The 2018 NORRA Mexican 1000
1,362 Mile of Off-Road Motorcycle Racing over the Length of Mexico's Baja Peninsula
OK, Day-2

Game face on.

Staging starts in the dark.

The Sportster is ready.

Last year I crashed hard at mile 0.8 from here, it still hurts. I do not want to do that again.

As the daylight arrives so do all the bikes.

I get in line

Yesterday I started out with a rear-view mirror. The first close call with a cactus blew out the glass so I just unwound the thing while still riding and whipped it off. I still have my sneakers and a T-shirt bungeed to my fender to lighten the load in my backpack.



Team Flying Pig finally shows up.

And the Yamaha 2-stroke

Last year after getting lost for an hour and a half on day-1 I started out close to last on day-2. Not this year :)

The first race section was fast with some deep sand and a few long whoop sections. I did take a couple wrong turns early on but the GPS saved me and I was quickly back on course.

Close to the end of the first transit section I find an area to pull over to pee, eat, hydrate and dress down to just this T-shirt under my race jacket. I notice the whoops out of San Felipe stripped off my sneakers and T-shirt. Da!, I’ve been biking for a long time and I know you don’t trust bungee cords solely to hold anything onto your bike. What was I thinking?

At the start of the 2nd race section I still had a good half an hour to chill. I start my stop watch at the start of every transit section so I can see at a glance how much time I have so I don’t risk a time penalty.

I’m enjoy chatting with other bikers.


This race section was long and fun. It started out with a huge drop off and deep sand. Later when the course became fast I was trading positions back and forth with a few other bikers and having a blast. Of course, as Cavegirl reported earlier I got behind on my roadbook and didn’t realize a silt bed was ahead. Riding up from Ensenada to the start with Tim and Ron (BajaBoundAdventures) I discussed my difficult time I had in the silt beds last year. They coached me intensely on what to do. “When you see the silt bed, pick another line around them. Do not ride through them!” I was so down with this I really heavily marked my road book with deep red denoting the silt. But of course, these red markings were not in my view yet because of the straight line on my GPS I was following i.e. no need to turn the scroll chart thingie when I know where I’m going. When I hit the silt at high speed I took off in flight without the bike like a bomber ready to make a crash landing. And crash landing it was face first into a picker bush. Parts of my iPhone holder were strewn everywhere along with the iPhone and GPS deep inside the picker bush. I retrieve the electronics, stick the iPhone odometer into my side pack and remount the GPS into its holder that luckily held together after the epoxy repair job I did yesterday. So, from here on its GPS navigation only (!) I try to keep the road book up to date ‘by-gosh-by-golly’ when I made a hard turn and saw that turn on the road book. This seemed to be working but took a lot of concentration. Sometimes I had to come to a complete stop because of all the hand scrolling needed.
Soon after the first crash I hit more silt ruts that weren't on the roadbook. The roadbook only highlights things you can't see ahead of time so of course once I saw the ruts I crash again. Fifty feet later I crash again. A hundred feet later I crash again. The ruts are super deep and it was tough to go off to the side to pick another route so I just pedale with my feet going super slow until I am out.

During the next transit section, I stop at a chase truck that is parked. A couple other bikers stop with me.

The chase truck is the Builtwell Sportster support truck. These guys are super fun and made us some crackers with ham and avocado slices. Fantastic and just what we needed. I love Sportsters and I again told the story of Cavegirl and I riding to Panama and back on our Sportster spending over a year on the road.

I show them my crashed navigation bracket and talk about how I will need to do some duct tape repairs tonight. We all have a good laugh.

I make it into Guerrero Negro to the finish line but did almost tip over at the very end just before the finish. Ha ha, that was close.
My motel room is right at the finish line, perfect. I feel dehydrated so beer is out. At the banquet line I just fill up with tacos and massive amounts of refried beans and rice, carbo loading to the max is what I do.

I get my body to the motel room and find Kevin and Michele parked right next door. They talk about two flat tires they had today and were redoing their bran new wheels preparing for tomorrow. Flying Pig racing has my tool bag but are staying at another motel so I ask Kevin if I can borrow some tools to fix my odometer holder. No problem, he immediately digs out all the tools I need and says he will be here all night if I need anything else. While talking he notices my rear blinkers are hanging funny and suggests I just remove them. I want to keep them so he hands me some super strong duct tape to help keep them attached. Sometimes when you meet people for the first time you just know they are real people and would do anything to help you, this is one of those times.

I get my iPhone odometer remounted better then new and feel great having connected with Kevin and Michele (the famous 2-up racers).

Next, I ride over to the Flying Pig’s motel to rally with the team and do more work on the bike. I need an oil change new air filter and my tail light and break light are not working. I had to do some smooth talking to pass tech inspection in Ensenada stating I had a blinking strobe light on my backpack that will take the place of the tail light. That worked but I figure now is the time to see what the issue is sense Team Flying Pig has all the tools and knowledge to troubleshoot and fix the problem.

The scene is intense, Loren’s bike is surrounded but as soon as I pull up Billy is on my bike doing the oil change and diagnosing the tail light issue. With help from the team we figure out and fix the tail light and break light issue. Perfect, all good and I am all set.

The bikes are done so a little spirit is the call. We can deal with that…
On the way back to my motel I load up on groceries, milk for protein shakes tonight and tomorrow AM, yogurt, bran muffins, three bananas and a can of re-fried beans. That should do it....
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