Social enemies

It has always been the tactic of our social enemies to make us feel we are not enough and do not have enough.

There are some well-meaning friends, coaches and teachers that encourage us to live up to our potential, and that is different.  But for social enemies who operate from jealousy and insecurity, this is how they can feel superior over us.  Anyone that tried to do that is not your friend and does not want the best for you.  

Treat them as irrelevant, because to you, they are.

"Finding Joe"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8nFACrLxr0

I hope you will take the time tonight to watch this movie.

It’s about you, and was made for you.

-Larry

Stop living so safely!

“Life is an ongoing process in choosing between safety out of fear and the need for defense, and risk for the sake of progress and growth.  Make the growth choice a dozen times a day.” – Abraham Maslow

I can say that I have taken far more “risks” than the average person.  I have lived a wonderful life, accomplished many things, and had many adventures.  If I played it safe, I would be moving toward the ultimate risk – arriving at death without fully living.

How about you?

What are you intentional about right now?

When you make a decision and act, you move in that direction.

Direction over time equals destination.

What are you intentional about right now?

The power in your language

We bring about what we talk about.

What you talk about and focus on expands.

What are you talking about lately?

Be careful.  Only talk about what you want.

You are lucky!

What good luck did you have that you didn’t recognize or don’t remember as good luck?

Surely many good things happened…

Surely many bad things didn’t happen…

You are lucky!  Be grateful for your good fortune!

On My Honor

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpdgO5NG7w4

An inspiring story….

So I am done telling our four-wheel Baja 1000 story this year, and many of you are asking, “What happened to Tanner?”  (I have been teasing you!) If you recall Tanner is my son who was racing the Baja 1000 solo on a motorcycle for the fourth time.

If you win this race, you are the best long-distance desert motorcycle racer in the world.  This race is the big one.

Tanner wrote his own story, and I wanted to share a link to it today.  It’s dramatic.  It’s inspiring.  It’s worth reading.  Here’s the link.

https://www.tjanesky.com/post/2022-baja-1000-story-775x-tanner-janesky

Five on Four – Part 8 – the Finish

I drove, and Kevin called the turns.  We raced to Mike’s Sky Ranch – a rustic hotel in the mountains catering to off-road racers.  Just past Mikes, the course gets really steep and really rocky.  You can’t take a civilian vehicle back there.  

Mountain switchbacks….up, down, turns.  We come upon a race vehicle – a VW Beetle stopped.  The co-driver is out of the car and runs up to us.  We stop, the nose of our car pointing up at a 35-degree angle.  He asks us to pull him up the hill.  No way we can do it.  We apologize.  We don’t have the power.

When I step on the gas our machine struggles to pull itself up the rocks and silt on a steep grade.  

A few ridges later we see a driver carrying a wheel and tire down a steep hill.  He did not signal for us so we drove by.  We reckon we are 20 miles from the nearest ranch.  Then we see a race vehicle.  The spare tire fell off and the driver we saw had walked a long distance back up the hill to find it.

We get to the Pacific side hours after getting in the car.  Randy was waiting for us.  While he gave the car a once over, we ate a burrito and a cold Cappuccino drink without taking our helmets off.  Heaven. Two minutes and we were gone.  The course got smoother and faster for a while.  But that is not permanent in Baja.  I knew that.

Back into some really rough stuff, back east across the mountains.  A few driver changes later Marie and I were closing in on the finish line.  Marie had a coat on.  I didn’t.  I misjudged.    I thought we’d be done by dark.  We met our team at the finish, did our interview on the podium, and rolled forward and got out to celebrate.  We had finished fifth of seven after losing four hours when the wheel came off.  

I had done most of the driving, and I was beaten up, and sleep-deprived,  It had been 30 1/2 hours since the green flag dropped, and we were up for four hours before that.  But sleep deprivation was not my major problem.  Hypothermia was.  We took celebratory photos and I began quaking.  Not just a little shiver, I lost control of my body.  My legs didn’t work well.

I went back to the hotel room and got in a hot shower, but I still was shaking violently for a long time.  The team wanted to go out to dinner.  We got there, but I could not hold my head up and had to leave.

The next day when we went to see the official results, we had been disqualified for going backward on the course.  I was so disappointed.  In the end, it didn’t matter much.  We finished.  We weren’t racing for points and we would not have gained or lost any positions in this case anyway.  It was still disappointing.

We didn’t have a great result, but we did make great memories and had a great experience together.  To win, you have to get into the game.  If you don’t get out there and try, nothing happens.  And most times you will not achieve glory. But you got in the game.  You did something.  You tried.  You learned.  

Thanks to my team.  The longest continuous off-road race in the world, the Baja 1000, in the books.

An extraordinary life of shared experiences. 

1914, 2022.

Five on Four – part 7

Victor and Dustin arrived at mile 289 in the night.  Marie and I got back in the car and strapped in, and hooked our filtered air supply hoses to our helmets.  We were off to take on Matomi Wash.  Matomi is a wide wash that narrows and narrows to steep canyon walls.  There was a lot of rain and Matomi can be a violent torrent of water at its throat, moving boulders and changing the landscape.  It is very technical to navigate.

Marie and I went fast where we could, and crawled over boulders when we needed to.  Chris told me not to turn on ALL the lights at one time for long because the battery would go dead.  We remembered – but just how long we could run the lights we did not know.  

We made a 40-mile crescent and turned sharp left for another 55-mile crescent.  We had company.  One buggy, not in our class, was dogging us and made a pass at one point.  We passed him back, playing a game of who could find the best shortcuts where the wash made a wide bend.  Sometimes you’d cut the corner and pay a price by having to drive over bowling ball-size boulders for 200 yards.  Other times it worked out.

This was where we lost Tanner when we were prerunning.  He ran out of gas.  There are no gas pits set up for pre-running.  

This chase truck meet-up point was tricky.  Only one chase truck could come in.  It was 20 minutes off the paved road in soft sand.  Four-wheel drive was a must to get into the wash at Race Mile 360.  We didn’t see them where we were supposed to.  We stopped and doubled back.  Somehow we went past them in the 200-yard wide river wash.  I shut the machine down and Victor and Dustin got in.  

Victor turned the key.  Nothing.  Dead.  Apparently, I found the limit of how much you could run all the lights.  Victor knew there was a second battery.  Press a button on the keychain to access it.  I did not know anything about this.  Bad communication somewhere.  Whew.  Thanks Victor!  

They took off up the course.  In a few miles, they would be at the scene of a fateful accident that occurred with two motorcycles involved – and one of them was my son Tanner’s.  I’ll fill you in on the amazing story of his race later.  But this scene involved two broken arms, a broken back, a broken femur, seven ribs and a hip.  

We drive back out to the road.  It was far.  Back north up the highway.  Through the small city of San Felipe, we stopped at a taco stand.  Timing is everything.  They were the best tacos I ever had!  35 miles north, through a military checkpoint and 30 more miles to San Matias.  We waited for Victor and Dustin.  

The sky got lighter, and slowly daylight came again.  We were in front of a little store – the only store in the tiny town of SanMatias.  Coffee was a cup of hot water with a scoop of Sanka powder.  Nasty but great at that moment.  Everything else they sold was in cellophane.

Marie was pretty beat and tired.  So was I.  We talked about it and decided to put Kevin in as codriver with me for a brutal seven-hour 200-mile loop over the mountains to the Pacific Ocean, and back.

The car arrived.  Kevin and I climbed in while the mechanics walked around looking for problems.  

“See you in seven hours – God willing”….