Well, it’s 5am on the 4th and I would say the real adventure starts today. Not sure why I’m up this early, still dealing with lag I guess though that doesn’t make much sense since its coming on 10 pm at home.
Anyhow, we boarded the plane from Atlanta to Argentina. A pretty easy flight. About 9 hours with nothing special of note. We landed and headed off to baggage check, of course, we joked lost baggage would be the capper for the trip.
As we stood with about 30 other people in the lost baggage line I was chuckling pretty good. I didn’t really have anything non replaceable in my bags and had little hope of seeing it again considering we were leaving the next day in a truck to drive across South America.
Mike was handling things surprisingly well. He was a bit more disappointed than me (understandably so) because he had sponsored a race team down here and had all the swag in his bag. 30 or 40 shirts and again in hats. He knew if we didn’t get the bags soon that we weren’t seeing them again.
As we made our way to the counter the airline staff were assuring us that they would forward our bags ahead as they found them. Mike said “Look, I’m in town tonight, after that I’m sleeping in a truck on the side of the road for the next 2 weeks, how exactly are you going to get my bags to me?”
“What’s your last name sir?”
“Shirley and Wolfsen”
“Ah, Mr. Wolfsen, we have your bag in the office…”
“You have his but not mine??”
“Yes…”
I collected my bag and we were off to the hotel. The plan was that they would have his bag to him by 9am and, they actually did. We awoke this morning at the hotel in Buenos Aries and Mike got his bag. We then headed off to the race start. We were running a bit late and we got to see the last of the truck class take off from the line. These trucks are big. They’re a cross between a Mac truck and a regular pickup. They are pretty gnarly.
After the race kick off we decided to walk around town and take in the sites. We walked for quite some time in the general direction of the hotel (we had taken the subway to the race). We stopped for lunch at the Ferrari café and I whipped out the map. I realized we were right across the street from the cemetery where Evita was buried and that peaked my interest so we headed over there checking out a little local flea market on the way. I got some shots in the cemetery and we decided we were ready for a breather. We headed back and took a nap, well tried…
Mike is very excited about the race and was going down stairs all the time for updates. He burst in the room “My guy finished 5th! He finished 5th out of 250 people!!” Naps over, off to watch race high lights. Followed by dinner in a fantastic café. Probably a little more upscale then a café, full linen and silver. A nice place. For meal selection it was the point and pray method. Mike got what looked like a great shish kabob and I got a chicken wienerscnhtizel sort of a thing. Both great. We finished up and headed back to the hotel for some more race high lights and then off to bed.
This brings me up to now, pounding away on these keys at 5am. So the reason I say the adventure starts today is because we pick up the rental truck this morning at 10. Beyond that we really don’t have many plans. We have a pretty loose map of the race. We’re going to grab the truck, pick up a cooler, and hit the road. As we watched high lights last night on TV occasionally the racers would go roaring by a stretch of dirt road in the middle of no where that had 3 or 4 tents next to it. Mike said, “There, that’s where I want to stay. Little bbq with the locals, then wake up and see the race roar past.”
Sounds good to me. I thought…
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