Baldy Interviews The Legend Joey Evans

you learn to accept things and you learn to adjust and adapt if you want, but then it's really You know, it was like it was a long lens and excuse me, and you don't sweat from your chest to where the nerve damage was, so when you go in the car it's 43 degrees Celsius, it's hot, you're just drinking more. and sweating more from the upper body or yeah, I sweat like crazy from there up because obviously I'm trying to keep up and, but often, if it's a really hot day, obviously I worked on my riding pants, you know. , when I get to that, when I get to We have a checkpoint or whatever and these water bottles and stuff like that, so I'll do that.

The biggest thing and the hardest thing that was in a race was actually the Missoula rally in Morocco where you got to 46 or one day and it was crazy and I could feel like I was overheating in my nose, I started bleeding in my helmet and I couldn't stop his bleeding. He was just a man, he was crazy enough. I stood there for a while at a checkpoint trying to stop there trying to refill and in the end I thought this isn't going to happen, it was one of those where you just put your earplugs on and put your helmet back on and you just get past the stage, you know, you bit it, yeah, crazy, so almost three years of rehab before you.

I got on a bike again, it was two years or yes, no, years before the first time I just rode a bike, you know, because it was three and a half years before I actually stood on the starting line of a run again and the first time I rode a bike was alone on a little piece of felt. I simply made a circle of about 200 meters. I mean, when I first got on the bike, I took off the kickstarter and raised my leg to start and I fell with the bike between my legs because I couldn't hold it and my teammates laughed so hard at me and finally they had to pick me up and I rode those 200 meters and you know, I couldn't. running, walking, I mean running or jumping or doing the sports that I used to use for BRT, just turning your tackle and just going, you know, it was amazing and in my mind I was thinking we can make this platform.

I think we could, we could, you know, yeah, you know, you wrote in your book that because it was so far-fetched, that's what made it compelling, you've eluded to it a couple of times here, I just can't imagine the idea. process my thought process would have been oh man I love motorcycling because there's a saying that you don't choose your passions, they choose you and motorcycling clearly chose you, which also chose me and I've said it several times Sometimes, I don't necessarily want to love motorcycling. I just love him. I can't help it. I just love it and you can't escape it, but I would have seriously thought about, well, maybe I should get into photography or something.

Motorcycling. Good, your story is kind. How incredible, so where was Meredith at that moment when you got on the motorcycle and started drinking again? Well you'll see she's the cool thing and then I mean you'll understand this and a lot of the guys watching this will understand this too. It's that you know how to open up to your wife and you don't agree with her about your passion or you don't understand, you know that they like it, yes, you know that they don't, they don't feel the same about motorcycles as you do, but but. they love you and they know the best passion and they want you to be happy and that's why it's one of those where she understood me and she understood and you know my need to go and you know these adventures and do these kinds of things and go for a walk on a bike and stuff, so I think for her it was as scary as it was and obviously it was scary seeing me get on a bike again and that kind of stuff, but she saw June, those specialists the first two years, everything that could.

I didn't have to endure all the frustration with this new body and accept things and things and all of a sudden being able to get on a motorcycle and just twist the throttle and be in the sun and be with my mates, she could see what that did. through my mind and then I say I have to be honest, she supported me and from day one she got a lot of pressure, you know, from people and the old ladies would be like he was your husband riding those. murder cycles yes you know there were a lot of experts but she understands me and supported me you know one hundred percent through everything amazing the irony was obviously a good motorcycle accident took all this functionality away from me and you.

I know that's what caused all my physical challenges, but when I came back from that I couldn't, I couldn't run anymore. I couldn't play sports like before, that kind of thing. I could ride a bike and I could walk. a pretty good bike and it was kind of the only thing I could still do and say yes, yes, that makes a lot of sense, so I have to mention to everyone who has this amazing book that I bought on the Amazon Kindle version, but you made it the audiobook was free during this time of kovat. Thank you and we will put a link later so people can listen to the audiobook.

You narrated the audiobook and her wife narrated her own pieces of hers. One of the things that I thought was great about the book is that you know it's one thing to be a great biker like you're adventurous and tough and everything else, but I said that the art of writing is a difficult thing and the structure of the story , etc. This is hard and I was in the book publishing industry for a while and editors would say things like if it's a movie or a book, if it's an action movie, the movies just shut down here, it's an action movie. movie there must be a point in the story where the protagonist is at the complete mercy of the villain, you know and there is no way out and that's what you have to think of Bruce Willis in Chains, you know, shaking because the bad guy has him. and if you don't have that, the story is just not going to succeed and your story just had that naturally, but it was so well written that it was more well structured than I ever imagined.

You know a normal motorcyclist. I could do it if you had help structuring the story or it's just you in it you and Meredith that's great to hear first of all, thank you and I often joke, but writing the book was harder than doing the degree, it was actually me. I literally went, I literally spent all night writing when it flowed and when it didn't, I slipped, but it was at the beginning, it was very difficult because you don't know how many chapters you don't know where. To begin with, you don't know what to do, so I started writing the stories of experiences, you know.

I gave the rallies I did, the off-road races, the things I thought about as a child and that led the way. Me and I would write these things about family that I thought were cool, you know, and me and I started putting all these stories together, but like, for example, how exactly a father's role is to embarrass his daughters in the mall. that that's one of your main callings and I did it, I started training it and stuff like that and I mean marrying a man, she probably had lost her mind because I would be like "I read this, I read this, you should read." and then you know he gave her opinion and I also had another partner named Gigi and Gigi had written a couple of books that had been published and he was fantastic and I would write a chapter and send it to him. and he would respond and say man, this is really cool, I love this, but this other birtija is total shit, take that, that's garbage and he was one of those really honest guys, which was fantastic and we went back and forth, so he, he.

He guided me through this a lot and yeah, we just hacked it that way and it got published, which was fantastic and it's your writing and Meredith's writing interspersed with each other. Meredith doesn't quite have it as a percentage of the book, but she is very emotional and very if they use the word vulnerable. I don't really like that because I can't imagine you being a vulnerable person in the sense that you know, but both. You know we're so honest about things you know, wearing a catheter and diapers and crying and trying to keep it together in front of girls and all that kind of stuff and she was, you know her emotions were extremely raw, you know she's scared. of death when you go to these races and she wrote that in a book that was a disaster, it was a difficult decision because when that was one of the things when I started writing it I thought, you know, obviously, you know like a guy you want to write and then I did this race and it ended up that you know you want the results and you want to show them the trophies and you want to like it, you want to do it like a race book and that kind of thing, but there was a deeper story of all the personal challenges and struggles and his reaching an agreement with the staff and that kind of thing and I was writing it and I was like hardened and when you want to tell people about this you know, this is a little embarrassing, all this and Meredith and I talked about it and We said look, if we're going to do this, let's all go in, let's leave everything on the table, let's be an open book with our lives with what I've been through because there are other guys that are struggling, there are other guys that have things like prostate cancer and that kind of thing that they have to use catheters and stuff and it's horrible, you know, but it's a reality for me it's a reality for them, so let's put it on the table and talk about it next, say, hey man, I'm struggling too, you know what I mean, this is hard for me too and so it was a conscious decision that we made to write a backstory and just put all that in there.

I'm glad you did, it makes the book so compelling even though it woke me up in the night, so yeah I'm just dreaming about it, so Elvis, my friend Neil, gave me that one originally, I think, and because when I get tired, and especially when I ride a bike, you know your legs get tired and my legs would go up stairs and you know they would jump like this on the bike so they would laugh at me because I was riding one and I would stop and I couldn't hold the bike and I could just tell that with the bike on my legs I would spasm like that and like that That's where we got the nickname Elvis, it's so funny, so you did a horrible job.

I mean, even now your legs aren't what they used to be, you can't run or play football, as you would call it, or rugby or whatever. but you did a lot of work in the gym, but partly because you think that's necessary to race the car, even if you haven't been paralyzed, right, probably yes, I mean, especially before the race, you know I was at a big disadvantage. and I knew it and that's why I have to be as prepared as possible, so you know, I figured out a light. You know, there were a lot of hours put in, but most of my time was spent on the bike and we all know cyclists.

You know the best way to get to 50 is to spend time in the saddle, so I would take several day trips to the Mozambique zoo and you know I got stuck in Botswana. I went there with Vinson Crosby, who was a swan and a boy. and he went up the deck or the same year I did it and we took a trip where he went through the bush. He felt that they were fantastic actors, you know, and in fact we ran to a race and the race went well, you know, we came back the next day. .

It was hundreds of kilometers across the Botswana savannah, so most of the training was just riding, riding, riding, then you, Meredith and the four girls went to a race where a ferocious cow chased you and you you got a new nickname, yes we laugh at this, we can laugh at it remembering it. I guess it's a moment where it must have been heartbreaking and at the time it was difficult, it was 2014, so if seven years after breaking my back and I am and I am working to get this deck or the gold. You know, I've done a couple of rallies, you know, like local races and there's one called AMA Gears RLE, which was a fantastic event that we're doing in South Africa and, unfortunately.

The guy who went and organized the race died in a gyrocopter accident and it was an amazing race. The ideas are early and I have done a couple of them. I'm understanding this this browsing experience. Israeli experience and and and I'm working towards these goals and stuff and I didn't even call the 500 pond goal on the border of Mozambique and Swaziland and I was running down this dirt road and, you know, eighty miles an hour. longer than me and there was this car that was just sticking out from beyond the bushes and you know I didn't even have time to brake, it was actually just one of those ones where it was like one and you know four guys out there that have hit animals and that kind of thing that everyone knows when they get attacked they always think I'm going to break or swerve when it happens it happened so fast and just boom I just boned this car and went flying down the track and the bike was waiting to be left blank and fortunately I went over it and, but I was, it was a mess, you know, I broke my ribs, I separated my collarbone from my shoulder, I opened my forearm and it exposed the bone of my forearm and it had shown me the triceps muscle from my elbow and it was quite remote, so I ended up lying there for several hours and then was road evacuated a couple of hours drive to a hospital in Richards.

Bay on the coast spent a week in hospital there he had surgery back to Johannesburg and you surely know you have been working hard at school for seven years and you are certainly back in thehospital and you're back in this terrible place and you're with all these injuries and it took six months of operations and one night and you know, pins and plates and all the fun stuff. That goes with it and it was like I was like what am I doing? you know maybe I just need to give up on this deck or meta maybe I'm just wasting my time I'm just being I'm just being dumb this is, you know, maybe it's time for you to just, you know, give up on this crazy dream and it was hard to accept. because it is my great goal in life, that is what I want to do and you certainly are. confront it by saying yes, maybe it's time and it was, yes, it was difficult, so repeatedly in the book you say that I had these moments where the internal dialogue, the doubt started to appear and I just had to stop it and say no. .

You can do this and that might be when you're in a race in front of an eight-story height or whatever, but there were times when you just felt inadequate and somehow convinced yourself to set foot and fly with the other. Yeah, you know, it really was one of those that was probably the point in this whole thing where you know I looked at it and it was like, maybe the right choice for me is as a parent as a parent. husband as a person and it's giving up on a crazy girl, you know, maybe it's like that, you know this is the right point to just cut off your license and live with what you date and it was hard to accept and it was and it was one of those where that he could come and go, but it's like he didn't want to be this guy who gave up and stuff.

I want you to know, I want you to know, I know I could, I know I could do this, but but no, maybe I got it and it was a lot of that and I decided, man, I need to kill my brain, so I decided I was going to ride a bike. to Cape Town from the riches of Janice Berg and it turned out to be a 2600 kilometer journey that took five days and I just went and rode as far as I could every day and then slipped and rode down through the city through the mountains Malucci and through the Drakensberg mountains and all these beautiful places that I've been to South Africa and I thought about this and I just ran it through my mind and decided: you know what man?

I can go a couple more rounds here, man, I've got some of me. I know no, I'm not done with this goal. I don't want to be one of those guys who lives on my deathbed and leaves. I agreed. You know I had big dreams and goals, but it became difficult and that's why I brought. They all go down and alpha at night and then you know I can do this. I came back from that trip and then we were back on deck or you know, you know, you remind me a lot of a guy I knew. her to the south behind another South African, you probably know who he is.

I think he's relatively famous, but embarrassingly I don't know, and what happened is I went to South Africa to run the Comrades Marathon, so yeah, I think four from Pietermaritzburg to Durban was a downhill climb. year and yes, I quickly learned that yes when Africans say marathon, be careful, they mean a lot of different things, in this one they mean 56 miles, not 26, yes, there is a lot of training for that and it was quite hot and it is mountainous and It's not a The hard surface is not an easy race, yeah, so it's a 50 mile mark.

I don't feel very good, but I keep running and I'm catching up with this guy who has high shoes and is running a marathon. high shoes and I could tell that the crowd was really interested in him and when I went to pass him, my number was color coded to show that I was not South African and he was very friendly to all the South Africans that he had been. on the Zulu Bus, you know, singing Zulu Wars and songs because they adopted Spears and everything you know, there were all these different buses you could run around with and now I was alone and I ran into this guy.

I'm very friendly and there was a helicopter flying overhead and every time a professional sports photographer took our photos, he grabbed my arm and held mine in his and I said, "You know, you're obviously someone very famous in South Africa." I'm embarrassed, I don't know who you are, an actor or something, and he said no, I love football. I think he said he was on the World Cup team and he was in the penalty area and he got knocked down and it broke. his vertebrae went up his back really high and he became paraplegic so all four limbs were paralyzed and it's like he tried, yeah, yeah, and remember what I said, but anyway, I said what and he said yes. , but I.

I only felt a little tingle on my fingertips after a lot of rehabilitation. I was very lucky because he was very well known, playing in the World Cup team, I received the best treatment and I got a little involved. fingertips and that gave us some hope that I could regain at least partial use of my arms and then I felt a tingling in my toes and after eight years of rehabilitation, nine years. Here I am, I'm doing the Comrades Marathon, so him being at Mile 50 was amazing, it was like, yeah, what is this spirit? Wow, it happens, you know, and a football player isn't even really an endurance athlete who would go through all that rehab and do everything else and obviously he wasn't. comfortable, it was hard for him to do it, but he was doing pretty well, he was ahead of me, so yeah, I think with any guy you have, you know, sometimes a physical injury, sometimes it's a financial issue or a victim of abuse or whatever. for what you've been through and sometimes you need it right.

I don't think that sometimes I think that you always need something to aspire to, something to motivate you, something to visualize in your future, that makes you bearable now and gives you something to work for, etc. I think maybe it's a very good lesson for anyone who is struggling. What you know now is to set a goal for the future. Make a plan. You know, those bikers pick a really cool trip you want to take someday and work. towards that, you know, yeah, yeah, it was really amazing. I was so inspired by that and I thought I would never hear another story like that and here I am face to face with you and it's just incredible, but a cow wasn't and So you had a titanium plate putting your arm on and everything and they nicknamed you cowboy and then you walk with Lyndon and do the Eco Challenge and this time it was a ferocious camel and that was just chaotic oh and you show your left wrist oh yeah, so the animals are done with me and a man, you know, I mean, here we are now, You know, we had all these other challenges and stuff and then we came back and there was this opportunity to travel with Lyndon. on the team races to places and we go to the African eco race and obviously it's one of those races where we know we've done the Decker and now there's this original deck that I read in North Africa and you're like, yeah, man .

Doing that would be epic too and doing it with London and honoring a team that races places with four other guys with a bunch of pit crew mates in terrible movies and it was like a once in a lifetime opportunity and I thought, let's do it, but You know, I thought, man, I've had all my crazy stories, I don't need any more crazy stories, this is going to be a nice smooth ride we're going to have. Through this, it's going to be cool to hang out with friends and stuff and it was hard, but it was killing, erasing, man and then on the second to last day, we want to be a zaanse on stage, the rant we're doing. at just over a hundred kilometers an hour, it's a 120 zone and in the middle of nowhere in the south of Mauritania and the camel footsteps act right on the side of the road and we were four cyclists together at the time, two British guys . and me and Greg and Greg Rockefeller South Africans and and III you know, I don't remember anything because I was unconscious in a loss, you know that, but I remember seeing the camel, that's the last thing I remember and Greg says that I.

It just swerved slightly and the camel turned slightly and we were shoulder to shoulder and I fell on the tire road and I was unconscious. Greg skied and hit the same camel and hit the Brit on our right and he kind of caught the camel's legs, so essentially three of us hit the same camel, it was crazy, it was just one of those weird things and suddenly now we hit two with a completely different story about how to deal with these things. Yeah, and that whole other story is kind of amazing because you have to be medically evacuated from there and it's like six hours to the hospital or something.

Yes, it was a man, because what is it like now? They had me taken out in the helicopter. and then, in about 15 minutes, they landed the helicopter and took me to a huge field and I think it was a hospital case, the closest hospital was in Senegal, on the other side of the border, and I don't think I could take the helicopter across the border so they put me in the ground ambulance then we went down this dirt road it was like it wasn't a road it wasn't even a dirt road it was in the back this this ambulance was rocking like this I remember seeing this drip hitting the window and the ceiling, kind of, you know, hanging over me and then, it was hour after hour after hour and we finally got there, so it crossed the border.

I remember the border guards opened the back of the ambulance and we checked passports and stuff and we arrived at a hospital in Senegal, a government hospital and obviously everything is quiet at this time, it's after midnight and they were in a lot of pain the side and they were worried. I had internal bleeding and they wanted to do an x-ray. That x-ray wasn't enough, so we had to get a cat scan and they had some kind of I don't know, man, cat scan machine, you know, one of the first. Some made me think and gave me this thing.

I was worried I was going to suffer some kind of radiation poisoning and they did a cat scan and in the middle of this the paramedic who stayed with me thank God because he almost never could. He spoke French, you know, so no one could speak English, but he could speak French and he liked broken English, so at least I had some kind of communication and he ended up sewing my head up because I split my head open, so I guess I did. he did like 15. stitches or 12 12 next time not yet, I say hey, well, yeah, we're all fine now, but here he sewed my head up in the hallway and from this hospital, the paramedic between these cat scans and stuff and finally they discharged me. of internal bleeding around 5:00 a.m. m., so I hadn't slipped for 24 hours and then they put me back in the ambulance and we went to the next bivouac which was in Senegal and then it had moved. in the same direction as the race and we arrived at the bivouac and we arrived at the bivouac just before 6:00 a.m. and as the riders are starting to leave and I mean, I haven't had all the I had a lot of injuries on my hands and things that hadn't been cleaned or anything yet and the organizers said look if you run the last special because I finished the day's special above, I just didn't complete the link. the last part of that link because it was on my link and with the race you can tow your bike on the long links, although they were fine with that for the whole race and then they said, look, if you ride the last day you can finish the race.

And then I thought, well, if we can finish this, it's this, do it, you know, and so we did it, so we had to put a plastic bag over my head so I could put my helmet on over the plastic bag and and we. I cut off my gloves and I put on my gloves and you know Linden is dead and you know he's an amazing guy and he helped me get geared up and stuff, you know and stuff, and we, we, we made fun and and lined up at that moment I went down to the beach to do the last 22 kilometers special and and in my mind I only go to 22 cages 22 caves that's all I have to do and the bikes are already gone and so I got to the beach and there were only cars lined up and I approached the marshal and he told me okay, just start with a cause and I said, you know, so I lined up next to these cars and said, man, lift these guys up. and they're gone and now I'm riding and I've got torn ligaments in my hand, but you know, this cut on my head, I've got all these injuries and stuff and I'm tearing my glasses and I'm in a lot of pain and I don't have a road book, so which is only twenty-two K, but you get off the beach and you do a few laps around that rose and I'm trying to figure out where to go. because the cars just went ahead and I thought I'd follow the guard that lost and the guy that lost wins slower and slower and slower and then he stops he's obviously broken and I think now what I do so I just wrote and He just went through that 22 K man, you know, and I got to that finish line and I stopped the bike because I couldn't push the clutch and stuff and I just thought the bike at that finish line I put my head.

I fell and I just cried man I was devastated and pretty much myself after that I took my helmet off and we crossed the finish line with the team and it was amazing that's amazing and no rider dropped out of that race because you did well , yeah, off that team, father of all, the ending, yeah, yeah, that's great. I can't imagine what was going through the other runners' minds, although they expressed some of that in the videos, but you know, people like Linden, I mean nobody. I was hoping to see you that morning, right, they just didn't know what your fate was if they had called you orsomething like that, yeah.Linda and I mean, can I just tell you that I have to give credit to our team and we had such a great team.

You know, you met a lot of the drivers in the series and you also met the pit crew, but you know, those put The team was man, they were solid guys and what they did was because my bike was obviously pretty destroyed, you know, I mean , you crashed it 100 into a camera with a hundred and twenty KS an hour on a road with tires, you know you're and Then your bikes broke down and they fixed that bike all night and when I got back there at 6 a.m. that black got pricked in case he came back and I mean, that's a testament to Linden and the team and you know.

It was so cool that they did that and I got to ride that right guard. They're black, you know, amazing, so now let's go back in time a little bit. You ran into a cow, you're devastated, you're trying to figure out if this dream was for you or not and you and Meredith finally decided, okay, I'm going for this dream, you had to raise a million of whatever your currency is in South Africa, remember, yeah, and that seemed unattainable, and you made it the starting line, you know, that's the part of the book, I mean, it wouldn't be a book if you didn't, that's the compelling part of the story that you made until the starting line and then you read the coverage stage by stage from the inside, they tell the way you write it, you know what?

When you're so vulnerable and things like that, like the marathon stage, etc. When you spend so many hours and you have these trucks and cars behind you, you want to talk a little bit about what it was like, yeah, and those early stages, I'm sure you know something that you said a couple ago. Sometimes in

interviews

you talk about the best runners and good runners and that kind of thing tonight I need to be pretty clear on this fit, but I'm not, I'm not a better runner, you know, I'm not a me. I'm not a guy, you know, I'm not a guy like Lyndon and these kind of guys, you know, I'm, you know, I'm like you know I can ride and stuff, but I'm not a, I'm not.

Those kind of guys when I go to the starting line and I'm not just dealing with this kind of stuff, man, I don't belong here, man, I'm out of my depth, I mean, I'm already on deck. This is crazy and a long road stops you there for a minute. Your regional races in South Africa you did quite well. You put it. Do you like second place in a big multimodal race? Yeah, that was years ago, but it was one of those ones where I felt off my dick and I was 40 and you've been paralyzed and yeah, yeah, and I'm and I'm thinking, man, what am I doing here? and I and it was like, this is, this is, this is. just crazy, I mean those trucks celebrated for the first time.

I mean, he had told me about trucks and racing on a deck line and you think you know how scary it is, but the first time that truck pulls up on the porch and it's like a two-story house. building a whistling stance is crazy you know and you realize wow this is mental and it was like I saw this and at the end of telling you I clearly remember at the end of the third day I was so physically and mentally exhausted. I had been spending, you know, I went into the dark in the morning, I went into the dark at night, I slept four to six hours at night.

I was destroyed, destroyed at the end of the third day and I'm like I'm out of this race, there's no way I can make it 13 days when I feel like this on day 3 our thoughts how I thought I would feel at the end of the race, but What I did was I decided I would do it. what I did in the hospital, which was I couldn't cope with my whole life being paralyzed, that was like a man, that was such a huge way to try there and if you think about it, you just can't do it, but she broke it down into two months in two weeks in two days and there were some days in the hospital where I was like, "I'm going to get through this next busier session or I'm just going to get there at lunchtime or and sometimes it was like the next one." ten minutes just ten minutes and that's what I did in the race.

I see a track that I'm going to go through one more day and sometimes it was one more stage and I remember there was one stage in particular that was so brutal that I thought 10 more meters and that was day 4 10 more meters 10 more meters and I have a little strategy I've used in enduro wrestling, someone gave me advice once that you only need to stop where you can stop and there were a lot of guys burning engines and things getting stuck in the dunes and stuff, and I'd pick a little junik sometimes 10 or 15 meters ahead and went straight, we'll get to that one because the sand was terrible. smooth and it was all messed up on the tracks and stuff and I just went in there, I guess I have BA and I just pulled up on top of that little guy with my front wheel on it and turned the bike off. and I would wait and choose another peak.

I go boom boom boom from these places, two points take forever, but I just worked my way through and worked my way through and suddenly I had Dave coming in from behind and then I had the day. five in the bag are these little pieces added up and a six and a seven you get to race day and you're like halfway there. I got to the couple. This is fantastic and then I started running around a bit. I'm sorry. I got to college and I just submitted and it just started ticking and I started adding up the days and adding up the days and you got up to day twelve or thirteen and that's when everything fell apart, but before you got there, You had some moments in the Dakar, like one time it was a very narrow stretch of road, so describe how the alarms work when you hear the beep and look back, 300 meters behind you there is a big truck coming twice as fast. of your speed.

Yes you know that trucks are faster than most motorcyclists and especially on certain terrains they are much faster and the way it works is that on every truck and car they have transponders installed and on every bike there is an alarm. and then what happens is that the car or the truck leaves behind the motorcycles in the morning and so during the morning and during the day they catch many motorcyclists and when they see a motorcyclist in the distance they press the button to catch them. or your truck and it sends an alarm your bike so you're riding in the living room when your bike goes off I just did it I did it I did it like this and you're a little rock and in that On the screen it says car or truck and what you do is a motorcyclist, you turn around and you see that guy kneeling normally 300 meters back, you know, and you look for a place on the track where you can stop and you stop. to the side and you pull up and this car track just comes ready, oh you know, you know, kick the you know, the chicken coop in the back of those things like half bricks and stuff, you know, I'm sure, guys from the Baja race and these.

In these types of races they will know what the cards and the trucks are like and, you know, they just throw all this chicken coop and you become completely invisible in this cloud of dust and that's why it's important that you get off the track, but sometimes there are two. or three vehicles in a row and you wait for it to get dusty, except you look at the track, make sure there is no other car and you go back to that track and more, and after you run again and yeah, it's probably the most scary what can happen to you, because there are guys who know that 90% or 99% of all the races we do are motorcycle races, they are just motorcycles, you know, sometimes you can race with quads at most, but suddenly you are racing. against 210 cars and eight ton trucks it's just mental you know yeah so describe one in particular where the road was too narrow and had a high wall and you just had to press yourself against the wall yeah that's actually what they rated . like rock, so it was like all the rocks, you know, the size of footballs and stuff, and what they did was they leveled this path through this environment and it was like throwing all the rocks aside so that the rocks were left standing up, you know, it's kind of a meter, even in each one and a half, in places they were just piled up like this, but it was serious, it seemed to me like it was a single lane that would be tight in a car and I.

I'm running and this alarm goes off and I turn around and I see this truck and he's a few hundred meters behind, but I can see this track that goes for four kilometers, so I'm hitting it as much as I can until I get to the point where the one that I think I have enough stock, you know he caught me and started pulling me out, buddy, I gotta get out of the way, but there's no way to God, you can't get out. of this aryan after that, it's just rock and you know, and over and over again, a 400-pound recovery, so I stepped aside and just stopped and I remember leaning my bike against this rock wall or a pile of rocks and looking across the track, to the other side, and thinking there's not enough room there for a track, you know, it just wasn't enough and I remember this truck coming.

I breathed in the art and I let myself start rocking and I was regretting all those big pizzas I had eaten and I just lost as much weight as I could and worked on this truck. I'm partying and can I tell these crazy Russians and Dutch guys there and they slow down for anything, man and he just, Oh, he went right by me like that and it was cool, it was one of those where you know, man, It was, yeah, it was very scary, you say you said in the book that you were waiting to go towards the light I could hear my grandfather calling me you know what it's like here we go yeah, yeah, that's crazy and you were also grateful for losing the 10 kilograms or whatever you lost to get to the race get into race shape, yeah holy cow, so what happened next is what you actually opened the book with, you had a huge cliffhanger when you opened the book, it's like, holy wait this doesn't make any sense what I just read doesn't line up with what my expectations are knowing he finished a car that doesn't and then of course you have to read the whole book to find out what happens so You were about to tell that story.

I think so, you know, so it's the second lie today they 1213 and I know I had had problems and they live and in fact, and I think it was the day I buckled the steering wheel and it was all kinds of challenges, so I know you were right. Writing torn ligaments, yes, that was an impulse and that's what happened. I'm a fall that happened on the fourth day, so I rode most of the race; those were those torn ligaments, but I think I had other challenges. It was the girls who were left to read it, but I had a challenge, weren't they living?

So I finished, they lived close to getting lost so I started day 12 lost so I'm completely lost in the race and that's it. Go and good morning, we went into a semi-arid like desert section and there were a lot of fish and fish and that kind of thing and there were these twin tracks, you know, like a jeep track that meandered and what had happened. As the years went by, those tracks had gotten deeper and deeper, so it was like two parallel rats running through this area, but the rats were full of fish, so as cyclists, we know that's how it is, it's so people ride on that kind of terrain because you have a little bit of vegetation here and there, and the center island is so steep that you can't ride on the center island, so you have to pick a routine and stay on that wreck and so on. which was on this rat on the left and I'm moving as fast as I can, but now you can only do 50 or 60 caves because it's hard to see the wrecks with all the fish, but obviously the cars and trucks with four. wheels, those guys just came flying, you know what they were, it was one of those sections where they were doing double speed Barker's and I was running from left to right and my alarm goes off and it's like he did it, he did it. and I turned around expecting to see this car, you know, two or three hundred meters back, but it's like 20 or 30 meters back and it's going more than twice my speed and I realized that I literally had about two or three seconds to go. go out. out of his way and I and I are waiting for me to turn to the side and I saw this guy and I turned around and I yelled at the guys at the bar to turn into the bushes and while I'm doing this, it's in a place where the rat is particularly deep so your front wheel just dragged against the inside of that right without being able to get up and you know what it's like when you've really committed and your bike stays on the right. and it's like going against a sidewalk on your bike, you know you and you like to pass, you can't stop and it went and this guy was on top of me and I just launched off this bike and I just heard a crunch and this guy crashes right into the side back of my bike and he straightens up completely on the motorcycle and I can't believe this and he missed me by just a few inches and you know I'm on my knees there, I'm like spinning on the ground.

I'm on my knees, the dust is clearing. I see this bike in front of me and the guy stopped, it's just a bike that needs his there and the Navigator stopped the car and he and he and he give me a Thumbs up standing there, you know, like a foot in the store of cars and I said no, I could come back, man, and he got back in that car and drove off and I just couldn't believe it, yeah, man, I'm telling you. What I was thinking I'm going to cut this guy up and bury himin the desert man and I was, like I told you, I was boiling, you know what it was and this 10 year journey that took me to the beginning of that race and on Day 12 with 13 and I'm out of this race and my bikes destroyed and also I'm thinking about the cost of all this and I can't believe it's over and now there's obviously going to be more cars and stuff. it was coming so I dragged that bike off that track and lifted it up and the box destroyed the frame was bent the subframe was all bent these 3 gas tanks on the bike to other gas tanks completely destroyed all the petrels.

Runner, footrest. It's cut out of the frame so you know it's broken, so parts of the frame are still attached to the footrest, the entire exhaust is completely flattened and bent towards the rear wheel and the entire back of the backrest is broken. the brakes and everything, all the brake lights and everything, all the wiring and the bars are bent, the triple clamps were bent and you know, the bikes just went all the way in and I can't believe it and you know I just stood there and it's just in disbelief and I'm alone in the middle of nowhere, I'm lost as a stone, there are no other bikes behind me and I'm out of this race, them twelve or thirteen and you know, it was just, I felt like just Such an unfair man like this is so wrong on every level, especially I've been through the days of life to get this far and I think all that credit, I think Meredith said later, that's how cruel life can be, yeah, yeah, and I thought . about Meredith and I thought she would see me Stein lost, you know she's following the race and she'll see that I stopped without reaching another landmark and I know she'll get worried, you know, as time goes by and she sees that I'm not making any progress. a reference point, she will be like you know something happened and after our story you can know that she has every right to think that and I think I have a cashier, I have to tell her that I am in the race and that I carry a satellite. phone and I pulled out my satellite phone and I found her app and you know she answered and I said the first thing I said was I said I'm not injured because she's used to getting that call and I said but this is what happened and I'm and I'm out of the race and she just cried and you know I had, you know, I like to say it was the fish fish in my eyes that made my eyes fill with tears and, but you know, I stood there a few miles away and We cried together, it was great to say what a way to end and I hung up the phone and I looked back at this and I and having done a few rallies, you know?

The thing is, you rarely use your one act when you miss your starting time the next day and I decided I know I'm out of this race. I had four hundred and sixty miles to run that day. It's nothing I can do, but I decided that tomorrow morning I will only arrive at four o'clock when I missed the X part-time and I am not going to quit before then, wherever, and if I press this, that's what What will we do and that's how I started. When trying to fix the bike I disconnected all the wiring and stuff, and I was really worried that it would spark and the whole bike would catch on fire because it was all full of fuel.

I removed all the exhaust from the bike and disconnected the gas tanks. which were damaged and I had to take part of the bottom off Iko and everything so the kids could turn because the whole tower had broken and bent towards the kids and everything and I and I took it off and I got the boys to turn and I got that the rear end worked without exhaust with that, you know, it folded guys without navigation and the road book was completely destroyed and and the whole tower or the carbon fiber and everything, but I made it work, but I couldn't ride that one anymore track, especially with a footrest.

You know what it's like to ride in a luggage rack. You know, you need your footrests, so I just zigzag through the bushes. You know, keeping the track inside to my left. From time to time a car or a truck would pass by and I would observe them in the distance as much as I could and I would point to that point on the horizon and I would go a few kilometers away and while I was waiting I would run up the hill. At this moment you know exactly what I had, just I had a few liters of fuel left at the next place I hit civilization 65 kilometers away and I have enough fuel for like twenty-five K, maybe I'm wasting it. my time I'm out of this race I just know I'm being I'm being stupid I know I'm out I know it's just I'm going backwards inevitable I'm like a dead man walking with you I know it and I kept taking it off, accepting this again, that I'm a mathematician and the cool thing what it is and thinking about what I'm going to do to the driver of the car when I find him and, yes, it's all over and then a mirage.

In the desert you can't do it, I'll tell you what you know. I don't know if I say it in the book, it didn't even occur to me at the beginning when what was happening happened because I'm riding and suddenly there's a bicycle stopped there in the middle of the semi-arid, it's a KTM 450 Railly replica exactly the same as mine from Barkers, standing in the desert and at first I saw it and thought, oh that's terrible, someone crashed. u obviously go back to being MIDI to act, you know, that's a tip, wait a minute, you know, and suddenly I realized, Ana and I stopped on this bike and there were three guys, Argentine guards, you know, an old man dirty.

The bikes are just spectators in the middle of nowhere, you know, and they can't speak English, but they kind of explained to him that the guide broke down in his arms and they found him, he backed up in the helicopter now when they when they. I met the coolest guy after they took all the tracking gear off the bike and put it on the rider when they put them on the helicopter, so here's this bike with all the tracking gear on and took it off to meet the riders outside of the race and that. The bikes will stay there until the sweeper truck comes and picks up the back, but the thing is, the decorating rules are that I can't ride on their backs, but I can use parts of that bike and I mean, I'm Janice's Berg, the South African and Reena Hardy, they borrowed things so I decided that's what we're going to do and these three guys helped me and we took all the exhaust off their bike and we know there was so much stuff on their bike because the guys You'll appreciate this, I mean, we took the gas out of his bike and he's very quick at just taking a tank off the side of the bike, but you're so tired, you're so exhausted that it's so hard to think straight. you just do dumb things, I mean we took the whole exhaust off, we put the whole exhaust on my bike, then we took the whole side of the frame off with the whole footpeg mount and it all went to my bike, we realized we had to take the whole thing off exhaust again to put that part on and then put the exhaust back on, so he liked things twice, we sat on the gas and got my bike running and I mean, to make a long story short, you know?

We started it. I still needed all the navigation equipment and stuff, but we ran out of time to try to get there before the next morning and at that point I was four hours behind the guy who was sick and lost and So there will still be contact with the guys until 4 a.m. m., so I had to go and I started riding and I took the route book and I pulled out about five or six tulips and I looked at these five or six tulips and I folded it, I put it in my pocket, I rode, I stopped pulling a little more and so on and I would just move forward and then it would get dark and I would pull out these tulips, look at them with a torch and leave. and you know, marking my way through that day during the night and then traveling alone in South America and the middle of the night is pretty scary and you know we wrote you some mountain passes, we crossed some rivers and we crossed rivers that marked on your own is a man there were some pretty crazy things and he just says us in that sense, but you said it right, oh yeah, I talked to myself, so I guess sometimes I think that's the week, but I kept tickling myself. my way that night and it's 11 at night I was still riding 1:00 in the morning 2:00 in the morning and I got to the end of the special and there was no one to make me big.

They packed up, they had gone home hours ago and I could see in my because I have one of my codes working, so I could see by my eye code because it resets when I get to that Waypoint, so I know I'm in the right place and at end of the special now there's no finish line, no Marshalls, so I kept driving and got to the link, which was a pretty short layout and me and I rode and got to the finish. pits and in the pits and if the bivouac is my teammate Walter too blind, she had gone out on the fourth day with her with the clutch burned out and he was waiting for me at a quarter past 2 in the morning at the door of the bivouac Walter He turned pale and got on the back of the bike and we rode in those places together and it was just yeah, it was something crazy, special, that's crazy, just the craziest thing I've ever heard in my life, that's me.

I think that's part of what makes the book so great, so we're a little overtime, but we want to hear the end. I don't know how many spoilers we are going to give. You've given a lot, so yes, in a way. leads to a medal on the final podium in the car and a big smile from you eating shit, oh man, it was, it was crazy, but I mean, the next day was full of crazy and falling asleep on the bike and there was a lot of relationship that last day and all kinds of things that I went through, but something that I think is worth mentioning is that I slept for an hour that night and I had a choice when I entered that bivouac that I could sleep for an hour or I could go and fill a incident report form, send it all in and tell what happened and find out who this other driver is and what and tell him what he had done and and get my justice and all that, but I chose to sleep and I went in for an hour and I rode that last day and I finished that car and crossed that final podium and that was something that was a great lesson in my life because they had the last day when I rode.

I thought about this incident and I thought about what had happened and I thought because I still don't know who that guy was and I thought about my lackey out of this. An incredible journey that I have to go through on my back on the second to last day was one of the best things that ever happened to me because it gave me an incredible ending to this crazy story and as I write, I thought of you. I know what it doesn't matter who he is and you know he'll live with what he's done and I can get revenge or whatever it is, it's just a waste for both of us and that's how I left it and I never found out who he was and to this day I don't know who it is and I'm fine with that, so we finished, you have a medal, we came home to my amazing wife Meredith and my four daughters, my maid for the airport and it was just amazing.

You know, you remind me of one of the most important life lessons of my life. I think a couple of people have told me in the past that there are three things you can focus on in life: personal grievance, personal ambition or mission, focusing on the mission is the best way to solve the other two and terrible things are going to happen to you. that they are so unfair and cruel and everything else just focus on the mission alone You have to get the personal grievance out of your mind, just focus on the mission and it seems to me that that is what you went through, you were furious and you wanted to divide this guy and then you thought yes, but the mission.

It's getting on the podium, finishing the car, how is everything? and then you got totally absorbed in that and the mission was to sleep for an hour, not make any personal complaints, fill out paperwork and all that, and I think that's one of the best life lessons I've ever tried to tell my sons and daughter. , so anything else, Joey, it's been fantastic. I mean, reading the book is great, watching the eco-racing videos that Lyndon put together was great even though the camel thing happened, but that made the story better be amazing, it was crazy, you know?

And I'm sorry for just babbling, I just got carried away with everything and things got better, but for the kids who watch Manny and already know the books, it's free. you can download the audio version that you know on your guys' websites and listen to it during the lockdown and I just hope that it encourages the guys to continue, you know, everyone carries a burden, everyone is dealing with something in their lives and Especially now, these are all kinds of financial impacts, there are all kinds of family and friends impacts, and you know, we worry about it, friends, and all kinds of things you know about these kinds of things, so I hope you have strength.

There's a lot more intimate to it than we can cover right now, so I hope you enjoy it and it gives you some perspective and keeps you pursuing your own goals and dreams. Thank you so much. Yes, yes, sir. Oh, Sh should too. Thanks to Paul who put this together and showed the images in the video. I guess you guys saw it. I couldn't see it on my machine. Oh great. Thanks Paul. Thank you. They had a bank. Paul and David Rudolph, who know they keep a DB pilot active. and who was just diagnosed as a kovat survivor Wow, he had a serious illness and he felt terrible and his parents are doctors and he and Wade were texting back and forth.

I told him friend,It sure sounds like you did it and yesterday he received the lab test and had it done. I have the antibodies now so I'm going to attack him for survival for people who like this please like it it will help our channel and subscribe so you get notifications about others and see you next time.