Round Trip – part 8 – Going home.

We woke up at 4 am to check the progress of the race car to be sure we weren’t going to sleep too late.  All good.  Back to sleep.  We wake up at 6 am.  I take my medication. Our dirty racing suits and gear go back on.  I’m feeling ok – not great, but ok with the sleep.  We get in the pre-runner and slip out of the hotel courtyard in search of breakfast.

We find our normal Valle T spot, but it was not opened yet.  We find another spot right on the paved road where the racecourse goes by.   All they have is shredded beef burritos (not a fan) and Sanka instant coffee.  Styrofoam cup.  Brown stained spoon to stir it with.  I tasted the coffee, prepared for the worst.  Whether food and drink are good is always context-dependent.   If you have nothing else and you are really hungry, it’s hard for it not to be good.  It turns out the coffee was heaven.

We see Javi and our car moving on the tracker app on the race website.  We know where he is.  Still in fourth.  We head south to find our chase team and wait at the rendezvous point for Javi.  We see Chris and half the chase team.  We learn what happened in the night.

Mikey, driving car number two, was out of the race at mile 287.  His torsion bar, a rear suspension component that holds the wheel hub straight, fell off the car.  This is bad.  When that happened, the shock mount broke.  He went back to find the torsion bar and put it back in the car.  It turns out it just backed out and unscrewed itself.  Nobody had ever heard of that happening.  Bad luck.  He drove out to the road slowly.  The car could not be fixed outside of the race shop.

Mike, Mikey’s Dad, who I handed our race car to, found 210 to 370 to be very rough and rocky as I had in pre-running.   Then at mile 387 he came upon a trophy truck stuck, blocking the way.  Nobody could get by.  One of our competitors, #1984 was trying to pull him out with a strap.  But a UTV is far smaller and lighter than a trophy truck.  So Mike wound up tying a strap from our car to the 1984 car which was strapped to the truck.  With great effort, they got him out.  Mike lost about 40 minutes there in the cold night.  The truck and the 1984 got going in front of him making dust.

Mike had 70 miles of pavement from 400 to 470.  He gave the car to Javi when it turned to dirt again.  Javi got a flat after ONE mile.  Now he had to drive easy as he could not risk another flat because his spare was flat.  Forty-five miles later he got a new spare from the chase team and was able to push.  It got very cold and started to rain, then it snowed in places.  Tough night.

#1925 was in front, having a perfect race.  Not even a flat.  Joe Bolton, #1957 was in second, finally having a clean race after five bad luck races in a row.  We see him go by as we waited for our car.  Then third place, #1984, comes in for a driver change where we were waiting. 

As Javi got closer, Dustin and I were ready with our helmets on for a quick driver change.  Javi comes in 40 minutes after third place.  In one minute we were strapped in and fueled up.  My goal was to podium in three races in three classes in one year in Baja.  I thought this race was a lock, but I had 40 minutes to make up in 138 miles.  Unless he breaks, that’s a very tall order.  No matter.  I drive as fast as I can.

My driving skills had really improved over the years.  I knew how to push the car and how to read and drive rough terrain.  I felt like I was really beating Dustin up.  He is usually bulletproof in the car, but this race, he was feeling a little nauseous.  I don’t like sitting in that side of the car myself.  I had the steering wheel and pedals on my side.  I like to know what is going to happen a moment before it does, not a moment after.  That makes a big difference.

Anything can happen – drive fast.  We drew nearer and nearer to the finish line, hoping to catch up and pass third place.  But we were out of time.  We came to the checkered flag just seven minutes behind third place.  I was disappointed.  But that’s racing.

I knew that you have to get in the race to win it.  But you won’t always win it.  Even if you have won it before.  Long-distance desert racing is so full of wildcards that predicting the outcome is just a guess.

I had a lung infection, and while it didn’t affect my driving, it was kicking my butt.  I was tired.  I was sick.   After being stomach sick for most of the trip in Morocco and for two weeks afterward, and now this, I had to admit, I was not having fun anymore.  I had six weeks to leave to go to the longest Rally Race in the world – Dakar, a 13-day rally in Saudi Arabia.  It sounds amazing.  But I was dreading it after these last two races.

They say that fanaticism is re-doubling your efforts long after your aim has been forgotten.  My aim was to have fun and adventure and create great experiences.  But I wasn’t having fun anymore.  Five races and so many trips and events this year – I was tired.

After driving the 40 minutes from the timed finish at Rancho Nelson to the ceremonial finish in Ensenada, getting interviewed, and turning in our race tracker, I had to stop by the score office across the street to talk to them about a matter.  Ted called me and said a local teenager was waiting there to meet me.  He was a fan, and waited specifically just for me.  I told him I’d be a while.  The team took the race car back to the hotel parking lot and I never did catch up with the kid.  I felt bad.

The crowds had left.  A few people were cleaning the streets.  T-shirt vendors had marked down their race shirts and few people mulled about their trailers.  I walked the long blocks toward the hotel in my dirty race suit, thinking about all the memories here.  All the starts at ungodly hours, here, on the very pavement I was walking on.  Tanner.  All the friends who had come on trips with me. Winning on two wheels. Not finishing. Finishing solo on two wheels.  Winning on four wheels.  Giving it all I had and being physically ravaged and even broken most every time.

I was hungry.  There was a street vendor with a cart.  There was no one else around.  The calm after the storm.  The two people were killed two days before just 30 feet from where I was standing.  The vendor was packing up, but he lit the fire under his kettle of oil again to make me a fish taco.  I waited. 

“I’ve been here for ten years in this very spot” he said. 

“You’re here even when there is no race?” I asked. 

“Si” he said. 

“Who do you sell to?”

“The locals, but it’s not easy.”

Time went by.

“Ten years.”  He poked the fish floating in the oil.  “I’m tired” he said, shaking his head seriously. 

“I know exactly what you mean” I said, emotion welling up inside me.

I broke the news to Chris.  “I’m not racing next year”.  I knew what this meant.  Racing was Chris Haines’s life.  Chris had raced since he was very young.  He was a mechanic for the factory Honda motocross and supercross teams and traveled the world doing it.   He opened a shop doing tours of Baja.  He provided race support in Baja for many years.  But Chris was getting up there, and the tour business had attracted lots of competition.  Business was slower than it had been.  I was Chris’s last customer for race support.  We had been through a lot in ten years.  He told me if I ever quit racing, he would close his shop.  I hated to say it, but I had to.

I packed all my racing gear.  The race car gear and the motorcycle gear.  I‘d return home with three giant race gear bags.  I asked Chris to repair what had been damaged on the cars during this race and ship them and my motorcycles home to me.  My friend Bobby decided to buy race car number two. 

After ten years in Baja, 27 races, including ten straight Baja 1000’s (6 on a motorcycle and 4 in a car) I was going home.

I will race again.  But now it is time for a new chapter. 

After I got home I was coughing for another 2 ½ weeks.  It was beating me down.  Maybe it was telling me something. 

I had completed five of the six races I had planned.  The last one was a 20-day trip to Saudi Arabia, and all the arrangements were made.  No matter.  I postponed it for one year.  I’ll be excited for it by then.  I had to turn off some switches right now and this was a big one.

I have had an amazing 10-year career as a racer.  From age 50 to age 60.  So many memories made, things learned and things discovered.  But what really happened is this – I am not a racer, let alone a long-distance desert racer.  There isn’t a desert within 2000 miles of Connecticut.  But I learned to do it by doing it. 

I became someone…someone unexpected, that I wasn’t before.

Now – I’m going home.