Baldy Interviews The Legend Joey Evans

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're 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 and 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 I ran again and the first time I rode a bike was just 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 is a saying that you don't choose your passions, they choose you and motorcycling clearly chose you, which also chose me and I have 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 them in 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 bikes 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 away all this functionality from me and you.

I know that's what caused all my physical challenges, but coming 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 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 it's great to hear that first thank you and I often joke but writing the book was harder than doing the race, 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 together all these stories, 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 had probably gone crazy 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 a lot through this 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 of you. 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 has scared to 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 the 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 it all 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 where 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 know that with the bike on my legs I would spasm like that and like that That's where we got the nickname Elvis, he's so funny, so you did a horrible thing.

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 guy. and he went up the deck or the same year I did 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 that the race went well, you know, we came back to the day following.

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 incredible 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 it just boned this car and it 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 the hospital, there he had surgery back to Johannesburg and you surely know that you have been working hard at school for seven years and you are certainly back in the hospital and you are back in this terrible place and You have all these injuries and it took you sixour 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 So 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

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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 party 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 that is, but the first time that truck pulls up on the porch and it's like a double decker. 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 he was going straight, we will 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 cyclists 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 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 stop and this car track just comes ready, oh you know, you know, kick the you know, the chicken coop behind those things like half bricks and stuff, you know, I'm sure, Baja race guys 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, I went back 180 kilograms, so I pulled over and just stopped and I remember leaning my bike against this wall of rock or a bunch of rocks and looking across the track, on 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 and I just lost as much weight as I could and worked my butt off in this van. 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 ones where you know, man , it was, yeah, it was, it was pretty scary, you say you said. the book you were waiting for 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 put on in race form, 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 said reading doesn't align with what my expectations are knowing that it ended a car that doesn't and then of course you have to read the whole book to know what happens so you were about to tell that story.

I think so, you know, so it's the second lie today it's 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 were living almost lost, so I started on day 12 lost, so I'm 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 I literally had about two or three seconds left. to 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 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 couldn't believe it, yeah, man, I'm telling you. what I was thinking I'm going to cut this guy up and bury him in 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 thatrace and on Day 12 with 13 and I'm out of this race and my bikes destroyed and I'm also thinking about the cost of all this and I can't believe it's over and now obviously there will 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.

Corridor, the stirrup. 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, and all the wiring and the bars are bent, the triple clamps were bent and you know, the bikes just stuffed them 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's 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 This one is so wrong on every level, especially I've been during the days that I lived 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 waypoint 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, we I stood there just 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 six hundred and sixty kilometers 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. In 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. I 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 weave 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, everything is 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 how 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, I put it in my pocket, I would ride, I would stop pulling a little more and like that and I just went on my way and then it got dark and I pulled out these tulips and looked at them with a torch and left. 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 crazy, special, that's crazy, 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. The incredible journey 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 get an hour of sleep, 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 awesome, that 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 buddy, it sure sounds like you did it and yesterday he got the lab test and had it done. I have theantibodies now so I'm going to attack him for surviving for people who like this please like it will help our channel and subscribe so you get notifications about others and see you next time.