Hardbody's Are Tough...But Not That Tough....

My goodness...this driver is lucky to be alive.

The Hardbody involved has a small lift but the pilot must be brainless.  Heading out on a small jetty into what looks like 15-20 foot waves is moronic.  The waves, broken by the rocks jetty are still plenty strong enough to toss the truck around like a toy.  The Coast Guard comes in at the end to rescue the driver and the world appears to be less one more Hardbody...RIP...

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...

Dave Grohl and Friends Cover Neil Young's Cinnamon Girl

This is from this past weekend.  Dave Grohl his friends and his broken leg show up and do a pre-concert show as part of a motorcycle rally in Washington DC.  He performs a solid cover of Neil Young's Cinnamon Girl.

Of particular interest is that behind the drums is Pearl Jam's very original drummer Dave Krusen.  Krusen provided all the drum work on Pearl Jam's first album Ten and likely lives comfortably off those royalties (if he was smart).  He left the band somewhat voluntarily before PJ ever even really became big due to his substance abuse problems and put himself into rehab at that point--a good move given the number of substance related deaths in the bands around him.  Other members of this "band" are former members of Blind Melon who had their own issue with substance abuse seeing Shannon Hoon (their lead singer) die of an overdose and Grohl himself saw Kurt Cobain commit suicide.  Ahhh...such happy tales...

Regardless, enjoy...

How Do You Know the Dakar is Big??

When you can sell out a stadium simply to watch a Dakar winner's bike do a backflip...not the actual guy who won the Dakar...just some standin on the bike that won the Dakar...

Road To Dakar Part 1

Yup, posting another link to another video...its the holidays and I'm lazy.  Doesn't mean this video doesn't deserve far more views than it has seen so far.  This was originally broadcast on NBCSports channel and the second episode of this will air Xmas eve.  It goes into a lot of the preparation and testing and packing that is involved in an effort of this scale.  It is stunning the investment involved and time required.  Many don't like Robby Gordon but its hard to question his dedication or investment in this effort.

Ryan Tuerck (Derry, NH native) Drifting a New England Hillclimb Mountain

So we'll post another video here...

Burke Mountain is a local ski area in Burke, VT topping out modestly at a bit over 3,200 feet.  The road to the top of Burke is part of the New England Hillclimb series.  Here however is professional drifter Ryan Tuerck who hails from Derry, NH (right next door to where I live) and who started out in motocross.  The video is a good look at the roads and some of the speeds the hillclimb series sees with some professional photography.  Good to see Burke, Tuerck and hillclimbing getting some good video out.

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

Bobby Robins First Fight as a Boston Bruin

Well that didn't take long...the Bruins replacement for the beloved Shawn Thorton didn't take long to get in the swing of things.  As a lower cost and younger (barely) hockey "enforcer" Robins did exactly what you would want him to do after Flyer Zac Rinaldo had earlier gotten a roughing penalty and had taken a run at just returning from injury (and Bruin's lynchpin) Dennis Seidenberg.  The fight itself was mostly a draw and no real blood was spilled...but it sets an appropriate tone and shows that though Thornton is now deservedly on an increased and two year contract with the Panthers that the Bruins haven't lost their tough side.

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.

Looking Good Rex!!

I think I had him on my fantasy team back in high school.  Classic white boy shooter who had some hops and came up 6th and 2nd in the NBA Dunk Contests he entered (falling short to Dee Brown's no look dunk in the year he came in 2nd).

Now he's making a "living" stealing stuff from Apple stores and then running to pawn shops to liquidate the goods.  Classic white boy from Kentucky stealing stuff from stores to sell at pawn shops??  I smell a Meth habit!  Anyway...video here of him in the Apple stores lifting the goods.  Time to take a plea deal and enter rehab Rex...

Another Syrian Tank Destroyed At The End of a US TOW...

These videos seem to be coming in more frequently now.  Here is another Syrian tank going up in flames at the end of a "rebel" launched TOW missile.  The tank looks like it was moving backwards before it was hit and then continued backwards after the impact as the fire resulting from the burning tank moves behind the building it was initially retreating to.  I'm shocked it could move at all or be under any sort of control after the TOW takes it out...The smoke and dust make it difficult to make out what kind of tank it was unfortunately.

BJ Baldwin and Recoil 2

The original Recoil video had a Nissan GTR and BJ racing around the desert on the northern side of the border.  The sequel has him down in Ensenada (I can say I've driven my own race truck on these streets!!) ripping up the scenery.  BJ has added one Mr. Dan Bilzerian here as well. With Bilzerian's legion of social media followers and some amazing video of the capabilities of his trophy truck, this video may exceed the popularity of the original...

Syrian Rebels Take Out Syrian Artillery with US TOW Missile...

Now here's hoping that these are the "nice" Syrian rebels and not of the ISIS variety.  What we have here is the use of an American made (Raytheon specifically) BGM-71 TOW missile which was designed to be an anti-tank/anti-armor weapon but can also be used as an anti-structure or in this case anti-artillery weapon.  You can see that the operator of the missile has to stay with the launcher after firing as it needs to be guided in to its target--not the best of circumstances in a hot shooting environment but like the video I posted the other day of the helicopter shootdown, they do not seem to be under any pressure from an opposing force during these raids.

BGM-71 TOW in Afghanistan for comparo

On the Syrian side of the equation it has to be

especially frightening as the attacks come in what appears to be a "calm" environment when suddenly your helicopter is blown apart or your cannon is made into easily recyclable material.  Attacks are very asymmetrical in this environment.  The artillery piece in question looks to be a Russian 2S3 self propelled howitzer of the 152.4mm variety.  The Syrians bought about 100 of these from Russia in recent years.  Given their maximum armor of

 Model of 2S3 for comparo with the video

30mm and the TOWs rating for armor penetration of at least 450mm (up to a reported 900mm in some varieties) it is safe to say that this howitzer is no longer in use.

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.

Syrian Rebels Take Out Russian Helicopter with Russian Missile

There should be a bit of irony here.  The Syrian rebels (likely to be of the extreme Islamic variety given their use of social media and apparent sophistication) here are using a  relatively modern Russian anti-tank guided missile to shoot down/blow up a Syrian government helicopter of the Russian variety.

The missile appears to be a Kornet which first came into production in the mid 90's and has been used by Iraq against American tanks in the early '00s, damaging a few but not destroying any and also against the Israeli's by Hezbollah (targets have included Isreali tanks and a child laden schoolbus).  Russia has supplied Syria with these anti-tank missiles for years and they appear to have now fallen into the hands of the Syrian rebels/ISIS.

The helicopter here appears to be an MI-2 which is more of a transport helicopter than an attack platform (though it can be outfitted with various short range offensive weaponry).  Supposedly Syria had about 20 of these at one point--make that 19 now...Produced in Poland beginning in the late 60's/70's and designed in Russia these helicopters serve in secondary regimes around the world.  Though the Kornet missile is not specifically designed to take down helicopters, given the static position this one was in during its landing and apparently unpressured position the attackers were located in, made this takedown easy.

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/

NORRA Mexican 1000--Part 2(c)

Ahh...so we are off to our third day of racing.  The good news is that with the prior days success and 175 stage miles under the tires of the race truck we know that a full tank of gas will get us through any stage without pitting.  The lack of any mechanical issues during the events longest stage gave us great confidence as to its ability to operate in this environment.  With a night's sleep in A/C, a clean and modern hotel and some decent breakfast in our stomachs, things were looking up...

Of course an hour or so of an improving mood was too much and we are back between the grindstones in short order.  While our General Tire A/Ts looked almost brand new we noticed a large screw in the tread of a rear tire and knew we needed to make a change.  So off comes the bad tire and a front tire to swap to the rear.  The spare that was being placed on the front was mounted on a different wheel than what was on the rest of the vehicle--no biggie...except that the difference in offset and wheelspacer on the spare wheel/tires require open lugs in order to seat against the wheel...and....I didn't pack any open lugs so we can't put the wheel on truck and we are left with the option of trying to run on a tire with a giant screw in it or try and track down some open lugs.

Elliott I can tell is about at the end of his rope with my and my nonchalant planning/preparedness and wanders off, likely to keep himself from throwing a punch at me.  Tim retreats to the inside of the van to leave the disaster to me to handle and Paul remains his usual upbeat self, not letting anything shake him.  Me?  I am in period of self loathing, asking how I could be so stupid and feeling like I had let everyone down.

Fortunately Elliott and Paul track down a local auto supply store a few blocks away and run off to grab a few sets of open lugs (the front bolt thread pitch is different from the rear so having a couple sets of proper open lugs is best) and I try and prepare the truck to quickly swap the tires upon their return.  Paul and Elliott return with the lugs and we get the proper wheels/tires on and Elliott and Tim take off in the race truck to find the start of the second of the day's stages (again, due to the late arrival and last minute obstacles we have decided to only try and run the later of the day's stages).

Paul and I take the "screwed" tire to a local shop and get it plugged so that we keep our # of spares sufficient.  We head out of town shortly after looking to meet the race truck at a road crossing about 1/2 way through the stage.  We have a loooong day of driving ahead of us just to reach the road crossing...we're talking like 6+ hours just to get to the half way point of the second stage.  The day is again filled with lengthy road construction resulting in near brownout conditions from the dust and seemingly endless straightaways.  We do however reach the aforementioned road crossing in fair shape and sit down to await our drivers with some burritos from the roadside family shack located here.  We watch other vehicles cross and wait...and wait...

Then we begin making inquiries as to if anyone knows what has occurred to our team hoping someone has had radio contact with them.  "Hey" says a course worker, "I think I took some photos of that truck when it crossed the road a while ago!"  Sure enough, looking through his digital files our drivers had actually passed the road crossing BEFORE we even arrived!  Here we are sitting here eating our burritos and relaxing while our guys went through the area an hour or more ago and were out there racing.

Well, Paul and I take this as good news...the race truck must be running well if it made it here that quick and just kept on going.  We hop in the van and begin sprinting down the road hoping that we can catch our guys as they come out on the other end some hour or more down the road.  By the time we reach the other end of the stage the sun is about to set and none of the course workers here have seen our truck.  Then we begin hearing radio transmissions from race controllers that there are up to a dozen or more vehicles stuck in a series of silt beds shortly after the road crossing we had just left.  We wait, and wait and then find out that our truck had stopped in that silt bed area and ceased any movement.  Oh, boy...with a giant van with only 2WD and a trailer we have absolutely zero way to get to them, let alone retrieve them.  Remember...this is Mexico and Baja racing...driving out onto a hot race course is perfectly fine here.  No need to wait till the course is deemed "clear", afterall these are public roads that are never shut.

So we are faced with a dilemma, we are a tad low on gas and the nearest gas station is over an hour away, in the opposite direction from the road crossing we hope to get back to.  Do we spend more than two hours just getting gas before we even begin looking for our guys or do we risk running out of gas in the middle of nowhere (there are NO gas stations for multiple hours in the direction the road crossing requires) but begin looking for our boys right away.  Paul and I decide to take the risk and figure it out as we go and head after Elliott and Tim.  It takes us about an hour to get back to the general area of the road crossing where we hope to pick up the race course and get as close to them as possible and discover what has happened.  We find a couple of roadside stores/houses/shacks that have their lights on and we pop our heads in with Paul using his Spanish to inquire as to the particular road the course is located on.  We grab some additional water and supplies and ask if there is any gas around (as we are running very low now).  We are directed to a local farmer down the road who is known to have some gas in containers for his personal use.  Upon arriving at his house Paul inquires as to the availability of gas and the farmer agrees to supply us with some at a somewhat inflated price.  Gas siphoned into van by blowing into the top of a large container of gas held higher than the gas tank and now tube running to it, we are just about back on the road when a truck with some gringo faces hanging out the windows pulls up.

Come to find out, these NORRA workers had been told to look out for a big Ford van as it might be a couple guys looking for their race truck and drivers.  They had passed us while we were fueling up roadside with the farmer, noticed the van and swung back on the off chance they could talk to us.  Turns out they had left Tim and Elliott just a little while ago a little further up the road where they were located with the race truck!  Paul and I speed off down the highway, our hopes rising now knowing we won't have to search the desert in the dark for our compatriots, nor have to worry about somehow recovering the race truck.

We arrive on scene to find Elliott and Tim waiting and smiling--thank god.  The hood of the truck is off and obviously not running.  We greet and embrace looking to hear just what had happened.  Yes, they had been running well, crossed the road and kept going as they had plenty of gas.  The roads had been beautiful and fast, stage rally type roads that they had made great time on.  Things went downhill quickly however when they hit the silt beds.  Running down a small incline and into the silt a huge wave of the fine powder crests over the hood and windshield of the truck, blotting out all visibility and rapidly pulling the truck to a halt.  In the process of the rapid deceleration the Nissan's engine somehow throws its serpentine belt which rapidly becomes chewed to pieces in the fan.  Without a spare and deep in the silt things looked fairly hopeless--that is, until "luck" takes over and located at this spot (obviously aware of the likely result of numerous vehicles trying to run through the silt) is an individual with a tractor.  Words are exchanged between Elliott and the tractor owner and the tractor pulls the truck out.  Without a serpentine belt the engine isn't going to be doing much of anything.  Some redneck engineering places a series of shoestrings in place of the shredded belt and gets the truck a short distance before that fails as well.  I am a tad fuzzy on the remaining details on Tim and Elliott's remaining trip back to the main road but I believe another competitor's crew or similar flat towed the race truck back to where we now found it.

I may not have supplied the race truck with a spare serpentine belt itself but we did carry one in the van so we conduct some quick field repairs and in short order the truck is back running just fine.  We joke that they can go back and try the silt again and finish the stage but we know that this day too is over for us from a racing perspective.  Driving on the highway with the race truck behind us we travel a few more hours, getting into La Paz quite late again...11??  Midnight??  Later???  We park our vehicles and again crash into our hotel room.

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.