Pic: Jean Turner / FIM
to allow for two and a half days of running. We had
hoped for six!
Mike Cook’s container, with all the timing and course
equipment arrived at the same time. Mike and his crew
had quite a challenge to get the course set up, ready for
our runs.
“It might get there,” was a constant emotional roller
coaster for Al Lamb hearing about his containers ship-
ping problems. “It’s not going to make it … there’s a
chance we can get it … no, it doesn’t look good”.
It was a huge disappointment … racers do not like to
be spectators. Al was very philosophical about the situ-
ation, but I know he was wishing he could be out on the
salt.
Showing up at a remote location, expecting to be
totally immersed in motorbikes and racing, evaluating
data, changing strategies to cope with the conditions and
hoping to go faster than the year before … and kind of
having nothing to do. It was a very odd experience.
Two of my crew members, Nick Capra and Mike Sa-
lembini, had been to Bolivia the year before. The other
members; my son David, videographers Alex Dryer and
Greg Maple, and all-round helper Gordon Reunitz had
not. We spent a couple of days seeing the town of Uyuni,
the train graveyard and cactus island, but I was really
feeling kind of lost, not sure what we should be doing.
It was interesting, when the bikes finally arrived,
everything fell into place, it was sort of obvious what
we needed to do. I suddenly felt at ease, excited by the
comfortable familiarity of bike prep routines and a clear
goal.
Amidst great excitement we all piled into the rented
Toyota SUVs and headed to the course on the morning
that the trucks and containers arrived. The course was a
long way from the hotel, it seemed like it took about an
hour to get there. With the containers, trucks and cranes
all assembled there was the usual discussions and wav-
ing of arms to decide where to set up the pit area.
The containers are sealed for customs purposes and
we assumed that the truck drivers dealt with that all the
time and would have bolt cutters or some way to cut the
seals and open the container. Never assume!
The seals were tough, but they finally managed to cut,
pound, pry and mangle the one off our container so we
could get the battery powered grinder and cut the seals
off Cook’s and Akatiff’s containers.
I’d noticed that the salt was very wet. In 2017, it was
so dry, you could sit or put a knee down and the salt
wouldn’t stick … not even a wet patch! Not so this year.
It was soggy.
We heard that there had been a snowstorm two weeks
earlier and it had left 6 inches of snow on the salt. The
snow had melted, and the water remained. Nothing to
TRAVERSE 13