"2653 miles to Primm"

Starting at 8pm from Sausalito CA on Friday March 10th I set of to meet Tim from TCR in Tucson AZ. I drove through the night so I could meet Tim at his shop to Dyno tune the Toyota and finish the race prep. Other than 14 hours straight driving and no sleep things went well. Arriving at 10am I handed the truck off to Tim and grabbed some shut eye in the truck and walk the dog.
Tim and I finished up around 6 pm, I loaded the truck on the trailer, grabbed some food from Boston Market and proceeded to head to San Diego. I stopped to check the strapps around 8 after another nap, all seamed good. I got about 12 miles from TCR when a strap broke on the trailer. I imedietly merged into the center divide on highway 15 and jumped out to see what the f happened. I didn't notice right away but my dog Rocket (a 12 year old Ridgeback mix) had jumped out of the truck and was somewhere on the freeway. I was so panicked and hysterical. From home wife Wendy called every hospital, humane society etc. checking if anyone had found Rock while I walked back and forth on the freeway for 20 hours with only 2 hours of sleep. Sadly I found him. He had been hit and killed less than 100 feet from where the incident happened.
Balling my eyes out, shaking and throwing up I took Rocket to the humane society for cremation and headed to a hotel to wait for Wendy and my friend Kevin who were flying in to Tucson. They were amazing.
On Monday I stopped at TCR again with a fueling issue. I had used the Toyota with its Soletek HID's to look for Rock both nights. The Highway patrol, after a lot of arguing on my part, let me drive the perimeter at night to look for him. That was when I discovered my fueling issue. Turns out it was just an old fuel line deteriorating and clogging the fuel pump. So in a way Rock helped me test the truck for the race.
Having that solved the three of us headed out. Kevin Hopper took the wheel just outside of Tucson while Wendy and I morned the loss of Rock.
Arriving in San Diego around 9:30 pm Monday the 13th two days late to meet Micah Newton with ORW we all hooked up and grabbed some food and went to bed.
On Tuesday the 14th Kev, Simon from Suspension Pro's and myself drove back out to Plaster City to set the suspension up. Simon is a suspension wizard. Completing that we drove back to ORW in El Cajon and did our final shopping for the day and finish some work on the truck. Can't thank ORW and there awesome staff for making this all happen.
Wednesday the 15th we headed to Racer X for the race radios and to Soletek for some last minute supplies and t-shirts for tech. Having everything we needed Kev and I drove to Primm.
Every one showed up on Thursday and friday including my parents that drove from Canada to help in the main pit and pit 2. That was awesome. Still sad not having my buddy with me it sure helped being surrounded by friends and family. They totally took over and made sure everything was handled especially the guys from ORW that supplied a kick ass e-z up for us to work under. Thanks for setting that up Micah!!!
5:30 am. Micah and I got suited up, Reviewed with everyone what the game plan was, reviewed the "danger notes" and preceded to line up. It was cold as hell!!! good for the motor bad for us....
It was a drag start, of course we got pitted against some monster V8 so we just eased off the line and let him be macho. We caught him and passed him in the first mile. The TC gen 2 kit was locked in to 4wd and made us fly over the sandy rough stuff and the cornering was amazing with the new Goodyear Kevlar MTRs. We passed 6 trucks and 4 buggies in the first 20 miles. We had to stop at mile 29 due to some weird engine noise but quickly decided "screw it, if it goes it goes". So we had to do some passing again. We came upon a flipped 7 truck that we stopped to help right as we were one of 2 trucks on the course that had 4wd and we were not racing for points so I figured what the hell, stop, help, get free beer's later for the crew. It worked. Off we went again.
Passing pit 1 and 2 at full speed of 89mph we got some good video by Ben Snead with his Canon HD camera we casually waved at them and wend by....
On the second lap we definitely hit some stuff really hard. Our lap time was almost 15 min faster due to no stopping and our f' it attitude. We bent some stuff up front including smashing the high miss spacers so we had to take the lake bed a little slower as the front drivers wheel wanted to shoot off into the desert. We decide to not fuel up at pit 1 which was almost disastrous as when we entered the short course section we started to sputter. Too funny. We still got some great air off the table tops, nursed it back to the finish which was only a mile away but damn it was close.
We finished 4th in class, helped a truck out, got great air and laughed our asses off.
Special thanks to ORW, Soletek lighting, Johnny Franklin mufflers, Total Chaos and LC Engineering. Not to mention Kevin Hopper who flew to Tucson AZ on his own dime to help a friend out and get me to the race. I love this sport
Jay St Claire