I said I was going to post a blog every Wednesday. Well I fucked that all up didn’t I. One blog down and then I miss a week. Well two, because today is Thursday. (and it finally went up Saturday night, this isn’t easy) You see it’s hard to find the time and energy to create these masterpieces while exploring 5 new countries in 3 weeks, and running a company. Add to that 3rd world internet. How I managed to write a blog every single day for over a year beats me. That’s completely insane!
Anyway, Bolivia. First a trivia question. What’s the capital of Bolivia? (This question is for the non-Americans reading this obviously, as the American readers are still coming to terms with the fact that Bolivia is a country that actually exists.)
La Paz right? WRONG! It’s Sucre. How this is possible I do not know. How do you make the whole world (well except America) believe that La Paz is your capital when it’s actually some other place no one has ever heard of? Maybe it has something to do with the fact that half the population is constantly high? Really high! I mean 12 000ft high, 3600m. That’s so high that our JQRacing driver Jorge Zamora who is a commercial airline pilot told us sometimes he likes to mess around and land in La Paz by reducing altitude too much before La Paz, and then having to actually fly up to be able to land. What worries me is these commercial airline pilots that like to “play around”.
Anyway, the super high altitude has a couple of major flaws:
- Now I could have swore that our hotel room didn’t have any gym equipment in it when I went to bed, but in the morning I woke up to Keenan K White working out on a treadmill. That’s what it sounded like. Heavy breathing, swearing, shuffling around. Turns out all he was doing was walking to the bathroom and back, packing his suitcase, and trying not to die. Apparently it’s almost impossible to breath at this ridiculous altitude.
- It is also impossible for our engines to breath. There is almost no power at this altitude. It’s ridiculous. The power is severely limited, the motor’s don’t rev high at all. You have to experience it to believe it. The things I did to at least make my car driveable:
- Removed the venturi completely.
- Removed 0.1mm head shims.
- Ran a 50 main gear, I would have run a 12t clutchbell, but didn’t have one.
- Ran an aggressive setting on a REDS clutch.
- Ran a very short low end needle to increase low end power.
- I would have needed fuel with higher nitro content also.
The reason for me and Keenan being in Bolivia, was our Latin America Tour, spanning Bolivia, Peru, Argentina, Chile and Colombia. We would end the tour with the roughest and most dangerous country of them all, South Carolina, for the Fall Brawl. So Bolivia was step 1.
Basically our visit lasted 5 days, landed in La Paz, tried not to die, drove for 6 hours or so to Cochabamba, traveled back in time and checked into our hotel from the late 1800s, raced for 2 days, then drove back, checked into a hotel close to the bus terminal in order to take a 11h bus ride to Chile the following morning. Below you can see and read about the highlights of our journey.
As we set off from Miami, Keenan was immediately racially profiled. Hilarious.
The journey then began with a seatbelt extension.
LaPaz airport. BE in there.
BLACK Edition Promotion everywhere
Ok, this is definitely not Miami anymore.
Look at THAT. Cable car ride from Alto to LaPaz. Something else. I want to see Danny MacAskill navigate Alto roofs.
God Bless Bolivia – Team JQ has arrived.
Our Bolivian Distributor took us to their home track up in the mountains!
Very nice track, only problem, lack of power!
A bunch of drivers showed up with JQ BLACK Editions, and JQ RTRs!
Next morning we woke up early, and drove 6 hours or more to Cochabamba with the power of cocaine tea.
Cochabamba was a bit lower than LaPaz, so a bit better power, but still terrible
After a long drive through the mountains we arrived at the track for the race.
Bit of an evening snack at the race! Goddamn!
Team shirts were handed out. We need all our teams to look good!
Andres Claros had a cool ride. Back to the future
The driver stand was a bit small. Needed an extension 🙂
This huge double proved to be my downfall in the main. I landed on a crashed car and my engine started running really weird, and died 2 corners later. Then it wouldn’t run. To this day I don’t know what happened.
Winner winner chicken dinner. On the left Jorge Chacon who took the win, and on the right Carlos Guerra who finished 3rd. Jorge is an up and coming racer who took his first win with a JQ, and Carlos is a veteran RC racer. A multiple Bolivian mountain bike champion, he runs a MBK store, and works as a mechanic on bikes. Great job to these guys!
Our Bolvian team is on point! Left to Right, Javier “Captain Slow” Rivera, nickname from real car driving. Jorge “Winner” Chacon, Javier “Rocky” Barros, JQ, Carlos “MTB” Guerra, Bryan “THEBoss” Bohrt, Keenan “K(unt)” White, Jorge “THEPilot” Zamora.
Preparing to go home, Bolivian style. TRANQUILOOOO!
The look of death. Our Team Last Resort driver who drove us back home was on another level. He clearly had no fucks left to give, and we almost died multiple times. I tried to explain to him why there were so many crosses on the side of the road, but he didn’t speak any ingles.
Back in LaPaz we stayed in a hotel where they shot a SAW movie. It was close to the bus station and it was Keenans first serious bad choice of the trip. Here I’m charging my phone. So awesome.
As if that wasn’t enough, this is the electrocution kit add on to the shower. Did it work, fuck no. Only cold water, well except for 3 seconds of luke warm water about 3 minutes in.
This breakfast hot pocket made things a lot better. So good. Saltenas I think they are called.
Finally on the bus with this lazy git, and on to Peru, via Chile.
And as for Chickens making you gay, I asked for an interesting fact about Bolivia for my blog, and the best story we heard was about Bolivia’s nutty president Evo Morales who said that eating chicken makes you gay. As a result chicken sales plummeted.
THEQuagraine 