The Vintagent Originals: Stories We Need to Tell.
BAJA SCRAMBLER (2020)
Run Time: 6:42
Producer: Motor/Cycle Arts Foundation
Director: David Martinez
Editor: Anais Bernard
Key Cast: Paul d’Orleans
FILM MAKER
David Martinez is a professional photographer and filmmaker, for whom photography is both a calculated science and a free verse art form. The controllable variables – the light, the shutter speed, the aperture – are all simply tools to allow the authenticity of a real moment to occur. David captures the beauty and sincerity of these scenes in the pictures he makes. Always at the forefront of technology (but still with a roll of medium format film in his camera bag), David has been shooting high definition video since DSLR technology made it more available. David is always ready for an adventure – with his surf bag packed and camera in hand.
SUMMARY
The original Baja bike? Paul d’Orléans thinks it’s the Honda CL72, the bike that set off a wave of Baja races after Dave Ekins set a record from Tijuana to La Paz in just shy of 40hours. After Dave, the deluge, and the Baja 1000 was created. Filmmaker David Martinez follows Paul around the desert roads of Los Cabos as he rides his 1964 CL72 Scrambler, and talks about the original Baja Scrambler.
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Honda ? First ? I find that hard to believe . Seriously … not H-D , Triumphs etc ? Hmmmmmmm………
Honda was the first to do a timed run. I’ve read of only one other bike doing the ride: an FN in the late 1950s.
Thats amazing in light of of the numbers of Triumph scramblers , Bultacos ( christmas … half the bikes in my cousins neighborhood in LA were freaking Bultacos ) Harley XR’s modified for desert running etc etc .. that were in S.California back in the day … not to mention how late Honda came to the party .
So seriously … where the ( bleep ) was everybody else back then ?
… and on the InstaFamous – InstaBroke news front …. y’all seen I&A has … err … purchased ( looks more like a bailout to me ) Bikeexif ?????
Sure .. on one hand its nice I&A is bailing them out …. but on the other … thats another M/C source/independent voice either going belly up ( CW ) or disappearing into the void of another’s shadow .
So … adding in all the Motor Company’s latest woes etc – et al – ad nauseam … 2020’s not only a horrible year for music ( we’re losing our best left and right this year ) … but for M/C’s as well
Hello Paul,
Thanks for the nice film about your CL and the Baja run. That riding looks like a lot of fun.
Have a good weekend!
Hugo
Thanks Hugo!
What a great excuse to buy an early CL72! Actually I got the bug after interviewing Dave Ekins at the Quail a few years ago – his original CL72 from the trip is long gone, so he had another first-year CL72 with him: they’d a bit special as the side covers and fenders are aluminum. I thought the story and the bike so cool…which is a different situation than in the 1980s, when I found an abandoned but complete CL72 on the street, and tore it totally to bits, taking the parts I didn’t want (frame, tank) to the dump! I was running CB77 cafe racers at the time, and the parts were useful…who wanted a Scrambler?
We have a house near San Jose del Cabo, in a little village called Las Animas that is becoming quite hip. The Honda Scrambler is almost invisible, because it fits in so well with the landscape. This film was made with my great friend David Martinez, who’s done four other films for The Vintagent, and who has had a house near San Jose for 20 years. We opted to stay in Mexico during quarantine, from March to July, and the film was a fun project to keep us busy and exploring new places. I’m taking a ’70 Triumph TR6 down in February, and next year might take my ’66 Velocette Endurance too, which was my first Velocette in 1985.
yours, Paul
… and now .. Silodrome has this video on their Sunday Features on their site as well … so … y’alls gone top o’ the pops Antipode ! Congrats !
Rock On – Ride On – Remain Calm ( despite it all ) and do … please Carry On
… and err … I’s still dumbfounded by it all … not that I’s doubting you in the slightest PdO … but damn …. it jes aint registering
PS; As for ‘hip ‘ … I/we avoid todays excuse for ‘ hip ‘ at all costs …. cause … 99.999% of the time .. its nothing more than trendy wendy ephemeral banal attempting to be profound masquerading as something …. ‘ hip ‘
Seriously … the only thing worse than todays ‘ hip ‘ is what passes for irony in this age of … errr …. anarcho – capitalist non – discerning mindlessness
The age of the ‘ tragically hip ‘ sums it up quite nicely
😎
PS; Brian Eno 101
” The hippest and hardest thing you’ll ever do in your life … is to simply be … yourself ”
From a man who know all too well what the price of not being truly yourself is
Hi Paul, I came across your website through Silodrome. I’ve watched your short film Baja Scrambler, that’s a good story and comments about the Honda CL72. I take this opportunity to congratulate you on the array of initiatives you develop towards keeping alive great stories about motorcycles & motorcycling.
I have been doing that on my website since 1999. I would be honored if you could pay a visit to it.
Cheers!
Ricardo C, da Rocha Lima
50 Years of Motorcycling
Vintagent, good job on the story. On the Bill Robertson crash, he hit a wire at a driveway entrance at dusk. Dad got his arm up and deflected the wire over his helmet. That crash damaged the rear fender of Bill’s CL 72. They took the fender off exposing the wire mesh air filter to more dust than it was designed to handle. 800 miles later when they hit the pavement north of La Paz, Bill opened up the CL 72 and the mesh air filter let in a clump of dirt, causing him to lose one cylinder. So, dad rode in on two cylinders and Bill fell two hours behind on one cylinder. On the gas part of the story, they met the airplane every 80 miles or so. When they used “Rancho” gas they poured it through a chamois to get the sediment and water out.
Best Regards
Greg Ekins
Thanks Greg! I interviewed Dave Ekins at the Quail Motorcycle Gathering when he attended a few years ago: that was the inspiration for me buying the CL72 in the first place! It’s a terrible dirt bike, Dave and Bill were real heroes to make that time down Baja on them. Reliable though, even on one cylinder…
all the best, Paul
So … this made it back to the top of the pile . Hmmm …
So which did come first ? The Chicken ( Trumpy ) or the Egg ( Honda ) .. or something completely other off everyones radar cause there’s no records to be found ?
IMO … honestly … seeing as how folks have been bopping down Baja since the beginning of motorized time … and knowing the number of ‘ outlaw ‘ events that have existed since those first runs ( Rachel Kushner wrote about one both in novel and short story form ) And after digging into the history thru those still alive able to remember it .
I’d place a serious wager that the ONLY honest and accurate answer is ….
WE DO NOT KNOW !
And anyone who says otherwise .. including me … . is fooling themselves
Honestly .. its like trying to claim Elvis invented rock & roll ( not even close )
Fact is … we do not know who was first .. and thats OK ! Fact is bikes like this Trumpy are still legends and worth the time and space to write about
End of sermon …. Donagels and single source Coffee in the narthex …
😎
It’s generally acknowledged (but still worth questioning) that the 1962 Honda Baja run was the first publicly shared, timed run down the length of the peninsula. The first press account of a motorcycle making the length of Baja that I’ve found was in the 1950s, with an FN of all things. I’m always searching for more stories on these runs: plenty of riders took trips from LA down into Baja California, but few went all the way, as there were no roads and no gas in many long sections. There are still no gas stations between San Felipe and El Crucero – 245km – although there are one or two roadside stands with 55gal drums of gasoline: diesel is more difficult to find. Of course bikes are common doing the run today, on pavement and dirt, but in 1962 it was the wild west.