Slow Baja - Ivan "Ironman" Stewart Baja It's All About The Adventure

Episode Date: April 3, 2023

For most off-road racing fans, Ivan “Ironman” Stewart needs no introduction. Stewart utterly dominated off-road and stadium racing in the 1980s and 90s. Born in 1945, Stewart grew up in East County, San Diego. As a youngster, he raced go-carts, competing on street circuits on both sides of the border.  Stewart made the unlikely leap to off-road racing in 1973. Scheduled to co-drive the Ensenada 300 in a Class 2 buggy with his friend Bill Hrynko --before the race, Hrynko broke his leg. Stewart raced the event solo, virtually unheard of then, and won! A tradition and a nickname were born.  In 1983, Stewart joined PPI Motorsports, Toyota’s factory-backed race team. At the time, Stewart was seeking a ride from an American manufacturer --“something with a V-8 motor.” The 4-cylinder motor and the Japanese truck didn’t sound like a winning combination to Stewart.  Cal Wells, head of PPI, stressed the reliability and the better weight-to-horsepower ratio of the Toyota and talked Stewart into taking the ride. This unlikely marriage created one of racing’s longest and most successful relationships. Stewart and Toyota teamed up for over 30 years resulting in unparalleled success in the Mickey Thompson Stadium Series and SCORE Off-Road desert racing. Slow Baja would like to thank Carol Mears for her help in arranging this conversation. We would also like to thank Ivan and Linda Stewart for their generosity in opening their home and making time for us. Learn more about Ivan Stewart here. Follow Ivan Stewart on Facebook here. Photos courtesy of Kurt Scherbaum see more of his photography here.

This podcast is powered by Tequila Fortaleza, handmade in small batches, and hands down, my favorite tequila. Hey, folks, it's that time of the year again. It is the Nora Mexican 1000. The Slow Baja Safari class is your ticket into the happiest race on earth. We take the green flag every morning. We drive the best stages, but we've got a little time. We're going to stop. We're going to take photos. We're going to take a little swim, maybe buy an ice cream cone.

And we're going to get back across the finish line in time for a shower and get cleaned up and watch the racers come in. And then we all go to the big fiesta each night, have a fine dinner. And back at it the next day. It's five days to get from Ensenada to San Jose del Cabo. We start on April 30th in Ensenada, and we end up with a huge beach party, May 5th, Cinco de Mayo at San Jose del Cabo. It is a major league adventure in the Slow Baja Safari class is your ticket in. For more information, N-O-R-R-A, that's Nora.com, or you can always message me through Slow Baja. Hey, it's Michael Emery, and I'm so stoked to bring you this Slow Baja conversation. Just back from the Baja X-Rally, and Kaiser and I, my podcast producer Kaiser, got his first trip to Baja.

We had an amazing trip, 3,000-ish miles, mostly on dirt, and we've got some great conversations to bring you, starting with today's. Today's conversation is with the legend, Ivan Iron Man Stewart. I've got a heaping dose of gratitude goes out to Carol Mears, wife to Off Road Hall of Famer Roger Mears, rival to Ivan Stewart. They're friends now, folks. They are friends now. Carol confirmed that. but she connected me to Ivan and she connected me to Johnny Johnson. I'm so glad that she did.

We had a great conversation. Ivan invited us over to his house and we got there a little late because we had some carburetor troubles in Slow Baja. But we got there and he was gracious and we sat down in the sun and had a conversation about his terrific career and his passion for Baja. And without further ado, Ivan, Iron Man Stewart, the legend on Slow Baja. It's Slow Baja. I'm with the legend. Ivan Iron Man Stewart. I'm at your house somewhere south of San Felipe. I'm not going to tell anybody where you are. And we're going to get right into some big numbers here. Numbers. You've won 17 Baja 500s. Is that a record? Yeah, I think it still holds today. Larry Rossler is pretty close to me, but he's raced on motorcycles. and a lot of different class. And all mine were, a majority of mine were overall.

So there's a lot of class wins, but I raced in trophy trucks and class one and all that. So most of mine were overall wins. Ahead of motorcycles, the whole thing. Yeah, well, guys are hard. I beat them before, but they're hard to beat, I'll tell you. Yeah, overall, yeah. Right.

Well, 2019, you were the first inductee in the off-road racing category in the Motorsports Hall of Fame. In the Hall of Fame of America, yeah, that was really, special. You've got 84 career victories, 10 drivers championships, 17 Baja 500s, 8 Mint 400s, 4 Parker 400s, 3 Baja 1000s, 4 score world championships. And you've been married for 55 years. Am I right on that?

Yeah, pretty close. Tell me about Linda. Great memories. Oh, yeah. We got married when we were 17 years old. Is that your greatest career victory? Yeah, really, it really is. Almost 60 years now, so we're...

Let's get back to that first race, 1973. Yeah, I raced with a high school friend of mine, got my name of Bill Rinko who's since passed away, but he had sold a house and had some money and said, Ivan, I want to go racing. We knew Lynn Chenet and we knew Johnny Johnson, but we'd never race. And he said, I'm going to build a race car, a two-seat buggy.

And why don't you help me with it? it, help me work on it, and I'll let you ride with me. So we did that for two or three races, and I just absolutely hated riding. That wasn't my cup of tea at all to ride in an off-road race car. So one day before a big race, he broke his leg, and he called me and said, Ivan, he says, I can't, I can't make the race, I'm making the race, but I can't drive. You're going to have to drive the whole, it was an Inconata 300-mile race in a little place called Santa Tomas. Anyway, I drove it, and we won that race, and then the next race was like the Baja 500.

He says, hey, you're doing so darn good. He said, just, won't you start, do the first half, and then at the halfway point, I'll get in, and that way he'd get the drive, and I'd start. He didn't like to start. It was a lot of congestion and stuff at the start of the race. And so anyway, we'll be doing good at the halfway point. He said, oh, hell, just keep going.

You know, we might win this thing. We did, we won the 500, and then we just won more races. So that was kind of the start of, of me realizing that, but I had more experience than a lot of guys because I'd raise go carts when I was in the 50s.

Yeah, let's talk about that. In the late 50s. You were born in 1944. Do I have that correct? 45. 45. 45. So when I was about 10, 11 years old, 55 or thereabouts,

they had races in Ensonata through the streets. I raced in Mexico, through the streets. I raced in Calexico and I raised Takati on the airstrip. So I had quite a bit of racing experience Over a lot of the guys that were starting to race off-road

So I knew not so much about how to drive off-road But I understood motorsports a little bit more than they did So it became a little easier for me And I think I always had a feel for it Just like, well buddy Johnny Johnson I never seen anybody with a feel for off-road racing like he had It's still this You know, to this day

You wouldn't be slow by away long ways Was your dad a racer at all? No, you know, I didn't. I didn't have any, the only person I had in my immediate family was my, my oldest sister's husband, race jalopi's in Bobo Stadium and some places like that. And I kind of got a, I like that. And then I, Parnelli Jones was always a favorite of mine before we started racing this, because he could race anything if Pike's Peak and Indianapolis off-road anything, he did it. So Parnelly was always a hero of mine that I had on a pedestal. I still do, to this

day. I mean, we're still friends, and he was one of the guys that, and Lynn Chenith, listening to Len Story's short, because he started racing just about a year or so before I did. So all those guys, Johnny Johnson, Lynn Chandler, Jones, Walker Evans, those are the guys that were my heroes. And I just had to figure a way to do this. I don't know how I'm going to do it, but I'm going to figure out how to get into off-road racing. And that's about the time Bill Rinko, the guy that broke his leg. Fell off a ladder. It fell off a ladder and approached me to do it.

Pursue it. Yeah. That's how I started. So you're born in Oklahoma? Where'd you grow up? Born in Oklahoma, Tulsa, Oklahoma, and then grew up in San Diego. All right. East County.

My wife and I bought. That's one of the best places to grow up if you want to be a little bit. That's a great place. Yeah. All right. What brought your dad out there? What brought your family there? Work.

You know, opportunities work. Yeah. Found a job where there wasn't much in Oklahoma at that time in the, you know, in the 40s and 50s. And you and Linda, you said got married at 17. Yeah, I was 18, she was 17. That's the way you used to do it in those days. Yeah, yeah, right. And you had a good job.

You're doing some fence working, if I have my notes correct? Well, I worked in the fencing industry, commercial fencing, prisons, tennis courts, baseball diamonds, all commercial stuff. And I loved it. I mean, that was another goal that I had, and I loved doing that, and that kept me in shape. So when it went, well, it comes to off-road racing, you know, I was in good shape being an ironworker. laborer and I worker and being on that field that it was pretty easy for me to adapt. Well, you start racing, you win your first race in 73. Do I have that correct? Yep, 73. That was the insinata. Bill breaks his leg. You win the insinada 300.

That's right. You get a pretty good payday. See, that was in a two-seat buggy. And at the time, if you were going to move up, you needed to go, It was kind of a pecking order that I started off in a two-seat buggy, and then I knew that I needed to move into a single-seat buggy, which was getting more recognition because they would have went overall. And then, so I found, you know, I drove a single-seat buggy and run some races, teamed up with Johnny Johnson a couple times, and build my way up to where I wanted to get into a truck,

because I knew that it was the Ford Dodge, Dodge, Chevrolet, or Toyota. At the time, well, back in the 70s, you didn't even hear. about Harley Toyota. I mean, that was just, people couldn't even pronounce it. And so anyway, I knew I wanted to get into a truck, so I got into a Ford with a Ford agency, a guy by name Cocoa Corral and his wife, then a chivalet agency in San Clemente that was a Joe McPherson, drove his truck for a while. And then we got Walker Evans to build me a truck, and then I started building a name and a reputation. and I was starting to collect a lot of wins and championships. And then about 1982, Cal Wells called me and asked me if I'd be interested in driving a Toyota,

which I told him, no, I would really have no interest. Because they only had four-cylinder motors at the time. Wait a second. You know, yeah. Now I'm going backwards. I don't want to do that. You are synonymous with Toyota now, and it's funny to think that you might have not even wanted to be associated with them. Well, yeah, because, you know, you know, in the, you know,

in the 70s to have a V8 was where it was at. Sure. That's about, you know, overhead, you know, overhead valve V8. And I knew that Toyota was only building little import trucks that were, you know, what they call them? Fuel savers.

Yeah, fuel savers and four-cylinder motors and all right. What do I want to race one of those for? So anyway, if you know Cal, he convinced me that, you know, horsepower to weight ratio, and you're going to go a lot farther with Toyota, then you're going to go forward. The more he talked, the more I started listening. So then I took a leave of absence for my job in San Diego.

At that time, I was a superintendent of a big construction company there, a big fence company. And so I talked my brother into doing my job for just a year. I said, Don, I want to take a leave of absence. And you do my job. He knew how to do my job. And I never looked back. I kept on going. So 10 years after that, that,

win in the 73 Ensenada 300. 10 years later, you're a factory-backed driver with Toyota. It didn't go into factory. It was factory-backed. Factory-backed. But until you started winning and winning championships and they got the taste of winning,

that's when they really started putting the money in. Then they built two trucks. Then we had a truck for desert and one for stadium, and then it went on and on. So I mean it was a progression. It probably took three or four. years for us to really get Toyota and once you have Toyota then the other sponsors fall on board once you get the big one I mean you get the manufacturer then

the tires and the wheels the light companies and all these people are now they're putting money yeah after you win after you win championships after you win they're all throwing it at you yeah it's but it's you know but it's not like a you know you just don't snap your fingers and those things happen it takes it takes quite a while and it wasn't set up by an agent you had to go out and hustle I'm assuming Oh, we had to, I thought, yeah, we had to go, well, it was kind of fun because my deal with Cal was he paid me so much a year, and it got to be pretty lucrative about the third or fourth year. And then I'd get all the tires, all the stadium trucks, because they would only practice on one set of tires,

then they'd get rid of them, right? Because they wanted every, every bit of traction you could possibly get. And the same with, you know, I mean, I got a percentage of the cut, of the winnings, and the tires, and a lot of saws making pretty good money there in the, you know, in the start in the 80s. Can you dive into the difference between a desert race, a 500 or a 1,000 or even a Mint 400 or something like that, and then the crazy Mickey Thompson Entertainment Stadium thing that you, I mean, you were the very forefront of that. You blew it up. They made a video game about you.

You're that famous. Tell me about that. That's crazy stuff. Well, I never considered myself very good at stadium. a racing compared to desert racing. Well, I mean, there are some guys, I can name you some guys that could lay down lap times

just time after time after time, right within almost identical lap time. Rod Millen being one, but my teammate, but he had to drive completely different. I consider myself really good at taking care of the equipment and understanding when it was breaking and

you know, what it was going to take to win a desert race. stadium racing, you took all that stuff that you've learned in desert racing, and it don't fit. You've got to just abuse the truck and, you know, practically tear the rear end out of it to win the races. So that was always, I never really liked doing that. It was a little bit leery of tearing the equipment up because the next weekend I'd have to do a Baja 500 and take care of the equipment and still go fast. But it was just, it was quite completely different. but I knew that stadium racing where it's going to be for the future of me.

For me to stay involved, it wasn't going to be just desert racing because it was too hard to televise. Too hard to tell the story. But in a stadium, it was easy. I had cameras and everybody was all on one spot, hotels and all that stuff. So it was difficult.

And I think anybody, I don't know if Roger Mears would tell you the same thing, but it was difficult for me. I want to know the toll on your body. Well, the secret was once you've done it for very long, you know, Johnny Johnson would get in your vehicle and he'd take a drive for three or four blocks in the rough road. He'd come back and said, we've got to change this, this, this, and this.

Where you don't know that. You don't know it's going to give you blisters on your back until you get down about 300 miles down there that the seat's not set up right. or the brakes are not right or something is not right on the car where he was just really good at analyzing that. So once you knew how the car should be, the race car, then that's what you go for.

But a layman comes in, he don't know until he hurts himself, right? That he doesn't know the seats were wrong, the steering's in the wrong position, the shoulder belts, are way too tight, whatever it is. So all these things you have to learn. So the longer you do off-road racing, or off-road driving, you'll learn. Tire pressures are too high.

In fact, yours look too high to me, but go ahead. I haven't heard down yet. No, you're absolutely right. I've been on the highway, and I need to drop about 15 pounds right now before I get out of it. You know that, but a lot of people don't even know that. Yeah, well, I put it on 25 when I get here, but I had a rough day yesterday, and I haven't done my work. Yeah. All right, all right.

I even appreciate you saying that because a lot of people would just say, well, I'm not going to tell this guy what to do. he knows what he's doing or whatever, but I do appreciate you saying that. But it holds true with everything on the car. In the scene position, how the brakes work, the throttle, hanging up, or whatever it is, you've got to fix it. Yeah, so I've talked a lot about, in my own personal life, I did the La Carrera Panamericana, and that's where Bill's dropped, you know, in the 50s. You did that also? I did that in the 2000s, yeah.

So I did that in old 53 Lincoln and a little dutson. Was it a speed event? High speed, dangerous is stupid. Oh, yeah. I'll be down. Mickey Thompson did that, too, Bill Scrob. Yeah, so, you know, that was when it was a real race. I did it as a vintage race, but it's a high speed, very dangerous 2,000-mile vintage car race.

And the fastest guys are doing 180. They've since changed it, that the high limit's now 140 miles an hour, but the fastest guys were doing over 180 when I did it on public roads that are shut down in mainland Mexico. At least they shut them down because they don't used to shut them out. Down here, he used to race with the traffic on the roads on the highway. What I was going to get to is Bill Straub. And in your life, I mean, Bill was before you a little bit. Who had the best backside?

You were talking about Johnny Johnson being able to analyze problems, Cal Wells. Who had the best backside to be able to feel what's wrong in a car? Johnny Johnson. And then set it up. Bar none. Johnny Johnson, yeah? Because he was a mechanic, and he was a problem. probably the first guy I ever heard of it would take shocks apart.

He wasn't afraid to take him apart and be one step ahead of the competition with valvian or whatever. He was extra reservoirs, whatever he wanted to do to him. But yeah, he was amazing at analyzing problem. And that's what it's all about. I mean, whatever, especially a race down here, you have to analyze.

If you smell something, there's a reason you wouldn't smell a mile back. He better think about it what it might be. Or feel a vibration and hysteria. It can be, you know, anything. What did you say on my way in here? These problems don't usually fix themselves? No, they don't, no.

I was going to tell you the story about the... Let's get to that. You want to hear that story now? Yeah, let's get to that. Yeah, this was the last Baja 1000 I won in the year. I think it was 2000. In fact, it wasn't a year 2000. Well, I didn't have any problems whatsoever racing down the peninsula until I got about

three quarters of the way down, down below Steve that constitution. own and it was dark and the throttle started sticking but it didn't stick wide open it was about half throttle you know it didn't because wide open would have been 600 horsepower in a few seconds you're going to be going a lot faster than you want to but it would hang up and I'd kind of fill with it and it would come on down and finally we stopped and tried to fix it because once it once it does that to you you don't have trust in it anymore you know so you don't have faith that it's going to maybe it might stick wide open instead of half throttle so anyway I stopped a couple times.

They tried to fix it, tried to fix it. And a friend of mine, Larry Raglan, was the guy coming behind me. If he could pass me, he would be leading the 500 or the 1,000. So anyway, we stopped the last time, and they kept trying to fix it. And they said, hey, Johnny's right behind you. And he stopped. I was stopping the pits, and then he stopped right behind me in his pits to get gas or something. So I took off.

The thing's still hanging up. I didn't go another 10 miles to quit doing that. and race cars never ever fix himself like that I found out later it was one of the butterflies and the fuel injection had come loose and it would flop over and hang up a little bit

but then that's what I'll tell it because anytime if you're down here for your audience also you're down off-roading and something's wrong you better analyze it because it'll really let you down and when you really have a problem you could have fixed it two miles behind you know

Here at Slow Baja, we can't wait to drive our old land cruisers south of the border. And 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, we're on. We're back. We took a little break. We're back in Ivan Ironman Stewart's garage. Yeah, this is my old Baja garage.

You don't throw anything away down here. That's why there's crap on the wall, everything, because if you don't need it, somebody else might. Well, I had a nice chat with your friend, Roger Mears. We were just talking about Roger and Carol, and Carol was so kind to connect us. And tell me about the people that you worked with, raced with, raced against.

Pick out a couple of really good unsung heroes. and shed a little of the Ivan Stewart magic on them. Tell me about the folks you really liked. Well, there was probably... And why you liked them. Parnelli Jones was probably the one that I really admired because he could race anything. You race Indianapolis, Pikes Peak, off-road, on-road.

Trans-Am. Sports-Am. Sports cars. Yep. Sports cars, you name it. And he was always a... You know, and I got to know him later on, he was retired, actually, when he got into off-road racing.

him, but you're just a man's man, a guy that could do anything, you like it, everything, you know, whenever you have somebody on a pedestal, on a pedestal, anything they say or do is okay. He told the story one time, and I hear these stories, and they always ring true, is he had a journalist with him one time just before the start of the Baja 500, maybe 1,000, I don't know, and he doesn't make any difference, and the journalist says, hey, Parnelli, just out of curiosity, how do you know the fast cars from the slow cars? He said, oh, it's easy.

He says, the fast cars have got the great big bumper on the front. He says, the slow cars have got the bumper on the back, which is the truth. I mean, there's no doubt. And then another time, another time this was in the 70s, I remember a journalist asking me, he says, Parnelli, you won this race. Now, you started, 150 cars were in front of you.

and you passed every one of them in that 500 miles to get back here first where'd you pass them? How'd you do it? Parnelli would say the same thing. The only thing you really could say, he said, I just passed them where I caught him. I thought that was the coolest thing. What a great answer, you know?

How else you're going to do it? You can't pass them where you don't catch them. Well, the two things that feed my passion about traveling down here, one side of the TV when I was a kid had a big cabinet, and it was all rodent track magazine. Yep. The other side of the TV was another cabinet and it was all National Geographic magazines.

Yeah. And I remember reading about Parnelli and it was the 1970 Trans Am season. And I think he'd already sewn up the championship. And he had a lot of problems and the car wasn't running right. And he should have just stopped and not competed. And I don't know if it was his determination. or if it was an unkind remark from somebody or something. But he, and again, I'm sorry, I'm going back to high school,

so 30-something years ago when I read this article. And the magazine was already 10 years old when I was reading it. But basically, he decided to take this battered, beat-up, not-right car and say, I'll show you F's, and took it from the very back and banged his way to the very front and won, and he didn't need to. Yeah, yeah. And he did it out of grit and determination. Another guy told me, that's funny, you tell me that story.

This is a different story, but it's the same type of deal. Parnelli's the starting line of one of the Trans Am, or maybe it was an NASCAR race, I don't remember, a road racing course. And he just, and the mechanic was telling me, this was only about four or five months ago. He's telling me his story. Parnelli's sitting behind the wheel and he's just gritting his teeth. You know, he's just, and it was probably the same, I'd have been the same story, but he says that part of the had been having trouble and stuff and he says I'm going to pass these guys in the first

I'm passing every one of them in the first lap and he did it in the first lap he was he was leading the race again that determined just that that focused and uh but yeah he just anything anything he did my opinion was pretty and Mickey Thompson also is a Mickey Thompson really helped me a lot in the early days

can you go into a little bit of that yeah he uh you know I was really terrified of these things and the camera and, you know, and public speaking and all that. And he knew that I was, you know, I just got in the ride with Toyota, and he knew a lot of things were going to come

that I didn't know anything about, you know, TV commercials and public speaking and all these things. Video games. All the, everything, everything. And, yeah, everything that transpired, you know, after he, well, mainly because he started the Mickey Thompson series. Desert Racing wasn't getting that much publicity. It was just Cal Wells convinced Toyota to go desert racing

because he had all these mechanics. mechanics in a big shop. If we're going to do stadium, let's do Desert 2, and he told me to bought into it. But, yeah, Mickey convinced me to do some Dale Carnegie classes and public speaking and just, he'd take me off the side. I remember one time Lynn and I were having lunch with him,

and he told Linda, he says, well, if I ever starts believing the stuff they write about him, he said, you kick him for me, will you? And she kicks me every once in a while, and not so much anymore but but yeah great you know I was I was really had some cow wells was another one I mean he was

absolutely amazing and putting deals together and getting the right people and engineers and pitting people I don't know how he did it he had 50 people working for him and all good dedicated engineers that boy I'll tell you what they'd you know they'd work all night all day for him

but it was a great period great time and to be in off-road racing when the It hasn't come back to that. Factories haven't got in since Toyota's been in. Nothing I know of. So, yeah, it was great to be in part of that, part of the history of the former racing. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Because, again, you were really at the forefront of that. And can you talk a little bit about Sal Fish and his devotion to making off-road into something? Yeah, if it wasn't for Sal, I mean, Desert Racing surely wouldn't be where it is today. I don't think that he put a tremendous amount of his life into it, you know, and for years and years and years. You know, just dedication. I mean, when you think about what he did, and the people he had to work with all of his competitors,

and not all of them, but the majority of them had a lot of money. You kind of go off-road racing without a lot of money. A lot of them didn't want to hear the word, no, they wanted everything done their way. So, I mean, he had to go overcome a lot of obstacles that were tough, But, you know, I don't know how many people that I've talked to said, well, I wouldn't have his job for nothing, you know. You'd be a real politician. Yeah. People getting killed on the racetracks.

And then he'd get the course all marked out. Then they'd have a, you know, flash floods. You've got to go up and change the course. And I mean, I can tell you stories about that, too, that just, you know, the way I'd want to, I'd be wanting to put a race on. But as many leaders of industry and people who were heads of their companies, and what have you, who had the dough to do this, he also, I think, had to keep it real for the carpenters and the plumbers and the guys who are stringing fences for, you know,

to let them have their class 11 or whatever, their opportunity. Well, that's why there's so many classes, because they have to, you have to cater to all of their wishes. So everybody, well, I'm going to build a, can I build a Baja bug with three wheels on it? He'd say, well, if you get enough people together, gave you a class. I don't know if he ever turned anybody down. You know, he gave you whatever it was, because that was part of his business too, was entry fees. Entry fees. And try and keep the other promoters from having your competitors. That's what,

that was the main thing. Well, you've raced a lot of races. Do you have any, has Dale Carnegie helped you figure out why you're more successful than others? No. I mean, not quite as successful as Johnny Johnson, but. Yeah, right. Not to needle you, but what do you attribute all the success you had? Well, I'll tell you, in a funny way, in a funny way, is being lazy. And the reason I say that, because before I got into off-road racing, I worked in construction, right? And so when I got a taste of off-road racing, and maybe the taste that I might be able to make a living at this off-road racing, I didn't want to go back to construction anymore. I'd had 10 years, 14 years of doing that, and I don't want to go back.

I mean, that was me like moving back. So I had, I shouldn't say lazy, because I worked really hard at being, I wanted to be the most professional, win the most races I could, look the best part, act the best part, could do an interview better than Roger Mears or do more autographs than, but I'll tell you another one. I think, so being lazy is that I figured out real early that Mickey Thompson was going to make us do these autograph sessions, right? Before the race, you'd have a whole stack of autographs on the hood of my truck, and then Rod Millen or Steve Miller or whoever my teammate was on the other side.

But I can see Roger Mears were down here, Walker Evans is over here and all this stuff, right? So being competitive, I wanted my line of people to be longer. So I did one thing, you'd never figure out what I did to get my line to be quite a bit longer. So what I would do is every time I'd sign my name to Margaret or Bob or Bill and I'd put all the best best wishes and whatever and then I dated it 1983 every single you see of mine has got a date on it so what would happen is later on about the second or third year I'd get people at my line that have been in my line but two years ago but they wanted an 84 be sure and dated I and I got an 83 and an 84 dated this way pretty soon I have more people in my line

They know like anybody ever did figure out what I was doing. And it took you a lot longer. You're just writing a dissertation. Yeah, well, what happens to too, that longer your line gives, even if people don't know you, they figure you've got to be somebody. It's got to be something good. Yeah. Better line up.

But just dating the autographs was, that's little things like that. And being competitive, even trying to do a, you know, win races, win more championship, do a better interview. That's, keep telling you to happy. That's the answer to your question. And we've talked a lot about your career, and you've had an amazing racing career, an amazing racing career. As a kid who graduated high school in 1984, there are few people as legendary in the world of off-road racing in that period of time as you were on TV at the video arcade. People are playing the game at the pizza parlor.

I mean, it's an amazing thing to be sitting here in your garage. Enough about that. tell me about why you're living in Baja part of the year. Tell me about Baja. Tell me about the people, the places you support, the charities, where you and Linda have spent your time,

and why you keep coming back. Well, I think probably the adventure of Mexico, and once you learn how to deal with Mexico and how to get across the border and what kind of paperwork you need, when you get down here, if something happens,

it's just like an off-road race. You know, and you have a problem in an off-road race, the quicker you solve it, and make a decision on what it is and how quick I can solve it. What's the same thing in Mexico? If you get stopped by the cop, you have to make a pretty quick decision. Should I try and bribe this guy or shouldn't I?

Or how much should I bribe him or whatever it's going to be if you have it get broke down? So it's just all those, I think it's the adventure of trying to figure out how the easiest way to get from, like I told you earlier, that I've never had a bad trip here. The reason being I've always made it back. But I've got a ton of stories. And, you know, for almost every story you can tell, I got one is going to be as good as that it may be a little bit better that happened to me. You know, from people pulling guns on me and, oh, I don't know.

It goes on and on and on, breaking down. And I used to start pre-running from Ensenada to San Felipe. And I knew that my pre-runner didn't have enough gas to make it. I just, because I've done it two years ago, the same pre-runner, it won't make it. But everybody that pre-run behind me always carry gas. So I wouldn't be out of gas for five minutes. So you've got to be first time in the road. So you got to get up early in the morning so you get all the people behind you.

If you've got the people in front of you, you've got to help them, right? That's a good way of looking at it. Somebody, I got, I got five gallons. Give me a couple gallons. I'll make it to San Felipe. But all those things, just fun stories. that, you know, and the friends that I've met, not only the competitors, but the, you know, the locals, the people, you know, because you, what you really want when you're going down through here, and the closer you can get a friend, when you break down, you want to be as close as you can. If you don't have any friends from here to La Paz, ooh, that's not good. You got to, you need a phone number or something, you know. Well, I tell you, you know, I had a problem at the end of the Nora 1000 first day, and my San Felipe guy directed me to a shop.

Chavo, who's working in his yard and got to see Chava. And what am I think is I'm driving down here with my problems? Well, as soon as I get to Chavez, it's going to be fine. He'll sort it. That's exactly what I'm talking about. Yeah. That type of. Or when you get close to Roger Mears, he may not be a mechanic, but I'll guarantee you he knows somebody that can fix a distributor on that thing.

Like Kurt Leduc says, I got a guy. If I can't fix it, I got a guy. I got a guy. You've got to have it. Hey, so you've done a bit with Linda helping the locals, supporting some chival, um, supporting some charities. Can you talk about that? Tell me a little bit about, I don't know if you want to or not. No, no, no. I'm proud of... You've been very generous. Well, for about 10 years, we took a group of motorcyclists.

You know, I don't know. I know we've donated over $100,000 to this little deaf school in the Sonata. You know, and that was just something every year that we'd do a motorcycle ride and they'd put a presentation on for us for these people that ran this deaf school. It was all on faith, a faith school. and that was fun and then I've been down here before and building houses they asked me to you know you can contribute your time to come and build a house

in fact I'm going to build another one in June I think it is you just donate your time and they've have a slab already poured so you help put the walls up and you paint it and the windows in and all that stuff and it takes about three days and that's always rewarding you know that's always a lot of fun so I'm going to do that again, like I say this June, then you know, always something you can do with the schools and autograph sessions and that stuff and fun things. But it's kind of fun to give something back

once in a while. You have to do that, I think. And this place has been awful good to me, all of bah up and down. Well, there's a lot of places you can live near the dirt where if you want to go out in your buggy or something, you can do that in Arizona, you can do that in California, you can do that in Utah. You can do that in a lot of places. Why are you here? Like I said, I think probably I keep coming back to the adventure. That's why I wanted to race the race down here. So it wasn't as much of the race as it was the adventure. You know, because everybody I talked to is they come with all these great stories

that they broke down and they had a horse pull them out of the ditch. And really, you're kidding, they had a horse. Yeah. Let me tell you, pal, if you get stuck in a ditch, you better find your horse because they'll pull pretty good. But I mean, those stories just never, ever end. And everybody that this race down here are very long, they've always got to. that's, you know, all these stories, how they got involved in something. And I ran into three guys that were naked in the desert.

Here's a good one for you. I was just going to say, you got one story that stands out. You got them starting with three naked guys in the desert. This is a good one. So Johnny Johnson and I and Frank R.C.ero, another friend of mine, we're pre-running. Actually, it was north of San Felipe up in the mountains back there. So we're pre-running. and we see some activity, some movement way up to wash.

Something's going on. This was like in the middle of the week, like a Wednesday, right? So Saturday or Sunday you see more people pre-running, but in the middle of the week, not that many. Most people have to work. I was fortunate that we didn't have to work. So there's some movement up there, and what the hell's going on, you know? So this guy, somebody ran out in front of us,

and pretty soon we get closer, and we realize you guys are naked, like three guys, right? And we're thinking the same thing. Everybody thinks what I tell us this is going to be a hell of a story. What's behind this? Well, so as we get closer, I'm thinking,

you guys are probably a bunch of Mexican guys that are drugged up. We're going to take a wide berth around them and just keep on going. I don't want to talk to him. And Johnny Johnson, I remember Johnny Johnson thought that he said, hell, they're probably skinny dipping out here.

Some there's a pond out here. Maybe there's some girls. Let's stop and see, you know? That'd be Johnston. Johnny Johnson and I forget what Frank R. Sierra thought he saw. But what actually happened is these guys were pretty new to Baja. And they had come down on their motorcycles and pre-running. I don't even think they were racing.

The area is doing it for the fun of it, right? And they were supposed to have a truck come off of the highway and bring them gas. They were a place called Thrace Posos. And, well, there's not a sign on the highway. If you don't know how to get the Trispozo, it's about 10 miles back in there. And if you don't know how to work, there's not a sign of a flashy, and light flashing signs as trace post was this way. So anyway, they missed their gas.

And they're out there for like a day or two. I forget the whole story now. But anyway, they pooled their gas. Put all the gas out of one and put it in one bike. And the best rider was going to ride out to the highway. And hopefully that's where their chase truck was going to be now, fuel and come back and get them. And he rides, and this guy tells the story.

He says he rides about another 10 miles and he doesn't get to the highway. He runs out of gas. He says, I walked all night long to get back to these guys. He said, you know, I wore my helmet. And he says, every once in a while, I'd get down on my hands and knees. So we're questioning me. You know, I said, what? Why would you get down on your hands and knees?

Well, he says it was dark. And he says, then in the middle of the road, there's a crown, right? He said, I get on my knees, hands and knees to make sure I didn't get lost. I'd feel for that crown with his helmet on. I said, well, why would you wear your helmet? He says, well, because there's coyotes out there, and I'm afraid they're going to chew my ears. I'm thinking, you mean, you've got no clothes on?

You're worried about your ears? So anyway, we ended up getting them all, and it was really hot. That's why they took their clothes off because it was getting too hot. And they've been out there like three days now without any water. They were getting ready to attack some cactus, and they told we laugh.

Anyway, that's another ball of story, you know. I haven't had too many people top that one. Yeah, I don't know if you can top that. Did Johnny tell you that story? He did not. He did not tell you that story. And one was really funny. I can't believe how many times I've run into people down here.

Here's the perfect example. The guys, one of the guys there had a lot of money. I mean, he was very wealthy because he, you ever seen those knee braces they wear? They're like carbon fiber. Like if you have a band, bad knee, you know, they strap it here and they strap it here in this car, really high dollar. He invented this thing. And remember he's in fact, I was just thinking about this

the other day. He invented this deal and he said, you know what? You guys saved our lives. He said, we're going to fly you to Las Vegas and we're going to put you up in a great hotel, buy you the best dinner you ever had. You were good, I'm telling you, we're going to, give me your phone number, right? He never called us. Never heard another word from that guy. But you'd be absolutely amazed how many times this happened to me where somebody, you've got to going to do something and they talk about oh yeah this is great you know you'm going to really take care of you he never hear another word i'm going to have you on the slow baha podcast then the guy doesn't show up for hours yeah yeah he got almost stuck stuck in this car when they were leaving

chenna's place well i haven't you've been a heck of a good sport about all this i really appreciate you making some time for me um if you had one piece of advice for somebody who's coming to Baja on first trip they've only read the bad stuff what would you tell somebody I tell everybody the same thing all the time I always have is come down here with somebody that's got more experience

than you do somebody that kind of show you the do's the don'ts if they speak Spanish that's even better but somebody you can tag with because you shouldn't be traveling too much especially at night you know by yourself so I mean that's

come with somebody that's and listen to everything they're telling you what they've learned because they've learned a whole lot probably You don't want to get hurt down here. You don't want to farther down you get the worse is going to be to get you back. Yeah, we saw a horrific accident. Unfortunately, the guy fell asleep at the wheel

and didn't roll his truck but went off. It's south of north of San Felipe. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So, anyway, a lot of that happens. Yeah, just, you know, learn as much as you can, read the books, all those things. The more and more knowledge you can get,

you know, the things that, you know, I've done over the years, and luckily I've got out of it, but yeah you can save yourself some agony but as long as you get back it'll just like i say it'll just add up to your baha stories right add up to your baha stories right well i think we're going to leave it right there cool well i appreciate you making some time all right michael thank you so much appreciate you having me on your show i think we did it good hey i hope you like that one with the legend ivan stewart so cool to just be sitting with this guy

who's done so much And thanks again to Carol Mears for getting us connected. If you like what I'm doing, I'm going to ask you, and I'm really seriously asking you, take a second, help me out. Go to slowbaha.com, drop a taco in the tank. If you're on Patreon and you're supporting folks doing this fun stuff, if you check me out and add me to your supporters, I'd greatly appreciate it. I really would.

New carburetor rebuild on Slow Baja on the way home from the Baja XL, first tank of gas, 6.77 miles per gallon. It was uphill. There was a headwind. It was on the highway, but that's a lot of gas when you're driving in 2 and 3,000 mile loops around Baja. So I need some folks to drop some tacos in the tank

if I'm going to be able to continue doing this stuff. Rate the show, share the show, Spotify, Apple, drop a 5-star, tell people while you're still listening. All these shows later while you're still listening. And to wrap it up, to paraphrase, Mary McGee's pal, Steve McQueen, Baja's life. Anything that happens before or after is just waiting.