Chinga… uh I mean Viva La Baja: My Baja 1000 '03 Experience
by Steve Hartman

I have been to races before, races in both Mexico and the states, MDR, SCORE and other races. BUT, I had never been to the Baja 1000 before. The Baja 1000 is the grand daddy of all desert races, and draws people from all over the world (as seen w/ this year's TT entry from Japan). All week long I was excited and awaiting Thursday, and finally Thursday morning came (a little too early I may add). I was set and ready to go, I went up to Rob’s (poor bastard had to stay home for work though) to meet Jason. We were on the road at 6:30 in order to hit contingency at a reasonable time. Down the 5 freeway we go and what do we see but traffic! After a slight bit of So. Cal’s stop and go crap we made it to the 805. We made our one last stop in the states for gas which is where we met up with Jeff and Jen, our buddies who we’de be spectating with for the weekend. After gas we got the ever-important Mexican Insurance and then we were off – Mexico bound.

We cruised down the tollroads, and past our normal camping stop at Salsipuedes as we headed down toward Ensenada for contingency. After seeing more and more traffic as we got closer to Ensenada, Jeff radioed us saying something about a Mexican Holiday, and Jason remembered that it was their independence day, sort of like our 4th of July, and that is why there seemed to be so much traffic. As we made our way in towards town, there was a roadblock because of a parade that was going through the main street. Thinking quickly as always, we told the policia we were staying in the hotel just past the roadblock. They let us past and we did a quick drive through the hotel parking lot as not to raise suspicions, and then zipped down the road into the heart of town. The closer we got to City Hall (Contingency is right next door) the fewer the number of cars on the road. The Northbound side of the road was closed off and the parade, which consisted of sports teams and bands from all the schools from all over Ensenada were marching up it. Each group was dressed in their schools uniforms or colors and was marching along singing or beating drums. Because we were one of the only cars on the road it seemed as if they were giving us a private viewing of their traditions and holidays. Now all this parading around is great, but we came to see the trucks! One good thing about the streets being closed is no one could get in to park near contingency so we quickly found parking and ventured into contingency.

As is usual with contingency celebrations, it was a massive mess of people and trucks along with HUGE inflatable Tecate beer cans and bass bumping so loud it makes your head shake. We did the typical slow shuffle through the crowds of people trying to get up to the cars we wanted to see, and trying even harder to get a clear picture with no one walking through it! After wandering for a little while we came across Danny and the class 1 car that we were going to help out with. We told him that we were going to Mike’s Sky Ranch and asked him what he wanted us to take. We grabbed a tire and a jack from him and then went back into contingency. We walked around contingency 2-3 more times just to make sure we didn’t miss anything, and making sure to stop at least once at one of the little taco stands. After we had huge headaches from the bass and were totally sick of the crowds, we got in the truck and skooted out of Ensenada towards Mike’s. Having never been to Mike’s and having been told many times how cool it is I was pretty excited. Mike’s a good ways out in about the middle of the Baja Peninsula so it took a couple hours to get there. We finally saw the turn for Mike’s and Jason and I pulled over to talk to our friends who were following us. They had a stock Durango 4x4 so they couldn’t go as fast up the LONG dirt road that leads to Mike’s. We told them we’d see them at the top and took off up the hill. We weren’t in a fully built truck, but Jason’s explorer works pretty well for what it is, and for how full of crap the back end was. We seemed to be flying up the hill when both of us smelled the strong smell of gas coming from the back of the truck. I was a little nervous, not knowing that Jason had a small gas can in the back. He knew exactly what the smell was though, informing me that his gas can must have tipped over in all the bouncing we were doing. We got out to investigate and found out Jason was right. After re-organizing the load we were on our way again. We only had a little more way to go on the smooth road before we got to the upper, more technical portion of the road. By this time it was about 4 in the afternoon and the sun was in the perfect point in the sky to blind us as we looked right into it. This made the already somewhat difficult drive a little scary. Portions of the road would disappear because of way the shadows fell, and of course these sections were usually found on blind curves. We were discussing how bad it was going to be the next day (race day) for the drivers who would be making it up that portion of the course (the race course went right through the middle of Mike’s this year) at the same time. Our speed had reduced to a crawl due to not being able to see 50 ft. in front of us, and we were wondering how fast the trucks and cars would be coming through there the next day. The technical sections of the road seemed to becoming less difficult, which means we were getting closer to Mike’s. I was wondering how much longer we had and then I saw it – the creek that runs in front of Mike’s. It was the telltale sign that meant we were there.

We found a good spot to camp, and started to gather some firewood as we waited for Jeff and Jen in the Durango. About 20 minutes later they pulled in, and we finished setting up camp. It was just in time too, because darkness was setting in. After we got some warmer clothes on (Mike’s Sky Ranch is at about 3500 ft. elevation) we wandered up to the bar/hotel to see what was going on. Not much was happening at this time so we ventured back down to camp to make dinner, which lucky for us was steak thanks to Jen. Girls are great on camping trips – they always bring the things guys never think of, and they make great camp food (thanks Jen)! After some really good steak burritos we headed back up to the bar to get a drink. The bar in Mike’s is great, the front room you walk into has the walls absolutely covered in business cards from the people who have been there for the last 30 years or more. Many of the cards on one wall have faded extremely and show their age. From this front room you walk through a little door into a small room that has pictures, posters and jerseys all over the walls and ceiling. This room is the bar which we hung out in for a while, watching more and more people filter in as they arrived to camp. After a few beers and watching some locals get very drunk and goofy (I haven’t laughed so hard in a long time) we headed back down towards the trucks. We only had a few minutes of light left because the generator that powers everything at Mike’s turns off at about 10:30 and after that it is pitch black! Just after we got back to camp and re-stroked the fire the generator turned off and the only light you could see was coming from the scattered campfires around. After talking around the campfire for a little while we headed off to bed – tomorrow was going to be a long day.

I was glad Jason had warned me about the elevation of Mike’s because I actually packed warm clothes. When I think of races in baja I think shorts, T-shirts and hanging out near the beach. Mike’s is a little different being up in the hills, and the Baja 1000 is a little different being in November. Both of these factored together make for one COLD night. I don’t have the warmest sleeping bag so I brought 2. I had my normal one, and then a little fleece travel one I bought when going to school in and backpacking through Europe. I put the fleece on inside the other, and then put on sweatpants, socks a T-shirt and a beanie. I crawled in my sleeping bag for the night. I was up for a big surprise! I can’t remember ever being that cold at night. I woke up about 10 or more times due to being freezing. I ended up finding my wool jacket and putting that over my head, which helped a little but not much. I guess explorers just don’t have much insulation, or it could be that it was a fricken cold 30 degrees outside!

We got up the next morning, still very cold and sat by the fire for a while. When we were finally un-numb it was about time for the 1st bike to be coming through. That’s when I heard it – that faint rumble coming through the hills. Everyone in camp knew it and was excited. Sure enough moments later # 1x was ripping through Mike’s and headed off up through the hills. That started it. From that point on we were impatiently awaiting the next vehicle to come through. We knew we still had a while for the big boys to come through so we cooked breakfast and sat around talking, and watching the bikes and quads come by.
About 3 hours later we heard the 1st helicopter and knew the big boys were on their way. Everyone at camp was excited and patiently awaited the arrival of the trucks. Then we saw it – the Pflying Pfleuger TT came roaring through! Everybody in camp was up and cheering and we knew that there was only more to come. After Pfleuger went through everyone settled back down a little bit but were impatiently awaiting the next truck. About 15-20 minutes later we heard the distant rumble again and the next truck came through. From that point it was on, after that we had a steady flow of cars and of course all the bikes and quads that were still coming.

When the class 1’s started running through we were getting antsy to see what place our car would come through in. We know we started 9th but were very pleasantly surprised when they came through at 6th in class. We got a quick honk and a thumbs up from Danny (the co-driver) as they roared through camp which mean all was well. Just after they passed us we called Danny on the radio to get the actual status. He told us that the car was running great and that so far they had not had any problems. We let them know how far behind them the next car was, wished them luck and told them we’d see them at the next location we were going to pit at. Seeing the car running that well, and coming through pretty far up in the class put everyone in a great mood, and got us ready for the long day of racing that we had ahead.

Mike’s is a great place to watch the race because it’s not the typical desert scene. When you think of desert racing in Mexico, you think of just that – desert. But Mike’s is different, Mike’s is at a high altitude and because of this it has a very woodsy feeling. It is amazing to see the trucks coming out of a tree filled canyon and flying towards you. We spent all day at Mike’s watching car after car come through and enjoying every minute of it. We took a short break for lunch, but because the course runs through camp and right past where we were sitting we didn’t miss a second of the action. After lunch we assumed our position up towards the top of the hill and continued watching the cars and shooting photos.

About 3:00 PM or so we heard weatherman calling a local pit to see if they could get to a car stuck on the course. The car that was calling for help was ours. They had gotten stuck in-between our pit and the next and didn’t have radio contact to either. The car was high centered. It could not get out under it’s own power, and we could not travel on the racecourse to go get them out either. Weatherman was saying that they (the racecar) informed him that they had just passed a McMillen pit a mile or so back and they were wondering if they could get help being yanked out either. At the time it seemed that all was going to be taken care of because weatherman dropped the subject, and continued on helping others and fighting off those with stuck Mikes.

Around 4:00 we started trying to figure out how many of the cars had not come through but that were not out of the race. All day long we had been marking off all the vehicles we saw come through camp, and those weatherman officially declared “out of the race” on our official starting list. We knew that soon we would have to head down the hill out of Mike’s and that a portion of that road was on the racecourse. This meant we would be going the wrong way on the course – NOT a good thing! We figured out that we were only missing 1 quad and a total of about 3 racecars. Even though this was a small number of cars, they were still unaccounted for and hence were active race vehicles. We knew that we had to get out and off to our next camp to set up the pit. At this time we decided to start cleaning up camp and hoped that the missing vehicles would come through before we had to head down the hill. Unluckily for us, this was not the case. We reluctantly got the cars ready and decided to head down the hill. I was very nervous at this point knowing that we had to head backwards down an un-closed course. The locals had been doing it all day, but it is never the safest thing to do. We turned weatherman down a bit, turned up the scanner to try and catch any radio transmissions meaning a vehicle was in the area, and slowly headed on our way down from Mike’s.

We were on our way and constantly on the lookout for signs of lights or dust coming from the other direction. A couple minutes into our trek we were passed by a set of locals, and then shortly after I saw it – a cloud of dust coming in the other direction! It seemed to be a pretty big cloud, meaning the vehicle was moving at a high speed, which was not good. We found a good wide spot in the road with a good line of site in both directions, and we pulled over to the right as far as possible and slowed way down. We radioed Jeff and Jen who were a little bit behind us in the Durango and waited to see what vehicle was coming the other way. Jeff and Jen let us know that another car had caught up to them and was following behind them. We continued slowly on our way with the dust cloud getting closer. Then we saw the lights coming around the bend up ahead. The truck was coming at a decent speed and looked to be a class 8. As we passed Jason signaled that there were 2 more cars coming behind us. We got a quick wave from the driver and that was it we had safely passed. BUT, we were not out of the woods yet, we still had a little ways to go while still being on the course. The next 5 minutes seemed to last forever and again I was keeping my eyes peeled for dust and lights. By now it was starting to get pretty dark, and luckily we reached the point where the course hits the road to Mike’s. This meant we made it, and we could breathe a little easier; we were off the course. We continued down the road when all of a sudden our headlights went out and back on. This was not a good thing, and it continued to happen for the entire distance until we hit the point where the road to Mike’s hits Highway 3. We figured that the headlights were going out because of a weird short in the wiring, and by this time I had figured out that it was the race radio connection that was reeking havoc on the system. We stopped before we got on the 3 and I quickly straightened out our wiring problems. This gave Jeff and Jen time to catch up to us, and when they got there we made our way back towards Jamau which was our next camp/pit location.

We pulled down the road to Jamau and realized the place was already packed w/ the “big boys”. We passed the BFG pit and kept going out towards the end of the pit row to see if there was some space left. As we passed the Herbst’s and Riviera’s pits we noticed that we were at the end and that there was plenty of open space. We set up camp and started to gather firewood and cook dinner. By this time it was plenty dark out in dirt, but the campfires and spotlights from the different pits gave the area a weird glow. After dinner we were anxiously awaiting the arrival of the racers. According to weatherman’s announcements and other radio traffic throughout the day bike 1x and 3x seemed to be having a battle for first place and were within 5 minutes or so of each other. To our surprise bike 3x was the first one through the area, with bike 1 about 10 minutes behind. About 30 minutes after this we started seeing motorcycles and quads come through at a steady pace.

We had been trying to make radio contact with our car, and/or the other chase and pit crews to check the status, but we had no luck. We hadn’t heard if the car had gotten out of the high center they’d gotten themselves into back by Mike’s, but we assumed that they had because of the radio call earlier. It was very hard to get radio contact with anyone semi far away due to the mountains in the middle of the peninsula. We hung out at camp more, telling stories of past races and fun experiences during them. Occasionally we would try to radio Barry or one of the other crew members to find a status. At this time we didn’t think it was necessary to bug weatherman with a status, because had been going over the vehicles that had not made the checkpoints, and he was getting to about where the car should be.

At about 11 PM the trucks and cars started coming through. Miller was 1st in his prophy truck and he did a great job of waking up the camps and getting everybody’s blood going in the cold night. After Miller was through there was a semi steady flow of trophy trucks and 1 cars, but they were no where near as close together as they had been when going through Mike’s in the morning. We started to get extra curious about the status of our car and a little nervous too. Jeff and Jen had wandered off to bed and Jason and I had been monitoring the radio and scanner to listen for weatherman updates or any news on our channel. Finally at about 2 AM after trying for about 20 minutes to get through to weatherman for a status check, Jason decided to go down to the Riviera camp and see if we could get on the big radio for a minute. Weatherman seemed to be hearing the Riviera guys and had just given them the status of Nick Baldwin and Mark Post, so we figured it wouldn’t hurt to ask. Jason walked down to Riviera pit, and I stayed at camp to monitor the radio just in case. A few minutes later I heard Jason come on and call weatherman. Weatherman answered shortly later telling Jason to “come back” but Jason didn’t. I listened a little while longer wondering what was going on, and why Jason didn’t reply, but then I heard Jason call weatherman again. This time they connected and weatherman informed Jason that the car had not made it through pit 8. We asked the Herbst and Riviera guys if they knew when pit 8 closed, but no one seemed to. Since pit 8 was a ways back on the course (other side of the peninsula – down by coco’s corner I believe) we figured that the car was most likely out of the race. At about 2:30 Jason headed off to bed. I waited up for a bit longer, scanning the radio and calling on our channel just to see if I could reach anybody. At about 3:15 or so the cold finally got to me, and I was so tired that I couldn’t take it anymore so I headed off to bed for the night.

I got all bundled up and into bed, but found it hard to go to sleep as everytime I would start to doze off I would hear a motor roaring down the road, and I’d jump up to see the car fly by. After half an hour or so of this I gave up and truly tried to sleep. Once again it was a freezing night. Granted it was not as cold as Mike’s, and I had learned to wear more clothes to bed, but you could still see your breath IN the truck! I got an ok night sleep, and did not wake up near as many times as I had the night before. Morning came and we had breakfast and a fire. It seemed weird to wake up to being pretty much the only ones around. After the other, bigger teams had their vehicles come through, they packed up and left, so by this time in the morning there were only a few campers left. We did a trash check and cleanup, including the site of some bums next to us that left their place trashed, and then headed back into town.
We arrived at the hotel where the team was staying to find them out by the car and chatting. It turns out that they did not get pulled off of the high center by Mike’s until about 11PM! They did not make the following checkpoints due to the late re-start and were forced to DNF.

Oh well – there will be more races, and hopefully we will have better luck in them. A HUGE part of beating Baja is luck, and it didn’t seem to be with us this year!

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