Crazy Stories of BAJA we are all eager to hear!!!

[Jr_desert_racer]

Hey for us who stayed home and experienced BAJA on our computer as you know we love to hear all the crazy stories that happened so please if you have any please share, because as you know the race was a sure exciting one so the stories are probably insane!!! Rollover, crashes, and also run-ins with local police! BAJA I love it!!

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[michael_loomis]

hmmm not to crazy ... but Ike Bruckmann and myself noticed Elliot Forbes Robinson standing there by his broken car , seemingly out of the race ... apparently a car clipped his A arm class ten while passing and bent a tie rod pretty bad and he had NO crew on the San felipe side with a new one ...shoot i dont think he had ANY crew on that side... anyways i hear Ike yell .. MIKE !!!! (yes we are as infamous in mex as the candy haha) in about 8 minutes we ripped it off straightened it buy putting it in our trailer hitch receiver and pumping the floor jack till it was straight as could be .. installed it .. eyeballed the toe and he was off again ! he was sooo stoked .. but really the pleasure was all ours !

[Rory]

Mine was just about watching a couple guys heading home from San Felipe up HWY 5 about 25 miles before Mexicall where the HWY goes to 4 lanes. Seems the 2 bone heads in the F-150 and Bronco can't wait to get back home, try to pass myself and the semi right where the median starts to go into 4 lanes. Now, there is 2 cars going in the wrong direction with a curb as a barrier doing well over 70 mph at 7pm with on coming traffic coming. The first truck jumps the curb (now over 80 mph) almost loses it in the HWY and keeps on going, the Bronco starts to jump the curb, partially loses control, saves it, cars driving by honking, middle fingers flying, you get the idea, and he finally slows down....WOW, what a great idea, and turns around following traffic to find a place to turn around again. Stupid people in this world.....but I enjoyed the show!!

[GFC]

well.... on the way to CoCo Corner, I along with 4 other people came up on the 5 car chase team(locals, 2 of witch were no older than 14) in a white tacoma pickup towing a trailer and the elderly couple in what i thought was a green f150 who went diver to driver head on at K124-125 on the 1. Relayed the message to one of our EMT's, Brandon and Gabe-Laura. They were no farther than a 60 seconds out and us the same time to the wreck when it happened. No skid marks, blind corner, and simply going to fast as they passed us not 10 minutes before the wreck. Sometime when this was all going on, the message was relayed to weatherman and there was some confusion as to it being a pflueger truck in the wreck. The people in the chace truck got lucky after rolling down the 50ft ditch and walked away from the truck just banged up. The driver was fortunate to have had an air bag. their trailer remained on the road still attached to the rear bumper. As for the elderly couple in the other truck, the man diving did not survive. he had the A-piller colapsed up into him as well as the stearing wheel shoved into his chest. Now im no medic but there was no way to get him out of there under the cercumstances. His blood painted the road as it dripped out of the cab onto the ground. The woman with him was pretty cut up and banged up but was fortunate to have got out with her life. The older couple had baked goods and luggage in the bed of their truck, probubly going to town to sell their goods. Several reality checks set in. Its not worth risking the lives of yourself and the people around you just to shortcut by crossing that centerline when you do not know what is coming infront of you. When possible, travel in caravans and use the radio to alert of upcoming traffic. Another is to Not Move Anything. i.e the wrecked truck, trailer. Do what you have to do to help the people but the police are going to need to do a report and it is a crime to move evidence. Well I think thats enuff on that. The rest of the trip was quite eventfull with the motor taking a dump on #28 about 50 miles away from CoCo Corner. We helped several trucks and buggies out with welding, gas, breaks, and CV needs. I know 1011 came in with alot of work being done on the rear trailing arms , tons of cracked welds. 66 came in for a power stearing checkup/fluid. A hummer, didnt catch the number, got a good splash of gas. And Curt LeDuc's class 8 came in for some welding needs on a stearing part. So atleast we were able to keep ourselfs buisy to pass the time untill the trailer made its way up north to tow back the truck. Big thanks to Alan, Its as if that smile was glewed to your face and hearing how you stayed with the mass of kids to sign autographs untill they had all recieved one whether it was on a poster or their arm when the posters ran out. Well i'm dead tired and am sure i did a bad job spelling when i typed this.... It was a long trip and I hope you all got/get home safe.

Life is a one lap race

[GFC]

pic of robby haulin the mail.

[Dez_Annihilation]

RM 327 El Crucero first weatherman incident was " ok we have our first fatality between El Rosario and Catavina DON'T RACE ON THE HIGHWAY chase truck for 578 was involved in a fatal car crash". Later Ickler and his crew showed up to our pit because Brian was going to get into the Groff car at Baja Pits. Andy McMillin was the first class 1 car to our pit and as he was approaching our pit he was the fastest by far as he was not letting off of the gas. Andy came in for 10 gal. of gas and a lift on the lightbar all done in about twenty to thirty seconds. Later Mark McMillin came in for 10 gal. and top lightbar. later on that afternoon Corky came in for 10 gal., driver change, bleed the brakes, and upper and lower light bar. unfortunately the tab for the upper light bar was gone so we had to find a substitute to weld on around the same time SMD arrived and Matt got out and David got in after having fuel not delivered to a previos stop Matt said they almost ran it on Pemex. With the rear brakes not fully functioning on McMillin car 121 Ron Stacy took over for Corky. Later CODE 7s points leader Dan Street took over for Sam Stahl in the class 8 truck. Perry McNeil was the first class 7, and with the Yee's class 10 car broken in San Felipe with a broken engine case Eli Yee told Perry that he would meet him again at San Ignacio to take over driving duties for Perry. Since McMillins had already been through our pit i decided to go and find out the status on the Yee's car when Hector Salazr's truck driven by El Indio (The Indian) was supposed to pit with Baja Pits and get refueled, but they were pre-occupied so the Yee's decided to lend him 30 gallons of gas since they woudn't be needing it so the truck was topped of and to clean up the spilled gas an ice cold Tecate was used at around ten P.M. Nick Baldwin was at the Wide Open Baja pit working on the truck whie the rest of the guys from Wide Open were waiting for there last car which was getting an engine swap at CoCo's. Not many other cars came threw our location. Some guys from Texas with bike 10x were still waiting to find word of there rider since they hadn't heard anything because after the guy broke his leg another rider was supposed to take the bike to RM 327 for a rider change.

[baja619]

I went down and was at ensenada by 8:00 and met up with some friends (who had informed me that they were not going to run there 7 because it was chewing through the flex plates).
So I bailed and started the race at the OJOS rollers to watch the front runners bomb through. After severeal drinks and it was getting time to move on.
We went down to the next road section. There me and my buddy got recruited to top off the fuel cell for pro truck 229

[ QUOTE ]
hmmm not to crazy ... but Ike Bruckmann and myself noticed Elliot Forbes Robinson standing there by his broken car , seemingly out of the race ... apparently a car clipped his A arm class ten while passing and bent a tie rod pretty bad and he had NO crew on the San felipe side with a new one ...shoot i dont think he had ANY crew on that side... anyways i hear Ike yell .. MIKE !!!! (yes we are as infamous in mex as the candy haha) in about 8 minutes we ripped it off straightened it buy putting it in our trailer hitch receiver and pumping the floor jack till it was straight as could be .. installed it .. eyeballed the toe and he was off again ! he was sooo stoked .. but really the pleasure was all ours !

[/ QUOTE ]

I was there to help do what I could and assist the two guys doing most of the work for the 1006. I was just stoked to be participating at all.

We caught up to them as the came down the goat trail, I noticed they were running on a flat front passanger tire. So we hopped in right behind them on the road and follwed them to see if we could lend a hand in the tire swap. I rembered from the first fix that there crew was still a ways away. So we got them up anfd going again. We then went down too San Felipe by 4:00 and by 5:00 started to Mexicali and then back to San Diego by 10:00.

[CRAIG_HALL]

Nothing real crazy just long and tiring.

RTR racing class 1 entry--I arrived in Ensenada around 9:30 Wednesday morning just in time to load my stuff into the chase truck.Departed Ensenada around 11:00 with one other crew and headed to Catavina.Ate dinner and left the other crew and drove on to Guerrero Negro arriving around 9:00 pm only to find our room at the La Pinta was given away so over to the Don Gus we went for some sleep.Woke up early and left for RM 911 for our pit.Arrived around 4:00 pm and set up next to the BFG trailer,made the sat phone call to check and all was good to set up pit so we did,fuel tower and all.Not more than 30 minutes later we got the call the motor blew south of Puertocitos.Being only 5:30-6:00 we wouldn't expect to see anything for 7 or so hours so it was decided to pack it up and return.(I'd rather of slept for 6 hours and wake up to the finishers myself but I wasn't in charge!)Headed to RM 500 (driver change) to meet two of our other crews and to carravan on to Guerrero Negro.

About 30-40 min north on the highway the fog got crazy thick. We were leading and were doing 5 mph at the most.One oncoming crew with a box trailer was going a little to fast was off to the right in the dirt then came back only to swipe the mirror off the 3rd vehicle in our group-All we could hear was a bunch of yelling coming over the radio! Ten minutes later a 18 wheeler come haulin [I have been warned] toward us first thing we saw was his right tires off the road then it started to roll over-our last chase said the truck started to come back on the road but the trailer pulled the truck over.If it came back on it would of went head on with our crew.Drove on for about an hour in the fog,cleared up and arrived in Guerrero Negro at 1:30 in the morning.Friday morning left and drove on to Ensenada got there at 7:00 pm hopped in my car and drove four hours home to Hesperia.-------Woke up and went to go watch the MDR race.

Since we were going the opposite way we saw alot of chase teams hauling [I have been warned] going south--chances are it will be a locals car going 15 mph with only a marker light on around the next corner.First time that far south for a race and it was great except for not seeing any race action-except for the highway sections where they were coming at us with all their HID's on!!! Hope everbody had more fun than I but I did get home a few days early.

[Cali_F350_XLT]

I left wed. afternoon and arrived in Ensenada at about 6pm, and it seemed like everything was in full swing. What I thought was cool was to see all of the race trucks/buggies driving down the street. Got to bed early to get up at around 4:30 and headed over to Los Ojos. For those that have never been there WOW, that place is out of control. The amount of people is amazing, and they are definetly not friendly with those who drive through the course. Got some good footage of a few cars/trucks getting hammered with beer cans, bottles, ha even a blow up doll. All that went on, but inbetween the bikes and TT's there was a pretty scary accident, and I was about 5 feet from it. I was filming at the large jump out at los ojos and it seems like some of the locals think there cars can handle that jump at say 65mph. So a very smart individual decides to hit it in his evo doing about 60-65mph and jumps farther than most of the TT's did all day. When he landed he bounced and then lost control, and cut very hard to left(right where I was standing). Now lining the side of the track is a barbed wire fence to try and keep some order(didnt do a good job) and in trying to run away I got tangled in the fence and was pretty much stuck. So to make a long story short the car hit about 5feet in front of me, straight into a van parked on the side of the course. No one was hurt, actually not one person was hit. But after the guy starts to pull away, the barbed wire fence was caught underneath his car somewhere. When he started to pull away he drug the fence with him, and about 5 people who were all caught up in it as well. It was a bit freaky to say the least, and this was all before the first TT passed by. All and all a fun experience, I will definetly be doing next year, but with a bit more planning.

-Markus-

[mexracer10]

Sorry to burst your buble that bob wire fence is not for crowd control it someones property line. I would have pulled that guys out of the car and tangled him in the bob wire fence. But what can you do ????