Knowing that the transit to the first service for us would be very short in distance, Memo and I hopped into the cab that Martin and Conrad hired to lead them across town in Aguascalientes to the starting arch.
Some one from timing and scoring must've forgotten a really important part of the race because organizers were frantically scribbling car numbers onto the time sheets and handing them to the increasingly impatient drivers. The race started 30 mins later than scheduled as a result.
Our friends, Doug and Angelica were 9 seconds behind the leader of the race, whom they caught up to in a speed stage on day two, and who blocked them from passing for 5 km, which cost them 30 secs.
It seems as though the week just flew by even though on day 2, Bill and I thought this race would never end...probably had to do with the all nighter.
we saw the taxi off with Martin behind the wheel and headed back to hotel for a quick breakfast before heading to the first service stop of the day, where the federales saw me give someone from Mats Hammerlund's team a Taxi Perdido shirt, and i got stampeded by federales asking for shirts! Yikes! There were not enough shirts to go around, so I tried to distract them...by slapping a 24 Hours of LeMons sticker, the size of Utah, on their truck.
Taxi came in with a loose ball joint after La Congoja...we had another one to replace it with, but not the appropriate nut. The BMW team I mentioned earlier, were lovely and lent us a perfect castellated nut and served us an assortment of cotter pins fit for a king! Thanks Team Aguirre!
After the taxi took off for La Bufa in Zacatecas, we headed for the 2nd service stop. The taxi ran well and since it didn't need a whole lot of attention, Memo and I headed for the super fabulouso Quinta Real Hotel in Zacatecas, to find primo parking spots for both of our cars and to be able to see the taxi drive through finish arch.
So, after we grabbed a bite to eat with Taz's group...there is this thing that happens...it starts with a donkey and mezcal...
And some dancing through the streets with all the race entrants and crews, throwing back shots of mezcal and walking the streets to the oldest bull ring, our hotel.
Taz's nephew, Kenny aka. Skittles, had a hard time getting his dinner bracelet on, so Memo helped him.
It did look pretty funny, but it went to another level of funny when kids started chanting "beso, BESO, beso!" = "kiss, KISS, kiss!".
Dinner and the awards took place inside of the actual bull ring. It was really fun and sad to say goodbye to every one. There are so many wonderful people we have met through this event. One of our favorite people is Joe Ramirez. He came over to Conrad and Martin and gave them an autographed book of his autobiography.
Joe was team manager for McClaren Formula 1 team and worked closely with Ayrton Senna. We had a special 15 min conversation with him in Oaxaca about the film that just came out a couple of months ago.
Team Taxi Perdido won first in class for that final day. Due to the hurdles of previous days, there was no podium for the overall awards.
Thanks for following our blog! I will post more photos, but for now, we ae kickin' it in Zacatecas for a day and preparing for our run at the border on Saturday!
TaxiCrew reporting...
Location:Zacatecas
