Road of Trials: Baja Motorcycle Adventure (Part 5 of 7)
Published July 20, 2021 · 8:43 · 70,855 views
About This Video
Part 5 of the Baja series. The Road of Trials. A couple of guys ride back down and one falls over in a McDonald's parking lot, punches a hole in his crank case. Leaking oil. Motorcycle shops closed on Sunday. They have to figure out how to fix this themselves. Then Scott drops his bike again and breaks the crank case. So they reassess the whole adventure.
Every adventure requires some suffering. When you're learning to ride a motorcycle, you drop it a lot. That's part of the learning. Five episodes in, the viewer has enough investment to feel the trials rather than just observe them. Van is building a seven-part argument that adventure is a technology for producing a specific kind of self-knowledge, and the trials are the mechanism. The suffering isn't cinematic; it's the accumulation of heat, mechanical failure, and the dawning recognition that the difficulty is not a bug.
Transcript
the lady in the i was telling the lady that we bailed on the baja trip and she's she's like yeah that's sad what happened down there we have friends that had a
house down there and they used to go there all the time and they were driving their truck and they got pulled over
by thieves or whatever at gunpoint got him out of the truck made them lie down on the side of the road covered them in a blanket they thought
they were gonna get shot and drove away and they never went back to baja they just abandoned their house it's just happening to everybody and she
said they'll shoot anybody they don't care it's they're just they see they'll just walk yeah and they don't care go after them
yeah but don't they understand that i'm jewish what happened purdue a couple guys
should ride back down there had an incident in a mcdonald's parking lot sunday quickly what happened he fell over and he punched a hole in his crank case
it's leaking oil we're screwed scott has to go home i'm going in for an egg mcmuffin it's sunday and all of
uh motorcycle shops are closed on sunday so we have to figure out how to fix this ourselves purdue has a really good plan
i mean i have uh springs and i said off-road i'm astonished that i packed that
so we matt plugged it up with this stuff scott dropped his bike again scott dropped his bike again and broke the crank case so we gotta go pick his
bike up and we're gonna reassess the whole adventure every adventure requires some suffering when you're learning to ride a
motorcycle you drop it a lot it's part of the learning
the end of the road baby gotta get it ready for you hold on all right matt just tell us what happened i forgot to shoot it
scott fell over again and this time we're not in a mcdonald's so i can't even get a milkshake yeah okay so basically the thing started
spraying oil all over the place and uh this is the oil slick all right so let me show you the problem
when you drop the bike this bashes into this [Music] smashes a hole sam has dropped his bike excuse me just leave it there it's not your fault he lost shoe
well it's better than when it came out that's the guard matt this is not stop thought matt invented this
to keep his pedal from pushing up keeping the lever from going through move the lever down and it's easy to
shift it's just spike's been scared not worried about scott
scott is my oldest friend we'd been friends for five years already
by the time this photo was taken dressed up as nerds from revenge of the nerds which uh came out on video that year
1985 he's the kind of friend who when invited on a motorcycle trip reserves half of his vacation time for
it gets himself a motorcycle license then buys a brand new motorcycle and flies across the country
this trip is more or less his first ride ever [Music] there's a canyon watch and the whole trail is through the canyons yeah it looks really cool there was a i saw the road you saw the road right to get to it
down there that's it yeah oh but i'm talking about the entrance to
that yeah so this is scott's first day of uh riding a motorcycle and uh he's about to ride through this which looks very very
far so i fell yes in the water as long as he doesn't lay it down if that bike stalls
it'll be fine trying to get started in there isn't the pipe up high on that bike yeah but if he lays it down it's going up the
pipe yeah oh yeah he's going into the woods this kid is entertainment entertainment
brother dude what do you think oh it's awesome it's all united your knees like you have to do this you have to you need one of spaghetti western and you went straight through
hardest part hardest motorcycle riding i've ever done in my life just that just a second
[Music] ugh this is what i remember best from this trip of a dozen years ago the romance of it we came upon two strangers fellow adventurers stranded with a dead battery in the
middle of the desert 11 miles away from electricity
[Music] all right so josh has this amazing 66 jeep what is this joshua comanche it's uh glady jeep gladiator
and he needs a jump start we're gonna see if we can jump it with our car i mean with our motorcycles so josh needs a jump i can i hold this
safely in my hand it's the only way we can get the leads on okay i've got it yeah you're fine i got it all right don't touch the bike because you're wet
nah that's fine dude all right where's your hot right there
[Music] i'm gonna take some stuff i'll tell you what you really think it won't just drain his battery well he should you might you should definitely have your bike on
bro but we can jumpstart his from yours for sure right but but you'll get more crank and answer put on
this thing [Applause] what happened uh his truck's battery was dead and we connected it to the bike and it started right up right up baby
why did the truck die because we were watching movies all night we're watching the wires yeah yeah which
season season four cool josh offered us his last two beers
i declined because i'm a gentleman but this guy rudely i accept well how did i end up with this ladies [Applause] first you
Products & Tools Mentioned
- McDonald's mentions — stopping at McDonald's during Baja trip
- 1966 Jeep Gladiator mentions — vehicle seen during Baja journey
Films & Media Referenced
- David Simon — Season 4 referenced, about the education system