So we finally made it to the end of the season. The last race was a bit anti-climactic as the 48 was never really in danger of losing the championship, and the race for the 35th owners points position was not really all that close either. Congrats to the 7 car team for keeping their driver in the top 35 and the guaranteed spot in the Daytona 500. With a new year always brings renewed optimism, so 2009 could be happy hunting for the 7. Time will tell.

Before I delve any deeper, just wanted to post the next 10 of the 25 days of RG items that are available at stores.ebay.com/thehotpass. I am taking next week off of the blogging to go home for my HS reunion, so I won't have time to do a good blog. So here are the goods.

This week was the Baja 1000, and since I am late in posting, everyone knows that Robby's fate was not the desired result. Robby was nice enough to bring the cup team members to last years race. I was lucky enough to go on that trip, so I thought I would share a story from last years race.

This year the race was a loop, but last year it was a just a big drag race from Ensanada in the north to Cabo at the southern tip of the baja peninsula. It was cool, because we got to drive the whole length of the peninsula and the landscapes were mostly beautiful and ever changing. We stayed in Phoenix after the cup race and flew to Ensanada early Monday morning. We went through customs, and then to a hotel for a team breakfast and briefing. The race truck was taken through tech inspection in the afternoon, and the team was divided into groups. In my group were three of the cup guys that were given a 15 passenger van, and we drove in a convoy with one of the support trucks with about 3 of the baja team guys. The support truck was outfitted with spare tires, radiators, tools you name it. The support trucks basically blast out into the desert ahead of the race truck and setup a pit stop area. The first pit stop for my group was about 300 miles into the race, so we left that and drove a couple hours to a random motel in a dirty little Mexican town and stayed the night.

In the morning I coaxed the other cup guys to go to little cafe for breakfast, which was more like a shack with flies all over. We had some sort of taco dish and I definitly had Coke for breakfast. Then we drove to our first pit area, which took a couple of hours. We got to the area at 3 ish and Rob was supposed to be there at about 5. Being the engineer and having the strength of a 6 year old girl, I was given the job of being the jack person for the pit. (I was way too excited.) The other cup guys were tasked with changing tires since they are like 80lbs a piece. Normally they only change rear tires on the truck, so I was to jack the truck under the rear gear housing while the other guys did tires and fuel. We got all revved up for the stop, but then we got word that Rob wouldn't be there until 10, so we relaxed and had some dinner and made a fire with some dried up cacti. Pretty cool.

Obviously live timing and scoring is not really available on the Baja, so you only really know your running position by counting the cars ahead of you. It was dark when the first of the trucks went through, so everytime that we saw lights in the distance, we all grabbed our tools and hoped it was Rob. Frustratingly, Rob came into the pit about 40 minutes behind the first truck.

Doing the Baja pit stop was about the coolest thing I've ever done in racing. I was all nervous and revved up. The jack was a normal 2 ton floor jack...the heavy ones, so it was tough to throw it around. The truck pulled to a stop and I whipped the jack under the rear end, and I pumped it like crazy. It was a little sandy so the jack sunk a bit, which threw me, but I kept pumping. I finally got the truck the inch in the air it needed just ahead of the tire guys getting the nuts loose. They got the new tires on, the fuel guy finished, I dropped the jack, and the truck sped off into the night. 40 seconds of fury and adrenanline, and it was over.

We hurredly packed up the equipment and started off to the next pit. Unfortunately, the truck broke down with drive train problems just 10 miles from our pitstop. We did a quick u-turn and caught up to it. It was parked in a ditch, and the guys did a trans cooler change, and some creative rerouting of oil lines. An hour later, the truck belched forward and hurtled into the night again. Still hopped up from all of the action, we got back in the van and zinged away to the next pitstop, 200 miles away.