Desert Dingo Racing

Category: Diabetes

  • Desert Dingo Racing featured on the World Diabetes Day home page

    World Diabetes Day home page

    Desert Dingos provide hands-on diabetes lesson to school children

    Desert Dingo Racing, the team who have entered the official World Diabetes Day race car in the Baja 1000 off-road race later this month, recently took the car to Holly Oak Elementary School in San Jose, California to give the children a hands-on lesson in desert racing. Students in Ms. Battistella’s fourth grade class got the opportunity to add a little colour to the car, dipping their hands in red, blue or gold paint and pressing them to the car’s fenders.


    Read the entire story here…

  • Desert Dingo Racing in Discovery Channel Magazine

    Discovery Channel Asia Magazine story on Baja Racers

    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.

  • Press Banner coverage of us and another local Baja 1000 team

    Richard in the Press Banner

    The folks at the Press Banner did a piece on us and a local motorcycle team prepping for the Baja 1000, “1000 reasons“. A great headline. Thank you Chuck and Peter.

    Our 1102 numbers arrive from STS Graphics tomorrow via Fedex.

    Shawn and I (mostly Shawn) complete painting the car tomorrow. I pick up the Desert Dingo logo for the hood, sponsor graphics and some surprise stuff on Monday.

    The team is pulling together spare parts that we’ll either load in the car or carry in the chase vehicles.

    We were contacted by the local American Diabetes Association with an offer to display the car at the San Jose City Hall rotunda. Unfortunately, we’ll be down in Mexico doing pre-running. I’ll be meeting with them on Monday, will give them hero cards and loads of crayons and we’ll figure out how we can work together on future events and have the car available. This should be fun.

  • From Race Cars and Google Doodles to Day Spas and Night Lights: Groups Across the U.S. Prepare to Join World Diabetes Day Celebrations Worldwide on November 14

    BRUSSELS, Belgium, October 31, 2008/ — Whether your tastes tend toward bright lights and big cities, quiet contemplation or off-road racing, groups around the U.S. are gearing up to celebrate World Diabetes Day and raise awareness of the growing threat of diabetes.

    The International Diabetes Federation (IDF), which led the effort to get the United Nations to recognize the existing World Diabetes Day (November 14) as an official UN world day, announced that this year’s campaign theme is “Diabetes in Children and Adolescents.”

    Over 200 children a day are diagnosed with type 1 diabetes and over 500,000 children under the age of 15 live with diabetes worldwide. In the U.S. 40 children a day develop type 1 diabetes, roughly 15,000 children each year.

    “People around the globe have embraced the effort to raise awareness of the growing threat of diabetes,” said World Diabetes Day Campaign Director Phil Riley. “All diabetes is increasing and children are not spared. The International Diabetes Federation estimates that 75,000 children with type 1 diabetes worldwide cannot access the medication, monitoring and education they need to survive. This story goes largely ignored and these children remain in the shadows to face an uncertain future. We aim to bring diabetes to light.”

    Read the entire press release here…

  • First GPS track released

    GPS waypoints for 2008 Baja 1000 course

    SCORE released the initial GPS track for the race. We purchase a more detailed version that loads into the Lowrance GPS unit mounted in front of the co-driver. It’s a bit more detailed and has cool little skull and crossbones icons that warn of things like sheer cliffs, deep water and boulder protruding into the course.

    If you want to check it in Google Earth, you can download the KML file here.

    Less than three weeks til we depart. We’ll drive to San Diego on Nov. 12, spend the night, then drive to Rosarita Beach the next morning and spend the next week with Eric Solorzano (who starts in front of us) tweaking the car and pre-running sections of the course.

    Car still needs to be painted. That will happen next Sunday most likely. And we’re waiting on two digital video cameras that we’ll mount to capture in-car footage, that, if everything goes as planned, we’ll upload to the Internets during the race.

    Still only three teams in Class 11 – Eric, us and Alaskan Michael Brown, who I’ve heard is making his first run at the race. I expect a few more will register in the next week or so.

    If you’re checking in from seeing the KPIX, howdy. If you can spare a few dollars, we’d love it if you pledged to our drive-a-thon fundraiser. Even a penny or five cents a miles would be fantastic. And 100% of the money goes toward diabetes awareness and education programs managed by the International Diabetes Federation. You can donate by clicking on the “Donate” button on the upper right side of this web page.

    You might want to bookmark this page. On the day of the race you’ll be able to track us in real time on Google maps. One of the GPS transponders on the car relays our car number (1102), position and speed and updates every two minutes. We’ll be using this to keep our chase trucks updated on the race car’s location, because it’s almost impossible to communicate via radio unless you’re pretty close to each other.

    Any questions or comments? Shoot me a note at jim@desertdingo.com .