Chapter one – Unfinished Business

 “What one can be, one must be” – Abraham Maslow

I woke up at 2:10 am, 20 minutes before my alarm went off.  Who can sleep well before riding a dirt bike solo in the longest non-stop cross country race in the world? 

I ate what I had planned to eat even though I didn’t want to this early – chicken, an apple, an orange, and a banana.  All my gear was laid out in perfect order.  There was a checklist, a backpack with a hydration bladder and exact items in it, and a “race bag” to go in the chase truck with all that months of thought could determine should be in there.

I had done this exact routine three times before.  Each time my son Tanner was in my hotel room with me.  Now I was alone.  I had unfinished business with 806 miles of beautiful yet hostile desert. 

After another year of thinking about it nearly every day, and training my 54-year-old body to perform and take abuse, the moment of reckoning was finally here.  It was serious.  Either I was going to finish this race on this dirt bike, or something bad was going to happen.  Maybe both.

I explained it many times, and I was tired of telling the story this way.  The short version was –

–       I went on a recreational dirk bike tour in Baja Mexico with my son and friends in Jan 2015.

–       We learned about the Baja 1000, the longest non-stop cross-country race in the world and my son Tanner decided we should enter it.

–       As a two-man team against teams of 4, 5 and 6, we won the race by 60 seconds in 25 ½ hours in November of 2015.  It was quite a story and we made a movie about it called “Into the Dust” on YouTube – the most popular movie about motorcycle racing in Baja ever made.

–       Tanner decided he wanted to race in the “Ironman Class” in 2016.  It’s solo – no teammates.  You do all the riding yourself and you are on the bike for 24-48 hours.  You have to be crazy, stupid or a superhero – maybe all three.  Only about ten people had finished this race as solo riders so far. Really Tanner???  Ughhhh.  Okay, I lost my teammate, so I’ll race Ironman too.

–       The first year my 21-year-old son Tanner used all the energy he could muster but finished in 27 ½ hours.  I hurt my neck at mile 200 and got to mile 600 in the 855-mile race.  I could not finish.

–       The next year the course designers went nuts for the 50^th anniversary of the race – it was 1134 miles.  Tanner was leading the Ironman class for 200 miles but tapped out of the race at mile 607.  I ran out of gas at mile 643 and wasted 7 hours waiting for gas in the night.  I got going again and made it to mile 831 in 37 ½ hours and could not go on due to exhaustion.  I did not finish – again.

–        I couldn’t live to old age and keep telling everyone the same damn sad story, let alone myself.  I do not quit.  So, here I was.

I got my gear on, paying attention to every detail.  I had tested everything.  Different socks, neck braces, knee braces, helmets, goggles, boots, undergarments, and dozens of other things.  In a race as long as this, little problems become big ones and cause stress to the body, as if there wasn’t enough already. 

For example, the second little toe knuckle on my left foot sticks up a little higher than the rest.  It was something I had never noticed until I put a motocross boot on and rode for 30 hours.  Then the skin rubs off it from rubbing against the top of the inside of my boot – so I wrap it with medical tape.  Such detail would make the next two days of my life more “comfortable”.

I went through my checklist – nothing more to do than to walk out to the parking lot across the street from the San Nicolas Hotel and see my team.  They would be my lifeline – keeping me going and who knows – maybe keeping me alive.

It was waiting for me again under the orangey lights.  A willing fire-breathing Honda 450X hot rod.  It was built just for me and just for this.  We would be one for the next 30 plus who knows how many hours.  I put my helmet on, checked the GPS, and headed for the starting line.

I knew the drill.  I was calm and full of resolve.  I resolved to accept whatever happens.  I resolved that I would come back again and again until I beat the desert and finished.  And I resolved that after this year I definitely did not want to do this again – it was torture.  There was one goal – to cross the finish line in less than the 36 hours time limit for this years’ 806-mile long course. 

That’s it.  Finish in time.  I had staked all I could on achieving it.