Yeah, yeah I've heard all the jokes in response to the above statement, but what happened was no joke and it ended our run down the Baja peninsula. This year's rally started out with baking temperatures hovering in the triple digits from the second the flag dropped in Mexicali. Our first day was a near perfect run of three stages that saw half the field get lost in stage one across the mirage-filled Laguna Salada dry lake but our superior navigation skills allowed us to finish ahead of many competitors. A steady pace for the other two stages of the day put us well up the time sheets as we finished in the Bay of LA that evening. Perhaps a sign of how things were about to turn, was when we noticed we had been given a room number of 13 at our hotel that evening. Day two started out just fine as we started the stage just outside town and settled into a slower than hoped for pace due to the brutally rough road and hot temperatures. Well lucky 13 bit us in the under carriage when all of a sudden our engine and transmission temps began to climb about 30 miles into the 127 mile stage. After pulling over to let things cool off we realized it was too late for the transmission when I pulled the dipstick and smelled that awful burnt stench and noticed the brown color. After trying to drive 100 yards, she slipped in all gears and then lost reverse and third, we were going nowhere. Break out the sat-phone and call the crew (now at least 120 miles away) we were gonna need the trailer. After not being able to reach them directly it was a call to the states that helped relay our predicament. In the end we determined limping the broken Bronco backwards on the course at 10mph would be better than trying to get a trailer in, and that is what we were able to do. Hours later at a local yonke (junk yard) we attempted to fix the C4 trans by draining, flushing and cursing, but nothing was going to get the well done gearbox going again, our race was over. Half the crew went back north and the rest of us continued south and turned our efforts into helping other teams with chasing and pit stops (drinking beer). Oh well we will be back next year. -B. Happier times, Bahia De Los Angeles A sign of things to come. She didn't help us. Broken down in the middle of... well you know where. Reaching the highway at the end of day one.
It’s been a busy few months around here and thought I’d share some of the things I’ve been up to. Recent projects have included Goodyear tire ads, portraits of X-games athletes for Monster energy, traveling on a RedBull tour bus with the BC 1 dancers, shooting in the mud and on the track for Maxxis Tire and making a extraordinary machine look extraordinary for Torchmate. Next month should be interesting also as I head to North Africa to shoot a project for a certain well-known team involved in rally raid racing.
One interesting facet of these jobs included making 20 tons of fake snow for the Goodyear ad shown below. The week we were shooting in November there hadn’t been any significant snowfall in our area and it was determined that our best bet was to fake it! This was accomplished by a special effects company we hired that used a machine to grind huge blocks of ice into a tube, which was then blown out onto the set. In the end we used two moving trucks worth of snow to get the one shot. We also used air-powered "mortars" to blow snow up into the wheel wells of the truck to add to the action of the shot. The end result is a realistic looking mountain environment created by combining a stock image of snowy trees behind the action shot of our hero truck busting through our fake “snow” bank.
Once again we head south for an epic adventure, the NORRA Mexican 1000 rally. We made many changes to our race vehicle this year including a completely new roll cage, FOX racing shocks and a 32 gallon fuel cell. Some quick plugs for the key people contributing to our program this year:
Jon, James, and Skylar at RDM Offroad for the amazing fab and prep. Brian Godfrey at FOX Shox for hooking us up with with some killer shocks. The one and only Tommy Morris who tuned our shock valving making our Bronco handle like a sports car (he was the guy behind some guy named Ivan Stewart and more recently Roger Norman).
To follow our progress click here or check the NORRA site for timing and scoring. Via con dios! Next stop Cabo!!!
