Another Baja race is in the books and once again the adventure and drama of racing in Baja has exceeded my expectations. Each time we head down for a race, I have to admit, there is a part of me that is scared.... but not of crossing the boarder, the local police, Federalies, kidnappings, drug murders, and this year "the swine flue",...... I am scared that in some way Baja has changed and the adventure of Baja will have been lost this time. Some my call the Americanization of Baja's bigger city's progression... but I think the more that Baja develops the further away from Baja it becomes. As for now the the adventure and drama of Baja is alive and well and happens whether you want it to or not.... and I wouldn't have it any other way.
The trip started off on the wrong foot as it always does. We were late getting out of Flagstaff. So we didnt get to the outskirts of San Diego till 4am. We needed some sleep so we crashed on the side of the road for a couple hours and were back on the road at 6am with a long day ahead.
We got to Estero Beach, our regular spot in Ensenada, around 10am loaded up the bikes into Johns truck and headed out for 100+ mile day on the bikes.
I love the way the streets, lined with shops and taco stands, that lead to our camping spot at Estero Beach have become like a second home. I feel as comfortable there, if not more so, then in downtown Flag where I have spent most of my life.
At the gas station on the corner the jokes and conversation with the attendants from the last trip pick up right where they left off......
.....and so does the riding. One of my favorite parts of the entire trip is kicking the bike over and heading out on the first leg of a long week of riding. A moment I've been waiting for for the last 6 months. This day we headed out from Heroes de la Independencia at RM 90.... up and over the Summit, which was a hot, rough and slow ride.
40 to 50 miles from the summit you find yourself in a dry lake bed. For as slow and rough as the summit is, the lake bed is equally as fast and smooth. We met up with the pit crew here and got some much needed gas and water.
John loves to ride fast.... and a fast bike into a deep unseen silt bed ..... equals a wobly departure from your bike and a huge cloud of dust.
I was riding behind him and I saw this column, of what appeared to me to be smoke, around the corner. Down here I would expect to find a random car on fire or a race car smoking out in the middle of the desert. As I came around the corner for a better view, I saw that it was just John and his giant cloud of silt. So I did what any good friend would do. I kept my distance and let the dust settle before moving in for pictures. He had silt in his sinuses for the next week.
We came into our second stop of the day at Burrego Junction around 6pm. The last 10 miles before getting to the junction are long and miserable and full of nothing but big whoops.
I spent a good 10min pouring cold ice water from the cooler over myself to cool down a little. It had been a long and hot day - 110 miles so far.
We jumped back on the bikes as the sun set and knocked out another 20 miles that paralleled the road before calling it a day. All in all a great day of riding in Baja... on 2 hours of sleep non-the-less. We made it back to camp around 10pm and called it a day..... after a pile of tacos of course.
Had a great nights sleep - the cool coastal air, and a comfy bed in the back of the box van. Woke up around 9:30 or 10am and packed up for another day of riding.
Today we were headed from San Matias to Valle de la Trinidad then over to the coast and up to Santo Tomas. We got a late start on the day because of sleeping in, but if every thing goes right we should be to Santo Tomas before dark....... well welcome to Baja. We headed out of San Matias with 4 riders John, Myself, Bryan, and Jo. Jo was going to ride 25 miles with us to Valle T then jump in the truck and meet us in Santo Tomas, since he was the only one who had driven the route before. Well as John and I sat on the hill refueling with the chase truck 25 miles from where we stared, Jo flew by without as much as a glance in our direction.... in it to win. We figured he would realize his mistake and turn around...... we were wrong. He was gone and not coming back. John topped off with fuel set out to catch him and I shortly followed with Travis and Bryan behind me. I found John 10 miles later at a junction in the course. No Joey. We waited for Bryan and Travis. Travis had to ride back to the truck and drive to Santo Tomas. John, Bryan and I continued on. 30 some miles later we were at Hwy 1 the main route down the pacific coast. No Joey. At this point we are beginning to wonder what happened. We talk and come to the conclusion that he either doubled back on a different route and is with the chase truck, or he wrecked far enough off the side of the course in the first 10 miles that no one could see him. We decided to head into San Vecente and get some gas and then continue on to meet up with the chase truck and hopefully Joey. Well as luck would have it on our way into town who do we find on the side of the road helmet off & out of gas? Jo. He had turned his 25 mile ride into a 7o mile sprint and we declared him the winner of the pre-ride. He had rode fast and had stopped to wait for no one and nothing. He never really explained how he missed us on the hill, or how 25 miles turned into 70, or why he never stoped to wait for Bryan who was behind him at the start, but we had bigger fish to fry, we needed to make it to Santo Tomas before dark and only had an hour to do it. We gassed up and hit the course. I told John to keep track of Jo and ride as fast as they could since they had no lights. Bryan and I would be behind them and we had head lights. We let them get ahead and then took off. For the rest of the ride I was on it trying to catch them before dark. I figured they were doing good as well because I never caught them. I made it to the gas station in Santo Tomas around 9pm an hour or so after dark... and guess who was there waiting for me... no one. No John, no chase truck, no other riders... no one. I waited for a while and Bryan eventually showed up. He said he had stopped about half way through the ride in the little town Erenderia and jumped on the paved road and road to Santo Tomas on the Hwy. Still no Jo or John and it was well past dark. I figured I must have got past them somewhere on the course. I filled up my bike with gas and thought about doubling back on the course to find them.
I have been coming to this section of the Baja coast for the last 7 or 8 years and know it better than any other part of Baja... and any one who has heard my stories of Baja knows I frequent a little hostel in Erenderia call Coyote Cals. John knew this as well. I figured if I was him and had no light on my bike and was stuck on the coast at night I would just go to Coyote Cals and pay the $15 for a comfy bed, sit by the fire, talk with the other travelers, have a warm shower, good nights sleep, free pancakes in the morning and ride back to ensenada the next day in the light. Sounds like a good time to me. So I find the only store open and ask them if they have a phone number for Coyote Cals. The old man behind the counter gave me a funny look and said no. I left and came back a couple min. later and continued questioning him about Coyote Cals. Some how I managed to convey, in my broken spanish, that Coyote Cals was a motel of sorts in Erenderia, and not a guy who smuggled illegals across the boarder. He made a couple phone calls to Pedro and a couple other friends and eventually got the phone number for me. I made the call and Rick the owner picked up. "Hey Rick, this is Jess I have stayed at your place the last 7 or 8 years and am looking for a couple friends." "Hey Jess they are here sitting by the road waiting for you to ride by." "Tell them I will be there to pick them up shortly." As I was on the phone the chase truck showed up and we loaded up and headed to Coyote Cals. Turns out they had gotton lost in the first couple miles of the ride. They saw me ride by on the course and tried to catch me but I was on a mission to catch them and that was that. They caught up to Bryan just before Erenderia and waited for him in town so they would have a light but as you recall Bryan went to the Hwy instead of to the town so they never saw him again. Like always Baja seems to have a way of working things out as long every one keeps a cool head and makes good decisions. We got in a little late that night 1 or 2am and turned in for the night.... that is after stoping at the taco stand and eating a pile of tacos.
Another late start after a long night but that seems to be the theme for the trip. John wanted to Run the car today and shake it down a little. We started at Ojos Negro RM 40 and were only headed to RM 100 Heroes de la Impendencia.
Fun section with a little bit of everything fast open roads to a sandy wash then some rough hill climbs and rocky technical stuff and back to fast sandy banked turns.
In the sandy banked turns about 5 miles from the road I come across John out of the car and flagging me down. He says that he had busted a front shock and that I needed to find the chase truck and send them in to pick up the car. He was going to wait for Travis to come through and jump on his bike. I sent the truck back to pick up the car and John met up with me at the road on Travis's bike and we road the Hwy back to Ensenada to make calls and get a new shock on its way. Bryan, Jo, and Travis got the car loaded without any problems and met us at the taco shop around 8pm for a pile of a tacos and we called it an early night.
The next couple days were spent working on the car.......... which I am not going to get into. Lets just say we did alot more work than we needed. If it aint broke don't try to fix it.......John!
By Friday afternoon we had the car prepped and things were looking good.
Robby Gordon stopped by and decided to show us what a real car could do.
Race Day
Pit #2 Rm 77 All is well. Car is running good and John and Bryan are 4 to 5 min in front of the next car in our class. We check out the car and send him on his way.
5 min later we get a call from Bryan over the radio. They blew a front shock 4 miles in on the course. Torsten, Jesse and I are in the box van and grab the old shock that John tore up a couple days earlier. We grab the box full of new shock parts that Brent had brought and started pulling the old shock apart. We replace the damaged parts and put new seals in the old shock. I suited up and pulled out old blue, thats my bike. We took a role of duck tape and taped the freshly refurbished King shock to my back and I headed down the course to meet up with the broken down car.
It took an hour or so but we replaced the shock and they were on their way once again.
They had a little trouble up and over the summit. The rough road had only gotten worse since we road it and they had lost 2 rear tires. We sent the chase truck to meet them at the dry lake bed with extra tires. In the mean time they put on the spare tire and a Class 1 car was nice enough to let them borrow another tire to get the car into the next pit. Notice the large rear driver side tire.
John and Bryan then met up with Johns old friend Mr. Silt bed, and he was up to his same old tricks. They got stuck there and burnt up the clutch. Luckily they had the spare clutch plates and replaced the burnt ones and were on their way once again.
They pulled up to Burrego Junction around midnight and Torsten and I jumped in. Due to all the problems they had covered the first 200 miles in 13 hours. Torsten and I only had 7 hours to take it the remainder of the 232 miles.
We made good time the first 100 miles. We had made it through two tough sections and all we had in front of us was 60 mile of my favorite section, and the part of the course I know the best... the coastal road to Santo Tomas. At Santo Tomas I would turn the car back over to John and he would take it in to the finish in Ensenada. But that would be way too easy for a Baja race. We were on a good graded road and I was driving fast trying to make up time. Around RM 307 we come around a sweeping left corner at 40mph. As I straightened out the car I feel a woble-de-woble in the front end. I tell Tor that I think we have a flat and started to slow down and pull to the right. All of the sudden the wheels turn hard right and I have no control of the car... no big deal except we are headed for a 30 to 40 foot embankment that goes almost straight down into a wash. I have one of those slow motion moments in my head of the car rolling numerous times and coming to rest at the bottom of this wash. I lock up the brakes, and since the passenger tires are already over the edge, the front end dives and digs into shoulder of the road that we are straddling. We come to rest leaning heavily to the passenger side. Tor jumps out and checks out the damage. No flats.
The two bolts in the middle of the picture that have the little holes in them...... They hold the tie rods to the steering box and they both had sheered off, allowing the wheels to go wherever they wanted to go, and they wanted to go over the cliff. It was an interesting few seconds and I wouldn't expect anything less. It was 2:30 when this happened. We got on the phone and called the chase truck told them to grab some bolts and come give us a hand. At the least we needed to get towed up the embankment and back onto the course. We pulled the limiting strap bolts and tried to make them work but no luck. The truck got there around 3:30am and by 4am we had the car back on the road. We didnt have the right tools to pull out the sheered bolts to put in the new ones. The box van with the right tools was still and hour out. We needed to be at the finish line by 7am. By the time the box van got there it would be 5am and we would have 2 hours to fix the car and take it 130 miles to the finish. We had run out of time. We loaded the car on the trailer and stumbled our way back to Ensenada. Our race was over.
Despite our broken shock, flat tires, getting stuck, burned up clutch, sheered bolts, almost rolling the car, 24 hrs of no sleep, and not finishing, a good time was had by all. We had gotten what we came for. An adventure that will pacify us for the next 6 months until we come down again..... oh and tacos.
Check out the article on Afraidium Racing the Baja 1000 '08 in Off Road Magazine written by our friend Jay.
One more.
Matt, Mike, Marc, Torsten, and I set out from Flagstaff on Sunday around noon. Mike introduced us to Lenny Burger, in Glendale (which I highly recommend for piling on calories before a long week of riding). Around Yuma we had a minor set back.... we ran out of gas. I was about to jump on the bike and head down the Hwy to the nearest gas station when.......
...we woke up early and headed across the border. Made a few wrong turns and after a much needed potty stop we were on our way to Ojos Negros to start the day.
Unloading the bikes and getting ready for the first ride of the trip is one of my favorite parts of the trip. All the months of waiting and weeks of anticipation are finally over.
