For want of a sandwich, and maybe a beer: aka Robyn's first attempt at desert racing

   I found myself sitting on the side of the trail, with my motorcycle propped up against a course sweeper's bike, chatting about riding and racing and the slightly ridiculous situation we were in. I had broken my chain just past the 25-mile mark in my first ever desert race, about halfway through the course, and had somehow managed NOT to notice that it was the sole reason my bike wouldn't move. I had been cruising along enjoying the course, riding well and feeling strong, thinking that I had a pretty good chance of finishing a whole lap. When I heard the snap and my bike stopped moving, I panicked, of course. I am not a motorcycle mechanic by any stretch of the imagination! I looked at the motor and the clutch first and nothing seemed amiss (exploded into pieces), and I feel as though I must have looked at the front sprocket at some point since it lives in the same neighborhood. Was the chain still on it at that point or not? I'll probably never know now. The first guy who stopped to check on me was a sweep rider who declared it to be a toasted clutch, since that has happened to his bike before. He offered to tow me out to the closest road access, estimating it to be about 5 miles; then confiding that he had never towed anybody before. My only prior experience being towed on a dirt bike was terrifying: my old Honda wouldn't bump start until we got it to a steep enough hill, and the road became a rock garden for a good distance and I bumped along behind Kit at what seemed to be a breakneck speed. Therefore I was quite apprehensive about the whole process.

   Unsure of how else I would be getting out of there, and not occurring to me that it might be wise to wait for another sweep rider who knows the area much better and knew how to properly tow another rider, I agreed that it sounded like a plan. Wrapping the strap around my handlebar grip at first, I wrecked almost immediately. A couple more failed attempts and then I decided it made more sense to tie it to the middle of the bars. Thankfully we were in a sand wash so hitting the ground wasn't too bad. We made it several miles with me crashing intermittently; it's difficult enough for me to stay on top of the bike in sand under its own power, but being towed adds a whole new level of excitement. At one point, another sweep rode past as I was picking my bike up and observed that it was lacking a chain. Uhhh... what? Well shoot!! Where was this guy half an hour ago?

   On about the fifth crash or so my rescuer happened to notice his bike was leaking out of the radiator hose. Somehow the exhaust ran too close to the hose and had melted a hole in it, and it would have blown up his bike if I hadn't conveniently crashed just then. Thus began the first time we sat down to wait for somebody else to come along. I found out then that it was his first time sweeping a race, and they had not given him a radio, which might have been helpful. I ate some snacks, and he puttered with his bike trying to find a way to fix it. Eventually, another group of sweep riders came along, and all were incredulous that I failed to notice that my bike had no chain in the beginning. Yeah. Slightly embarrassing! Of course, those guys had seen a chain on the trail and wondered who could possibly just lose one like that. Would have been super awesome if somebody had stopped to pick it up, then this whole epic rescue adventure would have just ended with me riding my bike back under its own power.

   Two of those guys started towing us farther along the trail. This time he knew what he was doing and put the tow strap on our opposite foot pegs, instructing me to stay to the one side at all times. Now that's easier said than done while getting squirrelly as heck in the sand. I kept running over the tow strap, bouncing off of rocks and giant sagebrush bushes, and crashing several more times. He became quite frustrated with my ineptitude and at the same time his bike started overheating from the effort of towing in the sand. We caught up shortly with the other two and it turned out that his rescuer's bike was also not very happy, so they left us there and went off to find somebody with a bigger bike to get us the rest of the way out.

   So we sat. The weather couldn't have been nicer; sun shining, perfect temperature, a slight breeze. I had plenty of water but quickly finished all of my snacks. Bummer. It was getting close to 1 or 2 PM and I really could have used a sandwich and perhaps a beer to drown my sorrows and embarrassment. Some time passed, and a Razor four-wheeler appeared coming toward us. We strategized for a minute and he headed straight through the sagebrush toward the power lines maybe a quarter mile away, looking for the shortest, easiest route to the road. Not long after he disappeared, the sweet sound of a big 650 motorcycle engine came closer and closer. The ordeal was finally coming to an end, but the unknown in between was how the final stretch of towing would go down. As it turns out, uneventfully: I didn't crash a single time. Had a couple of close calls though it was much easier not riding in the sand. Much shorter, too. A truck waited for us at the road with a cooler full of beers in the back, and I cracked one open in celebration, relieved to have gotten out of there with as little damage to myself and bike as possible considering the number of times I'd wiped out on the other end of the tow strap.

   Once back at the staging area, as I gathered up my things and rolled my bike back toward the truck, a random guy (who I could barely see without my Rx goggles on) stopped and asked what happened. He said "you were doing so awesome, you're my hero!" Seriously? Yeah, seriously. I thanked him. Told him I'd be out there again and next time I was going to finish!

   About four hours after starting the race I finally got my sandwich, and sat to watch Kit and his buddy come in after riding the full 100-mile, two loop course. Both tried to bypass the finish and come straight to the truck, almost falling over while looping back around to finish properly. Neither one could walk very well after coming in from that burly ride, and both of them agreed that the second loop was way harder than the first. Sort of a good thing that I didn't finish the first lap and decide to go out for the second, it may have been a rescue mission anyhow.

   So went my first desert motorcycle race... and you can bet that I finished the next one, a rough and rocky 30 miles--and I carried a beer in my pack just in case--sort of like carrying an umbrella to keep it from raining I figured.