Slow Baja - Sal Fish On SCORE And More

Episode Date: November 21, 2023

Sal Fish, the Godfather, is back for his second conversation on Slow Baja. This time, we met above the beach at his place in La Paz. We picked up where our previous conversation ended around 1969. At the time, Sal worked for Petersen Publications as the Publisher of Car Craft and later Hot Rod Magazine. One day, while visiting Revel, the model company, with Bob Weggeland, his advertising salesman, the company’s owners asked Sal and Bob to race the Baja Bug in the NORRA Mexican 1000. He knew the adventure would be a good story (and ad sales) for the magazine and leaped at the opportunity. Sal competed in the 1969, 1970, and 1971 races. Racer and entrepreneur Mickey Thompson recruited Sal as a partner soon after he created SCORE International in 1973. By 1974, Sal and Thompson were hosting the Baja 1000. Sal used his people and publishing skills to rapidly grow the organization and soon bought Thompson out. In the process, Sal realized Thompson’s vision to make off-road racing as big as NASCAR. Sal sold SCORE in 2012. Active and fit, he enjoys living in Malibu and spending time with his wife of nearly 50 years, Barbara. The couple has a second home in La Paz, where Sal enjoys kayaking and entertaining his friends.  Sal is a 2006 inductee of the Off-Road Motorsports Hall of Fame. Visit their website here: https://ormhof.org/sal-fish Enjoy this Slow Baja Podcast conversation with Sal Fish. Get your Baja insurance here: https://www.bajabound.com/quote/?r=fl9vypdv2t More information on Slow Baja Adventures: https://www.slowbaja.com/adventures

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. You know, I've long said it, ask your doctor if Baja is right for you. Well, you've got to check out the Adventures tab

at SlowBaha.com. The Slow Baja rally is February 23 to March 3rd. It's a slow roll from San Diego down to Loretto and back. About 10 days long, we're going to have a couple of nights laying over in Loretto. I've got some ready-made adventures for you there. If you want to get off on a one-day mule packing trip or if the weather's good, you want to get out on the water, we're going to have a one-day water adventure. There's also going to be a one-day volunteer project for folks who might want to do that. And if you've got some stuff that you need to address on your rig, well, we're going to have some hand-selected slow-boh-ha.

approved mechanics, whether you need a welder or a tire shop or a mechanic transmission, whatever it is, we're going to have those resources for you. So it's going to be easy for you to get whatever you need addressed, addressed. You know, it's not the longest or the largest or the most miles. It's the slowest and the best miles and hopefully the most smiles. All right. For more information, check it out. It's a SlowBaha rally at Slobaha.com slash adventures.

Don't be afraid to ask questions. You can always reach me through the contact link at SlowBaha. Once again, that's February 23rd through March 3rd, 2024, the slow Baja rally. You know, I'm a minimalist when it comes to Baja travel, but the one thing I don't leave home without is a good old paper map. My favorite is the beautiful, and I mean beautiful, Baja Road and Recreation Atlas by benchmark maps. It's an oversized 72-page book.

It's jammed with details. It brings the peninsula's rugged terrain into clear focus. Get yours at Benchmark Maps.com. In fact, get two. One for your trip planning at home and one for your Baja rig. Hey, big news. Benchmark just released the second edition of the Baja Road and Recreation Atlas. They are always striving to improve these maps.

And they've added a bunch of new features, bunch of places of interest, including the Chenet Legacy Lodge. It wasn't on the first printing of the map. It's there now. It's awesome. You can see it right there in Perseboo. Get your brand new second edition

of the Baja Road and Recreation Atlas from Benchmarkmaps.com. And while you're at Benchmarkmaps.com, you've got to check out all their other atlases. I think they're up to 17 now, including British Columbia. They've got folding maps. They've got digital maps.

They've got giant wall maps. My favorite, and I've got it up on my wall right here at Slow Baja HQ is a 30-inch-by-46-inch Baja wall map. It's so great to just look at one thing and see the entire peninsula there.

I love it. Benchmarkmaps.com. Slow Baja approved. Hey, hello, my heaping dose of gratitude today goes out to Bobby Shealy. Bobby has been looking after Slow Baja, and he solved a huge problem for me, and I can't thank him enough. And his wife and I, Susie, we go way back. We went to college together.

Actually, I think I was at spring break with Susie when she met Bobby back around 1986 or 1987. It was a damn long time ago, but it was great to get reconnected with them through Nora. Bobby races Nora, and they have a place in San Felipe. I was driving on this trip earlier this year and they raced up behind me honked the horn. I didn't know who it was. They knew who I was because of Slow Baja, of course, but it was just great to see them. We've run into each other, Chenet Lodge now.

And they're really dear friends. And I just want to say, hey, thanks. Thanks for looking after Slow Baja for me. All right, without further ado, we're going to get to today's show because today's show is with my old friend, Sal Fish. And I just love saying that, my old friend. But we met Sal in La Paz after the Nora 1000, and he couldn't have been kinder. We filmed in his place.

It's a beautiful place. And you hear the water crashing on the beach just below us, providing a beautiful background environment. And we talk about score and more. I think our last conversation got us up to about 1968 or 69. And this one, we bring you up a little bit further. But Sal Fish is a beautiful human being. He's got that great head of hair.

He's tan. He's rest. He's got a beautiful mustache. And, well, let's get right to it. Sal Fish, score, and more today on Slow Baja. The sultry sounds of Sal Fish here at Radio La Paz. Hey, yeah, I'm delighted to be here in Mexico with your beautiful tan, smiling face. You look great.

Thank you, Michael. I appreciate that. What's your fountain of youth? Tequila? My fountain of youth. Drinking the water in Mexico and tequila. And a lovely wife that keeps me in tow. 50 years, I heard.

50 years this coming September. Fabulous. Fabulous. Well, it's Slow Baja, and I am in beautiful La Paz above the beach now. Picholinga? Where are we? No, Picholing is a little further. This is Cromwell.

It's called, yeah. And right over there is the Secretary of Turham's new office, and then you have the Hotel La Concha, and then the Orchid House, and then you go on to the end, which is Tecalote and Picholingi. All right, well, I'm going to get it right this time. It's Slow Baja, and I'm with Sal Fish at his beautiful house in La Paz, and I'm delighted to be here, Amigo. I really am.

It's nice to see your smiling face. Both Barbara and I are happier here. Wish you would have spent the evening last night, but I understand you were on the mollicon listening to all the music and the craziness. Yeah, it was a good time. It really was, and it's nice to see, you know, I'm used to being here for events, car racing events, off-road racing events. So the Molokone is typically taken over by all the racers.

It was really nice. This place is really authentic, and it's really nice to just see. This is a, I think it's 488th anniversary celebration of La Paz. 487 or 88? Well, you were there at the beginning. Yes, I came with Cortez, and unfortunately he got wiped out, but I made it through because I'm Italian and Spanish. Drink the water. I remember what Cortez was.

You had more tequila. Hey, no, it was really fun. Local people having fun. They're blasting their music until well after midnight. And, you know, it was a one tequila night for me, so pretty low-key. But we'd had a rough week, a lot of miles, a lot of smiles. And it was nice to just have a nice chill, relaxing night and do my homework before I came to see you. Well, that didn't take a lot, didn't?

Well, that was the one tequila part. Okay. So, again, we had a lovely, conversation previously on Slow Baja. I was delighted to be at your home. I think we talked for a couple hours and didn't get past 1968. That could be. Yeah, I think you're probably right. That 1968. That wasn't even a score at the time. I was raised in Nora at that time. I was still a publisher of either car car car after hot rod back then. So I think we ought to recap. And I'd like to just ask you a few questions that we've already covered, but we'll set the stage for what we're

going to talk about today. How'd you get involved? I know, I know you were in the advertising business, Peterson Publications, which was great string of magazines. So set it up. You were, you were a guy in a suit with an advertising budget entertaining people, right? That's exactly right. Peterson Publishing Company at the time was the largest special interest public education basically in the world. He had teen magazine, guns and ammo, hot rod, car craft, motor trend, flying, quite a few special interest magazines. And I came aboard as an advertising salesman for Carcraft, which was then a drag racing magazine. And I certainly wasn't an ad salesman. I didn't have any ideal but Peterson took me under his wings the publisher of carcraft at the time was dick day and i met him

we used to body surf at hermosa beach on sundays and i met him with a group of body servers excuse me and i was working as a mechanic at my dad's garage then in los angeles and dick day said you know you don't want to be a mechanic and i said well that's you're right but i'm helping my dad out and i'm i'm just trying to do the right thing And he says, I think you'd make a good ad salesman. And I said, I don't even know what you mean. What's an ad salesman? And he says, well, I need a guy that, you know, it's kind of outgoing. And I think that would fit in with the Peterson group.

So my dad was happy. He wanted us all, my three brothers, he wanted us to have a college education, which we all got. And he wanted not to be mechanics, not that there was anything wrong with being a mechanic, but he just wanted something different for his kids. kids. So I went to work for Peterson and I just fit in. They were so nice to me, Bob and Margie Peterson, the owners, they took me in almost as their own kid. And I was able to go from the advertising salesman at Carcraft to the advertising salesman for Hot Rod magazine. So stepping up the ladder. That was a big step. And then from being an ad salesman, I became a publisher.

and which is hard to believe because I do not have the greatest command of the English language. And I did graduate from the universe of San Francisco, but I was really never a great student. So it was kind of when people say, gee, you're a publisher. Well, did you take English 1A and do you know Shakespeare? And do you know, no, I didn't do any of that. Peterson was about if you're going to be involved in cars. and you had it to be a car guy. If you're going to be at guns and ammo,

you knew who had to shoot and hunt and, you know, whatever you had deviant a rabbit or whatever you do, you know, and everything. If we went for Teen Magazine, you knew how to do fashion and stuff. They were hands-on. He wanted a guy that was in the industry that he was talking about. So I went from Carcraft Magazine as a salesman to Hot Rod magazine as a salesman.

Then they decided, you know what, why don't you give you a chance of publishing because they were taking me to Detroit and all around all the races. And I got in with that group of people, became the publisher of Carcraft, and then I became the publisher of Hot Rod. During that time, excuse me, I was very involved, obviously, of the editorial, the photography, everything that was in the magazine I was responsible for. but the real thing was revenue in bringing advertisers in. So I would go out on calls with the ad salesman at that time that was assigned to me for Hot Rod. And we felt we were going to do an article because at that time, kit cars were really in vogue. They were building replicas of all kinds of cars, and they were the hot setup.

and Ravel model car kit, which was located in Marina del Rey at the time, was going to build a Baja bug car kit, but they had seen the Baja bug that raced in the Nora race back in 1967, 68. So, excuse me, I went over with my ad guy to their office, met the two owners, husband and wife, really nice people. And they showed me the Baja bug that they actually had a real Baja bug, and then they were going to make a mock up of it and build a model car. And they competed in the Nora 500 the year before.

And they were smart people. They said, hey, we've got the publisher of Hot Rod here. He's going to do an article. Why don't we see if he wants to drive the car? And they offered me, they said, look, would you like to, race this car in the Nora race and I said kind of you know I'd love to although I was not I'm not a car racer I wasn't then although I was involved I went to every you know Indy and went to Lamas I went to I traveled you know NASCAR motorcycle races drag racing where I was really became a gearhead I wasn't a

gearhead but I became one okay and I just fell in love with Baha You know, we did, we raised some of my ad salesmen and I, Bob Boygan, we decided we're going to do it. And we had a totally different concept of what we thought the race was about. We didn't know about pre-running. I thought it was a yellow line down the highway in Baja and would, you know, go down to this great place and have a great time. Dancing girls. Yeah, the big ranch. The Senaeritas at Ranch to Chabal.

Lo and behold, and I think we've already covered this in the way. But we're going to cover it a lot more, just like the movies, right? Wear the guys in the guitar and the big hats, the dancing girls, servants, margaritas, and all that stuff. Well, we broke in Colnett. Actually, the first time we broke in Colnett. And this is 68? 68.

69? I think it was 69. And you're racing a replica of a plastic model car. Right, exactly. That's going to be advertised in your magazine. That's exactly right. Yeah. And it actually got more pages than I anticipated since I got involved in the car.

So they were smart. They did their home. work and did the right thing. But that really hooked me. And they decided after that event, they gave me the vehicle. And so we campaigned it for, I think it was 69, 70, and 71. And then, and I did finish third in the Baja 1000 that ended here right on the Mala Kone. And I think there were like maybe 30 vehicles that actually finished that race and that were in the impound area. Exciting time. And I said, During that time, I met a lot of people in Baja and Baja Swur, from political people to the politicians to hotel owners.

Just I fell into the group, luckily. And then I also met Mickey Thompson because I was doing stores at Carcraft and Hot Rod on Mickey and the various things that he was doing. And then, as most of the hardcore off-road racers know that unfortunately, Mr. Perlman, Ed Perlman, Mike's father, there was a little disagreement. I don't know exactly what it was, but in Ensonada and the governor at that time, Abaha, I think, decided maybe his son or nephew should maybe be running the event. And Ed Perlman was asked to leave.

And they put on the Mexican organization put on the next event. And unfortunately, it was a 73. It was a disaster, total disaster. And that time, the governor, Milton Castellano, invited Mickey Thompson because he was a famous name and personality and myself, because I was a publisher of Hot Rod, to come down to Mexicali, be his guest, and talk about how the two of us could help. He still was thinking that this kid, there was a relative of the governor, could put on the, events how we could help promote the event in the United States because Mickey knew a lot of the racers I had the media the press at my power and I flew down with Mickey and Mickey's playing to this meeting thinking that that's what Mickey was thinking of how we're going to

you know help these guys out well long behold of me Mickey had a different idea when we got back in the plane to fly back to Long Beach which was where Mickey's plane was part he said you know he says I'm going to start an organization and we're going to I could make this thing work and he says I want you to be the president and I said you know it was a joke I mean I was traveling the world and expense account and I said Mickey I've got the greatest job in the world you know I love what I'm doing with coming down to Mexico but no I'm not going to leave Hot Rod magazine well it took him a year to convince me that and he had already started he put a Riverside race on and he convinced me to leave hot rod and because he said I was going to be the president of this company and unfortunately I was not a financial genius besides not being an English major but I didn't realize that 49% wasn't partnership. Mickey was 51%. Gotcha. I see how that worked out. Mickey was very fair, very honest with me. And And a tough boss because he was a unique individual.

I was very honored to have the opportunity to have my apprenticeship under a guy like Mick. Because he worked 24 hours a day. And I was a workaholic myself. But he made me look like a slouch. He was always thinking, his brain was thinking about, he was thinking about off-road racing. He was thinking about boat racing. He was thinking about how to make a plane go faster, how to make manifolds, make wheels, tires. He was just, you know, he was all over the place. A genius, but very raw as a

person. He was not, you described him as not, not maybe, I don't want to put words in your mouth. Maybe you could describe his personality. It would be, you know, Mickey, you're in a suit and tie. Yeah. The best hair in the whole business. Great expense account, right? And you're, you're, you're whining and dining people. Mickey had, I mean, he's not Carol Shelby in coveralls or overalls, but not far off. Yeah. No, that you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, exactly right. Mickey was a best way to describe me, he was a street fighter. He was a guy out in

the trenches all the time. I had a background with Peterson. Everything was, you know, we had five offices across the United States. I could walk into the 21 club at New York. They had recognized they have a table for me, that London Chop House sit with Penske,

Carol Shelby, chairman of the board of the automotive industries, because Hot Rod was, you know, it was the magazine. And if you got an article in there, you sold product. If you got a car on the cover, you know, a new Mustang or something, it meant a lot to the Detroit. So I was in a unique situation. Mickey was a totally different guy.

Mickey was a real, the best way I could strive it, a street fighter. You know, I was wearing a suit and tie at my job. expense account, unlimited. Mickey, you know, was wearing bib overalls. and, you know, cramming a hot dog in his mouth and eating off the roach coach, you know. I didn't even know what a roach coach was until I went to work at Mixey's race shop, and I learned right away that I didn't wear a suit and tie. I was a Baja guy then, and I adapted.

And Mickey and I were like, I would say in a good way, we were like oil and water. I don't know which one of us was oil and which one was water, but we just, our personalities were totally different. And I think at the beginning, it worked because I didn't know anything. You know, I didn't know how to mark a course. I didn't know. I never slept out. I wasn't a Boy Scout. I never slept on the dirt.

You know, I didn't know what a snake was. You know, I'd go, oh, isn't that nice? What is that? It's a big lizard, you know. I didn't have any clue. So I got a lesson of fire, I'd say, and I learned what the Baja was about. I walked the Baha, I rode on a burrow. I rode in Mickey's plane. I drove it, you know, and I became Baja ties, you know, and I thanked

Mickey for that. Then Mickey, you know, wanted to go on to other things. He wanted to do the stadium racing. I did not want to do that. I felt, I believed in the family activity that score was creating. I loved the people of Baja, and I loved our races, and I said, I didn't want to be a a manager for 20 superstars, you know, egotomaniacs that are run around in a circle. I said the Baja is unique. The race itself is not so technical that if you smile, you're going to get disqualified. And, you know, I wanted to do something more than make left-hand turns or right-hand turns on a two-mile track. And so I wanted to keep it as on the edge as possible, but yet as safe as possible. So Mickey decided, and I decided, you know, that I first

all needed to move out of his facility so that I could be myself. He hired me to run score, and, you know, I couldn't do it with him, you know, second guess and everything I was doing, which was good because he kept me on my toes, but I'll never forget. I said, you know, Mickey, I don't know how long this relationship could last. I said, you know, I just, you hired me to the president. It's very difficult because you're such a demanding figure yourself. It's hard to be the president. And he said, well, I've got to go to Italy. I'm going to buy a shock company. He says, you can move out, but he says, you'll last. And he didn't say it in a vindictive way. He said, you won't last six months. And so I said, okay. And I was driving an hour and a half from my home in Malibu to Anaheim to his shop every day.

So I said, I'm going to get a little closer. So I opened an office in Sherman Oaks, which was only a half an hour, 40 minutes from my house. And I lasted a little more than six months. And I was fortunate enough because Mickey needed quite a bit of money to continue this relationship with the stadium races. And Mike Goodman, and I was able to buy Mickey out. And he was very gracious on what he sold it to me for. And, you know, X 30 years, whatever it is later, you know, score was running,

and I think we were doing a good job. Here at Little Baja, we can't wait to drive our old land cruiser 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 travel. since 1994. Big thanks to my new sponsor Nomad Wheels.

They stepped up and sponsored the Slow Baja Safari class at the Nora Mexican 1000, and I don't know if you've seen the pictures, but Slow Baja is running a set of 501 convoys in utility gray, and they look pretty damn sharp. They were a little shiny. I will admit that they were a little shiny when I got them installed at Basil's Garage just before the Norah Mexican 1,000, but after, I don't know, 3,800 miles of Baja dirt, they look perfect.

They really do. Nomadwheels.com. That's right. Check them out reflecting a minimalist approach to off-road travel. Nomadwheels.com. Hey, we're back. We're back. We had a nice little break. We're back.

And we're with Sal Fish at his beautiful house in La Paz. And that sound that you hear behind us is the water hitting the beach. The beach is right in front of his house. And it's a beautiful day. It's not very hot. It's nice. It's Malibu weather here. You've mentioned score.

You started score with Mickey Thompson, and can you define score for the folks who don't know what the acronym is? Well, you know, I'll bet if you asked 100 people in the off-road community that all come up with a different answer. But to my best knowledge, people thought it was short-course, off-road racing enterprises. people thought it was stadium whatever the heck competition whatever SC ORE you meant but I truly believe what it was Mickey came up with the original idea of score he had a different decal I came up with the block letter score after I was there about six months but Mickey's idea was it was you scored. You scored. You made a good score. That's what our company was called. And I believe that's

what Mickey had intended. And, you know, people ask me this question. And often, I'm sorry I haven't done my own due diligence. I should call Danny Thompson, Mickey's son, because, you know, everyone says, unfortunately, or fortunately, that I started because somehow Mickey's been gone for so long and everything I had to forget. It was actually Mickey Thompson that really started score. I came in, well, I knew about it before he started it, but there was no way I was thinking I would ever be a part of a score that was not in my plans. And Danny was Mickey's son, his Mickey's son, and he was working with Mickey in the shop. And Mickey and Danny were very, very, you know, close and not close as father and son because you could imagine having a father of speed king.

You know, Danny had a hard way to go. You know, to either try to emulate his dad or to be his own person. Very nice young man. And as we all know, he's done a remarkable job. You know, he broke the speed record and no one ever believed that would happen, you know. And he really did a lot of great things. But Danny, I should give him a call. and find out if he remembers how the score name really came about.

But I thought it was in a conversation, and think he was, well, you're going to score and not score like guys do with a girl. This was a totally different concept. But anyway, that's the best I could do, Michael. Gotcha. He ran this organization for decades, folks. He has no idea what it means. I love it.

So let's talk about those early days. You had this vision of what Matt. Mexico was in your suits and ties. You've eaten in Mexican restaurants before. You know what Mexico's all about, right? Certainly do. Yeah. You've drank a margarita and you've watched those fabulous singing Western films with the dancing girls. So can you describe the culture that you thought was here and the culture that you found and how profoundly kind the people of Baja are to the folks who visit? Well, you know, I, for the people that have been involved in off-road racing, you know, they've experienced the most unique lifestyle going on in our society, you know. Baja being, you know, right, I mean, in Tijuana, Mexicali, and the border towns, we, the United States breeze the same air that they breathe, but, you know, there's no, it's just a border, you know, you walk across. the line and you're in the United States, you walk the other way, and you're in Baja.

Baja is such a different place than the mainland of Mexico. The mainland of Mexico, I found out really early on when I start coming down here regularly, down here being Baja and Baja Sor, is it was a stepchild of the mainland of Mexico. A lot of the people in the mainland of Mexico thought they were still Indians over here on this side. one from Mexico City or Monterey or Guadalajara or any of the major cities came to the peninsula. They would go to Alcapulco or to Ziawata Nejo or wherever for their vacation. And so Baja for a long time, it really was the early California Cowboys and Indians, so to speak, west. There was only one paved road that did not go from Tijuana to Cava San Lucas.

It only went from the back way from Tijuana into Ensenada, stopped about a quarter mile south of the San Nicolas Hotel. And then it was off road from there. And there was a trail, you know, that went from Ensenada and ended up in... La Paz and Cabas and Lucas and there was a section of pavement from Constitution to La Paz. But I'm talking about in 1971, 72, 73, there was no pavement all the way down. Then the government, you know, put the Trans-Penitial Highway in and put the Lepinta hotels. I think there were originally four or five of them strategically placed so that a traveler could stop and get a meal and a bed and a shower, hopefully, and some gasoline.

So up until, I would say, 15 years ago, I think the Baja Peninsula still was a lot of uncharted land here. There was a lot of very pioneer-type people that came here. And, you know, when you think about it, when Cortez came, he wasn't very welcome here because the natives that were here, you know, they didn't need someone from Spain coming over and screwing him over, you know, and they got rid of him. And then, you know, whatever happened, then the English came, Italians came, the Russians came, the Americans came. And so you had a hodgepodge.

of a lot of different people for a lot of good reasons because I think it was the Germans that discovered the mine made mines here. The French did the mining in Santa Rosa Leia. The English made flour mills in San Quintin area.

The Italians in Guadalupe Valley before it was what it is. Started growing grapes. Russians too. The Russians there also. So, you know. So, you know, had a very, really unique cross-section of adventurous people that ended up here on the peninsula.

And the people that were here, you know, the native people, were just so happy to see people come down, you know, as whether it was the fishing people, the sailing people, or the off-road people. And I think the beauty of it was the off-road people and the government and the tourists weren't realized that we were probably their best way to get global attention. And because we had vehicles that had good tires on them, shocks, we had things called thermoses and ice chests, that they didn't, you know, ice was very difficult down here. So we came down and showed that you could travel from here to there,

and we opened up roads. You know, we made dirt roads. We didn't. It was not an environmental issue. Everything we did was with the auspices of the government. You know, we didn't go down and just start making new trails and everything without getting permission from the landowners, which are called the hitos. And we negotiated. I'd negotiate with them, you know, personally, whether it's sitting by a campfire or with a bottle of tequila or a can of beans or what have you, or eating venison or a rabbit that they had killed. it just it was spectacular for me i mean from a guy that was eating in five-star restaurants to come out and sit on the ground you know with scorpions running around here or snakes and everything and it was just great i tell you i just like 21 in new york yeah just like the 21 club for those

that have ever had the experience of eating there but you know i i've got a without a doubt i feel I'm one of the luckiest guys in the world. I'm very blessed, not only because I have a beautiful and wife that put up with my uniqueness for all these years, but meeting the people that I have met in the Baja Peninsula and because it brought me to Mexico City too, because I'd go back and meet with the presence of Mexico, the different governors in the state of Baja,

federal and state departments of tourism, immigration, customs, the fuel people. And score is a big deal to them. It really was because we were getting global attention. We were bringing people from all over the world to their country here, and they welcome that. So I never saw this as a job. I mean, I was doing something that most people got to do maybe once or twice a year.

They took their vacation or whatever it is. This was what I did every day, and I did do it every day, seven days a week. week, 24 hours a day, I lived it because it became my passion. You know, it really did. And it still is, you know, I love it here. Every chance I get, I love to come down here. I've met so many people. I mean, there's not, I don't think there's a place in the Baja Peninsula that I am not welcome that I couldn't go in. And they would say either saltfish or that's the guy that, you know, does the Baja 1,000 who would have you. They're just gracious people. Do you think it's the good hair and the great mustache?

Well, you know, and again, I wish I could take credit for having stole my hair and a mustache, but, you know, it was my parents that had the jeans. I didn't have anything to do with it, you know. Believe me, I'm just a lucky guy, if that means anything. But can I interject? So walking in said hello to Barbara. And we got onto a little, you know, conversation. I'm on a six-week-long trip and, you know, away from my wife for quite a while.

We're empty nesters now. And she said, yeah, Baja. And she gave me that look. Like Baja almost destroyed us. You put an awful lot into promoting this place and promoting the racing here. And I'm sure there are some difficulties along the way. She did it all with kind of a look and a wink. And you're now at 50, almost 50 years.

But can you describe the hands? on approach. When I talked to Ramon Castro, after I saw you last time, he said you're out there tying the ribbons on yourself. Well, yeah. And then, you know, a flood comes or this comes or whatever. Ivan said he'd never want your job. Yeah. Ever. Well, you know, I wish I could be a racer, but I could never have Ivan's job because he had a talent. I certainly didn't have his talent. And just because you're an off-road promoter doesn't mean you're a good off-road racer or any racer and just because you're a good racer doesn't mean you're a good off-road promoter it takes well first of all there's no off-road 101 school you know the way i learned it was the only way that

i think most people really learn it and understand it and that's a hard way i got down rolled up my sleeves didn't even have sleeves and slept on the ground broke vehicles down here didn't know where i was going didn't have a compass never brought food my philosophy was don't bring any tools because the car knows you're going to have tools and it will break. So I figured the heck with it. You know, not going to do that, you know. I can't fix it with the leather man. And, you know, I was fortunate enough to have great vehicle sponsors.

You know, it started off with the VW thing, if you could believe that, marking the course. And, you know, with the doors off. And that was my, you know, I had. had cars when I was at Peterson, you know, every automobile manufacturer wanted to give me a car, obviously, because we would do an article on it or something. So I never, for the, how many years, 65, when I started, Peterson, I don't remember, 62, 60, not 62, 64, 65 to 73, I always had free cars. And my car, when I got to score, because I didn't own a car, I had all these free cars. and you'd give them back

every six months or whatever. I was a proud owner that Mickey, when I say owner, was scores, but that was my car, was a Volkswagen thing. And I mean just a basic thing. And I would drive that from my home in Malibu with no doors on it

and no windshield on it and to Mickey's place. And then that's what I used to actually mark and find the routes. I'd fill it with stakes. and people thought they meant meat steaks, but I mean wood steaks that I'd pounded in the ground, put arrows on it to tell them which way the course went and a machete.

And that was my bath of fire. And I forgot, I didn't take water. I'd take a salami because that would, you know, because you're Italian salami. And you could keep that under the seed. It could get wet. It could get caught. Bugs could get on it.

It'd kill the bugs. It was a great staple of food. but it just was And then, you know, you can't, we're sitting here, you know, as you say, we're sitting in La Paz, we've got all this high-tech technology. Airplanes are flying in and out of air. There's a million-dollar trophy trucks. There's all this.

But when we were talking back in the early days, you know, there was no satellite phone. There was no communication. The peninsula didn't have phones. You cranked a phone, and it was. went over to the mainland and then it hooked up to the United States. I would leave the house and my wife, you know, who was at that time, if she was a professor at Pierce College in the Valley and also teaching an English class,

and here's this idiot me, is out there in Baja pounding stakes. And I'd say, well, I'm going to, well, I'm looking for the 500 course. And she said, well, where are you going? I said, well, I'm going south. You know, I didn't know where I was going. Mickey would fly over me and tell me, drop a rock. Trudy would drop a rock or a Coke can with a node in it and say, and go another 150 yards.

There's a cactus tree that looks like an elephant, make a right-hand turn, and there's a little trail. See where that goes. And I'll sit there and look for Mickey, and their plane, poor Trudy was in this single-seat plane, drops the rock out. I'd get, pick up the rock, read the thing, and go. That's what I did.

Barbara didn't know when I was coming back because I couldn't call her. You know, I didn't have any way to call her. And I don't know how she did it. I really, and thinking back, I was so caught up. And let's face it, it was such an adventure for me and such a different way of life that, yeah, I was concerned, but I didn't really understand what she was going through. You know what I mean? I'm not trying to paint this unbelievable picture, but it was just, you know,

And she was not a car enthusiast. You know, this was not her life either. She was in a different league of her own. So she made her, I think, decided, you know, she would have to become really independent herself. You know, I was never there to pay the bills. You know, I'd be gone every time a bill was due. I didn't know that you paid gas bills and water bills and had to do that.

Barber, or insurance, you know, she did all of that. So I, not only was I blessed. to be able to get down here and find this incredible, remarkable Baja California in Baja's order. But I had a wife that somehow said, you know, I'm going to make it work. I'm going to take my own business, you know, not her own business, but are educational and or being a worker at Pierce College in the education system, but run a house when my husband's never even here. You know, and it had to be very tough for her. And I jokingly say, you know, people say, oh, gosh, you know, 50 years, how did you do it?

And I said, well, I was gone 40 years of it. That's how I did it, you know. And I say that, you know, it's kind of a, I don't know, I don't think it could be, maybe it's too macho, mucho, but I don't mean it that way, you know, it's just I have a great wife that put up with it. We, unfortunately or fortunate, we didn't have kids. And, you know, I saw the off-road community as my family. You know, they were my kids. They were my, you know, brothers, my sisters. And I treated it that way.

So on that, and Sal, thank you for being so beautiful and candid about what your beautiful wife, Barbara, lived with and put up with. I've always said that Baja is a portal to another era. And I come here and it's a filter for what I was doing as a college kid bouncing around here in the 80s where we were just dumb. We had a AAA club map because that's where I used to get my insurance and had a AAA card. My dad always taught me to be cautious. So we'd go and get a AAA map. But a lot of it's dead reckoning and figuring stuff out and not knowing where you are when you're there. which now with GPS and everything else,

the Rance, all this stuff, all this technology. You're driving a vehicle through the desert, and it looks like it's a cockpit of an airplane. You know, and think about what you did in a Volkswagen thing with nothing in there and a salami rolling around, you know? A cooler of water and beer, I'm assuming, in salami. And that was that. You got your stapler, you know, in your stack of steaks,

and somebody's dropping a rock to you for communication. That's crazy. You know, again, it's, It's just, I mean, I wake up almost every night or early morning. I've never been a guy that needs a lot of sleep. And I really, I have flashes of things that happened in my life. Even before score, you know, I had a fun time. I lived in San Francisco going to school there for four years at the University of San Francisco.

I lived in Los Angeles, so I was born and raised, in probably the most beautiful time of Los Angeles. You know, the early 50s and then, you know, went to Loyola High School in Los Angeles, and then went to a Jesuit college in San Francisco. So I matured, I think, in San Francisco at the time when San Francisco was still North Beach, very Italian, it hadn't turned into the L.A. hype stuff that it eventually turned into one of the most beautiful cities in the world. So, again, I really consider myself blessed, a lucky guy to have met the people along my

lifetime and then to end up at score and in Mexico and especially the peninsula with the nicest people in the world and the most beautiful scenery. I mean here you've got the Pacific to see a Cortez you've got pine forests you've got lakes you got mountains you've got heat you've got snow you've got great food great people it's just just an incredible place and this was quote my job you know it was tough no question about it I mean I don't think anyone a lot of racers wanted to go out and say, oh, I want to mark the course with you because they wanted to figure out where the course was going. Well, they'd last a day or two because they didn't realize I could only go if I was lucky.

I could go maybe 50 miles. And that was, I had, you know, two names. One was skip it and captain midnight because I would say skip breakfast, skip lunch, skip dinner because I needed light. I needed every minute of daylight to get to A to B to find out. where I'm going to make this course go. And the other captain, and I never stopped before midnight, if possible, you know, to sleep in the truck or in the bed or on the ground.

You know, I used to take, at one time I took a tent in a sleeping bag, you know, in a tent. How do you put up a tent? I didn't. I looked like, you know, step and fetch it out there in Laurel and Hardy, trying to figure out how to put a tent. By the time I got it ready, it was time to leave, you know. So it did it the hard way. But it made me the person that I am today, and I think that gave me a challenge.

And I like a lot of people say in off-road and I never gave up. And that's a secret. You've got to continue going forward. I had to get to the finish line. And then, you know, you think about that. We were, Mickey really never wanted to, you know, the thousand disappeared, so to speak, after Nora. then we had the gas crunch, and then we had all kinds of things. And Mickey was a work guy that didn't want to leave whatever business he had going.

So he didn't want to take the time to make the thousand go from point A to point B. That's why the 500, and for his, he wanted the thousand to be a loop all the time. I did not want that. I wanted the challenge of starting here and ending, you know, here being insolvent. and ending in Bahasur, whether it be La Paz or Cabo. And he was dead against it. And Ricardo Soto, who was at that time in the early sevens, the Secretary of Tourism for the state of Bahasur,

called me at the, I never met him before, and he called at the office, said he was coming into Los Angeles. He wanted to talk to me out bringing the race back there, and that's how we got it back here. He stated, and his wife, introduced him to Barbara, stayed at our home when he came in town. And we became very good friends. Unfortunately, he's passed away. He was one of the longest Secretary of Tourism for the state of Bah, California. A great guy. Just a great family guy, and his wife was lovely. We stayed friends all these years.

But, you know, my life really, I spent the majority of my life here. I knew more people here than I did. and, you know, had more friends, real friends, and they really did in my home in California because of the fact that I spent more time here, you know. And, again, back to the relationship with Barbara, you know, friends that Barbara would meet in Malibu, you know, and I was never there for any of the holidays or anything, because you looked at our race schedule, I was always marking a course.

You know, you didn't just go out and wave a flag and say, go that way. I was a year in advance working on the courses. And at one time, you know, I think we put eight races on. And I don't know how. I look back at that and I say, I don't know how score did that. I don't know. I, you know, I had my nephew working with me, Sue Johnson, Bernice Sanders, Charlie Lavelle and his family, Charlie Engelbart, Bill Savage, Dominic Clark, all these people that volunteered basically their help. I look back and I said, That's how it happened because they had all these people that loved the sport, really loved score, you know, and we were a family.

And they worked their butts off and just had a great time, you know. I mean, how do you get a guy to go 400 miles in his own vehicle out in a middle of nowhere? And I'm telling them how to get there. There's no map, but I'm drawing a map for him. And he takes his family, breaks his vehicle, and he's there just to put a check stub in a racer come by. I mean, that's dedication, you know, and he wants to know when the race is next year so he could invite some other friends and take a vacation and come down. I mean, it's just unbelievable people.

I mean, they really are. It was just a, it was, and that, you know, really stimulated me, and I felt an obligation to them, not only to the racer, you know, but to the people that made upscore, you know, the 200, 300, 400, volunteers that put their life on the line so that the racer could have a great time. They weren't racers. They wanted to be a part of the community. I mean, what other sport? You can't do that.

In Indy, you're ahead of a checkpoint. Out in the middle and nowhere, you make decisions. I couldn't second guess them. I couldn't even communicate with them. If they had a problem, they had to figure out what to do and how to help the racer. So there's a big difference between what the off-road racer did back then and what they're doing today.

And I'm not taking anything away from what these guys do today. Because to go across Laguna Chapala or Diablo Dry Lake at 140 miles an hour, I don't get it. You know, the fastest I would go in marking, of course, was maybe five miles an hour because I had to stop every 50 yards and tie a ribbon or put a steak down in the ground. So it would take me to, you know, literally, I mean, figure it out, a 500-mile course. and if everything went well, 50 miles a day, you know, I'm not home in two days.

And then I had, you know, got up one morning and decided, well, everybody's doing something for the year 2000. I was reading travel magazines and said, gosh, why are they all doing this? I said, well, we ought to put a 2,000 a little. Double down. That was. I really had a brain fade then when I did that one. But it was exciting. What an event that was.

Yeah, Eric Solerzano told me on Slow Bar about his experience there and, you know, getting into a junkyard and having, you know, pit bulls after him and everything to steal apart so you could get his bug across the line and he won his class. Yeah. Hey, you were here as a racer before the road was completed. We're coming up on the 50th anniversary this year in December for the completion of the Trans-Peninsula Highway. People are worried about driving the Trans-Peninsula now. You know, 50 years later, pretty well paved. You know, I always say if you let your concentration lapse at all, there's a pothole or there's a cow or there's something here. It's maximum concentration driving all the time.

But can you even tell me about what it was like when you started this mess? When you started as a racer, certainly you had wide open, you know, stuff and only a couple of checkpoints. So figure it out. How do you want to go? And that really was the beauty of the early years when Ed Perlman did his deal. It was almost a point-to-point. And so he only had, I think there were three real designated checkpoints, or maybe four, I don't remember.

But, you know, any way you could get there. And he realized, I think, before he left Baja, that he had to tighten that up. because some of the money people started to come in and they had private planes and so they would look to see if there was another way to go that would be shorter than getting to a checkpoint and I think that had to stop because you know they were just going tearing up you know it was almost like the first motorcycle oh the heron-hound yeah the Vegas arena or not Vegas area the Barst area the Barstahs to Vegas you know when they lined up 3,000 motorcycles they just you know nuked the desert to get to you know every jackrab and snake left the area so one of the things that SCORE was responsible for is we really brought some

common sense into this and we knew first all we had to have a way if we had a problem to somehow ham operators could talk to someone in Yugoslavia and they'd talk to Wisconsin and they'd talk to San Diego and San Diego would talk to the Bayeah Hotel where we had a radio, you know, and so we developed checkpoints. We said we need to have at maybe the most a couple hundred miles away so that, you know, if the guy needs help, there's someone from score, whether we had a medic person there or a checkpoint personnel, he could get help there. And that really, you know, we were, we were living and learning. You know, every race we'd learn.

I learned something new, about 100 things new, that I needed I had to figure out a solution because else this sport won't last. And I never, I say sport, I want to call it an adventure. I wanted to keep score something that no one else was doing, something that was challenging, and it wasn't for everybody. It was for someone that wanted to accomplish something. It was man against machinery and machinery and man against the elements.

And the Baja element, many tell you, normally wins. And you've got to use your head. You've got to be smart. You know, where you go five miles an hour, you've got to go five miles an hour. Where you can go 100. Well, maybe you can go 100, but you've got to know what you're doing. And you tried to, and, you know, the other thing, I don't think a lot of people really realize because, you know, we have a lot of classes.

And we had a lot of classes for the reason that we wanted anybody that had a vehicle or a motorcycle could come out and have a good time. They didn't have to start racing when they're two years old. They didn't have to have, you know, mechanical ability. They just had to have a sense of adventure. And it was open for anyone to do that. So that's what we created all these classes. But that made a challenge for me because it's one thing to, find a track that a four-wheel vehicle could go over because the guy puts it in four-wheel and he gets over it.

But or he, you know, for a dune buggy, like we used to have, call them dune buggies or a sandrail or whatever it is, it's not four-wheel drive. It's only got 1,600 horsepower, you know, and no suspension. So I had to, when I was designing the course, had to think of, will a Volkswagen bug be able to get up this hill or through this silt? And what will happen after they pre-run? Because we used to open pre-running three months in advance. So people that could come down would come down and all of a sudden what looked like a nice trail. Now it's three foot of silt with moguls the size of a ski resort, you know, in there. And so there was a lot to this development of what we are doing today.

You know, a lot of the, let's face it, there's only so many ways you go in Baja, and we've just about figured out every way there is. And so the trails and the routes that are being used, we've used them. You know, I've tried to get as much variation every time that we could. But it's getting tighter and tighter now, and I do. I do really respect what SCORE and what Norris just did, you know, trying to find new ways without causing a problem for the landowners. And there's so much more development now here in Baja.

So, you know, score has its hands full. And they're doing, I think, an excellent job in trying to come up with a variation of what we really, what Perlman had and what, you know, Mickey and I started. to make it interesting for the racers. Was it Ramon Castro who said it, or was it Eric Solerzano who said it, that the Sal Fish era of score was the rock music of the 70s. And it's just things have changed. Music is still music today, but there was a special era about when you ran it.

And, you know, so watching videos doing my homework, reading about you, reading about your era when you ran things. Attrition rates. Can we talk a little bit about the attrition rate when you would start a race 100% maybe gets the finish line 90-something percent? What percentage is typically would you get in a good year or a bad year or a tough course or an easier course? How did, how many, what percentage of finishers?

Well, to be honest with you, my, you don't have to be a genius to build a race. course that no one could finish and my mentality is someone is buying a ticket to my show and I want them to see the whole show so what I did was I made as challenging a race course is I could in my mind put together and then I would listen to the feedback of people that would go down and pre-run and say Sal you know you know where in those days you'd say you know where that cactus that looks like a gorilla and then you come around this rock that looks like a snake and you know and we'd all know we'd go oh yeah you know and that's 300 miles down the peninsula we'd know exactly what they're talking well you can't

get around there now because there's a drop off or there's guys got a fence or whatever it is so where i would try to make sure that a racer had a chance to finish i made a the average speed, you know, I looked at the time that a Volkswagen would do it and then not even a trophy truck, the first real sophisticated class one vehicles in class eight. They were so much faster than majority of the classes. So I said, let's give them a longer time period. And so if you look back, you know, in our early days, the finishing rate wasn't that bad. I mean, I don't know who's, I mean, it wasn't like 20%.

I wouldn't, I couldn't live with myself of guys couldn't get to the finish line because I build a course that they couldn't finish, you know. So I had a challenge in my mind. I wanted to put myself in that seat and say, I'm going to be a proud guy if even someone does in 22 hours, but I took 50 hours to do it and legally I finished. You did it. That's bragging rights, you know. You did it.

And so that's what I, what I, what I, I tried my mind. That's how I saw my customers, my family of doing it that way. And I think in the long run it worked, you know. Today, the attrition rate, I don't think it's because the equipment cannot take it, or the roads are so much more difficult. I think it's they're driving so much more faster. They're not driving the way you're supposed to drive in Baja. They're driving as, quote, a guy sometimes.

would drive, let's say, at a drag race or a roundy round, they forget that, you know, when they put that helmet on, their brain and their right foot get confused, you know, and that's not good. How do you balance, yeah, how do you balance the triumph and the tragedy? That's a hell of a lot of weight that you carried, that, you know, having just seen Bob Bauer and his famous letter, Yeah.

Will it be you? You know, will it be you? How do you, and I hate to put you on the spot, Sal, but that must have been your biggest concern every year. Who was, who wasn't coming back? And how do you deal with that if you're able to even articulate that? That, there's no question, Michael. If anything was going to stop me from doing what I was doing,

what I was doing, it was the danger situation. I just, it was very difficult to have someone become a paraplegic or lose his life and have to tell the family, you know, that happened in my event. And I think mentally and compassionally the way I approached it was first of all, I truly believe that score with me at the head, the bucks stopped with me, put together the best number one and challenging fun event anyone could put to. I really worked at it. It wasn't just I took it for granted and someone else went out. I knew the course.

I knew every inch of it. I walked it. I drove it. I, you know, wrote it, as I said, a donkey over sections and everything. and I wanted to know what was there so that if I had a problem, I could say, oh, yeah, I know where it is and send a plane or a helicopter,

or myself go drive out there if I could or whatever to help the person. But I saw, in my early career, Peterson, you know, I went to all kinds of races, and I saw tragic accidents. I mean, you know, where people would get wiped out in a corner or a drag racing blowups, Indigar, flames, everything,

and it just tore my heart. And I knew that we had a problem going in. First of all, we were in a foreign country. We didn't have the medical assistance that we needed in the way you can't fly at night here. So as soon as it got dust, we were in a fog ourselves. Race headquarters had no clue what the hell was going on. And we wouldn't be able to go towards someone unless, you know, it was light and we could find. them. No one even knew where anyone who was half the time. So I wanted to say, first of all,

we built the best race course we could without me saying, oh, I'm going to make these guys break or fall off a cliff or something that would cause a problem, number one. Number two, I wanted to believe that people were doing what they wanted to do, and this was a place that they could do it, and they are mature people, and hopefully they have insurance, and they told their family what they were doing, and they knew what this was a challenge. That's not saying that I could just look the other way. I never could do that.

It just, but when you, the thing that I did would say to myself, when you look at other forms of motorsports, we have ambulances right there. They have barriers. They have this. They have that. We had nothing, nothing there. And you look at how many miles,

we would drive in a race. We didn't just go two miles around a loop. We were out from the minute you left that start line, you were in no one's land until you got back either to the loop event or to 1,000, 20 miles or 2,000 miles down the road. You were on your own. And so you had to, and we tried to make sure those vehicles, Bill Savage, God love him.

He did an incredible job, our tech director. he built the rules and regulations that he knew there was going to be an accident. And he wanted to have the guy have a chance or girl to survive that crash. And just a side note, I can remember one of the first things that happened, a lot of things happened when I first came aboard score, because everyone, you know, the racers, Mickey was just a unique individual and argumented with the racers. and everyone was a part of the original.

Parnelli was very active. Mickey Walker Evans, you name it. Bill Straub. The early pioneers were very involved with Mickey and myself in telling us, well, you've got to have these rules. You've got to do this. You can't do that. And they were all, you know, we listened to him.

But Mickey, he was a strong-headed guy. He knew what he wanted to do. I was listening because I was like a sponge. I wanted to soak all these guys. because they were racers. They knew what the hell they were racing other forms of motorsports. And I said, I could learn something from them. But I looked at these crashes and things that happened, I'd say, gosh, one accident is one too many.

But it's going to happen. And I was trying to say to myself, in my mind, I said, you know, compared to Indy, they take out, a tire goes into the stands and wipes out, you know, 10 people, a flame 10 cars crash year after year you know these were happening our events yes we had accidents we had deaths unfortunately spectators that were standing right in there and again you know there were no fences there were no sheriffs out there or what do you call them security people and rate they would be putting tents right up on the racetrack you know here a guy went you know pre-ran the day before and and he could go 10 20 50 miles an hour Next thing, you know, someone dug a hole and put a booby trap, you know.

And so there was just so many things. And I, in my mind, I had to say, look, you know, I've done everything I can human possible to provide the safety of it. To this day, I mean, I see people that, you know, unfortunately lost their lives in Baja. And it just, it still gets to me. But I will tell you, and this used to drive my wife nuts, not because she wasn't compassionate, but if and when I was home, you know, my phone, I was available 24 hours a day because I would pick up that phone thinking maybe someone was down pre-running or maybe someone was in Baja and they needed help and they were calling me. And so I didn't want to just say, well, you know, it's 7 o'clock. I'm, you know, I'm not answering the phone. My phone is to this day is listed, and I still get calls from other people that heard about score, knew about me.

They knew Baja, they knew I knew Baja, and their husband or someone was down here joyriding and having a fun time. And someone said, call selfish, he could probably help you. And so, you know, there's no question. It tears me up. It really did, and it still does. I think of the thousands of families that have stuck together because they came down to Baja. Fathers and sons and wives couldn't even relate to their kids. But on a Wednesday night or a weekend, they were at their neighbors working on their motorcycle or their car to come down for this adventure.

And instead of out there jumping rope and smoke and dope, their kids came together with them. And they came to Baja and it saved their marriage, it saved their relationship with their kids. They became, they opened businesses, they manufactured things. There was no off-road manufacturing stuff, and they become millionaires. I mean, we create, the score created an incredible avenue for people that wanted to do things and branch out. A whole industry. I mean, think about it, you know, wheels, tires, shocks, all kinds of wizards, helmets, breathing devices. Look at the people that were.

doing something else and they created an incredible industry. So I think the off-road community is spectacular. And the people that made it up and not only the racers but the volunteers that made score what it is today, my hat goes off to them. If it wasn't for them, I wouldn't be sitting here taking all the caduce and, you know, I get my picture taken and people want my autograph. but it's really the people behind me, you know, and my, you know, Oscar Ramos, my nephew, Paul, and as I mentioned, you know, Savage and Dominic Clark and Sue Johnson, you know, these people,

they were behind the scenes, but without them, score would not be here today. I think we're going to leave it right there, folks. Well done. Nice to see you. And you can always say Hemingway said it, you know. There are only three sports, bullfighting, down. downhill skiing and auto racing. The rest of them are merely games. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hey, I hope you like that one. Sal Fish, what a lovely, lovely human being. If you like what I'm doing, meeting these people where they are, where they live,

getting these intimate interviews, Sal and I, he walked me to the car. I asked him for some advice on the events, you know, as I was starting to do the Slow Baja Adventures, and he gave me some advice and it had us both in tears. That part wasn't in the show. But if you like what I'm doing, take a second hit that donate button drop a taco in the tank i really could use it i came back for my latest slow baha adventure a little over drawn no tacos in the tank so if you still got some tacos drop a few my way i really appreciate it if you don't i get it as i said i don't um but take a second hit that five star on apple or spotify and say something nice helps people find the show not not very many if you take time to to write a review um it really does help i got a nice message from my friend isaic

at Craven waves. He said that the Bob Bauer shows the best he ever heard. Thinks I'm getting better. Well, it's nice to hear that. But take a second and write it down, do a five star so everybody knows that you love Bob Bauer. All right. Well, we've got some great stuff in the Slow Baja shops and black t-shirts are in. I've got those really deluxe canvas shopping bags and they really are deluxe. Zippered top, zippered closure, zippered inside pocket for all your valuables. You should be rocking one of those every day wherever you're going. it to the market, carrying it to school to work, whatever, man. It's a cool bag. Get yours today

at slowbaha.com slash shop. And again, they close it up here to tell you about off-road motorsports Hall of Famer, Mary McGee. She had a pal, Stephen McQueen. He loved the desert. You know what? He said it. Baja's life. Anything that happens before or after is just waiting. You know, people always ask me, what's the best modification? that I've ever made to Slow Baja. Without a doubt, it's my Shielman seats. You know, Toby at Shield Man USA could not be easier to work with. He recommended Averio F for me and a Vero F XXL for my navigator, Ted.

This Ted's kind of a big guy. And Toby was absolutely right. The seats are great and they fit both of us perfectly. And let me tell you, after driving around Baja for over a year on these seats, I could not be happier. Shield Man, Slow Baja, approved, learn more and get yours at Shoe. shieldman.com.