Powder Puff: Race for the Cure

This year, I was able to go to the powder puff race with the race team. In a change of roles, Laurie drove the truck while Dan waited at the pit watching the GPS on the computer and waited for news of how it was going.

Laurie and I at the Start Line. Yep, my name is a new addition to the new truck. I think it's pretty cool.

Making sure I'll be able to spot the competition after we leave them in our dust.

Taking the truck through it's paces

Coming down pit row. (I think)

Laurie, Valerie and I at the finish line celebrating our win.

Once again, I'm stealing the press release to give you details:

The Factory Racing’s Winning streak continues

The Factory racing turned the driving over to Laurie Chamlee for the 4^th Annual Powder Puff: Race for the Cure on October 10, 2009. This has become a very popular event among the wives and friends of off-road racers to help raise money for Cedars Sinai Research Center for a cure for breast cancer. The totals are still being tallied but it looks like it will be around $80,000 that was raised from this event. Only women were allowed to compete. There were about 190 teams competing in 25 different classes.

Friday the team headed to Barstow to get in some practice time and have technical inspection. Dan drove Laurie around the 27-mile course to make sure the truck was running properly and to get her familiar with the course. Laurie commented “I almost backed out with Dan driving, I wasn’t sure I could do it.” When Laurie took the wheel she was more comfortable being in control and going the pace she was comfortable with gradually bringing it to race speed.

Saturday morning was spent checking the truck and getting ready for the 12:00 start time. Chamlee was given 3 hours to see how many laps she could complete. The first lap was very frustrating. They had started the girls 16 seconds apart and the factory racing was quite a ways back in the pack so the dust was thick it was really hard to see to pass. “I spent the first lap trying to pass people to get clear of the dust, as you would get close to them it was denser and harder to see. I had passed about 20 people and was leading my class when I came out of some dust and didn’t see a large rock in the road, as soon as I hit it I was afraid I was going to have a flat tire”. Sure enough the team had a flat. Though quite capable of changing the tire themselves they were grateful to a group of men along side the course waiting to help any team possible, who quickly changed the tire and had them on their way, allowing the girls to wait in their safety harnesses. Sadly about 6 people passed the team while the tire was being changed. She spent the rest of the lap passing those girls again. The third and fourth laps were much clearer and easier to pick the speed.

Laurie was really impressed with the new truck and how well it handled compared to the last truck and glad she didn’t blemish it’s winning streak extending it to four wins in a row. The Factory Racing has won 5 of the 6 races for the 2009 season.

Laurie completed 4 laps in 3:08:05 with an average speed of 35.7 mph. Laurie drove the whole race with Amy Tate her co-driver for the first 3 laps and Valerie Chamlee took over the co-driver spot for the last lap.

Primm

In September I headed out to Primm with the race team for the Terrible's Primm 300. Here is a portion of the press release after we won:

The Factory Racing traveled to Primm, Nevada to compete in the 14^th Annual Terrible’s Primm 300 on Sept 11-13^th. Each team was given 7 hours to complete their required laps on the 69-mile track; The Factory Racing only needed 4:41:40 with an average speed of 44.09 mph to complete their 3 laps to win Class 7.

Dan Chamlee drew pole position; he immediately lost several positions in the first corner where the dust was so bad from the classes that had started in front of him that he missed a corner and high centered the truck on a berm. He was quickly pulled off and began moving back up the pack. When he got to mile 34 he had passed a couple competitors and a couple pulled over to fix problems putting him back in the lead. By the end of the first lap he was leading by 20 miles but as he started lap two the engine temp began to rise. They found the radiator fan control wasn’t working so they pulled over to fix the switch giving a little time to second place, Igor Galvan. Galvan closed to about a 15-mile gap by the end of the second lap. Before the race we replaced the intercom that allows the driver and co-driver to talk with the pit crew but received a defective one; the distributor gave us a loaner to use during the race, which also didn’t work. So the pits had no communication with the truck, which would have allowed them to advise him where the competition was. When Dan came into the pit to fuel and begin his final lap he was informed he had a 15-mile lead over 2^nd place. He ran at a fast pace but didn’t push too hard on the last lap to make sure he was able to finish and win his 4^th race of the season. Dan is happy with the new truck design and newfound speed and reliability but is nervous about what weakness he has yet to find.

We would like to acknowledge the following companies who helped us set up our truck: BFGoodrich, King Shocks, Richards Signs, Tubeworks. Super Six Motorsports, Simple Digital Systems.

This victory extends the annual points championship lead, which The Factory hopes to clench at the final race of the season in November at the Baja 1000. Dan is also in the running for the coveted Mile stone award given to drivers who finish every mile of every race.

Dan drove the 207-mile race with co-driver Thomas Chamlee. Pit crew was headed by Laurie Chamlee and supported by Whitney Chamlee, Bill Chamlee, Nathan Saito, Amy Tate, Ryan Gomez, Bill Taff, Jamie Taff, Donald Taff, Valerie Chamlee, Ian Graham, Megan Suiffe, and Matt Tindell.

I also stole some pics! Here they are:

Here I am making sure the BFG pit crew fuels the truck properly.
I'm good at bossing people around. ;-)

Coming around the last corner before the finish line

Coming down the home stretch

Thomas and Dan after the race (codriver and driver) celebrating at the finish line

Official Results posted

At last, the official results for Class 7 at the Baja 500 have been posted and I am happy to report that Dan Chamlee and The Factory Racing maintained the #1 position with NO PENALTIES!

Here's a pic of Dan speaking at the awards ceremony that was held in Ensenada. (I'm in it too!)


This win puts the team firmly back in the lead in the points race for the season too. Here's another pic of the new truck:

'09 Baja 500

Since January, Dan and Thomas Chamlee have been spending their weekends and evenings after work building a new race truck. The new truck was shown to the public for the first time at Contingency for the Baja 500. Here's a pic:

Despite this being the first race with the new truck and knowing that there was a strong possibility that there would be unanticipated bugs, the team really wanted to win this race. There had been a lot of chatter on the online forums once it was leaked that Dan was building a new truck and not all of it positive. A strong showing at this first race would really be vindicating.

We were second off the line in our class but were quickly passed by many as a fan belt fell off at race mile 10. A quick repair later and we were back on the road. By the first highway crossing at Ojos Negros, it was obvious that there was serious problems with the race truck's radio. We could barely hear them when they were in sight.

We had only been at BFG pit 1 (race mile 87) for minute or two when the spotter announced that 701 was 2 miles out. Ten minutes later, after seeing a couple more of our competitors pass by we heard that 700 was on it's way. Along with refueling and checking fluid levels, we changed the antenna for the radio to the alternate mount. As they drove off, we could tell that it was an improvement, but still less than ideal.

We had a bit more time to wait at BFG pit 2 (race mile 199) but had a good view of the Trophy trucks and class 1 vehicles. We also were hit by a couple of dust devils that blew neighboring easy-ups completely over and showered the inside of the truck with marble sized chunks of gravel and sand. My laptop that was sitting open inside that vehicle required a little percussive maintenance to clear all the rubble out from under the keyboard. Dan showed up at the pit earlier than we anticipated and with the rest of the class behind him. I hopped into the truck and we were off. It was my first time in the new race truck and I was immediately very impressed with the ride.

As we came into BFG pit 3 (race mile 298) we had had almost no problems, only having to monitor the thermostat as the fan wouldn't always kick in to cool things down when needed. While at pit 3 the BFG guys informed us that we were leaking something from under the cab. After a quick inspection, we determined that it was coolant. Knowing that we had 150 miles to go, we decided to deal with it when it started causing a problem and headed off. The last section of the course was rough. At race mile 360-something we received a transmission from our chase team that our closest competitor was at race mile 300, more than an hour and a half behind us.

We began to have problems with the starter and a couple of times stalled, only to find we couldn't restart. Once we ended up sideways on a hill as we were trying to go around a stuck vehicle. No matter what we did, it wouldn't start and we couldn't roll straight back, because of a cliff. We were eventually dragged back into a straight position by one of the seven or eight vehicles stuck behind us and as soon as we were straightened out, the started worked and we were off. Though we did have a few more frustrating spots with the uncooperative starter, we continued to move pretty well through the course, occasionally manually turning on the fan to make sure we could cool the engine down, since we were still leaking coolant and could now see it collecting in the baseboards by Dan's feet. The last 20 miles of the race were a bit nerve racking as we kept sputtering as we were running out of gas. There was still fuel in the tank, but the intake hose was too high and wasn't able to get to it, especially as we went around left turns. One of those new truck bugs we were worried about. Luckily, every time we started to sputter, it would pick back up and keep going. Our unofficial time was 11:46:18, over an hour and a half in front of the next finisher. Of the eleven class7 vehicles entered in this race, only four finished in the allotted time.

Overall, it was a great first race for the new truck and wonderful to be able to come home with the Baja 500 win for the fourth time in a row.

The end of the race was not the end of the drama, however. After attending the awards ceremony in Ensenada, we headed out for home. Soon we discovered that one of the towing vehicles was having problems. It had no power and couldn't pull the trailer up a hill at speeds faster than 25mph. Eventually we ended up pulling it on a strap with the other truck and trailer. It took us over two and a half hours to make the one hour trip from Ensenada to Tijuana. We ended up pulling the truck and trailer across the boarder on the strap. We pulled over as soon as we got into the U.S. and found ourselfs behind another team having a very similiar problem. We attempted to continue on, but decided just North of San Diego to check the fuel filter to see if there was water, dirt or mud in the fuel. While doing this, it was discovered that the gas station in Ensenada had fueled that truck with gasoline instead of diesel. After siphoning all of the gas out and replacing it with diesel, the truck ran better, but still not 100%. We finally made it home 13 hours after we left Ensenada.

Four days later, the official results were posted for the Trophy trucks and class 1 buggys. What a surprise! Unofficial first place Robby Gordon was now officially listed in 7th place after a 90 minute penalty for an illegal pit stop. Apparently his team had set up a pit stop along one of the highway sections of the course and instead of pulling off the road into the pit, he stopped in the middle of the lane on the highway and his crew ran out onto the road (race course and open two lane highway) to refuel and do a visual inspection. I don't know why he didn't pull the 50 feet further off the road and into the pit proper, but it cost him. There were also other switch ups in the Trophy truck class. Unofficial 2nd place, Bobby Baldwin ended up officially in 8th after time penalties were added for course deviation and speeding on the highway. In total, 10 of the 19 trophy trucks that finished were assessed penalties for Course Deviation. I'm glad that we have the new IRC GPS system that allows us to not only track the race vehicles online in real time during a race, but also allows SCORE to review the route taken by each vehicle and make sure that the course and rules are being followed.

Official results for Class 7 have not been released at the time of this posting. I will update as they come in.

Atlantis Shuttle Launch

Atlantis Shuttle Launch

After flying into Orlando Sunday afternoon, we were up early Monday morning to meet the bus at 6am. I am so not a morning person.

Our early departure from Orlando made us one of the first buses to get to the Kennedy Space Center and we were able to go on the Shuttle Launch Experience and through a mock up of the orbiter.

We were also able to pose for a picture, do some shopping and grab some food before we got back on the bus to go to the Causeway where we would watch the launch.
It was very hot waiting and we found shade under a nearby food service table.

Finally it was time...

Awesome!

We went back to Kennedy Space Center on Thursday to go on the regular tour and see the sites that are closed on launch day. It was a great trip.


This is Pad 39A where we saw the shuttle launch from.

This is one of two crawlers that is used to transport the shuttle to the launch pad from the assembly building. I'm not sure why this one was out, but I do know that they were planning on moving Endeavor from pad B to pad A a couple weeks after our visit, so it could be they were prepping for that. It doesn't move very fast, the three mile trip usually takes about eight hours. The tour guide said, "It's not a matter of how fast it can go, but how slow. It can move as little as 1/4 inch forward at a time." He went on to tell us that the shuttle has to be placed on the launch pad within a tolerance of less than one inch.

San Felipe 250

We left just before noon on Thursday to caravan down to San Felipe. Dan and Laurie were in his truck with the race truck in the box trailer and Thomas and I were in Laurie's truck with Thomas' prerunner on the flatbed trailer. The trip down was long but pretty uneventful and included a small detour to Kartek so Thomas could pick up a new wheel.

Friday we were joined by Chicken Lips (that's not his real name, but the name he goes by on the Race Desert web site. Since I never learned his real name, that's what he's called.) and a couple of his brothers. Mike, who Thomas also met on Race Desert, also showed up to help us out. First order of business was to take the truck out to the start and evaluate the suspension and tires. After coming back with a good report, it was off to contingency and tech where the truck was inspected for safety. After several hours we were registered and through tech and on our way.

Waiting in line at Contingency

While at tech Dan talked to the guys at BFG and decided that he was going to leave the experimental Core mud tires with the inner liners on the rear wheels but up the pressure by 3 lbs in both the inner liners and the tires. With that change made, it was back out on the course to see what difference the adjustment made. Happy with the result, it was back to camp and off to dinner at Pete's camp where they took forever to bring us our food, but it was good when we finally got it. After dinner we set to changing the oil, sorting pit boxes and doing a final check of the truck. Around midnight while trying to diagnose a problem with the engine, a bigger problem was created, causing the truck to run very poorly. It took until around 2am to get it sorted but finally it was running better and it was off to bed. (I admit, there were enough other hands to grab tools, so I was in bed a lot earlier.)

Race morning, we had a team meeting to make sure everyone knew where they were going and what the game plan was going to be. Then we were loading pit boxes, food and tools into the chase trucks and suiting up. We were scheduled to stage at 10am just as the Trophy trucks started off the line. The start of the race went really well, with the truck running smoothly over the long stretch of whoops that is at the beginning of the course.

Off the start, flying through the whoops

As the rear shocks started heating up, however, our rear end started bucking and we had to slow down considerably and couldn't really get on top of the never ending series of bumps. By race mile 15 we were going 30-35 mph instead of 50-55. By race mile 35 most of our competitors had passed us. Along this stretch, we also broke the bolt holding our passenger side front limit strap in place. Thomas was going to come up to check us out as we passed at race mile 70 but broke a rear brake line at the military checkpoint along the way and didn't think he'd make it there before us. He was on the road faster than expected though, and was able to give us a once over before following us down to Morelia Junction where Laurie, Jake and others were waiting to top off our fuel and give us the spare we needed to fix the limit strap.

Thomas checking out the dangling limit strap as the truck speeds by

The only spare they had was broken but we took it to the BFG pit where they welded us back up and refueled us again. An either or that took us across the dry lake bed caught us back up with some of our competition where many of us got stuck in silt. We were buried up to our axles but were able to get out with the pull-pal and wench. That thing worked awesome. It took us about 6 minutes to get moving on our own and 4 minutes for me to figure out how to fold it back up and put it back on the truck. Next time I'll be faster. Running in silt with a race suit and helmet on makes me hot, really fast. Someday I'll learn to take my helmet off for these kind of situations. Still, only about 10 minutes to get moving and no digging totally rocked. We were splashed again with fuel after checkpoint 4 and the group there took their pit stop duties very seriously. We had people ready with open bottles of water for us while others were fueling and checking over the truck. After running through the silt, that water tasted wonderful. The next section of the course consisted of traveling through numerous canyons. Many of them were really rocky and rough. Somewhere along that stretch we blew our passenger side rear tire. It took us a while to figure out that it was flat but we had confirmation when we hit a rock hard and the inner liner went out with a gush of hissing air. We continued driving knowing it was flat because we were in really soft stuff and knew we wouldn't be able to start up again if we stopped. By the time we got to where we could stop, we were close to the road and there were many people and pits set up. We quickly found a group we knew and they were happy to help us change our flat quickly. I didn't even have to get out of the truck. Dan did get out and help them get the tire off since he was wearing gloves. It was steaming hot! From there, the rest of the way to the finish line was rough but fairly uneventful. We came in third and were able to finish in the daylight, never having to turn on our lights.

After the race, being interviewed by a writer from Dusty Times

In celebration of our success, but mostly because we were all starving, we all went out to a taco stand for dinner where we could share our stories of our race experience. It's always fun to hear what happened to the chasers while you were in the race truck and they like to hear about the events during the race that happened while they were sitting patiently (yeah right!) in the pits waiting for the truck to arrive. Stories swapped and quesa tacos consumed, we were headed back to camp where we packed up quickly and after a shower, called it an early night.

Sunday morning we were up at 6am to finish loading up and get on the road home. Despite our early departure, we still waited at the border for over two hours before getting into the States and continuing on our way. Our stop for dinner was extended as the neck of the flatbed trailer with Thomas' truck on it snapped as we went over a speed bump in the parking lot. Grateful we were in a parking lot and not on the freeway when it happened, we were able to get the welder and generator going and patch it back up enough for the rest of the trip home.

The trucks lined up in the parking lot to fix the trailer

I was safely home before 10pm and able to get a good night's sleep before heading back to work Monday morning. I am extremely grateful for the opportunity I have to go on these trips and for the continual blessing of safety that we have been provided. There are some guardian angels working overtime out there...

South Africa - Part two: Kruger National Park

After flying back from Cape Town, we rented a car and hit the road for Kruger National Park where we spent three days on safari.

This is the road entering into the Park.

Within 15 minutes of arriving in the park, we came across some elephants along the side of the road. It was a really great introduction to the park.

This was the view out our back door the first night. You can't see it in this photo because my camera thought that branch sticking up from the bottom right was really neat to focus on, but there were hippos across the river making lots of noise.

The first morning we were in the park, we woke up early to meet with a tour that was going on a walk in the park. Our main guide took the rules very seriously and sent away one woman because she was wearing white, which was against the rules. As we got out of the truck to start the walk, he told us that we needed to make sure that our cameras were set so they didn't make any noise and that the flash was turned off so nothing unusual would cause problems with the animals. He also encouraged us to walk quietly by rolling our steps. With 8 tourists trailing behind him, I don't know how stealthy he thought we were going to be, but we did spend over half an hour crouching down as we were very close to a white rhino and it's baby. I wasn't very familiar with my camera and the auto flash kept coming on every time I powered it up, so I didn't get any pictures of that rhino. I'll admit, I was too scared. It was a pretty awesome experience to be within 30 yards of an animal like that though.



This is a picture of ticks that were on a plant along one of the game trails we traveled. Yep that's pretty big. Nope, I didn't give any of them a ride.

This is something else I wasn't afraid to take a picture of.

I was pretty confident I could take this worm too...



This flower was too nice to pass up. There were a lot of flowering plants since we were there in the rainy summer season.

These flowers weren't too scary either.

The next day, we were at a different camp and went on another sunrise walk with different guides. One woman who had signed up for the tour showed up in white pants. These guides didn't have any problem with it and loaded us up on the truck to leave. We knew at that point that this tour was going to be different from the previous day. We started off seeing animals right away. We had been off the truck for less than a minute when two fighting baboons came bursting into the clearing, circled around us and the truck and then made their way on out of sight. Shortly after they left we heard a loud growling noise in the distance off to our left. Our guides said, "Did you hear that? Those are lions." They then led us off in the other direction. Though we didn't get as close to any animals as we had the day before, we did get to see more since we weren't crouching down trying to be stealthy for large periods of time.

There are White and Black rhinos in South Africa. They are both this color. The White Rhino are called such after the Dutch word for 'wide' which describes their mouths. White Rhino have a big, wide smile type of mouth, while Black Rhino have more of a pointed beak type mouth. These are White Rhinos. The Black Rhinos are endangered and are much more scarce. They are also more aggressive and tend to attack without provocation and won't stop stampeding until you're dead. If these were Black Rhinos, we wouldn't have hung around long enough to get this picture..

Another rhino pic.

A couple of juvenile male Wildebeast.

We came across this dug out hole. One of our guides made his way around and leaning over, peaked in to see if anything was hiding in the den. He indicated that there was something there so I went and stood where he was in this picture and leant over to take a picture.

This is what I saw. Can you spot the tusks?

Here's a close up. As soon as I pressed the button to take the picture, now very confident that my autoflash was off and my camera had all sound disabled, the animal in the burrow bolted out straight at us and then, upon seeing all of us standing there, did a figure 8 and took off in the opposite direction.

It was a warthog. Here is a picture of one of his family members, I got later that day.

The guards were pretty casual with their rifles. At one point while we were taking shelter in under a tree while we waited for the rain to ease up, one of them asked me to hold his rifle while they collected some plants to 'make dinner.' I suspect it was more to smoke after dinner... They also let my cousin Heather and Uncle Harley pose with it when we got back to the truck.

Because of the rain, we came back very muddy. I had a band of mud on my calf above where my socks stopped and my shoes were so caked with mud, I was standing at least an inch taller.

Each day, we would drive to the next camp that we would stay at that night. Along the way we would sight see and try to spot as many animals as possible.

Some animals were easy to spot.

This elephant was flapping his ears to try and cool off.

There was a whole group of these monkeys playing along the side of the road.

This giraffe was also easy to spot.

We came across this man riding his bike along the side of the road in the preserve. My uncle told him that he thought it would be a dangerous activity. The man replied, "Not every time."

Some things were harder to spot. Can you find the crocodile in this picture?

Here's a close up.

This is a Baobab tree. None of us were willing to get out of the car to give a sense of perspective, but it is not unusual for these trees to grow trunks in excess of ten meters wide.

This cheetah and it's mate were hanging out under a tree very close to the road. One of them was injured so they weren't moving even though there were more than ten cars stacked up along the side of the road queuing up to see them.

We saw a lot of baby animals of all types.

These lion cubs were hanging out in this thicket about fifteen meters from the side of the road.

Here's a closeup of them.
Behind them in the distance were a herd of impala that were darting first one way and then another. We were hoping that Mom would show up having caught dinner but after half an hour, we moved on. We came back about an hour later on our way back to camp. The cubs were still there but no sign of Mom and the herd of impala had settled down. I guess no dinner for them tonight.

I was able to get some great panorama shots from a big bridge that spanned this valley where we spotted elephants, hippos, crocodiles, turtles and more.

Our driver on one tour was willing to get out of the truck to give us a better view of this hippo skull.

We saw hippos that were alive too.

These are a couple of Water Buffalo.

There were places in the park where there were large cement water cisterns. Windmills would provide power to pump water from these cisterns into a trough along the ground nearby. This windmill had a cool bird nest in it.

This elephant was drinking out of the water cistern. You don't have to worry about crocodiles when you drink from these...

Zebras were common in the shorter grass areas.

There were these really big spiderwebs that we could spot along the side of the road while driving. It brought to mind the huge spider characters from Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter.

I asked what kind of spider made these huge webs and our driver got out to show us. You can see in this that the web is as tall as he is!

The little spot in the crease under the joint of his thumb is the spider that lives on that huge web. It turns out that web is like a condo for spiders, housing around 500 of them cooperatively.



As my trip came to an end, I was extremely grateful for the opportunity I had to go on this trip and for the experiences I had. I wasn't too excited to get back on the airplane for the long trip home, but as they say, all good things must come to an end.