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!!!