My wife and I have frequently tried to collect sand from the beaches and locales we've visited over our time together and display it in little jars in our home as a nice, cheap keepsake and reminder of where we've been. Amongst my many disappointments from my attempt at the NORRA Mexican 1000 was the fact that I didn't collect any sand from anywhere along the near two thousand miles we traversed of the Baja peninsula.So some six months later I've finally begun to seriously take apart the NISMOStuff Frontier and head towards preparing it for 2015. As I begin unbolting some steering and suspension components I notice that there sure appears to be a great deal of sand and silt packed into my frame. Then I proceed to unbolt the skidplates and a sheet of powdery silt comes raining down on my garage floor. Vacuuming up good deal of the light tan talcum like sand (?) brings me back to digging out the truck in the Mexican heat, dozens of miles from...well...nowhere. Broken parts, broken trailer, broken van, lost teammates, etc....it all comes back.
I now have a large ziploc bag filled with some five pounds of Baja Mexico silt. Some of this silt will be going in a jar on a shelf in my house to help bring back all those imbedded memories again and again. The rest? Maybe make a little silt bed in my own backyard? Thanks again to Elliot Sherwod, Paul Hartl and Tim Meunier for plowing my truck through various silt beds and "collecting" all this sand for me, only to be revealed some six months later. Baja...the gift that keeps on giving!
