Confessions of a Drugstore Car Guy
By Carroll G Anderson

Winter’s coming and, this year, it seems it’s coming pretty darn fast . . . aren’t we supposed to get some Fall before it gets too cold and nasty? This time of year I start thinking about “the Season” back home in Arizona. Out there you cruise and attend car shows in the winter when it’s dry and cool. The rest of the year it’s dry and hot enough to barbeque on the tailgate, no grill required! Winter is also off-road season in the desert and that’s what’s tugging at my nostalgia strings right now.

My friends, family and I used to love off-roading although, truth be told, it was really “bad-roading.” While you can go just about anywhere you want in the desert, you’re supposed to drive where someone has already blazed the trail; it ain’t environmentally correct to scar up the desert. Wheel tracks tend to become permanent fixtures in that neck-of-the-woods. There are, however, plenty of existing tracks and ruts to follow and no reason to really of “off-road.”

There are lots and lots of four-wheel drive treks that will provide plenty of white-knuckled travel. I believe it’s both reasonable and prudent to utilize existing routes when exploring in the desert; it’s also wise to travel with at least one other vehicle. Several times in my four-wheeling career we found intrepid (that’s another term for stupid) off-roaders who headed out ill-equipped and on their own and wound-up stuck. Some of them might still be there if we hadn’t come along.

The following report illustrates the thrills and spills that are available in the desert, in the winter. My friend Clint told me the story as we were climbing Harquahala Peak in his new Jeep.

All’s Well That Endos Well

Several years ago my friend Clint and a couple of his motorcycle riding buddies entered the Barstow-Las Vegas race. Now, none of these guys are/were kids; suffice it to say they were riding in the Over-40 classes. They did all have a number of years and lots of desert riding experience under their belts, however. Clint, especially, knew how to prepare for a race and never started without everything he’d need, within reason.

One of the guys, Allen, had earned “points” from competing in a previous race so he got to start with the “pros.” Clint and the other buddy, Bob, were in the amateur class and got to start at the same time. In races like the B-LV, the classes start together several minutes apart so Allen was long gone by the time Clint and Bob’s group took off. They didn’t figure on seeing him until Vegas.

The B-LV race, billed as a 250 mile event is actually only 236 miles long. But even then it’s 4 ½ hours of the most diabolical terrain the promoters can get permission to traverse; and that’s for the fastest vehicles on the course. Clint and Bob planned on being on the trail a lot longer than that! For the unititiated, 6 or 8 hours of bone-jarring rocks and whoop-de-doos at WFO is deliberately no walk in the park. If it wasn’t so much fun (in the minds of the kind of people who actually like that sort of thing) it would be considered unconstitutionally cruel and unusual punishment.

As stated earlier, the course for an event like the B-LV 250 is deliberately as difficult as the promoters can make it. In desert racing that means rocky hills, soft sand washes, and washboard terrain called whoop-de-doos, or whoops. There is a mad science in the development of whoops, too. They have to have a certain interval between peaks and valleys or they’re too easy. Riders quickly figure out how fast they have to go to jump from the upside of one whoop to the downside of the next. Or how slow they can go just to float over them. A “good” course, of course, features whoops with all sorts of intervals so that rhythm is much harder to achieve. In any case, riding whoops is like one kick in the ass after another, ad naseum. Couple that with steep hills covered with loose rocks and washes with really deep, shifty sand and you’ve pretty much defined the B-LV race experience.

Clint keeps himself in pretty good shape and, considering the nature of the course, wasn’t having too hard a time in the first leg of the race. Bob, however, wasn’t in good shape at all and was getting his ass kicked from the git-go. It wasn’t very long before he was suffering and his predicament was obvious to Clint, who slowed down to keep an eye on his buddy. At one point, on a hill that Bob simply wasn’t going to get up without help, Clint used the tow strap he carried to pull the other bike to the top. The hills, fighting sand in the washes, and the whoops had Bob on the ropes and the race had just gotten underway!

Fortunately, after the first checkpoint the course got somewhat easier and Bob was able to get his second wind. Seeing that his buddy was going to make it, at least on this stage, Clint concentrated on riding his own race. Now that he was on his own, Clint was able to log some miles WFO and started passing some bikes. Just as it looked like he might make up some of the time he lost helping Bob, however, Clint’s bike broke. Sitting there watching everyone go by, Clint figured at least Bob could tow him to the next checkpoint!

Sometime late, seeing Bob’s rotund form approaching, Clint picked his bike up. But Bob didn’t stop, didn’t look in Clint’s direction; he went by oblivious to the crippled bike and stranded rider. Didn’t see you, he later contended. After some fiddling, Clint was able to get his bike to keep running so at least he didn’t have to push while walking along beside it. How far could it be to the next checkpoint?

Turns out he never made it; not afoot, anyway. After walking the bike about a quarter mile, Clint came across another rider who’d had some bad luck; worse than Clint’s, it turned out. This guy was in pretty poor shape. He said he thought his collarbone was broken. He’d hit a rock and endo’d over the handlebars, landing hard on his right shoulder. On the bright side, he said, it looked like his bike was okay.

Clint asked him what he was going to do, that it would be later that night before they sent out people to look for casualties. On a course like this there wasn’t a parallel track for support vehicles to be able to reach downed riders. Unless there were injuries so severe that the event had to be shut down for a medevac, the wounded had to stay put until it was all over.

The guy, he said his name was Doug, told Clint he’d been riding with a group from his club, that they knew where he was, and that they’d be back for him as soon as they could. He asked Clint if he had any water and some asprin, that his canteen was about empty and his shoulder was starting to hurt.

Clint replied that he was nearly out of water, too, and he didn’t have any aspirin. What he did have was a bottle of brandy and some percodan and he’d gladly share those. Doug was welcome to some of each, if he thought they’d help.

Well, Doug was pretty sure they’d help; alone or, even better, together. In exchange, he offered his bike so Clint could continue the race.