The next most difficult part of the course was known to be "The Summit." Team Locos Mocos describes the Summit as such: "a geological feature that racers humbly refer to as 'The Summit'. The Summit is the remnant of a ranch road abandoned over 30 years ago by ranchers and avoided by race promoters for the last 20. The "road" (for lack of a better word) climbs to 4500 feet above the desert floor and crashes almost straight down the eastern escarpment of the Sierra Juarez. In just a few miles you plunge 2000 feet over a waste land of bare rock and multi foot high drop-offs. Tire slashing, wheel eating, jagged boulders jut from both sides of the (trail). Needless to say this is a one-way street to all but the experienced rock crawler." It was important to me to conquer the Summit as soon as possible.

With some GRUMBLING at the shop where my DS650 was and reminding them that they have tried absolutely everything in the past year and a half to fix the lemons on this bike, they dropped a new 2005 motor in the bike and had it back to us by the following weekend. This was the fastest we ever got our bike back from them, and I wasn't sure what to think of it yet the way my luck was going for this race. So the very next weekend after my major "Baja Beating," Bigfoot and I were off for the Summit for more.

Tim's uncle from Alabama had just arrived in town. He was moving to California with the military and had some time to play before reporting to work. Tim invited him along on our next pre-running session, and to my amazement, Uncle Eddie accepted. We hadn't seen him for many years and "Did he know what he was getting himself into?" I wondered. I wasn't sure he understood how hard core we are nowadays, but he told Tim that he didn't mind coming along for the adventure and going through whatever it took to help us out. On Friday night he spent the night with us at the Tecate Border and then followed us down in his Class C Motorhome to Ojos Negros on Saturday. Back in the Suburban again, we brought our kids along to spend time with Great Uncle Eddie and Christine.

We found "The Baja Store" in Heroes de La Independencia and asked the owner, Mario, if we could safely leave the motorhome there for the rest of the day while we went pre-running. Because of the late start, the goal of the day was to just pre-run everything up to the Summit. I covered race mile 35 (starting at Ojos Negros because we weren't allowed to pre-run from Ensenada) to 100 (the bottom of the Summit) by myself with Tim and the gang chasing me in the Suburban and had no problems. I was comfortable with that part of the course and we were able to study all the access roads off of highway 3 to the race course to make some plans for our pit crews assigned to that area in the race. We ran into lots of other racers and chasers who were also pre-running and it felt like we were part of a very important club that day.

We drove back to the motorhome and decided to stay there that night with the permission of Mario. Christine was done with her share of Baja and couldn't believe we did this for fun. Uncle Eddie was in awe of it all and excitedly talked about pitting for us in the actual race. We stayed up late with him drinking Jim Beam and Coke and listened to a great Mexican band playing at a big outdoor party nearby. We found Uncle Eddie to be an unusually easy convert to the Baja experience.

The next day was "Summit Day." Mario seemed to know it intuitively. He woke us up playing his religious music loudly from his house across the street and opened his store up early for a Sunday to give me a present. He picked out a nice sports shirt from his store selection and told me that it was a present from him and Jesus in honor of the courage I have for doing this race. I was stunned and really didn't know what to say. Even though I am not religious, I was incredibly honored to be given a gift "for my courage." He was proud to have chosen me for his gift because he discovered afterwards that my name was "Jessica" like "Jesus." Little does he know, I have actually framed that shirt as my own little trophy from the Baja 1000 experience and have placed it on my "wall of fame" (sometimes jokingly called our "wall of shame") along with all our other racing photos in my home.

We started on our trek early in an attempt to find a short cut access road to race mile 100. It took us at least 3 hours and a couple of times being kicked off personal property before we finally found it. Duh, it was right where all our club members were pitting at the big "Jamau" sign. But that's what pre-running is for; to prevent us from getting lost and making stupid mistakes in the actual race. This time Tim rode with me and we left the kids with Uncle Eddie "for a maximum of 5 hours," I said and then they were to meet us at race mile 200 near the end of highway 3.

Going up the Summit was very technical. I had to study some sections for alternative routes, especially those that went around big boulder sections where I actually got stuck. The last part of the climb at the very top there was a hill full of rocks about the size of large melons. After learning to go fast over that section and arriving at the very top to see the absolutely stunning view from the very top of the mountain, I stopped to celebrate my achievement. I made it to the top of the Summit! That wasn't so bad! And I could not believe the view from there! Tim and I decided that we were among the elite few that have had the opportunity to see this view. Only local ranchers with horses and us hard core offroaders get to see this.

I decided it was time to continue on. We hopped back on the bikes and turned the corner where the trail begain to descend the backside of the mountain. "OH MY GOD!" was all I could scream. Suddenly I realized what everyone was talking about. It felt like I was going down about an 80 degree slope with sliding rocks, dirt and boulders. I discovered that it was not going UP the Summit that made this so famous, it was going DOWN the Summit! I made it through the first section, scared to death, crawling in first gear. I wondered if that was the worst of it, but then I turned the corner and found another steep section just the same. I stopped many times to ponder this mountain and to strategize my technique with Tim and how I was going to do this in the race. Just when I thought I had cleared the worst of it, I turned the corner again and found another section that was even worse. When I found myself teatering off the two front tires on some very large boulders I didn't know how to maneuver through, I got off the bike and sat down on a rock and cried. Tim, who was surprisingly having his own little difficulty on the motorcycle, set his bike down, came over to me and pulled my helmet off. He kissed my face full of sweat and tears and told me that I didn't have to do this section if I didn't want to, but that he knew I could do this if I decided to.

Hearing aloud again that I might not be able to solo this race made me get up and study the damn course. I asked him to pull my bike off the stupid boulders and let me figure out an alternative route. I found a way through that section that would help me avoid that same predicament in the race and finally cruised to the bottom of that awful mountain. Without looking back, I scrambled out of there and sped off on the next part of the course, a long stretch of dry washes.

When the course turned off the dry washes and into a more hard pack trail, we came across a smouldering vehicle that looked like it had just finished burning. Tim and I did a doubletake, but seeing no one around, we kept going. About 5 more miles up the course we passed an Expedition with two guys and a girl in it, limping along with a broken rear suspension. We stopped to see if they were O.K. and found that they were pre-running in a rental for a trophy truck because they did not have anything else to pre-run in. They told us that earlier they ran into a hummer for the Mexican military and they told them that the day before they had shot a drug smuggler and burned his vehicle in the area. We realized that was the vehicle we had just passed. We told them what radio channel we were on and said that we would check in on them, forgetting that we had been having problems with our radio communication system all weekend. As we drove away and tested our radio contact with them, we asked the driver's name and discovered he was Chad McNeil, the cousin of one of my students whose family races class 7 trucks in these same races (Perry McNeil's racing team). I didn't find out whether Chad made it back to San Diego until Monday afternoon when I saw Chad's Aunt at my school and I asked about him.

We rode for a long time until we finally hit the fast dry lake bed. We had a great time wizzing through that section and then we hit the silt beds. I was thrilled to have finally experienced my first silt beds and thought they were relatively easy to go through on the quad. Tim ate it at one point on the motorcycle right in front of me and I saw how quickly the cloud of powder engulfed us. But even after stopping for Tim in the middle of the silt, I was able to get back going again without any complications. We discovered a way to go around an extremely difficult hill we could tell that someone else had recently got stuck in. We memorized the alternative route and I left that area thinking I would have no problems with the silt beds in the race.

With another 40 miles to go, I began to calculate in my head whether we would have enough gas to arrive to our destination. Before we started out on this section we saw other guys on motorcycles carrying gas with them in small bottles. I figured that I would probably make it because I started out with a full tank, but Tim did not start out with a full tank and we weren't sure how many miles he could get on his desert tank. With only 5 miles left to go, sure enough, Tim ran out of gas. With my radio not transmitting well at all, and Tim's hand held radio batteries going dead, we had a difficult time communicating to Uncle Eddie about our predicament. We also didn't know how bad the terrain was from him to us and so we didn't know whether to ask them to come get us. As the sun set, Tim started walking the bike, while I rode ahead to scout for help. I finally found a Hummer with some chasers waiting for a class 7S truck to come by. After begging and pleading for some gas, I managed to get them to drive to Tim and give him a gallon (they were not happy about giving up any fuel because they knew they would need it for their race truck). Again, we found ourselves driving back in the dark with no lights on Tim's bike. I had to drive closely behind him to light the way for him while he stumbled through the terrain. After finally arriving, I heard that it took us more than 8 hours to do this loop and I felt extremely guilty for leaving them to wait for us all day with nothing to do (there wasn't even enough gas in the Suburban to drive to San Felipe and tour the area). However, I found that my kids were completely enamoured with Uncle Eddie and excitedly talked about how much fun they had throwing rocks at glass bottles they found in the desert. Poor Christine who already hit her limit with the dirt, heat, and peeing in bushes the day before!

On the way back to the motorhome, we talked about the difficulty of that section and how unbelievable the Summit was. I felt like a fool that we had to make the decision that Tim was going to ride that section with me in the race. I had calculated that my average racing speed would get me to the Summit just when the first trophy trucks would begin passing me in the race. If I were to have difficulty passing through that section, while I was also experiencing the passing of trophy trucks for the first time, I would need Tim's help to move the bike out of the way or coach me through it. Then we saw a Class 7S truck on the side of the road and realized that was the truck the guys in the Hummer were looking for. So we stopped to give them the message that their chase vehicle was still looking for them at race mile 200. Noe Sierra and his buddy were very angry because the agreement was that their chasers were supposed to meet them at the spot where they were waiting (we later found out that they ended up waiting until 3:00 a.m. for their chasers to find them), but they took advantage of the moment to talk about the day's ride through the Summit with us. I was pleased to hear these two big tough guys in a truck complain about the Summit. "It's insane to put the course through there" they whined. They spoke of the fear they had clearing the Summit and how they were not looking forward to it in the race. As we drove away, I was much easier on myself; I knew I had the same fears...but I did it on a quad, without a roll cage to protect me!