Oct. 20
The Bermuda Arco

Now that the Baja 1000 course map is out, we have begun to divide it up and designate the first 4 sections in the race to each team member. For this reason, this weekend the team had to split up for pre-running and training purposes. Craig and Captain Dan went to San Felipe to train on Craig's leg of the race which is the first 180 miles or so of the race (it turns out they had quite an adventure on this trip, which we will not speak of here, and they decided to keep it a secret from the team until the race was over). Steve had to stay in the states this weekend to complete a move from Los Angeles to Encinitas and get adjusted for his new work location. Meanwhile, Tim and I had the plan to pre-run our sections further south. Tim was assigned the section from El Crucero to San Ignacio and I was assigned the section from San Ignacio to just north of Loreto. We believed that if we timed everything perfectly, we could drive to El Crucero Friday night, Tim could pre-run his section on Saturday morning and I could pre-run my section next Saturday afternoon and then we could drive back on Sunday.

However, it was already the end of the month and we were short on money, and we knew that it was possible we would only have enough money, gas and time to pre-run Tim's section. Tim debated whether we should even go at all and I went into the weekend just thinking that I am happy to be able to go down to Mexico at all and that we would just make do some way or another. Jovana stayed with her aunt for the weekend and our son, Zack, came with us to keep Tim and I company as we chased for each other in our pre-running.

By Friday night, our plans were already foiled. Tim was not feeling well and wanted to sleep another night at home. So we left early Saturday morning instead, with Tim bundled up in the back seat in blankets the entire way down. While feeding Tim ibuprofine to fight the fever it seemed he had developed, I drove south and hoped to get to our destination before he insisted that we no longer go.

Later in the day, we looked for the place where Tim would be starting his first leg of the race. But, we could not find the entrance to the course from El Crucero. We discovered that this spot is a veteran racer's secret until race day. Only on race day is it easily identifiable because of all the pitters who stake out there. Otherwise, there is no way of identifying this spot from the highway. So we continued south and found the course where it turns onto the road going into Bahia de Los Angeles. We drove onto the course and pulled off to the side and made a camp there since it was pretty late now and Tim needed to rest some more before he got on the motorcycle. Tim slept on the top of the Burban while Zack and I slept inside next to the full 30 gallon drum of gas (filled up with compliments of the Chevron card since we were short on cash) that made a loud noise every once in a while with the change of temperatures and everytime one of us kicked it as we rolled over.

Being the early risers in the family, Zack and I got up before dawn on sunday. Fireman Zack made us a fire to heed off the morning chill while I attempted to make breakfast out of whatever food I could put together. Tim tried his best to stay asleep as long as possible since he knew there wasn't a pot of hot coffee brewing for him.

I couldn't help myself from taking advantage of the morning light in the beautiful Mexican desert to look for the photographic shots begging for attention with my cheapo camera, while I waited on Tim to get up.

When Tim finally geared up, we agreed that we would meet in El Arco where I could gas him up half way through his ride. I knew he didn't have much water on him because we didn't have time to clean out his camelback from the previous weekend rides. But we didn't have a way to fix that without a large amount of running water and our jugs of water were dumped out at the last Chevron station stop to use for toting more gas. He had no spare food or gas on him either, mainly because we were just too lazy to take the time to set him up, so it was important that I meet him in El Arco as soon as possible. After he rode off into the distance, I wondered for a brief moment whether I needed to worry for Tim who was embarking on a long ride, in Mexico, without any emergency supplies at all. But I quickly dismissed those thoughts because coming to Mexico on the weekend was now a regular habit and it just felt like home and that things would just work out one way or another.

And so off Tim went on his long ride and about 1 mile later he hit the highway leading into Bahia de Los Angeles. While Zack and I chased Tim down the highway, I wondered to myself what the point was of pre-running the 40 mile highway section in to Bahia de los Angeles, since it was only going to waste gas and wear and tear on the motorcycle tires. About 5 minutes later I turned a corner and saw Tim on the side of the highway waiting for me and I laughed to myself as I realized he was thinking the same thing. So he loaded the motorcycle back up on the trailer and we drove together into town, thus saving a few more drops of gas out of the drum we would need for later.

We got to this corner, saw the SCORE arrows on the telephone pole pointing to a dirt road, and knew right away this is where Tim needed to start pre-running. The day was starting to get hot, and I thought again how stupid we were probably being for letting Tim leave without water. But I just told Tim, "If you get thirsty, make sure you stop and ask someone for water; I'm sure there will be somebody out there," even though all weekend we hadn't seen any other pre-runners in the area.

As I drove away, I snickered at the yellow building that claimed to be an internet cafe in the middle of nowhere in Baja, but dutifully logged it into my memory bank in case it would be something I would need later.

The day was turning out to be gorgeous and Zack and I were hypnotized by the beautiful scenery as we drove out of Bahia De Los Angeles and quickly lost radio contact with Tim. We had a 40 mile drive back to highway 1 and then another 200 miles drive south that included crossing the border from northern Baja to southern Baja in Guerrero Negro. It was at this point I realized that I had forgotten Zack's passport at home, had no required visas for any of us, had apples in the cooler that I didn't want to have taken away from me as they were our only snacks for the day, and not enough money to pay for the visas that I might get charged for. Furthermore, I just left my husband in the desert with no emergency supplies and a promise that I would meet up with him on the other side of that border crossing. I know that most people in the world would think that I am absolutely insane to put myself and my family in this situation. But cheap family travels to Baja were part of my regular childhood experience, and they have now become a regular childhood experience for my kids. I told myself what I always tell myself in these situations "It will all work out somehow, because it always does."

It wasn't long before we settled into a driving groove; Zack went to sleep and I hummed to my ipod as I watched the kilometer markers tick by. When we got close to the border crossing, I woke Zack up to help me pump some more gas out of the drum to put in the truck and to eat our apple snack of the day before they would be taken away from us. Zack and I came up with the plan that we would distract the immigration guys with our remaining apples by giving those up when they asked us if we had any fruits or vegetables and carry on a conversation with them as we looked for the 20 pesos to pay for their pesticide spray on the truck wheels to try to get the other guys to forget about asking for our visas. I figured if that didn't work, I would play dumb, and then turn back and find our secret route to bypass the crossing. There was a route we used to take years back that went into the town of Guerrero Negro and back around to highway 1 further south of the crossing. But I really didn't want to do that because it would add another hour or two to my drive to Tim.

To my surprise (but not really), our plan worked perfectly and by playing out the usual conversation of how "I am a woman that is about to do the Baja 1000 on a 'quatrimoto' and that's why we are down here training," their jaws dropped and my foot hit the pedal, and we were through in no time.

It was now time to start paying attention to the road to look for the "El Arco" turn off. I was supposed to meet Tim in or nearby the town of El Arco because the race map showed the race course going right by there. We knew that according to the map calculations Tim should be out of gas right by that town and so he was supposed to wait for me there, and, if all went well, I would be there not too long after him. So far I was making pretty good time.

We found the road that turns off of highway 1 rather easily because the road actually had a sign in capital letters for "EL ARCO." Because the roads in Baja NEVER are labeled, I thought this was odd and that it was just too easy to be true. It wasn't long before this thought was confirmed. The road was a deep washboard road that only high tech race vehicles would be able to glide over smoothly. On the map it only seemed like it would take about 30 minutes or less until we got to El Arco. But this was one of those deceiving roads of Baja that seemed much shorter on the map than it really was. I could not figure out what speed to take this road. Too slow meant it would literally take FOREVER to get there. Too fast meant that the truck would shake all over the place and our belongings would be tossed all over the place. After 20 minutes of "rattle, bang, crash, bumpity bump," the gas cans on the trailer tipped completely over, fell out of the tie downs, and leaked out some of our precious liquid gold. We stopped to configure another way to strap down the cans, and then discovered that the tool box lids on the trailer had loosened up too. We straightened up the gas cans, and shut locked the lids, and got going again. "Rattle, bang, crash, bumpity bump," and the spare tires went rolling off the trailer and bouncing down the road. We stopped to chase down the tires and configure another way to strap them down. We tightened up the straps as far as they would go and then knotted up the ends for extra security. But then we discovered that the trailer siding was coming off. We duct taped the medal panels back up to the railing on the side of the trailer, hoping that it would prevent it from loosening up even further. When we got back in this time, I decided to go slower to hopefully keep everything on the trailer. It was just getting way too hot for all this physical activity. But then we felt each and every bump in the road and we both started getting headaches, so my lead foot picked up speed again. "Rattle, bang, crash, bumpity bump," and the damn gas cans were tipping over again and my quad had now moved two places over on the trailer. Zack and I got out and put them all back in place again and then we discovered that we had lost a lock on one of the trailer lids (the bolts holding it in literally loosed up and fell out) and the lid was now banging open and shut with a roll of papertowels unraveling into a long string behind us. Zack and I decided to take a break.

We found a lizard that was perfectly camouflaged in the gravel on the road (can you spot it in the left picture?). We found some bones that Zack was interested in. We visited the bushes. We found some really cool rocks to take home with us. We guessed how far we had gone thus far. We guessed what time it was. And then we knew it was time to get going again.

O.K., so back on the road. This time I decided to make it a little more fun. We emptied all the rest of the gas from the gas cans into the truck and threw the tires and cans inside the truck, right on top of our pillows and sleeping bags (oh well, it was just too hot to figure out another way to pack them inside.) This time I told Zack he was going to drive. I hadn't quite figured out what was a good speed for this road myself, but now I only needed to watch my quad on the trailer, and I figured Zack and I together would do some experimentation.

My 15 year old Zack took his new driving responsibilities very seriously and asked how he was doing about every 5 minutes. I kept telling him to speed up and then slow down, and then speed up again. We just couldn't find a groove. With no AC in the truck, we were both very thirsty by now. But we felt guilty drinking any of the drinks out of the cooler because we knew that Tim was either waiting for us in the hot sun or riding hard out there somewhere in the Baja desert, and we needed to save what we had for him.

we continued our struggle to el Arco for another hour or so. Finally, we drove up to a small town with a military base. I knew we had arrived to El Arco, but it looked deserted. we drove around for a little bit trying to see if we could find the course. We finally saw two men standing by a car and drove by them a couple of times before we gave up and stopped to ask them for assistance. They abruptly announced that we had to drive further to get to the race course. They pointed out to one of the dirt roads that lead away from town and their directions quickly turned into one of those "turn left at the rock and right by the cactus" kind of directions that always seem to get me into trouble.

Once we turned away from town and appeared to be heading in the right direction, Zack and I looked down the road and realized we still had so much more offroading to do to get to Tim. Just as we realized this, Zack noticed an old cantene hanging off of a tree and we both laughed at the predicament it seemed to declare we were in. "God I hope Tim is not pissed!" I said aloud to myself.

About another 45 minutes later we finally found the race course...and there was no Tim. We sat there for about 5 minutes, with the truck still running, debating what to do. We drove up to a hill side nearby to look up and down the course but there was no sign of anyone. If Tim ran out of gas out on the course, he would need me to find him. But driving up and down an unfamiliar part of the race course towing a trailer could only mean I would get stuck somewhere. The only thing there was to do was to find a place to park, take my quad off the trailer and go looking for him. But that meant I would have to leave Zack behind.

I knew Zack could drive the truck and I knew that he knew how to use the radios. So I took a radio with me and told him I would stop to check in with him in about 5-10 miles, just before my handheld radio would go out of range. I also instructed him to stay in the truck and be ready to drive away if anyone were to come by and if he had to drive away to head back towards El Arco and wait for me there.

I must admit my heart was racing a little bit with this plan, but I knew that Zack could handle it and I also knew that we had to find Tim. so I struggled to get the quad off the trailer myself with no ramps on the trailer. I geared up and told him that I would not leave him there for very long. I went as fast as I could going south on the course, figuring that Tim wouldn't even know where to stop and wait for me because the course never actually went through el Arco and he probably would have zoomed right by this spot without even knowing that he was somewhat close to town.

I searched for about 20 miles down course until I ran into another chase team looking for their motorcycle rider as well. They had established the exact same plan as we had to meet their rider in el Arco, but then discovered that the course map was marked wrong and that they had to travel further from town to get to the course. We swapped information to see if we could help each other and agreed that our problem just got bigger because now we realized there were two seperate roads that lead to two different parts of the course from El Arco and neither road was marked to let the riders know that they needed to turn off to meet us in El Arco, but if they had figured it out, we didn't know which road they might have taken. They gassed me up and along with one of the guys on the chase team we agreed to ride up and down the roads looking for either or both riders. We found nothing. Then we decided to head north on the course to check on Zack and see if he had seen anything. Only my heart dropped when I discovered that the truck was gone. I told the guy with me I had to forfeit the idea of looking for the riders now and head straight to El Arco because that's where my son is probably heading.

"Oh crap, oh crap, oh crap!" was all I could think. I started doubling my speeds down the road toward El Arco, but thankfully, within a mile I saw the truck. To my delight both Zack and Tim were in it. The guy with me stopped and we all talked for a while trying to see if Tim had seen the other rider or could provide any other useful information. When Tim couldn't help him much and explained how he had been back and forth on the course all day, the guy blurted out in frustration, "The course map is wrong, and there is more than one road coming out from el Arco and I am so confused! We are trapped in a freagin' Bermuda Arco and I don't know if we'll ever get out!" We all laughed and with that he sped off to continue his search for his buddy.