road trip post for saturday - Tijuana

With my passport safely in hand, my buddy Mark and me were free to take a quick trip from LA down to Tijuana - as soon as he was done with rehearsal. I met him at about 1:30, and he let me take his Kawasaki KZ 1000 for a spin around the block before we headed south.
The KZ is a really cool bike. Totally different from what I'm used to. It's wider, lower, bigger, and it's what the blues brothers would ride if they had motorcycles. It's an old police bike and still has the switches for the lights and sirens.

Mark led the way in lane-splitting LA style, and we made it across the border in a little over 2 hours. In spite of the google map directions, which didn't take a big wall that separates our two countries into account.

I think this shot is funny and also a little sad.
This might be even sadder. Spiderman is now shilling for some Tijuana club. Oh Spidey, why? (That's an actual person in that costume crawling around on a little scaffold 3 floors above the street.)
They had boxing in the street, and donkeys painted to look like zebras. One guy told us they had everything we wanted. There was another guy that highly recommended a massage parlor. Some sort of walk-in massage therapy clinic I suppose. I sure could have used a massage after that ride, but we had too much to see, and not enough time.

We got some really great tacos. I had a coke that reminded me of summers at Grandma and Grandpa's place when I was a kid. That must have been before they started sweetening it with corn in the US. And, I had a real Cuban cigar (after turning down a dozen "real" Cuban cigars).
And, a great new sticker for the collection. Really ties the whole thing together don't you think?

Being on motorcycles probably saved us at least a couple of hours. We got to sneak up to the front of the line on the way out of Tijuana, while dodging people selling everything from food to ceramic turtles to puppies, and it only took about 15 min to get through the line and back to the US of A.