No ordinary moments

It was about 4 a.m. This was the same stretch of course I had run on my last leg two years ago when we raced as a team, except this time I was running it the opposite way. I knew to look out for a raised concrete platform that crossed the course. I hit it at high speed two years ago and nearly crashed us out.

It took a couple months for us to replay the helmet cam footage and put two and two together, but me hitting this thing likely cracked the headlight brackets. Just a few miles later, I gave the bike to Tanner for his last leg, with us barely in first place. A few miles into his section, the headlight broke off the bike. Watch the movie on YouTube, “Into the Dust,” to see what happened.

I crossed it this time without incident. I noticed it was getting markedly colder. I recall it being very cold here before. We were at a higher elevation – on a high plateau over the valleys. My body temperature was dropping, and my hands were getting very cold. My fingers began to stiffen and ache from the cold. I wondered if I had made a mistake not adding a layer or putting my cold weather riding gloves on.

The course started down a section very familiar and distinctive to Baja racers – the goat trail. A steep decent marked by boulders and then slick rock. Down. Down. Down. As I descended it, I could feel the air getting warmer. Relief.

At the bottom of goat trail, it dumps you out onto the road. Whenever the course joined or crossed a paved road there were men stopping traffic to let you cross safely without slowing down. Yes, even at 4 a.m. There was no traffic of course, but it was comforting to know that the people of Baja knew there was a race going on and you weren’t going to get run over by civilian traffic.

I rode a couple miles into the pit at a tiny town called Valle Trinidad. Then a few miles more to a small hotel parking lot where we planned to meet our van for the second time at race mile 107. I pulled in feeling pretty good. I dismounted as Andrew and Arturo checked the bike over. Just then we heard someone yell and the sound of a motorcycle tumbling. We look that way and see the headlight beam rotating from a gulley, as it would if the bike was cartwheeling. A bike had gone off the road 75 feet from where we were.

Two of my team ran over and witnessed a bike at the bottom of a ravine that was 20 feet deep. They climbed down and helped the rider who miraculously, while shook up and injured, was walking. It could have been much worse for #709, and Ironman. I do not know the outcome, but I assume he was out of the race.

I resumed my race, still dark as could be, and hit my next Baja Pit for gas. At mile 99, in the middle of an otherwise fast section, there was a narrow and dogleg left. I came in hot and wasn’t going to make the turn. In front of me, as I skidded with my wheels locked up in the silt, I saw the consequences of missing this turn. It was a 30” deep washout with vertical sides.

I tried to finesse it and turn left just enough, but my front wheel fell in, and my back wheel followed. It was 6 feet wide and my front wheel was wedged against the far side, and my rear wheel wedged against the near side. I struggled to pull the front wheel to the left and the right direction for an escape. I saw that someone else fell into this trench too, and saw evidence of a struggle to get out. Later I’d learn it was Tanner.

I pulled my front wheel up the side with my bike running, and standing alongside it, I tried to drive it up. But my bike was nearly vertical, and the rear wheel pulverized the crust into silt and sank. As I struggled, another bike came in and nearly fell in with me. As he passed in front of my headlight, I could see his number – it was Rick Thornton whom we had pre-run with.

He didn’t stop for a second. Would he have stopped to help me if he knew it was me? I don’t know. Racing is funny like that. You want to be the good guy you are, but not at the expense of lost time. Some guys will stop, and some won’t. It depends on how they feel their chances are, and how dangerous of a situation they perceive you to be in. Of course, if you are their class and viewed as their primary competition, they usually will not stop to help you.

I was stuck right now. I looked around for a moment and tried to figure something out. As I did, I see two faces in the darkness! I did not expect to see race fans out here, with no light source around anywhere. That’s how the whole course is, you always have this eerie feeling that you are being watched – because often you are. These people will just appear from nowhere in a place where you’d bet $1000 that no human was within many miles of you.

This turned out to be a father and his young son watching the race. I yelled to him, “Can you help me?” I didn’t have to say it in Spanish, because it was obvious what anyone in this predicament would be pleading to anyone else. He came over and grabbed the fork tubes from the top and pulled as I pushed from alongside the bike and feathered the clutch. With the two of us, we got it out. I only lost 90 seconds or so.

A few minutes ahead, I see two headlights coming at me. I wondered what was going on. Then I saw it was two motorcycles. They took a wrong fork and were backtracking. One of them was probably Rick, but I couldn’t make out who it was in the dark. I looked at my GPS and saw that I had made the same mistake.

I turned around and followed them back 100 yards to get back on course.

It’s pre-dawn somewhere in Baja. It’s cold, and it’s dark. I am 3000 miles from home. I have over 1000 miles to go.

There are no ordinary moments.

We must do our best in this moment, because this moment is the gate to the next, and will determine how it will be for us when it gets here. If I don’t get out of this ditch, I don’t get to go the next mile. If I don’t go that mile, I don’t get to the one after that.

Do your best in THIS moment. It’s all you can do.