[Editor's Note: This article originally ran in the June 2008 issue of Grassroots Motorsports]
While the rest of the world’s avaricious sanctioning bodies wrangle incessantly over control of all forms of racing on pavement, the sad result is that the once spectacular American open-wheel oval and road racing scene is almost dead. NASCAR’s suffocating tentacles control the electronic and print …
Love me some trophy trucks. Seeing videos of those things blasting through 3' whoops at 100 mph is mind blowing.
In November of 2005, myself and 6 other people loaded onto a plane and flew from North Carolina to San Diego, where we had shipped a Honda XR650r motorcycle, in a crate, to await our arrival. We landed in San Diego 2 days before the start of the famous Tecate SCORE Baja 1000, rented 2 Uhaul pickup trucks, loaded 7 people, and all of our various luggage, and gear into them. Then we picked up the crate with our motorcycle in it, ate some Jack-in-the-Box, and headed south toward Tijuana. We rented some rooms in Chula Vista for the night, uncrated and assembled the motorcycle in the hotel parking lot, took it up 2 floors in the elevator, and put empty pizza boxes under it in the room to avoid getting any fluids on the hotel carpet.
The next day we loaded back up, and drove to Ensenada to get there just in time for Contingency, and the beginning of the greatest adventure of my life... so far! I was just there to drive the chase vehicle, and help out with crew work for our 5 racers, and the 7th person was the lead rider's wife. What followed was 2 days of the most amazing adventures, the most beautiful scenery, and the most wonderful people that I've experienced the majority of my life!
Everywhere we went, we were immediately recognized, because those 2 Uhaul trucks were instantly distinguishable. For a brief, shining moment we became famous in Baja! Everyone was like, "hey, we heard about you, you guys are crazy! No one comes out here and races without doing any prerunning!" I guess there are worse things to be in Baja than crazy though, and even as crazy as we were, we still finished the race, somehow! Not officially though, officially we were a dnf, because we went past the 36 hour time limit. But we never gave up, and made it to the finish line in the stadium just as they were taking down the big inflatable archway, to get a little "finisher" pin as our trophy.
It truly was the most amazing adventure of my life, so far! I will warn you though. Once you've been there, out in the dust, it gets in your veins, and never stops calling you back!
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