Our team headed south for a week of prerunning prior to the race. Morton and his company, Baja Bound, handled the logistics of our pits with a combination of his guys and remote assistance from a pitting group called Mag 7. Our spare sets of wheels were spread out the length of the peninsula with gas stops about every 70 miles, with some stretches nearing 100. BMW of Mexico was super-stoked we were racing and even offered two standard GS1200s for use as spare parts donors (which ended up being a really good thing). Race day was approaching, and we seemed dialed. Our plan called for Street to ride from the start in Ensenada to near Puertecitos, 200 miles into the race over on the gulf side. From here, Donatoni would get on for the high-speed section across the middle of the peninsula to San Ignacio, where I would be waiting. Here we would mount the lights and then Tim and I would share the night-riding duties for the last 500 miles.
No problemo! See, everything was about finishing. We never intended to win; crossing the finish line would be victory for us. Things were looking great. With my teammates all having less than 20 minutes on the bike prior to racing the monster, they were a little apprehensive about going full speed on it. Street took off and had a smooth ride all the way through his incredibly rough section. He got passed by a few guys and passed a few himself, actually running ahead of our estimated pit schedule.
Donatoni got on the bike, second place in Class 30 (Vet), and raced back and forth for third through his whole section, bringing the bike to me right on time as the sun set on the highway above San Ignacio. Here we shut off the bike, threw it on the stand and, in a matter of minutes, changed both wheels and put on our good lights. Dave wished me luck and I hit the starter button only to be greeted with silence. Followed immediately by a collective groan from our support team. No problem, it might have been something simple, such as a clutch switch or a loose battery connection, but everything checked out. It didn't bump-start, and that's when things became interesting.
See, the BMW GS1200 motor is nearly as complicated as your late-model emissions-friendly car. It has a host of electronic features that range from heated grips to servo-assisted ABS-linked brakes. None of those features were on our race bike, but we were using the same engine-management system and computer as a bike equipped with all those features. And along with this fine luxury package comes theft protection, symbolized by three letters, EWS, flashing on the instrument cluster. I don't know what the letters stand for, but it means the bike thinks it has been stolen and will refuse to start. No electric starter, no fuel, no spark! How's that-halfway through the Baja 1000, our bike "realized" we were riding it as if we had ripped it off and it wouldn't start again.
Evidently what happened was when we moved the key from its proper location (to make room for the frame-mounted light), the chip-equipped key sent fault codes to the computer telling the bike it has been tampered with. After all this time, the bike finally realized in its cyborg mind that we'd jacked with it and it wasn't going to have it anymore.
Nearly four hours later we got the bike started. Through the combination of my German friends, with their knowledge of the bike's computer, a guy at the pits who was a Lexus or Acura mechanic and had dealt with security keys, the spare BMW of Mexico GS1200 off of which we'd cut the key and computer with a die grinder and a Sawzall (since it was security bolted onto the spare bike) and finally a Terminator-like extraction of security chips from various keys, we were officially banditos in Baja. And now we were going to ride it as if we'd stolen it and pray it didn't leave us out in the dark, Baja night with the coyotes.