Dust to Glory Page #11

on four wheels

was that of 16-year-old Andy McMillin,

a high school junior who'd just gotten

his license three months earlier.

Andy finished second in class

and sixth overall...

the most impressive debut

since Robby Gordon 18 years earlier.

I'm proud of ya.

You did a great job.

Great job.

Thanks for everything, you guys.

What a great family.

Honor to have you guys with us, it really is.

I had a friend tell me today that in Baja,

if you're dumb, you better be tough.

Having survived 300 miles

with a faulty headlight,

Greg Tracy's arrival

meant J.N. was back on the bike.

Well, if we get third, we'll be good.

Well, whatever we get.

Dude, we had no friggin' lights.

Jimmy didn't need to worry

because his dad had been

within two blocks of the stadium

for quite a while.

He couldn't find the entrance.

When he did make it,

victory towel

wrapped around his neck,

just like the old days,

well, it was 1967 all over again.

But that's what happened the first time,

so that's only fitting.

Some things are timeless.

There he is standing there,

you know, 30 years later.

He had that smile,

and you could feel the excitement

of there he was, you know,

at the finish line of the 1000.

And gosh, again,

he could be anyplace in the world

and doing anything he wants to do.

And there he is.

You can get

your social security check now.

A little past 5:
00 in the morning,

The number 227

of Matt and Steve Scaroni

collected the win in the protruck class.

After a dozen tries,

the father and son team had finally done it.

They give a lot of the credit

to the third driver, Ricky Johnson.

You fall back to the little kid

in the underwear and the six-guns

and the cowboy hat.

You're a cowboy.

At sunrise, two-thirds of those cowboys

were still out in the course,

some as far back as the halfway point,

like number 806 of Todd Wyllie

and Mark Julius,

who'd had a rotten night.

They'd lost a transmission,

lost a front end, simply got lost,

but could not lose

Jethro the know-it-all.

You never finished a 100-mile race,

you never finished a 500-mile race.

Come down here, how's he gonna finish

a 1,000-mile race?

Mark Julius, in an attempt

to lose his publicist Jethro,

was off and running.

And then a funny thing happened.

A race broke out for 195th place.

The buggy's race strategy

was hard to figure.

After closing a half-mile gap

in a matter of minutes,

he simply locked onto the rear bumper

and stayed there as if hypnotized.

And the one chance he had

to make a pass,

he saw open air,

and it scared the hell out of him.

He went right back

to his happy place.

After hitting the straightaway,

the buggy couldn't keep pace

with Julius and the truck.

And where it had taken 20 hours

to finish the first half of the race,

it only took him a mere eight hours

to come into the finish.

Julius and Wyllie had done it.

Where's my key?

We made it. We made it.

A thousand miles.

Buddy.

Good job, Mark.

Best adventure of my life.

Thank you, sir.

I couldn't begin to tell ya.

The dreams will come true, man.

Where do we go from here?

Rewarded with a pin,

Finishers celebrate all day long,

hour after hour as the clock ticks down

to the 32-hour time limit.

In spite of being denied

a record-breaking 10th overall Baja 1000,

Mark McMillin crossed the finish line

with a big grin on his face.

Told ya I'd make it back for ya.

You did.

You stayed true to your word.

No, we don't give up.

We don't give up.

Proving that even rich

handsome guys don't give up,

Alan Pflueger crossed the line

with a big aloha smile.

It was up front.

It was up front.

See that.

Then the front broke off.

- Hawaiians never quit.

- That's true.

Same hula gal,

or did you replace the hula gal?

No, same hula girl.

Gotta get her a new grass skirt,

but that's all right.

Yeah, I like this one.

Kind of had to do

some testing on this thing.

The ukulele ones last.

The other ones lose their arms,

so it's all good.

Although there are many examples

of Baja's never-say-die spirit,

few have as good a time

as the off-road version

of the Terminator... Al Hogan.

You'll be able to find pieces of his truck

all the way back to the starting line.

Nothing left but his pride

and his sense of the obvious.

Tired, man.

What can you say?

That's Baja.

Sometimes the course wins.

We only got 364 more days

till the next one, right?

One after the other,

they would cross the line,

dusty and tired,

But overjoyed they finished.

As the day wore on,

There were still many on the course.

Amy Thomas searched for the BC-10,

which was still a hundred miles out,

headed for home

in a race against the clock.

And only seconds

behind the women's team

came Eric Solorzano's Volkswagen

bouncing up the goat trail

outside of Trinidad,

hoping to finish,

just to finish.

While the Volkswagen wouldn't make it,

the women's team would,

with ten minutes to spare.

It was Mouse's drive to finish

that had us worried the night before.

We decided to send helmet cameraman

Louis Franco out to find him,

hoping he'd bring him back.

Mouse was up,

but not in the best condition.

Lucky for him,

Jeff Kaplan happened by.

I just saw him

out of my peripheral vision.

He told me that the next place

I could see somebody,

tell 'em that he was stuck there.

And I just told him to follow me in.

But we ended up going fast.

Really fast.

Surprisingly fast for one light.

At speeds

near a hundred miles an hour,

Kaplan paced Mouse for over 20 miles

until finding Scott Dunlavey.

The motorcycle's junk.

I beat the thing into submission

so it was at least halfway rideable.

He's goofy,

he doesn't even know if it's left or right.

He'd hit the wall,

he'd pushed through the wall

and kept going and going

and going and got bit.

And now it was a matter to get back

to some sort of semblance of focus

to get to bring it all the way home.

Mouse McCoy...

18 hours, 2 minutes, 40 seconds.

The sixth motorcycle to finish,

The twelfth overall vehicle.

Not too bad.

There were 246 vehicles behind him.

There's a connection

between people who make a commitment,

a passion shared.

You let me ride side by side

all the way to Ojos, man.

I'll never forget you.

You got me there.

This wasn't just a solo effort.

It might've been a solo effort

as far as me being in the saddle,

but the collective effort

was about my friends and family

carrying me through it,

and that's why it means so much to me,

that we all did it together.

- Congratulations.

- Yeah, congratulations.

Thank you, guys, for letting us

in your country to race here.

Hey, anybody know

where a good taco stand is?

A cold beer?

A cold beer and a taco is what I need.

I haven't eaten much today.

It's a hell of a race.

A race against the clock

in a country that defies time,

in a competition

which forges lifelong friendships.

Maybe only one drives,

But they search for glory as a team.

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