Sep. 1-4
Labor Day Weekend

For labor day weekend, Tim and I decided to hook up with our racing friends, Craig and Steve. We had trained together a little for the 500 and camped out together a few times and had decided that we were all good company to keep around for these training rides. We decided that we were going to do some long distance training for the weekend and had the hopes of riding from San Felipe to Bahia de Los Angeles.
Don't let this beautiful beach photo fool you. The weather was absolutely miserable this weekend! The John hurricane that was ravashing the southern end of the Baja peninsula this weekend brought some horrifically hot and humid weather to San Felipe as well.

We camped at Club de Pesca for the weekend. It took everything we had in us to work on our bikes and get ready for our rides each day. While exerting the smallest amount of effort, drips of sweat rolled down our faces and off our noses and chins. But as dedicated as we were to the cause of training for the Baja 1000, we pushed ourselves and each other to get on our bikes and roll out of camp.

Craig brought his father along, who is affectionately known as "Captain Dan." Captain Dan offered to chase for us, which was a perfect conclusion to our great plans to ride over 200 miles each way to Bahia de Los Angeles. He would haul the gas needed for all of us along the way and provide for emergency support.

But...it wasn't long until we figured out our plans were WAY too ambitious! On Saturday we started down the famous San Felipe whoops heading south. We got to about 30 miles into our ride, when we realized we were going no where fast. We were all over-heated and we seemed to feel worse with each and every whoop. We all had full camelbacks on us, but they only contained warm water that did not seem to help the problem. After stopping several times in our short ride, we decided to cut east toward the road and go find some cold water to help us cool off. I was so overheated I crashed on the way there. When a little store was finally located, somewhere by Campo La Roca, we bought about 20 bottles of water to drink and pour on us. The lady there thought we were nuts to be riding around in the desert on this day and happily fished around for more water bottles that were floating around in a large cooler of melted ice water and partially warm sodas.

Finally feeling restored, we all mounted our bikes again and attempted to continue south. Captain Dan was waiting for us another 30 miles further south, which was right where Steve and Craig would be running out of gas in their wimpy gas tanks that only hold enough for 60 miles (why don't they make desert tanks for the raptors!!!)! But because we were running behind schedule for Captain Dan, we decided to take the highway.

Going into this weekend, I was still believing that I was going to solo the Baja 1000. For this reason, I had much more at stake with completing this really long training ride than anyone else in the group. But up to this point, we had already left the camp late because our butts were dragging so bad, took twice as long to complete the first 30 miles of the ride, physically overheated, and now we were wimping out and taking the highway! The pressure was on for me to get my act together and do this ride like someone who can solo this race coming up. But I was feeling like shit and while I was dissappointed in myself especially because I had already crashed over a stupid mistake, I was actually relieved to be taking this damn highway and that pissed me off even more!

It was at this very moment I started thinking about whether or not soloing the race was the way to go. This was labor day weekend and I only had 8 more weekends to train. Craig and Steve had proposed the idea before of me racing with them on their team for the 1000 and so while I rode south, I pondered this option.

It wasn't until we met up with Captain Dan, filled up all our bikes with gas, argued over how we were going to transport gas cans and then buy more gas somewhere further south, when we finally realized this ride was too logistically rediculous to figure out. With having to fill up every 60 miles for Steve, Craig, and Tim's bikes (Tim was on the Banshee), and with it being already so late in the day, we just weren't going to make it to Bahia de los Angeles, Coco's Corner, or any of the other crazy places we talked about visiting. So we decided that we were going to have to head north again from that very spot.

The guys didn't understand the pressure I was dealing with inside my head. If this ride was going to turn into another 120 mile ride, that was not even going to come close to the distance I needed to be traveling to be properly training for the 1000. But it was decided that we needed to head back up the road and I understood that. So now that we all knew we weren't going on this incredibly long treck anymore, we all started playing. We rode along the side trails next to the road, and then decided to cut in to the beach and ride along there. We road fast along the beaches and had a great time. We even managed to stop for a swim in the sea which had ocean sized waves brought in from John (don't even ask about Steve's brown streaked underwear we were all forced to witness here!!!).

It was somewhere on some trail we were playing on, when I decided that today was not going to be a training day for me and just let myself go. After a few hours of this, I realized I was really relaxed and enjoying this and it didn't matter if I was overheated, hungover, unfit, or whatever else I accused myself of. At some point I thought about how if I raced on this team I would complete about 250 miles in the 1000 and with this short ride today we would already be completing half of that distance. When I looked at it that way, things seemed different; sharing the distance with a team took so much weight off of my own shoulders and my 8 weekends of training between now and the 1000 suddenly looked like a whole lot of weekends for training! It was on some stop when we were all grouping ourselves again where I felt the sense of comraderie that I keep feeling when I am out riding with these guys who all have their hearts in the same place I do with this Baja racing. In a moment that came as quick as it left, I looked over to Craig who was parked next to me and blurted out "I think I'm ready to team with you guys for this race." Craig finalized the decision with a high five and then we sped out of there to continue playing in the dirt until we finally made it back to camp.

At camp, Captain Dan made a delicious meal of steak and pasta primavera that just melted in our mouths. The awesome meal helped us to replenish some energy after not eating all day and we livened up a little. we felt like going into town to party a little.

That night we partied HARD!!!! I don't know what excuses everybody else had, but I had a really big one! I had just made a huge decision that was just going to change the course of 2 years of intense planning and training; I needed to get drunk. Only people who really know me, or who have read all of my stories throughout this past 1 1/2 years would truly understand how significant this decision was for me!

We drove into town, dressed as though we just walked off the beach because it was too dreadfully hot to bother, and shuffled into a bar. We played a few games of pool and had a few rounds of drinks and even started talking to the bar owner before I realized where we were. We were in Al's bar, whose owner Tim and I ran into when we were pre-running the Uruapan to Tres Hermanos section for the 500 a few months back.

We were in the middle of a conversation with Al, himself, when it all hit us simultaneously who we were talking to. We had received a special invite to this very bar after I had crashed on the Lagrimas hill and stopped to have a few beers with Al and his buddies who were all pre-running the section in their jeeps. As soon as Al knew who we were, he ordered us a couple more rounds of his special bar tequila which included my favorite drink, Damiana. I had already discovered I really liked this house tequila and was already working on my second, before 2 more were handed to me. But you can't say "no" to a bar specialty drink delivered to us on the house by an old buddy we had bonded with out on one of Baja's race courses.

Needless to say, it wasn't long before the night was "spinning" with fun. Before we knew it, Steve's charm worked us all into a special invite for a pool swim at a hotel some girls were staying at nearby our camp. The invite for a pool swim could have been from a one eyed, zit faced, open sored, heroine addicted, dreadlocked, street junkie and we all still would have accepted. Nothing sounded better after the awfully hot day we experienced. The pool contained wonderfully refreshing cold water and we could not have been any happier at that moment. We swam and talked and even managed to drink more beer until someone asked what time it was. When we discovered that the sun was going to rise in less than an hour, we were absolutely shocked and began to remember why were in San Felipe in the first place; we are hard core quad racers pre-running for the Baja 1000! We decided that we really needed to bid farewell of that pool and to go back to camp and get some sleep before our next ride that same day.

As wE all fell into bed, we thanked every god in the world that we left the AC's on in the motorhome and toy hauler that we were sleeping in that night. We relished that fact that it was so cold inside that we actually needed a blanket to cover up for our sleep.

Getting up Sunday was rough. We were very slow moving and we all knew the only way we were going to recover so we could get out butts on our quads again was to drink lots of water and gatoraide. It was the slowest moving day, but unbelievably, we managed to mount up for another ride. We decided to ride to the dry lake bed and do a little exploring there.

Captain Dan agreed to chase us again in Steve's Suburban. This time he was going to actually follow us on the actual 250 course we were going to ride on so he could experience the trails we do himself.

We went to our favorite bar in the middle of nowhere. Javier and his father live in this wooden shack and sell beers and sodas to all the offroaders who know they exist. I was still hungover and I couldn't drink any more beer, however, I bought one anyway just because it is so cool that you can buy beer like this in the middle of nowhere in Mexico! I was shocked to discover that Javier, who always sits on a little wooden bench in the dark shade with a beer bottle in a paper bag, remembered me from my last visit which was about a year prior. I asked him to draw in the sand again for me a map of how we get to the waterfalls nearby there and then we decided to try to find them.

We actually found some mud in the dry lake bed because Javier told me that it rained very hard the night before. Craig and Tim checked out the bikes and Steve took advantage of the stop to do some disco dancing (he keeps telling us he doesn't like to get his hands dirty with mechanics so this is what he does instead).

We finally found the "waterfalls" at dusk time. However, with even as much as it rained the night before and that morning, it was still all dried up. The wild life was quite alive at this time because things had finally cooled off a bit. When we stopped to take a look around, we heard lots of interesting sounds and eventually spooked ourselves out.

It was time to leave when we saw a tarantula cross our path. We got to do a night ride on the way back to camp. But not before we stopped in the middle of the dry lake bed one more time just to sit with the engines off and admire the peace and quiet you can always find there.

The next day was our last. I guess most sane people who pack up and leave right away so that they could deal with the drive and the border wait to get home at a reasonable time and be fresh and ready for work the next day. But us dedicated off road racing fools? No, we stupidly got up late, argued about where to go again for a ride, took a couple of hours to mount up and get out of there, went for a ride that lasted longer than expected and then still had to come back to camp to pack up. When we finally started rolling out of San Felipe, we took advantage of Pete's Camp on the way out to dump the RVs and sip on some Pina Coladas from the bar. It was there that we were informed that our beloved Crocodile Hunter had just been killed. I found it interesting that we chattered about this guy who was killed from his own dangerous hobby and how he was killed while doing what he loves best. It's easy to talk about the dangers of someone else's sport or hobby. I wondered if we realized that we were just like the Crocodile Hunter in our own sport when we throw ourselves in front of trophy trucks going 100 mph in the off road terrain which is already dangerous enough to deal with on a quad. But it's called "living life" and it was great being with a group of guys who live life the same way I love to.

So we knew we were already going to get home very late that night since we had left San Felipe so late. But we didn't count on another disaster that would make things worse. While waiting in the long border lines at Calexico, Captain Dan's motorhome started overheating and the tranny started to show signs off giving out. As Craig described the symptoms of the motorhome to Tim on the radio, Tim knew we were in for trouble. He immediately started giving everyone directions to line up so that Tim could be directly in front of the motorhome so that he would be prepared to start towing when we needed to. Almost immediately after we got everyone lined up correctly in the lines (rememember this is not easy to do with big vehicles and with fisty locals who do not give an inch in those lines) the motorhome gave out completely and we had to hook up a tow strap to the suburban. Tim towed the motorhome the rest of the way through the border (while he was also towing a trailer) and we ended up jamming up about 2 lanes of traffic to get past the border patrol. They didn't even bother checking us out or asking any of their usual questions because they were so pissed we were causing a major traffic jam.

We eventually made it into a parking lot of an Autozone on the American side of the border. Tim checked out the motorhome and after several bottles of tranny fluid and another couple of hours, it was determined that the motorhome was going to make it home. We all managed to make it to our homes by about 3:00 a.m. And, yes, we all managed to get to work at our usual times to carry on with our daily lives again.