The race team and the dust bowl

Well, so much for posting in a timely manner, but i've been busy lately.

If you’re interested in getting caught up in the story, you can do so here. http://whatstdoin.blogspot.com

Mike and I woke up the next morning at about 10:30 and had breakfast, cold cereal, milk, coffee and a banana. Packed up camp (put away the 2 folding chairs) and hit the road. The eco-system changed almost immediately. We went from Fresno to barren Utah almost instantly and a few hours later it turned into Africa high dessert. It was a long drive. With not much to see.

We went hours without seeing anything man made. Every once in awhile there would be a police check point in the middle of no where and we’d have to get out and switch seats because I had forgotten to get my international drivers license. For the most part it was my day to drive though. I had it much easier then Mike, very little traffic for me to deal with.

After several hours on the road we pulled into Neuquen. We knew this was a pretty big city and we headed down town and had a burger and pizza. Then it was off to the store for supplies followed by a run to the gas station for ice and then back to the store for pasta sauce which we had forgotten. We were anxious to get to a place to camp.

I had been warned about “Argentinean time” and thought I had prepared myself for it. I was wrong. 30 minutes in the checkout line. I was losing my mind this checker was so slow. I realized I just had to deal with it and bit my tongue, not that he would have understood the things I was going to tell him except for a few choice words I believe that are probably international. After the first till change and the two subsequent price checks I was out the door. We headed to a river bank and again pitched camp. More pasta and some idle chatter and we were out.

We woke up this morning and headed to the rally. We spent the better part of 3 hours watching the rally vehicles go by. We were parked on the side of the road across the street from a gas station. They weren’t at speed, just kind of cruising.

The way it works is they pitch a sort of tent city each night where all the racers and support vehicles stay together. Over 2000 vehicles total are on this massive caravan across these two countries plus fans like Mike and I who are in tow in non official vehicles. The race crews receive the directions for the following day in the evening. They work on the vehicles for a good portion if not all of the night and go to bed. They get up in the morning and pack up. Then they drive to a specified location to start the timed portion of the rally. That pre-timed distance can be from 10 to 500 km depending on the day. Then they start the timed portion of the event again, anywhere from 100 to 600 km. They take off staggered and race like crazy to get to the end point often having to check in with digital way points along the way. They just have to pass with in so many kilometers of the way point for it to register. Keep in mind that they don’t have any of this info until the night before. The motorcycles actually have a rolling navigation system on the handle bars. It looks like a big spool of register tape that they have a thumb button to advance it. Each frame contains a small black and white line on the basic lay out of the section. How many kilometers before they have to advance the tape to the next section and any hazards or road conditions they may encounter in the current section. They race through this information until they reach the end of the timed portion and then they have another 10 to 500 km to drive before they reach the bivouac / place they are camping and start the whole process all over again for 15 days.

The race is roughly 6000 miles. It’s called the Dakar Road Rally and can be found on line at Dakar.com. It got its name because it used to run in Africa at Dakar. This is the first year it has been in South America. They moved it for security issues. Last year it was canceled on 12 hours notice because of death threats against spectators and participants. The year before 2 participants and 3 spectators were killed. The area was so unstable that when they got to the Libyan border, they had to air lift the whole race over the country…

Anyhow, we ended up at the bivouac and used the wristband for tomorrow’s bivouac to get us into today’s. Security is not real tight. It was really a pretty amazing sight. All of these vehicles parked together and working there asses off to get the racers and equipment ready for the next day. Mike was going out of his mind. Mike’s a bit of a gear head and this whole thing had been described to us as Burning Man for gear heads. They were right. After wandering around and many photos, we found the reason we came.

My buddy Mike and I have been friends since kindergarten, chances are if you are reading this you have met him or at least heard me tell stories about him. Recently we had reconnected at a couple of parties and were touching base a little more often. Which if you’re also reading this you know is a feat for me since I’m am absolutely horrible at staying in touch with anyone.
At any rate, Mike gave me a call sometime in mid October and said “Hey, The Dakar Rally is coming up. You want to go.”
“Sure.” I replied.
“Do you want to know where it is?”
“Yeah”
“Argentina and Chili, you still want to go?”
“Yeah, sounds like fun.”
“I’m thinking of going rugged, rent a pickup, camp on the side of the road and chase the drivers.”
“Sounds like more fun. You book the truck, ill book the airfare.”
And so it was hatched. Later on I got another phone call.
“It sure would be nice if we could get into the pits so we could see the cars” Mike said
“Yeah, it would.”
Still later another phone call.
Mike: “Ok, I sponsored a race team. There are only 3 drivers from the US and 2 of them are on motorcycles. I started emailing the crew chief of one of the bike teams and asking him if it was even feasible to try and chase the race in a truck and the whole thing just kind of grew from that. So now it’s the Double Diamond KTM Racing Team with driver Jonah Street" (Mike owns a gym/sport facility in Reno called the Double Diamond Athletic Club.) Well, that took care of problems getting into the bivouac.

So, we met the race team for the first time, (we had met them briefly at a gas station but things were pretty rushed.) This is a small team, 1 driver, 1 mechanic, 1 crew chief, 1 motorcycle, 1 support truck. Compared to the other end of the spectrum where some of the factory sponsored guys like KTM have 6 riders, 15 trucks, and 30 staff. Some of the trucks on these teams are set up for specific things, 1 truck for rebuilding the bike engines one truck for changing tires, one truck for clutches ect. They also have on their team’s professional masseuses to take care of the drivers after the run.

They don’t expect all of their riders to place on these teams but there are pretty specific rules about how many engine changes and things you can have so they pretty much use these bikes to cannibalize for parts (enter extra riders so they have extra parts on hand.) or for example if on the coarse there lead rider blows a tire they’ll wait for one of the lower riders to catch up to the guy who blew his tire and then take the tire off his bike so the leader can keep his time up. If you’re getting the idea our team is a bit of an underdog, you’re getting the right idea. Did I mention were in second place over all in the bike class? It’s been an exciting few days.

So, were in the pits / bivouac. I’m fairly surprised at where they decided to park these guys for the night. They are in a silt bed, literally 4 inches of powdered dirt and the wind is howling. Most people are wearing goggles just so you can walk around and attempt to see. Without goggles it’s pretty hopeless, all you can do is turn away from the wind gusts and close your eyes lest you end up with a sandbox in your face. I had to go back to the truck and get my wind goggles. I half expected to see the guy from Road Warrior yelling "Just walk away and leave that fat tank of gas..." We did a bit of walking around and some pictures and then I decided to peace out and go back to the truck. I left Mike talking to the pit crew. Back at the truck I worked on the blogs a bit while Mike had a good time talking to the driver and crew and further exploring the pits.



By the time we left it was already 8pm which isn’t that big a deal since the sun doesn’t set here until about 10pm. We headed north out of Neuquen to get a jump on heading to the timed stage area. We wanted to see these guys at full speed. We figured we’d get up there, camp and see them in the morning. True to the K.S.N.S., we got lost on the way and did an extra hour detour in some small town called Catriel on the way. I was getting a little eggy because I was getting tired of pitching camp in the dark but at this point it was a grin and bare it kind of thing. We drove until 1am out into the dessert until we passed a random gas station that had a few police cars on the side of it at the entrance of a dirt road. Mike suspected this was it, to burnt to look for a proper camp site we just pulled onto the shoulder, had some pasta and fell asleep. Btw, it’s possible this is the dirtiest I’ve ever been. We haven’t had a shower since we left Argentina and the dust bath in the pits was pretty incredible.