Wednesday- Oaxaca, Mexico

The Coyote Convoy left Laredo at 6am sharp on Saturday, 11 hours later we pulled in to the beautiful old town of San Miguel de Allende. We had high hopes that it would be our longest haul driving from then on, but it paled in comparison to the 15+ hours it took to drive from San Miguel to Oaxaca. The Coyote Convoy fragmented at some point along the way. Between the varying fuel consumption, cruising speed, or tolerance for our fearless convoy leader´s wrong turns, it became just too difficult to stick together. Generally speaking, this wasn´t a problem, but since we are sans support truck it got a bit sketchy when we found ourselves at 9,000 feet, in a torrential rainstorm, at night, with no mas pesos. Luckily we bumped into Che and Karen somewhere around hour 12 and we stuck with them for the rest of the way into Oaxaca. They changed some dollars into pesos for us and the pucker factor dropped from around 6 to 2.

 The good side to driving the 2,800 miles from Santa Cruz to the start line is that we´ve had ample time to get used to the car. We know now what all the various buttons and indicator lights mean, we know how the mini handles in 2´´ of standing water, and we know how quickly the brakes will bring us to a halt from 90 mph.

 So day one of Tech Inspection was yesterday in downtown Oaxaca´s baseball field,(Go Guerros!), and we *almost* passed. The Pyrotect harnesses and all the work that Jacques did at Bay Bridge Motors was excellent quality and received a stamp of approval. However our helmets turned out to be motorcycle helmets, and we failed based on that. Not a problem though, on day two of Tech there just happened to be a vendor set up selling Simpson open face helmets, (solomente in Baby Blue), but 5,000 pesos later we are legit and have been officially welcomed to the race!

 It took a little longer than expected to buy our helmets and have them painted with our names and blood types, so we´re not going to be able to squeak in a pre pre-qual run of the first leg. But Emil and Keri are doing it in their GT3 and we´ll just copy their notes and pray for the best. We hear there are a few sections that get rough and have some good sized potholes, but we shall see first hand tomorrow regardless.

 We´re now about to sticker up the Mini with all the official La Carrera and Unlimited Class decals, and then we´ll have our first drivers meeting tonight. My father has an old friend that works in the American Consulate office in Oaxaca and we´re meeting him for drinks shortly. If I can buy him enough Cuba Libres, maybe we´ll be able to talk him out of a set of Diplomatic license plates!

 The little bit of news I´ve heard from home is that the entirety of Southern California has decided to catch fire in our absence. I´m sure my compadres at B40 are off on a strike team, so my thoughts are with them all and I hope they stay safe keeping all those movie stars´houses from torching.

 We´ve been fitted with our GPS tracking device now. Please go to http://panamericana.waypointinfo.com and look for us, we´re car 554. I haven´t had a chance to confirm it´s working yet, so drop a comment to the blog if you find us. 

Anyone pick up a copy of the Latest MC2 Magazine? Word is there´s an article featuring a couple loco gringos in a mini cooper s!