photos to come

5/31/03

Not the Finish We Were Hoping For

If you read the article Team Alba Prepares for Baja, you know just how much work goes into a race like this. Which makes it even more frustrating when something somewhat out of your control takes you out of the race - and that is what happened to Team Alba's 8a team in Baja.

"We haven't torn apart the motor yet, but at about the 60 mile mark, we lost power to the rear wheels". Stated Race Tech Rob who knows the motor probably better than anyone else. "Once we break it open, we'll be able to figure out what happened."

As Rob points out, this is just part of racing - especially in a race like Baja, where reliability is the key. Like all professional race teams, we'll take what we learned in Baja and apply it to the next race.

"Off the line the bike felt real good" stated lead off rider Alex Crosthwait "It was really fast and handled perfectly"

In fact at about the 40 mile check-point, Alex had the 2nd fastest time, and was off the lead by a small margin. At about the 60 mile marker, in a valley that was pretty-much inaccessible by our support vehicles, the motor broke. After an attempt to get the quad rolling again, Alex pretty much knew the day was up. But what do you do?

So he tried to flag down someone to tow him out of the valley to a place where the support vehicle could get to him. An early rider in not so kind words, told him off then sped away. Finally, after a while, a rogue beet-up Jeep came driving down the middle of the race course. They were not entered, just a couple of guys who like to drive the course for fun. Mind you, this is the same course where Trophy Trucks will go ripping by at speeds over 100mph, and probably not the best place to go for a weekend four-by. Nevertheless, Alex was very grateful to see them - they offered to tow him out.

Alex, not planning on stopping during his first leg of the race, didn't bring any water. So he asked the Jeep guys if they had any water. They didn't, but they reached into their well-stocked ice chest and tossed Alex a beer, saying this is all they had. So picture Alex being towed out on his broken down Raptor kickin back and throwing back a few beers. Now THAT is making the best out of a bad situation. And to top it all off, the guy who wouldn't help Alex earlier - who told him off, was there broken down on the side of the trail as Alex was towed off, drinking a beer. Now that's Karma! Alex just waved. (Well, he really didn't just wave, but this is a family web site - I mean, what would you do?)

Another side note from the crew. They report random psychos out in the middle of nowhere. When positioning themselves for one of the early pits, the crew reports that out of nowhere, a guy wandered out of the desert with no shirt on. Now we're talking out in the middle of nowhere - with no vehicle or houses anywhere to be seen. And we're talking hot too. This is Baja. This guy wanders up to our team. They ask him where he came from and he just looked over his shoulder and just said the desert. No car, no house, just out in the desert. Then he laid in the dirt and started to flail around. Not really knowing what to do, the crew offered him water and a ride to the next town. He took the water, thanked them and wandered on out into the desert. A strange encounter way out in the middle of the Baja desert

So all we can do is put this race behind us and look toward the next one. Take what we've learned here and apply it to our next effort. And hope that next time, we don't end up like that strange desert wanderer.