#33 Returns To Racing!

Baja 1000 Rehab Return Ride

It will be 2 years next month since I seriously injured my hand at the 2013 Baja 1000. I have been writing about rehab tours so I guess it is about time to get back on the horse.

I just agreed to race with the team I raced with in 2013 when I crashed and injured my left hand. I am a bit surprised they want me back after I destroyed their bike and ended the race for them two years ago.

I bought a used Honda CRF 450X from my buddy Charlie to use as a pre runner, since we will be racing a highly modified 450X. Today was spent wrenching and tweaking the bike to work for me and it took about 8 straight hours in the garage to prep it. Now I will take it out for a few shake down rides until I know I can trust it for long distances. Then some more adjustments to fine tune it and it should work just fine. I had one of these bikes a few years back and really enjoyed it.

I also have to try the rider out for some longer distances at higher speeds. I have had a few people say I was crazy for going back to race in Mexico again. Maybe. But I am looking at it as a challenge. I can’t live with the thought of not going back to do it after having a nasty crash. It would be like admitting that the Baja 1000 beat me or scared me. Nothing in life scares me more than having to live with myself and doubting myself. So maybe this will be a new beginning or just the final chapter. I won’t know until after the race, when all the dust has settled (literally!) and I have time to think it over as to whether or not it is important to me.

Only time will tell,

#33

“Scars remind us of where we have been, they don’t have to dictate where we are going”

A Trip of Firsts

As the Mobile Ghetto rolls on down the road to its next destination it gives me time to think of all the first time events. The first time on the road in the new/used fifth wheel, the first time rescuing abandoned kittens and the first time using a hydraulic (#33 Ton) log splitter.  Wow! How much more fun can a guy stand!

The hits just keep on rollin’!  Next stop finds us at our buddy Dave’s new house getting reacquainted with his wife, Penney and two daughters Nikki and Maddi and their new puppy Bucky. Dave shows us his place and away we go. More firsts! We got to go see the girls play on their High School soccer teams. Having never watched High School soccer before it was interesting to watch the difference from Junior Varsity to Varsity. Sort of like watching the Experts vs. Masters at an OTMX race. The Expert/ J.V. are good but the Master/Varsity are just smoother and more polished, interesting.

Next I find out that Wednesday is lawn mowing day and Dave can’t wait to mow the lawn. I find this a bit strange until he busts out his “Lawnmower”. I realize this isn’t really a lawnmower it is smaller version of a NASCAR with blades for mowing! Not only will this thing do about 25 mph in the front yard but it will accelerate, stop and spin a 360 so fast you need a seat belt! Just when I think it may give my KX 450 a run for its money Dave informs me he has ‘tweaked’ it a bit to get more speed out of it. I watch Dave make a few passes roostin’, spinning and cutting lawn scary fast when he pulls up in front of me and says I need to give it a try. I thought about running back to the trailer to get my helmet but jumped on without my safety gear. Holy Schmokers, it is immediately obvious I am not qualified to handle this thing. I give it a few passes to see if I can get the hang of it but wisely decide to give it back before I crash this sucker and end up in the Emergency Room again. Dave takes over and proceeds to set a new neighborhood lawn cutting record lowering his best time from the 32 minute range to just under 30 minutes. I am thinking maybe Penney had better consider getting him a helmet and shoulder pads. Just sayin’.

The next first comes after a trip to the shooting range with our pistols. Dave has been spending some of his spare time teaching his girls to shoot and polishing his own skills with his 9mm. His time on the range has paid off because he is shooting very well and often enough he has gotten into reloading his practice ammo. This is where the first comes in since I have never reloaded before. Being retired law enforcement, along with Dave, I had always shot factory loaded ammo. He has acquired all the equipment to reload his ammo and is willing to give me a crash course in reloading. Interesting stuff but much like the lawnmower I suck at it after watching Dave bust out reloads like a professional. I get enough practice after a few hundred rounds and move from the beginner class to novice in reloading. Like I said, another first.

Between all this fun we manage to get in several mountain bike rides and spend some time playing with their puppy Bucky who seems to never run out of energy. Poor Bucky has to go on lockdown when we go mountain biking unless Cheryl stays behind to watch him. Since he is like having a doggy Dennis the Menace he requires constant supervision. Dave shows me some great mountain bike trails and even gets to expand his horizons when we get dropped off near the top of the mountain and make our way down a trail Dave has not yet ridden called ‘Hard Guy’ which is appropriately labeled #33!  I loved that.  It takes us about and hour and a half to make our way down and another hour and a half to wipe the grin off our faces.

We spend about a week and a half mountain biking, shooting, dog rough housing, soccer watching, dual sport exploring and being exposed to a few more firsts when we finally say good bye to the DeRoco clan and head on down the road. I can hardly wait until next year but in the mean time I need to practice with my pistol and spend some more time on my bicycle if I want to keep Dave in sight. But I think I will pass on the NASCAR mowing because I don’t have ¾ of an acre of lawn to practice on like Dave does.

#33

“There is no psychiatrist in the world like a puppy licking your face.”

Orofino or Bust

The next stop in the “Mobile Ghetto” tour was to visit our friends Jess and Becky in Idaho. This turned out to be quite the experience. I had no idea I was going to learn how to properly mount scopes on rifles,  split wood using a log splitter for my first time, a “33” ton I might add, it doesn’t get any better than that and help rescue a couple of kittens left on the highway near Jess and Becky’s house. By the way, if the party discarding those kitten’s had gotten caught by Jess leaving those little guys I would probably be writing this story in the police station while I was posting bail to get Jess out! He was not happy someone would do that to kittens and muttered some offensive terms, the only printable one being vermin!

The kittens were so new that their eyes were barely open! As a matter of fact one of them only had one eye open so I called him “Mono”, short for monocular.  We figured if his name was Mono because of only one eye open then we may as well call the other one “Bino”, just to be fair. Becky took care of them overnight until she could arrange to take them to the animal shelter the next day.

However there were limitations of what would be tolerated in the house. It seems the two boys, Garon and Zeger, full grown German Shepherds were not going to tolerate Mono and Bino living under the same roof. So they spent the night in the garage in cardboard boxes with blankets for their own protection. I think I saw the boys licking their chops as Becky made them go back into the house for the night. The next day they were delivered to the shelter with a donation from Jess and Becky to help with their care.

Over the next few evenings I was given a crash course on how to properly mount a rifle scope. Interesting stuff, I thought you just lined it up and bolted it together, boy was I mistaken. Jess goes through quite a process to do it correctly and it shows when you test fire the rifle. I was sworn to secrecy and can’t give any trade secrets away in this blog. But now that I think of it maybe I should start singing like a canary because every time I visit Jess it seems I end up with a new gun! Last year I left his house with a new rifle and this year it seems I have acquired a new pistol.  Pretty sneaky.

During the next few days I couldn’t resist trying my hand at splitting wood with a hydraulic wood splitter I spotted out behind the house. Especially when I look it over and see “33 Ton” printed on it! This had to be an omen, me showing up and having a splitter with that number on it. Once I fired that sucker up and started shredding those big round sections of wood like they were Popsicle sticks I found myself grinning from ear to ear! What I remembered about wood splitting was the axe, maul and sledgehammer I had to use and what a pain it was to get through the wood. This made it almost fun having that kind of power at your disposal. Sort of like when I used to ride a CR 500 or a 490 Maico, you know, MAN’S BIKES!

I was having so much fun tearing through the wood until I took my first break and got a drink. It seemed I had created quite a pile of wood that needed to be stacked.  After a couple of rotations of splitting and stacking I finally ran the machine out of gas. There was still more wood so I couldn’t wait to get some gas and tear it up again tomorrow!

A few days later we were treated to a thunderstorm with lightning strikes that touched off several fires. The fires took off and created so much smoke that the beautiful surroundings were obscured and some of the local towns started evacuations. I watched the firefighting helicopters come down to fill their buckets from the river. It got so bad I was afraid they may close the roads so I figured it was time to move on before I lose the ‘mobile ghetto’.

#33

‘Riding is like licking Honey off a thorn’

OMG a BFF Ride

I got invited on a trail ride with a few guys in Montana. I was the youngest one in the group at 57 yrs young with the oldest being Montana John and his odometer is just about to roll over to 70.

The original BFF group consisted of Matt, Doug, Tim and Ron who was the designated ride leader on this ride since he knew the area best. These four were all hovering around the 60 thousand mile mark on their odometers. I found out these guys have known each other since their school days and have been friends through all these years. They still get together to ride motorcycles and enjoy each other’s company. It seems Montana John being almost 10 years older was an honorary member of the group after stumbling into the right motorcycle shop years ago. He met Matt who after some twists and turns in life runs his own shop called TWO WHEELZ in Butte, Montana.

The ride was very challenging and in a beautiful setting outside of Butte. We rode on a Wednesday and didn’t expect to see much trail traffic. It was a good thing because we rode some awesome singletrack with rock side hills, small creek crossings, superb wooded side hills and an occasional bridge leading to a LOT of switch backs. Well you probably know what switch backs mean, yup, steep climbs. It seems everyone did pretty well with the occasional mishap that would have someone picking up, kick starting or getting another run at the uphill turn.

The exception was Montana John. It seems he has a switch back limiter kind of like a rev limiter, after 3 or 4 he is ready to find another trail. Therein lies the problem, each trail led to another trail that led to more switch backs. The riding area is fantastic but so steep there are going to eventually be switch backs on just about any trail. MJ soldiered on and rode until he was pretty much “used up” to quote him. He still never quit and never turned around, pretty amazing at 70 yrs of life experience. We took a few breaks and helped him with some of the tight difficult turns and he made it to the top.

It was well worth the effort because the views were amazing! After a short rest to catch his breath rest and recover MJ even enjoyed the scenery, although he said, “been there done that, won’t do it again!”.   So I made sure to take some pictures of him up there so he could mount them on the wall sort of like a trophy. 9,000+ feet is an accomplishment for most riders.

We made our way down the hill while taking in the views, the photos just don’t do it justice. Still, MJ was not happy with the switch backs going down but had a MUCH easier time using gravity instead of fighting a losing battle with it.

When we got back to the trucks, changed clothes and loaded the bikes that’s when the beer, water and snacks appeared. The group hung out and B.S.’d for a while with no hurry to rush off since they had just spent the day with their BFF group and were in no hurry to call it quits. I could tell each guy appreciated their ride and time together. Our ride leader Ron was shaking his head quietly saying he didn’t remember that many switch backs the last time he rode it. I believe you Ron, but give MJ a few weeks he will come around.

#33

“It doesn’t matter where you ride, what matters is who you ride with”

Wing Sporting....Say What?

We went out for a ride the other day on a borrowed Honda Goldwing. I don’t know how it happened but we ended up on a gravel road doing a bit of exploring. As I rode along I began to wonder, if you take a Goldwing off the pavement is it considered dual sporting or is it a new sub group of riding, maybe “Wing Sporting”.

Anyway it was a lot of fun exploring at such a slow pace to actually see everything because I was being very cautious with Montana John’s bike. Also I was pretty sure if I dropped that monster I wouldn’t be able to pick it up!

We survived and rolled into the gas station with the low fuel warning light lighting up rather brightly, am I lucky or what! Saw some beautiful scenery both on and off road and had a great time. Montana has some great riding.

#33

‘The journey of a thousand miles begins by putting it in gear’