Motoclubes Unidos de Jalisco

[Green RT]

I don't usually ride with groups larger than two bikes including mine, i.e. hardly ever with more than one person. But this afternoon, I went for a loop in and around Guadalajara, Mexico with about 500 of my closest friends. It is an annual bike tour that starts in the middle of the city and does a loop of about 25 km. One of the reasons I don't usually ride in groups is safety. I feel that keeping track of the others in the group just adds one more element of risk and I am not keen enough on groups to want to add it.

This group felt pretty safe. I only got above 2nd gear once or twice in the whole loop. There was traffic control at every intersection so we never had to stop for cross traffic. And almost everyone was happy to just cruise along staying in line and maintaining decent spacing. I only saw a few bikes that felt the need to zip through the crowd weaving between the bikes.

 

It was a gray cloudy day with mild temperatures. I will attach a short video of the start, but it doesn't really give a sense of the number of bikes. They filled a wide avenue for about three or four blocks. Not many wearing masks, but everyone had a helmet. There is a helmet law in Mexico. It is not enforced and you often see people ignoring it,  but not today. There were bikes of about every imaginable type, with nothing particularly dominating. To mention just a few that I remember: one Gold Wing with a one wheel trailer, one trike with a VW engine, several Victories, a few scooters, one with ape-hanger bars, two BMWs besides mine, lots of Harleys, Hondas, Kawasakis, Yamahas and Suzukis, sport bikes and full dressers, lots of Italikas and Pulsars (inexpensive bikes popular here and mostly used for transportation or work, not recreation), mostly solo male riders but a lot of women passengers and a few riding their own bikes.

 

It was the first time I have been to this particular event, and would probably do it again. It happens the first weekend in December every year apparently. It is a little surprising the government allowed it. They have canceled many of the group activities that normally take place. Mexico is not seeing the increase that the US and Europe seem to be seeing in Covid cases, but the numbers don't decline either. The surprising Covid statistic for Mexico is the high mortality rate, about 10%. I don't know if that is just because they are missing a lot of the cases so the count of people dying from it appears to be a bigger percentage of the total number of cases, but for whatever reason it is higher than elsewhere.

Edited December 7, 2020 by Green RT

[TEWKS]

Wow, seems like your BMW would have been an attention getter with the brand being so few in numbers. 

[Hosstage]

Looks like a fun diversion from world events!

[Green RT]

Normally it is, an attention getter that is. But there were so many different types in this group that no one stood out much.