Martin Gastanaga

Previous Post Part 1

Going to Baja for the first time can be a bit intimidating, you hear all these tales of banditos, corrupt cops, kidnapping and people just disappearing. I am here to tell you some of it is true and I have experiences to prove it. (More to come in another post) Having been a Boy Scout and a pretty avid adventurer, I figured being properly prepared was the next step in this adventure from a safety perspective since the bike was ready for the trip, now I needed to pack the bags.

Many would think packing your bags is an easy thing to do, unfortunately this adventure made it much more difficult since we were traveling with no support vehicle. This meant that we needed to carry everything we wanted on our bikes or on our backs for 10 days. There are many solutions out there for putting bags on your bike. I have owned two BMW GS’s which are well knowing for the carrying capacity but when it comes to a dirt bike, I prefer to keep it as light as I can. The terrain that you travel on a dirt bike is much rougher, regularly has steep angels, cliffs and rocks so being nimble and light is wise.

While on the trip I saw many people on bikes, some had bags mounted to their bikes and most of the time they were fussing with them, things broke through the material and they lost items or the bags just kept falling off. For this trip I had one bag that was mounted to my bike and a waist tool belt for all of my tools for repair and maintenance of the bike. On the bike I used a bag that mounts to the fender and is small that can be tightened very securely to the bike. In the bag I put 3 tire wrenches, 4 tube patch kits, extra glue, an extra front tube and JB weld. There was room for more but I don’t suggest putting much else in it.

The second bag I had was a waist tool belt, which was nothing but motorcycle repair equipment/tools. In the bag, I had the following items:

Flash Light
Tow Strap
2 Screw Drivers
Allen Wrenches various sizes
Spark Plug + Spark Plug Wrench
Pliers
Electrical Wire
Bailing/Safety Wire
Quick Steel
Rags
Sand Paper
Spare Hardware/Nuts/Bolts/Medium Hose Clamp/Zip Ties
Tire/Air Pump
Leatherman Multi-tool
Extra hand guard bracket mount
24 mm socket
22 mm socket
19 mm socket
17 mm socket
14 mm socket
13 mm socket
12 mm socket
12 mm socket
10 mm socket
10 mm socket
8 mm socket
7 mm socket
6 mm socket
12 mm wrench
11 mm wrench
10 mm wrench
9 mm wrench
8 mm wrench
7 mm wrench
6 mm wrench
1/2 inch breaker bar
1/2 inch to 1/4 inch fitting

Then there are a few other items that I had on the bike as well for repair and maintenance, WD 40 and air filter oil. All of these items, I kept inside in the air box compartment. Lastly, I had a tool for doing oil changes without having to remove my skid plate called a man funnel which I zip tied to the fender bag.

All together I suspect that the two bags weighed some where around 15-18 pounds but if you break down in the middle of no where it is pretty tough to do something about it if you do not have the tools to fix it so the added weight was worth it.

Next blog post I will talk about my back pack and all the items I had within it.