Route Area for the Sonora Rally:
I didn’t get to go with them last year for this one, but I’m told it’ll be similar to the Baja Rally I did with them in Oct. last year. I’ll be driving the truck and trailer again. They are planning on just throwing my Tiger in the bed of one of the trucks one I get to San Luis. It’ll stay there likely until we get back to Santa Fe.
That first night there is a briefing and an update about how the rally works. Nicely organized, but that room was a bit too small for everyone, and it got hot in there.
The boys:
So the first day is tech and the prologue. That sorts out the start order for the first day, it also gives everyone idea about how to navigate with the road books.
Jim getting ready for the Prologue.
The start:
Jim ended up with his favorite number.
Kent:
David:
I didn’t get Scott’s start but Debby did:
Deb and I taking pictures of Jim coming in from the prologue.
So everyone was pleased with their prologue, David decided to change his oil, and that’s when things kind of went downhill for him. This is never a good look for a bike.
Jim and I rode the Tiger to the Rider’s briefing while David, Kent and Abe stayed to work on the bike. Jim took Scott’s commuting bike back to El Bosque, where they were taking parts from that bike of Scott’s to fix David’s bike. I stayed at the hotel. They already had 6 people there, I wasn’t going to be able to much help at that point. David and Deb didn’t get back to the hotel until after 1am.
The next morning I heard that we had to head over so there could be a motor swap….
I have to give them (Jim, David, Scott, Abe, and Kent) all A LOT of credit. They got the motor swapped and David made his original start time! Way to go!!! It was impressive to watch and I didn’t mind going grab tools or other things when needed.
Once they all got started, we headed off to El Golfo, but not before the three of us (Deb in Kent’s truck, me in Jim’s truck & trailer, and Abe with Scott’s truck and trailer) got lost at least twice trying to get out of San Luis RC. Thanks to a very nice guy, who came up to us while we were trying to figure it out. He told us that the GPS was wrong and pointed us in the right direction! Poor Kate, I never made navigating easy for her.
It worked out alright, we got there with plenty of time to set up and get comfortable.
Not a bad view of the beach from our pit area.
Scott rolled in first, before the boys. That was pretty much how the whole rally would go. That guy is wicked fast.
The grunion were running the two nights we were there. David got the best picture of it. Kind of cool to watch.
It was a nice site and the bivouac each night was great.
The boys the next day starting from right in front of our pits.
I had a good walk on the beach that day while we waited for the guys to get back.
I sat on the beach for awhile in the eve again, catching up on my voicemails and few phone calls, while I watched the fish again that night.
The next day we were off to Puerto Lobos, not to bad a drive and if a few of trucks hadn’t gotten stuck in the deep sand before we got there. We might have been able to camp on the beach. But I wasn’t willing to get someone else’s truck and trailer stuck. So on a side road a short walk from the beach we camped. Jim seemed okay with the call…
The beach there with the Bivouac was really nice.
What I had forgotten to add in this section was how David tried to light his azz on fire…
They figured that the screen in the exhaust had gotten plugged up and the exhaust started to shoot flames out the top.
Not the smoothest event for David.
I took my tent down to the beach and found a nice dune to hide behind. I didn’t even have to put the fly on the tent that night. It was AWESOME, to go to sleep staring at the stars and listening to the water.
Next up was Bahia Kino. It wasn’t as far mileage wise, but Jim informed me that there was about 36KM of road that was in bad shape so I should be really careful. I don’t know who told him that, but it was like out of the 200 or so Kilometers there was only 36K that was in good shape. Since Deb had the small truck and she could dodge the road hazards better than Abe and I could she took off. She also had to leave in the am before the racers, so she could meet them and top off their fuel tanks at one of the check points.
Kate and I didn’t have a very good time figuring out where the bivouac was. I got us lost, so we ended up seeing a lot of Bahia Kino. I found a spot to turn the trucks and trailers around, but I had given up the easiest spot to Abe. That left me dodging power poles on both sides of the two lane road. I missed the one next to the trailer, but I tapped the one in front of me. (I got some shyt the other night, as some of the creosote was still on the bummer after he washed the truck.) Seriously, it wasn’t a hit it was a tap. I needed those extra inches to get aim in the right direction. LOL.
We finally found the spot, but not before Kate steered us down a NARROW alley that had tree scraping the sides of the truck and trailer… Again, I got more shyt for that one… LOL. He should just be happy the rig made it there after that flipping road.
The beach there was stunning!
I’m shock each time at the number of sea shells everywhere.
That night was the awards ceremony. Scott finished 2nd, Jim was 7th & 2nd in the Dakar Challenge, David finished 11th, (given he almost didn’t ride and about set his azz on fire not shabby), and Kent finished. There were two days he didn’t ride, due to mechanical issues that get fixed and just being over whelmed by some of the terrain. He really did great, esp for someone who’s only been riding for 5 years.
I’ll fess up that the margaritas at that place totally kicked my ass. I’m still not quite sure what happened after the ceremony finished. Or how I got back to the hotel. Given the pieces I have been told. I don’t think I want to know. I just know that 3am I woke up wondering where I was, how I got there, where my phone was, where the rest of my clothes were, and why I wasn’t feeling so great.
3 hours after that, I was forced to get up and head back to truck and trailer where my bike was waiting for me so I could ride back to Santa Fe. At this point I wasn’t feeling a 100%, but I knew I was feeling better than I deserved to be feeling.
Feeling the way I was, I didn’t stop except for gas, to use the bathroom, and to get some more water. Since that seemed to help me feel better. I didn’t take any pictures, except for this one. I’m sure that from it you can tell that my day didn’t end much better than it started.
Now I made across the border rather quickly, I’ll just say that when you end up in the wrong place, you get very prompt attention and escorted to the front of the lines. I was lucky that they didn’t go through everything on the bike, but I was yelled at. Yes, yelled at for quite some time, too. They took my passport and made me wait for a while, but then escorted me to a quick exit and back to US soil. Ohh. Little did I know that in a couple more hours, it was going get a bit worse.
The front tire rapidly went flat. NOT a good feeling! I was a bit freaked out by the time I got the bike stopped on the shoulder of I-10, I also had hit some debris on the shoulder and dented my rim. Also a really scary thing. Then up, was the struggle of getting the bike onto the center stand. That bike is seriously a bitch to get on the center stand. The sprint was heavier and not as difficult. What gives with that?!
Followed by, figuring out that I didn’t have a way to power the air pump. Making a panicked call to Jim. Only to find out he wasn’t anywhere close and wouldn’t be until the next day. He did walk me through how to cut the wires on it and hook it to the fuze block if I had to.
Next was having to stand on the wrench to get the axle loose. By the time I got the tire off one side of the rim, the tube out and was trying to get new tube in (and had been working on it for what seemed like forever). I was a wreck and on the edge of losing it. When a VERY nice couple stopped and asked if I needed some help. He and I worked at getting that tube in, then I used the outlet in their car to put some air in the tube so I wouldn’t pinch it while putting the tire back on the rim. Then used the outlet some more to pump the tire/tube up to its needed pressure. I am pretty sure if they hadn’t stopped I might have been there for a couple more hours working on it. I was just too relived when I got it on the bike and I hadn’t pinched the tube getting the tire back on the rim. That would have been a huge mess. The middle of no where, a dead cell phone, and a flat tire. Talk about a bad day.
I decided to stop in Willcox AZ, I’d been there plenty of times for the track just outside of town. Once in the shower, I had my melt down. I think I ended up falling asleep before 8pm and I didn’t wake up until 7am the next day.
I had just gotten back to the room when Jim called to check in on me and ask if my tantrum was done. Lol. I think he was surprised when I told him it was done and it was tears and not foot stomping. He told me to double check for cactus thorns in the tire before I left the hotel. This time I got someone to help me put the bike on the center stand. By golly, he was right, I found one. I worked on getting it out of the tire with my leatherman for a while. Then I headed home, I’m thankful to say it was totally uneventful that day. I made it home before dark. I managed 3100 miles for this trip per the odometer. Not shabby.