The plan for race day was to meet some other Zonies at a super secret meeting place in Pete's Camp (I won't ruin it for you). Once everyone was assembled, we headed north to Las Senales which is not even a wide spot in the road; it's just a sign that says "Las Senales". The road there leads us onto a gigantic dry lake bed where we find a few other teams gathered to make their pit stop; Las Senales is about 232 miles into the race. Shortly after the start of the race, we heard on the famous "Weatherman" frequency that our car was on it's roof at mile 13, but the crew had located a tractor to help right it. We were happy to hear no one was hurt, and after a little while, they were on their way. Not too much later, the crew in the car called the Weatherman to report their engine had expired and they were abandoning the race. So now, all we had left to do was make all the cans of Tecate we had disappear: Mission accomplished.
Here's a video of a Trophy Truck (a $500,00USD endeavour) passing like I was standing still (which I was, but only about 5 feet from the behemoth).
We stayed on the lake bed until about 11pm when all of the top running cars had gone through. About the time we were leaving, Mark Miller's VW Tourag showed up. This was a scheduled driver change where Mark got in. There was some kind of problem with the clutch and he left the pit going down the wrong road; things were straightened out shortly thereafter. Here's the video.
The next day was actually more of a highlight than spectating the race. Kenneth's friend Dean had just taken delivery of a 4-seat VW-powered prerunner the day before, and took us out for a ride in the Mexican back country. We were on a part of the course from the night before, and then ended up in a canyon in the middle of a seismic fault area; here are some of the spectacular pictures of the area:
