The Big One

I think most of you know that I race long-distance races in the desert on motorcycles and in buggies (“side by sides” or “UTVs”).  There are five movies on YouTube called “Into the Dust” documenting this kind of racing and my adventures.  

The Baja 1000 is the longest point-to-point, non-stop off-road race in the world.  It happens on the Baja Peninsula in Mexico.  Well, there is this other little race….it’s called “Dakar”.  It’s a rally race.   That means you race a leg of it each day, and they keep adding your times together.  If you do not finish a “stage” that day, you are out.  Well, Dakar is 13 days and 6500 miles!

It started as “Paris to Dakar”.  Dakar is the capital city of Senegal on the west coast of Africa.  They did that for a lot of years.  Then bandits would stop racers and rob them.  So they had to move the race to South America for a handful of years – Bolivia, Peru and Argentina.  Then they moved it to Saudi Arabia where it has been for a number of years now.  It is still called “Dakar”.  

So naturally, I am doing it.  I was supposed to go last year, and I did a 5-day qualifier rally in Morocco.  I learned a lot.  The terrain is easier than in Baja, as Baja is all chewed up from years and years of racing.  But the sand dunes are very challenging and intimidating.  They can be as tall as ten story buildings, undulating, with near vertical drops and holes – and sometimes you are in them all day long.  Racers get motion sick in the dunes, and I was no exception.  I also got food poisoning or some bug from the water and was violently ill on day three.  It was not easy.

I leave Dec 30 and the race starts on Jan 3.  I have to get up each day and, with my codriver Dennis Murphy from Soouth Africa, have to race about 550 miles a day.  We will finish in the dark most days I think.  Eat, sleep fast, and get up and do it all over again.  Every day.  Day 7 is a rest day.  Day 5 we have to go out one way, camp in the desert with whatever yiou brought, and race back the next morning.

Each day there will be a highlight show on YouTube that you can watch from the previous day’s racing.  You won’t see me on the highlights I don;t think because I will not be in the top ten in my class.  I am trying to finish, and I will back it down to save the car and avoid surprises so as to finish each day.  I just need to finish each day.  The guys racing for the win will take risks and each day some of them will be out of the race.  I want to be a survivor and be there at the end.

This is my great challenge and adventure right now.  

Wish me luck – and enough good sleep.

Let’s go!