Ramblings from 85 Cunningham: Race Day

Unlike the riders (motorcycles and ATV) which started the race at 630A, ours is schedule to start around 1P … with us staging around 1130A. This meant a somewhat relaxed morning, more packing and I’m sure more worrying. I’m pretty sure that Tim didn’t get a great night sleep <g>.

The final packing included getting your personal stuff ready, this meant everyone brought a small bag, that would be wedged into the Jeep. Food for the course was taped to the inside roof and drinking water bags zipped in place behind each person. This should, at least by the plan allow people to snack and drink on the course.

The race strategy is for Tim and Sheila to start the race, have both of them run to RM (Race Mile) 31, then swap Tom in. Tom and Tim would then take the Jeep to RM 198, where we would swap Dennis and Mark. Our second driving team would take to Jeep to RM 449. Our plan is to put Tim and Tom in the Jeep at that point and have them take it to near the end, where Sheila would get back in for the finish.

As the morning moves on, we get all our cars ready to go … Race 1502 is ready. Sheila and Tim are suiting up. Chase 1, which is our pickup truck, has food, spares, 10Gal of fuel, sleeping bags, chairs, cots and is completely full. Chase 2, our rental Jeep Wrangler, is carrying 10Gal of fuel, some food and clothes.

Our chase strategy, is to have Chase 2 head to the rendezvous point on RM31 for the co-driver swap. They will leave early to make sure that they are able to get there in time, since we cannot predict traffic. Chase 2 will start off with Michelle, Brooke and Tom.

Chase 1, with Abuelo, myself, Dennis and Mark will head out to BFG Pit1. This is the first place where we are scheduled to spot and fuel. We aren’t doing any swap here, just taking on fuel and giving the Jeep a look over. Our plan is to have Chase 2 join up with Chase 1 at BFG Pit 1, and continue together to BFG Pit 2, an area called Borrego.

Since we have more time, to make our meeting point, we stop by the race start to see all the cars staging … while there is still a “circus” event around all of this, the teams look fairly serious, especially the early classes. The race is a stagger start, one

vehicle off the line at a time, with another starting at regular intervals. Fastest classes go first … so Trophy trucks, Class 1, etc … our class, class 15 will start near the end … so we have over an hour before 1502 sets off.

We find 1502 near the end of the staging area, we hang out a little, then decide to get going once we hear the roar of the trucks … and I mean roar … these things are monsters <g>.

All our vehicles have radios, this allows us to stay in communication with each other … they are line of sight, so we are limited to 10-15 miles, but much more if we are up on a hill, less so in a valley. We stay talking to race 1502 as we drive out of town … which surprisingly has little traffic … soon enough we are out of radio range, and switch over to one of the relay channels.

There are 2 relay channels that we will used of the race. One is the “official” relay channel which is referred to as “weatherman”. This is sort of a party line channel, everyone listens … if you want to get information you use this. If you want to reach your team, but are out of range … you call relay and they in turn call your team … as they are situated on mountain tops, there is radio coverage everywhere. Since we are pitting with BFG, we will also use BFG relay, this is similar to weatherman, but reserved for BFG racers.

We hear on the weatherman relay that there is a problem … apparently a local in a tractor trailer took a wrong turn and got on the race course at RM4. When he realized his mistake, he tried to back out but managed to jack knife his rig and blocked the entire course. The first truck, run by Jesse James (of TV and Sandra Bullock fame) came up on it and had to stop … as did 13 other trucks causing a big jam. Officials stopped the race, and decided to do a restart once they cleared the mess … all said, this delayed the race start by almost 1.5 hours … this gave us enough time to make it to RM31, catch up with Chase 2 and wait together for our Jeep.

This change in plans was a foreshadowing of things to come … at RM 31 we waited, and waited, and waited … after a while, we started to see helicopters … and a dust trail coming out of the mountains. There are at least 7 helicopters down here providing support for the big race teams …. when you see the helicopter, there is usually a very fast trophy truck underneath it.

I figure that the first truck (still Jesse James) passed us … and 1502 had yet to start … so more waiting. We watched a few teams pit, we picked up souvenirs (they left stuff behind) … and we waited. When we started to see the later classes come by … we started to call on our freq for the Jeep … “Race 1502, this is Chase 1502 … do you copy?”, “Sheila can you hear us?”, “Race 1502 this is chase. Can you hear us?” … in a while … we heard Sheila’s distinctive, although slightly garbled voice coming back … “We hear you, we are doing fine.”