Night Moves

(Continued from yesterday)

As we saw a light approach, we said “surely this must be Tanner”.  It wasn’t.  Then a trophy truck came by at 80 mph – scary.  Then two more.  They must have passed Tanner.  When you see a trophy truck in action, you have no choice but to be in awe of what these 850 hp machines do out there, and you respect it.  When you are on a dirt bike and one comes roaring up behind you in the night, and you are on a road where you can’t just pull off anywhere, it’s dangerous and scary.  Last year a bike rider was hit by one.

We wondered what happened.  During pre-running we got caught at nightfall on a section where we rode to higher elevation and the temperature dropped quick – to 45 degrees, and we both had only jerseys on.  We got so cold we had to stop and jump around.  Tanner was shaking from the cold.  Did that happen to him now? Waiting, I had three layers on and was ready to jump on the bike – Tanner had a thin jersey out there. Did he have hypothermia?

Finally…a light approaches – it was him!  Nearly five hours since we saw him last.  Something was wrong. Picture this – he had his jersey on, a hydration pack, neck brace and helmet, but no sleeves on his jersey!  I thought he crashed in the cactus and ripped his sleeve off – but both of them??

202x went by.  (Any bike with three digits starting with 2 is in our class). 40 miles earlier Tanner hit a rock and the front wheel bounced off and hit another rock and broke the front brake caliper off – it dangled from the brake line getting tangled up in the wheel.  He tried to tie it up – but with what?  He tried to get string out of an agave plant, but it was very tough and he didn’t have tools.  What did he do? That’s right, no choice – tear his jersey sleeves off and tie the caliper to the top of the fork out of the way of the wheel.  He nursed it back 30 miles to us with no front brake at 1/3 race speed.

Javier went into action.  He took the front brake assembly off the pre-run bike we had in the van and put it on the race bike (you can’t change bikes in this race). The locals, race fans whom we made friends with were eager to help in any way. More trophy trucks and quads and bikes went by.

In 15 minutes Javier had it fixed. I took off into the black on a section I had never seen before because we did not pre-run it. I was worried about trophy trucks – they were coming through now.

We lost about 2 1/2 hours, and we were in fourth place. In front of us – 266x (6 man team), 285x (6 man team), and 202x (3 man team).  It was 10 pm and we were at mile 470 of an 822 mile race.

Next problem – There are two paved roads on the Baja peninsula going south – Rt. 1 along the Pacific coast, and Rt. 5 along the Sea of Cortez coast.  They don’t touch each other, and the race course goes down the Rt. 1 side and up the Rt. 5 side.  Most teams would switch riders at the bottom, and the first rider would ride in a truck back 7 hours to the finish to meet their teammates. But we were a two man team and we each had to ride on each side of the course as we planned to take 6 turns each.  Each leg was planned exactly – for its terrain and length.

So we had two chase trucks – our second driver/mechanic, Chad, was waiting on Rt. 5 for us all day. Our plan was to get Tanner there via a dirt crossover road on the extra bike we had in truck one. So Tanner had this five hour ordeal on a 122 mile tough section, rolls in with no sleeves, has to jump in truck one, drive up the paved road fifteen minutes, unload the spare bike, and speed 45 minutes to meet truck two before I got there – with no front brake (the most important one).

Truck one would also go on the crossover road, but there are rocks and it would have to go slow, and never make it there before me with Tanner.  A bike could go four times the speed of the truck. But the pre-run bike now had no front brake. Could he get to chase truck two and the rider change spot before I did?

Cont. tomorrow…