African Dust – Rally du Moroc – part 7

I can endure tired.  I can endure hurt.  But dizzy and nauseous?  That’s not about being tough.  I wake up sick still.  I go to breakfast.  Andrew slaps down a box of Dramamine he got from Bradley Cox – a up and coming contender and points leader.  I went on a dirt bike tour with Bradley’s famous father Alfie Cox in South Africa some years ago.  He says take two.  At breakfast I have my head down on the table.  I am scared of the dunes and how they will make me sick again.

It’s time to climb in the car for Stage two of five.  In these rally’s, you start the stage right from the bivouac at a given time.  For example 10:43.  Then you have a “liason”.  The liason is on paved road and it is NOT timed.  This day we had to drive on pavement for two hours to get to the dirt section.  Here you had to start again at a given time and you better be there.  That is called the “Special test” and it is timed.  At the end of the “Special test” you have another liason back to the bivouac that could be as long as two hours or more.  It’s along day strapped in the car.

This day they decided to take the windshield out so I could have wind in my face and air flowing.  Maybe that would help me not get sick.  Well, it was a great idea!  And just as we started the special test after a two hour liason, the Dramamine kicked in and I started feeling better. 

I am driving really well.  I am getting used to what Bruno means when he calls the turns and dangers, and he’s getting used to my driving and starting to trust me. 

Here come the dunes.  I am ready this time.  Today, these dunes are mine.  I figure out how to attack them and crest them sideways at the peaks.  We even make some passes in the dunes.  I am excited!  I know that there will be more dunes, and many dunes in Dakar, and I now know I can do it!

We finish 22^nd today.   I get back to the bivouac and the South Racing team approaches the car to see if I am green or not.  When they see my smile they are relieved.  High fives all around.  We crushed it today!

I eat dinner, brush my teeth and go to bed in my tent.  But my sleep was interrupted by an highly unwelcome visitor…

African Dust – Rally du Moroc – part 6

Day 6.  We got the green flag at 10:40 am.  We started 26^th of 38 based on our Prologue finish. I felt good in the car for the first hour or two – I don’t recall how long it was.  Then they appeared.  Dunes.  Big sand dunes.  As we got in farther they got bigger – as tall as ten-story buildings.  I knew they were coming, and I thought I’d have fun in them.  But I wasn’t fully prepared.

They were steep.  You had to commit because they were soft.  Full throttle to the top.  If you let off you’d get stuck.  BUT, as you come to the crest you couldn’t see over the other side.  Sometimes they are almost straight down on the other side.  The crest wiggles like a snake – sometimes tighter than you expect and sometimes the other way – you can’t see until you are going over.  It’s unnerving. 

You have to let off the throttle enough not to get any air going over because you could easily flip your car end over end all the way down the other side.  But you can’t let off too much because you’ll get stuck in the soft sand.  Then you both have to get out and start digging.  Good luck with that.

The dunes were other-worldly.  A undulating environment of tan curves.  When you are in the bowl it’s easy to become disoriented.  It was very hot.  I am nervous.  Bruno is giving me orders.  I’m sweating.  I’m strapped into this very loud vibrating car in a monkey suit.  The windshield is blocking any airflow to me.  The only exposed skin was part of my face anyway.  I’m hot.  I’m getting dizzy.  Scared of flipping the car. 

We are searching for a hidden waypoint in these dunes.  If we miss it we get an hour penalty.  We have to backtrack.  Bruno points.  We are in virgin sand – no tracks.  It’s hot.  I’m dizzy.  I’m nauseous.  If there is one thing I hate in life is throwing up – and the feeling that preceeds it.  But I’m there.  I start making strange moans.  I can’t deny it.

Bruno says “Larry, what is the matter?!”  It’s loud and we are bobbing in the dunes like a boat on rough seas.  “I’m gonna puke!”  Good thing I have an open-face helmet I thought, though I’d fill my microphone with puke. I guess Bruno would hear what that sounds like…

At first he tells me to stop and take a moment.  I do.  But I know there is only one way out of here – and that is to keep going.  I know I have to face it and I don’t want to prolong it.  I start moving again.  I’m moaning again.  I’m really dizzy. 

Bruno, probably fearing  that if I puke while I’m driving I’d not be paying attention and be risking his life, tells me to stop.  We’re looking up at sand in all directions.  He yells “Get out of the car!”  I do.  He meets me on the drivers side and yells “Put your finger down your throat and throw up!”  I know that’s the only way I am going to get through this.  I try.  Nothing.  I try again.  Not much.  I can’t do it.  Damn!

It may have only been four minutes or so – or ten.  I don’t know.  Bruno was prepared to drive the car out of there, but sitting in the passenger seat I knew, would make things much worse.  I climbed back in and strapped up.  I had to go.  I had to get through this. 

The dunes seemed like they’d never end.  They went on for 30 kilometers.  I’m moaning again.  I hate this.  Why did I come here?  This sucks.  Really sucks.  The dunes get smaller.  Mercifully they end and were back to hard dusty desert wasteland.  But this kind of feeling doesn’t just go away.  I’m fighting nausea the rest of the race.  We finish 26^th of 38 – just how we started.  So in net, nobody passed us – that’s good.

We get back to the bivouac and I am sick.  The veteran racers are not surprised.  They tell me it’s common.  Andrew Short says he has to take Dramamine – a double dose or he’d get sick in the dunes too. 

I go to bed motion sick.  I’m in bad shape.  Stage two tomorrow.  There will be the same dunes as we are doing a similar loop but backwards.  I am dreading it.  Seriously dreading it….

African Dust – Rally du Moroc – part 5

It was day 6 of our trip.  Today the race started with the “Prologue”.  I was a bit nervous.  It was about to get real and I didn’t want to make any mistakes.  I didn’t quite understand the prologue.  It was flowed by 5 long stages, but the prologue itself was only 25 kilometers.  That’s nothing.  Why?

There was two classes of UTV’s.  SSV was the “slower class”, and the class I was in, “Challenger”, was the top fastest class.  There were 38 cars in my class.  At the starting line they were letting cars go every minute.  Like any desert it was very dusty.  In places where the wind didn’t blow the dust off well from the guy ahead of you it was hard to see the ground.

I went wide on a few turns.  Bruno was telling me to brake earlier.  But sometimes it was a matter of seeing the turn to determine what was early.  It went by in a flash – maybe 18 minutes.  With only a few kilometers to go we came upon this Toyota Hilux limping along.  We were in his dust in a rocky river wash.  Bruno was telling me to “go!”, but I couldn’t see the ground.  I obeyed.  Bang!  We hit something – a big rock no doubt.  I didn’t see it. 

Soon Bruno says we have a right rear flat.  We decided to ride it out two kilometers to the finish.  If we stop now to change it in a 25 km race, we finish last.  We cross the finish line 26^th out of 38.  How you finish in the Prologue doesn’t mean much.  It just determines your starting order for the next day – Stage 1.  Bruno changes the tire and we take the road back to the stadium parking lot. 

This time, there are no pop-up tents, no seats, and most of the trucks and pit equipment are gone. We have a five-hour bus ride to the first bivouac.  A bivouac means temporary living quarters/tent/camping…I’ve never been to one.  We left at 1:30 pm from Marrakesh.

The rest of the race we’d be staying at two different camps in the middle of absolutely nowhere.  I figured out why the short prologue was five hours from the serious long-distance racing.  To do these races you need permission from the government – the king.  The king wants something going on in the populated areas to showcase the race.  The race promoter needs buildings for registration and tech inspections, etc.  So they set everything up in the parking lot of the stadium and do the prologue nearby, until they leave town for the parched wasteland and dunes where most of the racing miles take place.

Morocco had had heavy rains in the last few weeks and roads were washed out.  The bus trip may take a little longer than five hours they said.  We climbed the swithcbacks of the Atlas mountains  for a crossing.  It was beautiful.  At high elevation there were some pine trees.  Below that – no vegetation at all.

We see some lightning off in the distance.  Hours pass and there’s stopped traffic ahead in a small town.  Mostly a stalled out parade of race vehicles.  I see a car carrier with all the South Racing race cars on it including mine.  It turns out there was two feet of water rushing across the road a couple miles ahead and they closed the road – the only one to where we were going.  We get out and walk ahead to see if we can what is going on.  The sun sets.  Finally the traffic starts crawling.  Back into the little bus.  When we crossed the water it was still 5 inches deep and flowing pretty good.

The five-hour trip took 11 hours.  It was 12:30 am when we rolled in to the bivouac.  Race teams were setting up their pits.  We schlepped our bags through the pits to a enclave of tents and oriental rugs – a thousand of them I think-laid out in the dirt and rocks.  First a big courtyard where they’d serve food with tables where you could eat.  That would double as a place for driver meetings each night.

Walk through that into aisles between endless tents set up.  There weren’t just any tents.  They were legit “Arabian Nights” kinds of tents.  Inside them there were carpets on the dirt and elaborate Arabic designs on the ceiling and walls.  We had a “luxury” tent.  It had a toilet, and sink, and a shower – all separated by fancy curtains.  Yes, hot water.  For the drains  they just dug holes in the ground and let the drain water soak in.  The beds were real beds – comfortable. 

It’s late – get some sleep – the real race starts tomorrow…

African Dust – Rally du Moroc – part 4

It was Saturday.  The race starts tomorrow.  Today we shaved my helmet foam down so it didn’t cause me stress fractures in my skull, practiced changing a flat tire, and sat down for a barbeque for the whole South Racing team – all 55 people in the South Racing pit.

It turns out there were some interesting people driving the other cars.  Andrew Short, the ex motocross racer I had watched on tv racing for years was the co-driver for the Can Am Factory car.  Rokas was from Lithuania and was the season points leader of the four race series.  All he had to do was finish relatively well and he’d win the season points championship.  Chaleco Lopez was from Chile and was a real contender in the points race.  Two guys from the Netherlands were rally racers who were racing in the dirt this time.  There was a father and son from the US in two different cars. 

As the days passed we shared stories and bonded over the whole experience.  It’s funny how going through challenging circumstances together can do that.

One more afternoon until the race.  We decided to go to the souk – the marketplace in the center of Marrakesh.  It’s a crazy place.  Crowded.  Shops and stands selling all kinds of things in narrow alleys and courtyards.  Hustlers.  We were warned about pickpockets more than once.  There was a snake charmer playing a flute-like instrument and a cobra – a real cobra standing up.  If you took your phone out to take a picture they’d rush you and tell you they want money for the picture.

We walked, and walked, and walked.  Narrow alleys full of people – but it didn’t stop scooters and motorcycles from driving in the alleys.  People stepped aside trying not to get run over.  When we’d seen enough we caught a taxi back to our resort.  I got to sleep at 9pm.  Little did I know things were about to change in every way.

African Dust – Rally du Moroc – part 3

Day 4 of this trip and the race still hadn’t started yet.  The waiting…ughh.  Ted and I tried to get acclimated to the time zone.  We slept until 8:30 am, ate breakfast at the lavish resort breakfast buffet, and went back to bed and slept another three hours.  I did an interview with Ted on camera for potential movie footage. 

We went to registration and tech inspection at 5:30 pm.  Smooth.  The media knew who I was and was glad I was there.  They knew about my Into the Dust movies on YouTube and were hoping we’d feature this race in a movie.  They knew it would be great publicity.  We do have 5 million views on Into the Dust on YouTube after all.  They gave us a deal on helicopter and drone footage.  Drones are not allowed to be brought into Morocco for some reason.  We were lucky we got all the lithium-ion batteries for the cameras in.  They hand-searched us at every airport.  Ted pushed up to the rules, but didn’t exceed them.

That night there was a drivers meeting and a rookie briefing – mostly in French.  But they did have translator gadgets for the Anglophones like me.  Whenever you’re in a crowd of people who know what they are doing, and you don’t, you feel like an imposter of sorts – like you don’t belong.  But that is just how you come to expand – you intentionally put yourself in that position. Then you listen, ask questions, and listen some more.  You are out of your comfort zone – literally uncomfortable.  That’s what growth feels like.  When you do it a lot, you know you’ll be ok.

I was anxious to get racing. 

Patience…

African Dust – Rally du Moroc – part 2

This year I had raced three big races by September.  I was tired and beat up after soloing the Baja 400 on a motorcycle.  Just two weeks after I got back we had our annual convention – CN Live!  For that I needed energy.  I decided to rest for those two weeks and heal up. The four-day event takes a lot of energy for me. It went great and I needed some rest. But 36 hours later I’d be heading to JFK airport in New York with Ted for a 9:30 pm red eye Air France flight.  We’d arrive at 10:30 am in Paris with a five hour time difference. 

Jet lag sucks.  You are falling asleep midday, and then even though you are tired, you have trouble falling asleep when it’s time. 

We catch a connection to Marrakesh.  When we crossed the water and land appeared again, it was parched hues of brown. No green anywhere.  The fringes of the great Sahara.

We catch our ground transport and it drops us off at an all-inclusive resort.  Wonderful rooms, giant buffet for every meal, big pool with Europeans speaking various languages sunbathing all day long. “I like Morocco so far Ted!”

So far…

It was Wednesday.  The race didn’t start until Sunday.  We rested and tried to catch up on sleep.  Thursday we met Bruno.  We hit it off right away.  It was a 15 minute ride to the “Service Area” – the pits where all the race vehicle and teams set up in the parking lot of a soccer stadium. There were 260 vehicles in the race and they were all there. South Racing had eight UTV’s lined up under pop up tents with two mechanics per vehicle.  here were engineers, electrical mechanics, logistic people, giant supply trucks…it was impressive.  It seemed like the big leagues.  South Racing had it down.

There was plenty of seating areas under tents where you could talk and have cold drinks and snacks, and there was a coffee machine!   They named it Maria. 

South Racing gave me a giant gear bag filled with Janesky Racing gear and clothing.  Bruno and I had custom race suits saying Janesky Racing and Contractor Nation. “Shake and bake baby!”

Today we had to shake down the race car.  It was a Can Am Maverick – custom built by South Racing.  Essentially it was my rent-a-car for the six day rally.  This car was a turbo.  It had 230 horsepower compared to the 105 horsepower my non-turbo car in Baja had.  It was a different class.  It was all dolled up with my graphics. 

I met my mechanics – Braulio and Tomas.  Great guys.  I walked around the car observing.  I got in to get familiar.  There was a windshield.  That’s different.  It allowed me to wear an open faced helmet.  The windshield would protect my face from rock projectiles if a vehicle passed us.  It became clear this car was high tech.  South Racing had built 131 of these over the years and they had it dialed in for Rally.

Bruno and I drove the car 15 minutes away to an area where we could run around a 10 kilometer course following the road book to make sure everything about the car was good.  I smashed the gas pedal down and all four wheels spun, kicking up rocks and dirt.  That’s different.  I can’t spin the wheels of my Baja car.  It was fun. 

We did seven laps, made some adjustments and practiced the navigation.  I was getting used to metric.  I like kilometers.  They are “baby miles”. 

The new helmet I had was round and my head was oval.  The helmet dug into my forehead and it was unbearable.  The mechanics told me they could shave some foam off the inside of the helmet, but they wanted to wait until after tech inspection so they didn’t flag us for modifying the helmet.

While I was happy the car was good, I just wasn’t quite comfortable yet….

African Dust – Rally du Moroc – part 1

Note – I have made it a custom to tell stories about my racing on Think Daily.  I think there are lessons there.  Many people say they like my accounts.  If you find you aren’t interested in my race stories, please don’t unsubscribe.  We’ll be back to our regular format soon enough.

When I wrote about my adventures racing the Baja 1000 in Mexico, I referred to it as the “longest non-stop off road race in the world”.  It’s true.  It is.  But one cynical commenter said “Dakar is longer.” 

That’s all it took I suppose.

I investigated.  I knew a little.  I had to know more.  “Dakar” is a 13-day rally race.  In a rally, you race the designated section each day, and they add your daily times together to determine who was in what place.  If you finish faster, you have more time to work on your machine and rest.  If you break your machine out there, you have less time to rest.

Originally the race was “Paris to Dakar”.  It started in Paris and ended in Dakar Senegal, in northwest Africa.  That’s far.  But at some point, the gangs in northern Africa were robbing people.  Even the guys laying out the course.  I heard one motorcycle rider say they took everything from him, stripped him naked, and left him there.  He was really scared they’d kill him. 

So the race promoter moved the race to South America for a handful of years.  Bolivia, Argentina, Peru.  Then they moved the race to Saudi Arabia a number of years ago.  That’s where it is this year.  All 6000 kilometers of it.

I thought….I need to do this before I die.  And there is no better time than now.  Let’s go.

I investigated.  I couldn’t just enter the race.  I had to qualify.  It makes sense.  They don’t want clueless people who don’t know what they are doing showing up and messing things up.

How do I qualify?  I had to race another FIA rally race.  Where can I do that?  Morocco. Ok, when is it?  October.  Ok, how do I do that?  Do I ship my UTV?  Where do you stay?  How does the race go?  I know the navigation is different than the GPS navigation they use in Baja, but how do you load it, read it, and follow it?  How do the pits work?  Food?  Flights?  How soon do you have to go beforehand?

So many questions.  This is how it is when you do something way out of your box.

“Morocco” – sounds cool.  Casablanca.  Marrakesh.  Rally in the desert.  Sand dunes.  Sounded like it would be worth the effort – especially if it got me a ticket to Dakar.

I started excavating some hard-to-find answers to my questions.

I employed a key question I use in business.  Instead of asking “How do I do this?”, I asked, “Who can help me?”  If I get the right who, they’d have the answers to how.

I found one race support company called South Racing.  They had an arrive-and-drive program.  You write the check and show up.  They take care of the rest (mostly).  You have to drive the race car.

There was one problem.  I needed a codriver.  The codriver sits in the passenger seat and looks at two screens in front of him for hours and calls the turns to me.  In Baja the codriver was important to make sure I don’t miss a turn, and give me the confidence to go faster.  As I would learn, in Morocco and Dakar, the codriver would be able to read to complex “road book” symbols and prevent you from getting lost. 

In Baja, you are on well-worn paths that are very rough and wavy.  In Morocco, you are in open desert a lot where there are no tracks, or lots of intersecting dirt roads.  It would be very easy to get lost.

Who can be my codriver who knows road book navigation and the Rally format?  I asked and asked.  Nobody was coming up who was available.  This is a small group.  There aren’t many people in the world who have done this.  And if they are doing it, they are committed to a team already.

I persist.  I found one candidate – Andrew Short.  Andrew was a retired pro motocross and supercross racer.  I had watched him on TV for many years.  He was a cool guy that I knew I’d get along with well.  He had raced Dakar a handful of times on a motorcycle and then switched to being a four-wheeled rally navigator.  Perfect!  I called him.  He was available. 

Simultaneously another name came up.  Bruno Jacomy from Argentina.  He was a professional rally navigator.  This is what he did. 

A navigator (co-driver) needs to be a good mechanic.  If the car breaks, they need to fix it.  Bruno was the better mechanic according to Andrew.  I chose Bruno.

Now I had my team together to give me the right advice and answer all my rookie questions. 

I didn’t know what to expect really.  You have visions but know that until you get there, you really won’t know what is coming.  I hoped something exciting would happen – a story worth telling.  So I brought my video specialist – Ted Waldron. We’d collect video and see what story unfolded.  Me and Ted – and Bruno when we got there.

I booked my flights.

Here we go…

Retire the Old You

“A human being always acts and feels and performs in accordance with what he imagines to be true about himself and his environment.” – Maxwell Maltz

You’ll never outperform your own self-image or your own beliefs about yourself.

To level up you have to retire your old concept of who you are and what you are capable of, and give it an upgrade.

You have to see and believe in a new and better you, and just as importantly, let go of the old version of you.

Spend some time right now. 

What do you believe about you? 

What do you have to change about that belief to move forward?

Direction vs Destination

Many people are walking around in a place they wish was better.

You can’t change your destination overnight.  

But you can change your direction.

Direction over time = destination.

Time will pass no matter what.

What direction are you heading?

What is amazing in your life right now?

The ideal life with the perfect situation in all areas is something we strive for that we will never have.  

But that’s ok. It’s not sad or disappointing to the realist.

It’s good to have better situations to strive for.

Think about it, if everything was perfect – what then? We’d do what humans do, and are doing now – find something that we wish could be better and either complain about it or strive to change it.   

**************

Take a moment to think about what is amazing in your life right now.

There is a lot that’s right.  Right?