Brother Don enjoying the November weather in Bahia de Bacochibampo, near Guaymas, Sonora, México. This was one of those days when the water and air temperature were so close you couldn't tell if your skin was above or below the surface. About 78°, I guessed.

A day or two later we left Margarita at her godmother's place in Ciudad Obregón, Sonora, and drove the '66 Barracuda Formula S straight through 500 miles to Tepíc, Nayarít. We spent the night there and then went to San Blas, on the Pacific Coast. It was the weekend of the 1966 Grand Prix of Mexico. We decided to relax on the shore and in the "jungle" rather than fight the additional 300 miles of driving and the entire Mexican Racing Madness thing.

On the return trip we were travelling north toward Mazatlán when we came up behind a white brand-new full-size Chevy driven by a young fellow who was cruising just a couple miles per hour slower than I wanted to go. When I pulled out to pass him he speeded up. I hesitated to use too much throttle in a 10.5-to-one compression engine on Mexican gasoline of questionable octane, but at the moment I was deciding to back off and fall in behind, something else happened: we came upon an area where road crews had just sprayed a mile of highway with fresh, oily tar. And it was only on his side of the road. Hah! We zoomed along side-by-side until the road turned and crested a hill, and I had to move back into the right lane just a few yards before the oil ended.

It took me half a day to get the tar out from under my wheel wells and off the lower body panels of that light yellow Barracuda. I guessed that if anyone inspected that white Chevy before they accepted delivery, my fellow racer must have had to spend a couple days at his cleaning job.

(Many years after the event, almost as many after the original page creation, it occurs to me the Chevy driver might have been influenced by the coincidence of the Mexicn F1 event.)

Much of the trip can be seen on 8mm-video transfer HERE.
The Barracuda cleanup begins at about 1:40 in THIS REEL.

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