Fall seven, rise eight.

You do not drown by falling in the water.  You only drown by staying beneath the surface.

It happened.  Ok. 

What story do you tell yourself about it?  That’s more important, and that is your choice.

Get back up.

Let’s go.

Your Future Drives Your Present

Where do you see yourself going?

What future do you believe in?

What do you think you are capable of?

That is why you are doing what you are doing today.

Should you develop, see, and believe in a better future for yourself?

There are no mistakes/failures…

There are no mistakes, only lessons.

When you try something in a given way, the world gives you feedback – this works, or this doesn’t work.

Nothing personal.

Lessons are repeated until they are learned.

What new lessons do you want to learn so you can get better and move forward?

Good things come to those who…

Ideas and intentions are great.  But nothing happens unless you do something.

Fortune favors the actioneer.

Good things come to those who wait DO.

What happens next?

This is your life.

You are in charge.

Grab the wheel and own it.

What happens next is up to you.

Right?

Ok, so what happens next?

Round Trip – part 8 – Going home.

We woke up at 4 am to check the progress of the race car to be sure we weren’t going to sleep too late.  All good.  Back to sleep.  We wake up at 6 am.  I take my medication. Our dirty racing suits and gear go back on.  I’m feeling ok – not great, but ok with the sleep.  We get in the pre-runner and slip out of the hotel courtyard in search of breakfast.

We find our normal Valle T spot, but it was not opened yet.  We find another spot right on the paved road where the racecourse goes by.   All they have is shredded beef burritos (not a fan) and Sanka instant coffee.  Styrofoam cup.  Brown stained spoon to stir it with.  I tasted the coffee, prepared for the worst.  Whether food and drink are good is always context-dependent.   If you have nothing else and you are really hungry, it’s hard for it not to be good.  It turns out the coffee was heaven.

We see Javi and our car moving on the tracker app on the race website.  We know where he is.  Still in fourth.  We head south to find our chase team and wait at the rendezvous point for Javi.  We see Chris and half the chase team.  We learn what happened in the night.

Mikey, driving car number two, was out of the race at mile 287.  His torsion bar, a rear suspension component that holds the wheel hub straight, fell off the car.  This is bad.  When that happened, the shock mount broke.  He went back to find the torsion bar and put it back in the car.  It turns out it just backed out and unscrewed itself.  Nobody had ever heard of that happening.  Bad luck.  He drove out to the road slowly.  The car could not be fixed outside of the race shop.

Mike, Mikey’s Dad, who I handed our race car to, found 210 to 370 to be very rough and rocky as I had in pre-running.   Then at mile 387 he came upon a trophy truck stuck, blocking the way.  Nobody could get by.  One of our competitors, #1984 was trying to pull him out with a strap.  But a UTV is far smaller and lighter than a trophy truck.  So Mike wound up tying a strap from our car to the 1984 car which was strapped to the truck.  With great effort, they got him out.  Mike lost about 40 minutes there in the cold night.  The truck and the 1984 got going in front of him making dust.

Mike had 70 miles of pavement from 400 to 470.  He gave the car to Javi when it turned to dirt again.  Javi got a flat after ONE mile.  Now he had to drive easy as he could not risk another flat because his spare was flat.  Forty-five miles later he got a new spare from the chase team and was able to push.  It got very cold and started to rain, then it snowed in places.  Tough night.

#1925 was in front, having a perfect race.  Not even a flat.  Joe Bolton, #1957 was in second, finally having a clean race after five bad luck races in a row.  We see him go by as we waited for our car.  Then third place, #1984, comes in for a driver change where we were waiting. 

As Javi got closer, Dustin and I were ready with our helmets on for a quick driver change.  Javi comes in 40 minutes after third place.  In one minute we were strapped in and fueled up.  My goal was to podium in three races in three classes in one year in Baja.  I thought this race was a lock, but I had 40 minutes to make up in 138 miles.  Unless he breaks, that’s a very tall order.  No matter.  I drive as fast as I can.

My driving skills had really improved over the years.  I knew how to push the car and how to read and drive rough terrain.  I felt like I was really beating Dustin up.  He is usually bulletproof in the car, but this race, he was feeling a little nauseous.  I don’t like sitting in that side of the car myself.  I had the steering wheel and pedals on my side.  I like to know what is going to happen a moment before it does, not a moment after.  That makes a big difference.

Anything can happen – drive fast.  We drew nearer and nearer to the finish line, hoping to catch up and pass third place.  But we were out of time.  We came to the checkered flag just seven minutes behind third place.  I was disappointed.  But that’s racing.

I knew that you have to get in the race to win it.  But you won’t always win it.  Even if you have won it before.  Long-distance desert racing is so full of wildcards that predicting the outcome is just a guess.

I had a lung infection, and while it didn’t affect my driving, it was kicking my butt.  I was tired.  I was sick.   After being stomach sick for most of the trip in Morocco and for two weeks afterward, and now this, I had to admit, I was not having fun anymore.  I had six weeks to leave to go to the longest Rally Race in the world – Dakar, a 13-day rally in Saudi Arabia.  It sounds amazing.  But I was dreading it after these last two races.

They say that fanaticism is re-doubling your efforts long after your aim has been forgotten.  My aim was to have fun and adventure and create great experiences.  But I wasn’t having fun anymore.  Five races and so many trips and events this year – I was tired.

After driving the 40 minutes from the timed finish at Rancho Nelson to the ceremonial finish in Ensenada, getting interviewed, and turning in our race tracker, I had to stop by the score office across the street to talk to them about a matter.  Ted called me and said a local teenager was waiting there to meet me.  He was a fan, and waited specifically just for me.  I told him I’d be a while.  The team took the race car back to the hotel parking lot and I never did catch up with the kid.  I felt bad.

The crowds had left.  A few people were cleaning the streets.  T-shirt vendors had marked down their race shirts and few people mulled about their trailers.  I walked the long blocks toward the hotel in my dirty race suit, thinking about all the memories here.  All the starts at ungodly hours, here, on the very pavement I was walking on.  Tanner.  All the friends who had come on trips with me. Winning on two wheels. Not finishing. Finishing solo on two wheels.  Winning on four wheels.  Giving it all I had and being physically ravaged and even broken most every time.

I was hungry.  There was a street vendor with a cart.  There was no one else around.  The calm after the storm.  The two people were killed two days before just 30 feet from where I was standing.  The vendor was packing up, but he lit the fire under his kettle of oil again to make me a fish taco.  I waited. 

“I’ve been here for ten years in this very spot” he said. 

“You’re here even when there is no race?” I asked. 

“Si” he said. 

“Who do you sell to?”

“The locals, but it’s not easy.”

Time went by.

“Ten years.”  He poked the fish floating in the oil.  “I’m tired” he said, shaking his head seriously. 

“I know exactly what you mean” I said, emotion welling up inside me.

I broke the news to Chris.  “I’m not racing next year”.  I knew what this meant.  Racing was Chris Haines’s life.  Chris had raced since he was very young.  He was a mechanic for the factory Honda motocross and supercross teams and traveled the world doing it.   He opened a shop doing tours of Baja.  He provided race support in Baja for many years.  But Chris was getting up there, and the tour business had attracted lots of competition.  Business was slower than it had been.  I was Chris’s last customer for race support.  We had been through a lot in ten years.  He told me if I ever quit racing, he would close his shop.  I hated to say it, but I had to.

I packed all my racing gear.  The race car gear and the motorcycle gear.  I‘d return home with three giant race gear bags.  I asked Chris to repair what had been damaged on the cars during this race and ship them and my motorcycles home to me.  My friend Bobby decided to buy race car number two. 

After ten years in Baja, 27 races, including ten straight Baja 1000’s (6 on a motorcycle and 4 in a car) I was going home.

I will race again.  But now it is time for a new chapter. 

After I got home I was coughing for another 2 ½ weeks.  It was beating me down.  Maybe it was telling me something. 

I had completed five of the six races I had planned.  The last one was a 20-day trip to Saudi Arabia, and all the arrangements were made.  No matter.  I postponed it for one year.  I’ll be excited for it by then.  I had to turn off some switches right now and this was a big one.

I have had an amazing 10-year career as a racer.  From age 50 to age 60.  So many memories made, things learned and things discovered.  But what really happened is this – I am not a racer, let alone a long-distance desert racer.  There isn’t a desert within 2000 miles of Connecticut.  But I learned to do it by doing it. 

I became someone…someone unexpected, that I wasn’t before.

Now – I’m going home.

Round Trip – part 7

We climbed into the pre-runner and started it.  As we built up speed we felt the cold.  We expected it.  Dustin had a very warm coat he let me wear while he froze.  He knew I was sick.

Where were we going in the pre-runner while our race car was out on course charging through somewhere around mile 240?

The course was a loop this year from Ensenada down the west coast, across and up the east coast and back to Ensenada.  Mike was racing from mile 210 to 470 and then Javier and Richard from mile 470 to 730.  Then Dustin and I had to race from 730 to the finish at 868.

We drove north on Route 1 in the cold night.  Route 1 was main street for all the towns along its length – and the only paved road in most of those towns.  For 90 minutes, we drove in the cold.  We located the dirt road we were looking for in the darkness and took a right – going east.  I was sick.  Sick during the Baja 1000.

The road went by a tiny settlement, then a lone house, and then up into desolation.  Switchbacks.  Then switchbacks up into the mountains.  It was dark and it was cold.  There is no heat and no windshield.  30 minutes into the wilderness.  I know exactly where we are.  45 minutes from pavement now.  We carry on into the night.  If you breakdown here you will get hypothermia. One year Tanner’s hydration tube froze here.

60 minutes. 2 ½ hours since we gave the race car to Mike at Race Mile 210.  We see lights.  We draw closer.  It was our destination.  Valle de Trinidad.  A small town along Route 3.  We pull into a hotel.  Yes, we were in the middle of the Baja 1000 going on right now, and we were checking into a hotel.

This isn’t the same experience as being on a motorcycle and being crazy enough to try to solo it.  35 grueling hours on a dirt bike exposed and worn down to your last accessible calorie to burn in a groaning half-dead body (See Into the Dust 2, 3 and especially 4 on YouTube).  This is sick Larry making a plan – a smart plan.

They have our reservation.  We check in and walk over to a famous taco stand two blocks away.  The dirt streets of this poor town are eerily quiet.  There is nobody around except the occasional dust-encrusted vehicle pulling up to the taco stand or pulling away from it at this hour – 10pm. 

Dustin and I were in the race car and then the pre-runner for over 12 hours.  We order our tacos and they are prepared in about 150 seconds and served on small paper plates at the open-air counter.  Heaven.  We ask for another.  We pay and walk the two blocks back to the hotel.  We check where our race car is on our phones (we are still in fourth place) and calculate a safe time to wake up. I get my nebulizer out for a breathing treatment.  Yes I carried it with me.  But the damn thing doesn’t seem to be working.  I’m tired. Screw it.

Baja 1000 reinvented. 

Seven hours sleep in a hotel….

Round Trip – part 6 – Flat luck

Two cars, three flats, two spares.  We decide to drive out on a rear flat tire.  I couldn’t go very fast.  We were losing ground every minute.  How far is the road?

Mercifully, we start seeing race fans camping out after just 3 miles.  I know we are close to the road near Colonet.

The course turns away from that road.  I know it’s 4 miles to the Colonet bridge – all sand whoops.  I stop.  Mikey pulls behind me.   In two minutes I see Rodrigo, one of our chase team drivers, come to my window.  “I don’t have any tires” he yells.  Oh crap again. Not all chase vehicles had tires.

Mikey decides to take two wheels of his car.  He put one on the rear flat we had and the other on as our spare.  (If your spare is flat you have to drive conservatively because if you get another flat you wind up in the predicament we are in right now – except without another friendly car behind you to sacrifice themselves for you.)

We take off into the Colonet sand wash, leaving Mikey there with three flat tires.  All in all we lost 23 minutes by getting two flats at once. 

Randy’s chase truck was on its way north from their position to give Mikey tires to get car #2 going.  It would take 45 minutes for him to get there.

I drove as fast as I could to try to make up time.  It was early in the race – only mile 150 out of 868 miles this year.  Anything could happen.

We popped out along the Pacific Ocean again.  Beautiful.  Fish camps, a few ramshackle houses in paradise, and the occasional micro town, maybe with a hotel on the water.  Fans waved and cheered us on.

We alternate inland up into some hills and rough stuff and back out along the water again, usually on graded roads there.  We get the car to mile 210.  We were unstrapped as we rolled in.  We unhooked our air hoses from our helmets and pulled our communication wires out of the helmet jacks and jumped out of the windows.  Mikey and his codriver Nick jump in.  Pepe fuels the car from our dump cans.  They are gone into the sunset.

We had been in the car for nine hours now, six of them in the race. We were beat.  We take 15 minutes as the sun goes down to eat muchaca burritos.  Not my favorite but I was hungry.  Now that the racing excitement has gone away I feel tired and sick.

The Pre-runner, the “practice race car” is sitting there waiting for us.  This is when Dustin and I executed what was maybe the most clever plan during the Baja 1000 race ever devised (for a sick driver)….

Round Trip – part 5

Friday – Race Day

I woke up feeling somewhat better.  We got a quick breakfast and suited up.  Dustin and I drove our race car #1914 to staging about seven blocks from our hotel.  I knew I’d have to wait there in the car for 90 minutes before starting to move toward the starting line.  In that time I felt ok, then sick, then nauseous, then very sleepy.

I had to give it hell for 210 miles, then Dustin and I had a plan – and it was a good one for a sick driver who was starting and finishing the race.

We got the green flag, but it was only the ceremonial start.  We were in the middle of a big city.  We had one hour to drive out of the city and regroup off-road for the real start.  All in all Dustin and I had been in the car for over three hours before the timed race actually started for us at about 12:15 PM.  I thought about how much better off we were than the poor motorcycles who started at 12:30 AM.  I had been there 6 times before, and I am glad I wasn’t on a motorcycle this time.

Here we go.  Green flag.  Lots of dust.  Movement – finally.  Waking up.  No time to think about whether I felt sick or not.  I was happy to be driving – because that I knew how to do and was good at.  Dustin called the turns like a champ.  It was on!

There were eight in our class.  They let cars go every 30 seconds.  We started 5^th.

At mile 35 we passed Eva Star, a 19-year-old girl who was an up-and-comer.  She always had her Dad in the passenger seat.  What a great thing to do between father and daughter.  Eva was in my car last year as a navigator for the Baja 400.  That’s a story I’ve told.  Something about passing a teenage girl in a pink UTV that makes me feel like a bully.  But…it has to be done.  Sorry.

The Factory Honda car in in the lead.  Our arch-rival Joe Bolton is in second, and David Pedder, who is the season points leader is in third with a ringer driver at the wheel.  We chased them down.  It takes 110 miles after passing Eva, but we can see them both ahead of us on the next hill clear as day, one behind the other. 

We are in the hills in a technical section.  Perfect.  The rougher it is the more of an advantage I have over them.  Maybe it’s my motorcycle eye picking the smoothest lines like my life depends on it that has them checking up more than I do in the rocks. 

“Light him up!” I yell to Little D.  Dustin pushes a button in our car that lights up a big blue light on the dash in the points leader’s car.  That tells him that someone is on his butt and closing, and he should pull over and let us pass.  This wasn’t one of the dustiest sections, but the closer you get, the thicker the dust is and the less of the rocks you can see.

It works!  He lets up and drifts to the side of the course and we go by.   Third place!  I’m thinking we can only better our position.  We will never be in fourth place again.

We see Joe Bolton’s dust ahead.  We are in hard red clay with lots of embedded rocks sticking up.  We pick through quickly.  A steep descent is ahead, Joe is already at the bottom.  I know this hill.  It’s very rough with rock ledges going uphill.  But going downhill those ledges are simply drop-offs and not hard on the car.  I’m flying down, trusting I am right.  At the bottom, we chase Joe between farm fences, left, right…”Light him up!”  Joe pulls over, and we go by.  I’m sure he is upset that it was us going by.  Too late now!  Bye Joe!

Second place at mile 145!  I like where this is going!  Now to extend our lead.  Not easy.  Joe’s car is fast.  Back up into the hills.  More red clay, more rocks.  We are flying for this terrain. 

A decent, off-camber (sloped right to left) as we go down.  There’s a deep rut presenting itself on the downhill side.  I try to stay above it, but it’s so off-camber that we are dropping into it. 

Bang-Bang!

Oh Sh#*!  It was the unmistakable feeling of rim to rock – twice.  We knew we had two flat tires.  We get to the bottom of the hill where three other cars had flats just like us.  Apparently, there was a sharp rock there slicing tires by the dozen on that hill.  The problem was we had two flats and only carry one spare!

I know two of our competitors are close behind.  Dustin gets out to change the tire.  We wait for car number two to roll up and figure they’d give us their spare.  This is where the plan to have a chase car in the race will make a difference.  We put our spare on the front as Joe goes by.  Then Pedder’s car goes by.  Fourth place again.  Ughhh.  I had chased so hard and so long for the spot, then lost it. 

Our race car number two pulls up after 8 minutes.  Mikey is driving.  He’s the mechanic who built our cars and the son of Mike, who is the driver I will be giving the car to at mile 210.  Mikey explains that he had a flat, so his spare is flat!  Oh no!

I’m sweating looking at my watch and coughing.  The minutes are ticking by…

Is this how it ends?

Round Trip – part 4

Thursday morning;  24 hours to race time.  I feel terrible.  I’m dutifully doing breathing treatments and taking everything they said to take.  I stay in bed most of the day.

I had to walk two blocks to near where the race started to get my helmet.  We were having my helmet speakers refitted at the PCI race radios trailer.  There were race vehicles in the tech line waiting to go up on the podium – a two-block long line.  Vendors mulled about selling food and sunglasses and all kinds of things.  Race fans walked in and out of the race vehicles in line, taking pictures and gathering stickers from whatever race team was handing them out. 

Then something tragic happened.

A young man from a chase team was behind the wheel of a trophy truck in line.  Often the line is hours long and the driver doesn’t want to wait in line, so he lets a team member take the truck through.  When the truck is almost up on the podium for the driver interview, the driver will show up and get in.

Well, the kid went to start the truck to move it up 15 feet and the truck was in gear.  The 1000 hp truck started, lunged forward and hit the buggy in line ahead of him, which hit the car ahead of him.  There were people in between.  One had his arm severed.  Tragically, two of them were killed.

At the drivers meeting that night, there was a palpable sadness.

I got to bed as early as I could, still very sick, hoping the antibiotics would kick in after 48 hours.