Tecate Enduro 2010 Race Report

[Fb.Paul]

LOS ANCIANOS TECATE ENDURO, DEC 4 2010

Dec 2010 marked the 50th anniversary of the Los Ancianos Motorcycle Club. Though the club had not run the Enduro format in about 13 years, they decided a return to their roots was appropriate for their 50th anniversary. The club says this is the last time the Enduro will be run, due to the amount of manpower and land use coordination required to execute such an event. I'm a sucker for once-in-a-lifetime opportunity type races, so even though things are a bit tight for me, I decided that I couldn't miss it.

Originally my plan was to go down with my wife and stay a couple of days at Rancho Santa Veronica and a day with my parents in San Diego. Due to some last minute issues my wife needed to stay home, so I hooked up with some local fast guys who had also decided at the last minute to make the trip down.

Thursday the 2nd I hooked up with Greg Gillian, Cory Pincock, and Brad Strong, and we headed to St. George to meet up with Bert Bradford. Greg is a former ISDE Trophy Team member, Cory just got back from the ISDE in Morelia and is also a former Trials Des Nations competitor, Brad is a former Utah #1 as is Bert. The plan was to stay in Vegas then head to San Diego to pick up Shawn Strong, current Utah #1, NHHA #10, and Morelia ISDE competitor.

Due to a late start we didn't make it in to Vegas until about 12:30 am local time. We stayed at my sister's place in Henderson NV and got about 4 1/2 hrs of sleep before hitting the road for San Diego.

It was great riding down with such a group of riders. Cory had some funny stories about the Trails des Nations and Greg had all kind of stories about east coast races, GNCC, National Enduro's, and also the 3 ISDE's he's participated in.

We arrived in San Diego to pick up Shawn and we looked around and thought maybe we should just stay here. Shawn was at his sister's place in Cardiff by the Sea, about 100 yards from the beach and just about perfect weather. "Livin the dream" Bert says.

We met up with my parents quickly to deliver some stuff I had brought down for them, and my mom set us up with two big bags of pumpkin cookies. Sweeeet. From there we headed to the Tecate border crossing which went smooth, and we made it in to the pits at about 3:00.


Bert and Paul clearly having a good time


As a Martian on planet Earth, Greg suffers from random facial contortions any time a flash goes off

We hit sign up and got all our stuff, then I headed out for a couple of laps on the test loop. Even the test loop was great fun, it was nothing but nice loamy singletrack. Everything looked good. The guys were all camping at the pits while I had a room about 9 miles away at Rancho Santa Veronica. I hitched a ride with a couple of guys named Grant and Scott ("Mr. Alpinestars" according to Grant), driving a Honda truck. Grant rallied that truck all the way to RSV and we made it in under 20 minutes when it was taking everyone else about a half and hour. I thanked them for the ride, checked in to my room, and headed to the bar for dinner.

The bar was full of great riders past and present. While standing in line I looked behind me and Malcolm Smith is right there waiting his turn. I saw Charlie Mullins, Russell Bobbit, and Destry Abbott as well. I'm sure most of the other pro's were there too. The turnout of high calibre riders was awesome. Zip Ty's Husky team was there, Taylor Robert, Justin Soule, Jimmy Lewis, lots of ISDE vets like Jordan Brandt, Brian Sperle, etc. The club only ran 3 classes on all three loops so I was in the vet class with about 10 Pro's, 10 super fast guys, and the rest of us... 51 competitors in all.

RSV was packed and their generators couldn't quite handle the power demand, so the lights went out about every 5 minutes or so. I ate my dinner at the bar with a few dos equis to wash it down and headed back to my room. I had forgot to bring a watch (really dumb since it was an enduro - timed event), and my cell phone didn't get any service so I had no idea what time it was. I figured it was about 10 because it was pitch dark outside... I asked my neighbors and they said it was quarter after 7. lol. I had arranged to meet up with Dustin Walcher in the morning for a ride back to the pits, so I set my cell phone to the correct time, set the alarm for 5 am, and crawled into bed at about 7:45. Due to the lack of sleep the night before I fell asleep pretty quick.

I had a dream that Dustin's dad Warren had come to my room and said it was time to go, and that I told him I wasn't going to go, didn't feel like it or whatever. Then I woke up to the sound of my phone alerting me to a text message. I got up and checked it and it was a system message from Sprint saying "welcome to Mexico". While looking at the text I noticed it says "message received Dec 4 @ 7:45 AM". I was freaking out thinking I had slept in, my start time was 4 minutes ago and I was still 30 minutes away from the pits without a ride! The Walcher's didn't know what room I was in so I figured they left without me! I started grabbing all my stuff and then opened the door and its pitch black outside, not a soul around, and very quiet. I am totally confused by now so I check my programmed time on the cell phone and it says its 11:30 pm Dec 3.

It was pretty hard to get back to sleep after that, because I had no idea what time it really was or if my alarm would go off at the right time or anything. I did eventually fall asleep, and my alarm never did go off, but I woke up at 5 am anyway. I got ready to go and went outside and the Dustin was waiting for me all set to go.

Most of the guys were still asleep when I got to the pits, but they started getting up and we made some breakfast. We went to riders meeting where they gave us some free hats from Klim, and headed back to the trailer for bagels and oatmeal. The temperature was about 32 degrees so there were fires going everywhere. Sounded like it was pretty cold, Bert actually got into the truck in the middle of the night and ran it for about an hour to keep warm. The other guys said they felt bad for him once they saw that Little Mermaid sleeping bag he brought.


Shawn's all set for the next day's ride