Wednesday, November 28, 2007
9000 miles of Fun!
It was the time of my life ! What a great experience, The guys were so great. The people of Mexico were all so kind and seemed to be happy that we were there for this event. The trip to the orhanage was an incredible heartwarming experience for all of us. I am so greatful to to Jerry and Christel for putting it all together and making it possible for all of us to enjoy the trip of a life time.
Monday, November 26, 2007
One Account Of The Race....
The Baja 1000… was amazing. We pre-ran on Thursday and Friday before the race on Tuesday. The Baja Peninsula is wonderfully beautiful. Different than we usually think of beautiful, but lovely anyways. The terrain changes so fast! One hour you will be driving through mountains with huge rocks every where and the next it is flat and full of thousands of HUGE Saguaro Cactus!!! And I am not exaggerating, there are really thousands!
Saturday we spent at the El Oasis orphanage in Valle de Trinidad with 57 kids. On Sunday we gave them rides on the quads. That was a blast!! They were all so excited!!
Sunday afternoon we drove to Ensenada and parked near the docks right near all the happenings! We worked on getting the quad ready to race, and Monday morning we had registration and tech inspection which we passed with flying colors. Jerry and Timm met Johnny Campbell and had him sign their helmets. Jeremy got sick and went to stay in a hotel until he was better. John went to get stickers made to hand out to all the kids along the route. Then John was sick. We think they ate something they shouldn’t have!
Monday night none of hardly slept! Between getting organized and being excited at 2:30am everyone was finally ready to sleep. At about 3am Dan and Timm pulled out in the chase truck and headed toward the orphanage where they would do they first rider change. Jerry was to ride first and Dan next. Then Timm and Jerry would cross over to Highway 1 from 3 on a dirt “goat trail” in the truck!
At 4am the motorhome pulled out and headed South on Mexico 1, leaving Jerry there with the quad to start the race! Jerry started at about 8am. He and Dan changed off without a problem and Dan raced toward us in the motorhome. The MH was waiting at the next driver exchange, so John could ride. Apparently Dan went a lot faster on his section that John anticipated, because when Dan drove up John was not ready to ride. He rushed around and was off… 7 hours later he and Erik changed and they discovered the battery for the night lights had come loose and knocked off the filter which let the engine suck in a bunch of silt! After Erik rode, Timm got on… by the end of Timm’s run the engine was getting too hot! Jerry got on again and after just a few miles the engine died at Race Marker 755. The chase truck was so far away it took several hours for them to get back to the quad, they would replace the piston and keep going. However after Timm and Dan got there they discovered the pistons were different and they had to put the new engine back together and just put the whole thing in! The whole engine problem ended up taking 14 hours! They finished at about 3:30am and Jerry continued on, and Dan and Timm had to follow on the race course to get back to civilization! By the time Jerry got to the next check point, it was gone and the pit support had also pulled out, so we were on our own to find gas and just get to Cabo! We still had 550 miles to go and only 6 hours to do it in. So Thursday morning Jerry switched with Erik and Erik went through the last pit stop before they disappeared, and bummed gas off of some fellow chase trucks he met along the way. It was during Erik’s run that our official time ran out for finishing the race on time. Dan followed him and the clutch died on him and they had to replace that before continuing on. So we decided that night we would actually sleep and the guys would go in the morning and just trail ride the rest of the way. Friday they only had about 200 or so miles to go but they had to find their own gas every sixty miles or so Jerry, Timm and Erik started out in the morning. Half way down they were going switch and John, Dan and Jerry would drive in to the finish! But we had yet another flat tire on the trailer and so we did not make it to the switch off point in time and the three of them went on. They just wanted to get to Cabo!!! The motorhome and chase truck drove on and made it to Cabo at about 6:30. The guys did not come in for another 4 hours! They were riding on 2 regular quads and the race quad so they didn’t want to push too hard and break the quads or themselves!! Plus there was LOTS of silt!! Deep Silt!
Finally they called us and they were going to run out of gas and they wanted us to try to meet them and fill them one last time… So the other 5 of us got in the chase truck and tried to go backwards on the trail, but the silt go too thick for the truck and so we turned around and found roads out to meet them… We found them… toodling along, very tired and Timm was towing Jerry on the race quad!!! They were a pitiful site… but they wanted to get to Cabo so bad they didn’t even want to stop for gas… they had taken the gas out of the race quad and put it in the other 2 to make it all the way there! So we lead them into town at 11:30pm. As we came down the main Party street the guys on the quads were whooping and hollering and John was yelling out the window of the truck “Team GodSpeed, Coming through!!!” People started cheering and yelling for us… That was pretty rewarding, plus knowing that we did ride the Baja 1000 in 2007 was just grand!! We did a team photo shoot and ate some food and went to bed! Everyone was so tired!! But like the t-shirt says… “No Sleep Till Cabo!”
Saturday we spent at the El Oasis orphanage in Valle de Trinidad with 57 kids. On Sunday we gave them rides on the quads. That was a blast!! They were all so excited!!
Sunday afternoon we drove to Ensenada and parked near the docks right near all the happenings! We worked on getting the quad ready to race, and Monday morning we had registration and tech inspection which we passed with flying colors. Jerry and Timm met Johnny Campbell and had him sign their helmets. Jeremy got sick and went to stay in a hotel until he was better. John went to get stickers made to hand out to all the kids along the route. Then John was sick. We think they ate something they shouldn’t have!
Monday night none of hardly slept! Between getting organized and being excited at 2:30am everyone was finally ready to sleep. At about 3am Dan and Timm pulled out in the chase truck and headed toward the orphanage where they would do they first rider change. Jerry was to ride first and Dan next. Then Timm and Jerry would cross over to Highway 1 from 3 on a dirt “goat trail” in the truck!
At 4am the motorhome pulled out and headed South on Mexico 1, leaving Jerry there with the quad to start the race! Jerry started at about 8am. He and Dan changed off without a problem and Dan raced toward us in the motorhome. The MH was waiting at the next driver exchange, so John could ride. Apparently Dan went a lot faster on his section that John anticipated, because when Dan drove up John was not ready to ride. He rushed around and was off… 7 hours later he and Erik changed and they discovered the battery for the night lights had come loose and knocked off the filter which let the engine suck in a bunch of silt! After Erik rode, Timm got on… by the end of Timm’s run the engine was getting too hot! Jerry got on again and after just a few miles the engine died at Race Marker 755. The chase truck was so far away it took several hours for them to get back to the quad, they would replace the piston and keep going. However after Timm and Dan got there they discovered the pistons were different and they had to put the new engine back together and just put the whole thing in! The whole engine problem ended up taking 14 hours! They finished at about 3:30am and Jerry continued on, and Dan and Timm had to follow on the race course to get back to civilization! By the time Jerry got to the next check point, it was gone and the pit support had also pulled out, so we were on our own to find gas and just get to Cabo! We still had 550 miles to go and only 6 hours to do it in. So Thursday morning Jerry switched with Erik and Erik went through the last pit stop before they disappeared, and bummed gas off of some fellow chase trucks he met along the way. It was during Erik’s run that our official time ran out for finishing the race on time. Dan followed him and the clutch died on him and they had to replace that before continuing on. So we decided that night we would actually sleep and the guys would go in the morning and just trail ride the rest of the way. Friday they only had about 200 or so miles to go but they had to find their own gas every sixty miles or so Jerry, Timm and Erik started out in the morning. Half way down they were going switch and John, Dan and Jerry would drive in to the finish! But we had yet another flat tire on the trailer and so we did not make it to the switch off point in time and the three of them went on. They just wanted to get to Cabo!!! The motorhome and chase truck drove on and made it to Cabo at about 6:30. The guys did not come in for another 4 hours! They were riding on 2 regular quads and the race quad so they didn’t want to push too hard and break the quads or themselves!! Plus there was LOTS of silt!! Deep Silt!
Finally they called us and they were going to run out of gas and they wanted us to try to meet them and fill them one last time… So the other 5 of us got in the chase truck and tried to go backwards on the trail, but the silt go too thick for the truck and so we turned around and found roads out to meet them… We found them… toodling along, very tired and Timm was towing Jerry on the race quad!!! They were a pitiful site… but they wanted to get to Cabo so bad they didn’t even want to stop for gas… they had taken the gas out of the race quad and put it in the other 2 to make it all the way there! So we lead them into town at 11:30pm. As we came down the main Party street the guys on the quads were whooping and hollering and John was yelling out the window of the truck “Team GodSpeed, Coming through!!!” People started cheering and yelling for us… That was pretty rewarding, plus knowing that we did ride the Baja 1000 in 2007 was just grand!! We did a team photo shoot and ate some food and went to bed! Everyone was so tired!! But like the t-shirt says… “No Sleep Till Cabo!”
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