Ya Had To Be There

How many times have you heard that? Or, "You should have been there!" In the year before Jon and I ran the 2007 La Carrera Panamericana I was sponging every tid bit of information, facts, stats, video and articles that I could get my hands on. There were even a few websites and blogs that had been posting regularly but once everyone left for Mexico it seemed as if they were virtually cut off from the entire world. All the blogs went silent and the websites were sparse with minimum details at best and what few did have something seemed for the most part to only be about a specific car or team. I told myself that when Jon and I got down there that would change and I would find time to make regular post so that anyone wanting to find out how things were going could.

That was just before all my good intentions went right down the crapper. What I quickly found out was while sitting at home in the evening relaxing with a computer only a few feet away, it's easy to keep a blog updated. But once you are trying to race a car all day, then get to a shower, dinner, awards ceremony, work on the car for tom morrow, talk strategy with your team and a few thousand other details there isn't any time left to do anything let alone worry about what the folks back home are doing. Now even "IF" you did have time to sit and relax in front of a computer there are a few other things to consider. First of all, shouldn't you be getting some well deserved and needed sleep? Then there are a few problems like, even the finest hotels in Mexico do not have but two or three computers and yet just about every team involved in the race want the same thing you want... a computer! So then you hold your place in line until you get a computer only to learn, "WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU ONLY HAVE DIAL UP!!! AND IT'S IN SPANISH!!!" The common quote on every one's blog reads, "I will post photos later."

The facts are, it's is impossible to maintain any good reporting with what limited time and computer availability you have during that week. By the time you drag your weary butt back home the last thing on your mind is to sit down and blog. That means that by the time you do begin to rejoin any normal semblance of the real world you have forgotten a lot of what took place. As a matter of fact here it is a year latter and I still have to ask my team mates... "What day did we almost hit that donkey? Was that in Tehuacan or was it after Aguascalientes? What day did that beautiful BMW crash? Was he ahead of us or behind us?"

There is so much to tell and every time I talk with another team member or driver they remind me of something else I had forgotten all about. There is just so much excitement that it's impossible to remember it all let alone tell others about it.

But wait.... The REALLY good news is, every single stage, both transit and race, have been documented with state of the art video equipment and our cameraman has hours of film of all the cars in the race both in city squares with thousands of fans as well as race footage and more. Better yet it's all high definition!!! It has taken the producers literally hundreds of hours to edit this documentary and I am not talking about handy-cams in the hands of amateurs. The three production companies involved are leaders in the industry each in their perspective fields. Besides, NOTHING tells a story of excitment, beauty, exhilaration, melodrama and danger better than film! As soon as they are finished you won't have to hear.. "You should have been there!"