Salt, Speed and Dust – Chapter 2

“She never felt ready, but she was brave, and the universe responds to the brave”

 

2018 was a huge year for me.  I had finished all four races in Baja in the Ironman class, only the third rider to ever do so.  The last race was the prize, and the one I had chased for three years.  I had become one of only 25 riders to ever finish the Baja 1000 Ironman solo, and was the oldest guy to ever do it.  It took me 34 ½ hours on the bike.

 

It took years of work.  After something like that, you ask “What’s next?”

 

In 2019 I raced some in the desert including a failed attempt at the Baja 1000 where I took a wrong turn that cost me 70 miles of extra riding, and ultimately, my hands gave out; I could not hold onto the bike anymore.  I have a bad knee, and it’s getting worse. I remembered Chris’s invitation and the Salt Flats.  I called Chris.  “It’s time”.

 

I didn’t set the goal, Chris had set it for me.  Go over 200 mph on one of these Suzuki Hayabusa motorcycles.  It sounded really fast to me.  Sit there and twist the throttle until you hit 200?  How hard could that be?  What could go wrong?

 

I had no idea what the 200-mph barrier really meant, how difficult it would be, and what it would really take.  Sometimes, ignorance is bliss.

 

Like when I started my business.  If I knew all the discomfort and hardship and suffering I was signing up for, well maybe I’d have weighed my options.  Sometimes it’s better to keep your eyes on the prize and not know what it will take until your deep into it and committed.

 

The Bonneville Salt Flats are located in northwestern Utah on the Nevada border.  Bonneville is named after Benjamin Bonneville, who was an Army Officer that explored the Western United States back in the 1800s. The salt flats were first discovered to be drivable when Bill Rishel drove a Pierce-Arrow across the salt in 1907.

 

Soon after this test drive, word began to spread that Bonneville was drivable and the first land speed record was set there in 1914 by American race car driver, Teddy Tetzlaff who was well known for his Indy 500 racing fame. Tetzlaff would set this first record in a custom-built 200hp car known as the Blitzen-Benz. To set this record, Tetzlaff was able to get the Benz up to 141.73 mph on the flats.

Despite Tetzlaff setting this land speed record, promoters had a tough time getting more drivers to attempt setting records at Bonneville. This proved to be a problem till the mid-1930s when a local Utah man by the name of Ab Jenkins began setting long-distance and endurance records at the salt flats.

Jenkins kept setting his own endurance and land speed records at Bonneville and in 1932 he was able to attract the attention of the car manufacturer Pierce-Arrow.

 

Pierce-Arrow was testing a new 12-cylinder car at the time and they contacted Jenkins to see if he could help them improve the performance since, at the time, it was slower than the v8. Jenkins did some tuning to the engine and he then came up with an idea to test the performance of the new 12-cylinder. He would drive the car as fast as he could at Bonneville for 24-hours straight to show how powerful and durable the engine is and prove to the racing world that Bonneville was indeed the place for land speed records.

Jenkins ran the car on a 10-mile course that was set up at Bonneville. He would only stop every two hours for fuel and during the 24-hour period he never once left the driver’s seat. His average speed during the endurance test was an amazing record of 112.916 mph.

He would then make another endurance run using the Pierce-Arrow in 1933. During this run he set a new record by getting up to an average speed of 125 mph. Three of Britain’s top racers John Cobb, Sir Malcolm Campbell, and Sir George Eyston happen to be in attendance and became interested in setting some of their own records.

The rest is history.  Racers came out year after year to set new records in various classes of vehicles.  To this day, records are broken in class after class as racers go home and modify their vehicles to go even faster and one-up the previous record holder. 

I watched two movies – “The World’s Fastest Indian” and “Out of Nothing” and came to appreciate the Salt Flats and the long history of man’s pursuit of speed there.

But me?  I had never ridden on foot on a Suzuki Hayabusa and here I was going there to attempt something that had not been done until not so many years ago on a motorcycle…