I’m posting this today instead of last night because I was positive I would have had nothing nice to say. We’ve all complained about it to each other so I have worked out some of the irritation with my fellow racers. I have to say that Steve has been great through all of my whining and is probably the best teammate I could have ever found.

We started off from Stinky Motel 8 #2 at 8am. We got a letter translated into spanish from the New Mexico Border Authority with an inventory of our tools and spare parts. While that was being typed for each of the cars we made our way over to Mexico to get the temporary import permits. I was the first one in the line and was quickly denied. I only have a temp registration and have no plates for my truck as it was purchased a few months ago. I was directed to someone else who had to authorize the temp registration. He took a look at my truck and said it was too new and had no plates so it could not come into the country. After a few minutes, more and more racers came out with denials as well. Several of us from California had our temp window tags and nothing else. FOUR hours later we had it sorted out.

The guy who was giving us all of the trouble asked Marcos (the guy helping us) if I was single, in spanish. I tried not to turn red but quickly said “I am if it will make this any easier”. Nothing like living in Mexico to have a simple grasp of the language.

From there we continued to the hotel to hook up the trailer. We had a quick lunch then headed to the border. We stopped at US customs to fill out exportation forms for the cars and then to the border crossing. After the border crossing we drove through town to the final check point 30kms out. We were waived through there. By the time we were actually on our way at full speed it was about 6pm. So I spent my birthday dealing with immigration/customs and as a special gift they gave me what feels like the most wicked sunburn I have ever had. We finally arrived in Chihuahua at our hotel around 10:30pm. If you weren’t keeping track it took us from 8am until 10:30pm to travel 300kms.

The best part about today was sleeping in until 9am. We woke up and joined some friends from La Carrera for breakfast. Shortly after we made our way outside for the tech inspection which consisted of “hey Rachel, glad you could make it down!”, showed we still had all of our proper equipment and that was that. We applied our stickers and sat around for the rest of the day. Steve and I cleaned up some odds and ends but over all it was a relatively easy and relaxing day. I still need to gas up the car but for the life of me I can’t get motivated. I am so excited about tomorrow but I really wished we had run at least one qualifying stage, just to get the jitters out.

Tomorrows first speed stage is over 40kms long. The longest one we did in La Carrera was around 20kms I believe. This is going to prove to be one hell of a ride. I’m hoping to get the video set up late tonight so we can actually post something for everyone to see.

I suddenly lost the ability to continue my through process so I guess I should join the festivities in the lobby and continue prepping for tomorrows wild ride.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 19th, 2007 at 6:45 pm and is filed under Chihuahua Express, Rachel Larratt, Racing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.