Final Post Here...

Not that anyone is really coming here other than bots and such at this point but...if you are a human...and you do come here...and have any interest in what I am doing now or thoughts I have, etc....I have transitioned over to my own site now.

It will be more photo heavy but still contain a blog but one that will be 50% less snarky...

That's all...carry on and if you wish to visit....the link is here:  www.danspalinger.com

Second Largest Exposure to Stage Rally in the US Was...the November Issue of DirtSports and Offroad Magazine?!?!

 

So a little while ago I posted that the RAV4 Virtual Reality display from Toyota featuring Ryan Millen and his stage rally SUV at Supercross events across the US was arguably the biggest exposure to this type of motorsport in the US this year.

On the heels of that comes what I would argue is the second largest exposure of stage rally to those of us in the US this year.  Written and shot by Cole Sprague for DirtSports magazine which is available both digitally and in print (see your local B&N), the article really doesn't cover anything ground breaking and only sounds like Cole attended and shot from the spectator locations (shocker that he didn't get any real proactive support from the series to put him in the thick of the action) but Team O'Neil gets a mention for their support of one of the racers as does the usual Higgins and Pastrana Subaru crew and, again, Millen's RAV4 showing and being mentioned prominently.

It would have been nice of Cole to have dug deeper into Bryan Bouffier's effort given his unique car but at least it gets a photo as does the classic Volvo of Derek Knight.

While print's circulation numbers aren't what they once were and DirtSports is not half the magazine it was a decade ago (its merger with "OffRoad Magazine" has resulted in far too much pandering to the mall crawler, bolt on accessory crowd) but stage rally coverage (three full pages with lots of photos!) in a magazine that has a reader count safely in the tens of thousands is a pretty good thing and positive exposure for the sport.

Sooooo...the two arguably largest exposures to stage rally in the US this year were...Supercross event displays and an article in a largely desert racing/offroading magazine.  Nice work Rally America...nice work...

Guo Meiling Not Wholly Responsible for Dakar Accident...

I'd like to place all the blame for the crash on the friggin prologue stage of the '16 Dakar solely on Guo Meiling but I can't.

Guo made it a whopping four miles into the two week long race before she wadded up her X-Raid Mini.  Various reports reflect different numbers of injured but most place it around ten individuals with four being serious.

Holding primary responsibility is Guo herself.  On a picture perfect weather day and a brief prologue of only about 7 miles in which no one should have been running at full race speeds (the usual, you can't win the race here but you sure as hell can lose it here cliche comes to mind) Guo has no excuses for careening out of control.  She simply lacked the skill, brains, experience or all three to be playing at the pointy end of the field.

She is not a professional racer as the rest of the X-Raid Mini team is.  Look at the other names on the team--Al-Attiyah, Roma, Hirvonen, Van Loon, Hunt, Garafulic, Malysz, etc.  They are ALL world class racers behind the wheel of a world class vehicle capable of running speeds virtually unimaginable to mere mortals.  Meiling??  She's a "businesswoman", a vice chairman of a Chinese healthcare company who dabbles in offroad racing in her spare time.  Her claim to fame to date?  1st place in the Taklimakan rally...on an ATV....in the women's class...five years ago.  She has no results to speak of outside of China and has no place behind the wheel of an X-Raid Mini...except for one thing...money.  I take a look at the photo of Guo crying behind the wheel seemingly uninjured (at least not seriously) while helicopters, ambulances and medical staff swirl around assisting the injured and I see someone completely out of her end of the pool.

Which I'm sure is what she and her company paid X-Raid in spades for this seat.  Maybe X-Raid was blinded by the ash and the fact that there was an experienced codriver beside her.  But Sven Quandt's team doesn't need the money really does it?  So was it the shiny ribbon of putting the first female Chinese competitor behind the wheel of a Mini that sold it?  I dunno...but Sven shares the blame here as well.  Testing for Meiling behind the wheel of the Mini (which can be seen in numerous videos to have a squirrely temperment with a rear end that tends to buck violently in the bumps) was likely minimal to non-existent and evidently never under full race conditions.  Video of the crash shows exactly what you would expect--a small bump raising the rearend of the vehicle followed by a massive overcorrection by the driver, through a fence and into the crowd.  The road was completely flat, no rocks, no trees, no turns, nothing....just a complete clusterfuck by a driver who had no idea what she was doing.

Maybe such instances of "gentleman" drivers have happened in the past at the Dakar...it likely has...I'm just not cognizant enough about the Dakar's history to point out another one.  This one however just stinks of the same problem that another dangerous sport has seen in recent years.

Climbing Everest and other world class peaks in the past 20 years or so has largely become a bucket list item for the rich.  We all remember the Into Thin Air disaster on Everest and there have been a number of other, similar and larger disasters resulting in numerous deaths in recent years.  Many times these involve problems caused by the "client" climbers.  Climbers who have a minimal amount of big mountain experience ponying up large sums of money in order to latch on to those who are more capable and experienced in hopes of bagging that peak which will give them bragging rights back home.  Sound familiar?  Its the same disease--paying clients who want a shortcut to the top and experts only too willing to take the cash in exchange for equipment or support.

No one will ask Sven about the money that changed hands or the vast gulf of experience and talent between his other drivers and Meiling.  Meiling will likely never return to the Dakar and will likely be lost to history.  If no one ends up passing on from her and X-Raid's misadventure in the 2016 Dakar it will be a lucky thing.  Here's a toast to needing less luck in avoiding fatalities at the Dakar in the future...

Cool Nissan NISMO GT-R LeMans Racer Print...

This print is available on Easy (a website for "handmade" items) and is signed by the artist, Roger Warrick.  Warrick seems to be a big time endurance racing fan with most of his art centering around tracks and events like Sebring, Indy, LeMans, etc.

He essentially has two styles of art with one being a "serious" realistic depiction of the racing action and the other being a Dave Deal-esqe "car-icature" of various vehicles and their drivers.  This one is his most recent production and depicts the recently introduced Front Wheel Drive Nissan NISMO GT-R LeMans racer that will be contesting various WEC events (including LeMans) this year.  Some of the nice details seen here including the fire breathing exhaust exits on the hood of the vehicle (where they actually ARE located) and the positioning of Godzilla (the GT-Rs nickname) in the front of the vehicle where the engine is placed, are nice touches.  It will look nice in a frame on my wall.

Roger Warrick Etsy Website...

How Interconnected the World Is...

I've been real lazy of late and haven't really posted anything in quite some time.  Busy time of year made busier by some some outside factors.

Regardless, this story struck me as instructive of just how interconnected our world is these days.

A plumber in Texas with deer heads on his office walls and with a decidedly redneck tone to his voice ends up getting harassing phone calls from other Americans because he left his company's logos on a Ford F250 he traded in almost exactly a year ago and said truck somehow ends up in the middle of the Syrian Civil War with an anti-aircraft cannon mounted in its bed.  Someone posts a picture of this truck on a "terrorist" Twitter feed, the phone # for his company is visible...and so the calls begin.

To me its shocking that such a truck would be found profitable to sell who knows how many times over and be found desirable enough to ship overseas.  Also given the length of time that the Syrian Civil War has been going on I'm betting it was imported to the area specifically for this purpose.  Generally Syria is a complete friggin disaster and I don't see too many common Syrian folk looking to rapidly import an American heavy duty truck and then leaving someone's English language logo on the truck to drive around downtown Damascus.  ISIS is about the only people in the MidEast not caring what negative attention they draw to themselves.  What's that mean then?  It means the truck was likely purchased at auction in the States, moved to Mexico and shipped to the MidEast with the specific intent to act as a support vehicle in the conflict.  I would wonder if there isn't a big stream of American trucks heading over there.  ISIS is flush with millions of stolen and oil derived dollars.  They are likely shut out from the typical arms markets but shipping big American trucks doesn't draw near as much attention and from the years of video we've seen of airstrikes in the Mideast we've seen if there is one thing we know they aren't short on over there its anti-aircraft guns and ammunition--so seeking to mount a bunch of these cannons that are useless against a generally non-existent air enemy is a logical move.

Just gotta make sure my Nissan doesn't end up over there!


https://autos.yahoo.com/news/texas-plumber-ford-truck-ends-terrorists-133033518.html

Massive Nissan GT-R Wreck in Russia...

This was evidently at a big dragrace event in Russia called the Russia Cup. The GT-R won the race, beating out an Audi of some sort but after the finish line the GT-R continued to accelerate and only stopped upon impacting a concrete barrior at the end of the runway. The GT-R reportedly crossed the line at some 200 mph so its impact was likely above that. Perhaps that is the reason the front airbags did not deploy--though that hardly would have saved the driver in this case.

Nissan GT-R Blows Tire at 203 MPH...On the Highway...

And this would be why its a bad idea to race a vehicle on a public highway.  Traffic here is minimal but you can still see him pass other vehicles at speed and while he tries to bring the vehicle to a controlled stop.  203MPH on a public highway...sheesh...Luckily the car remains stable through the failure and no one is hurt.

Surf Artist Jay Alders

 I was recently introduced to Jay Alders' work while staying at a beach house in North Carolina.  The owners of said house were obviously big surfers with photos of the local surf and beaches as well as surfboards and other "surfer" related items decorating much of the house.

In a couple of rooms however there were prints of various paintings that really stood out to me.  Not only did they reflect the laid back vibe of the locale we were in as well as the surfer dominated culture there but also elicited an emotional response in me.  I found them to be beautiful, powerful and sensual in their colors and curves--a near perfect reflection of what the ocean, beach and waves can be to human beings.

Fortunately each of these prints was nicely notated in a corner with the artist's name, Jay Alders.  The Jay Alders.com website contains a great portal through which you can see his work (in addition to the paintings shown here).  Alders works in a number of mediums--canvas, wood, photography, digital, etc. and he has worked with a number of musical artists as well as surf/ocean/water related non-profits in the past.  Check out his work...if you like the ocean and/or some sweet art to peruse, I think you'll enjoy it.  I'll be getting a print some time to hang in my house myself.
 
  
 

2014 Pikes Peak--Nissan GT-R Takes a Class Win...

 I'd be remiss if I didn't start mentioning some of the more interesting Nissan and non-Nissan racing results in the past few weeks.  First up is Mike Skeen and his '09 Nissan GT-R at this year's edition of the Pikes Peak International HillClimb.

A regular in the Pirelli World Challenge series with stints in Grand Am, NASCAR's truck series, as well as entries into the 24 Hours of Daytona and the Baja 1000, Skeen is a well rounded driver.  Evidently wanting to add another type of racing to his resume he entered this year's PPIHC with an '09 Nissan GT-R sponsored by Hawk Performance.

Given he had just come away from a pair of wins at Road Atlanta in an Audi R8, this would be a quick change and adaptation for him.  Equal to the task, Skeen finished Pikes with a time of 9:55.471 which was good enough for 6th overall and first in the Open class, beaten out only by PPIHC champions like Nobuhiro Tajima and Greg Tracy and others.  You can see Skeen's blistering run below.  Given the untested platform and lack of experience behind the wheel at a hillclimb, Skeen is one hell of a driver...

Skeen's website: http://www.mikeskeen.com/

Throwback Thursday: Jumping 510

I know the photographer of this photo sometimes comes by the site so perhaps he can ID who the driver of this car is and where it may be now.  Likely Jerry took this at an upper midwestern stage rally about 5-10 years ago.  The road is either a VERY smooth dirt road or a tarmac event which would be rare I think in the Rally America series.  Regardless...great car...great shot.

Dakar Vets Bring New Electric Tesla To Pike's Peak...

After finishing the '12 Dakar and becoming the first electric (at least in part) vehicle to do so the OSCar eO team turned its attention to North America.  In '13 they brought a custom electric hillclimb car and did not have the best of luck...You can see the recovery of the vehicle in the video below:



Not willing to give up on finishing Pike's Peak, they have returned in '14 with a new vehicle.  This time the platform is that of a Tesla Roadster--a car known more for looking incredible than performing incredibly.  The OScar eO team has replaced the stock Tesla driveline with a more powerful, liquid cooled, electric motor but remains RWD and is now motivated by a 360kW twin motor system (equating to 500 HP) and a 40 kWh battery pack and an overall weight of 1060 kg.

This will be the Tesla platform's major motorsports debut though it is not likely to take a win within its electric vehicle division as it will be running in what is essentially an unlimited class due to the drivetrain change. The class itself seems to be growing annually and now is up to seven entries including two production models (Honda Fit EV and Toyota Rav4 EV) and multi time Pike's champion Nobuhiro "Monster" Tajima.  The team website can be found here: http://driveeo.com/

NORRA Mexican 1000--Part 2(b)

So we left the team and I on a beach in Bahia de Los Angeles on the East Coast of the Baja peninsula the morning after our first race day that ended in a broken tierod and upper control arm after 95 miles.

Not reaching our "hotel" and bedding down till after 2AM and feeling utterly exhausted, we knew we would be in no condition to begin racing that following morning and so we decided to take the day's first stage (136 miles in length) off and try and recoup ourselves physically and mentally to tackle the event's longest stage of 175 miles in the afternoon/evening.  It was already apparent that we were woefully underprepared in terms of our chase/recovery vehicle, scheduling, spare parts, mental reserves, etc.  Our goal now had changed from finishing the entire event to merely trying to finish a single stage each day, using the morning hours when we should have been racing to make sure both our vehicle and ourselves were as prepared as we could make them.

So while the other teams had gotten out on the race course, we sat down with our maps and tried to plan out where we could refuel the vehicle during the stage and grabbed some food and water from what seemed to be the only store in town.  Now Bay of LA is not exactly a bustling metropolis.  If you want to make a call you should probly have a satellite phone as cell service is non-existent.  There are no banks, no ATMs and no locations (either gas or otherwise) that take credit cards for payment.  Not good for a group of guys who were running low on Pesos and had a full day of travel to somehow get through.  The single grocery store in town filled us up on bottled water and snacks for the day and look!  Low and behold, behind the counter was what looked like a little swipe machine!  Too bad the woman at the counter had never used it before as the device was brand new to the store.  She fumbled through the transaction, I signed a piece of paper and we left.

Sitting at a table discussing our plans a few blocks away, our conversation is interrupted 20 minutes or so later by the counter worker arriving in a fast moving SUV.  She jumps out and runs over to me saying something in Spanish.  After some minimal translation I understand that what I signed at the store was actually a rejection receipt and not a confirmation and she and the store's male owner were under the belief that I had been attempting to "steal" the $30 worth of supplies we had taken.  I agree to return to the store and settle up using a different card and the more knowledgeable male swipes me through correctly this time.

On the move again we head out of town in separate vehicles.  Myself and Elliott in the chase van and Tim and Paul in the race truck.  Just the transit to get to the start of the second stage of the day is an adventure.  Massive construction zones, road stoppages for cliff blasting, and beautiful ocean views all pass before we get near the start in San Ignacio.  Along the way we realize that there is no physical way for us to service the race truck at any point on the 175 mile stage.  There is simply no road that the van can traverse that will reach the race course.  If we had started out as the chase team about a half a day ahead of the racers we could have transited around the Southern end of the course and approached it from Western side where better roads were present but at this point, time did not give us that option.

So plans change on the fly and as 175 miles is outside of what I considered the range of the vehicle under stage rally conditions...so what to do??  Well, we do the only thing we can think of...we ratchet strap two five gallon race jugs into the bed of the truck and wish Tim and Paul well (after a delay at the San Ignacio gas station when they experience a power loss for a period of about a half hour...).  We express to the drivers on this day that they are on their own, without a net.  We're out of or never had significant spare parts, we'll be out of contact with them, night is falling while they are out there and due to our late start, there likely won't be many peoples behind them coming along--other than that, go out there and have fun!

Elliott and I have a great time wandering our way down Route 1, marveling at the near suicidal downhill, canyon carving it does into Mulege, disgusted by the oceanside landfill blowing its refuse in a constant stream of plastic bags into the ocean, loving the incredible roadside tacos (again) and stunned by the ancient volcanic landscapes and endless unpopulated valleys.  We arrive at the end of the 175 mile stage and park.  The only thing we can do now is wait and hope our boys come out the other end.  The sun is gone and we can see the lights of each vehicle from miles away as they approach the finish.

After a wait of about a half hour I return to the race truck to make my first attempt at communicating with Tim/Paul by radio.  I am stunned when on my first attempt I get a response from Tim saying they are only a few miles from the finish!  Truly after my disaster the previous day I had little hope that the truck would finish the longest stage of the event.  But there they are a few minutes later, crossing the stage finish.  At 175 miles it was longer than any FULL stage rally even in the States and they had done it non-stop, unsupported over some incredible terrain.  They had passed a number of vehicles on stage at speed yet taken their time, stopping for some 15 minutes to perform a driver change so that each individual would get some time behind the wheel.  They had taken incredible care of their equipment, babying it through the rocks and ruts.  We are all rightfully proud of this run--but its late...again.

We transit into Loreto finding that because of our late start time and generally slow speed of our vehicle that while we finished, the daily party was already over, the food and drinks all gone, most of the racers retired to their rooms.  The team sits for a moment, grabs a drink and then moves to our room, once again not bedded down till after 1AM.

 

Film Review: The Wolf of Wall Street

I seem to have a love-kinda uninterested/bored relationship with Mr. Scorsese.  This is probably a sacrilegious statement to most film critics who consider Marty to be the best US director working today and for the past few decades.

I'm torn on his works however.  I never cared much for Goodfellas but loved Taxi Driver and The Departed.  Maybe its the voiceovers of the amoral characters in Goodfellas and The Wolf of Wall Street that I couldn't enjoy.  Unlike Taxi Driver where you are merely watching the loathsome individual from the outside, in Wolf and Fellas you are asked to partner with and empathize with the protagonist who in each case is a fairly poor excuse for a human being.  Because of this I felt little interest in either and certainly wasn't invested in what happened to either main character.

Wolf is a well put together film as all Scorsese films are and there is no nitpicking that.  Its a sharp and beautiful film for what it captures on screen. Problem is, much of it is derivative and done better elsewhere.

For portraying scams and trading penny stocks on the backs of retirees, I prefer Boiler Room while the abusive, drug using husband, we can again go back to Goodfellas.  We also have the now getting tiresome use by Scorsese of various popular songs and music artists to key us in to moods, locations and timeframes--OK, we get it Marty...you're hip...you know good, modern music.  You've been bashing us over the head with your musical tastes for 30+ years now, its getting old.

DiCaprio is his usual solid self and certainly brings energy to the role of Jordan Belfort, a phenomenal Wall Street salesman who built a fortune on the backs brokers he trained to sell high commission garbage stocks to those who could least afford to buy them.  His cocaine, booze, hooker, cash fueled lifestyle was legendary through the 80s and 90s and he nearly got his firm mainstream.  He eventually went to jail for his deeds.  In the middle of all this he fathered some kids, got divorced twice, did a ton of drugs, had a ton of sex, and blew a ton of money--whooopeee....I seriously don't care.

Jonah Hill has the secondary role here and got much of the praise coming into the film.  He is more annoying than anything here and mostly a coke fueled version of his usual schlubbly self.  He got his lifelong wish to act for Marty but I don't see this gaining him many more quality roles.

So all in all??  A pretty film that is quite flashy and has a good deal on the surface but nothing of import underneath...Much like the cliche of what the 80s (where the majority of the film takes place) were in general...

NORRA Mexican 1000--Part 2(a)

Ah yes, where were we??  Oh, yes...just prior to the start of the race...Did I mention I gently ran the van into a pair of stanchions in the garage underneath our hotel in Ensenada when being yelled at in Spanish that I couldn't park where I just had, denting both the side of the van and the driver's door making the window exceedingly difficult to raise or lower??  Or that we spent quite a bit of time running around Ensenada trying to find a 2GB or smaller flash card with which to download the GPS files for the race course and were finally gifted such a card by Dennis Chairez, an Ensenada resident known to our most experienced Baja racer, Paul Hartl.

So Elliott Sherwood and I are up relatively early and geared up and ready to go on race day while Paul and Tim Meunier are off in the van with the extra gas and gear and heading down the road to try and find the part of the race course where it comes back and hits Highway 1 after 100+ miles in order to provide any service we may need.  We aren't in radio communication at this point as we are quickly separated by miles and terrain too large to broadcast over.  We start the day near the tail end of the 130 or so "car" entries of the event.  I snicker to myself as I see some other competitors in the garage still working on their cars right before the race..."Ha, at least I'm not breaking out the grinding wheel already!"  Sooooo stupid....

I share a few words with Darren Skilton and David Bensadoun, both driving Dakar spec vehicles and men with whom I have little business being alongside.  Within the race are other drivers I have no business sharing a race with including Walker Evans, Andy Grider, Bob Gordon, Bruce Meyers, Tim Herbst, etc., etc.  Multiple time Dakar entrants, multiple time Baja 500/1000 champions...yup, I'm here...a know nothing "kid" from New Hampshire, ready to show the world what I've got...

Uhhhh, yeah, not so much...The transit out of Ensenada is simple enough and just like a really long transit in a typical Rally back home...except here Stop signs are merely a suggestion, red lights more like yield signs and the city roads strewn with dead animals (and dead people on occasion) and locals seemingly playing a game of chicken with every passing vehicle.  Still, with the race started I am a lot more relaxed.  This at least I am familiar with...dirt roads, rocks, trees...this I can deal with.

A quick piss on the side of the road--no way I'm making it 100+ miles without pissing my pants after drinking this much water--and we're off.  The notes for the stage are a ridiculous, never ending stream of triple and double cautions.  Oh and that cliff of death??  That doesn't rate even as a single caution or even a notation.  Drive what you see becomes the most common direction given as you can literally go miles between notations pointing out the next intersection--all those ditches, rocks, cacti, cliffs, dropoffs, inclines, washouts??  Make up your intentions as you go....make a decision on the move, no prior notice given.

Oh, and yeah, about the course....it may be a "race" course in name but in truth its an open public road on which you are doing things you would NEVER dare think about back home.  Take your dumbest moments "testing" your vehicle on your local backroad thinking "Hey, I can run this road at speed, I've run it 1000 times and there is never anyone on it except old Bob and I know old Bob goes to church at 10AM every Sunday so I know I'm not going to meet any other traffic..."  Now take that and throw it out the window cause you don't know anyone here and they don't care that you are racing on their local roads and most certainly their livestock doesn't care that you are racing on their local roads.  So right away Elliott and I are shaking our heads as we are rounding corners at my maximum speed into oncoming cars and trucks...after a couple times it seems somewhat normal and you give it little thought that back home they'd shut down the whole damn race if a single car was seen on stage at the same time as a racer....As they say....Its Mexico....its just different here.

The roads themselves are spectacular.  Truly.  Nothing back home comes close.  Long flat gravel straights lasting miles followed by 180 degree turns down a 45 degree washout into a sharp uphill battle through a streambed followed by a three mile run down a single lane road paralleled by 10 foot high fence posts strung together with barbed wire (seriously??  I'm doing close to 70+ down this road where a three foot twitch of the truck would have me picking rusted steel out of my skull for the next year??  Its beautiful but I can't believe I'm doing this...)

Ah, and then there's the ocean...the racecourse runs out to the ocean and parallels it for long sections running only yards from the crashing sea.  The scenery becomes so distracting that Elliott and I are spending more time oooing and ahhhing about what we are seeing that actual stage notes.  Our site seeing is interrupted by other racers on occasion...we sit in the dust of a class 9 buggie for what seems like forever but what was actually only a mile or two (in Stage Rally if you get caught you kindly pull over immediately, not so much here) as we close and then back off a number of times trying to give them the hint that we'd like to pass...but our nice style of passing from back home (with the car being passed pulling over, nicely out of the way and to a near full stop) just ain't gonna happen here and we pass at full speed on what felt like a single lane road running the driverside out in the ditches and brush trying not to punt the little buggie off into the cacti.  Damn this is crazy...  We do our best to pull way over and out of the way whenever we are caught--those old Broncos that catch us are HUGE and all steel...no soft fiberglass there.

We settle into what feels like a nice pace and reel off the miles...my god, we've run 90 miles already??  That is as long or longer than some of our full races back home and we're not even close to 1/2 way done with the first day!

Then disaster...or as near to it as I have ever experienced in stage rally to date.  At about mile 95 we turn left around a rather casual bend at a fair speed and right there is a kid on a bike riding towards me down the course.  I point the kid out to Elliott and we both focus trying not to hit him and suddenly I notice what is surely his younger brother walking down the course towards us on the left hand side with seemingly no interest in jumping out of the way.  We slow, but do not stop having gotten used to seeing people, animals, and vehicles on the course, now taking it a bit in stride.  There is a right hander coming up and our focus is still on the kids on the left.  We pass them safely but before I can feel relief, I have missed noticing the very large, very rough and rocky ditch on the inside of the right hand turn and drop the front passenger side wheel into said ditch.  Before I can blink or even notice what I've done, that ditch grabs and twists that wheel sharply back and to the right.  There is a large bang and the truck plows straight forward through the sand without steering response and quickly comes to a halt.  A flat?  Nope.  The front passenger tie rod has separated at the socket (which is still attached to the steering rack) from the ball (which is still attached to the "rod" and the wheel/tire).

A few expletives and Elliott's inquiry as to if we have a spare tire rod ("Yes, Elliott, we do...its in the service van of course!") and we are left trying to figure out what to do.  Ratchet straps and some manual force do not do the job of either securing the wheel into a stable position and our spirits begin sinking.

As I would find to be the case whenever and wherever we broke during the event, the locals (while the cause of some on course trouble) are more than happy to appear like ghosts out of the ether and lend a hand without fear of getting dirty or putting in hard work for little to no return.  In our case here it appears that the two young boys were part of an extended family who had come to spectate at the right hand turn where we broke.  Amongst them are three adult males of various ages (Grandfather, father and son?) who begin chattering away and trying to converse with Elliott in broken Spanish.  One of them quickly retrieves his family SUV, drives out onto the course and backs it up against the broken tire/wheel on our race truck.  The idea here being that if we can line up the ball and socket on the tie rod and exert enough force we can POP them back together in an opposite fashion to how they came apart from the ditch.  Cranking the wheel as hard as I can to the right and backing the SUV up into the wheel does the trick!!  It pops back together like Mel Gibson and his wonky shoulder in the Lethal Weapon movies!  We're back at it!  We take some photos with our new "heroes" and set off again in hopes of completing the last 16 or so miles to the highway where we can make a proper repair.

200 yards later from just a crawling speed and a bit of sand??  POP!!  That same tie rod performs its magic trick again and comes apart, now leaving us separated from our heroes and buried up to the lower control arm in some very soft sand.  Now we're screwed....I begin digging out the broken wheel from the sand by hand (nope, no shovel) and Elliott grabs some ratchet straps.  Going forward is no longer any thought in our mind...our hopes only surround being able to get out of the desert somehow.  Its about noon, very hot and very dry.

Somehow our "heroes" must have continued to watch/listen to our progress as a few minutes later as we are attaching our straps to the frame, the eldest of the three adult males and his likely grandson, show up on scene via a quad while other locals and their dogs begin arriving as if from inside the closest yucca plant and chitter away over our shoulders.  The eldest male, for some reason, carries with him a big old pot of grease of some kind (huh?!?!) and he begins slathering it all over and inside the socket of the tie rod.  Once stuffed like a thanksgiving turkey with grease we employ all our strength on the ratchet straps and crank on the steering wheel once again.  Again the tie-rod pops back together!  Now, however, we are resigned to our DNF for the day and just want to somehow limp the vehicle back along the access road this family had come in on and get in contact with our chase team with whom we have been unable to relay much of a message too.  The "Weatherman" flying relay in the sky knows that we are broken and trying to limp out but we have not received a message back from Paul and Tim.

We very gently back the race truck backwards down the course to the access road at some 5-10 mph and begin the slow ride toward the highway where we hope to figure out just where we are and what to do.  Oh!  Hey!!  Look!  The temp gauge on the truck is spiking and there is steam coming from the engine!!

Quickly we kill the engine and exit the vehicle to the sound and smell of superheated coolant spraying all over the engine bay and a pool of green in the dirt.  Well, well, well, now that went from bad to worse...So now we can only go a couple hundred yards at a time before the engine begins overheating and has to be shut down to cool.  We are quite crippled and are both wishing we had packed more personal water...

In the middle of this slow process up drives the 18 going on 50 boy who had assisted us twice already that day on his quad again.  This time he is alone but carries with him a large hammer and chisel (what?) which he immediately runs to the tie-rod with and promptly proceeds to smash down the socket around the ball.  Now we have a margin of comfort around the ability of this suspension component to stay together for the last few miles to pavement.  He and his grandfather make out with a handful of (unasked for) pesos, and a pair of (unoffered) vice grips and wire snips but its a small price to pay for their assistance.

Hope rising further still as a group of Idaho surfers driving a 4Runner and heading for town in search of some tacos for lunch come sweeping by our pathetic scene...  Using full surfer lingo "We were mobbing this and mobbing that!", they kindly offer to tow our vehicle to the highway where they remember a small auto repair garage being present.  Huzzah!

These searchers of the Endless Summer pull our vehicle in front of said garage and leave to find their tacos and waves.  Here we pull the hood and diagnose the coolant system with a large crack in a plastic fitting as the cause of our heating issues.  A hack saw and some metal tubing scavenged from unknown source in the garage proprietor's backyard along with a couple small hose clamps and purchased coolant solves this issue in full.

And look!  Its our chase team!  They got the relayed message that we were heading out to the highway and given there is only one highway they figured they were bound to find us and so they have.  The garage owner kindly allows us to pull the race truck into his shady outdoor facility and get to work on our suspension repairs.  A bit of work later and we have the new tie-rod installed and the truck looks like it can stand on its own...turning the wheel however reveals a problem as it binds and will not turn to the left hardly at all.  I immediately know what the issue is as I had the same problem when I tore the same suspension and tie-rod from the vehicle during a hill climb event a few years back.  The upper control arm on that same side has taken the full force of the ditch impact once the tie rod gave way and twisted badly causing the bind.

Wow!  What luck!  We have proceeded to break on Day 1 the only two parts on the vehicle for which I carry spares!  So off comes the UCA and on goes the new one.  Without a spring compressor we resort again to ratchet straps and without a spanner wrench we resort to a hammer and a flathead to turn the spring adjustment ring.  Much swearing and cursing is had and my frequent exclaims of "its in there!" when asked if we have a particular tool or not begin grating on everyone's nerves (as I don't actually know where the requested tool is, just that its in a bag or box or van in general).  We manage to get the job done with the help of some more locals who use a BFH with great effect on getting the new UCA and bolts back in its now slightly tweaked frame mounts.  We have a functional race truck again!

Our race for the day however is over as its now late afternoon and we have hundreds of miles to our hotel in Bahia de Los Angeles that need to now be covered in dusk and dark.  We stop at a roadside taco stand run by a great little family (seriously, why don't we have these every other block here in the States?) and have a great meal, well deserved all around.

Covering the remaining hours to Bahia de Los Angeles is no easy feat however, even with the trailer unloaded and the race truck driving separately.  This first experience with driving Highway 1 at night while being completely exhausted is something that will never leave me.  Multiple times I thought I would die from oncoming tractor trailers moving at 60+ mph and passing so close to the van or race truck that their compression wave would lift the windshield wipers right off the glass and audibly compress the driver's side window pane.  Somehow we made it to Bay of LA by about 1AM and some of the NORRA staff including Ed Pearlman were still awake tracking down missing race vehicles (of which I am glad we are no longer one).  We get some directions to Larry and Raquel's beach camp and arrive to a place where we can hear the waves crashing on the beach and feel the soft sand under our feet as we exit our vehicles.  We never do meet Larry or Raquel (who I learned had been gunned down in a highway driveby some years earlier) and merely crash into the first room we find with an open door and no one inside.  I feel fairly safe however as some other big teams (Aldo Racing for instance) are here and their crew are still working at this hour (sweeping sand from their tarps underneath their giant EZ Ups at 2AM...)

While the rudimentary room we have acquired has air conditioning and beds, I ask myself if I will ever again find myself on the Sea of Cortez under such a sea of stars as I find overhead.  I find that the answer is unlikely and proceed to grab a pillow and a blanket and head to the beach to sleep on the sand, the sound of waves in my ears.  I would return to my "hotel" room at about 5:30, my body now bereft of adrenaline and the air quite chilly...but glad I had fallen asleep staring up (literally, no joke) at some shooting stars and constellation patterns not quite where I am used to...