Effort is your responsibility

You’ve got to try.  If you don’t try, then you won’t learn and you won’t accomplish anything.

Unsure of yourself?  Don’t feel your worthy or ready?  Is that why you aren’t trying hard? If you don’t give it a good effort, then you are holding yourself back – you can’t blame anyone or anything else.

Follow people who are losing – and you’ll see people who don’t try – who don’t put in the effort that is necessary for them to get better results.

Effort is your responsibility.  Are you putting in the effort?

Happiness – the purpose of life

“Happiness has always seemed to me, a great achievement.” – Francoise Sagan

The purpose of life – something so many of us have pondered, including me.  When we are young, we are simple minded, but as we mature, we think of such things more and deeper.

Here’s what I have come up with –

The purpose of life is to be happy, while and by becoming the best version of ourselves, in service to others.

What is your definition?  Tell me with the orange button, or just write it down for yourself.  Warning – you might get stuck for a while – and that is good.  Think.  Why are you here?  What ideal are you moving towards?

Choosing people to have long term relationships with

In business or personally – avoid people who are in conflict with others often.  If they demonize others and seem to thrive on conflict, one day you will be reclassified as someone they do not like.

Choose kind people who are nice as a default, and strive to get along and produce harmony.

What's your breaking point?

It’s when you decide to quit, go back, give up.  

If you are overwhelmed by small challenges, you can only live a small life, because a big life requires you to overcome big challenges.

Raise the limit on the amount of stress you are willing to endure (process, reinterpret that it’s ok) before you quit on moving forward.

Don't fool yourself

“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself – and you are the easiest one to fool.” – Richard Fienmann

If you think you already know how things are, your mind is searching for evidence that it is right.  You are easy to fool.

Don’t fool yourself.

Your death is indistinguishable from the end of the world

When it’s over, it’s over.

But it’s not over now.  Now is the time.

Are you happy?  If not, is it because of your poor thinking and loss of self-awareness in a consensus world?

Or is it because you have made poor choices, put up with what you shouldn’t, or haven’t made you proud of yourself?

Now is the time to get it right.  The end of the world is coming for us.

But not yet…

Your Independence

“It’s no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”

Just because everyone is doing it, saying it, eating it, and thinks it, doesn’t mean that they are right.

Notice.  Think, decide and act for yourself.

Salt, Speed, and Dust – Chapter 17

“An extraordinary life, of shared experiences”. 

There was no wind, and many bikes making dust.  While I am a seasoned desert racer, I’ve learned that no matter how talented you are, if you can’t see, you need to slow down, slower and slower as necessary, until you can see where you are going.  Some other riders are not so cautious, and I have seen them pass me and hit things, and crash right in front of me.

As the riders spread out, I could see better; some moments thick, and some thin.  It was clear to me that desert riding in the US is orders of magnitude easier terrain than in Baja.  You see, the land is owned by the US Bureau of Land Management.  They will not give race promotors permission to bomb through the virgin desert.  Instead, we stayed on graded roads 95% of the time.  You could have driven a pickup truck on 90% of what we raced on. 

This took a lot less energy, but not less danger, because you’d always go faster and faster until it was dangerous.  Blowing through a turn and going off a cliff or into the rocks was probably the biggest risk.  I saw a number of riders down, one with a Medivac helicopter landing to get him.

I sped across the desert valleys, through sand and silt and rocks.  Being a Baja racer, it was an easy race for me, with some exceptions, with my average speed of 46 mph, 50% faster than in Baja.

In fact, it was so fast that I beat my chase crew to one pit – and they were on paved roads!  At another pit I pulled in just as they pulled up and jumped out!  They were racing to Reno too!

The competition was on my tail.  One guy who had beat me in the Silver State 300 race was right behind me, pulling into each pit just after me.  Nothing like some competition to keep you doing your best.

The hours went by and so did the miles.  The racing trucks started 4 hours after us.  Normally in Baja they’d catch up to me in 8 hours, since there they were twice as fast.  But with my higher average speeds, only four trucks passed me by the time I got to the finish line.  I didn’t have to deal with their dangerous passes or their dust very much.

Out of 17 starters, I finished third, in 11 ½ hours.  It was a great race, made sweeter because it was the second goal of the trip accomplished.

The team including my friends Jeff Russell and Bobby Miles and my girlfriend Marie, were lifted by goals met, adventures had, and memories made. 

My personal mission statement is – “An extraordinary life, of shared experiences”. 

I hope you have enjoyed me sharing this story with you, and taken something for your own life.  

– Larry Janesky

To be continued…

Chapter 16 – Lost and Found

“If you’re not living life to the fullest today, you never will.” – Wally “Famous” Amos

We were only in Vegas long enough to register for the race and go through tech inspection.  There was no free time.  We had used it in Bonneville by staying an extra day.  On race day, we got up at 1 am to start the drive two hours north of LasVegas to the starting line in the middle of nowhere.  The trouble is, we couldn’t find it.  It was not in a town.  There was not a building or structure of any kind for many miles of this place in the desert wilderness.

Time was ticking away.  We had to be in staging in a few minutes and we weren’t really sure where it was or if we were going the right way.  We had doubled back for many miles already.  My heart beat faster.  Finally we saw the lights of many chase vehicles pulling into the same place in the distant night.

It was pitch black and I had to get my gear on quickly.  There were bikes riding up to staging which was over a mile from parking.  I hoped I didn’t forget anything.  They did not let the crew past a certain point, and they could not watch me start.  It was very controlled, but very organized. 

There were 17 bikes in my Ironman (solo) class.  Most teams would switch riders many times before the race was over.  Not me.  It was on me to take it all the way to the finish, 514 miles away in Reno.

Some riders in line recognized me from my movie on YouTube – Into the Dust.  I wound up giving advice to a young low budget rider from California on how to manage your energy in an Ironman race, something I had plenty of experience with.

They let bikes go every 30 seconds, and after a while it was my turn.  I blasted into the desert with the sun just making itself known. 

About a mile in, I couldn’t see a thing…

Chapter 15 – Validation

Run 14

One more time…

“When you go out of your comfort zone and it works, there is nothing more satisfying” – Vera Wiig

We had done it!  Chris didn’t celebrate long.  He switched his mind on the Vegas to Reno race, which we were scheduled to leave for the day before.  I told him I would like to take one more run with the GoPro mounted behind the windshield.  He said he didn’t think it was a good idea. He was worried the motor would blow up or something bad would happen. 

I told him I’d only go 175, that the people who watch the video would never know it wasn’t a 200 mph run.  He didn’t respond.  When we got back to the RV, I reasoned with him again.  “What we’re doing is not safe” he said.

 Now he tells me!

I told him I felt very comfortable on the bike.  He paused.  Finally he said “Well, if you feel comforta….”  I was out the RV door before he finished his sentence. 

Dean helped me mount the GoPro to the inside of the windshield.  They had put the kickstand back on, and we left it.  There was no line to wait in– it was day 5.  I was given the green flag in minutes.

When we were returning from our 200-mph run, a sleek long dragster vehicle called “Speed Demon” had set a world record for the fastest piston-driven vehicle ever built by mankind – 469 mph, and we saw the streak across the salt.  There would surely be ruts out there from that run. 

For me, it was a bonus run, and it went great.  I hit 203 mph briefly and held over 200 for a long time.  There were 1” deep ruts in the salt that I crossed but I held it wide open, but up, and squeezed with my knees.

When I got my timing slip I had gone even faster by a shade – 202.36.  Validation.

The grand finale run. My goal, at least my first one for the trip had been accomplished.  Randall said it took him three years to break 200.  I spoke to two other riders who were stuck at 199 for their long careers.  I stopped to get my Class A license, which said I could go as fast as I wanted now.  It completed my set of four licenses.

We rode south on air and relief, 5 ½ hours to line up for the longest off-road race in the US – Vegas to Reno.  I’d be riding a very different machine this time. 

The goal – finish the 514 miles solo.