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Four days before we are driving down the 405 at 2:30 pm just barely missing traffic, and in a rush to get across the border before dark. It’s Monday the 14th of November 2011, and we are on our way to shoot the Baja 1000. Wiley and I are an hour outside the border with no Mexican insurance and limited spare cash. Last minute operations seem to be the way of life lately! We managed to make it across just before dark and with subtle interference from border patrol. A sense of comfort settles in when you glide Into Mexico passing familiar faces, who are getting searched by drug dogs, and hassled for everything they have. It’s the shits when they want to tear through everything to find nothing! Ensenada is only an hour and 45 minutes south of the border on highway 1.

Three days before, after early rise before the sun, we’re driving down a windy road with no shoulder, and nearly nowhere to pass. Wiley and I are heading to Borrego, a checkpoint that is 110 miles from the start, and filled with wide-open whoops in every direction. Kendall Norman, Quinn Cody, Logan Holliday, and the JCR Honda team are dialing in the race bike. Making sure every part of the bike suits each rider’s needs. Capturing some of the drama that’s involved with the mechanical part of the bike preparation was very interesting. The Honda 450 X looks and sounds extremely fast.

With a deep throaty snap out of the exhaust, and Kendall Tripling the car size whoops at 70 plus miles an hour; I have no doubt in my mind that they will crush this 692 mile race. Tyler and Tom arrive later in the day, and we spend the next day shooting B-Roll, and game planning how we’ll cover the race.

We break into to groups to cover the race. Tom and I are in the van, and Tyler and Wiley in the Audi wagon. The wagon looks a little out of place in the desert, especially with all the Ford Raptors lurking around. We touch base with Tyler and Wiley as they set up the shoot for the first checkpoint, move on out to our spot down the road, and try to reach the other guys on the walkie-talkie. No answer. After nailing the shot of Kendall storming through the section, Tyler and Wiley roll up as the JCR Honda helicopter floats out of site. We grab some food and go over the pit map and our plans.

After food we head back out. Pushing 70 plus on the crowded Baja roads, it almost feels like we are part of the race. We meet up again at Honda pit 5, where Kendall hands the bike off to Quinn. He looks pretty roughed up, and we get some pretty raw footage of the handoff.

Turns out he took a pretty good spill at mile marker 200, and had some choice verbiage at the pit. Quinn took over and ended up putting JCR Honda far enough ahead to hold the lead through the rest of the race.

We continued to chase the riders through the Baja desert till around 10:30PM. Got some interviews, margaritas, and called it a night. Complete footage will be released by late January.

-Hunter & Tyler

“Full of pine trees, colorful flowers and grassy pastures for horses to graze. Toluca is at 7,500 feet. The air is crisp and the temp is a perfect 73 degree’s during the heat of the day. This is the home of Homero Diaz, a multi Mexican champion and  icon for the motorcycle enthusiasts of Latin America; Our next featured rider in the upcoming movie What !S, the sequel to What !f..”

The treacherous tales and ongoing drug wars that an everyday American is knowledgeable of, or at least aware of, makes buying a ticket to fly into Mexico city just a bit questionable… But we had a mission, which entailed capturing the spirit of Mexico and the culture that Homero Diaz, the five-time Latin Enduro champion and three-time Enduro champion of Mexico, lives and trains. So we bypassed Mexico city’s cluster fudge, and flew from LAX to Houston. Houston to Toluca, Mexico was by far the hot route flight to Mexico! Wiley and I arrived in Toluca around nine am with limited amount of sleep and a full day ahead of us! Homero Diaz was already waiting for the pickup and greeted us full of humor! We went straight to tacos and fed our belly’s till satisfied. Next stop was picking up some KTM demo bikes for us to ride. A 2012 KTM SXF 350 and XCW 450 from KTM’s Mexico dealership was ticket. 

Homero was able to provide bikes for us, which worked out great.  On our first scouting mission we rode out of Homero’s house through a nice little gated community and merged onto the streets of Toluca city! La Policia doesn’t enforce the traffic here like in the states, so suddenly we found ourselves pinning it between busses, cars and taxis through intersections, highways and main streets! Stampeding through the city was actually one of the highlights of the trip! Fifteen minuets of bobbing and weaving through traffic lead us up some stair sets over a few curbs and to the base of a green-forested mountain hillside.  BraaaP over one last curb and we are on a perfect horse trail single track, fertilized from manure and shaded with thick greenery. A symbolic high mountain California like pine forest and deep wooded Oregon feel is in the air; yet the area we are heading up is new to us and full of beauty. Admiring our surroundings only lasted till the trail narrowed down, Homerro stood up, and the trail got more technical by the yard. Boulders, loose rocks and tree roots all in the mix on a steep up hill was a good way to test the bikes we hadn’t rode before.

This tight cutty forest single track went on for about eight miles, while keeping you on edge pretty much the entire time! Coming out the backside of the mountain to sunlight and a road was nice. Homero showed us a bunch of fun hits and techy washes that he rides! We left the mountains to get water and lunch back at Casa de Diaz; meeting Valentina, Homeros wife and Mateo, his 2-year-old son was awesome.  After slurping up the rest of a delicious home-made soup and drinking enough water to pee like a racehorse, we got back on the bikes. Homero took us to four of his grass and special test tracks that he has built just outside the city for training. We road till dark, found the shots we needed and called it a day!

The next 4 days we spent filming in and around Toluca and Metepec, it was quite a treat. It’s a little like motorcycle heaven and it feels so good to just ride around town through the city without any heckling from the police. Homero knows his trails and tracks well, he had the lines dialed and put on a great display of riding in so so conditions; the dirt was a bit dry and very slippery. Of course on the last day of our trip it down poured and the dirt was perfect. Last time we talked to Homero it hadn’t stopped raining since we left!!

We ate the most amazing home cooked meals everyday, and on top of that, provided with unmatched hospitality from Homero’s family. Thanks for the time spent both Homero Valentina and KTM Mexico! Viva Mexico!