The end of the day
We finished up stage 2 with a time of 3:08:28. At the end, In San Felipe, we got a note from
Arwen and Mary saying to meet us at the OXXO.
They were worried, a drunken member of a chase team had told them we
were lost. So we went to the OXXO filled
the tank and waited. Then they drove
by. Turns out there were two OXXOs. We tracked them down and headed down the road
85 miles to the third stage.
The third stage is 56.7 miles of dirt road that both the
race cars and chase crew have to take.
It's pretty awful washboard and gets rocky towards the end. A race car can go fast on it, but Mary was
worried about the Lexus. So, we agreed
to wait for her at the end of the stage.
It would put us into Bahia de Los Angeles late but we weren’t worried. At this pointed we’d realized
that we should focus on finishing more than winning.
I drove and we bombed through this stage. Even though Rhonda and I were a bit fried it
was nice to be on a road that it would be hard to get lost on. Most of the course was a washboard and
the fj40 could cruise on that as fast as it could on a paved freeway (about
62mph). We stopped at a Pemex about
halfway through and team Brutus passed us.
The last third of the course was windy and rocky. Not horrible but it would slow Arwen and Mary
down. We did pass a couple broken racers
and a chase team with a trailer with two flat tires.
The stage took us an hour and twenty minutes. At the end we
stopped and waited. It turned out it would
take Mary and Arwen a little over three hours.
Finishing felt great.
It was the first stage that went perfectly. We ran into One Legged Lance and the Stroppe Bronco
chase team and chatted. They were
waiting for their chase trailer which eventually came through and then they
were on their way.
We turned around and went closer to the finish line. At that point one of the NORRA crew came over
and asked “what’s that fluid.” There was
a puddle of power steering fluid under the car. The hoses had come loose and rubbed against
the front shocks. Three or four guys
came over and we quickly repaired the power steering return hose (I forgot how
incredibly helpful people are in Baja). Then started the car and the high pressure braided hose blew out. It couldn’t be repaired.
It was getting late and started to get cold. Rhonda (unlike me) is skinny and was
freezing. We hadn’t packed jackets. There was a big canvas tarp wedged in the
back but we kept thinking Mary and Arwen would be their any minute. Finally, at about 9:30pm, our chase crew showed up and then we
had to figure out what to do.
At the same time our team came in, Ted Sumner and his crew
came through. Their 1970 Ford F-100 had
given out. They were planning on skipping Bahia de Los Angeles and driving through to Guerrero
Negro. In the morning they would head to
Vizcaino where there’s an excellent mechanic and get their truck fixed and hopefully race the second stage of the day. It sounded good to us.
We couldn’t get that far. Not only was the Fj40s power steering out (which made it funky to drive) we had two kids, it was dark, cold and the two lane
highway was full of giant trucks and cows.
11:30pm, in Rosarito, Mary pulled over and said she thought she saw a
hotel. She went over a found a trucker
hotel that had just opened. We would be
their first guests and for $35 a room we settled in, exhausted, and got a good
nights sleep.
our adventure continues here
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