2005 Best In The Desert; Hendersons Terrible 400

[CannondaleRider]

Justin and I were supposed to go WATCH the Best in the Desert race in Nevada..the Henderson 400. Our race partner Jeremy Butler and some race partners of his, Rick Ellsworth and Todd Ellsworth were racing in it on a Bombardier DS650 Baja.

It was still planned for us to leave after I get out of school, TRY to get to the riders meeting, and watch the race on Saturday....until

I get a call from krash at about 8:00AM Thursday morning, saying he needed 3 things; for me to get some money, obtain the ability to get checked out the next day, and to get my gear ready.

We left at 1:05 on Friday, and Krash and I were on our way to Henderson to race with a guy we had never met in person, on a DS650 Baja we had never seen, nor rode....and neither of us had ever rode a DS650

We got to tech at about 6:30, got through it without problems, and started walking through the lines of Trophy Trucks, Pro Trucks, Trick Trucks, Unlimited Class Buggies, Jeepspeed Jeeps, Hummers, Stock class Super Duties, Quads, Dirtbikes, Rhinos...and the list goes on...these are the big money guys. We watched the free concert that BITD had, Seven Mary Three was the band, afterwards we attended the Mandatory Rider/Driver meeting, then went back to camp to talk about plans for race day, and get some sleep.

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We woke up at about 6:00AM Saturday Morning, and started getting geared up, and doing last minute checks on the bike. We all went over to staging and got into our places..and waited

Todd took off at about 7:10am, Todd is one of the riders on the other team that was with us(Todd Ellsworth, Rick Ellsworth and Jeremy Butler - Q83)...Derek, our first rider on our team (Derek Garza, Justin Thompson, Chance Mayfield - Q77) took off 2 quads behind him...a minute later.

The first lap was on the Pro Truck/Buggy track, and consisted of mainly wide open straight aways, for 43 miles. We were to do this lap once, then do six 35 mile laps on the Quad/Motorcycle loop. We heard over the radio, at about 9:00, that our quad was down with a flat right front tire about 5 miles after Pit 2( putting him at about Race Mile 24)....Race officials told us to bring the tire to the officials at Pit 2, and they would take the tire to him...we got to Pit 2...no officials. We found the Rescue guy, who had all radio frequencies. He started radioing people to find out where the quad was. We were there for 15 minutes when he translated to us that he was(somehow) on the asphalt at the entrance to the pit, back about a mile where we came from. We took the tire to him, we changed it in about a minute, and the official that brought him there directed him through a shortcut so he wouldn??????????????????t be with the Trucks (who took off at 8:15am) for longer then he had to. He was still passed by a buggy and a Pro Truck on the last leg of that lap, a fast power line road where we recently saw a yellow Pro truck cruising at about 120mph, while we were looking for Derek

We hauled a$$ back to the main pit and prepared for him to pit. When Derek came in, Jeremy had already been out on one of the 35 mile laps for about 15 minutes...bear in mind, he was the last rider in the rider order, meaning Todd(who was with us finding Derek) had already run, RICK had already done a 35 mile lap, and Jeremy had been on his first lap for 15 minutes...we were over a lap down

The pit went fast, we topped it off with fuel, went over the bike a little, and Justin was off to do our first 35 mile loop, and his first time ever riding a DS650. From what I??????????????????ve heard it went alright for him. He got a left rear flat about half way through, and we still doing fine with it...Until Race mile 28 through 29.5....Which everyone in our camp agreed was the slowest, most technical, most steep, most treacherous, SCARIEST trail they've ever been on. Its a "Twisty Mountain Trail"(as read on the dangers sheet). Your basically riding down a ravine, which is drainage from most of that side of a mountain, with an elevation change of 3000 to 1000 feet in that mile and a half, it looks like a perfect spot for a professional rock crawling championship. He had to try about 7 times to go up one left hand sweeping hill, because his flat tire kept sucking him into a ravine on the inside, and about putting him over backwards.

He slowly crept through it and got it back to our pit. He had a lap time of about 1:37(Hour : Minutes). So around noon, it was my turn to go, us still over a lap down, we fueled up again, swapped that tire, checked over the bike again, and I jumped on and took off(also my first time ever riding a DS)...I cruised pretty slow for about 4 miles, then slowly started getting into my race pace. It was crazy for me, finding myself topped out on a power line road, 4th gear pinned(this is 16-38 gearing) and preparing myself for a whoop or square edge, that would KILL me if I was on my usual Utility class bike, and not even FEELING IT, at double the speed!!!. It was a Cadillac.

I started feeling pretty comfortable on it, and also getting wore out. Mainly my hands, the rocks from Race Mile 5-6 and 14-15 were brutal, it made it so the bars shook so bad that you couldn't hold on to the bars tightly, but if you didn't the bars would "bounce" around in your hands and beat the he!! out of them. I'll admit, I had to stop once and rest my hands for 30 seconds or so, then TRY to go back to race pace.

I was also doing fine, till about 1/4 to 1/2 through the treacherous downhill, when I got a FRONT LEFT flat tire. I was going real slow during that, I came over a peak of a hill, came down it, and had to make a right hand corner, where you ride on a LEFT angle bank(30 degrees or so), The flat front tire pulled me over to the pebbles on the left side, and slid me down the steeper bank(45 degrees or more) which was pure rock, covered in 4 inches or so of small pebbles, for about 6 feet..NO traction, any time I tried to ride out, it would spin, slide, and push me down farther. When I stopped trying to go up, was when my left rear tire was hanging over the edge of a rock face, which was about 6-7 feet deep, with boulders on the way down, and at the bottom, If the bike was to fall the way it was trying to, it would roll back onto a boulder and would: 1. Demolish the gas tank, or 2. Do enough damage that I wouldn't be able to ride it out. A guy on a Raptor stopped and tried to help out, and then told me he would tell the next checkpoint that Q77 was stuck a few miles back. A few other people stopped and checked if I was hurt. I just waved them on because I didn't think they would be any help, and didn't want to make them place worse because of me.

Finally I just got flat out pissed off and started pulling the front end DOWN the rock face, the rear end also slid and it was going to for sure roll on down, right about that time one of Epic Racings' Riders, Greg Row, on another DS650 - Q33 stopped and jumped right in to help me out (he was a life saver, I??????????????????ll never be able to thank him enough), he held the rear end while I pulled it down so it was facing down hill. We got out of the way, took off the parking brake and pulled in the clutch..Away it went. it rolled to the bottom and stopped. I was out. I thanked him for about the 5th time, and helped him get back up the hill. I started taking off when I found the left rim was wedged in between some rocks, and the way it was sitting, I couldn't roll it back slide it sideways, ride it over, anything...and at 500 pounds..its hard to move, I finally(after a few minutes of pulling, pushing, yelling, and cussing) pulled up on the front end as hard as I could and got it unwedged from the rocks, I jumped on and got the he!! out of there. I had to almost rock crawl, making a new trail, to get back to the designated course. I hit the bottom of the mountain, and tried to ride it back as fast as I could(which isn't very fast on a DS with a flat front tire)

I limped it back to the pits, with a total lap time of close to 2 hours...and I was sitting there for a pretty long time, i'm guessing my lap time without the big stop would be 1:30 to 1:40.

While a few people were trying to prepare it for Derek to get back on, Derek called it a day, we only had one good, reliable, spare front tire, and if Rick, Todd, and Jeremy were to need it, they would be screwed. With us being WAY more then a lap down, and them having a good shot at a 1st place for Quad Am, we agreed to give in also. Even if we had enough tires, we had only done two of the six 35 mile laps, and we were only allotted 10 hours to complete the whole race, 3:30PM was the cut off time to start your last lap..there was no chance we would make it. We had to face the three worst letters in racing...DNF. It's a hard thing to do, but we had to.

With over 20 DNF's on the Quad/Motorcycle side...We didn't feel all that bad.

[CannondaleRider]

On a better note. Rick, Todd, and Jeremy had a great race. Only one crash, when Todd came over a mountain ridge(one of the highest elevations on the course) on his first(and only) 35 mile lap, where you reach the top and make a hard right on a ridge that's the same width as a quad. He hit it with way to much speed, launched over it, baled mid flight, and landed on his right side about 20 feet down. The bike rolled on the front tires, then impaled itself top first into the next bank. He told us a few times that when he woke up, "He thought he was late for school". He was seeing spots for a little bit, and was able to get the bike up and take off...Bear in mind this was about 4 miles in. He rode the next 31 miles after that tumble. He's a tough guy...:clap: :clap: :clap:

At about 3:27PM, Rick went and talked to a BITD official, and let him know that absolutely no Quad Am team had came in, and there was no dust coming on the last 4 miles you could see coming in, and that if they kept that 3:30PM cut off date, every Quad Am team out there would get a DNF. He told him he didn??????????????????t pay over $400.00 in entry fees to not even have the slightest shot at a win, even being one of the fastest Quad Am teams. So they changed it to a 5 lap finish.

At the end the first 3 teams came in very close. Q81 was ahead of Jeremy by about 10 seconds, but with corrected times(Rick, Todd, and Jeremy starting 2 minutes or so behind Q81), they were technically ahead of them.

Other then Todd???????????????s tumble, there was no big problems, 1 flat tire(Jeremy???????????????s first 35 mile lap), and a first place finish for Quad Am :deal:

Through it all. It was fun, I was a great experience for Justin and I, being our first ever Best in the Desert race. It was the roughest race of the season from what we've heard, and the name says it all. Best in the Desert; Henderson Terrible 400.

[CannondaleRider]

Finally got the pics uploaded, waiting on Offroad.com to upload theres also.

Waiting to start

Another

Todds Start

Dereks Start

Derek in the gauntlet

Now for some of the carnage:
Our Bike


Other teams bike

And a parting shot of the track/desert

[cannondale27]

Man other than the oxygen that looks like you were racing on Mars:wow
Hey what blew the tires?Was it breaking the bead or were they punctured?

[CannondaleRider]

I'm pretty sure they were all punctured by rocks:mad:

Lots of rocks out there

[Exodus]

Sounds like quite the race, glad to see you got out of there without loosing any limbs. I've never rode a DS, would love to though, they biult those bikes to run wide open out accross nowwhere, so it would be run to see how it really feels. To bad on the the DNF, but it would have been worth it just for the experience.

[AMRsCdale450grl]

Hey bubba~ I know this is a little late, but great job! :clap: I knew you could do it.

[Happyboy]

Awesome! Just awesome! Keep up the work man, thats rough! :clap:

[CannondaleRider]

Got some more pictures for you guys

These are of me:


My chest protector makes me look like a fatass

[CannondaleRider]

These are of Derek:
If you could put a description of Best In The Desert into a pic, this would be the pic