THE VIEW FROM CHECKPOINT #3 Fear & Loathing In Hammer Town By Robin Hartfiel
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reetings Earthling… Welcome to checkpoint 3.” No question, weird things happen out in the high desert. Hunter S. Thompson Bat Country runs into UFO Conventioneers at Giant Rock kind of things… and then there is the Integratron where George Van Tassel was being parceled out the secrets of the universe… but this is not about that. This is about working King of the Hammers/ King of the Motos type craziness! The day certainly did NOT start off auspiciously…3:30 a.m. wake up calls are never good. Losing my receipt for the mandatory COVID test in the early morning fog didn’t help and paying for a second test at the entrance to Hammer Town and having to wait for the results cut precious minutes off my ETA to shoot the start of King of the Motos. But breaking my camera in the mad dash to reach Chocolate Thunder fixed that “problem” about getting photos. Zero cell reception, missing my ride and burying my 2WD truck up to the axles a mile from the start is when I started getting a wee bit perturbed. But I figured a mile run up hill in the sand would help settle my frazzled nerves… or at least cause a brain aneurysm to take my mind off missing the start.
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However in the desert, like Blanche DuBois, I have always relied on the kindness of strangers! Some random strangers saw me hoofing it away from the stuck truck and gave me ride right to the start just in time to see the first wave of bikes flagged off. When the last bike finally struggled over the crest of the hill, I looked back to see my riding buddy Paul Golde hanging out with Oscar Jackson (the man responsible for the turbos in Honda Talons) and they had a spare seat in Oscar’s personal Talon test mule… but it gets better. Much better! And there were dogs… not just any dogs, but a cute little Basset Hound. But I am getting ahead of myself.