Papers? We don’t need no stinking papers!
April 25th, 2008, 6:07 pm · Post a Comment · posted by rhoeft
I caught some of the NASCAR Nationwide series race from Mexico City on Sunday, and the whole going south of the border to race thing got me to thinking … no so much about the age-old “don’t drink the water” thing, but the proper documentation thing, as in what it takes to get there and get home again.
The reason this crossed my mind is because my good friend, who I rode with for 11 years in SCORE, HDRA and Best in the Desert races in Arizona, California, Nevada, Colorado and Mexico, is facing that exact dilemma as we speak.
Here’s the deal. He’s still got two desert racing trucks in his stable, with his sons now doing the driving. And he has all but written off ever again racing in Mexico. Ever.
The reason is, getting back and forth cross the border has become too much of a hassle.
I know, I know, all that’s needed, currently, is a birth certificate and a driver’s license, or a passport.
The trouble is, pretty much all of the members of his crew don’t want to put up with the hassle of having to produce two forms of identification at the border, and I’m guessing hardly anyone of them has a passport. They are not the, um, how should I put it, “worldly traveler” type, of you know what I mean.
That being said, they’d just as soon stay home and help out only on the THIS side of the border.
And that’s a shame. I’m not blaming them, or saying anything about them, but rather it’s a shame that this is where we’ve arrived, in reference to the hoops we have to jump through to, well, in my case, zip across the border to Algodones, for example, to get a couple of tacos for lunch.
What’s sad is, the SCORE Baja 500 is, or was, my favorite race on the whole schedule of everything we did. Absolutely. It’s a great race because it challenges the racer from a variety of angles, ranging from high altitude racing to racing on the desert floor, and everything in between. And, perhaps what I love the most, was the fact that you never saw the same real estate twice.
And whenever we went to Ensenada, getting there was rarely a problem. I mean, there were no holdups or hassles at the border. The Mexican officials pretty much waved us through when they saw we were racers. Oh, on occasion they’d ask to check the back of the hauler, but not very often. And when they did, hey, a handful of racing stickers did a lot to get you back on your way.
And on the return trip, it was almost as smooth, except for the occasional trip to secondary so the U.S. Customs folks could peek inside the same hauler.
Any way you cut it, except for the distance, it was an easy trip.
And I’m sure it still is, for teams like those from NASCAR, who have the means to make sure everyone in their entourage is properly documented, etc.
But for much, much smaller operations, like my friend’s, the proper documentation has become a major roadblock, that isn’t considered worth the effort to get around.
