Baja 1000 November 12-16, 2012 (Part One)

Monday: KTM Corporate!!

We got on the road from San Diego as soon as rush hour was over.  KTM North American is located in Murrieta California. It was very cool to see all the logo vans and trucks in the parking lot.  KTM’s front reception area is all decked out with samples of all their logo gear and clothing, resembling a retail store. We got to see what  the new gear will look like.   All the people we met were really friendly and helpful.

Picking up the pit box was…interesting.  It was very chaotic, someone compared it to the military, you know “Hurry up and wait”.  Nothing was ready in advance; the boxes had to be put together as we waited.  None of the pit locations hadn’t even been chosen until a couple of days before we got there, so pit books with all the maps and directions had to be created that day.  Satellite phones had to be assigned and activated.   The pit boxes were not as big as we thought they might be which was good.  We also got wheels with tires mounted, KTM Flag and pit mat. And we were given two 5 gallon cans of race gas, and then told to hide it when we went over the border. Yipes! I guess you are not supposed to take gas into Mexico.  By 2 PM we had most of our stuff, but the radios were still in San Diego, so some of us were scheduled to meet the courier at North County Yamaha to pick them up.

We had found out earlier that we had pit #2 which was located much farther from Bob’s place in Santa Veronica than we originally planned.  Once we saw the pit on Google Earth we realized we would not be able to take our motorhome to the pit anyway.  Now we had some decisions to make.  Where were we going to stay if we didn’t take the coach?  Bob suggested his friend’s beach house in Cantamar which is located north of Ensenada. Along with his other friends Don and Joanne we planned to head to the beach house.  Wayne and I decided to be prepared to camp at the pit, as on the maps it looked pretty far from Cantamar and we had to be there at 7 am.  Annti who works for KTM said he took 4 hours to get from Ensenada to Ojos Negros on race day last year.  Our pit was the one AFTER Ojos Negros so we would have to leave closer to midnight and drive in the dark to get there.  So we went to Walmart and bought another sleeping bag and an air mattress.  We planned food that we could take with us and cook on the BBQ and borrowed a cooler from Bob.

Tuesday: Drive to Cantamar

Before we could leave to go to Cantamar we had to find a place to leave the coach, and the cats.  Bob’s daughter has a rental house in Lakeside (25 miles from Bob's house) with space to park the RV, so we drove up there, opened up the slides and settled the cats with extra water and food.  We figured we’d be back in 3 days, and they could be alone that long.  Then we went back to Bob’s and unloaded anything we figured we didn’t need, such as our bikes and bicycles, and repacked all the pit supplies into the trailer.  We also loaded up Bob’s BMW into the trailer so he and CoCo (his little dog) could ride with us. 

Thankfully the trip through Tijuana was uneventful, last time when Wayne went through that border he got very lost.  We breezed through this time and then onto the 1D toll road and down the coast to Cantamar.

The beach house was wonderful.  It had 4 Bed/Bath combos, a full kitchen, dining and living room as well as a dormitory with more beds. We were very lucky to be able to stay there.  The location was great, right on the beach with a wonderful restaurant just outside the gate. We ate there several times. I highly recommend the black bean soup and the buck-fifty Margaritas during Happy Hour!

 

 

                 We stayed in the yellow one                      

 

View from the deck off our room

Beautiful wooden doors in our room

Wednesday: Out to the Pit

 

 

We started the day by going to Bob’s favorite restaurant La Fonda for breakfast.  It is right on the beach about 5 miles from the beach house.  Not very busy for breakfast, but the head greeter was strutting his stuff.

 

 I didn’t have the heart to tell this guy that his harem was probably on the menu…

During breakfast we had a major scare.  Our new friend Don began having heart attack type symptoms. Very scary even in the US, it was awful in Mexico, none of us speak the language and the EMT’s never came.  We eventually loaded Don in the truck and took him to the Medico.  While they were running tests, Bob took us back to the beach house so we could prepare for our pit.  We loaded the rest of our stuff into the trailer, including the now inflated air mattress.  We didn’t have a generator and would need all the air tanks full for the pit, so we did that in advance. It turned out that Don had acute Acid Reflux, not heart failure, thank goodness.  Once he arrived back to the house and prepared to rest for the day, Bob, Wayne and I went out to check out our pit location.

We headed south on Highway 1D toward Ensenada.

We aren’t sure what are in these nets but the bay had a bunch of them.  I think it is some sort of sea ranching.

Ensenada was a zoo as vendors and racers show off their stuff for the public.

We managed to get lost trying to get through Ensenada.  Eventually we got headed in the right direction.  We had one Government Check Point to go through in this section. We didn’t have any trouble, but the truck going the other way appeared to be race related, and they were being detained.  Looked like the Federal’s had found some type of ammo in their truck.  This is a HUGE no-no in Mexico and we figured they were headed for jail.  Shudder!

It took us a while, about 4.5 hours from the beach house, to get to our pit.  Obviously we were not going to be able to sleep at the beach and make it to our pit by 7 am to set up.  Mexican roads, even the paved highways would not be fun in the dark. And imagine what a military check point would be like at night!!

So we made the decision to camp out.  Bob had his BMW in the trailer, and he went back to the beach house to help with Don, just in case.  Here it was about 4:30 PM and he had to ride all the way back to Catamar, although I doubt it took him the 4+ hours we used getting there.  He decided to bail on helping at the check.  That left just Wayne and me to do all three jobs.  Oh well, it worked.

Our check point was located about 4 miles off the highway, on what used to be a gravel road to Santa Catarina.  It was in the middle of being rebuilt in concrete.  We knew it was under construction, but we didn’t expect to come to a 8-12” step up from the gravel to the concrete, no ramp built or anything.  And there were 15-18” deep gutters that were cut in a deep narrow V on either side of the road.  When we found the course (farther from the highway than our pit book indicated) we were not pleased.  The construction crew had not created a good way to get onto the dirt road that was the course.  We had to get our truck and trailer through that ditch.  As it turned out, the racers kicked up and drug enough dirt from the course to fill that in by the time it was over, so getting out was easier than getting in.  Next year it might not be an issue.

We expected there to be a crowd, you know, other pits set up?  No such luck.  We were the only ones there. Good news, we had all the room we needed to get set up. Bad news, we were going to be camping alone in the boonies of Mexico.  It’s one of those things you always hear, don’t camp alone.  We do it all the time in the US, but this is Mexico and it is not a good idea. Yes, I was a little freaked out.  We tried to camp where headlights would not reflect off the truck, but still…  So we ate dinner, watched the sun go down and did a little star gazing.  That took us to about 6 PM.  Too early to sleep, but dark enough to want to be locked up in the trailer.  We stayed up reading until 8 and then tried to sleep.  We were surprised at how much traffic was on a road that only goes to this little village.  The locals were hauling butt down this road in the dark.  They would wake us up, you could hear them coming, seemed like they were doing 90 MPH.  Me, I’d lie there going ”please don’t stop, please don’t stop, please don’t stop.” And they would blow right by.  The troop carriers (yes the army went by routinely) would rumble down the road.  I didn’t want them to stop either.  At that point I was still frightened by the army boys.

 

 

 

Baja 1000 November 12-16, 2012 (Part Two)

Thursday: RACE DAY – Baja 1000, Pit #2

By about 6 am it was light enough to get up and move around.  We didn’t die during the night, I thought this was a good thing.  We skipped breakfast and began to set up our pit. 

I got out the communication gear, and discovered that the 2-way radio had gone dead. Of course we had 3 extra batteries for the Sat phone, none for the radio.  Good thing I had borrowed a small invertor from Bob that I plugged into the power socket in the truck and set it up to charge.

While we were setting up, a young man in full riding gear arrived in his truck.  This was Brent Harden, long time national racer Scott Harden’s son.  It turned out that Wayne knew him, having camped next to Brent at a national enduro in California that Wayne had gone to a few years back.  What a nice kid.  He was excited to be riding with the ‘customer’ team, the 107x bike, which had been added to our pit responsibilities.  He thought they had a great team, and a good chance to do really well.

That’s me, with Brent ready to ride on the left.

After Brent arrived a truck with 2 guys about our age and one of their teenaged sons pulled up and off loaded a bike.  They were dressed in KTM logo clothing and had 3 orange bikes in the truck.  They set up cones at our road crossing and had yellow and green flags to use to help stop traffic or flag through racers. I asked them if they worked for SCORE the race sponsor, but they said no.  They were there just for the fun of it.  The older two had raced the event in the past and had the finisher pins to prove it.  Now they take a week to come down from northern California, just to be spectators, maybe ride around a little bit.  The younger kid used my camera to take photos of the pit activities for me when our riders came in.  The three of them were a hoot.  They helped with the crossing, warmed up food on their little Hibachi and set off bottle rockets.  They were having a ball!



The pit book said to expect Mike Brown around 8:15 am, and the 107x bike about 10 minutes later.  From our instructions at KTM HQ, we knew we would see the helicopter carrying Annti as the spotter in advance of Brown’s arrival.  We didn’t know that the first contact on the radio would be Bownie’s mechanic.  He called to let me know that Mike was in the section ahead of our pit.  He pulled into the pit well before his rider, but when he found out that the bikes would beat him to the road crossing where he was going to meet Mike, he jumped in his truck and took off!

Then came the call from Annti, Mike was headed our way.  He came in fully in race mode, blasting over the cement road and skidding to a stop on the pit mat.  He had already pulled the cover off the fast fill gas cap and was shouting at Wayne to hurry up, before he even came to a stop.  What was supposed to take about 15-20 seconds took about 6. Then he rev’ed it up, dumped the clutch and took off as he was putting the cover back on the gas cap!

Brent waiting for his bike to arrive…

 



We didn’t have to wait long for the 107x bike to arrive. Brandon was the rider getting off and his family was at our pit, set up to take pictures and to help. From here they were all headed to San Felipe where Brandon planned to get back on the bike.

Brandon got off as we were putting the gas in, but as Brent was getting on, we found out that the forks were coming apart.  Broken and lost bolts, caps backing out, along with fork oil running down them.  Brent was frantic, but forks were one of the few bike parts we didn’t have; not even the bolts that had been lost, and we didn’t have either of our KTMs with us.  KTM also had not included fork oil in our kit.  What we did have were those 3 guys with their KTM’s in the back of their truck.  They ran to the truck and removed the bolts we needed and gave them to Brent to use.  Once we had things put back together as much as we could, Brent took off.

 

 

The guy in the white hat had been trying all morning to get someone to give him beer; he didn’t need any more alcohol.  He ended up passed out on the sand shortly after we were done with the second bike.

Once Brent was gone I tried to call pit 3 to let him know about the need of forks and fork oil.  There was a lot of confusion because Pit 1 & 3’s phones had got reversed and no one thought to let us know, but we needed to talk to both of them.  When I finally got pit 3 on the line, he didn’t have anything there either and neither did pit 4. I never did hear if the 107x bike finished the race.  But I heard that Brent had crashed several times, finally being injured badly enough to be taken off the bike and Brandon getting back on before they got to San Felipe and pit 4.  Remember there are 20 pits so they still had a long way to go!

Once we contacted the other pits, it was time to put our stuff away and wait for the go ahead to leave the area.  The truck was parked on the wrong side of the course, so during a lull in the racers we moved to the other side of the course to wait.  While parked there a troop carrier with 8 soldiers in the back pulled up and stopped.  The only people left were us and those 3 helpful guys, so we were a little concerned.  One of the soldiers asked if this was the Baja race.  About that time a rider was approaching.  Once the troops heard that, it was like a switch was flipped. Gone were the serious soldiers and now we just had a truck load of laughing, talking, smiling young men, with their cell phones out, taking pictures of the rider as he crossed the road.  They were hilarious!  It made me realize that they are all just young kids, serving their country.  They just carry their automatic weapons in front of them, not slung over their shoulders. I wasn’t so afraid of them anymore.

It was then that the call came and we could leave.  We headed back to Ensenada, using the route info in our pit book to warn ourselves about places where the course was going to either cross or go on the same road as us.  The idea was if we come head on with the Trophy Trucks, we would find a place to park and wait the rest of the race out.  It turned out we made it all the way into town without seeing anything but their dust in the distance.  Once in town, we got lost again and ended up at the start of the race, in all the confusion that comes with it.

We saw the stock trucks (mini trophy trucks) lined up to start, included this ‘Baja Bug’

We made it back to Cantamar about 1 PM.  After lunch at the restaurant and hot showers, we felt pretty human again.  The weather had turned, with clouds and rain, but that didn’t keep the kids from body surfing near our beach.

 

The clouds made for an outstanding sunset, lasting more than an hour before all the light show was over.  I wish my camera could have captured more of it for you.

Friday: Travel and return to KTM North America HQ

We got up early on Friday, getting on the road by 7:45 am.  It took us 45 minutes to get to the border crossing, including the time we were lost in Tijuana.  Wayne loves to get lost there.  We waited in a massive line to get through customs, but really it only took another 45 minutes.  Once in the US we headed to Bob’s to drop him off and to pick up all our stuff.  Once we had everything reloaded, we went up to Lakeside and retrieved the motorhome along with the poor lonely kitties.  They had made a mess, but nothing we didn’t expect.  From there we went back up to Pechanga RV resort to spend the night.  Once we were parked, we took the pit supplies back up to KTM HQ.  We were the first pit to return our stuff.

Our trip ended with us headed over to Quartzsite, AZ to drop off our coach the next day. We had not been on that part of Interstate 10 before; one section is just full of wind farms.

Yes, I am following Wayne, again!

From Quartzsite, we headed home to the Pacific Northwest for the holidays, with just the cats, truck and trailer. We’ll start our travels up again after the New Year. Come back and check in with us then!

Happy Holidays!!!

San Diego, California -- November 6-11, 2012

Tuesday:  Travel Day

It is now time to get down to business and get ready for the Baja 1000.  It is the reason/excuse we have used for making this trip.  Our friend Brady is working with the KTM Factory team to organize and staff 20 pit stops for the race.  We were assigned pit #2. Wayne and Bob were going to do the heavy work and I was going to handle the communications.  It didn’t quite work out that way, more on that later. Our plans were to head to Bob’s house in San Diego before going  to his place in Mexico and do some riding in advance of the race.

We left the boonies and drove down into the big city of San Bernardino.  We are now officially in “California, Land of the limited access highways”.  Boy, they have a lot of freeways around here. We wanted to stop at Chaparral Motorsports, located just off Interstate 215.  It’s been about 15 years since we have been in their store.  I’m sure it is not the same location it was then; I can’t remember where it was.  The store is HUGE!  A building the size of Costco full of M/C stuff.  One half of this large building is just bikes, which we did not get to see because we spent too much time in the rest of the building.  Picture a whole room (the size of some shops we’ve been in) just of helmets, and the tire section is actually part of the warehouse with racks of tires sorted by brand.  Just stroll down the aisle till you get to the brand you want and pick one out.  The main floor was full of racks and racks of gear and other fun things.

After finding a new dual sport helmet for Wayne and some essentials (4 new tires) we managed to make our way to the Pechanga Indian Casino and RV Resort in Temecula.  We liked it so much we stayed there on the way back to KTM after the race, too.  We took advantage of laundry facilities and WIFI, and then felt ready to head to Bob’s in San Diego.

Wednesday:  Arrive at Bob’s house

We got to Bob’s about noon.  He said he had a place we could park; it turned out to be on the street, in front of a park that was being rebuilt, in other words it was a construction zone during the day.  We slept there each night, but moved during the day.  Sometimes we would park on the beach on Fiesta Island, sometimes on a street overlooking Lake Murray.  Each night we would park at that park and then go to Bob’s to soak in his hot tub.  Bob built pools and spas for a living, and his place is outstanding!

Bob’s back yard

On the sand at Fiesta Island

You are only allowed to park on the beach side of the road around the island.  People come for the day, bringing their RV’s as there are no restrooms in that part of the island.

Lake Murray

 

We thought about going to a RV park, but nothing was very close to town.  We had planned to go to Bob’s place in Mexico to ride, but we couldn’t get the logistics to work out with our commitment to the race.  And the weather caved in, raining in San Diego, snowing at his place in Rancho Santa Veronica.  So we hung out in SD and played tourist instead. 

We went to see the Sea Lions in La Jolla, and had 99 cent fish tacos at the beach.They were awesome!

Friday: Motorcycle shop tour

The weather was still rainy and cloudy, so we decided to go drool over new bikes.  We checked out many of the local shops, and had to stop at a micro-brewery for a taste.

 

Saturday: Tourists

 

Today we started at the Harley Shop then headed downtown to check out the waterfront.  We took a quick detour to hit Bob’s favorite food truck for $1.25 fish tacos. What a deal!  Then we went to the bay and saw some very cool ships and stuff.

The Star of India (and some movies!)

Submarines!!

Had to stop and check it out!

 

Sunday:  Road ride to Julian CA

The weather has finally improved enough to tempt us to ride.  Bob planned a ride to the small town of Julian.  Julian is an historic gold mining town located approximately an hour east of San Diego, surrounded by orchards and vineyards.  We would have tried the famous pie, but it was Veterens Day, so the place was packed.  But it was a beautiful ride, so we were happy.

Monday we report to KTM North American HQ to pick up our pit box.  Let the fun begin!