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hills, if the rear tire started to break loose it would just gear up until it quit spinning. It was a great concept, but it was prob- ably 60 pounds heavier than other bikes of that era, and that extra weight would wear on you." The Baja 1000 first ran in 1967 and quickly became one of the best-known off-road races in the world. Over the years, Bishop became a legend in the race for competing in every Baja 1000 from its start in 1967 through the early 2000s. His best result in the race was overall runner-up in 1972 with co-rider Don Bohan- non. The two of them rode a highly modified Suzuki TM400. "In the early days of Baja, it was just you and a co-rider," Bishops explains, as he shows a photo of himself in an early race wearing a military canteen, black leather riding pants and lineman boots. "The event has become so complex that in the 2001 race, our team consisted of 37 crew members and 13 support vehicles, along with all the GPS systems and high-tech communications gear. It's really something." By the 2000s, the average speed of the race nearly dou- bled from the time Bishop first raced Baja in the 1960s. Bishop described in vivid detail the tricks your mind would play on you after 14 hours on the bike riding at night. "You would start to hallucinate from fatigue," he said. "Cactus looked like they were moving, and you began hoping that the boulders, which started look- ing like houses, were the final checkpoint." During his years of off-road racing, Bishop became a self- taught electrical engineer of sorts and began developing more powerful lighting for his motorcycles. He was the first to figure out how to power halogen lights on his bikes. He earned such a reputation for his electri- cal and lighting systems that he worked for several factories over the years supplying them with bright and reliable lighting for high-speed racing in the dark desert. In the early 1980s, Bishop opened his own motorcycle shop, Ron Bishop Motorcycles, dealing exclusively in off-road motorcycles. Through his shop, Bishop worked with many of the leading off-road and moto- cross riders of the greater San Diego area from the 1980s to present day. The shop walls are adorned with trophies, photo- graphs and vintage motorcycle parts, representing neatly 50 years of off-road racing his- tory. It's a place where off-road legends like Scot Harden, Tim Morton, Jimmy Lewis or Larry Roeseler might stop in to shoot the breeze. If you're ever in the San Diego area and want to meet a living legend, you might want to visit. CN This Archives edition is reprinted from the September 23, 2009, issue of Cycle News. CN has hundreds of past Archives editions in our files, too many destined to be archives themselves. So, to prevent that from happening, in the future, we will be revisiting past Archives articles while still planning to keep fresh ones coming down the road. -Editor CN III ARCHIVES P124 Subscribe to nearly 50 years of Cycle News Archive issues: www.CycleNews.com/Archives "You would start to hallucinate from fatigue. Cactus looked like they were moving, and you began hoping that the boulders, which started looking like houses, were the final checkpoint."