Livin' Easy

40th Anniversary of the BAJA 500
Afraidium Racing 2008

Another wild Baja race is officially in the record books, having lived up to all our expectations and hype.


John started things off right on Monday - the first day of pre-riding. We were almost at the end of a 100 mile ride and it was almost dusk. Scott's bike had broken down and we were still waiting on Mark's UTV and Brian to come in. I trailered my bike and Chris and I grabbed a truck to go pick up Scott, Brent, and the broken down bike. John and Torstin decided to finish the section with a 40 mile ride down to Hwy 3. About 15 miles into the ride, John came into a sandy corner tapped out in 5th gear and found a rock buried in the sand. Though he remembers nothing, the story we got from Torstin was that he came around the corner and saw nothing but a cloud of dust. He could barely make out John's bike and John laying on the ground. He locked it up and had to swerve to avoid running over John. He got off his bike and came over to help John. As he was surveying the scene, he could see where John's bike hit and flipped at least 3 times. John was still unconscious for the next 30 seconds or so. As he came to, he had no idea where he was or what was going on. Torstin made sure there were no life threatening injuries and helped John pull himself together. They then finished the section, a 25 mile ride to Hwy 3. At Hwy 3 they had the fortune of meeting up with some random friends that we had met at the Baja 1000 last year, (a whole other story in and of itself). They parked the bikes at our old friend's camp, and gave John a couple Hydrocodone to take the edge off the pain he was having. We all met up eventually - probably midnight and other than running out of fuel in two trucks with no gas stations open, and having Mark Sawyers shuttle out more fuel and Hydrocodone, the rest of the night was fairly uneventful.
We got back to camp around 3am Tuesday and took John to San Deigo the next morning. Turns out he broke his collar bone in 4 places and broke 3 ribs. Which makes his 25 mile ride after the crash all the more impressive.

The next few days around camp were a little less eventful with John sidelined and heavily drugged.


Wednesday we pre-ran another section along the coast. Probably the most scenic section of the race. Mark had to fix a few things on his UTV, and we got a flat in the Trino, but no real problems.


Thursday Torstin and I pre-rode from the start to RM 80. I had to stop and take a picture of the Bikini Rock. When we got back to camp we did some wrenching on bikes and the UTV and some testing out on the track. Torstin and Scott decided to race in John's place so they had to do a little cut and paste from John's bike to make Torstin's work.


Friday was Contingency and Tech. Quite the extravaganza. Once that was over with we went back to camp and got some rest.


Saturday was RACE DAY!

Mark and Phil won the UTV class and finished just minutes before the cut off.

Torstin and Scott finished just around dark. Both of them raced hard and wrecked hard a number of times.

Brian's bike had some trouble at the end in the dark and did not finish.

(Photos available for purchase at desertracephotos.com and tracksidephoto.com)
I don't know the rest of the riders stories but here is mine.
John started the race broken shoulder, ribs and all. He drove around the first corner where he almost ran over a lady and we switched out drivers. Brent jumped in and we took off. We were doing great and had passed all the UTVs in the class within the first 5 to 10 miles. We were on the tail of a Bug when he took a sharp right. We did not make the turn and ended up on top of a little hill. All the spectators were pointing down the hill to the road. We headed in the direction they were pointing. There was a cut bank from the hill to the road which didn't look too big - maybe a foot or two.... Well it was more like 3 feet. We got on the brakes a little which dipped the nose and as we went off the cut bank we rolled right onto our side. All the locals ran out and flipped us back over. We started it up and hit the gas only to find we had no steering. We got the car to an open spot, hopped out and found out that the steering column had sheered. We got on the sat phone and got John and the chase truck heading in our direction. Brent jumped on a quad with a local to head out to a main road to meet John. Somehow they missed each other, go figure that's how Baja seems to work. We got it welded up and since Brent was not back, TJ jumped in and I drove. The next 20 miles were great. We crossed Hwy 3 and were running through a rough section when out of no where a Trophy Truck literally runs over my left side. All I saw was 40 inch Trophy Truck tires in my drivers side window. Apparently he was tired of being behind us and probably had nerfed us a few times and figured since he was bigger he would just push us out of the way. Which he did with ease and proceeded to throw dirt on us as he left us in his dust. About 3 miles down the road we got a flat and had to stop to change it. That is when everything started to go south with the car. Once we changed the tire we took off and 300 yards down the road it quit. Just died. We started it up again and 200 yards later it quit. This happened a few times. We finally got a chase truck from another team to tow us to a safe spot. We worked on the car for a hour or so and thought we had it fixed, only for it to die a mile later. We hooked up with John and worked on the car for a few hours with no success. Turns out when we welded the steering we did not disconnect the batteries and fried the electrical charging system. So that was that. Too bad because the car was running strong.

Another great Baja Race. Thanks to everyone for all the hard work. We had great pit crews this year, which makes all the difference in the world.
Baja 1000 in November. Bring it on.