Dreaming of Dakar

Can't believe it has been over a month since the event and I am finally just now getting around to continuing the story.  So to make sure I get this written down while it is still somewhat fresh in my mind here is the rest of the story uninterrupted with no commercial breaks....

We had just finished lunch and I was beginning to warm up a bit and feel somewhat human again.  Robb's wife Heather had met us at the lunch stop so he was able to change into fresh dry clothes.  I was a bit jealous!  I did have a spare pare of gloves in my backpack and put them on but otherwise I would have to make due with the same rain soaked gear.  The organizers mandate you take at least 30 minutes at the lunch stop and I don't think we were there much longer than that.  We hit the road again feeling a little refreshed.

Almost immediately I began to shiver again.  I had warmed up at the stop but with my cold damp gear any wind chilled me.  Luckilly there were only a few miles on the roads before we hit the next trail section.  By this time the rain had stopped so at least we were not getting any wetter and with the slower speeds of the trail along with the fact that I was physically working harder kept me warm.

Most of the afternoon trails were absolutely wonderful.  They reminded me of a lot of the class IV roads we have in New Hampshire, just old and no longer maintained roads.  However, in New Hampshire when you find a good road like that it lasts 1 or 2 miles.  We would go 20 or 30 miles without even crossing a paved road.  Much of it was rough and rocky and most importantly NOT muddy so it had good traction.  I was still the slowest rider of our group but on these I didn't feel like I was slowing us down quite as badly as early in the day.  There were a lot of other dirt bike riders in the area who were not in the event so evidently this was a popular riding spot.  I wish I knew where this area was because I wouldn't mind going back there to do some riding again.

Of course after getting comfortably on these roads we got to other trail sections that were greasy slippery mud again.  I had lowered my tire pressues down to around 15psi after slipping around a lot in the morning.  Brad was quite concerned about this since he was afraid I was going to get pinch flats from sharp rocks at this pressure.  I understood his concern but I felt the added traction was worth the risk.  I was running the Kenda "Tough Tube" intertubes and have never had a problem with them (knock on wood).  The lower pressure did help but this is something I am going to have to work on to get comfortable.

Along with the muddy bits there were of course some deep water holes.  After the insanely long 1200M stretch we went through in the morning I no longer had much concern over going through water.  Of course it is when you get confident that problems arrise.  There were a couple that were much deeper than I expected.  On one I almost dropped the bike while it was still running.  Dropping a running bike into water can be a very bad thing if water gets sucked into the engine.  It can take quite a bit of work getting things running again.  Throughout the day we passed a few other teams who were trying to get a bike going after this.  I am happy to say that all 3 of our bikes made it with no water issues!  However I did get stuck a couple times and needed a hand getting out of the water.

By late afternoon the sky had actually began to clear into a very nice cool summer day.  This was absolutely perfect riding weather and it was a great ride.  It is hard to believe at thsi point we had been riding nearly constantly for 12 hours.

Around 6pm we were getting close to the next stop where Jane was going to meet up with us.  Brad had mentioned he was getting really low on fuel and his bike started sputtering.  We knew we were getting close so he managed to get it fired a couple times and would go another kilometer or so and it would die again.  Good things we were prepared and had planned for this.  My DRZ has an oversized 4 gallon (about 16L) tank on it so the plan was I would make sure to have more than enough fuel and a siphon hose.  This of course made my already heavy bike a little heavier but it worked out well.  We had a little trouble getting the hose down to where it would pick up fuel but other than that we had Brad up and going again in a few minutes.

Jane was waiting for us as planned at Coe Hill.mud  She said that pretty much all the bikes she had seen recently were meeting up with their support trucks and loading up for the day here.  We were of course going to still push on.  Brad was especially eager to get going, being a finisher of the event the previous time it was held 2 years ago he really wanted to finish again.  We knew that the cutoff time at Camel Chute was 7:30, since we were the last team to leave with a start time of 31 minutes after the first team we hopped they would allow us to continue on if we got there as late as 8:00.  Either way we had quite a way to go and needed to get going.  We fueled up from the cans in the truck, I downed a gatorade from the cooler and off we went.

Just past Coe Hill we did make a bit of a wrong turn, or more to the point missed turning off of the road and on to a trail on an old railroad bed that paralleled the road.  Luckilly we discovered this fairly soon and were back on track.  The railroad bed trail was very fast and a lot of fun.  There was a lot of this and also some hydro line trail that was rocky but otherwise lots of fun to ride as well.  This all went on for miles and miles.  I would occasionally glance at the clock and realize that 8pm was quickly approaching.  I wasn't sure what the mileage was to the Camel Chute checkpoint but it seemed to never come.

8:00 arrived and we were still on the trail.  Robb was leading at the time and pulled over for a break.  At this point we knew it was official that we would not be able to do the last bit of trail but were satisfied that we had given it a good shot with our riding since Coe Hill.  This was the first time we stopped since then and had been making good progress but our slow pace early in the day with the rain was catching up with us.  It was still a lovely evening and still had more good riding ahead.

It turns out that we were even farther from Camel Chute than I had realized.  It was another hour later when we pulled off of the last trail section onto a paved road.  At exactly that time the background on my GPS switched to the dark nighttime mode which it does at sunset.  A couple miles down the road we got to the checkpoint where they jokingly told us we "just barely missed the cutoff".  Another team was at the checkpoint when we got there so evidently we were not far behind them on the trail.  Other than them we had only seen 1 other team who was fixing a drowned out bike about an hour before.

The "bail route" from Camel Chute was supposed to only take 20 minutes or so, I think it took us closer to 30.  Up to this point I had still felt really good, amazing since I didn't sleep the night before and had been up for about 36 hours.  Once the sun set however I found I could barely see the road.  The last bit of the bail route went through a narrow winding gravel road and I had slowed down to crawl speed.  It might have been better to have Robb or Brad lead for the last bit but I think they were just as tired as I was.

Then at 9:40 PM, just over 17 hours later we arrived at the Dacre Community Center.

We got cleaned up and had a couple beers but that was about all any of us could handle at this point.  My wonderful wife Jane had set up the tent and had everything ready (thank you sweetie!) so I was off to bed for some long overdue sleep.

The next morning we got another picture of us looking much better.

Looking at my bike the next day I realized why I couldn't see the road!  I need to remember to clean my headlight during rides like this.

as this post is already longer than I had planned I will save my closing thoughts until later.