Nick Nelson's
2010 SCORE BAJA 1000 ATV Race Adventure ::Continued::
With about 6 quads in front of him and the 1a of
Matlock/Miller no where to be seen, Jorie hammered
out of the pits on a now near perfect machine. Doing
his best to make up some lost time in his last 30
miles it seemed like mere minutes before we got
the call that Mike Bender was now on the bike. Bender
rode the 200 mile Bay of LA section flawlessly,
passing every other ATV except the 2a Mexican team
that had now stretched their lead out to almost
an hour.
We sat anxiously waiting at the San Ig. Honda Pit
for Bender to arrive. With the same great pit crew
waiting to swap out all four tires before I would
leave on a 200 plus mile stint out to the pacific
coast and then back again to Loreto on the Eastern
side. When Bender showed up with a perfect bike
and a big lead on the next ATV we quickly swapped
out the tires and I was off. After about 25 miles
of super boring 60mph governed pavement section
I finally got back into the dirt.
In Baja you can never let up no matter how big your
lead or deficit is, because anything can and does
happen down there. Knowing this I hammered into
my section telling myself that the leader was just
a few minutes ahead. Everything was going great,
the lights were awesome and the bike was still ripping,
until I got into a super slow rocky crawl and discovered
that first gear sounded like a chain spinning around
a stripped sprocket. From here on out we were going
to have to avoid anything that might require first
gear, as well as pray that no other tranny damage
would transpire. I came a little hot into a very
gnarly silt that I’m still convinced wasn’t
there the previous week during prerunning. I was
losing speed as quickly as my vision and in mere
seconds I was buried in a complete whiteout of silt.
Amazingly,
during the BAJA 1000, you could be in the
middle of nowhere, but more than likely,
there will be some one along the trail to
offer a hand as many of the locals are huge
fans of the BAJA 1000
Completely stopped, with the clutch in revving the
engine to keep it running, I yelled “ayuda
me” repeatedly. This is spanish for “help
me”, and out of nowhere thirty miles from
the nearest fishing village, 5 or 6 Mexicans almost
instantly grabbed the atv and helped me yank it
up and out of the silt onto more solid ground. I
pulled away from the white out, thanked them, and
then pulled the completely clogged K&N Filter
lid off, beat it on the tire to clean it as much
as possible, reinstalled it, and was off.
You
would think the racing 1000 miles through
the desert on an ATV would be dangerous,
but the chase truck drivers have the most
dangerous trip down to LaPaz, and the flipped
tractor trailer above is a perfect example
The next hundred miles were pretty uneventful “which
means good” and I was able to pass it off
to Kenney in Loreto with out any further complications.
Kenney “crash” Sanford took off with
a warning about the transmission and had no major
issues before the next pit. While on the bike I
had managed 200+ miles without a near death experience
to speak of. Not ten minutes after I get back in
the truck with my beautiful wife who is arguably
one of the best chase drivers to cross the border
in years, we are rubbing my passenger side mirror
with a swapping big rig trailer at 80 and fully
committed to the pass. Luckily for myself, Brad
and Sadie she stayed way calmer than I did and just
throttled through it. So much for being able to
sleep in the truck. Immediately after the Dump pit
in Loreto, Kenney was getting real tired from all
the riding with the two really great Trail Tech
HID lights and decided to take a little dirt nap,
and break off one of the HID lights. At this time
the 2a bike still had over an hour on us and Wes
was on the 1a Matlock Racing 700xx riding for all
he was worth in an attempt to make up time. This
is also about the time that some of the gnarliest
fog or “neblina” hit the race course
and the Highway. The very intense fog slowed everybody
down a bit, especially the chase trucks. Kenney
beat our chase truck to the Insurgentes pit and
had to power through an extra 30 miles of course
and fog to bring the bike to Brandon.
