January 11 Stage 7
Coming off rest day in the desert somewhere near Riyadh. Trying to sleep in the bivouac is not easy. There are helicopters coming and going – like the one for the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia. Apparently, there are a lot of princes, and one is in charge of motorsports, and he had a big helicopter. Then mechanics are working on vehicles all over the bivouac, and they have to start them and test whatever they were working on. There is loud revving engine noise all night closeby. This is Dakar.
This stage is another long one – 875 km. 271 liaison, 450 special, 260 liaison.
Second half. Here we go. I felt like each mile driven now put me closer to the finish. But I had a long way to go.
It started with big dunes. We were “surfing” the dunes – where you wind along the crests at the tops, when a photographer was standing at the crest right in our line. People ask me how we got such epic pictures. Well, the race organization and South Racing hire photographers to station themselves in the most epic places and take pictures. They send you a link to your photos by the end of the day. It’s amazing.
Well, we almost ran one of them over. We had to abort our good line and turn down into a bit of a hole to save the poor fellow’s life. But we got stuck in the sand. Dennis got out to assess the situation and to dig us out. Meanwhile, other cars were going by us really close, and one car came over the berm and nearly T-boned us. We lost 15 minutes. We were lucky in many ways.
Our overheating issue persisted, and Dennis was calling the temperature to me often. Again, it was intermittent, but climbing soft sand dunes was one thing the car did not like from an engine temperature perspective. I was worried we’d blow this engine and it would all be over. We had to put water in twice.
We both had our face shields changed the night before. Wiping abrasive dust off your face shield all day puts little micro-abrasions in it until it seems cloudy. We got new shields, but little did we know, they were the “cheap ones”. They marred up within hours and we were struggling to see. By nightfall, with headlights, I could not see very well at all to drive the car. Good thing I had a backup plan. I brought $2 safety glasses that I bought in Baja, Mexico, with me. I put them on and raised my shield just a bit to see through. It worked and saved us!
The dunes gave way too fast, flat sections and then small canyons with rocky passes between them. We were chasing two cars that were both in our class just ahead of us. Suddenly, the first one veers off to the right wildly. The next one veers suddenly to the left. It was almost as if they were pulling over to let me pass. Then – “Boom – Boom!” I realized what happened. There was a sharp tire-eating rock that they both hit. Then we hit it for two flats at once!
Good thing we had two spares. In Baja, we only carry one. Dennis changed the tires and now we had to be extra cautious as we had no more spares. Our flat-less streak was broken. Dang. We lost 30 minutes and finished 115th overall, and 24th in our class.
On the two-hour liaison in the cold darkness back to the bivouac, we were following another car. Remember, in the liaison road sections, we are not being timed. Dennis realized that he had missed a turn 15 km back. Nobody saw it in the black night. We flagged him down and told him but he did not believe us. He elected to keep going. We turned back and went a long way. To be honest, I doubted Dennis was right. Then he started doubting it himself, but he said the road book said keep going back. We were cold and tired, and an hour and a half from the bivouac. Finally, we found this important hidden turn, and were headed the right way home. When you are in a foreign country, in the middle of nowhere, in the cold night, with limited food and gas, you can get into a bad situation quickly. Ask me how I know.
I was tired. Very tired.
Six stages to go.