Baja 1000, Part Five: The end, but not the finish

November 20, 2007

For all that driving the truck was pretty exhausting, the next few days were far, far worse. With driving, at least you have adrenaline and urgency. After handing the truck over to Jim and Doug, though, the adrenaline was gone and it was time to keep moving to support the truck on its [...]

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Baja 1000, Part Four: My turn

November 18, 2007

After all of the confusion and delays, my turn to drive had finally come. As I climbed into the truck and got the air and comm lines plugged into my helmet, I was definitely suffering from some jitters. There’s always a bit of adrenaline in any kind of race situation, but this [...]

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Baja 1000, Part Three: The off-road wait

November 18, 2007

You know how sometimes the simplest things turn out to be way more complicated and difficult than they have any right to be? Such was the case in getting from pit #4 to pit #5, a mere 35 course miles and maybe 50 miles on road (this was one of the cases where the [...]

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Baja 1000, Part Two: The race begins

November 18, 2007

We got started bright and early Tuesday morning, with all of the usual pre-race confusion and mayhem. We had a few helmets that needed last minute tech inspection, the chase cars needed to grab water and snacks, that sort of thing. The truck was lined up in its starting place, the GPS course [...]

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Baja 1000, Part One: Contingency day

November 17, 2007

Wow. Just wow. Now that was an experience. It’s going to take a while to digest and write about, so in the interest of keeping family sane in the face of inevitable media reports of the deaths and serious injuries that occured, let me first say that I survived, in one [...]

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It begins…

November 13, 2007

We’re just heading down to the race start. Apparently, there’s some way to track our progress online; we are Trophy Truck #34. I’ll be driving from about 11pm tonight until about 7am tomorrow. Next update from Cabo… hopefully!

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Next adventure: the Baja 1000

November 10, 2007

Woohoo! This week I will be part of a team driving the Baja 1000. It’s one of those things that I’ve always wanted to do, but never thought would be possible. It should be a pretty amazing week, though I’m definitely having a few of the “what the hell did I [...]

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Nightstand lamps. The hard way.

November 1, 2007

Just in case you’re looking to make a networked, computer-controlled, internet-capable nightstand lamp, I’ve put together these easy instructions for how to do it with a maximum of pain and expense. This should have been an easy and fun project, based on DMX-enabled LED fixtures and some fairly simply homebrew software. However, [...]

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Buffalo to Seattle: Day Nine

October 19, 2007

After getting into Lethbridge around 2am last night, I was up around 7am this morning, and knowing that I was (probably) going to end up in my own bed, I pretty much just dragged myself out of bed and got on the road. The whole unplanned stopover in Dauphin / Winnipeg sort of [...]

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Buffalo to Seattle: Day Eight

October 19, 2007

10:00am - Left Winnipeg
12:00pm - Drove through Riding Mountain National Park, again
1:00pm - Got to Dauphin
2:00pm - Truck repairs complete, truck (mostly) cleaned of oil residue
2:30pm - Left Dauphin
3:00pm - Drove through Riding Mountain National Park. Again.
2:00am - Got to Lethbridge, Alberta. I sleep now.

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