Slow Baja - Curt LeDuc Blue-Collar Racer

Episode Date: June 4, 2025

Blue-collar racer Curt LeDuc is a self-made “Imagineer” and Trophy Truck Champion who was born in the unlikely state of Rhode Island. “Why was I born in Rhode Island? Because I wanted to be close to my mother,” LeDuc quips.He has spent decades building and racing his own vehicles at the highest levels of desert racing. LeDuc has achieved notable success, winning the championship in desert class 8 for five consecutive years. He also holds two titles from the Short Course Off-Road Drivers Association, a Governor’s Cup, and a rare and valuable Borg Warner Cup. His impressive career includes victories at renowned events like Crandon, Pikes Peak, the Dakar Rally, and Baja.LeDuc is highly regarded for achieving his accomplishments through hard work and his indomitable spirit. He has earned a reputation for being able to fix anything. Sal Fish once said, “Curt is the guy you want with you in Baja; if he can’t fix it, he knows a guy who can.”I am excited to announce that LeDuc will serve as Mechanic and Sweep for the 2025 Slow Baja Vintage Expedition.Enjoy this conversation with Curt LeDuc, recorded on his 70th birthday.Follow Curt LeDuc on InstagramMentioned in this episode: Curt LeDuc Baja Legends Tour Support the Slow Baja Podcasthttps://www.slowbaja.com/supportBuy Baja Bound Insurance

What's your birth date, Kurt? Today. 70 years ago today. Is that 195? Yes. We march. You know where I was born? No.

Rhode Island. You know why? Why? Because I wanted to be close to my mom. Not funny, Kurt. Kimmy, two tequila sunrises, please. Kurt's throwing out jokes already. Hey, this is.

and Michael Emery. Thanks for tuning into the Slow Baja. This podcast is powered by Tequila Fortaleza, handmade in small batches, and hands down my favorite tequila. Well, if you've been listening to me for a while, you know I'm an absolute minimalist when it comes to Baja travel, but the one thing I never leave home without is a good old paper map. And my favorite is the beautiful, and I mean beautiful Baja Road and Recreation Atlas by benchmark maps. It's an oversized 72-page book, jam-packed with details, and now you can get it from me at slowbaha.com. That's right.

You can get it in the Slowbaha shop, and in fact, you better get two, one for your trip planning at home, and one for your Baja rig. And if you love maps and you can't get enough of them like me, let me tell you about two sites I am absolutely obsessed with. Eastview MapLink and Longitude Maps.com whatever you're looking for in maps, it's there.

From the entire benchmark collection to Baja Wall Maps to custom maps, you'll find it all at longitudemaps.com or EVmaplink.com. You know I've long said it. Ask your doctor if Baja's right for you. Well, if you've been hankering to get down to Slow Baja with me, you've got to check out the Adventures tab at SlowBaha.com. All my trips are there from my famed fall vintage, extravaganza to my winter and summer expeditions which are open to trucks of any age.

You know, on a Slow Baja expedition, your meals are always included, which really does take the sting out of camping. And when we get off the trail, let me tell you, we have the happiest of happy hours. If good dirt roads, private campsites, ranch stays, great food and great people sounds like you're kind of fun, well, you've got to check out the Adventures tab at slowbaha.com. but don't delay. These trips are small, they're highly immersive, and they will sell out. And folks, just so you know, I am always here for you for your Baja trip planning questions. One question, 100 questions, the easy way to get me is slowbaha.com slash contact. And if you'd like to go to Baja and you don't want to go by yourself, you don't have a vintage vehicle,

my winter trip doesn't work out for you. I am happy to talk to you about organizing and leading a private guided tour. I've done it. I've loved it. the pictures are over there at slowbaha.com slash adventures. And you can check them out. And if you've got some questions, let's talk. Coming to you from the Shielman recording booth. Thanks for tuning in to today's Slow Baja.

My heaping dose of gratitude goes out to Kurt Leduc. That's right. The subject of today's podcast is also the recipient of my heaping dose of gratitude. Let me tell you what that is all about, because it's a pretty rare occasion. Kurt Leduc has just signed on to be my sweep and mechanic

for my upcoming Slow Baja vintage expedition to over 11th through 18th, folks, if you got something old, and I'm absolutely stoked. That means you folks with that old stuff, the old stuff like my old stuff, are going to get off the trail. Kurt can fix anything, you know.

He can fix anything. off-road motorsports Hall of Famer, Blue Collar Racing Legend. He's built it all. He's raced it all. He's broken at all. And he has fixed it all.

He asked if I wanted him to bring his battery-operated welder. You know, I said, no, sir, but you can bring your battery-operated blender because he's got one, and it's super cool. You know, this trip is a tribute to Sal Fish, who will also be involved in more on that later

because we're talking about Kurt LaDuke. But this route, this trip is the first 1,000 that Sal and Mickey marked themselves. Mickey was flying overhead in his plane dropping Coke cans with notes in them to Sal, who's down below in a Volkswagen thing, of a salami rolling around underneath the seat. And, you know, it's just hard. It's hard to fathom in this age of technology, how primis. things were, but they got them done. And we are going to run that route to the best of our ability, and it's going to be a ball. And Kurt Friggin' Leduc is going to be the sweep of mechanic. So without further ado, we're going to get into it. It's Kurt Ladook on his birthday, his 70th birthday.

That's right. He's sitting there talking to me, talking to you folks, on his birthday. Without further ado, it is Kurt Ladoek on today's Slow Baja. Kurt Ladoek. Catching up with him. Kurt was my idea as I was driving over here yesterday. What the hell? You're living in Baja? Tell me a little bit about how things are going for you. Seventieth birthday today? Happens to be, pure luck.

Yeah, I have this little casita here in Baja for a couple of years now at Ostero. And we're down here a lot with Ford and a brand new Ford Raptor Bronco in the driveway. Yeah, I noticed that. It's a good-looking truck. Great, great truck. That's a fast Baja, not your version. Yeah, well, it seems like that's the only time I see you now is when you're shepherding those Broncos through the desert. Yeah, so we just did a whale trip, and Kim and I put on these amazing trips like yourself with your groups.

Just we don't camp. We're a little more bougie, you know, hotels and hot showers. People like that. That's a rumor. But, you know, it takes all kinds to come down here and people want adventure and you deliver it and I deliver it. And Baja delivers it. Yeah, I think that's the key. You know, I'm just off of a one week trip.

My group had a great time. I did a week of pre-running before with my daughter and that was just an awful lot of fun. And I think Baja does deliver it. It still delivers. Still delivers. Yeah, even though it's a little more refined than it used to be. A few more paved roads, a little more people, a lot more gasoline. So many more gas stations now.

Yes. Let's take a spin back on the old time machine, Kurt. When did you first come to Baja? Because you're a guy from Massachusetts, and I jokingly called you a mass hole this morning, jokingly. But you're an East Coast boy, and you were incredibly innovative in genius. What did you say before?

you're not an engineer, you're an Imagineer. Right. And you came out and showed the West Coast Boys some stuff. Didn't know I could, but I would just, I just wanted to be challenged in my life. So moving from Massachusetts to Bah, you know, basically to win the Ba'a 1,000 without a plan, just pure grit on my part. And raised my family doing it and built a lot. lot of cars, built almost 70 cars in my life with teams, with Mike Leslie's team and Dick Landfield's team and, you know, a lot of them as part of teams, but a lot out of my own shop,

out of my own head, you know, that Imagineer part. And, you know, to win races, you know, in Crandon and to win Baja races, you know, I accomplish everything on my checklist and, you know, I get to hang out down in Baja more. So it's good time. What did you tell me the last time? Work is only, I'm paraphrasing you. I wish I had this quote straight up recorded here. Work is only work if you'd rather be someplace else.

Correct. You didn't have a boat. You didn't have a weekend house. You didn't have any of that stuff. You were in your shop and you were building. But that's what. That delivery. This is what I'm talking about here, folks.

The off-road Motorsports Hall of Fame 2024 induction glasses, a little umbrella and a tequila sunrise. It's noon. It's noon. It's time. It's for health reasons only, Kurt. I'm going to have a sip. Health reasons, yeah.

But, you know, yeah, you're right. Like, I always, I never had a boat. I never had a river house. I didn't, I just wanted to be in my shop creating the next project, the next challenge. And get them done, get them delivered. And then prove they could win. For folks who aren't completely up to speed with all the innovations and all the ingenuity, you're grassroots guy. People love that you're a grassroots guy. You were never...

I like the thing of I'm a blue collar guy. Absolutely. Utterly approachable. You understood what it took. You were relatable to every guy there and aspirational that, you know, guys who were tinkering in their shops wanted to be Kurt Leuke, building what you build. going as fast as you were going, launching it. Yeah. Where does that come from? What, I mean, what was inside you that had to get out in that way? I don't know any other way. It's just me, you know. I had to over-deliver for my customers, who cars we built, for sponsors, you know, for the tire companies, people that believed in me, just over-delivered my whole career.

And I never had to force myself to get up and go to work. I was up. I was ready. I'd work until I dropped. And that's just me. And there's people in this world that are way more successful, made way more money than me. But I wouldn't trade what I was able to do for anything. So pretty crazy.

Yeah. And a bunch of trophies are going to have to get hauled out to the dump by your kids someday. That's what trophies are. Somebody said to remind your grandchildren that you are somebody when they're taking your stuff to the dump. Somebody cool. Exactly, somebody cool. Yeah. I got my beach umbrellas down.

Party foul. Beach umbrellas down. Well, hey, what a glorious day here in Astero. I saw you here last year when you were doing the charity run with the local kids. and you were taking kids around this little short course that's right out to your back door. The core track. Talk about a little that in Baja.

We were bonding last night over bringing dog food to Rick Howe, and you know, you've got a baseball team. I'm bringing baseball gear. What is it about Baja that makes people want to help people? I think people want to help people everywhere, and not just, you know, just like you see the homeless guy in the corner and half the time you want to run them over and half the time you want to give them 100 bucks.

So down here, it just seems like it's easier to interact and get the response that you're looking for. They're happy, you're happy, and you just feel like you're not taking advantage of anybody. So I don't know, it just pulls the best out of people, I think, when you're down here, you know. Yeah, I had a guy on my trip. We were in Takate at Ranchola Bayota, and it was cold.

I mean, it was cold, frost on the ground. And he was definitely not provisioned properly with his outer wear. And I said, Lee, where's your jacket? He said, oh, on the drive down here, I saw a homeless guy in Las Vegas. He looked a lot colder than I did, so I gave him my jacket. And so, of course, I reached behind my seat, and I've got a weatherproof bag back there that's got four down jackets in it. because in my truck it gets freaking cold. And, you know, you've got the lightweight down jacket,

the vest that goes under the lightweight down jacket, the heavyweight down jacket that goes over the lightweight down jacket and the vest. And then I have another jacket that the Pacifico, Ben Crow, the Pacifico rep for San Diego, gave me that's a fabulous jacket, which I usually sleep in. And so I gave Lee my big heavy-duty, serious, heaviest down jacket. And the next morning we're driving out of the ranch, And it's raining. And we're waiting, you know, for everybody to get down the dirt road and spending a minute.

And I'm sending a text off to Sal Fish. And here comes Lee from 10 cars back walking up with my jacket because he's worried about me now that it's raining. And he's worried that I'm freezing. And I said, no, no, no. I've got a waterproof jacket on. Put your jacket on, Lee. But, you know, it's people helping people, I think, is a beautiful part of this. And it's an untold part of, you know, it's a culture in the racing, I think.

you know, people are, you know, supporting this orphanage or that the school for the deaf or what have you. And I know, again, we talked last night about you adopting a baseball team that's really out in the middle of nowhere and me trying to fix the coordinates in my head so I can swing up there and meet those folks. Vision Gonzaga down by, I can't think of it. Is Epidhia de Los Angeles, that area? No, no, no, no. It's farther south. We're calling David Kier. Hang on, we're throwing a lifeline to David.

Yeah, get a shout out. Constitution. Yeah, thank you, Constitution. Okay, and so that road is the seventh longest straight road in the world. That's amazing. That road in Constitution. But it's the first narrowest straight road. No, it's not that bad.

No. But I'm just, that was a fact I learned from Ken Neal. It used to be the fifth longest straight road in the world. and then somewhere in Saudi Arabia, they built a row this. It's like 25 miles perfectly straight. Well, we're going to back up. We didn't get to it. I was joking about you coming from Massachusetts

and using my colorful vernacular name for people from Massachusetts. You knew that things were happening in Baja, and if you had the goal of winning the Baja 1,000, you couldn't do it from 3,000 miles away. You had to get out here. And how did that play out? Well, so there was guys. Married with kids, right?

Oh, yeah. You had a business that, you know, a great business. Four-wheel parts type store. Retail, construction, you know, fabrication, you know, maintenance, lifts, sold lift kits. And I have to apologize for all these people with the early Broncos because I bought diapers and baby food with putting on those plastic flares on the cutting the fenders out of the suncoes. stock Broncos. You were the guy. I was the guy back there. You were the guy raising the value of every uncouth Bronco. Yeah, I apologize.

But, you know, you had to. You had to do it. If you wanted to buy some white spoke wheels and some Dixiepect tires, you had to cut the fenders. Who's that wheelmaker? Remind me the name of the wheelmaker. Just Jackman? Is it Jackman wheels? That was before, yeah,

Jackman was the original guy. Okay. Out here. Yeah. With the big welds, thick centers and big welds. That was his trademark. But I didn't sell those on the East Coast. It was just regular white spoke wheels by the pallet loads. Anyway, so I just, I read about Baja and I was racing. I would, you know, up and down the East Coast in Canada, signed up dealers. I would make roll cage kits and roll bars because it was too expensive to ship from the West Coast. So every time we go to race,

I have a little display and people would buy these. kits and they wouldn't have to pay shipping. And the next time I went to a race, that's, you know, that I would bring product and, you know, grew my business, you know, one handshake at a time. A little Malcolm Smith liking that. Had the van selling the parts and then racing and then doing it all over again. Yeah. It smuggled stuff into Canada. And, you know, you just found a way I wanted to just come to Baja and met Walker Evans. He invited me out because I needed a pick for the ball 1,000, and I flew out, and he had vans back then, Dodge vans, and came down a thousand till a pause, and he broke, didn't finish, but the vans broke down, the trailer,

the wheels came off, the carrier bearing, the water pumps went out on this group of us heading north, and I fixed them all, all the way home. And Kurt said, I see an opportunity here for a guy like me can fix these things. Yeah. And so Walker always, every time I went to La Paz after that, he called me and I just, I just fell in love with the challenge. I wanted to know why is this here? Why is that mission there? Like, why is there water here? You know, when you first come in to San Ignacio and you see all the water and the mission, you're like, you just got to, you know, Boston has a lot of history. New England has a lot of history. But I was just enthralled with Mexico and figured out how to come out here and make a living. at it. No backup plan. No backup plan. You did say that. You can't, you can't do this stuff if you have a backup plan. You're constantly thinking about what's plan B. Yeah. Too easy to stop. Like slow Baja, too easy to stop. So tell me about that first Baja race. For me, racing, or no, just with Walker. No, the first time you were in a car waiting to race a Baja race. Oh, I race with

John Swift and a Ford Ranger 74x4. 1980s or is just 1990s now? It would have been 86 maybe. Okay, late 80s. 86. You're going real fast. I think I moved in 85. And that's when Simon and Simon was in 74 by 4,

Mike Leslie, Johnny Johnson, 7S, like it was a lot of cars very competitive and we didn't finish. We didn't win. I think we had motor problems. It was a V6 truck. It was problematic engine. But it was just, it didn't deter me at all. I was like, okay, there's a race next year.

There's a race next month. Let's keep going. And let's keep going has kind of been your theme. People, when the sport changed, when all the manufacturers pulled out, everybody's like, a lot of people just up and stopped. People kept saying to me, Kurt, you all right? always land on your feet. It's like, I don't, what, I don't have a choice. I'm not a plumber. I'm not a contractor. Obviously, I'm not a contractor. You look at my workmanship. Kurt is, uh, Kurt is showing me

the staircase that he built, um, up to his sun deck, which were, which was a, uh, a potential location for the shoot today. And I made a, uh, quip as I went up the stairs. I said, I don't think these stairs are to code, Kurt. No, no code. There's a tough, there's a tough, uh, uh, dissent after a few margaritas, I think. Kurt, you've got a VHS tape next to you there called Never Lift. Can we get into, again, the ingenuity of this, the ingenuity of building your brand in an era before social media. I mean, people all have brands now. Every racer has to be a brand.

You did it decades ago. You created this thing. you relentlessly marketed this thing and you for years and years got to hear feedback from wives saying my husband

and you tell the tale guys I mean this this is how long ago this came out in VHS tape and you might have to explain what VH yeah let me tell you kids

there was a thing before yeah but eventually when DVDs came out we sold them on DVDs but we sold them all around you know we had distributors in Australia and we could you could buy them in all the off-road shows like overlanding shows but there wasn't much off-road racing on TV because of a few things that had happened and crusty demons of dirt came out with all the crazy stuff the very first one and uh jason moriarty made

movies about snowmobiles all the crazy snowmobile stuff back flips and jumping off mountains and And so I teamed up with him to, you know, I wanted to do this video for my sport, you know, to grow my brand, not thinking that way, but, and it was an opportunity. And so we spent a year filming. And to film back then, there was no Gopros. So behind me is the setup it required to. And we are going to get into a detailed film work of that. Yeah. But it's an engineering.

Recorder. Yeah, it's an engineering feat to say the least. A full-sized microphone. I had to build my own motor winder, you know, to keep the, and, you know, film it. So I use it at Pike's Peak. And back then I was going to Dakar, so it's got, it's got Baja in it, it's got short course. And we sold them. And so now for my 70th birthday, we're doing a fundraiser here at Astero, and it's going to, we're going to re-release, Neverlift and DVD.

And the proceeds are going to go to, Micasa Esperanza with Dennis Hollenbrecht, the Class 11 champion, to build a new classroom, you know, for the school. There's more kids. You know, you've, you know, we do a fundraiser here every year for them at Astero. And so I just thought it's a way to give back again, you know, just it's, it's more work, it's more time, it's more money, but I think it's the right thing to do. So, and hopefully enough people come out and support it and be able to make a sizable donation to get this classroom built. And is that for your, today is your actual birthday. Right.

Which I'm so lucky that I stumbled in and said, can I come by and see you? And next weekend is the swap meet. Yeah, and then the weekend after is the party. And the weekend after is the party. Which will be about the time this podcast drops if I'm lucky. So you won't get to hear it here first, folks. But again, it's just, you know, people come down here. People like to bring clothes.

People like to bring donations. You know, the orphanages are well supported by the race teams. You know, I think, you know, score puts Ensenada in the eyes of the world. And that's good for the town. The cruise ships come. You know, there's a lot of race memorabilia in town. So, you know, off-road racing has helped this part of the country immensely. for decades.

So, you know, I'm just trying to do my little piece of it. Yeah. Can you tell me a little bit about what made you decide you wanted to be here and you're not retired? I don't think you'll ever retire. I don't think you can retire. You can't. I can't stop. But I slow down a little bit.

But what made you decide you wanted to live in Baja most of the year or part of the year? Just saying, we've been down here so much and Kim and I spent years. It's looking all the way up and down the coast from Cabo, you know, stayed with friends, looked at places, figured out, and we just kept coming back to Astero. It's, you know, it's two hours from the border, you know, I don't want to, Loretto's beautiful, you know, mule hay, but just to be able to go back and forth, because I don't think I can never stop going back and forth. You still have my shop at home.

Right. Still like projects. Still like to build stuff. Is your shop two hours north of the border? Yeah. So you're four hours-ish door-to-door? Door-to-door. At least coming south, going north, you never know.

Well, we have sentry so far. Got a front license plate. I'm nervous because my Bronco doesn't have a, it's a Michigan plate and they don't have a front. There you go. Well, maybe you know a guy. Maybe you'll get better treatment than I got. You had a tough year last year. Can we talk about that a little bit?

It was a challenging year with my son passing away and racing with my grandkids and the trophy carts. It was heartwarming and devastating all at the same time, but the problem was I never owned a one-cylinder race car with a chain. So it was a big learning curve on my part. But it was good to see the kids happy with their racetrack friends running around, taking them fishing. And you know, Reed's teaching me how to fish. And Kim and I drove 6,000 miles last year. Crisscrossed the country. It just, it was a big road trip, but it helped a lot.

It helped a lot. Can you tell me a little bit about Kyle and his life? He did a hell of a life. Just he got sick. And like it was just my, everybody has a cancer story. It was just my turn. And we drove back there. We flew back there.

We did what we could to try to make sure things were handled, and he thought he was going to get better. The sport raised $100,000 for him, and we were going to get him into Mexico for some treatments, and just he never got well enough to do it. So you just never know. When I saw you the last time you said you basically, you just powered through working, just staying busy.

Yeah. Well, yeah, you can't let it eat. eat you alive. So yes, I, you know, people would criticize me because I did keep working through it. But everybody handles it different. I just, I don't, I don't know. Someday it might hit me like a ton of bricks, but till then, yeah, I have memories. I have photos. He made a lot of, you know, I did a lot of the right stuff in his life. So we don't, can't explain any of it. Yeah, and your kids grew up doing this stuff with you. You had your kids all the time doing this stuff.

They had... So it wasn't unnatural that one would follow you into this sport? No, because I didn't know any other way. You know, I taught them all how to weld and how to use a tubing bender. And, you know, Kyle took it to the next level. Todd was a heck of a driver. He didn't like working on the car as much as Kyle, but you'd give him a hot rod. He put it out front.

He won with it. So, different, Valerie raced a little bit, and, you know, she's still doing good, hanging out on,

doing her own thing, her own life, not that far from where I live. So it's, yeah, I mean, you know, everybody says when they have kids,

oh, when this kid's 18, he's out of my life. Like, I'm going to throw him out. And it's like, they're never out of your life. Your kids are with you

until the day you die. You know, you're always looking out for him. And you're never happy unless all your kids are happy. Yeah, that's for sure. You know that too, right? Yeah, that's for sure. And things are going good.

Just give it a week. Yeah, exactly. On this profound moment of parenting, we're taking a break right here for a word for Baja Bound. So we'll be right back with Kurt Leduc, catching up with Kurt on his 70th birthday. Here's Little Baja, we can't wait to drive our old land cruiser south of the border. When we go, we'll be going with Baja Bound insurance. Their website's fast and easy to use. Check them out at Bajabound.com.

That's Bajabound.com, serving Mexico travelers since 1994. Hey, big thanks to those of you who've contributed to our Baja baseball project. You know, we launched our gear deliveries on my winter expedition. Michael and Matthew from Barbers for Baja, we're along for the ride, and we got to deliver that critically needed baseball gear up and down the peninsula. It was really, truly amazing. And on my last trip, I got to go to the state baseball championships and see some of our alums playing, some recipients of the Baja Baseball Gear Deliveries.

And congratulations to Guerrera Negro and Muley, the Austenaros and the Cardinalitos won silver and bronze at the state championships. Big stuff. It's really fun to be there and fun to see them. All right, well, please help us continue this vital work. Make your tax-deductible donation at the Barbers for Baja. click barbers for baha.org, click the baseball in baha link, and I thank you from the bottom of my heart. I really do.

It is so amazingly gratifying to be able to give these kids this chance to keep playing this sport. Keep them on the field. Keep them out of trouble. Please check it out. Baseball in Baja link at barbers for baha.org. Thank you. I want to tell you about these new rocky, talky radios that I absolutely love. heavy duty, beautifully made, easy to program, easy to use.

We had 28 people, 15 trucks on the Slow Baja Winter Expedition. You can hand these radios to anybody from a 14-year-old kid to an 80-year-old, and they'll know how to use it. They are that well-designed. One charge lasted the entire week. We are never out of range. I happen to upgrade to the accessory whip antenna for my radio and for my sweeps radio. and for my sweeps radio, the Donovan Brothers, we were never out of contact.

I can't say it strongly enough. Rocky Talky Radio's, RockyTocky.com. Check them out. Slow Baja approved. We're back with Kurt LaDuke. Hey, we're back. We're back. Thanks, Baja Bound for keeping everybody safe and well insured.

Yeah, we had a little fun talking Baja today looking at the benchmark. map looking at and that's just what's so great about having a good map you get to get to spread it out on a table and put your dirty fingernails on this spot and look at that spot and over here and talk about how this route is and that that beach that's got big rocks on it and I don't I really don't get that same feeling hovering over a iPhone screen with some sort of mapping app there I think it's much better to have it maybe it's an age thing but everybody's like Google Earth oh Google Earth I'm like, yeah, whatever. I remember one time coming down here.

Yeah, whatever, you kids. I had a little Ford Ranger, and it was my shop truck. When I got it out here, I put a cage in it, made it four-wheel drive so I could pre-run. I was racing the Ford, and I pulled up near the Compadre Trail, and it was getting dark. And there's another pre-runner buggy sitting there, two guys. And they get out and they come walking over to me and I get out and I put a marker to was falling. You know, I marked my pit where I wanted my chase guys to be. And the guys goes, you know where you are?

I go, yeah. And they said, you have Massachusetts plates on that truck. I go, yeah. He's like, well, where's this road going? Well, if you go this way, it goes to those negroes. If you go that way, it goes that way, it goes to that way. goes to the Kadi and if you go this way it's about a two hour long deal to come down in Densonada and I know how to get here from Massachusetts without a map

they got in their truck put on our belts they know they just sit there and looked at each other like huh does it really know was that there was nobody yeah it was you know like maybe the second year I lived out here Who was that dusty-faced man? Yeah. Can you talk about your famous media moment when you said when you die? Oh, I don't know if I can remember at all. But anyways, down here, when I was racing the Donovie trophy truck,

I climbed the ladder from seven, four by four to class three to class six. And then the big leap to trophy truck, you know, and help write the rules for it. So all this is rolling around in my head pre-running, and I wrote this little deal in my head. And I knew to deliver it, I had to get to La Paz. And back then, we all soloed. There was no team drivers. Like, you drove 200, 300 or half. No, you started Ensenada, and you got out in La Paz.

That's the way it was. That's the way it was. I'd switch co-drivers in San Ignacio. It's kind of like baseball in the old days where the pitcher just pitched the entire game and extra innings. They didn't go through seven pitching changes. So anyway, so I delivered this deal at the end, and it made the TV show. We'll have it in, and we'll clip it in, folks. But it's a beautiful quote of when I die, I want to be reincarnated as a cactus.

So I got my helmet off in the race car, and they're interviewing me. I think I was, I think I got fourth. I think Walker Beating. Yeah, you were racing for third. Yep. The only reason Walker beat me is because that's another story. But Walker's, I don't want to steal any of Walker's glory. But I said, yeah, when I die in my next life, I want to come back as a giant carding cactus,

about 100 miles north of La Paz. And even though I can't see or hear, I'll feel the ground shake. I'll know that things are okay in the world because fathers and sons and daughters are going to challenge themselves and come to Baja. And some motorcycle rider too tired to push on will sit in my shade and gather his strength and then push on to the finish. Anyways, and they, it made the show. Yeah. But it helped grow my brand, not again. not thinking that way.

It was just something I felt like I had to say. And in order to say it, I had to get to the finish. And I had to deliver it. And I think when we spoke last, you said that basically, because that did make the show, it did get you your sponsor deal renewed for the next year, which is also critical. Because you, yes, you had to deliver. I didn't win the race, but I got as much TV time as the guy who interviewed.

is the guy who did. Right. And so when they do that at the end, they have to go back when they do the show and go, well, we got a show LaDucke racing. And so there's different land shots, there's some helicopter shots. And so people, I don't know how I'm wired that I think like that,

but that's just the way I am. And I told my kids when they were young, and they would always make fun of me. I'd come out to Riverside and race from Massachusetts. And they would, you know, Ms. Lou TV was a deal and the H.S tapes I had of it. And they interviewed me before the race. And they said, no idea who I was.

And they said, what do you think about this race here at Riverside? It was a land rush start like Crandon. And I said, well, I'm just a hand grenade sitting online ready to pull the pin. And my kids would always make fun of me. They'd watch it over and over and over in the house and make fun of me. And when they got older and started racing, I said, listen, if you have to have something already ready in your head, that thing I did was so stupid, but they used it. So anybody that's watched that race wonders who's this guy from Massachusetts. And I ended up winning and leading and racing Walker.

And everybody's like, who is this duck guy? You know? And it was just like, it's always worked. Well, it's been real nice for me to get to know a little bit of who this duck guy is. And, Kurt, I want to change gears here. And I'd just like you to show me this kit in an era before GoPro's. What you thought up to be able to try and put people in the truck with you and show a little bit about what it was like when that just wasn't happening. We talked a little bit about the film Grand Prix

where they had cameraman strapped to the front of Formula One cars and holding a camera. Holding a camera. And of course, guys with motorcycles would have a VHS camera bolted to their helmets. Exactly. Graham, I have a picture on my phone of Graham Hill,

the Formula One racer in the 60s with a big camera bolted on his head. And, you know, that goes back into the 50s filming at LaMalle and other places. But to do it in the dirt, where it's jiggling around and all that. I want to just grab my camera and have you walk me through a little of this stuff. So let's take a second to do that.

Sure. And then you have to fix my carburetor and we'll get out of here. All right. Talk to me. What is this machine here? Okay. So this is what it took. So they had roof cameras in NASCAR when they first started coming out.

And I said to myself, man, that's cool. Like, I want to do something like that for off-road. Then they did it so they could be transmitted live. Going this way. Let's move all that gear into the shade here. So I can see it. Beautiful. All right, tell me about all this stuff.

So back in the day, they all, you know, they had the big, you used to be able to put a full-size tape in the camera. So they came out with a newer one called Super 8. This is a Super 8 recorder. So this box would be a big, this box would be mounted in the back of the race car and it would have this recorder. And so the guy would have to, one of your crew guys would have to come over here. He'd have to start it, shut it, Zeus the lid on and it would record.

And so at the time, this is the smallest tulip camera I could buy in Hollywood. And so had to fabricate a mount. would just mount to the front bumper, back bumper, whatever. And, but then to get, to keep the screen clean, I had to use motorcycle roll-offs, you know, that you would have. And so I built this device that goes on here, mounts on the camera, to protect it. And to make the motor winder, I went to Home Depot and I bought an electric screen.

screwdriver, a rechargeable electric screwdriver, and use that to run the motor. Well, the problem with that is once you turned it on, it would just keep going until all the film was gone, it didn't last long. So then, in the old days, if you didn't have intermittent wipers on your 75 or 85 Ford station wagon, you could buy a kit like this, and it would, it had a timer in it. And so I wired a start button here to get the film wrapped. And then once it was powered, it would, on an intermittent, it would just, didn't wait for it to get dirty.

It was just on a timer. And so this is how, you know, we got the video. And then you had to have a full-size microphone, like what you're using here, and an amplifier to tie into it. And then this had to be, because this would, if it wasn't padded, it would skis ship. So we had to build this box so that it would, you know, absorb the shock of landing on the cars. And it had a battery, separate charger for it, cables, front to back. And when it was real muddy, we'd have to face the camera backwards because it would jam this. And that's what it took

to build your first VHS. So even all the race cars I have, when you're watching the movie, realizes this is what we were using to record it. And we got the rights from Metallica to use, give me fuel, give me fire to this day. And it's just, you know, I just, I had a passion for this sport and I wanted to share it. So like Mickey Thompson, like same thing when he was racing Baja and he said he invented the Mickey Thompson Stadium Series.

He's like, I want to bring, you know, my sport, this excitement to where anybody can see it. Well, this was my way of doing it before GoPro, a long before GoPro. No engineering challenge too great for Kurt LaDuke. That's what I see. How many of those do you think he sold? I probably sold 40,000 of DVDs and VHS tapes. And I bet half of those are more were person to person with somebody standing right in front of you saying, wow. A lot of them were through dealers, but yeah, every time we'd go somewhere, we'd have some.

So it's like Graham McIntosh. Every time he goes out to dinner, he brings a few books, helps his economy. But this really helped my sport. Of course, there was a lot of videos made after that. And then when my kids started racing, we started filming for Never Lift 2. But I have a lot of raw footage, but we never took the effort to produce it again. And it had changed. It was more on TV.

You know, it was, it just got. You know, the Baldwin's came up with the zip cameras, you know, before they had the drone shots and they had a steel cable with a camera on it. You know, they would run the cars down, you know, the controllers and video. And so it's just part of the evolution of this sport. Now it's live streaming, you know, with the Starlink, you know. But, and it's really expensive and sometimes it works and it's always going to get better. And so the future is amazing. You know, people say, well, you know, what do you think of today's generation?

Kids don't work hard and they don't really have a plan. They live in their mom's basements. No, there's, don't ever give up hope on people because somebody knew is going to come along and revolutionize everything we know. On that profound note, Kurt, thanks for spending some of your birthday with me. All right. See you guys. Thanks, buddy.

We did it. Boom. Brooks and done. Well, I hope you like that show with Kurt LaDuke. And I got a big shout out to Kimmy, too. You know, she couldn't be better. She is so wonderful. Bacon brownies, making chila keelis for breakfast.

I slipped in a tequila sunrise just because I was being a smart ass and asked for one. And, you know, the funniest thing, I asked Kimmy and Kurt how they met. And Kimmy was in line getting Kurt's autograph. She was with somebody else and Kurt was with somebody else. And Kurt, without looking up from signing the poster, asked her where she had learned her Spanish. And without missing a beat, said, in prison? Well, anyways, they're wonderful and they couldn't have been kinder to me. And I just want to say, if you like what I'm doing, if you like, get these podcasts,

these intimate podcasts sitting in people's homes, making the effort, spending the night, night putting in the work, drop a taco in the tank. Go to slowbaha.com slash donations. Drop a taco. And if you're there and you're going to drop one taco, drop a few, you know. I can use them. I can use them. Anyways, if you're over there at slowbaha.com, you can also check out the store by your

entry for the Slow Baja Vintage or maybe the Slow Baja Winter Expedition 2026. Those are both in the store. buy that deluxe canvas shopping bag the black t-shirt is in stock in all sizes i've got the hats in all sizes and all style stickers too and a replen on white t-shirts coming you know it's summer white t-shirts are coming so take a look for those they'll be out soon okay well i'm going to tell you now about my my old pal slow bah-ha alum mary mcgee she had a dear dear friend named steve the queen and he loved bahaw he really did he said you know Mary, you've got to come to Baja with me because Baja's life, anything that happens before or after,

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