Toyota Camry's and Mud boggin...what a freakin' day!

Stage 3 started out a little different....sort of. Yeah, the rain was falling for the 3rd straight day, but uncharacteristically, Doug was late to the start and I had not heard from him. We were set for an 11:50 start to accomodate TV and the Star Spangled Banner was wrapping up....still no Doug? The riders had left and all the team cars and most of the caravan had gone when Doug showed up on the outside of the barrier! Long story, but it had to do with logistics and a set of keys to their vehicle.

After getting away from the start area, we were a good 2 miles out of the race envelope and the traffic in downtown San Jose was as you can imagine a little congested. All I could do was follow the race route via the GPS and be patient. As it routed us out of town we were headed for Sierra Rd....which 4 miles from the start...goes straight up for the 1st KOM.
The GPS had us turn left and then right to connect with the road up which threw us into a neat neighborhood. I got behind a Toyota Camry and my 4 way flashers were going. As I approached the rear of the car, he moved over to the right as a few other vehicles had done to let us go by....only this time his move to the right was a big swing to make a left turn as if he were pulling a trailer? No turn signal, I started to accelerate to move on and in an instant he turned left right into us! It was a surreal moment in slow-mo....I jammed the brake and tried to steer left but his turn and my forward momentum created the reminder of the law of physics....two objects cannot occupy the same space at the same time....bam! The right side crash bar that protects the cylinder caught the left rear wheel well and the car drug us to the curb...and we braced ourselves against the car yelling obscenities at the situation. As we came to a stop I put my feet down and did a body check of myself and Doug...all was ok and we were still upright! The kid in the car was maybe 16 or 17 going to pick up his girlfriend for a fashion show....he was pretty upset at himself for the whole situation. It took almost an hour for the officer to come do a report and I allowed him to tell what happened first....and he was straight forward and honest about the situation. Neither one of us received a citation and we were off to catch the race which by this time had already gone over the first KOM and heading to the second.

I jumped on the interestate and followed closely the GPS to drop us on the route as close as we could anticipate. If I didn't have the GPS....we would still be out there wondering around! Finally caught up with the back of the caravan and got back inside the envelope...a mere 3 hours later! We went past the group and shot a little off the front then moved ahead to get a scenic. The rain was still coming down and we were in big farm land with water standing everywhere on the road.

A beautiful green field with a vast shot of the open farmland caught Doug's eye and I attempted to turn up a tractor access road....only to roll about 10 yards and just cake up in black mud! We pulled the moto back onto the road and I moved to the other side of the road...tires caked solid.
Doug came back to the bike after making the shot and it looked like he had moon shoes because they were so thick in mud. As we pulled back on the road mud begin to fly off the tires and I started weaving slightly back and forth to clear the tires out. I bent over rolling down the road to see if the tires were clearing and looked up and damn if I wasn't heading toward the left shoulder with more mud...too late, I ran off at about 30 mph....the bike started slipping and sliding and I knew I could not correct or the front end would wash out and down we would go...my only other option was to continue straight....right into about 2.5 feet of water in a ditch! As I hit the ditch, a wall of muddy water wailed over the windshield and I finally got the bike to a stop...feet in the ditch up almost to my knees! We were laughing so hard we about fell over in the water! After manipulating the bike and employing many years of off road skills, I got the bike out of the ditch. Me and the bike were absolutely covered in mud....looked like I had been to the Cabbage Patch mud wrestling in Daytona!

We went back to the field...shot a few more and at this point there was only 15 miles to go. So we took off to the finish line to conclude a day of adventure on the moto.
I am grateful that no one got hurt and we didn't have too much equipment damage.

Tomorrow we have 5 KOM's that start at 2000 feet and climb to over 4000 feet! Should be a dandy...stayin' away from Camry's and mud puddles!

Over and out.....