menu
- and finally "settles" for something outrageous - I don't remember
what, but they were "going to try to make it" whatever it was. We were
in Baja, but she apparently wanted no part of that reality, and wanted
to be somewhere else. I recognized her accent and the man said "Hello!"
to me, brightly and offered his hand for a shake - which I was happy to
have. An Anglo and a friendly in this ghost town was already another
asset on my short list of things I had to work with at that moment. A
very hearty howdy back atcha amigo! "I'm Mike," he said. (I'll call him,
"Mike") And this is Tasha. "Hi - I'm Dave, nice to see ya," I gave -
and traded faces. She looked up and just glared.
I tried this for
size, "Prevyet, coch d'yla?" (Gave it the best Russian I had, for the
hell of it....) "Prevyet, horoshor - nu pa Russky?" She continued to
glare, from underneath her jet black hair toward me.
"Nyet," I
told her; but I like to be able to say hello in a few different
languages. "Hi, pleased to meet you." She just looked away and lit up a
smoke.
Turns out, this fellow "Mike" owned a Baja motorcycle
guiding business, and was serving as guide for a couple VIP's on a trip
to Cabo - this lady was part of the entourage. There was another fellow
along who came by and joined their party, a native New Yorker, and he
was also part of the guiding service to the group. These guys started
telling me stories every time they could break away from the guests they
had in tow, and they were just cracking up. The party was a lead
element doing a reconnaissance in Baja for an upcoming Hollywood film.
They told me names that were involved and what they were doing and
pointed across the veranda to where a couple of gentlemen were sitting
and talking, identifying them and so on and so forth. Longer story
short, all the names were 'brand names' Hollywood heavy hitters, and one
fellow from Germany who was a director, and a VIP from the Guggenheim.
Anyway, the young lady was from Russia, and 'on the job.' She turned out
to be a real pip, and from what I was led to believe in much animated
conversation among the 2 guides over the next day and a half, something
of a high-maintenance piece of work! The guides were hauling a trailer
with BMW GS's for the party to ride when and as they wanted, and doing
their thing down there for a couple weeks. They were pretty candid with
me, and it was clear they had the personalities and background to be
doing what they were doing, very gregarious and experienced Baja people
in the short of it. It was all very entertaining, and the sidetrack into
the drama unfolding among these people was a rejuvenating distraction
from my own problems, and the humor was pretty outrageous. It served me
well, and those two guides really blew some wind into my sails. That,
and when the original Easy Rider, Dennis Hopper came by and introduced
himself to me, ("Hi - I'm Dennis.") as I sat by myself at a table. He
knew I had hurt my shoulder out riding, his guides had told him, and he
came over to say hi, and hoped that I would be alright. Asked me if I
needed anything. Sent me a drink. Later I sat and played with the two
guides, and occasionally "Tasha" (not her real name) and the
entertainment value skyrocketed.
My post ends here, the how and
why of when Dennis Hopper bought me a Marguerita in San Ignacio, Baja
California Sur. I made it back home a week later, without outside
recovery efforts, under my own power. The ride back for me started a
couple days later and took everything I had to give, and then just a
little more every now and again. We rode beaches, two-track, sandwashes,
through the Cirio forests and over mountains from the Pacific side back
again - over another 900 miles of off-road before I dismounted for the
last time on that trip in Yuma. My posse came back and helped me do it, I
couldn't have done the dirt sections without them, and it was hard. It
helped to Never Give Up.
Stovey
|
|
