Sow, Reap

Cause, effect.

There is always a relationship between responsibilities and benefits.  If you don’t plant, you don’t harvest.

You can tell what someone has been sowing, by looking at their relationships, income, and self-esteem.

How about you?

What do YOU want to achieve?

To understand someone, however young they may be, we can look at what they want to achieve and how willing they are to pay the price to get it. Desire is the starting point of all achievement. Those with strong ambition and corresponding determination will bring forth what they want in the world. With no ambitions and no self-discipline, a person will not do much.  

So – what do YOU clearly desire and are willing to pay the price to get?

We're getting better all the time

2017 was the best year in human history. Fewer people were hungry, impoverished or illiterate. Fewer children died than ever. Every day the number of people living around the world on less than $2 a day goes down by 217,000. Every day 325,000 more people get electricity and 300,000 get clean drinking water.

As recently as 1960, the majority of humans had always been illiterate and in extreme poverty. It was the norm. Now fewer than 15% are illiterate and less than 10% live in extreme poverty. In 15 years, both will mostly be gone. After thousands of years, they are pretty much disappearing on our watch.

I feel great about that and lucky to be alive as it is happening.

How about you?

I pick up trash

Litter drives me nuts. I could ignore it like everyone else. But I just can’t. So, once in a while, I’ll stop my truck and get out with a few garbage bags and walk along 1/4 mile on one side, cross the road and walk back to fill them up. It’s mostly beer cans and bottles, but there are coffee cups and booze bottles and all kinds of garbage.

I used to be angry – at the jerks who are throwing stuff out the window, and that I have to do this, and that nobody else does. All those ideas are certainly valid. But being angry is only hurting me. Instead, I just own it. It only takes 30 minutes on a weekend, and I do it when I have some open time. I listen to a podcast or audiobook when I’m out there, and I am getting some light exercise. (Watch out for the prickers!)

I just see it as me taking responsibility for what needs to be done in my community. When I drive along the road for the next few months, I take pride in the section I cleaned, and I feel good.

I have made a big change in how I think about cleaning up trash on the side of the road, and it made it a lot easier for me. 

It may not be easy at first, but we can always choose our attitude. 

What’s your thing?

Court the Angels

I believe there is a big bank account in the sky. Every time you do something good, especially for others, you make a deposit. Every time you do something bad, you make a withdrawal. 

In either case, it doesn’t matter if anyone is watching. It all counts.

So, when nobody is looking, I sometimes do something good that nobody knows about except me. Will it buy me some protection or goodwill or luck another time or when I need it?  

In my experience – yes.

How about you?

Failed attempts to fly

I am struggling now. Three o’clock pm. The heat. The course drops into a dry river wash with deep sand with embedded boulders. Tree branches hang over from the left and right as the course winds like a snake. Great effort is required.

Some riders are taken to the hospital by their crews for dehydration.

I begin to see trash on the left. That’s good. I was going to meet my crew at the Loreto Dump at mile 831. Keep going. Finally, I see a dirt lot with chase vehicles. I see both white vans. Mercy.

I pull up and surrender the bike to them. I slowly survey my pinky. It’s not broken. I feel hotter now that I am stopped. Tanner holds an umbrella over me to shield the sun. I sit down. I am overheated again. Worn down. Fatigued. 

I knew I had a big decision to make, and my team knew it too. We didn’t talk about it for a while.

I got up and studied the map on my GPS. I watched dust trails of buggies going by. I knew there was a huge rocky hill climb nearby, and I knew there was a paved road section where the spillways were. It was eight miles before the pavement though. If I could make it eight miles, I could coast the pavement without using much energy. But then the party would be over as there would be more rocky river crossings and 70 miles of sand whoops.

The next time I’d see my van was in 122 miles. That was very far. In my condition, that was very very far. It would get dark for the third time.

My bike on the stand, I stood alongside it and studied the GPS, and then looked to the horizon. Could this be it? I prepared for a year. Has it all come down to this time and this place? Tanner held the umbrella over me and knew the thought I was struggling with. Nobody influenced me. If I wanted to go on, they’d rally around me. If I didn’t, they’d do the same. 

They waited…

My body had precious little left. I didn’t want to sit up straight or stand without leaning on something. The thought of riding even eight more miles to get to ten miles of pavement was daunting. 122 miles to see the van again? That was not smart. There was no way to finish in the 48-hour time limit now, and getting lost on my crew was not going to gain anyone anything.

I gazed at the nearby mountains. Last year I got to mile 600. The last two years the course was 822 miles and 855 miles respectively. I was standing at 831. Now I knew I could go this far. There was something satisfying in that.

I had raced for 37-1/2 hours and I would be awake for 42 hours. I had faced the wall yet again. This time, I was better, stronger, smarter. That’s what these attempts had done to me.

Why do I tell you this story? My personal mission statement is “an extraordinary life of shared experiences.” I’m no different than anyone else. I struggle. I search. If I have done anything right, if I have discovered anything about myself and therefore all human experience, my wish is to share and inspire and empower as many others as possible. Heaven knows I have learned so much from other people – those that have come before me and my contemporaries. If I can be part of the chain of people who pass on the human instruction manual to a fulfilling high-performance life, I am eager to do my part.

Emotion welling up inside me and my voice cracking, I softly admitted to my son, “I’m done.”

The Gauntlet

The course wound left and right and left and right. Ruts from the four-wheeled vehicles dominated the path – one on the right and one on the left. These ruts were 12” to 18” deep. This means there was a hard berm in the middle as high, and the shoulders of the course were that high too. Up on the shoulder were cactus and hostile brush, often hanging over the course.

A motorcycle needs to lean to turn. If you are in the right rut, you can turn left ok because you lean over the middle of the course. But after every left, there is a right turn. Now you are in the wrong rut because you have to lean toward the shoulder and cactus of every variety, like Stegosaurus tails, preventing you from leaning that way. You had to jump the berm to get in the outside rut. This was no easy feat in many places. You’d get your front wheel up the berm and falling into the opposite rut, while your rear wheel tracked the old rut. With great skill, you can be successful most of the time. But a 99.9 percent success ratio had me crashing three times – once pretty hard.

It was a crash I knew I would have avoided had I been fresh. When I went to pick up my bike, I knew my strength was waning. The front wheel was up on the high shoulder against a tree. The rear wheel far lower down in a deep silty rut. I stood alongside the bike and heaved it up. When I got it vertical, I dropped my helmet down on the seat and tried to catch my breath out of the 100-degree air that was filled with my own dust. Sweat stung my eyes inside my goggles.

Around here, Jeff Benrud crashed in the silt and the handlebars slammed his knee brace. He thought he had broken his leg.

There were miles of this kind of road. No civilian vehicle could ever make it through. I’m fighting for every 100 yards now…and I have hundreds of miles to go.

I remounted and got out of my awkward position before any truck or buggy ran me over. I had water, and I was grateful for it now. I had learned a trick from one of the other guys. When you reach for your hydration tube hanging over your shoulder, the first swig is as hot as the air. But when you are done drinking, if you blow the fluid back into the bladder it stays cool on your back.

I push on. I am proud of my performance because no one part of my body gave up before other parts. I wore down evenly. But now, all parts were diminishing.

The course crossed a rocky riverbed. I pulled over and got off. Just for a couple minutes. A buggy approaches and storms by.

Rick Thornton, my pre-run buddy, got Rhabdomyolysis – a condition caused by extreme physical exercise where the muscles break down and result in clogging the kidneys. Rick saw yellow like he was looking into the sun. He withdrew from the race and was taken to the hospital.

The course opens up wider and turns left. I look ahead and I’m astonished. I knew this area would be silty from looking at it during pre-running. But this was sheer mass destruction. From a barbed wire fence on the left, 150 yards wide to a line of trees and pipe organ cactus on the right, it is a sea of silt. When a vehicle sees silt ruts, the best option is to take a virgin line around it. When everyone does that, there are no virgin lines left. They take existing lines and take their chances. Mash the gas pedal down and don’t stop. There are dig holes where race vehicles have been stuck. It looks like a trench warfare zone.

I study the scene and figure out the best strategy. I choose extreme left along the barbed wire fence. I jump over a big sewer pipe to get there – only to find it was as deep and shot as the field. I have little choice now that I am in it and cut across the whole field of deep ruts to go extreme right. I make it, and go what may have seemed off course, picking my way very slowly through the cactus trees – anything to avoid the motorcycle eating landscape to my left.

I judge when the landscape must have changed and emerge from the desert “forest” and re-engage with the course. This is real work now. The course has more gauntlets coming. A steep hill climb – narrow and twisty. More silt ruts. I recall why I hated this section so much.

Then the course drops into a rocky riverbed – not to cross, but to follow. Bowling ball size rocks, and nothing but them (no dirt) tests a motorcycle. Bump, bump, bump, bump – forever. Two men are standing ahead on course. Something’s up. As I approach, they point to the right, and up. I turn to follow the course and immediately go up a very steep hill climb hidden in the trees. It’s very steep and very long and twists and turns. Do I have the energy for this?

Back down as steep as it went up, and back into the riverbed. More variation. I see an Ironman bike and rider taking a break on the side of the riverbed. I keep going. 

In a right turn, I catch my right pinky on a branch that had been sawn off, and it rips it back. It felt broken, but I didn’t want to stop and look. My glove was ripped, and blood soaked through. There’s nothing I could do. I don’t really need a pinky to ride. Keep going.

I am struggling now…

The Shadow of the Wall

“I am always doing that which I cannot do in order that may learn how to do it.”  – Pablo Picasso

I only had a handful of miles to go to see my van.  But now that I was stopped at this Baja Pit under this pop up canopy, I realized I was seriously overheated and dehydrated.  The workers at the pit were awesome to me.  They gave me water and a banana and a wet washcloth.  I wiped my face and neck down and it felt like first aid.  I took five minutes – maybe ten.  I thanked my new friends, and headed out on course.  A blistering hot, rocky, white-with-sun course.

If I didn’t know I’d see my crew soon, I’d have stayed there longer.  Another fifteen minutes and I see a flagman and cones ahead – the physical checkpoint.  Thank God.  I rolled in slow between the cones and came to a complete stop.  They wrote down my race number. “Get it right boys – 714x is here, at mile 784!”.

Just as I started again I saw a half dozen faces I knew.  My crew!  They pointed to where I should pull over.  I dismounted, happy to see them.  They hadn’t seen me in 13 hours, and didn’t really know if I was dead or alive.  They looked relieved. 

They were baking in the heat too.  I got my pack off, then my wind proof jacket.  Then my pullover.  Evaporative cooling – sweet relief.  My face was red, and I was down a few quarts.  Since I saw them last I nearly got hypothermia, and now I was wiped out from the heat.

It’s hard to describe how great it was to see them.  Tanner looked very concerned about me.  John rubbed my traps and arms.  I got some cold Chia drink and food in me.  Chad and Omar changed the rear wheel and checked the oil.  There wasn’t much for the mechanics to do, as I had not crashed the bike since I saw them last.

I told them about what happened as I rehabilitated.  I started to feel better as my body cooled some.  We put a Tanner’s water bladder in my pack and filled it – lots of ice too.  I changed helmets, goggles, jersey and gloves, put my pack on, and mounted my trusty motorcycle.  Trevor changed my helmet camera batteries and memory card. I felt good….compared to how I felt 20 minutes ago that is.  I had a job to do and so long as I was able, I was going to do it.  Only 339 miles to go.  It was a little past noon, and I had been in the race for 35 hours.

I know what’s coming. During pre-running it was the hardest most technical section of the course.  I told Tanner about it 10 times since pre-running when he sat in the truck with a swollen ankle and foot.

I asked Tanner what the math was for me finishing in time. He said “Don’t worry about it. You only have to go 43 miles” (to the next van stop). I knew this meant they damn well figured the math and it was becoming nearly impossible to finish in time.

I told Tanner this section was 43 miles of hell. “Don’t be surprised if it takes me three hours to get there.” He said “Just give me ten miles, four reps”.  Ok, I thought. That’s what I’ll do. Ten miles. I can go ten miles.

He was right.  When we have a huge task ahead of us that seems insurmountable, just break it down into small doable steps, and do first things first.  That’s all you can do.

I took off out of there with authority. The bike sounded great. I had been up for 39-1/2 hours and only had caffeine once. The caffeine put me on a roller coaster I did not like.  It was long gone out of me and I didn’t want anymore.  Amazingly I didn’t feel sleepy. What I was beginning to feel was exhaustion.

I was controlling the bike well, but the pain was in my face now. Arms, shoulders, traps, back, knees and my butt.  They all performed spectacularly so far. But they were all sending me a message – “Hello. Umm, when is this going to end?”

I was beaten down by a long war, and the 43 mile dragon was in front of me – in 100 degree heat no less.

Now was the time.  When the needle is on empty, transcend the definition.  Perhaps it is hard to understand, but I had worked so hard and so long to come within the shadow of the wall, and now I would be able to see what I could do…

The Flight of Icarus

“Live like life depends on it. Because it does.”

Sand whoops gave way to a wide gravel road that rolled up and down in long intervals. I crossed three rivers that were filled in for the race. A race truck passed me going 20 miles an hour faster than I was – and I was doing 65. He must have had trouble earlier to be this far back.

Finally, I pulled into the Baja Pit for gas just outside Scorpion Bay. The whole town must have been there watching the race. The pit staff offered me an 8-ounce bottle of water and a half a peanut butter sandwich. I would normally decline. Not this time. I needed it.

It was near 100 degrees. A guy held an umbrella over me as I choked down the little sandwich. I was cooking in my race jacket, pullover, and jersey. To get it all off would take some time and effort, and my pack was not big enough to get my jacket in. There was no place else to carry it and I didn’t want to ditch it as I had another night to face later. My time limit would be up at 1:00a.m.

I sped away. Amazingly, I felt pretty good. I was thirsty, and tired and hungry and fatigued – but there was no one factor or body part that was screaming much louder than any other. It was good.

I hit the paved road for six miles along the Pacific Ocean. I looked to my right and watched the blue waves turn to white foam. The hills were brown, with a black ribbon of asphalt undulating ahead of me. The sky was blue and clear, and the sun bore down on it all. 

Thoughts of a worn man. We are blessed. To have all this. To be here at all. We’re just temporary dots on a big spinning planet. We’ve been given all this ability – to shape our world. To create. To experience. To love. And yes, we have been given this. We are not responsible for us being created. Hell, we don’t even know how we work. So…then…something else made us and set the table.

I headed back into the desert. It was way siltier than when we pre-ran it. The course got rockier as I knew it would. Rocks and silt. Rocks and silt. I was riding fast. I felt good. I felt lucky.

I was headed to mile 784 to the physical checkpoint. That’s where I’d meet my van and see my friends. I hadn’t seen them for over 12 hours now. The course went up a mountain and switch-backed; straight up on the right, straight down on the left. It was very hot.

The next Baja pit was 12 miles before the checkpoint. I pulled in. I was feeling it…something. I had to get off my bike and sit down. 

I knew I was in trouble…

Possibilities

“People living deeply have no fear of death.” – Anais Nin

I had a lot of time to make up. I had 646 miles and 28 hours of race time behind me, and 477 miles and 20 hours ahead of me. Finishing was possible, I thought, if I didn’t take any breaks and had no more problems. That’s what I was going to do. No more calculating. Just ride – fast.

I hit 94 mph on an open dirt road section – but it didn’t last long enough to make up anything significant. I was near the Pacific Ocean now. I couldn’t see it, but I could smell it. I was getting near the pit 16 miles away from where I ran out of gas. There was no way I was going to miss it. I got nervous early and pulled over to ask a spectator. “Where’s the Baja Pit?” He motioned ahead. I found it.

The sand was deep and some gentle whoops began. I reached for my water tube hanging over my left shoulder to take a drink. It wasn’t there. That’s right – I used it to siphon gas. No water for me. I was riding good, and I felt good, and that’s all that mattered right now.

Later I’d learned that Jeff Benrud and others had lots of problems in the night. When the fog came in, it made it hard to see through their goggles. When a truck went by, all the dust stuck to their lenses. Wiping it off with your gloves just makes abrasions on the lenses that catch the light and make it hard to see at all. Jeff threw his goggles off and rode without eye protection for three hours. He had dirt packed around his eyes at the end of the race. I missed all the fog. 

The mile-to-effort ratio is low at night. It was daytime now, and I was flying like the wind. Maybe I was lucky. In fact, I was sure I was. Here I was, 53 years old, 31 hours into the longest non-stop race in the world. This far in, you start to think different. You are beyond normal function. You have dug deep, over and over again. You’re in a surreal state.

What human beings can do is not based on their date of manufacture. That’s how we teach kids. You’re ten years old now, and you, and all the other ten years old’s will learn this, and have to pass this test to get a good grade and have your parents proud of your progress based on the same yardstick all the other ten-year-olds are on. This continues through life – we act our age. We are supposed to.

I’m not going to act like a 53-year-old. I don’t want to. So if my behavior is not that of a 53-year-old, then what is age anyway? Is it a limitation? Too young for this or that? Too old for this or that? Your body has an age, yes. But what you can do with it is up to your mind. Are there limitations? Of course. But they are far beyond the fence we have accepted.

I recently heard of a man in his nineties who swam every day for decades. At age 95, he improved his lap times. He was still trying to get better – and he did.

I got to the salt flats and was happy about it. They were fast and required little energy. The course alternated to sand dunes and back to salt flats. I went off course and wound up in a tiny fishing village. I saw a young man and held my arm up, palm up. He motioned to the way. Just the other side of the berm – back on track. 

The air was getting a lot warmer now. I was sweating. I had three layers on since I left my van at 11:30 last night in 40-degree air. Now it was about 85 degrees and rising. I hadn’t eaten in 9 hours and I had no water. 

As I raced toward Scorpion Bay I thought, this was going to be a problem…