Hey, don't laugh...I had one of those. It was my first geared bike, probably came from the Ft. Belvior PX in 1989. To ~12-year-old me, that crank cover and graywall tires were about as cool as the pop-up headlights on a Pontiac Fiero. (it was the late 80's after all)
Rode my entire Boy Scout Cycling Merit Badge (250 miles) on it; learned how to make proper use of 2x5 gears; added a rack and fat tires to it, and started klunkering in the woods.
Sometime in early 1992 or so, I was at my LBS, looking in to fitting it with cage pedals with toe clips and 'Smoke' MTB tires, when the shop guys stuck me on a Giant Iguana and told me to take it around the loop behind the shopping center; and my my first N+1 was hatched.
Sadly, my BAJA is no longer with us; I crashed pretty heavily into a roadside culvert (in the rain) at the 1993 Boy Scout Jamboree. The forks collapsed almost to the downtube, and the top tube was bent up like an omafiets.
We gave the bike a Viking funeral by tossing it into a bonfire on one of the last nights of the encampment.