Rhino Rally 2011: You don’t have to be a crazy woman to race desert, but it makes it less lonely and more fun.
As a little girl, I never grew tired of fairytale princess fantasies prancing around in my vacant little head. Years later, the imagined attire has changed from sparkly tiara and gown to full-face helmet and armored, purpose-built gear. Also, my imaginary steed evolved from a big white pony with a pretty tail into whatever two-wheeled concoction of finely engineered horsepower I fancy at the moment. Right now, it’s a sadisticYZ450F. Looks like Fairytale Princess got booted from my mental podium and replaced with Motorcycle Racer. I probably would have been better off sticking to the former daydreams. For one thing, fairytale princesses don’t often limp home from a hard day of princessing with broken bones and, two—I can actually go out and buy motorcycles and race them. Yeah, uh-oh. Here’s to you, mom-who-told-me-I-could-be-anything-I-wanted-when-I-grew-up.
I blame Bruce Brown, though, not mom. That helicopter shot of thousands of bikes rocketing across the desert trailing dusty comet tails, from On Any Sunday, is what did it for me. I fell madly in love, emphasis onmadly. Because that’s what you become out there in those long miles of yourself inside your helmet—raving mad. Don’t lie to yourself, my fellow desert crazies. You know you’re a full-blown nut job. There’s no fame—at least not for many. And there’s definitely no fortune. None of your “normal” friends want to come watch you race, and the most epic moments of your life are witnessed only by you. Then by the time it’s all over, you’re too delirious to remember half of them.
Desert racing is the most fulfilling, excruciating and insane thing you could ever do with a perfectly good Saturday and you’ll pay for it for days—in my case months—afterward. Some wild creature enters into existence the instant that banner drops and the sound of hundreds of bikes exploding the crisp desert air echoes through the cavities in your skull. The world is yours and nothing else matters.
I love MotoGP and all that; nothing compares to the clean, sharp and intense glamor of roadracing at its ultimate. But for someone who seeks the true essence of motorcycling, the idea of that down-home, run-what-you-brung, tough-guy attitude of the local desert rounds really does it for me.
So I went for it—Rhino Rally 2011—the second race in the USRA Desert Series. Fifty-five miles (at least for the Novice loop) of Southern Utah’s red dirt washes, rocky hill climbs and single-track madness through sage-spattered fields. This particular race had been painted in legendary hues for me long before I sent in my entry fee. Everyone has a good Rhino Rally story—many of them with not-so-happy endings. The biggest piece of advice I got over and over again was, “Just finish.” Little did I know….
With a strange combination of fear and anticipation I loaded Blue—sporting a brand new set of Maxxis Desert ITs—into the back of my truck and took off on the 300-mile jaunt down to St. George. Blue is my seven-year-old Yamaha motocross bike—still rocking the old steel frame—and with only four gears to tame that brutal 450 thumper. Bone stock except for a pair of hardy Pro Taper bars, a USFS approved spark-arrester (required) and a Clarke desert tank, Blue is my run-what-you-brung baby.
On the trek down from Salt Lake City, I called my friend Danielle, who is one of the big reasons I got into desert racing. She grew up storming around the high desert of western Colorado like an entire pack of rabid coyotes all wrapped up in one spunky little blonde on a Kawasaki. My dear friend succeeded in soothing my nerves with calming words of advice like, “You’d better be prepared. You’re out in the middle of nowhere! You get lost out there, nobody’s going to find you. You could die out there. This is serious s__t, girl! I remember one race when I broke my elbow and I had a vein dangling from my arm. A vein! Dangling! From my arm! And I had to get back. People get lost out there.”
According to legend, there was a snow storm at an ‘80s Rhino Rally so bad the National Guard had to be sent out to rescue shivering racers huddled around race-gas scented flames well into the night. I looked up at the frosty sky and thought, hell yeah. If ever there had been an unpredictable winter, here it was.
The morning of the race was dim and cloudy, the palate of the desert sharp under a layer of new moisture. I was truly impressed by the hospitality of my fellow racers. As I rolled up, people saw that I was by myself and went out of their way to make sure I knew I had help available should I need it. At the starting line, my heart throttling maniacally in my chest, I calmly told myself that I’m just out here for that finisher’s pin and I’ll just relax and let most of the novice class get a head start on the bomb run and then pick my way carefully through and set my pace.
Yeah, right.
As soon as I feel the throaty roar of Blue beneath me, accompanied by the deafening symphony of his new companions, the pressing urge to pass every motorcycle in sight takes over. My brain goes on a two-minute vacation as soon as the banners drop. When I come back to reality, I find I’ve suddenly become a hollering Indian in the middle of some scene from a wild west movie, hunting stampeding buffalo on the dusty plain.
The bomb run funnels into a high speed wash that nature has meticulously engineered into big, sweeping corners, and I proceed to ride way over my head. My throttle hand and Big Bad Blue have conspired against everything that was once sane in me. I try several different lines, desperately needing to pass absolutely everyone. Sometimes I gain a few places, sometimes I lose a few until, finally, my concentration gets out of pace with my coordination and I go down. It’s not a bad wreck, but when I go to kick my bike over, the lever won’t budge. Hundreds of buffalo stampede past me as I turn the air around me black with expletives until—with the help of said profanity—I get my bike fired back up.
Round two has begun.
This is the point where I really start to enjoy myself. No one is in front of me for a minute, and if my palpitating heart didn’t know any better, I could be out on a trail ride with Blue’s brand new knobbies swallowing these miles of dirt like a starving dog.
Suddenly I round a corner to the sight of a small traffic jam. About eight riders are stopped at a rocky outcropping because someone is stuck. I pause for a moment, unsure of how to proceed. Do I wait in line like the polite, well-raised American girl that I am? These guys got here first, right? Well, yeah, but…. Then I spot a gnarly line just to the left that leads up a little ledge and think, hell no…this is RACIN’! As I barge my way past the polite folk waiting patiently and billy-goat my way up past the stalled rider, I put on a small rodeo and holler, “Stand back, ordinary mortals!”
Behind me, I hear at least two angry motors now pouncing up my line, undoubtedly wondering, Why didn’t I see that in the first place? and Who says I’m an ordinary mortal!? and best of all, Was that a GIRL? My third wind ensues, I’m wearing a big, stupid grin, and somebody’s screaming in my helmet the first of about a million WOOHOOOOOs!
There are some things you will learn about yourself in a desert race that you may never learn at any other time in your life. Some of them you’ll probably wish you hadn’t. I’ve learned that I’m capable of becoming a crazed, psychotic machine with no other purpose in life than to roll through home check and nab that finisher’s pin. I become a primitive animal with one thought in my head. (For those of you who are aware of the incredible multi-tasking entity that is a woman’s brain, you’ll know that this is no small feat.)
I’ve also learned that under a lot of stress and pressure, about half the thoughts that occur in my head also occur out loud—at top volume. Welcome to the Molly Show. Please tell me that I’m not the only one who does this, guys. About halfway through the race, I start to really feel it. I’ve had so many battles back and forth and pulling crazy s__t over and over again, it feels like I’ve lived three lifetimes in the last 20 or so miles and I’m still not half done. This is when I start giving myself the ridiculous pep talks. Out loud. It starts out with the tentative, “Yeah! Yeah, you got this. Focus. You got this, girl. Focus!” Gradually it deteriorates into loud observations of the scenery and racers in front of me, punctuated with the occasional top volume, “WHO’S A BAD BITCH?” Also some hysterical cackling and a song or two. Sometimes its the music from On Any Sunday if there’s no one in front of me. Sometimes it’s not.
This sort of behavior isn’t terribly surprising to me—I’m well aware that I’ve probably knocked a few screws loose over the years—but the thing that really kills me is that fact that I raced for hours in the pouring rain and didn’t realize the weather was doing anything more than sprinkling until it was all over—and everything, including me, was thoroughly drenched and slimy like a 120-pound bag of fried okra with wet hair.
This downpour may have had something to do with that critical and momentary loss of grip that eventually left me maimed and bawling. I was booking it down a straight stretch of wash when at the last second I realized the trail marker pointed up onto a diverging single-track. During the process of quickly braking and yanking that big hunk of reciprocating 450cc mass over to where it needed to go, I managed to crunch my left wrist into the handlebar. The initial pain was like any other, but as I continued with less than five miles to the finish, I began to realize that something was terribly wrong. Every little bump sent a sharp blast of pain through my wrist, and trying to work the clutch began to terrify me.
No!, I thought. I broke my wrist.
I then transformed into a maniacal beast with nothing to lose. I had to finish. I inched along in second gear, going as fast as I could bear, screaming in pain and sobbing. The numerous bikes that passed me each represented a hard-won battle now lost. I’m sure all these guys who recognized me from earlier were confused and wondering what the hell I was doing snailing down the trail with my butt on the seat, after I had blown past many of them on some heinous stretch of treacherous loose rock. Each fresh defeat brought a new sob. It took everything and more to make it those last few miles, and by the time I got to home check I had no sanity left. Seeing the tent appear through my tear-fogged goggles brought forth a whimper of utter relief and joy. I couldn’t believe I actually made it.
Someone shoved a Rhino Rally finisher’s pin down the top of my right glove and noticed that something was wrong and I was not okay. Whoever those guys were who helped me out at the end of the race, thank you for calming down a very confused girl and walking my bike back to my truck for me. I held that finisher’s pin in my swollen left hand for what ended up being an eight-hour drive home through one of the worst blizzards of the year. When I called my husband to tell him about the race, I somehow failed to mention that my wrist was most likely broken and that I was currently in excruciating pain.
I later found out I took second in my class. What’s funny is that I couldn’t care less how I finished, other than it makes for a cool story that I finished a race with a broken wrist and took second place to boot. But personally, that part doesn’t matter much. It only mattered that I finished.
Six months later, I’m recovering from surgery to repair my scaphoid after spending most of the year in a cast. I broke the most difficult bone in the body to heal and had to have bone grafts and hardware installed about two months back. If you ask me whether or not it was worth it, there’s a rational part of me that says, well, no. Not really. I lost the best job I’ve ever had and haven’t been able to ride all summer. But, goddamnit, I can’t wait to do it again!
I won’t pretend that I’m a normal, sane, functioning adult.
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