2025 San Miguel to Guatemala by Moto
Tuesday, February 18th to March 5th – 16 Days
This year, our big moto trip was to be Guatemala, in search of adventures, volcanoes, and Guatemalan culture. We limited ourselves to four riders to keep things simple.
Neil Parker: Neil is a resident of San Miguel de Allende and Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. Neil is 56 years old and started riding at 30 years old when he switched from 4-wheel money pits to 2-wheel money pits. When living in Canada, he raced a 430 horsepower turbo charged Suzuki Hayabusa, with his best time of 8.52@170 mph. He presently has a KTM 890 Adventurer R, KTM 390 Adventure and a big-ass BMW R1300GS. When he retires, he has dreams of creating a riding directory of Mexico. He’s good to have on as long as he’s got a large screen TV on his 890 for navigation.
Rick Crandell: Rick lives the retired life in Las Vegas. His brother Ron and I used to have a motorcycle race team called Team Stupid in our teen years. We were inseparable friends in those years, racing every weekend possible. I only knew Rick as Ron’s older brother, and being older, a guy who could buy us beer. He and Ron were planning on coming to Mexico so we could ride together. Tragically, Ron died last September. I casually mentioned that Rick could still come and ride. He needed no encouragement.
Rick has a unique habit of being admitted to hospitals in seven countries, with the majority of these admissions being motorcycle-related: India, Nepal, Ecuador, Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia, and Peru. I believe we were very fortunate he didn’t add Mexico and Guatemala on our trip, especially since three days after his return to the USA, he went in for emergency gallbladder surgery. Rick rode my BMW F700SG
Robert Bouffard: Bob lives in the San Francisco Bay area and met Randy many years ago via a mutual motorcycling buddy when Randy was invited to attend an annual moto ride, "The Pinecrest Ride", which traverses the Sierra Nevada mountains in northern California. This year will mark the 42 running of this epic event. Bob and Randy quickly became good friends and have remained so ever since. Bob is an experienced rider with multiple adventure tours around the world; Northern India, Thailand, Colombia, Mexico, and Tibet, to name a few. Bob also has a spectacular sense of hair style and can be heard saying on any given day, "How's my hair?". When Randy moved to Mexico, Bob vowed to visit him, and in 2019, he joined Randy for a most enjoyable trip through the Sierra Gorda mountains. When Bob found out about Randy's plan to ride to Guatemala in 2025, he could not resist, and before you knew it, he was on a plane to San Miguel, Randy's base of operations.
From left to right: Neil, Bob, Randy & Rick, with the Oaxacan mountains as a backdrop.
