Salt, Speed, and Dust – Chapter 17

“An extraordinary life, of shared experiences”. 

There was no wind, and many bikes making dust.  While I am a seasoned desert racer, I’ve learned that no matter how talented you are, if you can’t see, you need to slow down, slower and slower as necessary, until you can see where you are going.  Some other riders are not so cautious, and I have seen them pass me and hit things, and crash right in front of me.

As the riders spread out, I could see better; some moments thick, and some thin.  It was clear to me that desert riding in the US is orders of magnitude easier terrain than in Baja.  You see, the land is owned by the US Bureau of Land Management.  They will not give race promotors permission to bomb through the virgin desert.  Instead, we stayed on graded roads 95% of the time.  You could have driven a pickup truck on 90% of what we raced on. 

This took a lot less energy, but not less danger, because you’d always go faster and faster until it was dangerous.  Blowing through a turn and going off a cliff or into the rocks was probably the biggest risk.  I saw a number of riders down, one with a Medivac helicopter landing to get him.

I sped across the desert valleys, through sand and silt and rocks.  Being a Baja racer, it was an easy race for me, with some exceptions, with my average speed of 46 mph, 50% faster than in Baja.

In fact, it was so fast that I beat my chase crew to one pit – and they were on paved roads!  At another pit I pulled in just as they pulled up and jumped out!  They were racing to Reno too!

The competition was on my tail.  One guy who had beat me in the Silver State 300 race was right behind me, pulling into each pit just after me.  Nothing like some competition to keep you doing your best.

The hours went by and so did the miles.  The racing trucks started 4 hours after us.  Normally in Baja they’d catch up to me in 8 hours, since there they were twice as fast.  But with my higher average speeds, only four trucks passed me by the time I got to the finish line.  I didn’t have to deal with their dangerous passes or their dust very much.

Out of 17 starters, I finished third, in 11 ½ hours.  It was a great race, made sweeter because it was the second goal of the trip accomplished.

The team including my friends Jeff Russell and Bobby Miles and my girlfriend Marie, were lifted by goals met, adventures had, and memories made. 

My personal mission statement is – “An extraordinary life, of shared experiences”. 

I hope you have enjoyed me sharing this story with you, and taken something for your own life.  

– Larry Janesky

To be continued…

Chapter 16 – Lost and Found

“If you’re not living life to the fullest today, you never will.” – Wally “Famous” Amos

We were only in Vegas long enough to register for the race and go through tech inspection.  There was no free time.  We had used it in Bonneville by staying an extra day.  On race day, we got up at 1 am to start the drive two hours north of LasVegas to the starting line in the middle of nowhere.  The trouble is, we couldn’t find it.  It was not in a town.  There was not a building or structure of any kind for many miles of this place in the desert wilderness.

Time was ticking away.  We had to be in staging in a few minutes and we weren’t really sure where it was or if we were going the right way.  We had doubled back for many miles already.  My heart beat faster.  Finally we saw the lights of many chase vehicles pulling into the same place in the distant night.

It was pitch black and I had to get my gear on quickly.  There were bikes riding up to staging which was over a mile from parking.  I hoped I didn’t forget anything.  They did not let the crew past a certain point, and they could not watch me start.  It was very controlled, but very organized. 

There were 17 bikes in my Ironman (solo) class.  Most teams would switch riders many times before the race was over.  Not me.  It was on me to take it all the way to the finish, 514 miles away in Reno.

Some riders in line recognized me from my movie on YouTube – Into the Dust.  I wound up giving advice to a young low budget rider from California on how to manage your energy in an Ironman race, something I had plenty of experience with.

They let bikes go every 30 seconds, and after a while it was my turn.  I blasted into the desert with the sun just making itself known. 

About a mile in, I couldn’t see a thing…

Chapter 15 – Validation

Run 14

One more time…

“When you go out of your comfort zone and it works, there is nothing more satisfying” – Vera Wiig

We had done it!  Chris didn’t celebrate long.  He switched his mind on the Vegas to Reno race, which we were scheduled to leave for the day before.  I told him I would like to take one more run with the GoPro mounted behind the windshield.  He said he didn’t think it was a good idea. He was worried the motor would blow up or something bad would happen. 

I told him I’d only go 175, that the people who watch the video would never know it wasn’t a 200 mph run.  He didn’t respond.  When we got back to the RV, I reasoned with him again.  “What we’re doing is not safe” he said.

 Now he tells me!

I told him I felt very comfortable on the bike.  He paused.  Finally he said “Well, if you feel comforta….”  I was out the RV door before he finished his sentence. 

Dean helped me mount the GoPro to the inside of the windshield.  They had put the kickstand back on, and we left it.  There was no line to wait in– it was day 5.  I was given the green flag in minutes.

When we were returning from our 200-mph run, a sleek long dragster vehicle called “Speed Demon” had set a world record for the fastest piston-driven vehicle ever built by mankind – 469 mph, and we saw the streak across the salt.  There would surely be ruts out there from that run. 

For me, it was a bonus run, and it went great.  I hit 203 mph briefly and held over 200 for a long time.  There were 1” deep ruts in the salt that I crossed but I held it wide open, but up, and squeezed with my knees.

When I got my timing slip I had gone even faster by a shade – 202.36.  Validation.

The grand finale run. My goal, at least my first one for the trip had been accomplished.  Randall said it took him three years to break 200.  I spoke to two other riders who were stuck at 199 for their long careers.  I stopped to get my Class A license, which said I could go as fast as I wanted now.  It completed my set of four licenses.

We rode south on air and relief, 5 ½ hours to line up for the longest off-road race in the US – Vegas to Reno.  I’d be riding a very different machine this time. 

The goal – finish the 514 miles solo.

Chapter 14 – Beautiful moments

Run 13

“I had done battle with a great fear, and the victory was mine.” – Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

We arrived at the track at 7:10 am.  The crew already had the truck and trailer in line waiting for the course to open.  Tom and Rick had the RV all set up.  The vehicles that had broken a record the day before had to go first and do it again to confirm their new record.  There were eight of them and they began their runs at 8:08 am.  The waiting is no fun.

At 8:46 it was my turn.  This was it.

I stayed right on the new salt.  I shifted through the gears, my powerful machine under me responding obediently, with a beautiful note.  I started the week as a rookie.  We all start a new thing as a beginner, but we can’t let that stop us.  Now I was competent.  I knew what to do. 

I watched the speedo come up, and up, and up.  199..200…201…202…..203…..204.

It stayed above 200 from mile 2 ¼ to mile 4 when I got into a rut and got wheelspin that slowed us down to 200 and then 199.  I knew I had it.

I slowly rolled the throttle down after mile five and when my speed was below 90 I turned out toward the return road through the ungroomed crunchy salt and touched the back brake to gently stop.  I shut the engine off and waited for my chase truck and crew.

A very old man in a very beat-up truck, obviously a seasoned SCTA volunteer of many many years rolled up to me and thanked me for coming and asked if I was ok.  I took my helmet off and told him that I just broke 200.  Out there on the salt, with just me and the old stranger, I had an emotional release.  Without words, he well understood.

Minutes later, my team pulled up.  They had heard the speeds on the radio on their way out to me and erupted in celebration in the truck when they heard the results – 202.32. My girl Marie ran out of the truck to me.  She squealed and hugged me, and we cried together.  My team gave us a minute and then joined us.

We had done it.

We celebrated out there on the salt.  Chris was smiling ear to ear.  We took a photo – Me, Marie, Chris and Karen, Jeff Russell and Dean. 

It was a beautiful moment. 

One you work for, and risk for, and live for. 

Salt, Speed and Dust – Chapter 13

“Each single day is all we have.  Single days experienced fully add up to a lifetime lived deeply and well.” – Alexandra Stoddard

The day before, the fourth day, started with high hopes for 200 mph on fresh salt, and ended with four runs just shy, within ½ a mph of our goal.  Chris got some inside information – tomorrow they’d change to an alternate track – no chewed-up salt!  I now knew the bike would do 201 with the new sprocket and a 7-mph crosswind.  I had gone over 200 twice, and my GPS shows it, but I don’t have the timing slip from the SCTA that shows I averaged over 200 for a mile.  We needed to make it official and get in the 200-mph club. It was an exclusive club for motorcyclists.  And for good reason – it’s not easy.

We were in the hotel parking lot cleaning the salt off the bike when an old man came creeping around our trailer.  First Chris and Dean thought he was weird poking around our trailer.  Then the disheveled stranger said he was watching our progress all week.  Woah!

He was studying the bike.  He suggested we remove two little plastic lumpy brackets at the windshield bolts and to remove the rear fender that stuck down 8” from the tail.  I thought that was a great idea – why didn’t we think of that?  I suggested we remove the kickstand and tape the 3 windshield screw heads on the front of the fairing to smooth the wind out over them.  We were looking for that ½ mph.

Chris and I talked about me taking my left hand off the handlebars to get it out of the wind, and tuck it up behind the fairing or grab the hydraulic clutch reservoir closer in on the handlebars, a bold trick that Jason McVikar used – (but then again he crashed at 247).  I decided it was too risky because the emergency shut off lanyard was around my left wrist and if it got tangled up or pulled out and the motor shut off at 200….no bueno!

I slept another night trying not to get worked up about it.  Stay calm and sleep…

Salt, Speed and Dust

Salt, Speed and Dust – Chapter 12

Run Ten

“The good life is not, I am convinced, a life for the faint-hearted. It involves the stretching and growing; the courage to be.  It means launching yourself fully into the stream of life.”  -Carl R. Rogers

We had to make this happen right now.  The sun was getting higher and we had been trying for four days.  We had to leave today.

At 197 mph I had some wheelspin and wobble, but I recovered by putting more weight on the pegs and it went away.  Sixth gear had the rpm down at 10,000.  My top speed was at mile 4 – 198.19.

We decided to put a 39 tooth sprocket on instead of a 40 tooth, and leave it in fifth gear.  This would effectively give us another half a gear.  It was a dance between speed and power.  We just needed ½ mph more!

Run 11

Crosswind blowing at 7 mph.  Soft salt.  I stayed right.  I saw 201 on the speedo, then it dropped to 200, and 199, and 198 with wheel spin.  Did I make it?

When I went to get my timing slip they said their computer had gone down and to come back later – they didn’t know when.  Are you kidding?

Finally we got the timing slip – at mile 4 the top speed was 198.99. 

Ughhh.

We decided to stay one more night and try again in the morning.  We couldn’t give up so close.  Chris wanted to call it a day so we didn’t blow the bike up or break anything, but I wanted to try again – so I did.

196.74 is all I could get.  The wind picked way up.  We waited at the course for several hours more, but the wind only increased. 

We went back to the hotel, and kept thinking…

Chapter 11 – "Fortune favors the bold"

Run Eight

“audentes Fortuna iuvat” – “Fortune favors the bold”  

Day three, Monday, last run.  The wind was 5 mph, and toward the end of the course the flags were pointing directly at the start.  A 5-mph headwind is 5-mph slower speed.

I stayed far left on the course to stay out of the salt that was chewed up by the powerful cars.  I didn’t feel much wheelspin until mile 4 ½.  It was a good run, but we didn’t learn much.  I topped out at 188.63 at mile 4.

The crew was building faith in my riding ability.  I was taking the bike to the max each run and I was very consistent.  I was doing my part.  We weren’t short because of me and they knew that now. 

When I was home weeks earlier, I had some anxiety about whether I could ride this bike so fast – what it would feel like and how scary it would be.  While I did my best to not think about fear or failure, some remained through the first six runs or so. But I had stayed present, learned from each experience, and it wasn’t so scary anymore.  Fear is something we manufacture – most often unnecessarily.  That is to say, it doesn’t help.  It just causes suffering in advance, and hurts our ability to perform.  Controlling what is going on in our own head is our first challenge.

There was no line to run again, but we decided to go work on the bike for tomorrow instead.  We were topped out at 188, four runs in a row.

I thought we could possibly break 200 mph early the next morning and here’s why –

1)    The salt is hard and faster in the morning.  The cool night air stiffens it up and there is better traction and no wheel spin.

2)    Hopefully in the morning there would be no headwind.  If we get lucky there will be a tailwind but we hadn’t seen that since we got here.

3)    We bought C12 race gas, at $30 a gallon.  The extra octane should help.

4)    We put the good tire from the white bike on the red bike, and lowered the air pressure to 20 psi.

5)    We put a new chain on to get the rear wheel closer in.

The salt and wind were the number one and two factors I thought.  I just have to do what I have already done as a rider and I’d have it, I thought.

Tuesday morning came – Run #9.  This was it.  We had to leave here today to go to the Vegas to Reno off-road race, and the first run in the morning would be our best chance.  I was excitedly optimistic.

The track opened for the record breakers late, about 7:45, and they took a long time.  In my mind I was saying “come on, come on, hurry!”  I didn’t want the sun to hit that salt and soften it up.  Clouds helped block some of the rising sun. Temperature 74 degrees. A slight tailwind faded to a 6-mph quartering crosswind.  Dang! 

I got off the line at 9:10 am and shifted through the gears up to fifth, where I remained.  The salt dissolved from a fast-moving conveyor belt to a blur under me.  I watched the tach and tucked as tight as I could.  I was very far right on the course.  So far that at the three-mile mark I looked up and saw the  “3” sign go by me, just five feet away, at nearly 200 mph.  No time for adrenaline to be released.  The danger of blowing through the 4’ square sign was here and over in a flash. I leaned a touch toward the center of the course and watched the digital, GPS driven speedometer.

I saw 198, 199, then 200!  But it was very brief and dropped back down to 199, then 198.  I tucked as tight as I could to try to get it back.  My butt was all the way back to the speed hump and my helmet was in hard contact with the gas tank.  It went up to 200 again, then dropped to 199.  Then to 200 again, then dropped again.  I had to average 200 mph over a measured mile. 

I got my timing slip on the way back to the start line with great anticipation.  Maybe I had done it.  The slip showed 199.45 at mile 4, and 199.31 at mile 5.  So close!  OMG!

We immediately got back in line and decided to shift to 6^th gear this time.  I was optimistic. We only needed ½ a mph!

I could taste it… 

Chapter 10 – Red It Is

Runs Six and Seven 

“Fear has always been a diminisher of life” – Marya Mannes

The Turbo bike was out.  If I was to get to my goal of over 200, I’d have to do it with 200 hp.  The world record is 211 mph, and who knows, he could have had a big tailwind that day.  The max speed of the bike stock is stated by the manufacturer to be 194.  I had it to 185 on my previous run; let’s see what fine adjustments we can make to get it to go faster.

We took the front brake lever off the bike for two reasons.  It was in the wind sticking out past the fairing, and a 200 mph wind has been known to depress a brake lever and apply the brakes!  I could stop without a front brake – with air brakes by slowly putting my elbows out into the wind and then my head as I slowed, and finally the rear brake.

So it is with other endeavors in life.  Small things are not so much of a problem when you are doing average things, but they can become critical if you are to achieve high performance and goals.  You wanna’ go high or fast, you have to master lots of things you didn’t think of before.

Dean ripped my knee pucks off my suit that are used to rub on the asphalt when road racing in turns.  I didn’t even know they were removable, but they were just velcroed on.  We leaned out the air/fuel mixture because we were at some elevation and it was hot.  Less air needs less fuel.

Dean told me to rev it to 10,500 rpm before shifting instead of 9000 rpm, and to stay in 5^th gear to get more rpm and more power.  I did all that.  Mile 2 ¼ – 181.95, Mile 3 – 184.23, Mile 4 – 185.2 and mile 5 – 186.24.

We got right back in line. It was a short line.  The team swapped windshields from the white bike while we waited our turn.  It was a little higher and they thought it would keep me out of the wind better.  I thought it did.

They told me to try to scoot my but back, which I did about 1 ½”, but my torso wasn’t long enough to get all the way back with the big gas tank in my chest.  This time, we were going to get to 10,500 rpm in 5^th gear and shift to 6^th and see what that will get us.  I did that and at mile 3 I topped out at 187.24, and it dropped to 184 in mile 4 and 182 in mile 5.  I hit soft salt at mile 4 and felt the rear wheel spin, slowing me down.

Sixth gear didn’t help because it dropped the rpm.  And fifth gear had the rpm but not the speed.  We needed a gear in between.  When we got back, Randall proclaimed sarcastically that the bike would not go 200, and he left on less than good terms.  We were glad he was gone.  You don’t need negative people on your team when you are trying to break new ground.

At this point, it was a physics puzzle.  As the rider, I didn’t know what I could do to go any faster. 

When confronted with a problem, share it.  Get more than just yourself thinking about it.  Crowdsource solutions.  Don’t give up.  Keep trying.

Chris and Dean, mechanics and racers both, tossed the problem in their heads…

Chapter 9 – Mechanical Resonance

Mechanical Resonance

Run Five – For Real

“If everything goes ‘as planned’, you aren’t doing anything interesting.” – Tom Peters

It was day 3, Monday. The sunrise over the salt with the mountains was just as breathtaking each day.  The hot rods parked beside tents and RV’s outside the salt along the access road were waking up.  The night before was a busy night for the crew.  Randall took the damaged header pipe from the turbo bike and drove two hours to Salt Lake City and stayed up until 3 am to custom fabricate a new one from a pipe he robbed off a Honda.  He returned to the salt with it very early and the team worked to get it mounted on the bike without the advantage of a full shop and equipment.

Chris and Dean had made a connection and got tires that were rated for over 200 mph.  They were slicks – no tread at all.  They would not “grow” with speed; that means with very high centrifugal force they wouldn’t get taller.  They went to tech inspection and got the 200-mph speed limit sticker off the bike.  We were cleared for our goal.

We were in line, nearly our turn with AJ in front of me, ready for another run at it.  When I started the bike Chris and Dean were attracted to the sound and listened to it.  I didn’t like the look on their faces.  They muttered to each other and listened closely to the engine.  Their faces said something was wrong.  They shook their heads over the noise.  They shut it down.  “We can’t run it. There’s a noise we don’t like.”

The 320 hp Turbo bike was out.  Here’s where the wisdom of bringing two bikes paid off.

Since my turbo bike wasn’t ridable, we bumped AJ, since he was sort of an exhibition rider getting free rides with the support of the entire team.  Honestly, I think he may have been somewhat relieved since the last run he wobbled so bad.  I got on the stock red bike, 120 hp less than what I was used to, minutes before I was to get the green light from the starter.  All of a sudden, I had a different set of challenges.  I had never been on this bike before.  It was different.  Bodywork in front, shifter position, and a few other things.  But the biggest difference was the stock gas tank.  It was a huge hump in my chest compared to the lower tank of the modified bike.  I was worried I couldn’t tuck my head down enough and rotate my neck up enough to see with a big tank in my chest.  No time to think about that – I got the green flag.

The red bike was powerful and smooth.  Less of a monster, but still very formidable.  I just met the bike minutes earlier and I took it to 185.64 mph at Mile 5, weight on the pegs and off the seat, and tucked in nicely.  I had a maximum speed of 188.  I hit some ruts at mile 3-4.

No swap.  Relieved.  Smiling…still 12 mph short.

Salt, Speed and Dust – Chapter 8

Run Five

Thwarted

“No passion so effectively robs the minds of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.” – Edmund Burke

It was 4:15 pm and the line was shorter towards the end of the day when many racers were starting their nighttime modifications to their machines to go faster the next day, or had blown their motors up.  Then there were the record breakers.  There are so many classes, that each day a dozen records or more are broken.  When you break a record, you have to go to “impound”.  You have four hours to tune your machine but are not allowed to make major modifications.  The next morning, all these vehicles go first out onto the salt and they have to beat the record a second time in order for it to count.

AJ has the red bike in line ahead of me.  It’s almost his turn and we notice the header pipe on my bike is missing!  It’s just a little stub coming out of the cowling in front of my foot, and it was gone!  O guessed that my bike swapped hard enough to knock it off.  I’m glad it didn’t take my own rear tire out!  But the pipe was out there, and if anyone hit it, like AJ, it could be disastrous like it was for Jason McVicar. 

We tell the starter immediately and they shut the track down.  Course workers drive the track looking for it.  It took ten minutes, but they found it, smashed as if it had been run over.  We were not sure if the 2 1/2” x 10” long steel pipe could have been flattened like that just from hitting and tumbling on the salt, but 193 mph was fast!

We pulled the turbo bike to our pit as AJ took a run.  He reported a wobble when he returned, but not as bad as his previous run.

It was the end of day two and we had officially reached 193.07 mph (and nearly crashed at that speed).  We packed up and headed off the salt.  There was much work for the team to do tonight…