Tuesday, November 6, 2007

Day 3: Peubla to Queretaro via Mexico City

As Emil will explain in great detail - we had a speed section on the major freeway of Mexico City. The police shut down the freeway, and we had at it. After this section, we had a high-speed police escort to the mid-day service stop. This was exactly Emil's sort of thing, so I won't attempt to describe it.

Arriving at velocity section in Mexico City (Day 3 - Queretaro)


The morning started out with heightened excitement. We were raring to go because we knew the Mexico City section would be a blast. One of us was more raring than the other though, and after all of my demands to "slow the F*** down" were ignored, we hit a small rise in the pavement and were momentarily airborne. (BTW - this is the second time that we have been airborne in a car in the past month.)

Once all four wheels came crashing down and we were again zooming along, Emil agreed that we would take things easy. The Mexico City velocity section had similar rises in the road, so actually, it's a good thing we had that little experience beforehand. Otherwise, we could have really launched the car into a wall or something, since we had reached speeds in excess of 300km/hr.

After the velocity section and during the police escort, we hit an invisible tope really really hard. It was not in the route book and I swear it disappeared immediately afterwards. Evil, I tell you!

Either the rise or the tope or both caused the front left tire to blister. We were able to change it with our spare front wheel and tire at the service stop - so it didn't slow us down really. Yet. (see day 5)

Whoops


The last velocity section of the day was 6 laps at a race track. I have never been in a car with Emil on the track - and I have to say it was hot. He is really good! The track was fairly new with lots of run-off areas. I called the turns for the first lap only and then tried to remain silent the rest of the time. The sounds I made were biological only - in that you can't be yanked around in a 5-point harness without going "HUUUUUH!" at least once. Emil passed any car that was within 40 feet of us. Later, I met one of the drivers he passed. He told me he kept yelling to his co-driver "I'll be damned if I let that new car get past me!" He admitted to chuckling when we flew by. We found that most of the La Carrera "old-timers" were having fun with the new cars being around.

Crowd at Arrival Arch (Day 3 - Queretaro)


The Queretaro arrival was exciting. The arrivals usually took place at the town squares (Zocalos). They were pretty parks surrounded on 4 sides by cool old buildings with shops and restaurants. Beer was always plentiful at the arrivals. In Queretaro, some kids wanted to pose for pictures with me and I looked around for a place to put my beer. I ended up handing it to Bret and saying "I don't want to pose with kids holding a beer!" A girl, about 11 years old, looked up at me and said in perfect English "Don't worry about that - this is Mexico!" I'm not kidding. I also noticed that when the arrival parties had DJs, they were playing Hip-Hop songs that we would NEVER play in public in the U.S. Especially at an event with kids running around.

Crowd at Arrival Arch (Day 3 - Queretaro)


Our awards ceremony that night was in the Art Museum. It was quite lovely, but very chilly!

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I have a theory that when something is prohibited it creates an insane desire for it, as a witness, in Mexico (i'm Mexican) I taste beer for the very first time when I was 6 years old, I ask my father to taste it, he never gave me a full beer, but sips, at 11 my grand father gave me my first tequila shoot, I hated it, and since I can remember I participate in Christmas and new years toast with champagne or other bubble wine.

While in the states (as a tourist) and in Mexican beaches like Cancun , you can see that all US kids act like crazy, all the desire for that taboo is now extreme, while the Mexican kids are normal, because that is something they had all the time, so they know how to drink, the effects, and even to behave.