Baja Dreams

© Jason Hill

"Some day we're gonna ride the Baja 1000. Some day when we're older." Such was the dream of two dirt-bike riding boyhood buddies, John Lowe and Jason Hill. Then life intervened. Over 20 years they went their separate ways, until a high school reunion reunited them.

"As we began catching up," Hill relates, "John asked 'Do you remember when we were riding as kids how we used to watch the Baja races on TV and always said we'd run it one day?' 'Yeah,' I replied. 'Well, it's time.' And that was that." A month ago that boyhood dream became reality, and Lowe has the broken bones to prove it.

And since then, the dream has stayed with them. "I go to work every day, trying to get back into the 'normal' routines and in my head I'm still in Mexico," Hill says. "Ash (Ashley, his wife) says I've been laughing in my sleep lately, yet all my dreams that I can remember have been replays of being in the saddle dashing across the dusty countryside."

Baja Bound

The Baja 1000 is a 1,000-kilometer race through the extremely rugged terrain of Mexico's Baja peninsula; a race so daunting that it's a triumph simply to finish. Cars, trucks, motorcycles, and ATVs all share the route with each other, and spectators, in a wild free-for-all.

Racing the Baja requires support for the riders, so to do it, Hill and Lowe needed to assemble a team. Rod Pegram, a British expatriate friend of Lowe's, signed on as crew chief and race support. Ashley Clifton-Hill and Liz Pegram, Rod's wife, rounded out the team, which was dubbed J2 Racing.

Eight days before the race, they loaded everything into Rod's truck and trailer and Hill, Lowe, and Rod Pegram headed for the Baja. The women would fly out later. In the trailer was "Grunt," the 2001 Honda XR650R bike they would be racing, Pegram's CanAm Renegade 800 quad, and a full load of additional gear.

Gearing Up

A beach house outside of Ensenada J2 Racing Hq. Once everyone was settled in the first order of business was pre-running sections of the course. Because some portions of the Baja 1000 are paved roads and other sections are little more than goat trails, pre-running helps riders stay on course come race day.

"The pre-run was awesome," Lowe says. "All the fun of Baja without the race pressure. It was however the most difficult terrain I have ever encountered, and as the week progressed, I got more and more doubtful of my abilities, although I had some race experience. Sand whoops like something out of a video game, rocks that came out of nowhere, uphill and downhill challenges, coupled with just the right amount of sections where you could pin it, made for an eclectic outlook of what's to come."

While better-financed teams may ride the race vehicle just enough to set up the tuning, and then park it to ensure nothing happens to it, J2 Racing didn't have that option, so they ran their race vehicle all week long. And Grunt, carrying the number 299X, did suffer some damage during pre-running. First Lowe snapped off the gear shift lever running up a gnarly rock hill, but a replacement was scavenged off a similar bike parked at the beach house. Then Hill had trouble of his own when he, on Grunt, and Pegram on the quad were pre-running the first section of the course, which Hill would be running in the race.

"The sun was just setting below the peak and it hit me in the eye like a laser. There was a lot of dust in the air where Rod had just gone through and as I bounded into the curve of the hillside following the path, but without full vision of it, I soon found a huge rock jutting out of the dirt, and it was too late to avoid it. I hit the rock, my wrist snapped the throttle and the bike took off out from under me as my feet separated from the pegs. We both hit the ground pretty hard, but not hard enough make me think twice about what I was doing."

Grunt's rear sprocket was bent and the chain was doubled up around the front sprocket from Hill's attempts to start it before he noticed the problem.

At this point, "I thought the race might not happen," Hill confirms. Like any good crew chief, however, Pegram was more than equal to the task. When he came back down to where Hill had wiped out, "he hopped off the quad, found an old course marker, stomped it down to a 1-foot length of wood, and said 'Hand me a big f*&^#ing rock.' I complied and he leveraged the piece of wood on the bent portion of the sprocket from the opposite side of the wheel, through the spokes and began pounding on it with the rock. The sprocket immediately reacted and began reshaping itself into its normal configuration. I laughed because here we are in a race full of modern technology and yet sticks and stones, which will break your bones if you're not careful, actually fixed a malformed sprocket. Only in Baja!"

Race Day

The morning of race day arrived at 3:30 a.m. for J2 Racing as breakfast was prepared and eaten, pre-made meals were packed to keep everyone going during the long day, and gear was tested and packed. Hill would take Grunt from the starting line in Ensenada out as far as Race Mile 40 (RM40), where he would hand it off to Lowe. Taking his place in the starting line, which sends out one racer every 30 seconds once the race begins, Hill gave Grunt a final inspection and signed a few autographs.

"The tension was mounting and I had to consciously take a few deep breaths to try and relax. I kept telling myself, 'You can do this, nothing to it, just run it the same way you did yesterday. Play it cool and run your own race.'"

He edged closer and closer to the start when suddenly, someone in the crowd yelled "Hey!! 299!"

"I turned to see what the commotion was and some guy was pointing underneath the bike. Looking down, I saw green fluid starting to drip slowly and then quickly begin gushing out of Grunt's belly. She was bleeding like a Matador's ill-fated Toro. I pulled out of line, said a few choice words in a panic and thought the race was over before it began. I got on the ground to see if perhaps I'd damaged the coolant reservoir in yesterday's dump when the sprocket bent. I didn't see any holes or damage, and then a race official came over and said 'It's probably just overheating.' The race official uncapped the radiator and Grunt sputtered like Old Faithful, steam surrounding us and the bike.

"The official took two bottles of water from some spectators and poured them into the radiator, re-capped it, and said in a raised voice to be heard over the deafening engine revs of the other bikes, 'These 650s are notorious for overheating!! You'll be fine! Just run it! She'll cool off pretty quickly!' He then ushered me to the head of the line at the top of the staging mound. The official there saw me coming, Grunt still steaming and chomping at the bit in heavy-throated 4-stroke revs. I informed him it was just overheating a little and would be OK.

"The guy in front of me at the line took off and I rolled down the slope to see Sal [Sal Fish, president and CEO of SCORE International, the promoter of the race]. He looked at the smoking beast heading toward him and as I came along side he said, 'Is everything OK here?' 'Yes sir, she's just overheating, she'll be fine but I gotta go!!' He said, 'OK good, be safe out there, have a good race, we'll see you at the finish' and shook my hand.

"The man with the timer and green flag gave me the 5-second countdown. I revved the engine one last time and at the signal, popped the clutch, nailed the throttle and roared off toward the wide left hander into the 2009 Baja 1000, easing up so as not to get stupid in the first corner on the pavement."

Hill blasted through the first 40 miles, dumping the bike twice but generally running well, even on the rocky hill where the gear shift lever had been broken previously, where "the locals decided it wasn't difficult enough so they piled three consecutive rows of large rocks across the trail to add that much more of a challenge. I took those in stride and kept on rolling."

Lowe Lifts Off

Reaching RM40, Lowe was anxious to take off, hearing the roar of the 800-horse power dune buggies that had now joined the race and were rapidly gaining on them.

"Jason came flying into the pit, we swapped, and I was off like a prom dress," he says. "I knew I was going too fast; I just could not back off the throttle. I could literally feel the ground shaking behind me." Just 10 miles later, "I launched the bike over about a 10-foot rocky drop, obviously the wrong way...Before I knew it, I was down and being dragged off the course by my gear, thankfully.

"Locals dragged me off the track, put me under their tent, and gave me all the help I could have asked for. No sooner did they move me, the first truck came through, and it sounded like something out of the Book of Revelations."

Contacted by phone and advised of the situation, the rest of the team set out in the thick of the race to retrieve Lowe and get him to the hospital in Ensenada. That rescue, and the cross-country trek back to town was another adventure in itself. By nightfall it was all over. Lowe had two broken bones in his right arm, and a broken patella in his left knee. But he was alive and he had done it; he had raced the Baja 1000.

While it didn't work out the way Lowe and Hill imagined it all those years ago, the pair has no regrets. Says Lowe, "Hey, I'm cool with what we did. We got to ride some of the most awesome terrain in the world, and we were actually racing in Baja for a morning anyway. We did not quit, we went for it with no sponsors and our race ended in crash fit for a movie."

"The whole trip has been one the most memorable experiences of my entire life, and I'm pretty sure John's as well. And we don't plan to quit either," Hill says. "Just yesterday he mentioned Pikes Peak [the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb]. I looked at the website for that race and thought, 'Oh yeah, we're definitely doing this!'"

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