Day 61: Some sad news from the Baja 1000 race
Slept for 11+ hours. Not sure why I am calling this a bike tour when I do far more sleeping than biking. Change the name to a sleep tour?
When I woke up and opened the tent I found the tide was in, and our tents were surrounded by water. We were basically on a kind of island. Oops. Marcus even had to move his tent during the night as woke up to water in his tent.
Decided to try to take a shortcut out to the road. It looked like some dirt track should connect to the road via higher ground. It didn’t.. So I had to backtrack and clamber through shrubs on the side of the road to (mostly) stay out of the water.
Didn’t make it 3 mins from camp and ran into 2 other bike tourers from Australia that were camping nearby. They were smarter and camped on higher ground. They are on a 2 year cycle tour with the final destination of Ushuaia also. I was very jellous of their 2.8 inch tires.
Was a sandy, pushing bike up hills kind of morning but quickly evened out. Took a detour away from the divide to go into town and stock up on food for a few days which made today’s cycling easier.
Re ran into Blake and Marcus towards the end of the day and we found a restaurant/pub that had camping out back. Talked to some Americans down at the beach who said that John Wayne used to come down to Baja and stay in the same spot we are at. They joked that the sheets probably haven’t been changed since!
Had one too many drinks…
Tomorrow the Baja 1000 race starts. We are a few hundred miles from the start point so the plan is to take a rest day here and find a good spot to watch the vehicles pass through the day.
Just about to press publish on this but just heard some sad news… Apparently during a pre-race day inspection by judges/referees for the Baja 1000 race, there was an accident and 2 spectators died. Seems like no one knows yet exactly what happened but the rumor is that the accelerator of one of the race trucks became stuck on and it drove into a crowd. Really sad news. Thoughts and prayers are with the families.
