There are few weeks that we look forward to as much as the week that we get to cover the El Diablo Run. Don't tell the boss, but it is almost like a vacation. Throw some clean socks and skivvies in a backpack with a toothbrush and an assortment of handtools, some zip ties, duct tape, and a tire patch kit, and you are ready for the road. Get out there with your buddies and ride south into Mexico. The first leg is on the Gulf of California side all the way down to San Felipe-and that's where it happens. You have one day and two nights to relax, drink beer on the beach, and forget about civilization. No crowds, no traffic, no lines waiting to get into restaurants, no vendors selling cheap Chinese leather vests, none of the stuff you can expect to find at typical bike weeks. In fact there isn't anything typical about the El Diablo Run.
None of the typical $80,000 choppers built by welders who think they are rock stars, no bikes on trailers unless they are too broken to continue, and nobody thinks they are any better than the next guy on the road. Even the real rock stars who go on the El Diablo Run sleep in the palapas and drink beer by the fire rings like the rest of us. The thing that makes this run in particular so cool is that it is a level playing field and everybody that goes is just another guy on a bike. A lot of the guys get together and put all of their resources together and con a buddy into driving a chase truck with spare parts, tools, and lots of fuel cans because once you cross into the deserts of Mexico, fuel stations are kind of sparse.
This year, unfortunately, was the last El Diablo Run for a while because of the unrest south of the border. Bullets kill people just as dead in Mexico as they do up here in the U.S.A., and there are plenty of them flying around down there right now. The guys who promote the El Diablo Run decided to call things off until the Mexican government gets the violence under control.So until the El Diablo Run starts again, you'll just have to relive past years through photos and all the memories. We decided to include a message from the four guys who started this annual pilgrimage to Mexico as a side bar. Enjoy! SC