Angelfire Adventure

All we wanted to do was get here. It seemed simple enough...

In 2009 I purchased my beloved van. It's the best vehicle I've ever owned and it's taken me all over the country. In the 3 years I've had it I've logged 100,000 miles driving to more races than I can remember. I purchased the van in Spokane Washington on a Tuesday in May of 2009. The next day I took it on her maiden voyage. I figured something short would be great to test it out. In order to do that, I loaded two lay-z-boy recliners in the back and headed out with 3 other friends to Angelfire New Mexico! The van made the trip without incident, and other than a few sharpie drawings on the walls and some scratches on the chairs, that trip is nothing more than a distant memory.

Mitch Angus drew this portrait during the vans first road trip. It's starting to fade, but it's still there.

During the first trip, this was our map. it's still on the side wall. We took a different route on the trip.

Fast forward 3 years. The van is now a solid partner in my race program and with the 2013 & 2014 National Championships being announced for Angelfire, Charlie and I decided it was time to head back.

Ruth and I loaded the van and headed south to Portland to pick up Charlie. After some fast food and a few energy drinks, we headed west through the boring slow part of Oregon. A quick note about me, I like to drive my own car. I don't like to be a passenger. If I'm not driving, I'm not able to sleep. If I'm not sleeping, I want to be driving. This creates quite a conundrum for long trips and usually results with me driving most of the way for hours on end. For some reason, it doesn't seem to bother me and most of my passengers like to sprawl out on the bed in the van and arrive at our destination rested and relaxed.

Eastern Oregon sunrise.

 The trip was supposed to be about 28 hours including stops for food and gas. However, the trip gods decided to extend that length. A short while after the sun rose on Thursday morning we were nearing the eastern end of Oregon. I had just passed through Pendelton and was heading up Dead Man's Pass. I rounded a left hand corner and out of nowhere a deer jumped out right in front of the van! There was nothing I could do as we slammed into him. I pulled the van to the side of the road to assess the damage. We hit the deer with the front right corner and the van looked surprisingly good! The bumper was bent and and a lot of broken bits of plastic were laying around. I noticed that the bumper was bent into the tire and was hitting the tire if it turned at all. We didn't have much of an option, we had to bend the bumper back straight.

Charlie trying to move the deer off the road. He thought this was funnier than I did.

The damage wasn't that bad! 1-ton vans are big solid vehicles. I was glad I wasn't driving the rabbit...

I found a cable lock in the back of the van and locked it around the bumper and to the guardrail. It snapped as soon as we tried to drive the van backwards. The next option was to remove the seatbelts from the rear seat and try using those. They broke as well. Our last option was to use my hacksaw I luckily had to cut the corner of the bumper off. After 15 minutes of taking turns cutting, we managed to remove the bumper. We were back on the road!

Hacksawing a bumper at 6am will wake you up quickly.

Bending the last part off. (The brown stuff on the fender is deer poo)

Mission accomplished!

The next few states went by without much incident. We had lost maybe an hour or so hitting the deer. I managed to relinquish the drivers seat for a couple of hours through southern Colorado and sleep for a little bit. I awoke and took my turn spot at the helm in Raton NM.  Raton is where you leave the interstate and start heading towards the ski resort on highway 64.

It was about 3 am and around a big left turn before Cimarron NM, A big elk jumped out into the road. It saw the van and turned off the road and right as we drove past, it darted out attempting to cross the road again. BAM! We hit the animal dead center in the front of the van. I slammed on the brakes and brought the van to a stop and jumped out as fast as I could while choking on the airbag dust. No one was injured, and the only blood was from my arm getting cut when the airbag went off. The front of the van was a different story. The grill was gone, the hood was cracked, the bumper was mangled, and the radiator was spewing coolant all over the road.

The damage.

The deceased. It took both Charlie and I to pull her off the road.

 

Scene of the accident.

I dialed 911 and waited for the sheriff to arrive. The sheriff arrived and was really nice and friendly and waited until the tow truck showed up. We had to be towed all the way back to Trinidad Colorado, to the nearest repair shop. The shop opened up an hour after we were dropped off. Bob, the owner, came over and talked to us. He used to race bikes and knew how important it was to get to the race. He said he would help us get there before the end of the day. He tracked down a new radiator in the next town and drove 60 miles to get it! In order to get the old radiator out, her went home and grabbed his recovery truck. It was an early 80's suburban with a bored out 454 and a huge winch on the front. He just hooked it to everything he could find in the front end and started pulling things straight! We waited all day while Bob and his crew worked on the van. About mid afternoon I was able to fire it up and we were on our way! It was ghetto fabulous at this point, but we finally made it to NM.

One of these days I'll have to count how many photos I have of this van being towed.

I had to jump on the hood to get the latch to work. Thanks 5.10!

Fixing body damage the American way!

We missed all Friday practice because of the accident and got our bikes ready for Saturday. Charlie and I each got 3 runs in before the short practice was over. I had a mediocre qualifying run and managed to put together a decent run for the race. I felt like I rode the technical sections really well, but just didn't have the energy to sprint the huge pedal section in the middle of the track. 4 runs down a 6 minute track at a national level race doesn't really let you end up with a great result. I was still happy with the top 20, but it obviously wasn't what I really wanted.

Not a bad result considering everything that happened, but it will be higher next year for National Champs.

Looking up the mountain. We'll be back next year!

You can train hard, your bike can be prepped and running perfectly, but 2 days of crazy stress, no sleep, and no practice do not make for a winning combination. Looking back though, I've been racing for a long time and as many of these trips as I've been on, this is the first one where I've had a big issue getting to the race. That's a pretty good percentage and statistically, something was going to happen eventually.

I'll be back to Angelfire in 2013 for National Championships. I'm hungry to do well there and I'll have a Mad Max bumper on the front of the van for that trip!

It's the Death Wagon for now. Death Wagon -  2, Mother Nature - 0

-KT