Zambo
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I'm a little surprised that there isn't a thread about this event. I've been to BOLA many times and dealt with wind there. I thought last year was a little bit nuts with the wind but this year was pretty unbelievable. I don't think I've ever seen wind like that before in my life.
We never get a room in BOLA because I never get us entered on the first day. So we always camp on the beach, usually away from the main pit campsite so we can get a little quiet and get some sleep. Fat chance this year. The wind started a little after sundown and by about 1 in the morning I swear it was gusting close to 100mph. Pretty incredible. Most of our guys were in sleeping bags sheltered as best they could behind a two foot tall seawall. I had pitched a tent and my buddy Frank was in there with me. I had some faint hope during the first couple hours of wind that we'd be ok and it would die down but that was wishful thinking. Eventually it got so bad all the tent poles collapse and we were basically in a big flopping noisy bag on the beach. I'm not going to lie, for a while I was slightly concerned we were going to get blown out into the bay and drown like unwanted kittens.
Around 2am when the super strong gusts started coming through, it was enough to bow up the flip-top cover on my pickup bed and hurl it up over the roof of the truck. It shattered my rear window and the flopping cover dented the hell out of my roof. Baja Rudy had taken shelter inside the cab and all the broken glass and sand blew all over him. He opened the door and the door folded all the way forward due to the wind blast and put a big crease in the side and dented the fender. He came running to the tent and yelled at us what happened....you have to understand that it was blowing so hard that you had to yell at a person 3 feet away so they could hear you.
I told Frank to stay in the tent at all cost because there were wallets and passports and cellphones etc in there and we would lose them if the tent blew away. I got out and spent the next 10 minutes getting absolutely sandblasted. Not figuratively, but literally. Point a sandblaster at your skin and pull the trigger, that is what it was like being outside at this time. We were able to eventually drag the cover back down to the bed and strap it down with ratchet straps. Rudy is a real trooper because he didn't let go of that damn topper even under the strongest gusts and it had to have been killing him to get blasted like that. Once we got the cover secured I ran back to the tent and Rudy turn the truck around so the wind wasn't blowing straight into the shattered back window and drove it near a building to shield some of the gusts away. He literally sat in the truck with his seatbelt on because it was rocking so violently that he was worried it might roll over.
Nearby, two of my guys were sleeping next to another building when a door blew open. It turned out to be a little crypt or shrine for some dead people. There was just enough room inside for them to crawl in and lay down.
One of the rooms in the closest cabana to us had a window get blown in. When the occupants left in the morning we went in there to take a shower and fold up the tent, etc. There was glass everywhere, especially on the bed under that broken window. That must have been hell for whoever was sleeping in there.
Needless to say, nobody on our team except the guys in the crypt got even a wink of sleep that night. We managed to race pretty well all the way to the highway north of Loreto but broke an I-beam just a couple miles from the road. By the time our tired asses got the recovery done and limped back to town, we had been up for almost 2 days straight. This was a big part of my decision to stop our race in Loreto, have the truck fixed in the fab shop by the airport, and just spend the next few days relaxing. Crazy stuff....which is pretty much the point of racing in Baja so in that regard, mission accomplished.
We never get a room in BOLA because I never get us entered on the first day. So we always camp on the beach, usually away from the main pit campsite so we can get a little quiet and get some sleep. Fat chance this year. The wind started a little after sundown and by about 1 in the morning I swear it was gusting close to 100mph. Pretty incredible. Most of our guys were in sleeping bags sheltered as best they could behind a two foot tall seawall. I had pitched a tent and my buddy Frank was in there with me. I had some faint hope during the first couple hours of wind that we'd be ok and it would die down but that was wishful thinking. Eventually it got so bad all the tent poles collapse and we were basically in a big flopping noisy bag on the beach. I'm not going to lie, for a while I was slightly concerned we were going to get blown out into the bay and drown like unwanted kittens.
Around 2am when the super strong gusts started coming through, it was enough to bow up the flip-top cover on my pickup bed and hurl it up over the roof of the truck. It shattered my rear window and the flopping cover dented the hell out of my roof. Baja Rudy had taken shelter inside the cab and all the broken glass and sand blew all over him. He opened the door and the door folded all the way forward due to the wind blast and put a big crease in the side and dented the fender. He came running to the tent and yelled at us what happened....you have to understand that it was blowing so hard that you had to yell at a person 3 feet away so they could hear you.
I told Frank to stay in the tent at all cost because there were wallets and passports and cellphones etc in there and we would lose them if the tent blew away. I got out and spent the next 10 minutes getting absolutely sandblasted. Not figuratively, but literally. Point a sandblaster at your skin and pull the trigger, that is what it was like being outside at this time. We were able to eventually drag the cover back down to the bed and strap it down with ratchet straps. Rudy is a real trooper because he didn't let go of that damn topper even under the strongest gusts and it had to have been killing him to get blasted like that. Once we got the cover secured I ran back to the tent and Rudy turn the truck around so the wind wasn't blowing straight into the shattered back window and drove it near a building to shield some of the gusts away. He literally sat in the truck with his seatbelt on because it was rocking so violently that he was worried it might roll over.
Nearby, two of my guys were sleeping next to another building when a door blew open. It turned out to be a little crypt or shrine for some dead people. There was just enough room inside for them to crawl in and lay down.
One of the rooms in the closest cabana to us had a window get blown in. When the occupants left in the morning we went in there to take a shower and fold up the tent, etc. There was glass everywhere, especially on the bed under that broken window. That must have been hell for whoever was sleeping in there.
Needless to say, nobody on our team except the guys in the crypt got even a wink of sleep that night. We managed to race pretty well all the way to the highway north of Loreto but broke an I-beam just a couple miles from the road. By the time our tired asses got the recovery done and limped back to town, we had been up for almost 2 days straight. This was a big part of my decision to stop our race in Loreto, have the truck fixed in the fab shop by the airport, and just spend the next few days relaxing. Crazy stuff....which is pretty much the point of racing in Baja so in that regard, mission accomplished.
