These blog entries are pretty rough; I don't know how I used to articulately blog when I was young (i.e. 2006) AND race AND party!
I got up around 7am, which wasn’t too bad, and had a WTF
moment when a guy banged on my door at 7:10am and I was in scanty PJs and he
said he needed to check the mini-bar.
Ummm, okay. He did and he
left. I don’t know, I don’t ask, I just
keep rolling!
I got to the truck and Rene said, “Where you been?” I was 2 minutes late. I said, “You said 8am,” and he said, “I said
7:30am.” Umm, okay, just keep
rolling.
So Rene, Bimbo, Tonio and I headed for the mountains to meet
the race car at service. It was a long
morning climbing several mountain passes in the rain and fog that were nearly
9,000 feet in elevation. The temperature was a perfect 72 when we left
Veracruz and now we were a wet, cold 56 in the mountains.
The guys listen to fantastic music and for that I am
grateful. My favorite was sort of a
techno tune that went,”LIVE FAST, DIE YOUNG, BAD GIRLS DO IT WELL!” I was thinking, “This is THE best radio
station in all of Mexico” and later I realized it was Tonio’s iPod. Jajaja!
I love the music but I’m absolutely going to more deaf than I was when I
arrived here.
We stopped for breakfast in a gas station and since I don’t
eat bread or cheese or any number of other things, I got a New Mix for
breakfast. The closest thing to New Mix
is a Bud Light Lime-A-Rita and if you’ve had one of those nasty tonics you know
the taste is pure chemical but for some reason you keep drinking them. New Mix is bad tequila with different flavors
of soda. When I drink a New Mix I go
into a coma about a half hour later so my 10am liquid breakfast enabled me to
pass out for most of the next 2 hours, which was quite nice!
This morning Rene said he was talking to Gil and he felt
pretty sick and was looking pretty peaked.
I have been telling everyone that I have my suit on and I’m ready to
step in for most anyone, should anyone be too sick to compete. Not to wish anyone to be sick but we are in
Mexico and lots of gringos get sick.
I called my mom to check in and put her on speakerphone and
she sang La Bamba for us and the boys laughed.
I usually call my mom from the top of 14,000 foot peaks in Colorado,
where there is almost always a good cell signal and my friends know now to ask her
to sing. The usual request is an Irish
ditty called Tura Lura so we got her to sing a few bars of that too until we
were all laughing. She has a beautiful
voice and she’s usually up for a little fun time. Just as we were talking Bimbo motioned out the
window and there was the Pico de Orizaba, an impressive spire high in the sky
covered in snow! We were only about 3
hours from the coast – what a sight to see!
I love this country and all of its mountains and the varying beautiful
terrain in between.
We thought we were about 30 km from service and knew the
first car was in at 1pm. I read the
Service Book and read that we were supposed to be there at 11:30am because we
were coming in on the route that the race cars would take to come out. Shit.
There was less and less traffic on this windy mountain ride and we hoped
for over an hour that they wouldn’t close the stage and we’d miss service. We snuck in around 2pm and what a
cluster. I had read that there were two
Pemex gas stations so when we didn’t find El Jefe we went to the next Pemex and
found them. Geezer was worried about us,
that we had had a crash or problems with the truck. I had called him 20 min prior but he left his
phone in the truck and Stewie doesn’t bring his cell phone. Ahh, the joys of miscommunication on La
Carrera! Happens every time!
The car battery was dead this morning because we left the
trip computer on and Stewie said they had to get a jump later in the
morning. The first speed stage was
cancelled because of rain but they ran the rest of them well and were having
fun. There was a ton of large gravel
with tar on it in the engine compartment.
Stewie later told me that the car was really gassy in the cab and they
both got headaches. It took them a while
to figure out you could open the small side windows only if you opened the
door, because the rollbar is in the way.
Yeri said the tar on the gravel melted their power steering pump hose
and it failed. Hey, you never know
what’s going to happen!
We headed out after service and headed to Oaxaca, up and
down more majestic mountain passes and sometimes getting stuck behind my
favorite, doble remolques (double semi-trailers). How those guys navigate those passes with
double long semi trailers, I will never figure out! It is hard enough in our truck and trailer.
I love Oaxaca and I love Hotel Victoria. We got there, checked in and since El Jefe
wasn’t there yet, I snuck into the bar and had an amazing sipper of local
smoked Mescal. Happy! And the best tacos arracheras every. My view was unsurpassed. I really love this place. Even the bar snacks – peanuts with roasted
pieces of garlic – are the best. So I
had some solitude and enjoyed every minute.
Chip Fudge came in and said they threw a rod in his Fastback and did I
have Mats Hammarlund’s phone number? I
didn’t but gave him Yeri’s number and he was grateful. Jack Rogers ended up giving Chip his spare
motor – both are such good guys!
Finally saw Stewie and Geezer around 9pm and they were
absolutely exhausted and sitting in the hotel room in their suits. They asked me to go to the driver’s meeting
downtown, which is mandatory, and I was happy to do that. I showered quickly and rode the rowdy shuttle
bus full of drivers and navigators downtown to a historic hotel where the party
was. They had quite a spread of food and
once the ceremony started around 9:45pm, it went pretty fast. I was super pleased to see we were 4th
in class and 45th overall. It
is funny though because we are on the second page (we hate the second page) and
pretty far down in a field of 85 starting cars, and 1st in our class
is Paul Hladky at 6th overall.
Okay, we don’t feel super bad because Paul could win the entire race.
El Fer and Yeri were in the lobby, still in their suits
because the hotel didn’t have their reservation and they didn’t have their
luggage. That’s a bit to handle after a
long first day, but it’s what we deal with after we survive a day of dangerous
racing. Saw Angelica and she had a sad
face on and said they did not have a good day. I gave her a hug and didn’t ask
any questions.
We heard that Memo Rojas crashed but they are okay and will
run again tomorrow after working on it through the evening. The Alfa named “Plato Volador” had some
trouble but will hopefully run again in the morning. Geezer named it the Alfa-ito and Christine
liked that.
I was back at the Hotel Victoria by 11pm, riding in a taxi
with Carson and Lauren. That has to be a
record for in and out of the driver’s meeting downtown. Rene joined me in the bar, as well as Steve
and we drank mescal and laughed. There
was a lounge band playing with a keyboardist/vocalist, another vocalist and a
bongo player and they were good.
On my way down to the bungalow I shared with Stewie, I
chatted with “Cowboy” the mechanic for the Australian Holden. What a character. As he likes to say, “The car has a lot of
passion put into it” and it is evident by the workmanship. One prominent logo is “Ryan’s” which Cowboy
explained was the name of the driver’s dad’s blacksmith shop many years ago and
when his dad saw it he teared up. Good
stuff. Cowboy had named the Mexican crew
from VP Racing Shorty, Slim and Skippy, pretty funny.
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