Salt, Speed and Dust – Chapter 7 – Nearly Over

Run Four

“Happiness lies in a divine unrest; if you are lapped in comfort you stagnate and miss it.” – John Buchan

Randall gave me advice – put your butt all the way back.  There was a Speed hump in the rear fender and he wanted me to close the gap between me and it.  His advice was very short, and not framed with any questions or conversation otherwise.  “Ok,” I thought.  “I’ll put my butt back.”

I am a trainer and teacher.  One thing I learned and got very good at, is when you are trying to teach someone, you have to frame information and give it context, and be complete in your explanation.  Randall didn’t do that – at all.

We had the wrong tires to go over 200.  So we were going to take this run up closer to 200 and get the tires changed tonight.  I had qualified to ride the longer track and now had five miles per run to go fast and learn.

I let the clutch of the fire breathing turbo out and rolled off the line with a lot of confidence.  I dutifully shifted at 9000 rpm to the next gear.  The course was about 100 feet wide to the markers, with a blue stripe painted down the middle on the salt.  There were black markers up the sides of the course every quarter mile, and an orange sign with a big number on it for every mile.

The markers were going by with increasing velocity.  Everything felt good.  At mile 2 I was at 181 mph with 3 miles to go.  At 2 ¼ I was at 193.  Smooth sailing.  It always is until it’s not. 

Just before the Mile 3 sign at 194 mph, the bike started wobbling.  The rear of the bike swaps left while the front swaps right, then the opposite.  I held on tighter but that is not the problem or the fix.  It wobbled harder.  I knew not to chop the throttle or the back end would come around the front.  It didn’t stop.  4 seconds, five…I didn’t make any sudden moves, just eased the throttle down a touch.  It continued and adrenaline flooded my blood.  I didn’t know how to stop it.  Six seconds and eight.  Long enough to think about what I should do and what could happen. 

Mercifully, it stopped.  I rolled down.  Mile 3 completed at 191, and mile 4 at a frightful 170, mile 5 at a stunned 133.

All of a sudden my confidence for this entire goal was blown into the wind over the salt.  What happened?  I didn’t know.  I thought I hit ruts or sugary salt.  There are some very high horsepower vehicles that race here.  Around mile three to mile five they are really laying the horsepower down.  We’re talking up to 2500 hp, and when they unleash it at high rpm late in the course, they chew up the salt, forming ruts and loose salt.  Then here I come on two wheels, one of them under power.  I kept thinking it was the salt.

I was freaked out.  When I got back, AJ was freaked out too.  He said he got in a full-on “tank slapper” at 175 mph.  The same thing that happened to me.  We talked about what happened and what the cause could be.  I told him I was 6 feet right of centerline, but he went left of centerline.  What was it?

The world record on a Turbo Hayabusa was 247 mph.  On a stock one, it was 211 mph.  AJ told me the record holder, Jason McVicar, had crashed at 244 mph after he ran over a piece of metal left on the course when a previous vehicle blew its engine, and it gave him a flat tire which caused the crash.  I did not see the video on YouTube of the crash and didn’t want to at that time.  (I have now.  You can look it up yourself.)

Then there were the two crashes that Ron Cook had back in the late 1990s as he tried to break 200.  He started swapping each time.  I didn’t see that video either.

I didn’t want to go out again unless I had an explanation. I applied my logical mind.  Things don’t happen for no reason.  It’s physics.  What was the problem?  AJ and I talked more.  I asked him questions.  I saw other motorcycles in line, and I interviewed them.  I heard lots of unsure answers.  “It depends…”  That wasn’t good enough.  I asked more riders, and I looked for patterns in their answers.  One guy was on a highly modified Hayabusa and had been to Bonneville each year for many years.  He had never been over 200, and he didn’t have a good answer for me.

Then my mechanic Dean and I talked.  He was a retired road racer.  Road racers go 160-180 down the straights at some tracks.  He said keep your weight on the pegs to keep it low and forward.  Aha!  And he said sudden movements at high speed upsets the bike and the wind effect on the bike will change abruptly.

I told him I had my weight on the seat, and once I got up to sixth gear and 190, I did what Randall told me to do and put my butt back 6” to the speed hump – and I did it rather abruptly.  I went back to AJ.   “Do you move around on the bike at speed?” I asked.  “Yeah, a lot,” he said.  “Do you have your weight on the seat?”  “Yeah”. 

I had my answer.

I know when you load a trailer or a truck with all the weight to the back, it will sway at speed.  I looked at the bike.  Where my butt was on the seat was behind the pegs and obviously higher.  Dean told me to put my butt back, yes, but keep my butt off the seat like a jockey, so the weight is low and on the pegs.  It made sense, and now I was willing to go out and try again.

When we fail, we have to try again differently.  If we do things the same way, we will usually get the same result.  This goes for anything we are doing.  Practicing the wrong way doesn’t help, it just locks in bad habits that keep yielding less than desirable results.

Let’s try this again…

Chapter 6 – Next level

Run Three

“You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face.” – Eleanor Roosevelt

We stopped at a trailer to get my timing slip.  It looks like a grocery store receipt, and it tells you’re your average speed at each of the timed intervals.  I then went to another trailer to get my B license, which allows me to go over 175.  My next goal was to go between 175 and 200.

We still had a big speed limit sticker on the side of our bike that said we were not permitted to go over 200 due to our tires.  I wasn’t worried about that now, but Chris was figuring out where to get new tires and how to get them mounted out there.

My team was a great help to me.  Well, no, sorry team.  That’s a huge understatement.  My team was indispensable to me even being here at all.  Some were mechanics, and some were helping me with my gear and holding an umbrella over me to shield me from the unrelenting sun and making sure I didn’t cook in my leather “onesie” suit.  I was sharing this experience with them and it made it a better experience and one we’ll never forget. They were in it as much as I was.  We were all pulling in the same direction.  One goal, one team.  One thing was for sure, I could not do this alone, or even with one or two other people.  Great endeavors always require a team. 

But then there was Randall, the experience Bonneville guy we had hired to coach me.  A bit of invaluable advice could make all the difference.  Randall was smart, experienced, and had an impressive resume.  But his social skills were off.  It was beginning to become more and more apparent.  He ruffled feathers at tech inspection, and his comments and advice were delivered in a less than helpful way.  Chris was starting to question whether he was helping the team or hurting it.  Meanwhile, his son AJ was getting a free ride on our back up bike.  AJ was a fine young man; smart, knowledgeable and drama-free.  I liked him a lot, and we compared notes after each run on the salt.

I rolled the throttle on for run #3, the second run of the second day.  I counted five shifts down to sixth gear, each at 9000 rpm, and then I just pinned it to the throttle stop.  320 hp is a thrill!  I saw 188 mph for a brief moment and averaged 183.32 mph at mile 3.  It was a great run.  I thought that now I would just need to tuck tighter, get my butt back, feet and knees in and head down and I’d make 200.

I got my timing slip, stopped and got my B license, and we got back in line for another run.  I thought I was going to continue a predictable progression to 200. 

I was wrong…

Salt, Speed and Dust – Chapter 5

Run Two

“Overcome fear, behold wonder” – Richard Bach

The morning sun was just peeking over the mountains as we drove back to the salt flats.  We got off the highway and onto the access road to the salt.  Bonneville Speed Week is a scene out of a volume of Americana.  There were hot rods everywhere.  Mostly “Rat Rods” – custom fabricated machines that started out as Model A and 1932 Fords and other cars from the pre-war era and wound up as lowered, flat black Chevy V8 powered open-wheeled examples of American cool.

“This is how we won the wars and sent a man to the moon,” Chris said sincerely.  All these guys who know how to build machines, toiling away in their garages learning and making these creations.  The comment included all the custom-built machines racing for speed.  Some low budget, and some 2500 hp one-million-dollar machines like the Speed Demon; a marvel of high tech engineering that looks like a rocket on the ground.

These same minds and the ones orbiting around them are the ones building high tech machines used to defend us, make our lives better, and to entertain us.  To see them express themselves at Speed Week in Bonneville is a sight to behold.  It’s worth a trip one year as a spectator to see what goes on there.  Alternatively, there are many movies and YouTube videos about Bonneville Speed Week where you can see the machines – the ones that race and the ones that don’t.

One thing we came to realize is the salt is hard and fastest in the morning before the sun comes up very high.  When the sun comes up and starts to beat on the salt, the salt becomes slippery.

The line to get on either course was long.  You could wait over two hours for a turn.  I had to stay on the short course, course 2, until I got my license to go over 175. 

Another rider rode the red bike.  A guy who was supposed to be my riding coach with a lot of experience on the salt had to cancel last minute.  He recommended another guy he knew named Randall.  Randall had a 23-year-old son, AJ, who wanted to take some runs at it.  Chris agreed, so we could learn faster and compare notes after each run.  We could also learn about the differences between the stock bike and the turbo bike.

AJ had made a successful first run the day before like I did and we both lined up again for our second run.  It was day two; a Sunday.  I was extra careful getting started to not break the wheel loose. I hit the shifter by accident, as it was too high, and I hit neutral.  I had to lift my heel off the footpeg to get on top of it to shift down.   I stepped down to second gear, then third.  The bike obediently accelerated as if it was no big deal.   The salt flew under me.  My goal was an average of between 150 and 175 on any mile stretch.  At mile two I averaged 167. 

I rolled it off, not picking my head up too early into a 160-mph wind, and gradually turned to the right toward the return road.  Of course, it wasn’t really a road, just a line marked on the vast flat plain of salt with flags and cones.  I was thrilled.  I thought that I could get to 200.

A big goal has to be broken into steps to get there.  When you accomplish a step, you are allowed to celebrate your progress.  Inside me, I did for a few minutes.  When we got back to the starting line though, it was back to business.

Chapter 4 – Casting out the Demon of Fear

Run One

“The first duty of life is still that of subduing fear.”  – Thomas Carlyle

The SCTA doesn’t allow you to get on the salt and just go as fast as you can on the first run.  That’s how people can get killed.  Going really fast on asphalt is risky enough.  Going fast on salt adds other dimensions of danger.

You have to “license up”.  For your first run, you get a class D license, which allows you to go over 125 but not over 150.  Once you do that, you get a class C license that allows you to exceed 150 but not 175.  When you demonstrate you can do that safely, you can then go over 175 but not 200.  Finally, a class A license permits you to exceed 200 – but not with these tires.

By taking it in stages like this, it allows you to learn about your bike and the salt.  If there is a problem, hopefully you will learn before it gets catastrophic.

I had to buy the right riding gear for this.  They wanted a rider wrapped in leather.  Leather is the most resistant to abrasion should you go down at high speed.  I bought a leather riding suit, but it took the assistance of another person to get it on me, and I felt incredibly claustrophobic in it.  I could hardly move, and I could not get it off by myself.  I had to control my heart rate and claustrophobic anxiety – and I was in my house.  When I got it off after having it on only ten minutes, I was soaked in sweat.  What would happen when I got out on the salt at 100 degrees?  I was worried.  I sent it back and got a bigger size, and then repeated for a bigger size still.  I still needed help getting it on and off, and was worried about the heat.

Chris had two Suzuki Hayabusa’s for me to ride.  One was a stock bike, 2010, 1350 cc, red, which tested on a Dyno at 200 hp.  The other was a white one that was Turbo Charged with a lower gas tank, special bodywork and modifications.  It tested at 320 hp!  It was an incredible beast.  It would spin the rear tire on the salt at any speed – even up to 180 mph.  I had to be very careful with throttle control.

Finally, in the late afternoon of Day 1, I was cleared to take my first run.  I got help putting my 25-pound leather suit on.  I put my boots and helmet on.  I walked to the start line where my team had the bike ready to go.  It was hot.  I was sweating in the suit from the heat and from being nervous.  What would happen?  How would this go?  Would I twist the throttle on a 320 hp motorcycle and spin out?  One way to find out….

I got on the Turbo bike at course 2 and waited for the starter to give me the signal that the 3-mile course was mine.  With slick tires, slippery salt, and 320 hp, I rolled the throttle on very slowly to not spin the wheels.  The bike felt good.  Real good.  Patience….speed coming up.  9000 rpm. Then I missed my very first shift!  My brain was used to shifting up, but this bike shifts down to go up a gear.  It reminded me with the motor zinging up to 13,000 rpm when it hit neutral.

The bike pulled strong as I let it loose.  I watched the conveyor belt of salt go under me faster and faster.  100 mph.  120.  Feels great.  I tucked.  I was worried that I would have trouble picking my head up far enough with my back and neck curved as they are.

The SCTA times your average speed between mile 1 and 2, 2 and 2 ¼, and 2 and 3.  My job to get my C license was to average between 125 and 150 in any one of these sections of the course.

130….140…feeling good.  I rolled more on.  I felt the animal I was on had so much more it wanted to show me.  150….155…and I rolled it down and pulled off after I saw the mile 2 marker. 

What a relief!  I could see forward while tucked (even though it was like looking through your upper eyelids.  I didn’t sweat to death in my suit.  I didn’t crash.  I could control 320 hp on a slippery surface.  Wow!  This was going to be ok after all…well, it’s ok so far. 

Sometimes we let the demons of fear stop us.  We dwell on how hard or scary something will be and the fear grows in us until it stops us.  Controlling fear and not manufacturing any more of it than is necessary is something we must do to live to our potential.  Whether we are in a spelling bee in second grade, sharing our ideas at a meeting, or doing anything we haven’t done before.

The salt courses closed at 5:00.  We only got one run in on day one.  It was enough.  We headed back to our hotel a couple of exits away in Wendover, the town where the Enola Gay took off from to end World War II.  Lots of history was made out here in the desert of Northwest Utah.  I felt I was a small part of it now.

Salt, Speed and Dust – Chapter 3

“Life begins at the end of your comfort zone” – Neale Donald Walsh

200 mph on the Bonneville Salt Flats in a motorcycle I had never been on before – that was the goal.  But there was more to it.  As it turns out the longest off-road race in the United States was a couple of days later – “Vegas to Reno”, 514 miles.  “Ok, let’s do that too – it will be epic!”  I was an experienced desert racer, and I had raced a 300-mile race in Nevada two months earlier.  “I got this”, I thought.

Ok, one trip, two goals, lots of planning and preparation complete.  One thing at a time.

We pulled onto the salt at Bonneville early on a Saturday morning.  The salt is very white.  The sun bounces off of it and you need dark sunglasses and a wide-brimmed hat.  The threat of exposure is real.

The texture is like rough finished concrete, smoother in spots, and rough in spots, with the occasional rut or hole.  Untouched, the salt has bumpy lines in it forming patterns.  It’s as if a thousand moles were lost under there.  I always wondered how thick the salt is.  50 feet?  200 feet?  I had no idea.  It turns out the salt is from 3” to 7” thick.  That’s it. 

Bordered by beautiful brown mountains, the white salt is a flat jewel in a valley.  I couldn’t help myself – I tasted it.  No surprise – it tasted like salt.

The organizers drag the course to make it smooth.  They have two courses.  One is three miles long with three miles to stop and one is five miles long with three miles to stop.  They prepare alternate courses.  Think of six runways parallel to each other. Speed Week goes on for six days.  On days one and two they will use one course.  The salt gets chewed up from accelerating wheel traffic, so on days three and four they use their first alternate, and on day five and six the second alternate.  I had no idea how important all this would be to my quest.  I was learning fast. 

That’s what happens when you do something new.  You have to learn even the very basics of it.   Here’s the line. Here’s where you start.  Here’s how you know when to start.  Here’s where you ride to.  Here’s what you do then.…

The whole event is put on by the SCTA – Southern California Timing Association.  It’s tightly controlled.  Step one – registration.  Step two – drivers meeting.  Step 3 – Rookie orientation.  They take you down the track in your car or truck and you get to see what the course is like, and where to turn out to the return road which is about 120 yards from the course parallel to it.  When you make a run, they do not allow you to ride or drive back to the starting line.  You have to be towed by your chase team or on a trailer to return.

We had 10 people on our support/chase team and three vehicles – an RV set up in the front row between courses one and two, a passenger van, and a flatbed truck with a box trailer to haul the bikes.  It’s a significant operation and necessary to get the job done as I would come to realize.

I was nervous.  I had never been on these bikes before, and I didn’t know if I could tuck tight enough and still see, given a big gas tank in your chest.  I didn’t know what it would feel like.

I kept telling myself that if anyone could do it, then I could too.  Hours went by in the hot sun and we took the steps to get to the starting line and get the bike out on the salt.

At tech inspection, I stayed in the background while Dean, our mechanic, and ex road racer stayed with the bike and the inspector.  We had the wrong tires they said.  They were not rated for over 200 mph and because of that, they put a speed limit on the bike of 200 mph.  We were not to exceed it.  There were debates and questions about whether the tires were safe at 200+.  In the end, the inspectors won, and we were not allowed to hit our goal unless we changed tires.  We were frustrated.

Then the inspector asked, “Where’s the rider?”  Dean pointed to me.  He asked me to come over and sit on the bike.  Then he said, “Ok, turn the ignition on”.  I looked down.  I hesitated.  I thought “Oh crap.  Where’s the ignition?”.  It wasn’t obvious.  I broke into an embarrassed sweat.  The inspector waited.  Here I was at Bonneville to take this bike over 200 mph and I didn’t even know how to start it!! 

I played like I was deaf and didn’t hear him.  The inspector finally reached over and turned the ignition on. 

This was going to be some experience….

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…

Salt, Speed and Dust – Prologue

It was a few years ago I suppose, when Chris Haines lit the spark.

Chris Haines is my desert racing support team owner.  In his day, Chris has won a LOT of races in Baja, and he’s in the Off-Road Racing Hall of Fame.  His shop is in Southern California.  I was there for a short visit and I see these two beautiful street bikes.  He starts telling me about them and about the Bonneville Salt Flats and let out a soft invitation – a challenge even.  It was so foreign to me.  I let it go. 

I had desert races to run in Baja.  My quest to finish the Baja 1000 solo had not been completed yet.  I’d spent thousands of hours riding motorcycles in my time, but not that kind of motorcycle.  That’s not for me….or….nahhh….

The places we go, and the people we meet.  That’s what shapes our lives. 

Everyone’s heard it – “hang around interesting people”, and the corollary, “be careful who you hang around with”.  Maybe the person I was with that day offered to take me hang gliding, or mountain climbing or some other adventure.  Maybe they would try to hustle me and offer me a scam investment, or offer me drugs, or show me some other behavior on the lower tier of what humanity has to offer.

The people we get with have an influence on us – and some will cause us to take a fork in the road that has a profound impact on our lives. 

This is the beginning of a story, right here on Think Daily.  It’s a daring adventure, and a personal challenge.  I hope you enjoy it.

To be continued…

Loving others

“When you make loving others the story of your life, there’s never a final chapter, because the legacy continues.  You lend your light to one person, and he or she shines it on another and another and another.” – Oprah Winfrey

It’s in all of us.  Show it.  Don’t ration it. 

Express it a little more today.

"We dig our graves with our teeth"

The other day we stopped for ice cream.  There was a long line.  It was a big one, and ohhh, it tasted so good!

Well, I didn’t eat lunch because of it, and I felt like hell after it.  My body was trying to process the giant flood of dairy and sugar.  My digestive system took all the energy from the rest of me to deal with it. I had to lay down and rest!

I pondered what would happen to me if I made a habit of it.  

“We dig our graves with our teeth.” -Fannie Hurst

Stop drinking sugar

Soda, fruit juices, iced teas…the single best thing you can do to improve your diet is to stop drinking sugar.