The Dogs Of Baja

The first time I rode bikes in Baja was at a race in Los Barriles called “The El Diablo Challenge”. I only knew about it because BIKE magazine had sponsored the first running of the event, somewhere around 1995. My mother was living in Loreto by this time, an 8 or so hour bus ride to the north, so the next year I thought it would be a hoot to fly down to Cabo, race the El Diablo, then catch a bus up to say hi to mom and then fly home. This promised to be a different kind of adventure than the kayak based ones that had preceded it.

This seems like one of those setups that gets followed by something like “and with that one turn of events, the hook was set and my enduring love affair with mountain biking in Baja began.”

But it wasn’t like that. At all. The El Diablo Challenge was put on by Grant Lamont. Probably more familiar to readers of NSMB as the once promoter of The Cheakamus Challenge and Test of Metal races, as well as his time at the helm of Whistler Bike Guides. Grant is a very strong flavor; I suspect if he was a pepper and rated on the Scoville scale, he’d be somewhere well above serrano but still a bit more manageable than habanero. He can be somewhat polarizing. And it would be fair to say that his events were geared more toward the character building end of the spectrum than the gentle coddling end.

Having no expectations, and possessed at the time with a tangible streak of masochistic intent, I loaded up my single speed Rock Lobster and headed south. What followed was four days of beautifully hallucinatory pain, ample bleeding, sketchy trails, hard as nails Mexican racers from La Paz, and an encompassing looseness that pervaded everything from the drifty nature of the dirt to the shrug and a wink organization of events, all underscored by the dodgy intestinal rumblings that afflict most noobs in Baja. It was awesome. It sucked. Both in equal dreamlike measure. Which about sums up how I feel about Baja in general and mountain biking in Baja in particular. It’s awesome. It sucks. Often both at once.

One night, as we were rehydrating with ballenas of Pacifico on the beach wall in front of the Palmas De Cortez Hotel (I think. It was 30 years ago, and Los Barriles has changed a whole lot…), Grant pointed to a female dog that looked like a cross between a German Shepherd and a Corgi with a dash of Xolocuintle thrown in, and said in a conspiratorial tone; “Mike, you know those calendars with the Weimaraners in them? William Wegman, that guy. He dresses them up and puts them in poses and takes pictures and then sells calendars by the million. What about this – “ He paused dramatically, gestured grandly at the dog, her teats from a fresh litter nearly dragging on the ground as her stubby Corgi legs tried to carry her German Shepherd-sized body enthusiastically along behind a pickup truck that was driving the gory halves of a freshly hacked up Marlin out toward the truck scales to be weighed; “The Dogs Of Baja! A calendar tribute to the majestic and strange canines of this peninsula! It could be a gold mine. There’s no shortage of material, that’s for fucking sure!”

Grant had something of a point. Dogs had it pretty rough down there at that time, by and large. On a cultural level, it was something of an affront to neuter dogs. As such, any dogs that were free to roam were also free to indulge in the carnal congress of their own choosing. As a result of this, there were plenty of interesting experiments in cross-breeding. Dogs that were “owned” generally stayed within the confines of the homes they were assigned to guard, barking maniacally at anyone who passed. That was their job – guard the stoop, make a lot of noise. But there was a huge and constant population of dogs that were not owned, who lived by their wits and their teeth, who could be charming when it came to begging snacks but who could also be pretty damn feral when loose in packs. Overall, life was hard, and the dogs had it rough. Appearancewise, they ran a very interesting gamut.

For the past three decades I have carried that notion around in my head, while coming down here every year and getting beat up by this awesome, sucky peninsula. Things are changing. The standard of living is on a steady upward trajectory, and this is most evident in the overall health of the roaming dogs. They are looking a lot less haggard these days. So, I have not capitalized on Grant’s idea. Instead, I have thought about other calendar/coffee table book projects: The Homicidal Sidewalks Of La Paz. The Random Barbed Wire Sculptures Of The Vizcaino Desert. The Broken Glass Mirages. The Great Book Of Roadside Shrines. The Urban Powerline Puzzle Book. The Ford Rangers Of Baja. Given the rate of change, however, what started as a whimsical desire to catalog the beautiful incongruities that abounded, has turned more into a bittersweet longing to capture some of these images before they get buried beneath the rising tide of sprawling stucco and tile “villas” that is inexorably spreading outward from every air-accessible nexus on the peninsula. Ah well. So it goes.

My time down here is drawing to a close, and as I mentally gird myself to return north, it’s bittersweet in every direction. On one hand, I am SO OVER riding loose. Loose sand, loose gravel, loose rock, loose kitty litter on top of loose rock, every corner apex an exercise in wishful thinking and calculated hope. On the other hand, I am finally getting used to it, and it is kind of fun, in a not quite drifty way, except for when it’s not fun and I find myself trudging along another arroyo, blinking sweat out of my eyes. On one hand, I am SO OVER the casual, held together by faith and bailing wire, eternal mañana-ness of everything. On the other hand, I am not sure how ready I am to go back to where strangers don’t wave at each other, where folk by and large seem to be in a worse mood than the people down here, in spite of materially having so much less to complain about.

This is not a love letter to Baja. This is a love letter to Baja. I could ride these janky trails forever. I'm dying to feel wet dirt beneath my tires. The way the sky turns all these coral and orange hues over Isla Carmen, even though the sun is setting all the way on the other horizon, cuts a chunk out of my heart and keeps it, drawing me back time and time again. The wind – that shitty northerly howler that sets up house for days at a time and churns the entire sky into a dirty brown haze, filling my eyes, my teeth, my everything with dust – can fuck right off. The burn rate of both chain lube and eye drops during three months down here is alarming, but much as I am eager to take my creaking drivetrain north and once again blink without grit, I will be returning to cold snowy trails and the unpredictability of shoulder season. I have tan lines, damnit, for the first time in years.

Every morning, my dog and I walk out through Colonia Zaragoza and down the Salanita. Walking out of town involves running the gauntlet of dogs doing what they do down here, guarding their turf. It is a four block tunnel of noise, every dog howling murderous intent at us, telegraphing to all the other dogs that the gringos are on the move. Lottie was initially freaked completely out by this, but has learned the language and now ignores the noise. I do the same, and we walk in the middle of the road, impervious. I try to channel my inner Cesar Milan, exude some calm alpha energy, but the dogs behind the fences don’t care. They have their jobs to do. Their human owners do not seem one bit fazed by their raging dogs. They watch us walk past impassively, wave hands in greeting, and the dogs bark and bark and bark and bark. We walk past the house with the Huskies, the house with the beautiful Malinois, the house with the impeccably cropped Dobermann. These dogs are well fed and intentionally bred. They would not rate a mention on Grant’s calendar.

Once we get past the gauntlet, the road turns to dirt, and the dogs here are never behind fences. They don’t bark nearly as much, and have figured out our schedule, our scent, and go through the same ritual of greeting with my dog before deciding it’s okay to play. We walk past the house with the scruffy dog that always has some sort of matted something in its fur. Past the house with the little grey dog that looks like one of Wegman’s Weimaraners that got hit with a shrink ray and crossed with maybe a beagle. He has pale green eyes that speak an ancient wisdom. Past the house with the terrier that has its left ear bitten off. Past the concrete block pile where the three legged hound lives. And past the place where there are a couple horses tied up, where the skinny brindle guy lives who looks like a Mastiff and Greyhound and Catahoula and something with the ears of a bat all got together. I kind of want to take him home with me.

The dogs down here, the ones that would fit perfectly on Grant’s calendar, and the ones with shiny coats in their echoey concrete yards, they have their rules. Different rules than up north, for sure. Same with the people. Some of those rules are less clearly defined, more elastic, than us gringos are used to comprehending, what with our more brittle understanding of the world. I like that elasticity, that certain uncertainty. I will miss it. So yeah, some sort of hook was set 30-some years ago sitting on that sea wall talking about dog calendars and plucking cactus spines out of my forearms. I'm itching to get out of here. I can’t wait to come back.