We  left La Paz Monday morning around 12am.  It’s 1100 miles from La Paz to home in Menifee, CA and we still had a few stops to make.

As we drove north I kept taking pictures.  The inspection stations were about 100 miles apart and at each one they asked us to get out of the truck.  They checked inside and each stop takes about 2 minutes.  They were a little more relaxed than the last time I was down for the 40th Anniversary Baja 1000 race.  We gave out stickers and we were on the road again.

Our next stop was the Inn at Loreto Bay to see if they were open.  This 4 star Hotel had been damaged by financial problems and the hurricane last fall.  They are rebuilding and making repairs but it still needs a lot of work.

We stopped in at Bertha’s for dinner and, of course, a Pacifico.

Porfirio took the wheel for the next leg of the trip home, I was sleeping in the passenger seat.  In the middle of the night and in the middle of nowhere, Perf wakes me up to check the GPS for gas stations.  We find out that the closest station is 200 miles away.  I didn’t think it would be a problem since we still had 20 gallons in the race barrels.  We stopped to find that someone stole all the fuel at the hotel!  So, I had to take apart the fuel cell on the Hornet to get past the backflow valve in order to pump it dry!  I was able to get about 8 gallons which gave us about 1/4 of tank with 200 miles to go. 

We got back on the road at about 50 mph.  The road was very bad, there were lots of turns and hills with bad wash outs.  Suddenly, we hit a cow!  It was just standing in the middle of the road at the bottom of a turn.  Perf swerved to miss it but we couldn’t get over far enough, the cow hit the corner of the bumper and spun into the truck.  It crushed the rear bed and took out the trailer lights.  And we still had 100 miles from any gas or a town.

We finally pulled into the Pemex station by Mama Espinoza’s at 7am and the gas gauge was showing only 10 miles left until empty. We had a quick meal at Mama’s and were off again.

There was nothing else to report from Baja.  However, I got a call while we were sitting at the border crossing.  Turns out that my boat was taking in water at Harbor Cortez on Shelter Island in San Diego!  We made out way to check on the boat and found about 3′ of water in the hull.  What next?!

P.S.  The damage to the truck was $4,500.00.

May 6, 2010
Categories: Race Reviews . Tags: baja, baja california, desert racing, lost boys racing, mexican 1000, NORRA 1000, off road racing . Author: lostboysracing . Comments: Leave a comment