My notes get shorter and say less as the days go on, but today one sentence stands out, "this has all become a blur". Today we drove Mil Cumbres, which roughly means "a thousand peaks" and what feels like a thousand turns. Mil Cumbres is one of the most famous segments of the Carrera, this is arguably the most dangerous part of the entire race, thats had numerable crashes and a few deaths.
The day was one of short speed sections and long, seemingly uphill transits. Once at the top of the mountain, the start of this section was delayed, which gave everyone a chance to look at
fantastic scenery and brought a
rush on the timing officials by anxious navigators waving time cards. For me, and I think Rick, this was our moment of highest anxiety, waiting for this start, because of all we had heard and read regarding Mil Cumbres. The word on the delay was that the section had been cut short because of loose gravel from repaving and fallen trees on the road because of logging. It turned out that the section was shortened by about 9k because of this. It would have been better for us if the entire portion
had been cut, as we flat out did poorly. Our philosophy for the race was, 1: to finish and 2; as they say when you rent a car in Mexico "no dents". This thinking led us to run a very, very conservative section, so much so that we were passed by, dare I say it... a Ford. Uggggch!
The stories of Mil Cumbres seem always to have living and/or deceased animals on the road, our version included a dead horse, a few alert cows who watched us go by and tree trunk or two. And there's always a few
The stories of Mil Cumbres seem always to have living and/or deceased animals on the road, our version included a dead horse, a few alert cows who watched us go by and tree trunk or two. And there's always a few
rocks, whether placed there by enthusiastic locals or Mother Nature, it makes for interesting driving.
After our drive into beautiful Moreila, our evening was filled with changing all the fluids in the Chevelle, which is running excellent, and attending another late drivers meeting. Our thoughts for tomorrow focus on doing a better job driving Mil Cumbres again.
Today we are 36th overall, 6th in class.
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