Slow Baja - Living The Dream With Geoff Hill Baja Bound Insurance

Episode Date: June 6, 2020

Geoff Hill is not your average Insurance agent. Since his first surf trip in 1990, he hasn't been able to escape Baja's pull. After surfing his way to a degree at UCSD, he joined Baja Bound Insurance in 2003. As VP of Business Development, Hill spends his time sponsoring events that bring people to Baja. When our Lucha Libre Racing Team took on the grueling La Carrera Panamericana in 2006 -we reached out to Hill and were honored to be the first racing team sponsored by Baja Bound Insurance. Nearly fifteen years later, we are thrilled to have his continued support. In this conversation, Hill gets personal about his travels, volunteer and fundraising work, and the people that keep him coming back. If you are planning a trip south-of-the-border, make Baja Bound Insurance your first stop. Visit the Baja Bound Insurance website here Follow on Instagram Follow on Facebook

Hey, this is 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. Hey, it's Michael Emory here. I'm on the Slow Baja podcast in San Diego with Jeff Hill, of Baja-bound insurance. Tell us, Jeff.

How are you doing with all this crazy COVID sheltering in place? Doing well under the circumstances. You know, without saying it's just been a lot of family time as I think most people have been experiencing. But we're making the best of it. Still getting some work done at home and, you know, looking forward to things being a little more normal, hopefully sooner than later. And your business is it, it's completely online. People aren't driving through like the old days. Correct.

Yeah. We started off as a drive-through Mexican insurance agency back in the mid-90s. But everything went online in 1999 and has been so. We've had an office in downtown San Diego up until recently where our lease expired and now we're all working remotely and it's working out just fine. Convenient, convenient timing. Couldn't have planned that. Well, I'm delighted to be here.

You and I've had a relationship more via email than anything else. get to see it nearly as much as I'd like. But we've had a relationship since Ted Donovan and I raced the La Carrera Pan Americana. The Lucha Libre. Yeah, Team Lucha Libre racing. That was really fun. We raced that back in 2006,

and I know that you were with me then, and then 2008, 10, 11, you may not remember those sponsorship arrangements, but I do, certainly. And now, certainly since Ted and I've been doing the Baja stuff with the Baja XL rally and most recently the NARA Baja 500 in October, last October, and the Mexican 1000 coming up this October.

We're just delighted to be here with you and talk about your passion for Baja. Yeah, great, great, yeah. It's funny. I look back, you know, it's, you know, sponsorships are such a big thing for us now. Back then, we were just learning how it all worked and, you know, how we would get benefit from it. So you guys were actually probably the first race team

that we ever sponsored, although now it's more the off-road stuff. So back then the career of Pan Americana was something kind of new to us and it seemed so far away because it was. You know, when a race starts in Chiapas so you don't get much further

away in Mexico. But I think it's also interesting that, you know, given the name, Baja Bound, not everybody knows that when you buy a Mexican insurance policy, you're buying an insurance policy for all of Mexico. Correct. And that's actually not true for all of the underwriters. I mean, some do regional type policies. But, and actually back in the

day, when we first started out, the first thing you would do on our website is click the map in Mexico to which region you were going to. Interesting. And because we, at that point, I think there was a rate that was somewhat different for Baja versus Maine than Mexico. So yeah, but it's interesting. Yeah. So you can drive right on down to La Paz, put your car on the ferry, go to Mazadlan, and just keep on going as we did many years ago, 2001. We did that when our children were young, put the car on the ferry, went to Mazatlan, drove over the devil's backbone, got to Durango,

and then went on to Zacatechus and spent six wonderful months there. Awesome. I never heard that story. Well, you know, kids were in preschool. I had two twins in preschool, and another one that was just heading off to kindergarten. We just couldn't really come to grips with. He was going to be one of those early,

boys going off to kindergarten. And so you had that chance of like, does he go when he's really young or does he go when he's old? And somebody gave us some advice. A friend who's a kindergarten teacher gave us some advice that, you know, boys are always slow to develop. So if you can send him as an old kindergartner rather than a young kindergartner, it'll be better for him.

What do we know? So we just quit our jobs and moved to Mexico. That was our solution. The twins actually learned a lot of their first words in English. They went to preschool, as all three kids went to preschool, we had a really great life. And kids learned a lot of their first words in Spanish. I wish we had continued to travel to keep that up. But anyways, enough about me, Jeff.

We are here to talk about your passions from Mexico. I think your business story is relatively well known, covered in print and in podcasts. If somebody wants to Google search you, it's out there. But if you want to give us a quick history. of how you got involved? Yeah. So the business, actually, we just had our 25th anniversary. 25 years, holy Toledo.

Yeah. So that was really cool. 94 is when the drive-thru opened up. And so it's a funny story. I was a Navy rat. So grew up in Coronado. Well, born in Coronado, moved away a bunch, came back right before high school and was lucky to do all four years of high school there.

And one of my friends, his dad was a doctor and had his medical practice down by the border. And when he was 48, I believe, he started surfing. We all love surfing. That was like the biggest thing to us. And so he'd been traveling to Mexico ever since he was a kid, but surfing was something new to him. So he started surfing and then started taking us on day trips and then weekend trips down to Rosarito to surf. And then those turned into a couple epic adventures all the way down to Scorpion Bay. And we did that in 1990. in 1991. And that was really kind of the wow, like, you know, right just south of us is this amazing land that we can go and explore. And, you know, we can cross the border in 20 minutes.

You know, we had this just, you know, this playground in our backyard. And get waves almost to yourself. Yeah. Almost. Yeah. So anyway, flash forward to the late 90s, my buddy Hank Morton, who is my business partner and we were best friends in high school. He was just finishing up college, looking for something to do. You know, late 90s, web boom was happening. His dad was about to retire and close down his office. And it was then, you know, the idea of, hey, could we do Mexican insurance online? Because at that time, his father was a broker for another bigger agency on the border.

And nobody was doing anything online at that point. It was still drive-through. So Hank had the idea to basically build a website, teach himself how to make a database, and, you know, the rest is history. He launched it in November of 1999. Basically, ran it out of it, ran it out of his bedroom for the first couple. For the top-com boom. Yeah.

I wouldn't say it was a boom. It was a gradual, you know, for Baja Bound, it was a very gradual growth. But, yeah, you know, just kind of bootstrapped it, you know, ran it out of his bedroom for a couple years. As soon as he was making a little bit of money, I came on board and started, you know, working on marketing and events and sponsorships. And, yeah, that was 2003. and, you know, we've had a great run these last years and, you know, tough times right now, but we're still getting through it and making things happen. And thankfully, we've got a lot of expats that live full-time down in Baja that still need their insurance policies.

So we're, you know, we're keeping it going and can't wait to get back to Baja in a more normal situation, whatever that means. And so I've been trying to suss out what the actual regulations are, the up to the minute, real information on the ground. When do you think Baja will open to non-essential travel? You know, we've been talking closely with our friend at the Tourism Board, Carlos Valenzuela. He's the director of visitor assistance. And, you know, I feel like the news changes every day. They were supposedly going to start easing restrictions as of June 1st. Right.

which given that San Diego only opened last Thursday, and I felt like we were already several weeks ahead, if not more, of where they are. So we'll see. I know a lot of the, like Loretto, you can't go north or south through Loretto right now. It's blockaded. Same with Aubrey O'Hos, same with Scorpion Bay. I think in some of the more remote areas,

they've been really good about making sure no outsiders are coming in. Um, that said, I know Tijuana has been hit very hard. Right. And also similarly, Chula Vista, too. It's, it seems like those two regions, they're so close and people go back and forth all the time. Um, I think the most cases in San Diego are in Chula Vista right now. And it's likely because of the, the border factor. Right.

And just, just to clarify, we're talking, uh, May 27th here. So we're at the end of May and, um, this will live for a long time on the internet. Sure. as people reflect back on this period of what's on our minds. Everybody wants to get back to Baja, get back to our love of Baja, recreating, off-roading, surfing. Yeah. In fact, actually, my last trip down there was the 13th, no, excuse me,

the 11th of March to meet with Carlos from the Tourism Board. And oddly enough, I was telling a man like, you know, I don't know what's going to happen. It's looking pretty bad, you know, in the U.S. are about to look bad because one of the girls in our office, her husband's from Italy, and he has family there. And they were definitely three to four weeks ahead of us. So we were getting firsthand information from her. And honestly, when it first started, you know, hitting, you know, the news, I was like, oh, this is like a, you know, media hype. I wasn't really

buying into it. Once I started hearing stuff from her on the ground in Italy and seeing that we were on a worst trajectory, I started taking it really seriously, mostly because, you know, I've got a four-year-old daughter and I've got asthma myself and I've got two parents that have compromised immunity systems immune systems. So you have to take it seriously for sure. So I really did. But gosh, and I, you know, Carlos from the tourism board is a great guy. And I kept telling him, you know, I don't know if the San Felipe 250 is going to happen. He's like, oh, you know, I'll talk to the guy right now, my contact there. And he said, yeah, it's still on. And then that next week, I think is when Disneyland closed. And I texted him, I said, Carlos, they just closed Disneyland. Disneyland. That was like, oh.

Yeah. So, and, you know, the rest happened from there, you know. Yeah. I think it first hit us when my son was heading to a baseball weekend baseball tournament. He's a college baseball player and he's heading to Pepperdine for a weekend tournament. And the bus just stopped. They just stopped on I-5 and we're at Harris Ranch for five hours trying to figure out what the NCAA was going to do. And the Ivy League had shut their season down and he'd played in the Ivy League. So he kind of felt like, you know, they're the thought leaders in, in, in, sport and if the Ivy League's going to shut down the other leagues you're going to be pretty quickly behind following suit and you know five hours of tri-tips at Harris ranch which was a side benefit they they ended up turning the bus around and that was that and season was you know declared pack 12 immediately said they're done and you know he's in the west coast conference and

they said they're done and I well there goes racing in Baja for me yeah you know you know you hate to say like how it trickles down but I said well there goes Baja racing for me well same thing once they canceled soccer matches in Europe, I was like, okay, this is serious. Yeah. This is serious. This is crazy. Yeah. Yeah.

Anyways, well, we're going to get back on to your passions for, you've given us a little history on Baja bound. I know you're passionate about surfing. I know that you surfed on the surf team at UCSD, and you've certainly just told me about early trips to Baja. Tell me about the surf tournament that you host there. Oh, gosh. That's been so much fun. You know, so I've got a couple friends. One, Zach Plopper, who is, he works for Wild Coast, which is kind of like a

Surfrider Foundation. They do coastal preservation down in Mexico. And he was helping us put on a contest in Rosarito, just by ourselves, along with Alfredo Ramirez, who does a nonprofit called WAPO, United Athletes of the Pacific Ocean. And so we were sponsoring stuff, you know, sponsoring a contest here, sponsoring it there. and they approached me and said, hey, what if we do a series and basically combine all the contests that go on down here and put up a little cash money?

So it was their idea, and we just kind of ran with it. And it's been so much fun. Just being down there, the Baja Surf Club, based out Ensenada, actually reunited when all this was happening. And so they put on another contest that we brought into the series. It's just great. I mean, those are some of my favorite weekends in Baja. We've got Baja Bound has its own surf team that will compete against other clubs at the San Miguel contest, which is typically in January.

And then we do one called the Walter Koloka, which is usually in the fall. Also at San Miguel. And then we do one contest that's up in Imperial Beach, which is the Wild Coast contest. So the whole series came about mostly because of Zach and Alfredo. But, yeah, it's just, it's wonderful. And I mean, it's, you do get a lot of people coming up from different parts of Mexico to compete as well, which is, which is really fun. And then you get, you know, a handful of Americans that come down as well. So it's kind of this cultural exchange.

And more often than not, the waves are just amazing. So we've, we've tried to make videos for each of the contests. If the conditions look good, we'll bring a videographer down. And, you know, the contest that we had at the beginning of, let's see, it was 20, 20. 2019, yeah, the Baja Surf Club invitation on 2019, the phenomenal waves, like some of the best waves, best conditions in that video. We just reposted it when all the chaos started a few months ago. Looking back on, you know, more fun times down in Baja with friends. So, yeah, it's that whole surf series and being a part of that's been just, you know, tons of friendships have come out of it and tons of great memories.

So. And baseball. We talked a little bit about that as we were walking into the studio here. about my son's passion for baseball. He's still playing in college. And your passion, you have the monos, correct? Yes. Tell me about the monos.

So I'm actually not a... Los Monos? Los Monos. Yes. So that is my buddy, Greg. Met him through my wife. And he's been going to Vaha forever. He's got a house down in Arindra.

And so what happened was he and his wife are both school teachers. And they had an exchange student that was from Arindra. And that's how they got. to know the town. And over the course of time, they became friends with one of the families and who sold them a little piece of land. And they've been building it out for the last 15 years. And it's, you know, now it's a beautiful house. But they're passionate about baseball down there. And so he is the coach of a adult, you know, fun league team here in San Diego called Los Monos. And so he decided to bring the team down to Arendra. I think, gosh, the first one was

maybe 2000 2009, 2010? Actually, I think maybe longer. I'd have to check my notes. But anyway, he wanted to do something nice for the community. So it started out as a fundraiser to bring sporting goods down, you know, kind of piggybacking on the whole baseball thing. And so we, you know, everybody was collecting bats and balls and, you know, old uniforms and mitts and everything.

And we brought stuff down. And then the next year was like, well, okay, you know, sports. is good, but they really need educational stuff. So then we started bringing down backpacks full of, you know, pencils and pins and rulers and arts and craft supplies and stuff like that. And that seemed like it was, you know, kind of going in the right direction. And then they were doing scholarships for some of the kids, although it didn't seem like those were going to be quite as beneficial. And so now what we've done these last couple years is all the money goes to actually give the kids school uniforms because the school uniforms are

actually pretty expensive right so the last two years we basically provided school uniforms for all the kids in arrenderra which is really cool raised about five thousand dollars how many kids would you estimate 130 wow so yeah it was it was money for the uniforms and we also continue to do the school supplies so fabulous and seeing these kids you know for the last you know decade plus grow and you know a lot A lot of the kids have gone on and gone to college and Ensenada and come back to work in the town. So you know, it's, you know, you kind of see a little bit of, you know, cool progress that like, hey, you know, we're doing something and motivating these kids. You can make an actual impact. Yeah.

And see it. Yeah. Well, when we lived in Zacatecas, the interesting thing about sending our kids to school was your kids need a uniform. Well, in San Francisco, we would just go to the uniform shop and buy the uniform. But the way it worked there is you went to the fabric shop that was owned by U.S. usually a relative of the director of the school, and you bought the specific fabric for your school, and then sewed up, you know, a uniform for your children.

Well, of course, you know, we're down there as tourists. We don't have a sewing machine or, you know, my wife had sewed a little bit in high school, but didn't have the skill. So here we are fumbling around through the system of like, wow, okay, our kids are going to school in three days, and we need to find, A, when the store is open, be by the fabric,

C, find somebody who's willing to quickly whip up, you know, three school uniforms, two boys and a girl. And of course, in Mexico, it all happened. It was just, you know, they were thrilled to make the dough and, you know, we were thrilled to get the uniforms. And it was really an amazing, wonderful thing. And the amazing thing about it is just, again,

our kids were in preschool, pre-kinder, as they called it. And they had six levels of pre-kinder and just the live music every morning. The school front door locked, you know, when school started. So it started at, I believe, 8.30. And we oftentimes, the school was only, you know, a block and a half away, right directly behind our backyard was the school's backyard. But we had to run down the block, hang a left, run up the block, hang another left, and run down the block to get to the front door of the school. And with, you know, a couple of two-year-olds and a four-year-old, it often was a real dash to make the morning doorbell.

to make it before they locked. They actually locked the front door, so you couldn't be late. And while we were inside with our little guys, those parents are on the other side trying to get their kids in, but they're late, so they can't come in. And that meant that those kids had to go with grandma or grandpa or somebody. So it really was amazing to us. They didn't tolerate any BS. Get your kids to school on time. You know, the bell rings, the music starts, the kids are in the playground,

singing by the time we were back at our house, you know, we could hear them singing their morning songs. And it was really all the things that we love about school here in the United States, you know, with music and drama and, you know, pretty advanced for two-year-olds and four-year-olds, mathematics and, you know, writing skills and drawing and all this stuff. It was really a great experience for a whopping 50 bucks a month per kid for private school. So compared to what The college tuition we had been paying for each of our kids to go to private, you know, to preschool in San Francisco. It was an eye opener. Wow.

We lived well there, very well. So, again, I'm digressing about school uniforms in Zaka Tekas. But that work that you can actually make a real difference in that town, warms my heart. Yeah. It's, it's really fun. And, you know, again, like we typically, we'll be there for races and stuff, but it's not the same as. is, you know, getting to interact with all the different families and their kids. The one really cool thing is that after the baseball game,

usually one of our friends will host the after party at their house. And so the other players and their families, they come, and it's like a huge fiesta. So it's like all of our kids are playing together. We're hanging out together. And it's just really cool. And it's like something that, you know, just going on a vacation, say to Cancun or something and having, you know, a tourist vacation. You don't really get the cultural experience, like getting to be in a small village,

play a baseball game, have some beers, and then go have a fiesta afterwards and share food and, you know, sit around a campfire. And, you know, it's just a really, really cool, warm experience. Yeah. Having grown up with a kid who's a serious baseball player and going through the travel ball world and traveling all over California and actually, amazingly all over the country for travel ball tournaments. I stumbled into a baseball, youth baseball game in San Javier up above Loretto at the mission there.

And we just were looking for lunch and found two uniformed baseball teams in a little taco shop having a, you know, I can't say catered, but having like a goat cook out. And it was interesting for me to see two teams. from two towns sharing lunch before they went to the field to play baseball against each other. So, of course, we followed them. A, they invited us to lunch. There were five of us. And they invited us to partake in their lunch, warmly and openly.

And then, obviously, we went to watch them play baseball. And it was just, again, an amazing experience of community, much more than, you know, these American kids roll into a baseball tournament and they hate every team there. You know, they're strutting in and, you know, their coaches are instilling a feeling of anger and animosity towards the other team as their opponents that need to be vanquished. And, you know, if you eat, it's at a fast food place on your way in or on your way out, and then you're off to the next one. And there really wasn't a sense of community. Like I saw these kids from two different towns from two different teams. And they also mix the ages a little bit more.

They're 13 to 16 year old or 12 to 16 year olds. or think we're playing together. So you had younger guys and older guys, and they were all kind of, you know, jostled together. And it was really warm. And I think we've been talking about it since then, of how to figure out a, we've brought carloads of baseball supplies ad hoc

on subsequent trips. That was 2012. But we haven't done anything coordinated where you say, okay, we're going to get an entire town fitted with uniforms or gear or what have you. And that's something for the future for Slow Baja. to figure out how to do.

So if you have any advice, I'm going to get to you on that. Do you have any baseball chops? I know you know how to surf. So I did play baseball. Let's see. It was a long time ago. I kind of went from, I probably played baseball all the way through elementary school. And again, it was tough because my dad was Navy.

So we were, you know, two years in Guam, two years in northern Virginia, back to Guam, back to Virginia and I played baseball and soccer during that whole thing. And then when we moved to Virginia the second time, that's when I discovered skateboarding and the rest was history. There goes a career of a tall, lanky, right-handed pitcher. You can see Jeff right now. I was a pitcher, actually. Yeah, no doubt. I could look at you for a second and say that guy, if you could just get some control, he's got a 98-mile-an-hour fastball. You could just get it into the catcher's glove. I ended up stopping playing baseball and soccer and ended up skateboarding and playing football, which, you know, seventh and eighth grade, they do it by weight. I was fine. And I love playing

football. I still love football to this day. But by the time I was a freshman in high school, I was still under 100 pounds. And I was going to get, I was going to get, I was going to get creamed. And, you know, my freshman year was also, we moved back to San Diego and I discovered surfing. So I decided to focus on surfing. And I was going to focus on surfing. And I was going to get. And I was going to get and I ran cross-country, which, you know, I didn't grow until I was a junior. I went from the smallest kid in my class to one of the biggest. Well, my younger son's a collegiate rower, and that's another sport that you look like ideally seen that for.

You could have been a rower at UC, San Diego had you not fallen in love with surfing. Yeah, but I do have roots in baseball. I love playing it as a kid, and, you know, my only connection now is through the Monos. And actually, Baja Bound did sponsor a North Park Little League team this year. Oh, fabulous. And I actually got to go to the opening day and throughout the first pitch, and then a week later, everything got closed. Oh, not so fabulous.

Not so fabulous at all. And the Monos play hardball, right? Yeah. Oh, yeah. You're not beer league softball. Oh, no, no. This is fast pitch, you know, bring what you got, you know. And it's, you know, it's a, you know, everyone's in there, I would say 40s and 50s.

So, you know. And the guys you're playing against? Same. Although the team in Arindera, the Marineros, they, they tend to bring. ring and ringers from all around. Awesome. We'll be a new hot shot kid up there, you know, whiz and fastballs. You know, they usually win the games, but, you know, I think we've won maybe twice in all those

years. But again, it's more for the fun and the experience and to help out the village. Well, with all the kids shaking out of pro ball right now, maybe the next game you can bring some ringers too if you really feel like you need to show those mariners who's boss. Hey, let's transition to off-roading. That's another reason that people get off to Baja, a big reason that people get off to Baja. I know you've done some pit work.

Yeah. Tell us about that. Yeah. So my first, you know, we had gone down to Ensonada a couple times for Tech Day before the race started. This is like, you know, late 90s. So we're talking about score. Score races, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So, yeah, I hadn't really, you know, we had sponsored, you know, a couple events here and there, nothing major. And then we had partnered with this gentleman, Eric Lundy, who at the time was treasurer of a club called Mag 7 that does pit support down in Baja. And in 2009, he said, hey, Jeff, you know, we're going to go to the Baja 1,000. We're going to have a pit at Borego Junction. And he was telling me all the stuff. Like, I knew surf spots.

I didn't know middle of nowhere desert junctions. Pit stops, yeah. Pit stops. So he invited me to come down. And at that time, I was still doing a lot of video work. I had actually been in video production prior to starting at Baja Bound. And so I made a video of the Baja 1000. And that year it was a loop race.

And we basically had a pit that got vehicles early and then towards the end of the race as well. So it was like an overnight pit, you know, and this whole grind. And, you know, the motorcycles came through. It's like, okay, that's cool. And quads came through. Like, okay, that's cool. First trophy truck came through. And I was just like, holy bee.

Are you kidding me? Yeah. Elephants. I was... Elephant stampeding through. Yeah, and I was, I probably had a straightaway of about 150 yards, and I was kind of, you know, five feet off on the side, and this trophy truck is coming, you know, I'm looking through the lens, and this trophy truck's coming straight at me.

I left my camera and ran. I'm like, I'm out of here. So that was just a real eye-opener, and after that, I started going down to every race with Mag 7, you know, learning about, you know, what they do, how they do pits, support. And then that was that really kind of kicked off. You know, there's a whole whole lot more to Baja when you were away from the coast. So that was cool. And then in 2010, I went to the Baja Beach Bash, which is put on by, at that time, it was done by Baja bound Moto Adventures. They do tours to Baja. And that's actually Hank Morton and Tim Morton are cousins. So there is, they're both

Baja Bound names. But yeah, so I got invited to go down and I shot a video of that. And at that point, I met, and this is what was so amazing. I had just seen a thing on, I think it was on Fuel TV back in the day when Cameron Steele did his rip-to-the-tip show. So they would do their, you know, the eight-day ride down to Cabo. And so, you know, I just was up late one night flipping through channels and all of a And here's Cameron Steele walking into some talkeria, giving this lady a hug, high-fiving people.

And this was, you know, right after, you know, 2009, 2010, that's when all the drug cartel stuff was very much front-page news. And we had the swine flu. We had the new password requirement. There's nothing but bad news. Bad news everywhere. And I, you know, I was like, wow, this guy, you know, this guy's amazing. You know, he's got everywhere he goes in Baja. He seems like he knows everybody and he's friends with everybody and he loves it. And so Beach Bash in 2010, I meet Cameron Stee.

and I meet Johnny Campbell and I meet, you know, Colton Udall, Max and Matt Eddie, all these, all these Baja racing legends, you know, guys that have been down there and doing it on a pro level. And a few months later, I pitched Cameron. I said, hey, would you know, want to be sponsored by Baja Bound? And I, you know, again, I felt totally out of my realm. I didn't know how this was in the go. A little bigger by and then Lucha Lever Racing. But he responded. He was stoked and he was like, you know, this is great.

You know, I really appreciate it. I'm stoked to work with you. And that was kind of really our entry into kind of ramping up our sponsorships. And honestly, Cameron's been amazing to work with, you know, not only because of his love for Baja, but he's just a great communicator. And he's great with media and he's always putting stuff out. So, you know, he really helped us, I would say, in the early, you know, 2010, 2012, that whole era. where we were kind of growing out of what had happened in 08,09. But all of a sudden we were getting all these new clients in the desert racing community.

And so I immediately was taken in by all that. And because of the relationship also with Mag 7, I started going to every race. And then it kind of steamrolled, met more people, started sponsoring more people, started running my own pits for Mag 7, which then also started including the Nora race. which that was really cool too because, you know, then we were going way south into Baja. Like the first pit I did for Nora was at Scorpion Bay. And I was like, and I hadn't been there since 1991. So it was like really cool to like go back to a place that I traveled to so long ago

and check out the difference in the town to be there for racing. So. Spend a second here breaking down the difference for folks who aren't in the weeds on off-road racing. The difference between what score is and a score. Baja 500 or 1,000 and a Nora 1,000. Gosh. I would say score is highly competitive. I would say it's fairly aggressive racing.

You know, people are there to win. People are there to dominate. And Nora, on the other hand, there still is that desire to win. But because it's a stage race and you're basically going, you know, Newtown every night. for five nights. It's definitely more of a, you know, we're in this together. People, I feel like there's more camaraderie, more. Yeah, there's a party every night too.

It's easy to, to foster a little camaraderie over great food and a few drinks. Yeah, people are sharing tools, sharing resources. We actually did the Nora in 2015, and oddly enough, our race truck broke down just out of Scorpion base. We ended up keep getting back there for some reason. Yeah, exactly. It's funny. And I had a surfboard on top.

top of the truck too. It was on the trailer. It was on the trailer. So we actually did go be prepared. We did go surfing the next day. So yeah, so definitely like score is competitive. You know, it's usually once the race starts, you're going until you finish, if you finish. And Nora, you know, it's straight through the night.

Yeah, straight through the night. Yeah. Yeah. And Nora is just this kind of fun adventure, a lot of camaraderie. And, and just, man, the party at the end on the beach in Cabo was one of the crazy. things I've ever seen. Happiest race on earth, they call it. Yeah.

We actually are, let's see, my brother-in-law was in San Francisco for a convention when we were going to be finishing up the Nora. And we said, fly to Cabo. You know, he's from upstate New York. So he had never seen anything. So we're like, come on, come down. It'll be worth it. We'll get you a hotel room.

And he's also a volunteer firefighter. Wow. So when he saw that fireworks display going off right over his head, he goes, this would never happen in the United States. But it was amazing. You know, we had a couple of experiences like that in Zacatechus, and it's one of those things that the town puts on a fiesta every Friday night, and it's a burrow with two casks of mescal and a little handmade wooden saddle. So you've got these casks of mescal hanging over the borough's neck,

and then everybody gets a little handmade mug on a lanyard. And there's like a three or four-piece polka band that accompanies this donkey, this borough, and it moves sort of a block at a time. So it'll walk for a block, music playing, people in a procession, dancing, and then it'll stop in the little parklet at the end of the block, or two blocks maybe. And then in the parklet, it'll play for 15, 20 minutes, a half hour. And, you know, it fits, it's high elevation. So if you get cold, you just dip your mug into the mescal, nobody's monitoring it, nobody cares, and it's put on by the city. That's awesome. And I thought the first time I saw it, I thought, how many permits would you need in San Francisco to do this?

And then the first time I saw an actual fiesta where fireworks were involved in downtown, and Zacatech is a stunning, you know, magic Pueblo, a beautiful historic town with, you know, 500 years ago, it's where all the silver money was coming from, all the silver, and then huge, beautiful rose quartz buildings. And, you know, the fireworks there are just a little bit different from. from an engineering standpoint, and if you get your hair singe, that's even better. They're up close and personal. They've got stuff that's spinning around as people are running around in costumes, or sometimes people are on stilts with fireworks shooting off of their head.

And it was just an eye-opening experience for us with young, young, young, you know, our kids had turned three and five there. That's so fun. Back to off-roading. My experience is with Nora specifically, but I did photograph the 1980s. Baja 500, and I did have an experience like you with the big boys in their trucks. I think it was Class 8 in those days, but they were coming three abreast. I was 25 miles out of anywhere.

Worked for on trackside photography had dropped me off in the middle of nowhere. And I had been photographing the San Diego Padres in those days, and I had a 600-millimeter lens with me. And the boss said, you only need 150-millimeter lens. You're going to be really close to the action, so you don't need to bring the 600. But, you know, I had it, so I thought, hey, you know, I'm going to be a show off. I'm a 20-year-old kid. I'm going to bring my big lens out.

And what I found was standing out in the middle of nowhere, where you can see for 20 miles in any direction. If the racer saw a photographer standing out there, they knew that there was a jump, so they would slow down. So what did I do? You know, I'm not so smart, maybe, San Diego State kid. I decided that I'd lie down with my 600 millimeter so I could get these trucks flying off of these jumps. but obviously they didn't see me, nor did they see my folding chair or my little thermos or my school books because I was studying for finals in between trucks driving by.

And so, you know, Walker Evans, a couple other guys, three abreast, just wiped out my camp. And it was one of those things that luckily I was sort of, you know, 25 yards off to the side, but I just realized afterwards, like, how dumb is that? I'd photograph so much track racing where you look at every exit of a turn where a photographer's post up and where a car is going to come sideways through and wipe out photographers

or photographing sideline of a football game where a quarterback's going to throw you the ball perfectly and you think, wow, I'm going to photograph the quarterback getting creamed by the linebacker. And then you realize that there's a wide receiver streaking right towards you with the guy right on him and they're going to cream you when you're looking the other way with your 600. So I realize that the Baja racing could be dangerous. What's it like for a person like you that didn't have any experience to come in

and work in a pit? What was your first job there and how did it progress to you actually running the pit? Oh, geez. Well, you know, you start off by, you know, because the bikes are the first ones to come through. So at that point, you're wiping goggles and giving them a cold bottle of water. And, you know, being... Let me jump in for just a second. Explain Mag 7 in the service that they operate.

I think that's an amazing, amazing operation. Yeah. So Mag 7 actually came about because of the first Baja 100 in 67, I think it was. and there was a couple of guys from Los Ancianos, which is a motorcycle club that does a lot of events in Takate. But they wanted to run the Baja 1000 and they needed people to do it. So they had seven friends that, you know, got together to help out and do this thing. And they had so much fun, they decided to turn it into a club. And I think part of that was also because they were supporting Steve McQueen at the time in his Baja

A boot. Yep. Crazy car. And he was in that Magnificent Seven movie. I think it was a movie. I don't know. Yeah. It was a little bit before my time.

Yes. So I think that's where the name came from. I could be wrong. But anyway, yeah. So basically the club started as just, you know, people that want to go to the desert and help racers. And so people can sign up with us. You know, you can be just a mom and pop team. And we also get people like the McMillans that sign up with us as well.

So it's everything from, a guy just doing a bucket list motor ride just trying to get to the finish line to the top tier guys, you know, that are, you know, winning championships. So it's just a great opportunity to get out and see places in Baja that you've, you know, would otherwise never have a reason to go to. I've learned so much about Baja just because of Mag 7 and doing stuff with them. And I'm no mechanic by any stretch of the imagination, but I always have somebody on my team that is. Right.

Well, you can certainly wipe some gawks. and hand to water off to somebody, right? I can change a tire. I can, you know, fuel a car, no problem. But if there's something electrical going on, you know, it's, you know, honestly, to be fair, a lot of the racers do have some mechanical background, or at least they know the ends and outs of their vehicle. So we come down there with everything that they could possibly need

if they need to wrench on their car. We bring welders, all kinds of tools, jacks, lubs, you know, oil, everything. You know, some parts. And racers can also stage parts with. us. They say, oh, I want this to be at pit five when they come in. I want to do a full tire change. So, yeah. But it really simplifies the logistics of somebody who's going down to do a race like that, to not have to bring their own people to stage each pit stop is a huge simplifier for folks. And, you know, you do get, it's funny because you do get a lot of people every year that are brand new.

They've never been to Baja before. This, you know, they saw something gone. TV and they're like, I want to do that. So a lot of it, too, has become really trying to educate them on what they're going to need to do to get to the finish line. You know, we had, I remember there's a bug team, a little class five bug. I think they were Canadian. They had never been to Baja before. The husbands were going to be racing and the wives were going to be the chase vehicle. And so that was just. Oh, that'll work well. Yeah. And I don't even think they had four-wheel drive. And so, you know, It's, you know, a lot of times you got to try and, you know, manage their expectations of what's going to happen. And, you know, it's like, do you have a race radio?

Like, no, we don't have a radio. Okay, gosh. So just trying to help people and, you know, make sure that they have a fun and safe experience, you know, because oftentimes people do break in the middle of nowhere. Right. And they end up spending the night out there, you know. And if it's any kind of adverse weather, either super hot or super cold, it can be, it can be pretty scary. Right. Yeah, absolutely.

That goes back to when we first became acquainted doing the 2006 Law Carrera. Ted and I were way out of our league. But you know, you're driving a 100-horsepower car on a paved road, and I had driven paved roads before. So at least there was that. And I said to Ted one time, I said, you know, we'd misqualifying. We were total knuckleheads. Had no business doing what we were doing.

And I said to Ted, if we ever figure this race out, we're going to get one of those class, you know, whatever the, the slowest Beatles are, and we're going to race the Baja. If we ever, if we ever feel like we know what we're doing here, we're going to race the Baja. And so fast forward a couple years later, Nora was trying to start their first event, and I had gotten wind of it and found the regulations online and, you know, the regulations or the amount of the water you had to have with you and a sleeping bag. And I thought, well, this is for me, you know, if this has a complying. where you could be broken down overnight out in the middle of nowhere.

Yeah, I'm all in. I mean, my ignorance level is that high. Like, let's jump in on that. Hey, let's wrap up here. You've been super generous with your time and meeting me in quarantine lockdown. The waning days of our lockdown here in San Diego, we're sitting six feet apart with microphone cables. How does somebody get started if they're going to go to Baja?

I always say, you know, go check out Baja bound.com. get your insurance and look at your vast archive of real information about Baja and where to go and what to do. What do you tell people? You're interacting with folks all the time who probably haven't been to Baja, even friends from upstate New York who, you know, know nothing. People know nothing about Baja outside of California or Arizona. Yeah, you know. What do you say to people about how safe it is or how, you know, why people are, why you go and. I, you know, more than anything, I tell people it's like anywhere in the world, you know, use common sense when you're

traveling. But a lot of times if someone truly, I mean, so we would get, this is, this is super fun, we would get a lot of Europeans that would, they would fly over to the West Coast. They'd buy a dual sport bike and then, you know, ride down the coast, show up at our office, and they're just going to Baja. They don't know where they're going. They don't know what roads they're taking. They're just like, yeah, I'm going to ride Baja. And so a lot of times I would just sit down with the map and, you know, tell them, hey, well, you can get gas here. Careful, this is a long stretch where there's no gas. You know, there's a great place to stay here.

This place has great food, great overnight, you know, just kind of, it's almost like even though what we do is primarily insurance, it's almost like we can serve as sort of like a travel agent and kind of helping them plan their trip. And information, yeah, yeah. Because, you know, an informed traveler is going to have a better time than someone who's, you know, for a lack of better words, just flying blind. down there not knowing where they're going. You know,

granted it's, you know, highway one. You know, you can't really make too many mistakes, but in some ways you can. So, yeah, we just try to keep people informed and keep them safe. And, you know, a lot of people are like, oh, don't drive at night, which I don't mind driving at night, but I have had close calls with cattle. And that, you know, on race days, you know,

you're coming around the corner on the highway and it's, you know, five in the morning and it's misty. And all of a sudden, there's five cattle standing right on the road. And that's the reality of it. And that's how a lot of people get in trouble. Yeah. Well, that is a very, very sound advice, Jeff. I'm going to pin you down on two more questions.

We're going to wrap it up. Give me one or two favorites. Where would you like to go? I know things have changed your wife and you have a four-year-old now. So if you're going to head to Baja, maybe you're driving, you're going someplace close by a couple hours in, where are you headed? The easy trip for us, we've actually rented a place at Campo Lopez, K-55, for about eight years. And that's kind of been our little home away from home.

It's, you know, 100 yards off the ocean, great little beach, fun waves. My daughter's pretty much grown up playing on that beach. And that's just a place that, you know, it's become a very special place for us to kind of get away from it all and decompress. number two, I would have to say, Punt to San Carlos. My buddy Kevin runs the windsurfing and kite surfing camp there. And have you been? I have not. Okay, it's really cool.

I was, you know, you look at their website and you're like, where is this place? It's crazy. So it's basically, you know, south of El Rosario, like 70 miles off, you know, south, southwest, where basically the coast road ends because the mesa is. so steep, but he has had a camp there for, I think, 30 years, a little over 30 years. And it started off as they were just, you know, literally camping and then they kind of built it up. And now it's like this full compound where they cook for you every day. It's like an all-inclusive, but a Baja kind of high-end camping, all-inclusive.

Clamping. Clamping. You can't actually go up to the camp and order food or drinks or anything. Basically, you have to prepay. They don't sell anything in the camp. You just go there, check in, go surfing, you know, kite surfing, paddleboarding, surfing, hiking, biking. They've got mountain bikes. They've got all the stuff you need

to get out there and play. And then you come in and they've got snacks and a meal waiting for you. A rustic club med. Yeah, exactly. How old do you have to be to remember what club med was? But yeah, that's a really special place.

Without all the people. Yeah. And still within an easy day's drive of the border. It's about six to seven hours depending on, yeah. So you get a morning start and you're... Yeah, you're there. And you are, it's literally off the grid. You know, there's no, there's nothing nearby, there's no towns, there's a small fishing village, no shops.

It's basically the campsite and then nature and no cell service, no contact with the outside world. That's a fabulous inside tip. Thanks, Jeff. Do you have a favorite taco? Ooh, I would say. Someday. El Rancho and Vita Trinidad. Okay.

The one as you're going down the hill and it's off to the right. Yeah, yeah. I think that's that. And El Trilero and Ensenada is probably right up there too. People love El Trilero. And then, I don't know, Tacos El Yaki and Rosarita was really good, but those are huge. Those are, those. It's hard to explain those.

They call them what? Pupuces. It's like they call them like puppies, fat puppies, you know. It's a wonderful thing. That's usually our first stop. In fact, my last trip to Ensenada, sadly, I went on a Wednesday, and they're closed on Wednesday. Oh, Tuesday, whatever it was. Drove all the way into Rosarita.

I'm stoked to get one of those big guys. And they're so big, you almost have to take a nap after one of us. I made the mistake of ordering three the first time I went there. And I finished one and was like, oops. Yeah, they're giants. Hey, well, I really appreciate you making some time for Slow Baja. And people can find you at Bajabound.com. And you have Facebook and Instagram, which I'm well acquainted because we're a regular

posters to your site. So you can go on to Baja Bound on Instagram or Facebook, and you certainly will see Slow Baja jumping into your social media space, posting up what we're doing down there. So really nice to see you, Jeff, and hope to see you in Baja soon. Yes, yes. Actually, I think this might be the first time I've seen you on the north side of the border. Yeah, for sure.

I'm going to hopefully get an invite to your Christmas party one day, you know? Absolutely. Yeah, I was going to be Ted's date, and I couldn't get down there. this year. But yeah, no, this is the first time we've seen each other north of the border. So hope to see you south of the border soon. All right. Thank you for having me. Hey, you guys know what to do.

Please help us by subscribing, sharing, rating, all that stuff. And if you missed anything, you can find the links in the show notes at slowbaha.com. I'll be back before you know it. And if you want to receive notices on new episodes, please follow. Follow Slow Baja on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook for you old folks.