"My Impersonation of Jim Morrison" - Baja Travesia, Baja, Mexico

Boy race fans are you in for a holiday treat! First,
happy holidays to all and to all a healthy New Year.
Yes, I'm finally sitting down for a winter break. I
actually owe you a few other reports, but I think this
special holiday edition of adventure race reports will
keep you cozy until I scribble down the earlier ones.

And so, thinking I'd call it quits for 2005 after a
poor showing from the Silly Rabbits at the World
Championships in New Zealand in mid-November, I was
happy to lick my wounds, let my body rest and get on
with the other aspect of my life -- namely my film and
video writing and production. Or so I thought...

Yes, yes. I know, I know... How could I not
immediately report on the World Championships!? Trust
me, it was a decidedly poor showing, though a fair
tale to be told.

By the way, in a shameless bit of self promotion check
out www.waterbuffalofilms.com. This is my new
production company! We've got a lot of exciting
projects in the works and people have been contacting
us from around the world. Back to the story...

There was a race that had been tickling the back of
our team's race throats for a number of months.
Called the Baja Travesia, it was slated as the
unofficially official "Finals" of the Explore
California race series of which there were 4 races
throughout the earlier part of the year. We, the
Silly Rabbits, America's Adventure Racing Team,
participated in two of the four races, and won them
both. With only these two races, we had gained enough
points to stand in second place in the overall series,
going into the Baja race. This Baja race would be
quite a bit longer and more difficult than the other
races and would also act as a stand-alone race which
any team could enter whether they'd participated in
the rest of the series or not.

As mentioned, I was content to take my race vacation
starting two weeks before the Baja Travesia with an
overabundance of Thanksgiving food and drink -- call
it refueling and, um, re-hydration. But then... some
prompting from my former teammates who are the current
race directors of the Baja Travesia broke me from my
food coma and reached that enlarged part of my
cerebelum that must need adrenalin to fuel it.

However, with my dearest "Silly" race companions
already committed to other end-of-the-year activities
and vacations, I was faced with the task of drumming
up a few other racing souls... if, in fact, I were to
give in to the prompting and decide to undertake the
trip to Mexico's incredible untapped wilds. Perhaps
with the sending of this report I have already given
away the fact that I decidedly did attend said race,
so I will again not undermine the intelligence of my
readers. I did attempt to stick to one principle upon
deciding that I would race. I wanted to have as
teammates a few others who would hopefully be
enjoyable to race with and whom I could potentially
race with in the future if circumstances so arose.

With this as background, I leap head first into the
tale of the inaugural Baja Travesia adventure race
(www.bajatravesia.com). Along with the Silly Rabbit's
second place standing in the series came a free entry
into the Baja Travesia. An interesting factor in the
equation I undertook to solve with regards to
participating in the race. The other factors would be
finding two new teammates to join me on this latest
adventure....

At this point, dear readers, I intended -- and
actually executed -- a massive dissertation with
regards to this race... however, in hindsight of
writing and in foresight of sending said dissertation,
I feel that I should be much briefer with my details
and thus, I give you -- a hopefully shorter, certainly
witty, and as always engaging tale of adventure. (I'm
not sure I achieved the "shorter" aspect, but do read
on!)

It was a tight turnaround, but I managed to find two
other persons with equal tastes for high adventure and
spontaneous international travel, and thus, the --
somewhat different, one time only, end of 2005-- Silly
Rabbits once again were slated to begin an adventure
race somewhere on a spinning piece of rock circling a
fiery star at the far edge of a massive galaxy.

I would be joined by Emily, a veteran of many
adventure races including a handful of long expedition
races and Harald, also a longtime veteran of many
international races and a good friend and rival during
the course of the last several years. Emily is a
former US National rowing champion who would have been
in the Olympics if not for an injury and Harald,
a.k.a. "The German", was a Navy SEAL commando. Me?
I'm just a nice Jewish kid from Pittsburgh... :)

And so, we all made it to the white-washed Century
Hotel nestled on a huge piece of property with a swim
up bar and a hot tub on a long stretch of beach
outside of Rosarito, a small town on the Pacific coast
of Baja, Mexico. We went through gear check and a
surf entry and exit exercise to prove our boat
handling abilities on the 3rd of December. We also
attended an intimate Tecate beer sponsored party at
the all-but-deserted-for-the-winter hotel that
evening. The next day, Sunday, Dec 4, we attended the
pre-race meeting in which the course was revealed and
maps with instructions handed out. While we received
all the maps we would need for the race, we only
received the instructions (and checkpoints) for the
first 1/3 of the race. We then had until 3 p.m. to
pack the items and supplies we would need for the race
into two gear containers and three bike boxes.

We also received instruction sheets detailing how to
arrange our gear which would be transported by the
race staff to the various Transition areas along the
course. The instruction sheet that details how to
pack your gear in these races where teams are not
aided by a crew always turn out to be a jigsaw puzzle
wrapped in a brain teaser topped with a Word Jumble.
Figuring out how to properly dole out your resources
into the correct places for the correct transitions is
a Mensa-worthy event. The gear containers would
leapfrog around the course, so it would take
understanding which container would be at which
location at which point in the race to make our
adventure run smoothly and to ensure we had the proper
gear at the proper time. Along with disassembling our
bikes to pack them for transport by the race staff,
this ended up taking nearly the whole of the allotted
time, for at 2:45 pm, only 15 minutes before the
deadline to have our containers and bikes packed, did
we find ourselves breathing normally again. We then
had until 4 a.m. the next day to rest and prepare
mentally for the challenges that lay ahead.

The race did not actually begin at 4 a.m. the next
morning. That was just when our alarms went off in
order to give us enough time to eat and prepare to
board a shuttle bus at 5 a.m. for the 2 hour drive to
the actual start location of the race. At just after
7 a.m. the small but deep field of 15 teams arrived at
a picturesque fishing cove outside of the city of
Ensenada to meet up with our kayaks and take a last
few deep breaths before launching out on what was
measured to be a 300 km course.

At just after 8 a.m., a bright signal flare pronounced
the start of the race. The parts of the race for which
we had instructions would include this first leg of
kayaking nearly 50 km down the picturesque and
stunning coast of Baja, a 40 km mountain bike leg, and
a roughly 25 km trekking section. Upon completion of
these three legs, we would be given instructions and
map coordinates for the remainder of the race.

While our three-person kayak was only one of four
similar vessels in the field, we quickly and decidedly
jumped out to an early lead. Harald and I fancy
ourselves to be above average paddlers and with Emily
digging in the middle seat, we put our muscle into
gaining every time advantage we could. I must digress
here for a moment. Aside from the elation of jumping
to a quick lead, my emotions were further stirred by
the beautiful, majestic company of numerous dolphins
which swam and played alongside us. Magnificent. We
were also greeted by seals, sea birds, and a rugged,
unspoiled and spectacular coastline with the jagged
Sierra mountains as backdrop.

We assessed the breaking waves leading into Checkpoint
One and decided to paddle to shore. We had roughly
ten minutes on the next team. We executed a fine
landing and hit the sand in straight order... however,
we did not get out of the boat quickly enough and a
following wave crashed into us, sending us sideways
into the beach at an odd angle. When we assessed our
boat, we found that this had broken off our rudder!
And we had nothing in our small array of gear that
would come anywhere close to fixing it. Thankfully,
being rudderless does not render your boat un-paddle
worthy, it just means that there is more involved with
steering it from a bio-mechanical (people strength)
rather than purely mechanical (metal rudder) state.

We re-launced from the beach, taking a few waves in
the chest (me especially since I was in the front
seat) and got out beyond the surf as the next teams
arrived. Performing the task of the steersman in the
aft seat, Harald did an excellent job of keeping us as
straight as possible on the rest of our journey down
the coast. He was certainly aided by the nearly
perfect paddling conditions -- almost no wind and
little swells.

Several hours, two more checkpoints, many energy bars,
and no more boat incidents later, we were greeted by
cheering volunteers, race staff, friends, family, and
a few locals, as we pulled our boat out of the water
and rushed to our boxes. We now had to put our bikes
back together for this next leg. The whole transition
with costume changes, food, and bike assembly took
about a half hour, and it was only as we rode out that
the next team was closing in on the beach. We had put
quite some time on the field in the kayaks!

So, about 7 hours after beginning, we were now on our
bikes for a magnificent ride down the coast before
turning inland just after dark. As we rode south
across an open, flat plateau along the ocean, the sun
was setting to our right -- a beautiful sight to
behold.

At just after full darkness, we came to the first
checkpoint on this leg. As we rode away, we thought
we saw some lights behind us in the distance...
perhaps another team. We made haste across some more
open territory and then towards a fair sized town
along Baja's main artery, Route 1. We rode into town
and ticked off another checkpoint. And here, for a
brief couple of miles, we... well, let me say that
driving along Mexico's highways is ample adventure for
most, however if it is true adventure you seek, you
can always try riding your bicycle along them -- at
night.

Incident free, we turned off the two lane highway onto
a series of dirt roads and into the cool night.
Several miles later, we navigated to another
checkpoint and then turned into a canyon that would
lead us towards the next transition area. We felt
like we were going at a pretty decent clip, but now
there was certainly a team behind us. As the evening
grew cooler, Emily started to feel the effects of our
brisk early pace. Her stomach became upset and she
began a deep cough that would only get worse as the
race progressed. And we were only 12 hours into the
race...

We made haste towards a road that would lead us, after
14 km, to the transition area. The team behind us
didn't seem to want to overtake us, though we felt
that they could have. In the darkness, thinking we
would certainly see lights from cars, fires, and
headlamps, we missed the unmarked turn off to the
transition area. When we turned around a few minutes
later, we found ourselves pulling into the transition
in second place behind an interesting, and fast, team
sponsored by Nike which consisted of a one Polish guy,
one French guy, and a British gal.

At the transition, we were greeted by a few locals
offering of freshly cooked tortillas and quesadillas
which we hungrily scarfed down and paid for. We had
to disassemble our bikes here and repack them in the
boxes so that they could be transported to a location
further in the race. Though we were a bit taken back
by this Nike team's speed on bikes, we tried not to
get discouraged because most of the race still lie
ahead... and anything can happen out there (as if you
didn't know already).

At roughly 9 p.m., partially sated with local fare
mixed with our own gastronomical offerings (dried
salami!, energy bars!, more energy bars!), we embarked
on foot from the transition area and began a trek
across a wide, flat expanse of open desert in search
of a particular canyon which would lead us into the
foothills of the Sierra mountain range. Like surf
entries, night navigation is tricky under the best
circumstances, and faced with total darkness and flat
terrain without any distinguishing features, we came
upon perhaps the most difficult of circumstances. At
this point, I was in charge of the team's navigation
and thus, fortunes. My confidence with the map and
compass was bolstered as we caught up to the Nike
team! However, I perhaps placed too much emphasis on
their current course selection and was unable to
pinpoint a distinct peak that we could have used to
key our own course across the open expanse.
Basically, I couldn't find s$%* out there.

Long (part of this story) short, we eventually
meandered to the right canyon and started our uphill
trek towards the ridge tops over a thousand vertical
feet above. Due to our meandering state, a pair of
teams working in unison and racing under the same
moniker, caught up to us. Hailing from the Seattle
area and racing as two teams because they had enough
people in their pool who wanted to tackle this race,
Dart 1 and Dart 2, were aiding and abetting each other
in an attempt to utilize the strength-in-numbers
principle. This is a totally legal and quite
advantageous maneuver in adventure racing.... that is
if everyone can move at the same speed.

My teammate Emily had raced with the members of Dart
before, so she was very friendly with them. We threw
our lot in with theirs -- for the time being -- and
chummily scrambled together through the dense brush of
the ever-narrowing canyon. In a lengthy endurance
race, it is really of no use to sprint ahead of
another team. It is certainly unique to adventure
racing that two competing teams could actually work
together to help each other out, but this is an
amazing sport. Sprinting ahead at this point would be
like trying to win a marathon by sprinting at
100-meter world record pace right from the start --
you'd never make it.

Perhaps it was the fun banter as a few member of the
Dart team were hams like myself, and perhaps it was
the darkness and the fact that we had now been racing
for 15 hours, but we ended up in an off-shoot of the
main canyon that we really needed to be ascending. At
a particularly precarious and near vertical section,
we decided to reassess our position and figured this
out. The options were to continue to climb up this
difficult side canyon and come out near where we would
in the main canyon, turn around and retreat to the
main canyon, or... as I scrutinized the map, I had an
A-ha! moment. I saw that if we scrambled a little bit
higher in our current direction and then traversed to
our left, we could make it to a ridge line that would
offer easy travel to the higher points we needed to
attain. The other navigators agreed and we climbed
the steep loose canyon walls towards the ridge.

Turned out not to be such a bad move. We ended up in
front of the Nike team... at least temporarily. The
next feat of stupidi... I mean racing, had us eyeing a
short cut to the next checkpoint through some off-road
terrain. Now, we COULD have stayed on the nice easy
dirt road and followed it around to another road. It
would have been nice and easy. It also would have
been about 7 km and we would just be doing a big loop
to come back in the opposite direction we were in now.
Or we could scramble over a hill and through a dale
and past grandma's house and shorten our trip by about
4 km. Next time, stay on the road.

We ouch-ed and ow-ed through some scratchy brush, got
turned around a few times due to some poor compass
following (not our navigator, but we were in with the
other two teams for the time being), and then had to
bushwhack (more ouch and ow) in an arc to finally make
it out to the road again. By this time, I looked like
a branch of catnip that had been stuck into the middle
of a room full of rabid cats.

Light was finally dawning again as we checked into
checkpoint 9. Team Nike had gone around the cat trap
and were slightly ahead of us now. We tried to double
time it -- this time staying on the easy, straight
road -- to the next transition. I was carrying
Emily's backpack now and her hacking cough was getting
worse. She is an incredible trooper and never
complained once, though her condition continued to
worsen....

The transition was at a quaint hacienda situated in
the middle of a beautiful ranch complete with horses,
cows, and various barn animals. We warmed ourselves
by a fire and were again offered tasty local fare by
the owners of the property. This was where we
received the instructions for the rest of the race and
the coordinates for the remaining checkpoints. It was
now nearly 24 hours after starting the race and we
hadn't slept a wink.

In a cheeky and calculated maneuver, I suggested to my
teammates that we only plot the next couple of
checkpoints and try to hurry out of the transition
before the other teams. We could plot the rest later
and try to gain a leg up on the other tired teams in
the meantime. We could also kill ourselves. Again,
Emily was a trooper and agreed to our plan. We put
our bikes together, told the other teams we were just
gonna... go over here... for a second. And then we
snuck out of the transition as they ate tortillas and
beans inside the hacienda. Well, Team Nike had
already left, but we jumped back into 2nd place with
our cheekiness.

The temperature swings in the desert can be dramatic
and we encountered this firsthand throughout the race.
Mere hours before, we were cold and covered up with
clothing, and now in only the early morning with the
sun out, we couldn't get naked enough.

The next checkpoint was situated at another ranch at
the bottom of a wide long valley. From here, we had
planned to take a trail across a desert cow pasture
and up through a pass to cut off some miles of riding
on a road. Well, after pushing our bikes through some
sand, sporadic brush, and cow patties, we deemed that
the trail that was so nicely announced on our maps
probably didn't exist in reality, at least any longer.
So, we turned back across the pasture, upset at not
just taking the road around in the first place. Now
see, I mentioned some number of updates ago that we
adventure racers tend to have distinct problems with
our short term memory since we beat ourselves up in a
race, swear we'll never do such a thing again, and end
up doing it a mere week later all over again. Just
see the note a few paragraphs above about taking the
road....

Anyhow, at least we didn't have to do any bushwhacking
and somehow we still clung onto second place... though
it was only the beginning of a long, hot day...

The theme of the day was "Up". And up we went for the
next several hours. 6000 vertical feet of up. One
false rise after the next of up. Extremely slow
riding up. And on top of this, the temperature
continued to go... up. A long day told in a short
manner: we were climbing up towards the tops of the
Sierras, into a beautiful national forest and into the
defining leg of the race. I towed Emily for much of
the day. We tried to find shade at every possible
turn. We often got off our bikes and pushed them to
save from the strain of riding so slowly for so long.
And we got passed by the Kings. It was a wonder that
it didn't happen earlier because their team was made
up of two serious triathletes and a pro female
mountain biker.

Sometime in the late afternoon, one of the two Dart
teams caught up to us. They said that the other team
chose to get some rest, so they had separated. At
around 4 p.m., we arrived at the next checkpoint which
had been changed into a pseudo transition area. Due
to the park gates and closing times, the race staff
had brought our gear boxes to a ranger hut near the
entrance. Despite the fact that this should have been
the warmest part of the day (in summer, that is), we
were now in a shaded forest, at 8000 feet, in
December. Brrrr. It had nothing to do with the fact
that we were nutritionally and sleep deprived for
nearly 32 hours or anything... okay, well, it was also
truly chilly out.

In our waning physical state, we now had to plot the
rest of the checkpoints and noodle out our plan of
attack for the rest of the race. Harald and I found a
nice table inside the ranger hut and slowly plotted
our course. Meanwhile, the other teams were getting
away...

We ate as much food as possible, picked up our
climbing harnesses, lots of warm clothes, a mandatory
rope for the next section, and repacked our packs with
lots of food and water. We were now burdened down
completely, had clothing from head to toe again, and
had to ride another 5 miles to drop off our bikes.
Meaning, we would have to disassemble and repack them
again. And now, the sun was rapidly setting, the cold
mountain air was rapidly creeping in, and we were
still going up (!).

Night fell quickly as we finished repacking our bikes.
The cool air quickly turned cold and we stomped
around to keep warm while preparing to tackle the crux
of the entire race -- a mad, Heart of Darkness style
canyon section that would take us to nearly 10,000
feet into the shadow of Devil's Peak, one of the
highest points in Baja, before plummeting us over 4000
vertical feet into the aptly named Devil's Canyon.
From the canyon floor we would only have to trek
several more miles down stream and into the vast, open
desert on the east side of the peninsula. At the
pre-race meeting and at numerous other times we were
given strong suggestions to follow a certain route
down into Devil's canyon. We were tired, we were
cold, we were now in 4th place,... and we were racing!
This meant that... we were racing! And that meant
that we were here to beat all the other teams to the
finish line (pretty straightforward, eh?)

And though it was a very strong recommendation to go a
certain way, I ran by my teammates an alternate idea.
By taking the very same path that others take, we
would just fall into the same rhythm and fall victim
to the fact that surely the other teams would see us
coming -- if indeed we caught up -- and thus they
would speed up themselves. The strong recommendation
to descend the canyon through a certain gulley came
with numerous announcements that this was exactly why
we were to bring our climbing gear, helmets and rope.
It was heavily suggested that this would be the best
-- i.e. "fastest" -- route down. This route would
require employing our harnesses on a series ropes that
had been fixed by the race staff before the race down
through a treacherous, steep, and precarious gulley.
And we would do this at night.

With all this in mind, we had been given a
supplemental map which detailed another route down
into the canyon. Projecting myself into the minds of
the other team's navigators, I was fairly certain that
they would heed the advice of the race directors and
take the prescribed route. I have never been a very
good follower and because I felt it would be a
potentially advantageous and bold move to take the
alternate route, we did just so! We also could have
killed ourselves. It was longer in terms of distance,
but we heard from some folks that it could potentially
be quite a bit easier. And thus, the race was on!

We followed a series of rock cairns, or markers, set
by previous hikers along this route. It wasn't easy
as it was pitch black out, and our going was slow as
we scrambled over hill, dale, and boulder up to the
highest point in the race. With nothing to gauge our
progress, we finally began our steep descent into
Devil's Canyon. There were a few spots on our descent
that required some nifty down climbing maneuvers as
well as some precarious hand holds. After a few hours
of this, we reached the flatter bottom of the canyon.
From here, we scrambled through brush and over river
rocks to Camp Noche, a tiny flat spot in the middle of
nowhere that served as a jumping off point for many
intrepid hikers and climbers who braved this tough
region. And, lo and behold, dear readers, the
volunteers who were manning the checkpoint proceeded
to inform us that we were now in second place!! Our
gamble this time had paid off.

We found that things had shaken up considerably with
the other teams as well. Team Dart, who had been in
3rd place before heading into the canyon, had decided
that they would sleep at Camp Noche when they arrived.
However, upon finding out that they had arrived in
first place, they sped out of the checkpoint with
enough energy to propel them... further into the race
(I cannot divulge anything further at this point!).
We were proud that our gamble paid off... though it
was kept in check because there were still many miles
and many hours to go.

We left Camp Noche at around 3 a.m. Still we had not
slept. Emily had dozed at one or two points as we
transitioned, but we were now pushing the limits of
endurance. Though we were informed that it was nearly
impossible to "get lost" as we made our way down the
rest of the canyon and out to the desert, I
nevertheless paid careful attention to my compass as
we trekked and scrambled through the mostly dry canyon
bed. Emily's cough continued to worsen, but she was a
complete trooper and never complained about her state.


Dawn. Almost 48 hours since the start of the race.
Over 48 hours since we awoke to board the bus. Light
illuminated quite a scene... and we were smack in the
middle of it. The walls of the canyon we now trekked
through rose hundreds, if not a thousand feet up, on
both sides of us. We were able to rest easier that it
was, as mentioned, nearly impossible to get lost as
there was no other way out except forward down the
canyon. We had several hundred feet of elevation to
lose, yet the canyon appeared nearly flat. It would
turn out to be a very long day...

Nearly five hours after leaving Camp Noche, we caught
sight of a team in front of us. From our distance, I
thought this was Dart! Who else could it be? They
were now the only team in front of us? Could we have
caught up?! I will say that my brain was starting to
play tricks on me at this point. Slight instant
lapses slowly crept into my thinking and movements. I
waved at the team. They yelled something about
getting down from a spot we were in. And then they
disappeared further down the canyon. We were
incredibly excited to think that we had made up the
nearly two hours that Dart had on us at Camp Noche.
About an hour after spotting them, we came around a
bend to encounter something quite different. It was
not Team Dart that I had an exchange with earlier. It
was Team Nike! We found them sitting on some rocks,
looking a bit put out. It was only as we came upon
them that they asked if we had found Camp Noche. My
goodness! They had overshot the checkpoint on their
descent down from the top and wandered several hours
down the canyon! I informed them that Camp Noche was
several hours behind us. Without batting an eyelash,
Team Nike bravely turned around and headed back up the
canyon. Kudos to their spirit.

Much of the rest of the day was spent walking,
scrambling, and down climbing through the canyon. The
Kings once again whipped by us. We chatted and tried
to walk together for a few minutes, however they were
much stronger through here. They informed us that
like Team Nike, they had started to descend the wrong
gulley, but they had turned around and found the
correct one. It had obviously taken them a long time.


At 3:30 p.m., after literally taking a flying leap to
get out of the canyon (we launched ourselves into a
freezing pool of water when we ran out of options at
one point), we came upon two race photographers who
were hiking up from the desert to see if they could
encounter any teams. It's a good thing we ran into
them because they were able to inform us that the next
transition area had been moved! If we hadn't run into
them, we surely would have done what a few other teams
did -- wander to the spot of the old transition in a
state of confusion.

The next leg would represent one of the funkier things
I've done in an adventure race. It was also one of
the main advertising points of the race. A desert car
rally. Before getting to Baja, all of us racers had
visions of donning aviator goggles and leather helmets
and crashing over sand dunes as we drove modified
rally cars through the open desert! Upon getting to
the race, we found it would be a much more sedated
undertaking. Each team would get a local driver and a
vehicle. We would then have to direct them to a
number of checkpoints in the flat, desert valley
floor. We would have two hours to complete this
section whether we raced through it or not. Meaning,
that we would get a flat time of two hours no matter
how fast we went, so there was no bonus for speeding
through it. A safety issue.

We got an amiable American fellow who now resided in a
nearby town with his wife. A former motorcycle and
rally car racer, he was the ideal "partner" for this
section. However, he had a pick-up truck and only one
of us could sit inside the cab. The other two would
have to ride in the back. Since I was navigating, I
got to ride shotgun. Harald and Emily got to know
what it's like to... well there's nothing to compare
it to, so I'll just say it. They attempted to sit in
two plastic deck chairs which were tied into the bed
of the truck as we bounced over sandy roads and
scraped by desert shrubbery for over an hour. Let's
say it wasn't as relaxing as it could have been to be
off our feet.

We found all the checkpoints and made it to the end of
the car rally in just under an hour and a half. It
was now dark again. The third night of the race. 57
hours since the race began. 61 hours since we woke
up. And still, no sleep. Though now we had about 30
minutes to sit and wait before our alloted two hours
were up. The checkpoint volunteer had a nice fire
going, and we huddled next to it. At this point, I
finally managed to nap for about 10 minutes. Emily
got a few minutes in, too, while Harald would take
over the navigation duties on the next leg -- another
huge trek. This time, all the way to the Sea of
Cortez! It was only 20 miles as the crow flies...

Ding! Our two hours were up. Team Dart was somewhere
ahead of us. The Kings had taken longer than us in
transition, but had left on the car rally a few
minutes ahead. They had some difficulty in finding
the checkpoints and came to the end of the rally in
about two hours. We decided to start out together on
this next trek. It was an incredibly welcome venture.
Not that your own teammates are not engaging people,
it's often just nice to get some fresh conversations
in. Again, there's no sprinting ahead in adventure
racing.

So, for the next 3 hours, we stomped through more open
desert and up into another canyon that cut through to
the final section of open desert which finally sloped
ever so gently back down to sea level on the east side
of the Baja peninsula. And here, dear readers, is
where the proverbial wheels started to fall off...

At this point in the race, we were off to see the
Wizard. The wonderful Wizard of Oz. And all his
merry subjects. And a horse of a different color.
And, yes, even a few flying monkeys. For now, dear
readers, were we beyond the point of no mental return.
Upon entering this last high canyon, our two intrepid
teams walked together for several minutes, staring at
little besides the desert and scrub that our headlamps
illuminated. Perhaps staring isn't the right word
since I don't know what it's called when you're
focused on one thing and walking towards it, yet your
eyes are sometimes closed, as if sleeping.

Our two teams quite suddenly turned down the
proverbial rabbit hole (no, nothing to do with our
venerable team or name) and entered a land of Mad
Hatters and talking hares (again, no reference to our
team or team name). The Kings and the Silly Rabbits.
Trudging across a cold, sandy, dark expanse of Mexico
on no sleep. Boy, if only I had a video camera.

We all were starting to nod off while walking (!) and
map and compasses started making less and less sense
-- not that the darkness was helping any. After 60
hours without sleep, our body's were starting to turn
off the lights in a few of the upstairs rooms to
conserve a little power, so to speak. Emily was
practically a zombie. She walked right into my back a
few times. I believe Harald was shaking off some
cobwebs, though he was trying to converse with the
Kings. I, on the other hand, was stuck. I was
leading our teams (or so I thought) and I had come to
the end of the trail (or so I thought). I was now
facing a large bush-tree of some sort and I could not
see a way around it. I thus announced our predicament
to the others. Stopping to assess my pronouncement,
the others quickly came up with a solution. If I were
to just take two steps to my left, I could join them
out in the great expanse of canyon that we still had
to walk through. Basically, I had sleepwalked nearly
into a bush-tree and thought we had been bamboozled on
our journey... yet, I was delirious enough not to
notice that I could have just walked around it.

This was only one minor incident over the next several
hours... The Kings thought better of thte situation
and decided that they needed to finally lie down and
get some sleep. Harald felt as if he could continue
to lead us onward. And so we continued on. Emily
quite literally asleep on her feet. And me... just
resting a bit. Harald said he felt good (or so he
thought). For the next half hour or so, we kept to
our course. Then Harald's wheels fell off, too. He
suddenly exclaimed that his compass wasn't working
properly. It was being magnetized by some supposedly
magnetic rocks in the area! He asked to see my
compass. Oh no! My compass was pointing in the same
direction as his! And clearly (to Harald), we were to
be going in another direction because surely we hadn't
turned anywhere and now our compasses were telling us
we were going in the wrong direction.

Basically, Harald had a few lights off upstairs but
thought all the power was still on. After a few deep
breaths, we shook ourselves to full waking mode and
got our bearings back. A few minutes later, however,
we decided it was officially, as they say in
kindergarten, nappy time. I can't say exactly what
time it was, but Harald's wheels had rolled somewhere
off towards the Sea of Cortez without him, Emily was
rolling along on her rims, and I fortunately had my
wheels still on.... however I was cruising along at
six inches off the ground. :)

Harald laid down and shivered and shut his eyes. I
rummaged through my backpack for our mandatory gear
kit which included 10 waterproof matches. Emily
somehow helped me collect some dry sticks and then she
passed out while I used all my boy scout skills to
build a nice cozy fire. Yes, in the middle of this
"race", I built a fire and we huddled next to it.
Harald and Emily slept while I tended the fire. After
about 25 minutes, we decided that we should continue
on. We were not doing ourselves any favors, but we
were spurred on by the fact that there were other
teams behind us... somewhere.

For our next act, Harald and I consulted the map
several times, attempted to make it correspond to our
surroundings and deemed that we had finally reached
the end of the canyon and were now at the edge of the
next vast, open desert area. Fine by me, but what did
our other three teammates think? Yes, dear reader,
for the next two hours, I was joined by three other
teammates who I would engage in conversation every
time we stopped to consult the map. Harald didn't
know what to think of my mumblings. He was trying to
get my opinion of his choice of direction, and I was
talking with some other people. Emily then walked
into my back again.

On a good note, Harald spotted what appeared to be a
red light in the vicinity of the next checkpoint off
in the distance. We had to basically just find a set
of power lines that ran right across our path, and
then walk along the power lines to the next
checkpoint. In between conversations with my other
three teammates, I was able to corroborate Harald's
conclusion that a set of white-ish lights in the
distance were lights atop the power lines. Coupled
with Harald's spotting of the small red light that
appeared to be a light of a vehicle or campsite
underneath the white-ish lights, we pressed on into
the vast, open, dark desert.

I believe I mentioned that the desert here was vast,
open, and dark. And so, for the next hour or so,
Emily and I stumbled along behind Harald as he set his
sights on the red light underneath the nice straight
line of white-ish lights. Every once in a while I
would wake up. And I would find myself several yards
behind Harald and Emily. And I would shuffle to catch
up. And every once in a while, I would find the time
to stop talking with my other teammates and ask Harald
about the little red light in the distance. Why
wasn't it getting any closer? I didn't ask this aloud
because things always take forever to get to at night
in an adventure race.

But finally, nearly two hours later, this question
turned a small turbine in my upstairs warehouse and a
dim bulb flickered back on in one of the windows, so
to speak. I came back to full consciousness and
called to Harald. I asked him what the elevation of
the checkpoint was supposed to be. He consulted the
map and answered. I consulted my altimeter. He
consulted his. We were hundreds of feet below that
elevation. Harald came back to nearly full
consciousness. We squinted at the white-ish
lights.... Stars. They were stars! They were
admittedly lined up nicely, however we could have
walked for quite a while and really never reached
them. And the little red light Harald was chasing
after? Well, it was earth-based, but it was so far
off as to be on some distant star.

Harald nearly broke down. We had wandered several
miles past the power lines and were now standing
somewhere in the middle of the vast, open, dark
desert. He handed me the map and humbly asked if I
could get us back to the checkpoint. A few more
lights turned on upstairs. I said I could.

We turned our tired ship around and marched back up
the slight grade of the desert towards the power lines
that we had so obviously now walked right underneath.
After an hour and a half (!) we hit the power lines.
Another 15 minutes and we were at the checkpoint. It
was 3 a.m. We were exhausted. We woke the checkpoint
personnel who proceeded to rebuild their burnt out
fire. Emily hacked herself into a fitful nap. Harald
and I warmed ourselves by the fire and ate. We were
actually terrified now.

We calculated that Dart 1 was several hours ahead and
that the Kings, by now, were well ahead also. What
terrified us was the whereabouts of the second Dart
team. With a huge amount of foot travel over fairly
open terrain, we were mortified at the prospect of
getting into a foot race with the second Dart team
which was made up of three ultra-runners. Oy vey! We
needed for Emily to get a little rest and we needed to
regroup mentally for the remaining 20+ km of trekking
to the Sea of Cortez. But we also needed to get up
and go. And painfully, we did so.

The navigation from here was fairly easy. All we had
to do was follow a single bearing towards the ocean.
We left the checkpoint under cover of night and
thankfully an hour later, the sun was again up. The
dawn of the 4th day. The dawn of the dead...

If you've ever seen those horror movies where it's now
late in the last reel and the hero or heroine has
escaped from the villain temporarily, but is now beat
up and bloody after tangling with the villain and he
or she limps and huffs and puffs towards safety all
while constantly looking over his or her shoulder...
then you know what the next five hours were like for
the Silly Rabbits. We were the "heroes" and Dart 2
represented the "villains". Not that they are not
nice people, it's just a metaphor. For after all,
this is reality, not some movie... or was it?

Despite the fact that the sun was out again to warm
things up, we were still a band of walking zombies who
didn't get the memo that you're supposed to go back to
your graves and sleep when it gets light out.
Accompanied by Emily's hacking cough and my distinct
limp we made our way ever so slightly downhill and
towards the water which we deemed our "safe haven".
Like those horror movies, we could see exactly where
we had to go and it seemed a million miles away. And
actually that estimation wasn't too far off. Okay,
so, we tried to move as quickly as possible, but
finally after a few hours, my body had had enough. I
was still clothed in full evening wear which consisted
of ankle length windproof, water-resistant pants, a
few layers of warm undergarments, my waterproof jacket
with the hood up over my head and my heavy gloves.
Harald and Emily had already stripped down. Harald
asked me if I wasn't hot. I said I was just fine.
The lights were shutting off again...

And so I said I needed to sleep. Just for five
minutes. I was trying to hold off until we got to a
big rock outcropping, but I couldn't make it. We lay
down under the shade of a scrub tree. I was wracked
by violent dreams. Harald woke me up a few minutes
later and we continued on. I felt a little better.
We were still looking over our shoulders.

We had an interminable march all the way to the beach,
but finally, we felt safe! We knew that we could
out-paddle any team in the field, and now we had come
to the final leg of the race -- a kayak section
several miles down the coast of the Sea of Cortez.
Like a wanderer in the desert finding an oasis, our
strength -- if not our mental condition -- went up.
At this final transition, we ate the rest of the food
we had left with our equipment, gingerly changed into
our paddling gear, and grabbed two race-provided
kayaks. On this section, the race provided the same
kayaks for all teams. We would receive one single and
one double boat. The trick was getting them into the
water. Being a narrow body of ocean water, the Sea of
Cortez is prone to extreme changes in tide. We
reached the Sea at nearly low tide and therefore had
to walk our boats several hundred yards through knee
deep tidal mud to get them into the water. But we
were safe!

Falling asleep literally in our boats, we paddled to
one last checkpoint and then headed for a steep,
jagged point around which lay the finish line in the
town of San Felipe. Harald paddled the single boat
while Emily and I were in the double. For much of the
paddle, I wondered why Emily was talking to a mermaid
who was clinging to the front of our boat. Can't you
see we're trying to race?! We weren't out of the
woods yet.

And so, we consulted our maps and landed on the beach
in San Felipe, the finish line! Or so we thought.
Met by nothing except the sound of crashing waves, we
pulled our boats ashore and checked the maps again.
We were in the right spot. We quadruple checked. So,
we started walking towards the beach side buildings
and then onto a street. It was eerily silent and
devoid of people. We thought at any moment, the race
staff and volunteers would jump out and surprise us.
At any moment... any moment now... hello?

We finally encountered a few locals and in my broken
Spanish I asked them about the race and if they knew
if we were in the right spot. One kind fellow said
that he was pretty sure the finish line was still a
mile or two down the coast...

We hobbled back to our boats and relaunched into the
water. What a way to finish. It was dusk when we
arrived at this point, and now as full darkness fell
for the 4th time on the race, we paddled slowly down
the coast of San Felipe in search of the "alternate"
finish line. After another 15 minutes, a few whistles
and cheers along a stretch of beach side bars and
restaurants told us to head to shore. The Finish
line? Well, it was not really marked and we certainly
had it plotted at a different spot, but we were
finally there! And in third place!

I will spare the gory details of the post race. All
you wished to know was the horrors and highs of the
race itself and where we finished and how. We were
proud of sticking it out and amazed at how hard and
far we had pushed. After a shower that got about 18%
of the grime off of my body, I fell into a deep, rock
solid sleep in a large bed inside a hotel room in San
Felipe. Another adventure complete. Dreams of our
$8000 payday dancing in my head! Yes, for 3rd place,
we would collect this amount.

And that, dear readers, is my holiday tale. Merry
Christma-Hannu-Kwaanzika to all! I'm going back to
sleep now....

~Rick Baraff
Web Site: Rick Tales of Adventure

Technorati Tags: Adventure Racing, Primal Quest, Screenwriting, Travel Writing, Extreme Racing, Running, Hiking, Mountain Biking