Chihuahua Express wrap-up: getting there

Everything about racing in Mexico just feels right, the way you would want it to feel if you were the person who invented the whole thing in the first place, except the part about getting two cars into Mexico owned by one person, at the same time. The importation process is so lame, it's barely better than leaving the tow vehicle behind and only driving the race car the whole way from your house to the start line and hoping you don't need a spare of anything along the way. Unfortunately, since about 800,000 cars are brought into Mexico illegally each year, the process needs to be a little tough. Or at least that's what they tell us.

The tow/no-tow decision was made for us long ago when Kevin acquired a van that would be the envy of the entire A-Team. Shockingly, we have no picture of the van. Picture big, black, smooth riding, no windows in the back, and nothing behind the front seats except a mattress and a la-z-boy recliner. That's the van. With the right sized fuel cell it would be very easy to speed this thing across the entire width of any country without stopping, but that would be silly.

I flew into L.A. at about 7pm, we hooked the empty trailer to the van, drove the Subaru in, and threw just about everything we could think of into the trailer. Packing, as we have stated elsewhere on this blog, is one of our most hated activities. We hopped on I-10 East at about 11pm and our GPS told us we would be taking a right, three states later. That's a lot of highway after a long day of work, a rushed packing session, and the knowledge that we were most likely going to have trouble at the border.... Thankfully, we spotted an In-N-Out Burger just outside of town that was a harbinger of our success to come. If you work for In-N-Out Burger, please contact us. We have an exciting sponsorship opportunity you want to hear about.

Kevin took the first shift driving, and after a seriously delicious burger (In-N-Out, call us) I crawled into the bed in back. During the 30 seconds I was awake, I promised myself I would do everything in my power to nominate for a Nobel Peace Prize the person who came up with the idea of putting a mattress in the back of a van. Does a blog entry satisfy that promise? Yes.

At a gas station near a place that sounds a lot like 'Pikachu Mountain' we switched drivers, and contemplated how much more the van would be worth if we grill-mounted the $4,000 buffalo head available for sale behind the counter. Agreeing on "probably about $3,500" we put our credit cards away and kept on heading east.

At one of the next gas stops we met a friendly border patrol agent and innocently asked which crossing he recommended considering our van, trailer with race car, and passenger with a goatee that looks a little bit like bin Laden's. He confirmed Santa Teresa was as good as any other, and provided some other information to aid our journey. Knowing the readership of this blog, let's just say the information was helpful, and Mexican-border patrol agents are underpaid.

After one of our more legal border crossings in recent history, Mexico welcomed us with open arms:


















We weren't sure what caused the van in the picture to burn, but there was no reason for alarm because previous experience has suggested the STI is fireproof.

The van did a bang up job of getting us to Chihuahua in just under 22 hours driving straight from L.A. Yes, that distance could be traversed in a much shorter time. Unfortunately for our hopes of a quick trip to the hotel, we have a bit of a war on drugs underway. Two Military checkpoints made sure we had no funny business going on in back:















Something about this first checkpoint made me a little nervous. Oh, I remember what it was. It was the dude in the back of the hummer (just under the big ALTO sign on the left) aiming his anti-aircraft gun at the tanker truck. After a couple checkpoints in the mad dust storm, we continued through gorgeous Chihuahua State (pictures in a future post) and checked in to the equally as gorgeous Westin Soberano. If you work for the Westin, or any of the Starwood properties around the world, please contact us. We have an exciting sponsorship opportunity you want to hear about.

All this could have been said with, "We towed the car to Mexico," but for me at least, getting there is about 30% of the fun. Plus, I wanted to use 'harbinger' in a sentence.