Baja 1000 Trip Report

Okay, so I'm a little late in getting this trip report up, so I apologize to all who have been checking all the time. So, last year I missed the Baja 1000 due to a new job and a bum leg. This year I wasn't letting anything stand in my way, so I asked for the time off and traded in my 2wd Ford Ranger 4cyl for the last silver 03 Tacoma Prerunner I could find a deal on. This year, I wasn't going to work down there, just bring my Yamahas and have fun.

One thing I needed to do first was get a Line-X job for the new toyota and find a motorcycle ramp. With that all done I thought I was good to go: NOPE! When heading to Mexico it's a must to get Mexican insurance for the time you are going to be down there. Unfortuneately, I found out that if you haven't made 6 or more payments on your new Toyota, they will not approve Mexican insurance for you and won't let you take the car. So plans to take the Toyota fell thru, but that wasnt' stopping me.

My good friend Greg, for whom I just built a 66 Ford pickup was going with me to Baja, and what a better time to deliver his ride to him. So I loaded up his F-100 with our camping gear and left the dirt bikes behind. I was sad about leaving the Toyota, but Greg had a 4Runner we could maybe take to Baja if his wife let us. The F-100 is a trip to drive and lots of fun with the 351W roller, EFI, Power 4 wheel disc brakes, overdrive, and new suspension. Made good time doing 80 most of the way.

After spending the night at Greg's in Pasadena, we headed down to Baja. With the traffic on the weekday, it made it a bit of a hassle but we got down there in time for Contingincy. For those of you who haven't been, it is basicly like a swapmeet sized area downtown in Ensenada; alot like a street fair almost: booths with food, beer, shirts, fake sunglasses, beer, girls dancing, beer, and some race supplies too! See the race trucks being paraded THRU the people on the way to tech inspection. Too cool, but watch out, the tires are big.

These are the tacos. There are several stands around serving lots of chicken, fish, and carne asada tacos. As you can see theres lots of toppings you can choose. I recommend having as many tacos as possible. There is also pizza and hot dogs.....but....cmon, you're in Mexico.

Here we have the Tecate beer booth. Well, actually, those girls are on top of it. It's made to look like a giant Tecate beer can. Tecate helps sponsor the whole SCORE Baja 1000 event and has for years. These girls really work hard for the beer-soaked crowd. It's pretty warm there and they dance all day it seems. I could stand there all day anyway.

It didnt' take us long to find some of our friends. Here was one of the two Early Bronco entries, Phil Moulton and Matt Miner. They were trying to fix a taillight in order to pass tech inspection. Other than that they were all amped and ready to take on Baja, so we didn't stop and bug them too long.

The paint job on this rig caught our eyes. It was Willie Stroppe and his Ford Expedition. We didn't remember seeing them on the list of entries, so I found Willie and asked him "What gives?" He said, he just couldn't keep away and had to come down and run the Baja. How about that. Must be nice! Well, we were glad to see a Stroppe truck out there carrying on the tradition....and it was a Ford too!

Well, after one more visit, we managed to break free from the Tecate girls spell around 12 noon. We headed for the hills near Ojos Negros, usually the first place where the racers cross the main highway, around 30km outside of town. For the Baja 2000 and the 2001 Baja 1000, I had been at the start, showing Yokohama Execs the beginning and several road crossings during the race. This year I wanted to be somewhere down the course so I could see some Pro trucks and Trophy trucks fly across the road. We ended up here, where the course drives down a dirt road between two fields. There are two peaks here that the racers catch some good air off of. When we arrived at 2pm, there were maybe 4 cars parked there...we decided to go down the course a bit and see what we could see. Well...when we got back it was dark and all these people showed up!!! Pic was taken the next morning.

This was cool. Rewind a bit.. During the night, more and more people came; all locals. They came in loaded down vans and 4x4s and parked and camped all around us. Only they weren't camping. They simply made fires, pulled out the beer and put on some tunes as loud as their car stereos could go. The Chevy Astro parked not 15 feet from the back of the 4Runner was playing early 90s Snoop Dog, Mexican House music, and Andrew WK. What a mix. At around 3am I heard high RPM and shocks bottoming out....the locals were jumping their own cars on the course. Ah what fun. These guys in the Bronco came out around 7am, just before the motorcycles came thru. The crowd was cheering for more as these three guys in the early Bronco made several passes catching some hairy air. The guy was from San Diego and had just pulled the Bronco out of moth balls. Just blowin out the 'carbons.

I'd say the guys in the early Bronco were about the last of the non-racers let thru by the crowd. You see, during the race, there aren't enough officials to go around policing the course....so the crowd takes on that responsibility. This is why you don't bring new or shiny cars to Mexico. Several non-racers made their way down the course DURING THE RACE! Not only is this dangerous for everyone, the crowd thinks it's WRONG. So if you do this you get PUMMELLED with everything from corn cobs to rocks to full cans of beer. I counted 3 broken windows, and heard more painful dents than I care to count. Here are a couple of SUVs getting the wrath.

We stuck around to see this buggy catch some air. We even waited for the Class 3s to go thru and saw the two early Broncos. After that we headed out in to the field and did some churning up of dust trying to find our way down the highway to a cool spot to camp for the night. We chose a place where the racers would be doubling back and we could see them the next morning too. This was down another 30km or so down the highway. We camped and froze.

We were sorta tired and so we didn't really wake up to quickly. We did however see what ended up being the class 3 winner come cruising by. I think it's a 79 Bronco. They always do really well; Don and Ken Moss from Sacramento, CA.

This picture pretty much sums up our mood for the trip. I was "Stayin Alive" and Greg was taking all the pics. I recommend everyone go next year. That's your assignment. Seriously, if you've never been, I highly recommend taking a few days off work and coming down for an adventure if you can swing it. You won't regret it!.