Day 2...the race begins
The morning came way way too early for me but alas the excitement got me going. The rigs were packed and the Toyota and Superduty hauling the trailer headed out to get ahead of the racers. I stayed to capture the start and make sure we got started
Here is our pair for Race Day 1, Todd & Nick. They would have the most drama but kept it cool and did a great job.
The vehicles all lined up by the Bull Ring in Mexicali for a ceremonial start that I would tell anyone is worth going to see. Matter of fact this event is great for specators as you can get ahead of the racers at many places each day and park very near the racecourse.
This 71 Burb by BFI racing put some evil thoughts in my head and they were super cool people to get to know throughout the event.
This 40 series Cruiser with Sean & Rhonda on board was a hoot to watch each day and they really had the right attitude about the Mexican 1000...all fun all the time.
Even being as I am a Chevy guy you gotta love the Bronco lineup that was there. A nice variety of race rigs in varying states of mods from fairly stock to all out crazy.
And before long we got the thumbs up and Team Baja Bronco was on the throttle.
After that is was into the old Burb for Gary & me and off to San Felipe we went. This was to be where we would see the race truck go by, get some lunch and catch them again later in the day. At least that was the plan.
While pulling into a Pemex in San Felipe I hear Todd's voice over the radio. That freaked me out as he should have been driving and not talking. It seemed there had been a bit of an issue involving laying the Bronco on it's side which caused a fuel pump problem. Lucky for us the "Checkers" group of guys were on the same radio freq and knew right where Todd was at and proceeded to run their Ford Raptors hard to get there. We did a bit of dashing around to meet up with the SuperDuty that had the spare fuel pump and then Gary & I got to drive backwards on the racecourse. That was a bit more fun than I had planned on!
After a while the race rig was repaired and under way. I hope Todd will chime in with more of this story and I have some great video to post also.
Being the tech guy who had never really used a GoPro (thanks UPR for the loaner) meant we got some interesting footage! And I got more shots like this than I wanted...but don't worry I am working hard to edit it up and post it as part of this report.
The rest of the day was much less eventful and saw us fly down the very nice new highway that almost reaches Gonzaga Bay, past Coco's Corner and back to Mex 1 were we just caught the Bronco doing it first Co-driver change before heading into Bahia de Los Angles.
Now I have this hard and fast rule about never driving at night in Mexico. There are cows, old rigs, and all kinds of other very interesting things on the roads and with the way Mexican highways pretty much don't have shoulders it can be way dangerous. But of course rules are meant to be broken and this trip saw way too much night driving for my nerves.
We did catch up to the rest of the team in Bahia de LA and had some killer tacos before hitting the sack at Las Ventas for the night.
Even with all the drama of the crash, fuel pump issues, lack of logistics, trouble finding our hotel and everything is I have to say everyone was having fun and I just knew this was the right crew for our Baja adventure.
