Isolation

“The real glory is being knocked to your knees and then coming back.”

The next Baja pit was 16 miles ahead. Could I walk? In riding boots in the sand…it would take forever, and then I’d have to walk back.   

Could I walk back? It was about 14 miles to the river crossing where I could find locals. Too far. More trucks. Another bike slows and stops. “Are you ok?” Nothing he can do. I stopped flagging vehicles. I called Andrew again. Another truncated conversation. He said Arturo was coming out on Tanner’s bike. Before we could discuss details, the call was dropped.

If I could talk for five minutes I would have told him that I was only 16 miles from the next Baja pit – so I didn’t need too much gas. They could fill four or five water bottles with gas and put them in Tanner’s pack. Arturo could ride freely this way.

I stood there in the dark, thinking about how much time I would lose. I thought it would take an hour for them to get back to San Ignacio and unload Tanner’s bike. Then figure 15 minutes to get Arturo prepped. Then an hour for him to get to me. I may even be able to get to mile 784 by daybreak, which would be right on my plan.

I rolled the numbers over in my head as trucks and racing buggies came by and dusted me, my bike, and my pack at irregular intervals.

I was sobered by my situation. I had worked so hard, done so much right, and come so far – only to make such a heavy mistake. If just one person from either crew said, “Don’t forget the gas pit ahead,” I would have been looking for it. But I couldn’t blame them. Everyone was focused on Tanner dropping out and not the details of me staying in. Fair enough. It was my fault.

Well, if I have to wait for Arturo, I’ll take a nap. He can’t miss my bike, reflectors, and blinkers. If I was any closer to the course I’d be on it. I laid down between the low brush and small cactus that lived in this flat sandy plain. I left my helmet on to hold my head up and keep it warm. 

This may be a luxury I thought. Maybe this is good. Maybe I’ll get an hour or two of sleep and be fresh as a daisy when Arturo wakes me up. It was cold. Real cold, and I wasn’t moving. My socks were damp from the river crossing and my jersey was damp with sweat. Cold night air doesn’t dry you like hot day air. The cold sand sucked the heat out of me. I started shivering. Intermittently at first, then continuously. Trucks roared by.

I had to get up. As tired as I was, I couldn’t sleep with my body so cold and quaking. I jumped up and down to get my blood going. I began getting warmer once I got off the ground and heat loss by conduction stopped.

I called Andrew. He answered. “Arturo is coming with a gas can.” I could hardly make out what he was saying. “A gas can?” I thought. How is he going to ride with a gas can? You have to stand up when it’s rough, and he had a river crossing to navigate. A dirt bike seat is about 4 inches wide, and you need to slide forward and backward to use body English to ride. Where is he going to put a gas can?

Time went by. It was 1:30a.m. and I had been there for two hours. It was 24 ½ hours since I saw the green flag. Then it was 2:30. Then 3:30. I kept recalculating the entire rest of the race. I laid down to try to sleep again. Same result – impending hypothermia. Get back up.

The sky was beautiful. I observed the desert at night as I never had before. I had hours to kill. I heard animals; a coyote or desert fox howling, and some kind of night owl. A shooting star. Hues of black.

It seemed to be getting colder. I observe a low cloud – no, a fog bank – rolling in. Soon, I was wet with condensation. My bike and pack and helmet and gear were all wet. When a truck went by, the dust stuck to me like I was a powdered donut.

More time passed. Slowly, I came to the realization that I was going to lose a lot of time. A LOT. This was going to threaten all my cushion time and even the race itself. All that cushion time I had earned with everything I had for the last 24 hours…gone. This I did not want to accept easily. I stayed positive. 

Another light is coming. Is it Arturo? I have a feeling it is. Closer…closer…the lights fly by – again.

By now I was pretty wet. The fog was moving on a slow wind. “So this is how plants and animals drink out here.”

Another light. Is it Arturo? No.

It was 4:30a.m. Then 5:30. A new day was turning the eastern horizon a dark blue, then lighter blue. The satellite phone rang. It was Andrew. I could not believe what the scratchy voice on the phone was saying. 

“Arturo did everything he could. He tried to get to you, but he had to turn back. He’s back here at the van now… We are no closer to getting you gas than we were six hours ago.”

My body was still. I blinked in slow motion…

Facing Reality

“The keenest sorrow is to recognize ourselves as the cause of all our adversities.” – Sophocles

It said plain as day on the tape on my front fender – Van stop 607. Baja Pit (gas) 607. I never saw the pit. It was in San Ignacio along the street with the people and the lights and the colors. It was camouflaged in plain sight. When I was fist pumping the crowd to the right, it was on the left.

I accepted what happened right away and began thinking about what to do about it. It was 11:32 pm and I was far away from any people or structure. It was 45 degrees and dropping. I pulled my bike over to the left side of the course and heaved it up the bank of sand to get it off the course. The sand was deep, and the bike would not roll. I had to pull it sideways one wheel a few inches at a time with great effort. 

I was ahead of my plan. It will be ok. I’ll get gas somehow, and if it takes an hour or two, I’ll be alright.

I didn’t pull it more than four feet out of the way of race traffic, because I wanted to be seen. Maybe someone would stop and help me. It was very dark, and the desert stars laced the sky above the clear air. I took my pack off and got my satellite phone out. I turned it on and waited to get a signal. I called Andrew and hoped he was monitoring his phone. 

There was a time when Iridium satellite phones were a hot technology. With 22 satellites orbiting the earth, supposedly you could call anywhere on earth from anywhere else. It never took off and I knew why. The damn things didn’t work half the time. I knew this from last year. The calls would not go through often, voices would come in garbled, and the calls would be dropped halfway through. Still, we rented them for the race because there was little choice in a situation just like this.

Andrew answered. He was on his way to our next rendezvous point at mile 784 and had driven over an hour away from San Ignacio. “I missed the pit, I’m out of gas at 646,” I reported. “Oh shit!” he said. After a pause for not knowing what to say, he said he’d head back toward San Ignacio and figure something out and call me back. I wanted to discuss some options, but the call was dropped. All I could do was wait.

Lights appeared on the horizon, coming my way. I stood near the course near my bike. Was it a bike? A truck? A buggy? As it got closer I could tell. I had never been stranded in a race before. When I saw a bike stranded, I always stopped to ask if he was ok. I guess I was assuming they’d do that for me. 

I had two red blinker lights on the back of my pack when riding at night. I also put reflector tape on every rear facing surface I could – the shoulders of my jacket, my pack, the back of my boots, under my rear fender and the back of my helmet. I didn’t want to get run over by an 800-horsepower truck going twice my speed. I positioned my bike and the blinkers so other race vehicles could see me.

Soon enough I had my answer. They didn’t even slow down. Race trucks went by at 80 miles an hour and showered me with dust. At first, I was disappointed. But when I thought about it, I guess I can’t blame them. They are in a race in their respective classes and have planned all year and spent a ton of money on this race. Bikes are cheap. The trucks are one million dollars apiece, not including pre-run trucks, the crew, chase vehicles, and the shop they built them in. If I was stranded, that’s not their problem.

A light approached and this time it was a motorcycle. I waved to him – as he went by. “Oh, ok. It’s like that then.” The thick of the pack of trucks and buggies were coming through – one every few minutes now. I knew there were about 300 vehicles besides motorcycles in this race – 400 entries in all.

Another bike…he slows and stops. “I’m out of gas,” I shouted over his engine and through his helmet. He thought about it for five seconds and then shook his helmet and shrugged. “I’ll tell them at the next pit,” he said. I paused. “Okay. Thanks.” He took off. There was nothing the guys at the pit could do for me other than report it to my team if we called them. What did I expect? That’s what I said to a rider who was out of gas last year. There’s nothing a bike can do. They don’t have any extra gas.

I called Andrew again. No answer.

The Second Crossing

“Let me embrace thee, sour adversity. For wise men say it is the wisest course.“ – William Shakespeare

I rode away from San Ignacio at 10:30 pm on a leg that I knew would take me most of the night. I felt good. Surprisingly good for being this deep into the world’s longest non-stop race. My physical preparation was paying dividends now.

I turned off the paved road into the desert yet again. There were fires along the course – people camping out and watching the race. The course rolled and turned in the hills, but it was far easier than the last 50 miles. I hear a truck and see lights coming up behind me. I pick a place to pull over and watch the dragon pass, populating the air with particles of airborne earth so effectively, you’d think that was why the machine was built.

I’d have to deal with passing trucks and buggies the rest of the race. This would slow me down significantly from the first half. I’d have to pull over to get out of their way, and then wait for the dust to clear so I could see and proceed. If there was no wind, a typical nighttime situation, it would take a number of minutes, and sometimes ten. Just when you get going, you see the lights of another one coming up behind you. This process gets repeated when the bulk of the pack is coming through, as your average speed suffers considerably.

I came to a river crossing – the same river crossing that had claimed Santana. It was about 60 feet across. This time it was night. There were crowds of people on both banks. This could only mean that there was drama here worth watching. The last thing I wanted to do was fall down in the water at night, submerged, with 40-degree air and being 157 miles from my truck. Now that I think of it, that could be life-threatening.

I stopped and asked a spectator, “Which line is good?” and I motioned with my hand. I couldn’t understand him. I asked again. He tried to help me, but I wasn’t confident he had been paying attention. A truck could take any line they want. But a bike had to miss the big boulders to stay upright.

When you have something tough to do, staring at it and telling yourself how bad it will be it won’t make it any easier. I didn’t hesitate any longer. I put the bike in first gear and put my calves up on the radiator shrouds, as is my water crossing technique to keep my feet dry.

The river received me without much protest at first. The water got deeper and deeper. The splashing from my front wheel licked the back of my boots on my outstretched legs. About 2/3 the way through, I hit something under the black water that knocked me off balance. Instinctively I hit the throttle to stay up. I altered my course to regain my balance and sprinted for the bank. I was about ten feet to the left of my original target when I got there, but I got there. Besides a little water in my boot, I was dry. 

I happily left the crowd behind and sprinted into the darkness.

I never was a quitter. When things got tough, I hung in there. When nobody expected me to win or finish or stick it out, I always did. If anyone can do it, I can do it. Maybe not at first, if I didn’t have the training or experience or knowledge, but if I wanted something, I’d pay the price.

I think too many people quit on themselves. In an age of instant gratification, where we find out if we win in minutes and go on to the next thing, persistence over long periods of time is a valuable quality. Sometimes you just keep going until everyone else goes home.

Finishing a project, even after you discover it is taking far longer than you expected or hoped, is what we need to do. Doing anything worthwhile means going deep into it. It means sticking with it through complexity and problems and when weeks turn to months or years. So long as it was a worthwhile endeavor in the first place, if you start, you finish. Finishing builds self-esteem and confidence. And life is a confidence game.

I pressed on. The excitement of it being on me, and the fans in San Ignacio, and now even the river crossing had faded. It was work again. It was cold. When I look behind me I could always see at least one set of racing truck lights back there coming my way. I had to keep looking to time when I’d pull over.

The course flattened out. The sand got deep. I shifted my weight back to lighten up the front wheel and gave it a healthy dose of throttle to push through the sand. 

Suddenly, “broughhhhhhhhh.” My engine quit. It took two seconds to understand what happened. 

I was out of gas.

Man down

“The imagination is far better at inventing tortures than life because the imagination is a demon within us and it knows where to strike – where it hurts” – Anais Nin

I headed out away from my van with one concern. Why was Tanner “taking a rest” a mile ahead? Something was wrong. He had been there all the while I was at my pit – and they did not tell me. If they didn’t tell me, then something must be wrong, and they didn’t want me to know.

I saw the white van on the left – a twin to the one my crew was in. I circled around. There was Tanner, and he had his gear off. At least he was standing. I pulled up.

“Are you ok?” “Yeah.” “What happened?” “My body is just not working anymore.” I paused and surveyed his body language. “Can you go on?” I asked. “No,” he said, “I felt like I was going to pass out at 70 miles an hour.”

Awww man. I couldn’t believe it. If he tapped out of this race, there had to be a damn good reason. Here’s a kid who ran 46 miles a month earlier. He doesn’t quit. Being in anaphylactic shock 30 hours before the green flag had something to do with it, I was sure. Add lack of sleep and going all out like he was, and this is the result.

“Are you sure?” “Yeah,” he said solemnly.

“Are you okay with it?” He knew what I meant; was he ok with not finishing? “Yeah,” he said. I reached up to put my hand on his face. This was my son. It was just yesterday that he was a little boy. It was hard to see him have to drop out. But at least he was taking it alright.

Of course, when he rolled into this spot to meet his van earlier, he was far from alright. He got off the bike and dropped to the ground. Some members of the crew wanted to take him to the hospital. By the time I got there, he had some time to re-gather himself and accept it.

Ok. Now what?  I looked around. They were all looking at us. At me. Two crews. Andrew, Arturo, Ralph, Franz, Trevor, John, Jesse, Ted, Chad, Omar, Bobby, and Todd.

Tanner looked at me with encouragement.

It was on me now. It was up to me to finish this race. All of a sudden it was more important than ever. Nobody else could do it. I had to make it happen. I was Dad again.

There was nothing more for me to do here. Tanner was ok. I had to go.

I had two chase trucks now – one of them with Tanner in it. I felt great. Really good. A surge of resolve and energy filled me. I was reborn. I felt strong. I would finish this race!

My next goal was to go 177 miles to the physical checkpoint at mile 784 by dawn; the second dawn. It was 10:30 pm. I had all night to get there and still be on my race plan.

I rode away from the team with conviction. About a half-mile towards the center of this tiny town a flagger waved me right. There were crowds of people along the road, three deep in places. They were waving and cheering. I fist pumped them to the right. There were lights and colors and movement. Cheering. I fist pumped them to the left.

The people of Baja let us ride on their land. They don’t know me, but I was giving them something back. I fist pumped them to the left. Colors. Crowds. Lights. The 230-year-old mission church presided over the plaza. Left. More crowds along the narrow streets with one story masonry buildings three feet off the curbs. I fist pump the crowd again. I will finish this race. I had done so much right, and I felt good. I was over halfway there.

More people. More cheering. Narrow street. All of a sudden this little town kicked me out into the oblivion of the nighttime desert. Black. No more people or cheering. No more lights. Just me and the blood in my veins and oil in my engine.

As I would find out soon enough, I had just made a huge mistake…

Restoration

“And once the storm is over, you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.” 
― Haruki Murakami

Mile 607. A few miles outside San Ignacio. 

“I got two problems,” I shouted before I got my helmet off. “The GPS is not showing a course line, AND I fell into a cactus!” Arturo took the bike from me, and I pointed to my shoulder. Now that I had some better light and my helmet off, I could see needles bristling out of my jersey.

We got my pack off. It was cold now and a jersey wasn’t enough. The crew were all bundled up in jackets and hats. I sat down, and Andrew grabbed one of the toothpicks sticking up and yanked on it. “Owwww!” It hurt! I don’t know how, but these needles hang on. When you pull them out they pull your skin up an inch before letting go.

He pulled on another one, and another. When we got all the tall ones out, they helped me slowly pull my jersey off. Now we could see the ones that were only sticking out a little. There were two distinctly different types of needles in me. Dozens of the big toothpick-like ones, and hundreds of smaller fine hairy type ones. 

I had tweezers in my side pouch for this purpose, and Franz started working on me. Soon he realized that this job was for younger eyes, so he gave the tweezers to his son, Trevor. I don’t know how long they were trying to extract the little demons, maybe 15 minutes. I multi-tasked and ate and drank while I sat there. The little needles were so fine and so numerous, we decided to do what I did during pre-running to my forearm – shave them off. At least then they wouldn’t be rubbing up against the inside of my jersey. They’d work their way our over the next weeks.

“Where’s Tanner?” “He’s in second place,” they told me. “Wow,” I thought. 

A vehicle was coming that made its presence known. It was the first trophy truck passing me – 20 hours in as I had predicted. That means others would be coming soon.

Now that I was sitting down, I started to feel how tired I was. I had been awake for 23 hours after having four hours of sleep the night before. I had been racing for over 20 hours. In my race planning, I had rationed my cushion time over the second half of the race. 

I had planned on getting to mile 524 by dark and, so long as trucks were coming through, I’d take a rest there. But I was over two hours ahead, and no trucks had come yet. Now at 607, after that brutal section of terrain, it was dark, and trucks were coming through. Now was the time. Don’t keep going until you can’t go another mile. Invest a little time. Get refreshed. For all the distance I had come, I was only a little over halfway there.

I told the team I was going to take a nap. I put a jersey and a pullover on. Andrew set up the cot behind the van. Ralph, who did not anticipate the cold last year and suffered unprepared, had a huge coat this year that weighed 20 pounds. He wrapped it around me. I’ve got to say, it was a heavenly coat at that time. 

Last year I told the team to wake me up in 20 minutes when I took a nap at mile 430. They didn’t. I woke up on my own in 45 minutes. They said they thought I was done – out of the race. I admit I was in bad shape as I had been riding for 9 hours with a neck injury. But still, if I say to wake me up, then they should wake me up.

I gave them explicit instructions. Don’t mess around. Wake me up in 15 minutes. I lie down. It took me 5 minutes to fall asleep. But that’s all I needed to do. Hit the reset button. Allow all my muscles to relax. I don’t think it would make much difference if I was sleeping 30 minutes or 60 minutes. I was in a race. It was more of a therapeutic trick to my body than it was meaningful rest.

In 15 minutes, Andrew woke me up. “Do you want to sleep for 15 minutes more?” he asked. I thought about it. “Yes,” I said. He walked away. I thought about it more. No. I put one boot on the ground. Then the other. It was cold out. Maybe 40 degrees. I stood up and walked to the bike.

I put my riding jacket on. That was three layers. Backpack on. I hadn’t had any caffeine yet. Now was the time. I drank a five-hour energy. I am sure these are not good for you, but I was hoping for some good results right now. 

I was feeling pretty good about the whole race. Another trophy truck went by. I should still be ahead of my schedule by some. I was into the second night, and one of the two worst parts of the course were behind me. I wasn’t hurt. The cactus needles were flesh wounds that I could ignore. I felt like I was in good shape here. Then I asked the question again.

“Where’s Tanner?”

Did I notice an awkward hesitation? 

“He’s a mile up the road at his van.”

“What!?” Something is very wrong here. I thought he was in second place? He should be two hours ahead of me. 

“He’s where?”

“Just a mile up the road on the right.”

I shifted the 714x into gear. I couldn’t wait to see him…

Escape

There are ships sailing to many ports, but not a single one goes to where life is not painful. – Fernando Pessoa

I tried to pull up again, but there was no way. There were hundreds of needles in me that were still very much attached to the cactus. I’d have to rip them all out at once to stand up. These needles have a hook-like action. They don’t want to come out easily.

A few months ago, I was looking at a photo of Tanner from last year’s race. “What’s that on your side?” We’re always trying to figure out the best way to carry things. We test fanny packs and holsters and all kinds of things when we pre-run. You can’t really attach anything to the bike because the vibration and violent up and down movement will loosen it and you’ll lose it. Your body and head are the things that move the least.

A backpack is good, but you have to take it off to get anything out quick, and it can be an ordeal. (I can tell you there was no way to get my backpack off in this prickly situation.) I tested an awesome adventurer fanny pack, but in the heat it’s a bit claustrophobic. So I copied Tanner and got a little belt pouch from Home Depot. If you wear O’Neal riding pants, which I did this year, there is a belt that you can slide the pouch on.

I put the pouch on my right hip so I can grab things quick with my right hand. As luck would have it, my left hip was buried in the dirt, but my right hip was up. I unzipped the pouch and right where I had left it was a small pair of wire cutters. I carried them to cut wire ties, or to cut barbed wire out of my wheels or brake calipers.

I reached down under my left arm and began snipping away at the fleshy part of the plant. I separated it from the rooted part. I managed to get up and lift the bike up. I look on the back side of my arm and see green plates of the cactus still stuck to my arm via large toothpick sized thorns. I began cutting the thorns with the wire cutters one by one. I was able to release one of the plates and went to work cutting the thorns from the next. Then the third. Then the forth.

There was a lot in me. I had landed in a big angry plant. I reached behind my shoulder blade and could feel another one on me back there. I could barely reach and couldn’t see, but managed to feel around and cut the needles with my small wire cutters. Finally, the last plate fell off of me.

I could feel a myriad of needles sticking out of my skin through my jersey. I could not see them well as many of them were around the back side of my arm. When I touched them they poked my hand. I reckoned I was 20 miles or so from the van. Could I ride like this? If my muscles expanded and contracted and moved around with needles in them, would it be insufferable pain and discomfort? Let’s see…

It was a doable plan. Now I just needed to get to the van to get help. But I knew what was coming up and it was not good.

Some terrain is just really, really hard on a motorcycle. The deep silt whoops changed to a narrow river wash with tree branches hanging over it from both sides. Embedded boulders poked up 12” from the night time sand. Turns every 30 feet. Add all this together…

I passed a guy who was struggling in it. I looked at his number – an Ironman. He followed me. I knew it was for moral support. We came up on another bike struggling who had then stopped in front of us. We both pulled up to him and stopped. It was another Ironman. “Are you ok?” His voice was discouraged and frustrated. “Yeah,” he said while he was shaking his helmet “no.” “This sucks!” the other one said. Then he yelled some expletive over the sound of three engines in the night. I nodded in agreement and got going again. They both attempted to follow and stay with me, but I pulled ahead and lost them.

A rider from Norway, who had raced and won his class in the Dakar rally three times, another incredibly tough race, came to Baja this year. When he saw the Baja 1000 course on race day he said it was the most miserable terrain he had ever seen and said he would NOT be back! “I’m out!”

“When you’re going through hell, don’t stop!” – Les Brown

Suddenly the course turned up a rocky hill. Don’t let off the throttle. Holy smokes this is steep! But I knew the next hill was the worst. Down the rocks now. Dark. Two-foot vertical drops. Rocks. Down. Another ½ mile. Here it comes…

If I was a race fan and there was any place along the 1134-mile course I could camp out and watch, it would be this place. The uphill is so steep and full of rocks – I mean full of rocks – I mean no dirt, JUST rocks, that it must be an incredible spectacle and entertainment to see any type of vehicle try to ascend this angry slope. This was stupid dangerous.

My wheels danced off the rocks altering my direction every few seconds, but I kept my balance and held the throttle open, with my finger on the clutch ready for anything. I saw faces on the ledges to my left temporarily illuminated by my headlights. I avoided the biggest boulders that would surely cause a crash. Up, up, up, I felt like I was in a pinball machine bouncing around. How high can this hill be? My jersey pulled against the needles sticking out of me.

Mercifully, I got to the top. A few more miles to the military checkpoint and I start looking for my van.

I am so relieved that section is over. I had ridden every mile of this course in pre-run. It was one of the two worst parts of this entire course. I scanned the vehicles alongside the road, looking for a white van or the yellow 714x sign.

I knew I was still ahead of schedule, even though I had lost some time. I was excited, stressed, encouraged, and exhausted.

There they are! I pulled in. “Guys. I got two problems…”

Piercing my luck

“Only the dead have seen the end of the war.” – Plato

The desert is dry. Real dry. You’re sweating, but your motorcycle and the desert combine to create a 50-horsepower blow dryer. You never get wet. How much water do you lose? A lot. You keep drawing water from the tube hanging over your shoulder that comes up from your backpack with a 3-liter bladder, but you still feel dehydrated when it’s daytime in Baja.

Many Ironmen, like Jeff Benrud, got IV’s halfway through the race. This restores you and gives you energy. Jeff didn’t have time to let the IV drip in. “Squeeze it in,” he told the nurse. Thinking about it, I wish I had an IV too.

I had 80 miles to go to get to San Ignacio. The sun was going down and I was 2 hours ahead of my schedule. I headed away from my team at the crowded pit at mile 524, into the setting sun.

I knew the course would get really tough before San Ignacio. It wasn’t too bad for a little bit, but hell seemed to start a lot sooner than it had during the pre-run. The course breaks down the more race traffic (both pre-run and during the actual race) that runs over it. Silt gets deeper. Ruts get deeper. Whoops get taller and deeper. Sand gets looser.

The sun went down on me. At this time of year, a day is composed of 11 hours of daylight, and 13 hours of darkness. That 13 hours seems like an eternity. When it’s dark, our spirits dim, and challenges rise taller than they seem in the day. The night is lonely, visibility and perspective drop, and there is no energy outside your body to draw on.

When we have tough times in our lives, night time can be desperate. The best thing we can do is go to sleep and in the morning, we will have light, hope and clearer thinking. Of course, that was not an option for me right now.

My mileage goals were more modest for nighttime because I knew about the night. I had to make it until daylight. I knew I’d feel reborn yet again with the coming of the sun – but that was far from now. Keep moving.

It was getting cooler, but not cold yet. I had a thin jersey on. I thought I’d be okay for another two hours. 

The whoops get deeper. Silty. Deep silt – up and down and up and down. I had to keep my front wheel from washing out or knifing in. If I had four wheels, I wouldn’t have to worry about falling over. 

The course deteriorated. It was bad. Really bad. Conditions like this took 10X the energy per mile than fast sections did. “Pay the toll, boy.”

I check my GPS screen often to be sure I am on course in the dark. Then I see the line on the screen that represents the course ends! As I progress, I watch the arrow move right off the line into space. Damn! Now I had to follow the tracks. There are many intersections and forks out here. I’d have to worry about that when I got to the next one.

I struggled to keep some speed up. I could ride in just about anything. Skills weren’t my problem. Keeping a reasonable race speed in this crap in hour 18 was. Then, in one second, I was down. A strange sensation… My engine shut off, and I could hear another bike ahead of me struggling with these deeply silted whoops like I was. The drone of his motor faded away ahead in the darkness.

I was on my left shoulder at the edge of the course. My hands were still on the handlebars. Normally a crash like this was nothing. You get up, start it up, and keep going. So that’s what I tried to do. But when I went to rotate my torso up off the ground, I was stuck. Pain…

I reached up with my right hand and clicked on one of the backup lights on my helmet. I turned my head down to see my predicament. I had fallen into a cactus – a prickly pear. The thorns were deep in my upper arm and shoulder. The plant I was attached to was firmly rooted in the ground. That’s why I couldn’t get up.

My bike is horizontal on my left leg. My left shoulder and arm are pinned to a cactus. The GPS and tracker on my handlebars are sideways with me, illuminated in the dark. 

The pain…

No time for rest

“At any given moment we can step forward into growth, or back into safety.”  – Abraham Maslow

I didn’t want to blow the bike up, so I wasn’t going the maximum speed of nearly 100. I had it backed down to 85. Ahead I could see what I was looking for. My van stop at 524. This was an important van stop in my planning. I thought if I could get here by one hour past dark, I would be doing good. The sun was still up.

My average speed including all stops was 33 mph. That was very fast and exceeded my estimations. I was 2 ½ hours ahead of schedule – the same schedule that had me finishing in 41 hours with 7 hours of cushion for emergencies or extra rest, or a turtle’s pace at the end.

I was very much encouraged by this fact. Trevor did the math and told me I’d finish in 34 hours at this rate, but I knew the later the race wore on, the slower I’d go. Further, I was facing the second night that was to begin in an hour or so. Thirteen hours of blackness. This is why my planning had me finishing in 41 hours, not 34.

I had planned to take a rest of 30 minutes here and get horizontal. But I did not want to take any rest during daylight hours and waste them, or before the racing trucks came through. If I was going to rest, I wanted the trucks to be coming through while I was down. Every truck that passed me then, was one I didn’t have to deal with on course.

Trucks are dangerous to motorcycles on course. Truck drivers openly admit “I wouldn’t want to be a bike rider with me driving my truck on course!” They go twice as fast as the bikes and come up on you with incredible violence. Once they pass, the four giant thundering tires spitting dust, and the wind created by the truck body itself puts so much dust into the air you are blinded.

Some truck drivers used to ride motorcycles. They switched to trucks in their old age of 30 or 35 so as to not push their luck, knowing how difficult and dangerous it is. “With age comes a cage.” Roll cage around them that is.

No truck had come through yet. Its presence would be preceded by a chase helicopter that radios down course conditions and hazards ahead to the truck driver.

My crew was excited to see me, and I was equally excited to see them. The location, where the old lady had the store in the middle of nowhere, was crowded with race vehicles and fans. They put my bike on the stand and I sat to let my body stop vibrating and try to release the tightness. I hadn’t seen the truck for 5 hours. I ate and hydrated on more than just what was in my hydration pack, which was being refilled again. I had dissolved hydration powder into water into a concentrate. We’d pour some concentrate into my pack and dilute it with water. During the day we’d throw a little ice in there too.

“Where’s Tanner?” He had led the 19 rider Ironman class for 205 miles. An incredible feat in this class of hardcore riders. Now he was “in second or third.” I was happy for him and knew he was pushing hard up there in front of me. This course and this race is so damn crazy anything can happen, and I hoped he’d stay clear of misfortune.

Kids came up and asked for stickers. Franz and Ralph obliged. John dug his fingers into my traps and arms. I don’t know how long I was sitting in the folding chair – maybe 15 minutes, but I relished in being 2 ½ hours ahead. I was getting tired now, but it was an even fatigue that I only recognized now that I stopped.

My friends were good friends. I have fond memories of the camaraderie we shared at that stop and others. The chips were down, and we all came together.

Shadows were getting longer. I changed my helmet back to the night helmet with the backup lights on it. I changed my tinted goggles for clear ones again. I didn’t put my jacket on as it was still very hot – maybe 93 degrees. I had been holding off consuming any caffeine during this race. I had energy gels, but I resisted, knowing I would need them later. I didn’t want to start the roller coaster. I decided to wait some more.

I knew what was ahead now. I had to go on to San Ignacio. In my plans, I had a bit of a rest before tackling this section. It was gnarly. The second toughest part of the course – the 30 miles before San Ignacio. It was second to the 43 miles before Loreto at mile 831. But that would be later. One thing at a time. There would be no rest right now.

I was at mile 524. The next time I could see my crew was at 607 in San Ignacio. It was 83 more miles and it would get dark again soon.

Little did I know, the Goddess of Good Fortune was about to take a break…

The Goddess of Speed

“Studies show that the number one most important habit for success is self-discipline, sometimes called willpower, over long periods of time.”

Last year I went 600 miles in 27 ½ hours – but 400 of that was with serious whiplash – three vertebrae in my neck were way out to the left. This year my goal was to get to 524 in 16 ½ hours. If I could do that, then even with some short rest periods planned, I’d have 7 hours cushion to finish in the 48-hour time limit.

I rolled into the town of Bahia Los Angeles, or “Bay of LA” as we called it, at race mile 400. The calm picturesque Sea of Cortez to my left, and the memory of Santana pushing the bike with a blown engine. I rolled through the seven blocks that were the town at the speed limit of 37. One dirt block off the pavement and the speed zone was over. Back to 50-70 mph range.

The 124 miles from Bay of LA to a road crossing at 524 was a fast section – the fastest of the whole course I thought, and I had to take advantage of it during the daylight hours. The sun was getting lower now and I didn’t want to waste fast terrain in the dark.

The diversity of plant life out here was amazing. I was especially fascinated by the cactus plants – or do you call them trees? Saguaros were 30 feet tall. Organ pipe cactus were thick with many dozens of 4” round spiked spires maybe 12 or 15 feet tall. Prickly pears looked like spiked plates balancing on each other. There were dozens of other varieties; cool to look at, but I was glad I didn’t hit any!

In pre-running, I hit a cactus at 40 miles an hour and had 200 little hairy thorns in me. I wound up shaving them off at the hotel that night because they were too fine to extract them all. Lucky there were no big thorns on that one. Getting ever smarter, I carried tweezers in my hip pouch.

I was on a fast road full of loose aggregate at about 60 mph, when I heard a bike close behind me. It’s funny that you can’t hear a loud bike until it’s on you. I rolled on a little more. He pulled up alongside me. It was 249x – the first Sportsman bike I had seen. I thought about it and was pretty encouraged. Sportsman teams had a bunch of teammates taking turns – always a fairly fresh rider. This guy could have been the third or fourth rider to get on that bike. Here I was at mile 460 or so by myself, and they were just now catching up.

Ironman and Sportsman are two different worlds. Ironman is a pro class. Sportsman is an amateur class. While I knew some Sportsman teams would be faster than me by myself, I just didn’t want it to happen right now – especially since I saw the gravel coming off his rear wheel like a Gatling gun. I raced him and passed him back. He hung back there a while, but I pulled a ¼ mile gap on him.

The course approached some mountains and switchbacked left and right up their shoulders. As the road switched left, I could turn my head just ¼ turn to the left and see him behind me down there. But there was someone else in the chase. At the next switchback left, I looked down and behind again, and the newcomer had blown by 249x with authority. “Who is that?” I wondered.

The switchbacks started down now and ended at the next valley floor where the road straightened out some. All of a sudden, a bike passes me like I am standing still. It wasn’t 249x, but I couldn’t make out his number. I knew it was a 250 rather than a 450 like I and most of the motorcycle riders in this race were riding. While the size of the frame of a 250 and a 450 are the same, I could hear the difference in the motor sound – a higher pitch and faster revving. The 250s were a Pro class with numbers beginning with a 1.

Thirty miles later, I see a bike and rider upright in the middle of the course ahead not moving. I pull up to a stop and see 114x, his rear tire shredded with big chunks hanging off the rim. A flat tire that shredded on the rocky ground at such high speeds before he could stop. He’s lucky as it could have caused a crash.

He was Mexican and spoke broken English. He asked me to tell them up at the next Baja Pit that he was back here with a flat. He wanted me to tell “Abelardo.” I promised I would.

It was a long way to the next Baja Pit. Maybe 15 miles. They had no way to travel back 15 miles to help him. I asked for Abelardo, but there was nobody there by that name. I went through six guys before they realized I had something they needed to hear, and they got a guy who spoke English. I told him 114x was 15 miles back with a flat rear tire that was shredded. They knew already, and he pointed to a new tire and tube sitting there. I didn’t know how they were going to get it to him, but I did my job and took off back on course.

Most racers had tires that had a hard foam insert in them instead of air, so you couldn’t get a flat. They cost some and are really difficult to get inside the tire when you mount it on the rim, but they will save your race. 114x must have been on a budget, were rookies, or were just overly optimistic. Now the whole team had a big problem. Last year a rider appeared in front of me like a ghost at night in the mountains and asked if I had an air pump. I was glad it wasn’t me.

The course took a big soft silty turn onto the straightest, smoothest dirt road I had ever seen. The one where I ran out of gas pre-running and Santana kidded me about not knowing how to ride and using too much gas. I knew I could open it up all the way here with no surprises. And I knew it had a happy ending.

In 180 miles since I saw my van last, nobody passed me. It was a good sign that I was keeping a strong pace. I had been racing for 15 hours now. The sun had a ways to go to catch the horizon, and I was going 85 miles an hour.

The Goddess of Speed and good fortune was on my shoulder.

Performance-enhancing drugs

“Intention and theory don’t change the world – only decisive action does.” 

I left the fourth van stop near San Felipe 5 ½ hours after the start of the race with plenty of energy. I knew there was a Baja Pit in this area too. The white tape I had put on my front fender had the race miles of all my stops written with a Sharpie. Van stops in black, Baja Pits (gas) in red, and physical checkpoints in blue. My own headlight would light the tape up at night, so I could see the colors.

I looked for the Baja Pit close by but couldn’t see it. I stopped and asked another team waiting for their rider where the Baja Pit was. I couldn’t take any chances of missing one. ¼ mile ahead.

A question I am often asked is why doesn’t my own van fill up my gas tank? There are 22 Baja Pits and only 11 planned van stops. That’s one reason. It is odd that a half dozen van stops and Baja Pits are in the same spot, (maybe 50 yards to one mile apart) and I have to stop at both. But it saves the van from having to carry so much fuel, and the Baja Pits are only a 30 second stop. Still, it’s one more stop you have to remember.

The road out of San Felipe started out fast. You could go 90 mph for 15 minutes, but there were four 90 degree turns in the stretch. I blew by one, with both wheels locked. Fortunately, it was a tee in the road with no penalty for missing the turn. I needed to watch the GPS carefully to see upcoming turns. Taking your eyes off the road at 90 mph on a dirt bike is against your instincts.

The smooth road ended abruptly into whoops. 23 miles of whoops, most of it with loose rocks in them. I found a rhythm and made it through. I recall in 2015 when we pre-ran this section, I struggled. Now this challenging section was much easier for me. I had been training in many ways to push through “this sucks,” and now it was paying off.

The course dropped me onto a paved road. A few miles and I’d see my van again. It was a great stop. I felt good and the team was encouraged by my condition and spirits. The idea they all had of their job of trying to keep a half-dead man alive had not materialized yet.

There had not been much for the mechanics to do yet. The bike had not been on the ground. Some mouthfuls of food, chia drink, quick shoulder and arm massage, and I was gone again.

I was on a performance-enhancing drug – dopamine. Our brains, yours and mine, make dopamine when we play games, and especially when we compete. My brain knew I was in a race and it was cooperating. The sun was getting higher in the sky and it was heating up for the day. I navigated the mixture of Baja terrain and put miles behind me.

The course went through a tunnel under the highway. I made a little mistake on a boulder and slowed for a few seconds. I heard another bike behind me and got some motivation to kick it up a notch. I had been riding dust free for some time now and I wanted to keep it that way if I could. I left him behind and didn’t see him again.

The desert is full of wildlife. The first time you see a jackrabbit you have to think about what you’re looking at. Their ears are so very big compared to their body, and they move so quickly that it doesn’t register to someone from the woodlands.

Monarch butterflies and other butterflies can be numerous, so much so that unfortunately they wind up splattered over your goggles.

Another unusual sight is Road Runners. These birds dart across the ground in blurring sprints – just like the cartoon!

It was mile 360 or so. One pastime over these hours of riding was math. “1123 minus 360 =…..oh man that’s a hard one. Let’s see. 1123 – 300 is 823. Then minus 60 more. Oh crap don’t hit that cactus…soooo, umm, 823 minus 60 is 763. 763 miles to go. Okayyyy….so what percent complete is that? Well, ummm….”

“Just keep going until the math gets easier.”