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The two ORC crews caught the rooster in a cold and muddy slumber when we rolled out of the sack at 4 a.m. in Rick’s Baja estate just north of Rosarito. Between a band of wild dogs barking and the early morning rainstorm, sleep was little more than a catnap.
Pat and I fired the Diesel burning Ford F350. "Fast" Eddie Perrez and Norm followed suit in what has become known around the ORC camp as the "Disco Jeep." The black ’91 Wrangler resembles that of a four-wheel drive disco ball. Utilizing the monstrous Ramsey winch mounted on the front of the low riding YJ, the vehicle can quickly transform itself into the ultimate disco ball by simply latching onto any gnarly tree limb, cranking up the boistrous base and igniting a nasty set of disco lights. This may serve them well when they reach their destination in Santa Rosalia to provide the real-time results and photos at the half way point of the race course. It is an instant rave party on wheels. Pat and I will provide the same coverage down at "end of the earth," Cabo San Lucas, where if all goes as planned, we ought to see the first motorcycle finish late in the afternoon on Monday.
As we embarked upon our journey, the rain clouds escaped the sky and opened up the path for the warm sunlight to make its way through. Rick bid us a buenos suerte and we were off into the muddy alley ways of the Roasarito suburb. Things were looking good for the journey upon the long road ahead.
Within three miles, the sunshine and smiles Pat and I were enjoying went wry, the knotheads in the Disco Jeep wandered off into the snarl of traffic in town, leaving no trace of their whereabouts. With no radio or sat-phone contact between us, we figured them for dead. We drove on.
As we passed through the last toll booth before Ensenada, we bribed an interesting bit inforamation from the attendants. A few ORC "See Ya In Cabo" t-shirts and a boat load of slick "steekers" did just the trick.
The word we got (partially translated): "the Jeep negro cluttered with muchos cosas all around and a driver with ear rings pinned to his ears, passsed through here about five minutes ago." This means the Disco Jeep, mounted with more than 38 gallons of gas, was sliding along the slick and twisty fogged-out turns of Santo Thomas at a stupid rate of speed.
Anyhow, let’s move onto the road report.
Just south of Ensenada at the military airport is some minor road construction. There is no significant traffic hazards to report other than the muddy chicanes you must pass through to clear this half-mile stretch. A few "steekers," a smile and a buenos dias will get you through the Mandenero Military Checkpoint with the same warm sentiments in return. "Steekers," it’s like Baja money.
Coming down through Santo Thomas was quite slow go due to the snail-like traffic which snaked down the twisty grade. Awaiting you in Santa Thomas is fog-laden valley and a wet road ahead. The skies remain partly cloudy above and the grape vines are climbing into the heavens. And a note to all of those who coerced your wives into allowing you to head south for the Baja 2000, do yourself a favor, pick up a few bottles of fine wine when you roll through. It may be the only thing which will keep you from sleeping in the dog house when you return home to the wife. A good bottle or two will of ST wine will bring upon welcome mat and a warm smile back home.
Now, before you meet the ass-end of a cow at 80 mph, slow yourself down and enjoy the view. The cows have taken to the road in full force. Dogs and other forms of livestock are also on hand to ruin your weekend. Despacio mi amigo.
Perhaps the liveliest towns to cruise through thus far on our journey, Camalu renders a host of dogs doing their best to mass produce for future generations to enherit Camalu landscape. The road is dry, and some beautiful clouds still hover above in the sky. Below, the hustle and bustle of the farm hands steadily tend the fields.
Stop the presses! I’ll be damned if it wasn’t the Disco Jeep, cruising down the main drag of San Quintin. There it was in all its glory, low riding its way down the drag bumping along on its bump stops. The stock springs are shot. It has got to be that 40 gallons of Pemex ping-grade gas, the 36 cans of Kodiak black tooth chew, and the three or more ear rings spiked into the side of a few brain cells.
As far as the gas supply goes, you chasers ought to be good to go for your trip down to Cabo Wabo. It’s just the return trip you ought to be concerned with.
Before you drop down into the town of El Rosario, keep your eyelids peeled for a few tractors along the side of the road. They’re dropping down some fiber optic phone lines into the ditch. Make way for modern communication. Progress inteligently planned
Mama Espinoza’s is the place you’ve got to stop for the good grub, a warm smile and an arctic-cold Tecate. The Pemex station on the left is loaded with good gas and a mob of sticker-hungry kids. On your way out of town, be sure to kick down some cash to the fundraiser.
As the scenery unwinds around the rocks and emaculent aray of cacti, we awaken to the need to bleed the fluid from the bowles. We pull off to the side of the road to meet a friendly group of guys. In tow is Fred Mangles’ 1970 Baja 1000 ride. The 73 inch wheelbase was quite tight, but that didn’t keep the thing from attaining a top speed of about 115 miles per hour. It was nicknamed the Splinter because of the aircraft grade plywood used as its panels. These folks were headed down to the Bay of L.A. for pit for Ivan Stewart and Larry Roeseller’s PPI entry. The interesting twist the history involved with this car and Ivan is the fact that the next car Fred Mangles produced was Ivan’s first buggy. Mangles tossed in the checkered flag and passed on sometime last year.
In Catavina, fuel is about $5 a gallon with at least one shipment of fresh gas arriving daily. When we passed through, proprieters Joe and Caesar had managed to stock pile more than 1,800 liters of fuel. They expect another shipment to arrive later on this evening, usually receiving them twice daily. For the primo discount on the high-grade go-go-racer Pemex hybrid race fuel, kick down a few steekers and tell’em Fidel sent you.
Local boy, Caesarinito, 12, and his kid brother John, 6, were hanging around an abandon café when we rolled into town. They joined us for lunch and proceeded to give us the rundown of the town. Both went to the school located just over the hill and behind the gas stop, just shy of where the race course passes through tomorrow afternoon. The entire ORC crew was very impressed with the manners and respect with which these two young men presented themselves. Personally, it doesn’t quite put a smile on my face so much as it puts joy in my heart that two young men of could be so cordial this day in age.
Heading southbound from Catavina with a wide open stretch of highway ahead, we were feeling pretty good with a belly full of cold cuts and the idea that a 12 pack of cold Tecates awaits each of us at our next camp, Santa Rosalia. The entire crew will camp there tonight. Pat and I will head south for to do the scoring at the finish in Cabo Wabo. I’ll wake up at the crack of dawn on Monday to hop onto the saddle of my Honda XR 400 and hunt down some killer photo action for when the first bikes arrive later on that evening. Eddie and Norm will back track later on tomorrow (Saturday) evening to catch some photo action as well as some mid-point times at San Ignacio. Throughout the dirty, dusty, long drawn out day, we’ll provide satelite updates to the comfort of your worn out desk chair via our Globalstar communications system. Please toast your cerveza now.
About 15 miles from Cativina, we dropped into this open stretch of highway where we spotted a wandering dot out in the distance, weaving over the road like a drunken sailor on sabatical. As we approached, we made visible confirmation of the object. It turned out to be 20-odd year-old Miguel Morales on his ten speed bicycle careening down the Trans Peninsular Highway without a worry in the world. Standing at a slim 5-foot-7-inches tall, Miguel was out-weighed by his bursting-at-the-seems back pack and bore a better posture than that of his worn-out bicycle, which brought him all the way from La Paz on his marathon journey to Anywhere, Baja, a location we’re not able to disclose at this point in time. Actually, he had his sights set at making it to Cativina by 3 p.m. He was an hour’s ride away from meeting his objective. "Va ya con Dios," he said as he peddled into the distant expanse of open road ahead, the glass-framed Virgin Mary portrait clanking against his handlebars as he pushed further into the distance.
We pulled up along side of Ramon’s makeshift gas station at the Bay of L.A. Junction to get a report on his Pemex stockpile. Ramon and his beer-drinking buddies are offering the good-guy deal to all chasers who request the ORC discount. Tell’em Norm Lenhart sent you and your word ought to be as good as mold and just shy of fool’s gold. They’re selling ping-resistant petrol for $15 for five gallons with 250 liters to their good name. They do three runs per day to Guerro Negro for more gas, but when Guerro Negro is tapped of its lush supply, all of you returning back home to your honies are SOL. To go the distance on the return trip, you’ve got to turn your rig into a virtual tanker truck. No joke. And we’ve seen several of them already.
So here we are, barely getting over the fact that some young man had gone the distance of over 600 miles on a beat-up old bicycle. Well, here’s another one for you folks at home. Get a load of this, and never again dis or doubt the power of the pedal, nor the length three German kids will go to see what the world is about on this side of the Atlantic. Michael Junghurdt, 22, and his twin brothers John and Fabian, 20, pedaled their sun-parched souls all the way from Calgary, Canada. WHAT! ! ! Yea, you got that straight. Set your bear down for this one. Uh, better yet, toast a chug for the Krauts. These boys biked it all the way from where the maple leaf wipes the backside of the frenchman. How long did it take these gents to pedal down to this peninsula? We’re not sure, nor were they. The question was rather perplexing to the three whose lips drew a foaming crustation as they spoke. They were too baffled to even fathom an answer to that one. What would draw the three of them to do such a thing to themselves? Well, they were a bit more sure of themselves on this question. "We want to see the world and meet the people." Simple enough.
Well, I thought this was quite an interesting story to push over to your computer screen. And since these guys chose to embark upon one hell of a journey which will take them all the way to Mexico City to meet their Mexican brethren, I thought it’d be a good idea for you to meet them.
"I wonder who else stops for these nutcases," Pat cried out with amazement when I brought back the story to the cab of the truck. Well, I suppose if anyone is charged with such a duty, then it is we who claim that crown.
We bolted for Guerero Negro to fill-up our empty tanks with some real Pemex for the Ford, a six-pack of Tecate for the shotgun-sitters and a cold hit of caffein for the weary pilots. At our gas stop, we ran into none other than the Barstow Bandit himself, MDR Class 11 fame Bill Swisher, who had managed to hitch a ride with Tom and John of Mag 7 pits. These boys were pulling a straight run to La Paz. Our very own Kevin Gorzney makes use of Mag 7’s professional pit operation for his 2000 mile run down the peninsula to Cabo.
And now, the highlight of the entire trip, at 4:55 p.m. Pacific Standard time, we get a kick ass phone call from a devout reader who claims he’s sitting back at home enjoying the words we’re cranking out. Write on buddy! You made the last 500 miles that much more worth while. By the time you read this, we’ll be toasting in unison over a fat ass lobster and a cold round of cervezas at our final stop of the day in San Rosalio.
That phone call sure beat the hell out of the one we received earlier in the day from someone’s wife who was trying to track down her husband. Apparently, the poor guy’s running in one of the Baja Challenge cars. She wanted to surprise him in Cabo for the finish. Let us just hope that she is not surprised at what she finds. I’ll tell ya, this sat phone is a love hate relationship.
While were at it, our hats are off to Globalstar for the satelite communications which made these transmissions possible. Without their excelence in modern communications, we’d be in the dark without our readers checking in every once in a while. In fact, if not for Globalstar and the one devoute reader who had the courage to call our bluff, we’d be deprived of the inspiration and hope that there is some soul out there actually taking the time to peruse this web of words.
And the Disco Ball went dull in the night, lacking the ilumination required to "staying alive" long enough to "dance the night away" through the Baja night. The problema was a backyard wiring job that went wrong when an inexperieced technician, Eddie "Travolta," took it upon himself to snake the wires through a few wrong pathways. A flip of the switch and zap! Lights out Irene. With a quick fix in the next town, we were on our way.
El Machismos De La Luces. Warning!!! Don’t tempt your fate with a set of Hella HIDs mounted on the front of Great White. You will – see the light! And it will damn near put a hole in the back of your head after frying a laser-like hole through your retina. We are now cruising through a section of the peninsula where everyone is son, brother and mother of a trucker. These big rigs are brute and pound their chest with a little game of "flash the brights at the idiot in the car." Well, first off, this ain’t no car nor did we fall off of the side of a shrimp boat in the Sea of Cortez. The beast we’re in is code named Great White and it will gnaw off your retina with a beam of light. What the pecho-pounding truckers do is play a little headlight game with you from the moment you come within range. They’ll flash their lights a couple of times getting you to back down to your simple set of headlights rather than just your brights. Then they’ll crank-up their lights again from distance just to tee you off. No problemo for us on that account, we know our limitations, and this bean-belching trucker doesn’t get anywhere near it. Then they’ll finally submit and cut their brights. And then right when they come upon passing you head-on, they’ll lay it on you. Well, wrong move dude. Because, Great White will show you the light like you’ve never seen before hombre.
As Norm put it, I don’t know what they were bitching about; they were just enlightened.
San Rosalia, well were here. This town is hot to trot, time for a little night, but first, we’ve got to get this etrocious amount of text and photos to upload to your computer. Thanks for tagging along with us on our journey to the "end of the earth" to cover the Baja 2000.
Until then mi amigo. . . It’s Tecate time!
Road Condition Index
