Desert Dingo Racing

Category: Diabetes

  • How to simulate being chased by a helicopter

    We’ve scheduled a photo shoot for the car for April 27 at the Bonny Doon Airport. The managers are great folks and, like us, very community oriented. Brooks Institute-trained Santa Cruz photographer Jeff Luhn will do the photography. Larry, of Larry’s Electric, is bringing his boom truck. Why a boom truck, you might ask? Well, we want to simulate a photo of the car being photographed from a helicopter. Something like this, which I got a screen capture from “Dust to Glory”

    To recreate this shot on an airport runway, Jeff says we need 25 pounds of flour. I’m guessing whole wheat.

    (The above shot is of Eric Solorzano’s car, actually being chased by a helicopter).

    We’ll be inviting the airport neighbors to come out and I should have some World Diabetes Day items to give out. If there’s time we hope to give some folks a ride in the car.

    The photo will be used on hero cards that we’ll be printing. They’ll have the photo on the front and the warning signs of diabetes on the back. Our first run will be in English, but in advance of the Baja 1000, we’ll also do a print run in Spanish. We’ll be autographing these and giving them out to fans.

    We’re also working with the International Diabetes Federation on an event in the Bay Area in early June. More on that once we firm up a few details.

  • Post race update

    Richard and Skid take a well-deserved break.

    This report from Seth (who also sent the photos):

    Our valiant attempt to conquer the Baja 250 came to an end at Race Mile 72. In those 72 miles, we suffered 3 (three) flat tires, which when added to the two on Friday, were 2 more than we could handle.

    Many of you know that we race to raise awareness of diabetes. That said, we decided to have our two diabetic team member start this race. Skid and Richard left the start line at just after 11 a.m. The first flat tire occured near race mile 5 (!). After a quick tire change, they were off again. At Mile 22, they were joined by Chase Captain Seth. There, they replaced the spare wheel with spare #2, performed a helmet swap, fixed the radio, and pulled the damaged bumper (from an early close-encounter with a creosote tree).

    Off again, the course claimed tire #3 at Race Mile 46. The decision was made to run the car with the flat, and this they did admirably. And, at Race Mile 55, another tire went flat.

    Richard and Skid carried 1101 all the way to Race Mile 72 with all tires on the left side of the vehicle flat. They finally stopped because they could not see through the smoke coming from the flat tires.

    We chased them for 2 hours, and loaded 1101 onto the trailer. No racer wants to see the trailer…I think they were hoping we might have some more extra wheels and tires, but we did not.

    1101 is now trailered, and will soon go home. But, as always, lessons were learned, and 1101 will not be down long.

    You can check out race day photos here.

  • Nice note from the folks at dLife

    The dLife TV team was kind enough to send us copies of the segment they did on Desert Dingo Racing and included a nice note:

    Thank you for being part of dLife TV. We enjoyed working with you – and learning about all that is involved in the Baja Desert Dingo race. Your story is sure to inspire the millions of people living with diabetes. Enclosed is a copy of the episode with your story. Hope you enjoy it with family and friends!

  • Desert Dingo in Diabetes Hoy

    Diabetes Hoy, the magazine of the Federacion Mexicana de Diabetes, published a piece on Desert Dingo Racing. You can check it out here (if you read Spanish).

  • Desert Dingo Racing on dLife TV

    dLife’s Matt and Christian put together a great six-minute piece on Desert Dingo Racing at the Baja 1000. Actually makes us sound like we know what we’re doing :).