LUCHO'S JOURNAL -- CROTCH on FIRE!

[Lucho]

CROTCH ON FIRE!
And ABC Wide World of Sports
June 6, 1977

It was the Baja 500. As always, I was as high as an eagle with anticipation, waiting to tackle my section like no one had before. Prior to this race, I’ve been racing the 500 by myself, only with my family (wife, my two girls and little boy) chasing me up and down Baja. This time I had a partner, with a brand new C&J-frame Honda. Lenny was a great rider, well seasoned in desert racing and in district races, and me; well, I was well inducted into Baja. However, for the first time, I would be sharing the ride in Baja, so I could let it all out.

Two months before, prior to the event, I trained hard, riding my bicycle every day, a hundred times around our block (in Van Nuys), then racing in the desert, racing at Ascot on Wednesdays, at Long Beach every Friday night, at Indian Dunes on Saturdays and back in the desert on Sundays. I was in shape. And when the time came to pre-run for the Baja 500, I did my section no less than ten times.
It was like a guy who has been wearing old shoes for a long time and suddenly he gets a brand new pair that fit just like a glove and feels so good, that you just have to keep walking.
I had to keep riding and pre-running because all I had to worry, for the first time, was my section of the Baja 500. I was to take the Honda from the start at Ensenada to the Tres Posos entrance, just off Mexico highway 5. From then on, my partner would take it back to Ensenada. A cinch! I knew I had to give it my all.

And to top it all, I was third off the line in Class 22. Ahead of me was some guy named Larry Roeseler who was racing with A.C. Bakken and some guy named Harden who was racing with a guy named Jack Johnson, I think.

Nonetheless, I was ready. However, my biggest challenge was to get out of town. There was dust ahead of me, combined with a light fog bank and then of course, the sun rising, pointing directly at your face. Add to that, only a few miles out of town, I was about to meet the crafty, crazy and somewhat sardonic Baja spectators. Boy, they love to see someone get off at speed. They hooped and holler whenever somebody bailed. They were just having a great old time!

About three miles from the start, in a wash, by the cement plant, I suddenly felt a thump on my face. Some cute little Mexican boy had thrown a rock at me and hit me squarely on the front, knocking my goggles off. So cute, aren’t they? The impact was severe enough to knock me off the bike and into this smelly creek. I heard loud laughter and cheering, you though I had just made a triple somersault with a twist in the Pike position.
After a couple of seconds, I gathered myself up and started cussing in Spanish. I used every cuss word I knew. It didn’t take long for the locals to realize that they had knocked down one of their own (not really, I’m Peruvian but I sounded like a Mexican). So about fifteen guys jumped off the rocks where they were perched, picked me up, picked my bike up, one of them started it and I was actually lifted onto the bike and off I was sent, in less than 30 seconds! It’s good to speak Spanish in Baja and it’s even better to cuss them in Spanish. (I think I’m going to learn French now.)

I was a bit shook-up but that dissipated quickly as I jumped onto the highway and for the next fifteen minutes I lost all sense of…of…sensibility! I weaved in and out of traffic and trucks, semis, and on-coming traffic like a dumb novice. The 405 freeway had nothing on this road. Rather than take my time and try to get out of the pavement safely, just like many crazy-heads, I just wanted to get over it. So far, nobody had passed me but I also could not see or hear the two bikes in front of me. I didn’t want to slow down.

Finally, the course pulled off the pavement at the Pepsi Stand and we were back into dirty, sloppy, dusty and silty terra-firma, where dust and the sun would be our only challenge. As I got through Ojos Negros on my way to the Sawmill, everything cleared, the sun was high enough that no longer posed a visual problem and I could concentrate on catching the two guys ahead of me. Yeah, right, good luck! They were gone, disappeared, moving so fast that I could never hope to get near them.
My challenge now was to make sure no one would pass me. Every once in a while I looked behind to see if anyone was getting close.
Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! You never do that! You never look back! But one learns quickly. On the last time I peeked back, I hit a rut and I went flying into a Manzanita tree. Before I could take my first breath, two or three bikes went by. Oh, boy!

I gathered myself up and started that fiercely hot Honda after about a minute of kicking. Off I went, albeit riding a bit slower, out of breath, hurting some but luckily, the bike was in good shape.
Now I had to contend with the dust just ahead of me but that wasn’t bad. I got by one rider and had the other two within reach. On my way down to Independencia, I caught another and I was feeling pretty good. By the time I reached Nuevo Junction, my first fuel stop, I was humming again, standing up, pain gone, and head cleared and feeling pretty good. Got at quick dump of fuel and off I went up the “dreaded “summit.” I had gone up it eight times during my pre-run, so I knew what to expect. I was ready for it.

Side note 1: The “summit” and I have a special bond. Back in 1971, when I first participated in the Los Ancianos Tecate 500 Enduro, I crashed against another rider going back on the course, about 20 miles from Tecate. The Husky’s front end was tweaked to the point where you had to point the handlebars all the way to the right, in order to go straight. I rode up the “summit” that way. It was brutal, falling down countless of times and cursing the gods for getting me into off-road racing. When I reached San Felipe later that day, at about 7 p.m. (most riders had arrived between 2 p.m. and 3 p.m.), I was out of it. The “summit” just killed it for me.

Side note 2: The following year, just before the 2nd Annual Tecate 500 Enduro, a week before the event, I had a crash with an on-coming DWP truck at Bouquet Canyon, CA. What the hell was that truck doing there? I found out as they took me to the hospital and had my knee sewn—DWP was checking power lines—did they have to do it while I was riding? At the emergency, I asked the doctor to sew my knee in a sitting position because that’s the way I would be racing the Enduro next weekend. He said, “You’re crazy!” I said, yeah, of course.
So next week, while going over the same “summit” I was hurting so badly, that the stitches had broken and I was bleeding profusely, while coming down those eleven miles of the “summit.” I managed to run out of fuel at the foot of the “summit” and spent the next eight hours waiting for somebody to come and pick me up. I got to San Felipe at around midnight. I was out of it in pain.
So you see, the “summit” and I have a special bond.

Back to the story: Leaving Nuevo Junction, I tackled that rocky, boulder-laden hill like it was the parking lot at Ralph’s Market. Stood up all the way, and picked my way through the massive rocks and boulders. I reached the top of the “summit” and I was feeling pretty good. The hard part was over. Way down there, I could see some dust trails. I figured it might have been the dust trails of these guys named Roeseler and Johnson. OK. I’m in the game; we still have a long way to go.
On the way down, I managed to miss a couple of drop-offs (barely), the bike caughed a couple of times as if it was loaded, but still kept a good pace. Once at the bottom, all I had to do is manage the next 30 miles or so of deep sand, until Cohabusco Junction, where we would get out of the wash and into much more solid ground.

About ten miles into the deep sand wash I began feeling hot. Not on my face, not under my helmet, but on my crotch! I looked down and saw nothing. Man, what’s that all about? Maybe the exhaust pipe is too close to the seat and heat is radiating from there. I better tell Lenny about it, before he takes over, I thought. I continued for another mile or so and now my crotch was really feeling the heat. I hadn’t felt this hot since I first saw my wife (this dainty fifteen-year-old cutie) at the corner drugstore in pig-tails and a wide smile. But this was definitely a hot heat. I looked down once again and couldn’t see anything unusual. Then suddenly, flames shot up from under the seat. My Bill Walter’s leathers were on fire! My crotch was on fire! The bike was on fire!
Riding at about 50 M.P.H. all I thought of was to bail. So I did. I flung the bike and jumped, rolling several times until I came to a stop. Ahead of me was this brand new, CJ-frame tricked out Honda, burning in the middle of downtown BFE.

You have to understand the moment. It’s not like you had a warning, or you were in your garage with easy access to water, a telephone, some help.
Here I was in the middle of “bum-f%$k-Egypt,” (BFE) with nobody around, no water (except what I carry in my canteen), and no communications. What to do?
So I remember my buddy Roger, in the film “On Any Sunday” where his bike was on fire and he proceeded to throw dirt on that sucker, to put the flames out.
I immediately went for the bike and like an old dog digging for a bone; I started scooping dirt onto the flaming Honda. I was at it for what seemed to be ten minutes but it was actually a few minutes and nothing was happening. The flames were getting bigger and bigger, coming out of the air breather box and now spreading onto the seat, the rear tire, the grips, tool bag and the plastic gas tank--the tank that was mostly full since I had topped off at Nuevo Junction a few miles back!
“Holy shiieet, I’ve got to get out of here,” I said to myself, “That tank is going to explode!”
No sooner had I said it and as I started to run away, a large “boom” went off. I turned around and I could see the tank about 60- to 70-feet up in the air and coming down onto the desert. It landed near the bike and it burst into flames. Man, I knew I was in trouble.
I continued to throw dirt on the bike but it was useless. The next thing I remember was finding a soft-ball-size boulder, picking it up and throwing it at the bike is desperation, frustration, dejection, and just plain pis sed off.

Little did I know that hovering above me was a helicopter capturing my predicament and filming the moment just as I was throwing that rock. They had recorded that instant for posterity.

The helicopter was from ABC, the moment was one of those that you see as you watch the opening of the Wide World of Sports Show, when credits begin every show and someone is saying something about “The agony of defeat!” Yeah, that was me, and for the next ten years or so, every Saturday afternoon I was reminded that even in the middle of BFE, you have to be careful what you do, or it’ll come back to haunt you forever.

Six hours later, after the helicopter had captured one of my finest moments in Baja racing, the pilot had called ahead to tell someone at SCORE of what had happened. Eventually, SCORE contacted my friends from the San Gabriel MC, who were pitting for me at Cohabusco Junction. They finally arrived at the scene.

Now you have to remember that these guys are not your typical weekend tennis players or golfers. These guys race desert every week of the year and they only came to pit for me because of the Baja 500. You also have to remember that they got in at their designated pit, early the night before. They had come prepared for anything including running out of beer. The cases were stacked inside their camper shell to the top. Then they had spent most of the day waiting for me. I was supposed to be there around 9:30 a.m. or 10 a.m. at the latest. It was now almost 5 p.m., and even though they heard about the fire, they could not come to get me until it was safe to go against the race traffic. So what did they do in the meantime? Like every off-road racer worth his salt, they drank until they were so numb that you could have stuck a long barrel riffle up their butts and they wouldn’t have felt anything, except maybe a tickle!

These guys finally arrived and immediately started to do a Voo Doo dance around the smoldering, burnt bike. I on the other hand, just sat there on the side of the wash, wanting to get out of there and face my partner. No such luck.

They continued their ritual for at least thirty or forty minutes, sipping on their beers, chanting some odd noises, until I yelled, “Let’s get the F^$k outta here!”
The next thing I heard was “Aren’t we a bit testy, now! Easy firefighter, let the big boys take care of the wounded deer.”
They found the only thing on that Honda, not scarred with fire, which was the front wheel. Everything else was burnt to a crisp. The aluminum carburetor had melted and was lying on the sand spread out as if inside a mold. The ironies of all ironies were that in the melting process, the carburetor took the shape of a gigantic penis! Of course the SGMC guys, more specifically, the Jordan Brothers, thought it appropriate that we must take the melted aluminum with us, as a memento of the occasion.

They strapped the Honda carcass to the truck’s front bumper and cattle guard, just like a dead deer, and then stuck me in the front seat between the Jordans. For the next hour and a half we drove out of the desert near Tres Posos. They could not stop laughing and making jokes about what had happened. I, on the other hand, wanted the nightmare to be over. A $3,000 tricked out Honda had burnet with less than 150 miles on it. Back then $3,000 was the salary that many people made in one year!

When we finally got to the highway, we drove a few miles until we reached the spot where my riding partner (Lenny) and my wife were waiting. They were both sitting under a tree. The temperature must have been about 110 degrees.
The Jordan boys, just to rub it in a bit more, decided to park right in front of their faces, no more than a foot away from where they were sitting.

My wife’s look on her face was incredulous. Her eyes grew bigger with every second. She was dumbfounded and could not speak. On the other hand, Lenny, who was sitting on a beach chair, with his dark glasses on, just looked at his bike strapped to the truck, lifted his shades, took another look, slowly shook his head back and forth a couple of times, then let the dark glasses drop, sat back and grabbed a sip of Tecate.

Five months later, as we took off from Ensenada on our way to La Paz, we were on a brand new C&J frame the company had provided for us. Honda had replaced the plastic, tanks and wheels and they went through the motor which was not damaged, and we were set for another Baja adventure. Oh, yes, they told us, "Next time don't put the oil breather inside the air box." Dah!

Does the name Al Baker mean anything to anyone? Well, it meant a lot to us for that Baja 1000, but that’s another story for another day.

Lucho
#####################

[SPONSOR]

Membership in the largest desert racing community has its advantages - Participate in Forum Discussions - Send and Receive Private Messages - Maintain Public Photo Albums - Access to Groups - User Profile in our Social Network - Increased Access to more Sub Forums - Reduced Online Advertisements Join our community today

[Bill]

Lou your stories are the greatest.

[troyharper]

Amazing!
btw you didnt mention Ron Bishop. He was there, I know cause we were chasing him.
HAPPY HOLLIDAYS Lou!

[Rhinestone Cowboy]

Always a great read Lou.

[200MPHTape]

Like you Lucho, some things get lost in the mind and YEARS! But I can remember a Baja race that started in Mexicali and we were 12 miles off the start. When a guy on a Yamaha was screaming towards us, and it went errgghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! He flipped the kick stand down and approached us and asked for matches. Being the herbal Americans we were (at the time) we handed him a pack of matches thinking he was gonna have a smoke and call it quits. He then walked over to the bike and pulled the fuel line and let it bleed for a couple of seconds then proceeded to throw the match at the bike! Some were there are still pics of the locals taking the bike away! I WANT MORE OLD STORIES LUCHO.
PS: He said it was the third or fourth time it had seized since the start!

[Lucho]

Like you Lucho, some things get lost in the mind and YEARS! But I can remember a Baja race that started in Mexicali and we were 12 miles off the start. When a guy on a Yamaha was screaming towards us, and it went errgghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! He flipped the kick stand down and approached us and asked for matches. Being the herbal Americans we were (at the time) we handed him a pack of matches thinking he was gonna have a smoke and call it quits. He then walked over to the bike and pulled the fuel line and let it bleed for a couple of seconds then proceeded to throw the match at the bike! Some were there are still pics of the locals taking the bike away! I WANT MORE OLD STORIES LUCHO.
PS: He said it was the third or fourth time it had seized since the start!

That was Chuck Sugar (Sweet Duck) and he was a CHECKERS. We raced together thereafter. And I just remembered an incredible story of our race. Thanks. I had forgotten all about it!!! The mind really goes doesn't it?

Another CHECKERS put us together (Thumper) because Chuck had tried to finish a race a bunch of times but bad luck always followed him. On the other hand, I had a pretty good record, so we decided to race together. I'll tackle that story later on. Thanks for reminding me. Good old Chuck Sugar.

I've got to tell you; between Chuck Sugar and Dick Graham, another guy whom I raced with because he always had bad luck, and in fact, it was that race that I was racing with Graham, I can fill a book. They were really characters.

l

[LTL220]

...I WANT MORE OLD STORIES LUCHO.

x2

Lucho, you tell the stories...all I want is the concession rights.

[Andy McMillin]

Are these stories real or fake? Just wondering, I really don't know!

[OldStroppeTeam]

Are these stories real or fake? Just wondering, I really don't know!

The truth is buried in the legends that are Baja !

[wheezy]

AWESOME... love the inclusion of one of my offroad heros AC Bakken. Had the pleasure of hanging out with him a few times out at the river with the other "lagunatics".

GREAT STORY Lucho, my favorite one so far for sure.