Advocate Cycles

Building The Baja Divide: 12 Days Towards Christmas

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Building The Baja Divide: 12 Days Towards Christmas

Words by Lael Wilcox, Photos by Nicholas Carman

In San Diego, we photocopy a colored atlas into white and black. We cut the pages down to size and highlight probable routes in orange and possible routes in pink. There remains a lot of black and white in between—lots of unknown and lots of hope. We trace our fingers over thin lines, then dotted lines—over mountain ranges and to the sea. Maybe this road actually goes through? Could we ride there? If we can’t ride, could we push our bikes and make it anyway? Let’s go try. How else do people get there? Who lives there? What do they do? Let’s go see.

We take a ferry to Coronado. Saying goodbye to my godmother in the morning, we ride the Silver Strand to Chula Vista and to a dirt road over Otay Mountain. From the top, all alone, we can see both San Diego and Tijuana. Both America and Mexico—where we came from and where we’re going.

We descend to the pavement and drink soda in the shade at Barrett Junction. We pass a road sign to Campo, the start of the Pacific Crest Trail. We continue to Tecate, the border crossing. I sit in a customs office on the American side, while Nick goes to find pesos to pay for the tourist visa. He returns to retrieve his passport and gives me a cucumber-lime Gatorade while I wait. It’s delicious.

On December 8, a couple stamps later, we cross the border to Baja. We pedal through the gate, to Tecate and pass a tree-lined plaza. Old men play dominoes on park benches. We don’t stop because we’re on the hunt for dirt roads to other places.

On the first night, a Mexican businessman that commutes daily to San Diego invites us to camp in his yard. On the second, a shop owner in Ojos Negros invites us to camp out front. We buy a half-pint of Mezcalito. Are you sure you want that? Why not? She’s right, it’s gross.

On the third day we pass vineyards on the way to Santo Tomas and almost make it to the Pacific. We climb steep and camp on a hilltop. In the evening, trucks honk hello from below.

In the morning, motos flash thumbs up as they pass. I wave to their backs. We stop at the top of a climb to look out at the Pacific Ocean. It’s all downhill from here. Let’s ride to the beach! I crash hard on the way down riding too fast into deep sand. I hear my back pop in four places and burp my front tire. Ouch! Nick digs the sand out of the tire bead and swirls Stan’s while I pick the sand out of my teeth and finally sit up. He helps me back onto my bike and we ride slowly to Erendira.

On the fourth evening, brilliant purples and reds paint over dark clouds at sunset. It’s both stunning and menacing. Ripping down the coast with a strong tailwind, we watch the storm brew. We need to find camp. To Nick’s dismay, I stop and steal brussel sprouts growing on tall stalks by the sea. He points to the sky and urges me on.

Shielded on two sides by rock walls, we set the tent up. It’s sandy and the tent stakes hardly hold. Nick stakes and re-stakes. The tent walls flap loudly in the fierce breeze. We’ll be fine. If we have to, we’ll pack up, ride on and look for shelter. Under the cover of the tent, Nick steams the brussel sprouts with onions and tops them with a dry, crumbly sheep cheese. I swear it tastes like clams and drink the tasty broth. It rains in the night and after several hours the wind dies and we fall asleep.

On the fifth day, we cross the primary paved highway, the MEX1, at Colonet. We ride dirt to Ejido Benito Juarez and follow a sandy arroyo away from the village. Fresh water flows through the valley. Behind a fence, I spy fields of tomatillos, but I don’t steal any. The night is clear and we camp under the stars. A heavy wet frost covers our bikes.

The next day we climb to El Coyote and then Mike’s Sky Rancho. We drink beer with Canadian mototourists until dark. One of their Mexican guides, named Oscar, works in a fish plant in Seward in the summer. He packs salmon. You’re from Alaska? Yeah! When you go home to Anchorage, go to Thai Tom’s and tell my boss that Oscar says hi. Where are you biking tomorrow? To Coco’s Corner. You’re going to Coco’s Corner? He’s the greatest! When you see Coco, tell him Oscar from Ensenada says hi.

The Canadian motos invite us to stay for steak dinner, but they’re not cooking the steaks. Oscar and the crew are, they’re running a business. We’d rather not impose and we’re ready to find camp. We pedal away in the dark and across a stream. The sky is overcast and it looks like it’s going to rain again. We ride half an hour uphill to find a flat spot. Then I realize that I lost the tent. Dang! Where is it? Nick says that we’d better retrace our steps. With our lights on, we descend slowly to Mike’s and look hard for the tent. We don’t find it. Well, what now? We could either ask to stay here, pay to stay here or look again. If we stay here, we won’t find the tent and then we won’t have the tent for tomorrow. Let’s go look again. Nick suggests that the tent might be in the stream. I’m sure it’s not. And then, sure enough, there it is in the stream. I let out a cheer because I’m so happy that he’s right and I’m wrong. We’ve got the tent! We climb back to our flat spot and set up camp. Instead of steaks, we eat beans and tortillas and they taste great. Heavy rain pounds through the night.

The morning of day 7 is clear and bright. We roll out of camp and start climbing. The ground is still wet from the night before and it’s muddy. It’s that nasty clay mud that stops bikes dead. The mud cakes on our tires and chains and my chain drops off the ring. I put it back on, but it won’t stay. A few steps later, Nick’s tires clog in his frame. Neither of us can pedal. We start pushing our bikes slowly through the mud. It’s sunny and not a big deal, we’ll walk until we can ride again. Eventually, the sun will dry out the roads—for now the air is cool and it might take a while. We keep pushing.

And then I see them. On the side of the road are two unopened cans of beer. It’s the little things; cold treasure can make all the difference on a muddy forced hike-a-bike. We stop in the sun, on the side of the road to drink the beer. Meanwhile, a big white pick-up approaches, engine roaring and sliding all over the road. It’s Oscar from Ensenada! Want a ride? That’d be great!

We put the bikes in the bed of the truck and take a ride to the MX3. Back on the bikes, we rip pavement with a tailwind 60 miles to San Felipe, a tourist town. We stay in a hotel for three days and watch full-length movies on YouTube and eat tacos and write.

On day 9 we head for Coco’s Corner and stop short at Bahia Gonzaga. At the end of a paved road, on the other side of a military checkpoint, there is a really nice store. The owners are having a Christmas party and they invite us to join them. We all dance to loud music and drink Tecate Light and eat cake. We camp on the beach nearby and return to the store in the morning to fill up on water. A middle-aged man in a comboy hat asks if he can try reading my Bukowski novel. He does a good job sounding out the words. He wants to learn English so he can drive a truck in Canada. I see his son eyeing my bike. I ask him if he wants to try and ride it. First he shrugs no and I ask again and he agrees. He barely stands over the frame, but he pumps on the suspension fork and he knows how to ride. It’s awesome!

On day 10 we make it to Coco’s and stop early. He insists that we stay. Coco is alive and well! He’s the greatest. That night, a man arrives at Coco’s Corner. His truck has a flat tire and his family is waiting with the truck and he can’t get the lug nuts loose. Coco—it should be made clear that he has no legs—goes out to help with the truck. We make egg and bean burritos and leave one on a plate for Coco when he returns. In the morning I sign his guest book before we leave.

On day 11 we camp in a half built house just above Bahia Los Angeles. The four walls protect us from the wind. The un-paned windows give us a view of the bay, and the lack of roof—a view of the stars.

On day 12 we eat tacos with Pancho in San Rafael. Pancho lives in a trailer above the beach. He fishes when he wants to and he rolls fresh flour tortillas when he wants them. He fries everything on a propane stove top and I swear they are the most delicious fish tacos I’ve ever tasted.

It’s December 20, four days to Christmas and we’re half-way down the peninsula. We pedal across the imaginary border from Baja California Norte to Baja California Sur. It only gets better from here.

The Baja Divide is a projected 2000-mile off-pavement touring route from San Diego, CA to the southern tip of the Baja California Sur. Lael Wilcox and her partner Nicholas Carman have spent two months researching the route, and have recently returned to San Diego to start a second routefinding mission down the peninsula. A digital track will be published by summer 2016, with additional guiding resources scheduled to be published later in the year, leading up to the inaugural group start on the route on January 2, 2017. This group start—neither a group tour nor a race—is a way to encourage people to ride the route self-supported, at their own pace, by starting amidst a community of like-minded riders. Lael is riding a 27.5+ Advocate Hayduke. Learn more at www.bajadivide.com.

Rider Profile - Lael Wilcox

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If you haven’t heard of Lael Wilcox, allow us to introduce you. Lael has spent the better part of the last decade touring around the world on her bike. It all started about 8 years ago when Lael and Nicholas Carman decided to take off on a two-month paved tour in the United States—in some ways, the ride has yet to end. Since that tour, they have been splitting their years between working to save up money and traveling by bike.

They have spent time touring throughout North America, two summers chasing dirt routes across Europe and a substantial amount of time in both South Africa and the Middle East. Recently Lael has also taken to ultra-endurance racing with great success, setting the female record for the Tour Divide in the summer of 2015, although for the both of them, travel is most important and will probably always remain the focus.

Currently, Lael is down in Baja, Mexico aboard an Advocate Cycles Hayduke where she and Nick are working on mapping and planning a roughly 2,000 mile bikepacking route through the area. In the end, they hope to be able to publish the route for others to use as a springboard for their own rides. You can check out their project online at www.bajadivide.com. We caught up with Lael during her tour and asked her a few questions about what it’s like living this lifestyle.

RK: For starters, when you aren’t riding, where do you call home?

LW: I grew up in Anchorage, Alaska. That’s where my family lives so that’s where I’d call home. I don’t spend too much time in Anchorage. I don’t have a house or a car, but I’ll always go back there. When we’re not traveling we may work in different places. We’ve lived in Tacoma, Denali, Key West, Annapolis, Albuquerque, and France, but for the last eight years, we’ve spent the majority of our time riding.

RK: What do you do for work in between these long rides? Do you keep a similar schedule or does it change year to year?

LW: I usually work in restaurants as a server or a bartender. I’ve been working in restaurants since I was sixteen. The first year I cleaned a bar in the mornings and washed dishes in a cafe for the afternoons. Since, I’ve worked in at least twenty restaurants. It’s usually an easy job to find and an easy job to quit, and I enjoy the work. I’ll work hard for four to six months in a stretch, often two jobs at once. I save money so I can travel on the bike again.

I’ve done other jobs as well. I taught English in France and yoga in Anchorage and once worked the door for a bar on New Year’s. I’ll take any job I don’t dread. Although, serving is fast-paced and fast cash and I prefer it.

I don’t have a set pattern of work and bike travel. Mostly, I travel until I run out of money and pick up a job to save for the next trip and leave town when I can. It’s nice to mix it up. I’ll often live and work in different places. It’s fun and exciting to learn a new place and make new friends along the way, but I’m always ready to leave after a few months. There’s a lot to do and see.

RK: Tell us about your first extended bike tour and what effect that tour had on your cycling and the course of your life.

LW: I met Nick when I was twenty years old while in college in Tacoma, Washington. He gave me a bike so I could commute to work four miles away—otherwise I got around on foot. The bike opened up my world. I love walking, but the problem is walking takes a lot of time. The bike really speeds things up. We started biking all around town together.

At the time, one of my sisters lived in Seattle. The other sister flew in for a weekend visit. I wanted to go see them both. Normally, I would’ve taken the bus—its only $3 even with a bike. However, we didn’t have enough cash to pay the fare. So I said, hell let’s just ride there instead.

At the time, Nick and I were riding fixed gear bikes and it was definitely the longest ride of my life—45 miles. We pedaled and talked the whole way on bike paths, through industrial zones, outskirts and in town. Along the way, I turned to Nick and said, “If we can bike to Seattle, we could bike across the country!” I’d never known anyone to do it, but I could imagine the lifestyle of pedaling all day and camping somewhere different every night. We figured, I’d graduate in the spring and we’d leave from Tacoma and ride to the east coast.

I graduated, but we didn’t have any money—none. So we worked all summer, saved what we could and left in the fall. We flew into Boston to visit Nick’s sister, rode north to Montreal and south to Key West, Florida. We chased fall colors all the way to South Carolina and then rode the coast. Sometimes it was cold and hard, but we learned a lot: how to camp, eat, ride, and spend all day with each other and feel safe and free.

We ended up in Key West in November. It was the end of the road and we were out of money—it seemed like a great place to spend the winter and work. We both got jobs as pedicab drivers and I worked in a restaurant. We shared a small house on a tropical lane with a French guy who assumed the name Jack. We dove off the pier for lobsters and I spent many afternoons at the outdoor laundromat down the street because we only had two white work-shirts. Besides, Felix the coffee man made good Cuban coffee and sassed me cause I was from Alaska. He called me Palin.

We saved enough money in three months to ride out of town and we haven’t stopped since. That was eight years ago.

RK: What do you look forward to most on these adventures? Is it the riding itself, travel to new places, seeing new cultures and landscapes? Tell us what it is that makes you want to live this lifestyle.

LW: This is my life. How does anyone look forward to their life? Do they appreciate what they have? Do they daydream about what could be different? Do they daydream about other places or other people’s lives? Does traveling on the bike allow me to do all of these things? Yes.

I see and experience and feel new things everyday with my best friend in the whole world. We do this together. And then we talk about it. And then we sleep next to each other on the ground and then we wake up and do it again and pedal somewhere else. What else could I want?

It’s not always easy and sometimes it rains and sometimes we fight, but that’s life. Life is not always easy, but it can be damn good.

I look forward to mixing it up. And along the way, I look forward to sunny weather and climbing mountains and sleeping hard and smiling until the wrinkles at the ends of my eyes hurt.

What I look forward to most is going somewhere new every day.

Everywhere I’ve been, Ukraine, South Africa, Israel, I’ve been invited in and I feel like a special guest. People see us on the bikes—they’re curious about us and we’re curious about them. To be invited into someone’s home, you learn so much about how they live and what they care about. If we share a language, then we talk. If we don’t, then we do our best. It’s real and it matters.

In the end, I guess we find a home away from home. We learn new places. We ride our bikes and we’re happy.

NicholasCarman_Baja-5676

RK: Why did you decide on Baja? What was it about the area that made you want to ride and travel there?

LW: Baja is just south of California and, snowbiking aside, it’s one of the last mountainous places we could ride in North America in winter. We rode here five years ago, mostly on narrow, paved Highway 1. This time we came back with bigger tires and less luggage to ride a mostly dirt route. To do this, Nick invested a lot of time and money into printed and digital maps. We’ve decided to commit more time to this project to ultimately publish a high quality route for other riders to enjoy in the future. This means we’ll probably ride the peninsula again this spring to explore alternative routing. I’ve come to learn that the Hayduke is the perfect bike for Baja. The 27.5+ wheels eat up loose rock, sand and washboard.

The peninsula is a desert, the least populous region in Mexico, with open water on either side. On Christmas Eve, we arrived at the dead end of a dirt road. A family was slaughtering a cow and they invited us to stay for dinner and singing and breakfast.

In the month we’ve been here, we’ve ridden along both coastlines, spent a lot of time in the mountains, and encountered lots of fresh water and the camping has been awesome, with mostly clear skies.

Throughout this ride, we have been working on connecting dirt roads and rough jeep tracks as much as possible. We hope to share our route with others and encourage them to ride here too.

RK: What’s next? Any plans after your time in Baja?

LW: We plan to be here for another month or two. We’ll be riding with friends and working on the route and then we’ll see. I’ll need to work sometime in the next few months. We might go back to Alaska to ride fatbikes in the snow. I’d love to ride parts of the Iditarod Trail and in the White Mountains near Fairbanks.

RK: Thanks so much, we wish you all the best in the rest of your Baja tour and will be excited to see where you end up next.

NicholasCarman_Baja-5675

All photos courtesy Nicholas Carman

Their Only Portrait - A Bike Tour That Gives Back

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As cyclists, it is hard to quantify what we get out of riding our bikes. It is a sport and lifestyle that gives us endless enjoyment as well as countless memories and experiences in the locations we see and with the people we meet along the way.

Buenos Aires photographer Federico Cabrera and his “ Their Only Portrait” project ask the simple question, “What if we all gave back a little more along the way?”

DSCF6387At the end of October, aboard an Advocate Cycles Hayduke Ti, Federico will be taking off on a 4000-mile bike tour along the Cordillera de los Andes from La Quiaca to Ushuaia giving away 1000 printed portraits along the way. In addition he will be giving away portable solar lanterns to people who need them most.

Federico came up with the idea for this project during his previous travels. In underdeveloped areas he would often notice hundreds of tourists taking photos of the local people without showing much if any respect for the subject. Furthermore, he learned that many of these local people did not possess a single family portrait of their own. With this realization, the idea for “Their Only Portrait” was born.

During his upcoming bike tour, Federico plans to make family portraits of the local people he meets along the way while riding thousands of miles through developing communities. To do this, he will bring a small portable photography studio along, which will allow him to create and give each family a printed copy of their photo. His intention is simply to give back to local communities and hopefully inspire other people to find their own way to give back.


We caught up with Federico in the final days of preparation before taking off on his tour to find out a little bit more about his project.

RK: First off, I want to say that this is such a great idea. We all dream about long rides and adventures, but to connect with people in such a personal way is very special. I can only imagine the remarkable people you will meet along the way, but what excites you most? Is it the adventure of a long ride or the adventure of the new faces and communities that you will surely find in the process?

FC: Thank you! It’s certainly both, but if I had to choose just one it would be the people I’ll be able to meet along the road. The portraits are the most important part of my trip and so the people are central to this idea and I want to make these portraits the best I can, even when that means carrying gear that is definitively not light or “bike friendly” such as the Studio flash & printer and possibly even an umbrella for lighting.

RK: Surely there are many other ways to visit these communities and meet these people. What is it about bicycle travel that you enjoy most? Have you done other long rides like this in the past?

FC: I have, and I still remember the freedom I felt exploring Patagonia on a self-supported bicycle trip almost 20 years ago. On a ride like this it is so easy to appreciate nature and blend in with the environment. It is by far the best way to relate with local people, and to engage with life in its every form.

RK: No doubt, this is a long bike ride. How long do you think it will take you to complete this adventure?

FC: For this trip I’m also collaborating with Fundacion Ruta 40 (a local NGO contributing in the comprehensive development of rural schools) to make & print their students’ portraits. Depending on how many schools I manage to visit before the end of classes in December, it should take around 4 months to make it to Ushuaia.

RK: I see from your photos that you have done some portraits for families in preparation for this project. What kind of reactions have you received from people that you gave portraits to?

FC: Yes, I already did two trips through some of Argentina’s most remote & wild areas in an effort to put myself and my gear to the test before the main trip. Outside of the big cities, most people are very shy with strangers, especially at Argentina’s original communities, and are not used to big flashes, photometers, and the rest of the gear I’m carrying along on these trips. It usually takes them a while to understand what I’m doing and that it is a gift for them to keep, for free, even with other printed portraits as examples. Usually, as soon as someone is brave enough to pose for the camera and they see a familiar face in print, they want their family portrait taken and one of just their kids as well, because they don’t know when they might be able to get another one.

RK: Will you be updating on your progress along the way? Where would someone be able to check in on your adventure in the coming months?

FC: Yes, I’m traveling with satellite technology to keep people abreast of my progress online. You’ll be able to track my daily progress on the project website at www.theironlyportrait.com and also keep up with regular updates through social media on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

RK: We wish you well on your journey. Thanks so much for letting us be a part of your project.