Prepping the car shortly before the start of the race in Ensenada.
First off, thanks to Roxanne for keeping everyone informed on our progress while we were beyond the reach of the Internets. And thanks to everyone who passed along their words of support, which she relayed to us.
As I write this, we’re headed up Highway 1 back to Ensenada. Seth and Marcus are towing 1146 back up Highway 3 and will likely beat us back to town. Everyone’s fine and ready for a hot shower.
Here’s the race in a nutshell. Cary set a blistering pace off the start line. The horn, which I was using to honk at spectators, immediately blew a fuse. Then Cary had a bit of trouble shifting into second gear. Just past the Ensenada dump, we hit some silt on an uphill climb. We enlisted some spectators to help get the car unstuck. At some point my helmet hit the rear view mirror and knocked it off, and I opted to hold it to watch for cars coming up behind us. Then, somewhere around Mile 20 the left rear shock gave out. (Note to self, call Bilstein when we get back).
Quickly remembering from college that you can run a car with a bad shock, we soldiered on and delivered 1146 to Shawn and Dennis about an hour behind schedule. As I staggered out of the car, I looked at Christian, the dLife cameraman, and said “I like turtles.”
Shawn and Crusty tore off into the night and we headed back to Ensenada, and then south to the rendezvous point with Mike, Richard, Scott, Carrie, Jeff and Matt and Christian who were following us for dLife TV.
By the time we caught up with them, they’d gotten word from the chase truck that 1146 was out of the race and Shawn and Dennis were up at 4,600 feet altitude, using a road flare to start a fire with wood they’d collected.
Seth and Marcus got to them around midnight. They all spent three hours getting the VW turned around and then bedded down for the night.
(We just cleared a military checkpoint and gave the guys some Cokes from the refrigerator. It is hot out here.)
This morning we all headed north and expect to meet up in Ensenada, spend the night and head home Thursday morning.
Here are some photos of our race day prep. I’ll see if I can get some race start photos from Marcus and upload those later today.
Lastly, I’d like to say thanks to our sponsors and their generous support: HomeCheck A1C, GlucoMON, 4Wheel Parts, Donaldson, Camelbak, Skips Tire and Auto Centers, and ToolUp. We could not have done this without you. We also want to thank John and Noah Turner and their mobile welding rig from Turner’s Portable Welding for getting us out of a jam in San Diego. And thanks to Adolfo Barragon, Juan Martinez, Richard Molina and Ino Briones at Econo Lube ‘N Tune and Brakes in San Diego who stayed late into Sunday evening to help us.
We enjoyed the company of Matt and Christian, who filed a piece on us that we expect to air in the coming weeks on dLife TV. Bill Simurda with HotVWs got a couple shots of the car just before the start, and I did a quick on-camera interview with Cathy, who’s shooting for SCORE, ESPN and NBC. We’ll keep everyone in the loop on when the shows will air.
Thanks, too, to everyone with Baja Pits, who took very good care of us (and got us that race gas at the first pit stop). And special thanks to Eric Solorzano and his team, who worked way too late into the night and way too early in the morning of race day helping us get 1146 ready to go. (Eric, please pass along our thanks to Rosa, who got me coffee on Tuesday morning. She’s the best.)
Oh, and one last thing. We’re already planning for our next race.
