To Be Called “Racer”: It’s the highest honor, and the Baja 1000 finds them.
ESPN Magazine online, November 25, 2008
In motorsports, there is one word above all others that exemplifies what our twisted metal, burning rubber, death-defying pursuit is all about. The term is never used lightly and bestowed upon only those have earned the right to wear it.
Racer.
And we’re back! About 12 hours from Ensenada to Felton. 1102 is safely ensconced on the trailer in the front yard. We’ll be needing a couple of new fenders, a rebuilt transmission, a short throw reverse lock out shifter and some other bits and bobs, but we should be back in business in short order.
Here’s a gallery of photos from Contingency Row on Thursday and the race on Friday. More to come.
We did our team briefing this morning with Seth, our logistics guy taking the lead. He mapped out fuel stops, who’s riding with whom, and a bajillion other details that only a guy like he could conceive, remember and then articulate to the rest of us sitting in plastic chairs in the barnyard.
Genas fabbed a new light bar for us and welded the mounts in place last night. Mike Taylor painted it this morning and a whole bunch of folks pitched in to install and rewire the lights after we got to our base of operations in Ensenada this afternoon.
We breezed through team registration this evening but encountered a hiccup with fuel distribution afterward. Terri with Sunoco has been great, and we’re meeting with Carlos of Baja Pits to iron out the rest of the details tomorrow morning. Richard and Cary get in line for roll cage inspection at oh dark early tomorrow, even though it only opens at 10 a.m.
Tomorrow we have our booth on Contingency Row with Norma Angelica Ramirez of the Asociacion Mexicana de Diabetes en Baja California, AC. We’ll be handing out the crayons and hero cards with the warning signs of diabetes printed on the back and literature provided by Norma.
Here’s a gallery of photos from last night’s work and this morning’s preparations. And, lastly, here’s a quick video of everyone hangout out at / working at Eric’s Tijuana workshop.
PS: Note to families and friends: Feel free to contact me, Roxanne Graham, at info@desertdingo.com, with your messages for the team or for anything when the race starts. I’ll post updates to the blog as I receive them once the Desert Dingos are on the road.
Shawn and I (again, mostly Shawn) got started putting on sponsor decals and our numbers tonight. We needed to do some touch up on the paint, so we’ll finish it off tomorrow, after Richard and I return from Auburn with the trailer.
Two days to Mexico and counting. Photos of Shawn’s handiwork here.
Ok, it’s only one quote in a tremendously cool article written by Judy Smith, a veteran Baja racer and longtime writer for Hot VWs. A good number of the photos were shot by Trackside Photo, which got the great shot of us catching air at last year’s Baja 1000. They even mentioned our fundraising for World Diabetes Day. Click here or on the image to download a PDF of the article.