Dakar: The Dream Versus Reality

This entry is part 3 of 320 in the series Adventure Rider Issue #1

Considered by most to be the ultimate bike challenge, the Dakar Rally remains the stuff of daydreams for most. But for a very tiny group, it’s an experience that takes over their lives. Craig Tarlington gives some insight into what it’s like to do Dakar, and do it the hard way: as a privateer.

Words: Craig Tarlington. Images: WRT and maindruphoto.com

Left: Good to go on the starter’s dais for the 2012 Dakar. Four years of training and preparation about to be put to the test. Below: The support team at San Juan on the morning of the third day. The ground was stone and it was hot all night. There was no sleep for the support crew, and I slept in the Suzuki 4×4 with the engine running and the AC on.

It all starts with a video or magazine article about the allure of a mystical thing called the Dakar Rally, and over time it grows inside you. Before you know it, it’s all you think of.

Just when you think you have it sorted, you turn up for the race as a competitor and the reality hits. It’s really just another race, and it’s got all the usual stuff of any race, but this one goes on for a few weeks. Yes, it looks tough on TV, and it is. And yes, it looks like a real adventure, and it is. But what TV and magazine articles don’t tell you is it’s a lot of other things – like at times, it’s actually boring.

Multitasking

Preparation is probably the key to success, and if you break the Dakar down into pieces, ‘preparation’ can probably be covered by several categories:
• Physical fitness;
• Mental strength;
• Riding skills;
• Navigation skills;
• Time management; and
• Planning.

It’s hard to work out which of these deserves the highest priority, because to do well you need to have them all covered to a high degree. This is probably the hardest element of the Dakar compared to other events. To run at the front you need to be on top of, and excel at, all these elements. To just claim a finish you need to be good at most of them.

Day Two – Santa Rosa De La Pampa to San Juan. It was a hell of a hot day, the rivers never stopped and San Juan was still over 40 degrees at 11pm at night.

Day One Special – Mar Del Plata to Santa Rosa Del la Pampa 160km. Then liaison to 65km of beach sand and dunes, and then 800km liaison to the end of Day One. About 100km from the end of the liaison my rear mousse collapsed and the tyre lost a 100mm piece of sidewall. I limped to the end and thought my race was done on the first day. The cause was 40-degree temperatures, 800km of bitumen at 110kph, a non-Michelin rally mousse in the rear tyre and a tyre whose sidewall was too soft. In the end the heat buildup in the carcass of the tyre caused it to literally fall apart. Lesson One: Do not cut any corners on the Dakar.

The top guys like Cyril Despres and Marc Coma are extremely fit, mentally tough and wise, can navigate at speed, have many people around them to take care of planning and other incidentals, and that’s what makes them the best. When you see a guy like Coma riding a 690 Rally around his motocross practice track in Spain, you can see he has good bike skills. Or to watch Cyril do his roadbook and talk about the technique of carrying two or three sets of roadbook instructions in his head while he’s running at high speed and considering a vast range of other factors like fuel consumption, is the bike running okay and where’s the guy in front or behind me, is to get an inkling of how competent the front-runners are. For the average person it’s a real shock to turn up to a race and suddenly not only need to be fit and able to ride, but need to able to navigate and do a dozen other things while you’re riding and challenging your fitness. It’s a bit like rubbing your belly and patting your head while trying to balance on a tightrope while your wife asks you how was your day and then proceeds to tell you all the stuff you “need” to know. And you’d better be listening.

Tested

One of the realities is that there aren’t many races you can do to train for an event like Dakar. If you turn up at the Dakar and have never done

Above: Day Two getting under way. A 5.00am start. It was cold.Below: An oil pipe left off after valves being checked on Day One caused problems on the start line at Day Two. I had to strip the bike and fix it, add oil and then we could go. This pic is in the afternoon, explaining to the mechanic in my broken French what the problem was.

anything like it, it’s tough. If you do an Aussie Safari or some Cross Country Rally World Cup Championship races it’ll help a lot.

You can do a few things though. Your fitness is easy; you just need to get a good plan in place. And don’t kid yourself. No matter how fit you get, you’ll wish you were fitter as you go into the race. So get as fit as you can and make sure you don’t overtrain and turn up tired and worn out.

The riding, while it’s challenging, isn’t any harder than a good cross-country race. It’s the length of the event and the variations in terrain that make it so tough. You can find yourself in riverbeds for hundreds of kilometres, and after you think you’ve had enough, they just keep coming and coming. The organisers won’t give you a break: dunes, hard-track, rocks or whatever – you name it and you’ll ride it at some point in the Dakar. The only thing that’ll vary is how much of it you’ll ride, and if it’s over 40 degrees or below zero, raining

Day 5 – Chilecito to Fiambala. The desert and rivers were hot, over 40 degrees. Not far from where this picture was taken was the end…the end of the stage and the end of my Dakar or snowing or extreme in one respect or another, you’ll be expected to cope.

This variation and length of terrain, mixed with the exposure to the fluctuating weather, is where the race is different to others. The challenge goes on for days on end, and the next day isn’t predictable. You just ride and accept what’s thrown at you, and enjoy it. It’s all new and unknown and every element of your ability and preparation as a rider is tested.

Amazing

After about three days you start to fall into the rhythm of the race and get used to the late nights, questionable food, stinky showers, fatigue, constant noise of generators while you’re trying to sleep, the heat and the dust. It starts to become normal.

As this happens things begin to get easier and you find queuing for fuel is not so bad and waving to the thousands of spectators is nice. Being treated like a celebrity starts to feel not unusual and you do start to enjoy it. You also get to meet some nice people.

As you race you meet some of the best riders in the world and you see how, even in this environment, they’re not beyond sitting down beside you at dinner, having a chat and generally just being ‘regular people’. This sport seems to breed a camaraderie that’s a little unique, probably due to the fact that at some point in time any one of us may need help from the next competitor to finish this race, but also due to the nature of being exposed to the elements.

Dakar to a circus: it’s a collection of performers engaged in dangerous acts every day, entertaining an audience in each location and then moving on hundreds of kilometres the next day. The sheer size of the circus and the logistics are incredible. To bring all of these people halfway around the world and then travel 9000km across some of the toughest terrain there is, and to do it safely and with no sense of panic, is amazing.This in itself opens up the other realities of the Dakar.

It’s the biggest motorsport event in the world. It runs for 14 days, travels 9000km and moves thousands of people, and it’s only when you see it up close you understand how special

Left: The morning of Day Five – Chilecito to Fiambala. The support crew were ready to go, talking to the mechanic about the new forks and the other stuff that was done overnight. This was known to be the killer stage of the race and it was expected to take out a lot of riders.it is. I believe that’s why, when you’ve been once, it’s very hard not to want to go again, and it does call you to return each year.

A heated discussion

I first got interested in the Dakar in 1979, but only entered the race for the first time in 2012. The pressures of work kept me out of 2013 event, and I was fired up and ready for 2014, right up until health issues got in the way.

Now it’s full-throttle preparing for 2015. Once you’ve got the bug, you’ve got the bug! My own reality was cut short in 2012 with an engine failure in the sands of Fiambala, one kilometre from the end of a Special. That one kilometre may as well have been 1000km. With an engine that wouldn’t run and 140km after the end of the Special to get to

Above: Day 4 – San Juan to Chilecito. I was very late in to service. I’d been up since 4.00am, and had a failure. One fork-leg damper rod came adrift and after four falls in a river bed, I worked out something was wrong. I had new forks for the next day .

Making history

In 1977 French bike racer Thierry Sabine got lost in the Tenere Desert during the Abidjan-Nice Rally.

During this time he decided desert would be a good location for a regular rally, and organised a route starting in Europe, continuing to Algiers and crossing Agadez before eventually finishing at Dakar.

He came up with a motto for his inspiration: “A challenge for those who go. A dream for those who stay behind.” In December 1977 he arranged an edition of the race with the start in Paris and the finish line in Dakar. He spent the rest of his life organising The Paris-Dakar.

Sabine was killed when his Ecureuil helicopter crashed into a dune in Mali in 1986.

Over nearly 30 years, what is now The Dakar Rally has become a legend of its own, and finishers can claim to have conquered one of man’s great modern challenges.

Above: Day Six – The camion balise (sweeper truck) with my bike on it…and a lot of others.Right: Day Six – Fiambala. I’d been awake since 5.00am and this was after being picked up in the stage by the camion balise (sweeper truck) a
kilometre from the end of the Special. I was taken 240km back into the stage to pick up other riders and then change vehicles. I was in an ambulance heading back to Fiambala when, at 3.00am we got stuck in the stage. The 4×4 bogged and we waited three hours for the same truck I was taken out of to come and pull us out of the bog. We then backtracked to where I was originally picked up from, to pick up another rider. Then we drove the kilometre to the end of the Special and then 140km of tar to Fiambala.

service – and no help allowed – my Dakar was done.The reasons for the dead engine were simple: a $2.00 tee piece in
the cooling circuit had burnt from the inside out and in doing so had dumped all my coolant. I’d fixed it and got going again, but the damage had been done.

Many months later I pondered how that could’ve happened and came to the conclusion that it wasn’t the failure of the one part, but a series of failures: the failure to buy the larger radiators that would’ve kept the bike cooler, the failure to insulate the fuel lines to stop the fuel from boiling in the heat, making me have to stop and wait for the bike to cool so I could ride in the heavy sand. That led to delays that, in turn, put me further back in the pack and forced me to ride in a lot of dust. That led to dust getting into the engine and so forth.

In short, I wasn’t well enough prepared and I was caught out by the Dakar.

Looking back, there are a few things that do stand out. When the engine stopped I wasn’t tired, so my fitness training had paid off. I hadn’t really had any trouble with the terrain we were riding, so my skills wer okay. I hadn’t had any navigation issues, so my navigation training had paid off. In general, I was having fun.

It was only the fifth day, but I was okay and had settled into the race.The mechanical failure left me with a sense of being cheated, even more so when, after returning home and stripping the engine, I found it was all fine. The actual fault was a wire that had rubbed through and was shorting on the frame, effectively working like a kill switch. I could only suppose that I wasn’t thinking straight and probably should’ve had a rest and something to eat and drink. Maybe I would’ve found that fault and gone on to finish.

Rear vision

But hindsight is perfect vision, and I now know what the reality versus the dream was of my Dakar. The reality was a DNF. The dream is I still want to complete the event, and that’s the Dakar. No matter how much you try not to think about it, it always calls you back. It’s the last great motorcycle adventure in the world and it keeps calling you.

Riding Songs

A bunch of biking songs – that is, music about riding, rather than to ride to – that includes usual suspects and some you don’t know but perhaps should.

Born to be Wild – Steppenwolf

It’s practically written into the contract that any compilation of biking songs starts here. Furthermore, virtually every ad depicting riding – particularly toddlers on pushies, for ironic effect – must likewise be underscored by Born to be Wild thanks to its inclusion in the soundtrack to Peter Fonda’s 1969 countercultural masterpiece Easy Rider. Although the lyrics clearly suggest it to be about another activity entirely that may also include ‘riding’. It will crop up in further entries below.

Ballad of Easy Rider – The Byrds/Roger McGuinn

Peter Fonda had in fact approached Bob Dylan to deliver the theme to Easy Rider. According to the story, Dylan
declined, instead scrawling a verse or so of poetry on a napkin and advising Fonda to hand it to Roger McGuinn of the Byrds as “he’d know what to do”. McGuinn did indeed: he wrote the rest of the song. It’s about another recurring motorcycle theme – freedom, riding, being at peace. McGuinn’s solo recording featured in the film’s soundtrack; the hit version was a re-recording by The Byrds. Note that traditionally, an ‘easy rider’ is an expert horseman. Motorcyclists are their modern equivalent.

Funky Moped – Jasper Carrott

Yes, it’s a novelty song taking the mickey out of the traditional biker ballad, the twist being the replacement of the heavy-duty ride with a safe and economical, low-powered, two-wheeled contraption known as a moped. Before you dismiss it, remember: Funky Moped was a mid-’70s top-five hit in Britain and Jasper Carrott was himself quite a hit in Australia thereafter, frequently visiting and performing on The Don Lane Show during the late-’70s. Comedy lovers also love Carrott because he begat other great musical parodies and comedic routines, as well as daughter
Lucy who played Dawn in the original British The Office.

Muthafukka on a Motorcycle – Machine Gun Fellatio

Speaking of ‘novelty songs’… it’s hard not to love Machine Gun Fellatio, a carnivalesque troupe of musicians whose every recording and performance – and, indeed band member, given names like Chit Chat von Loopin Stab, Bryan Ferrysexual and of course KK Juggy – reeked of fun. KK Juggy provides lead vocals on this number, from their debut album Bring It On. Perhaps not Ivor Novello material, the ditty – inspired by something someone sang at a house party thrown by one of the band – is a lot of fun. Meanwhile KK Juggy has reverted to her real name, Christa Hughes, and even recorded an album of jazz standards with her dad, the legendary Dick Hughes (who used to spend days working as a journalist and nights playing jazz venues).

Titties & Beer – Frank Zappa

In which the American composer and rock’n’roll orchestra leader rewrites Stravinsky’s The Soldier’s Tale – about the Devil fooling a trusting man out of his soul – as an every-day epic featuring a biker, his buxom wench and their intention to get ripped at the top of the mountain with a handful of ‘downers’ and cans of beer. The negotiation gets a little more heated in Zappa’s reading: “Blow it out yer ass, motorcycle man, I’m the Devil. Don’t you understand?!” the Hornéd One insists. Although no studio recording exists, there are a number of impressive live performances, the first of which appeared on the 1977 Zappa In New York album. An earlier prototype, Chrissie Puked Twice, came to light more recently as part of the Philly ’76 set.

You know we left out key songs you always carry with you when you’re on your bike. From next issue we start looking at rider playlists – the good, the bad and the downright embarrassing.

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