By Mike Latta

How long did it take, after happily traipsing about Mazatlán, before you began wondering what it would be like to live here…for good? A week? A day? If you’re like most of us, it didn’t take too long to start dreaming the possibilities. Those delightful “what ifs.” Have you been wondering about what it must take (besides winning a lottery) and what kind of folks (besides rich ones) can actually make it happen? What makes a person chuck it all and move to Mazatlán? Well, here are two people that made it happen almost six years ago. And they are definitely still grinning. Dan and Sally Lane are both ex-race car champion drivers from Portland, Oregon. It’s how they met. Both were hard-charging, career-oriented workaholics. And both were heavily involved on weekends in racing cars of various types. “It may not seem so, but racing on a track is a great way to reduce your end-of-the-work-week stress levels,” said Dan. “You leave all your worries behind out there,” added Sally. Dan started racing jalopies on short track dirt ovals back in the 70s. Then drag racing. Then autocross racing. By the 80s he’d found his niche in the super-competitive GT 4 sedan class, while Sally gravitated to autocross racing. Dan ultimately won two national championships in his VW GTI, as Sally went on to win the Oregon autocross championship in her highly race modified VW Rabbit. These two can fly. While campaigning in GT4 Dan was asked to drive a full-race dune buggy in the rugged Baja 1000 road race down to Cabo San Lucas in ’92. “This was our first taste of Mexico, and we loved it,” said Sally. Soon they were fantasizing ways to retire early, flee to Mexico and leave their stress-filled jobs to someone else. But how to afford it? They were (and still are) too young to collect a pension and had to work at something to be able to stay. They both loved to drive…maybe there was