RAW & RAAM 2p

VIC’S RAAMIFICATIONS RACE ACROSS THE WEST SOLE SURVIVOR DALLAS MORRIS REACHES FINISH Taos, New Mexico June 21, 2009 By Vic Armijo At 9:12AM local time, Canadian Dallas Morris became the only solo finisher in the Race Across the West. He wasted no time in getting to the time station table to partake in the home-made chocolate chip cookies waiting there. With cookie crumbs tumbling down his jersey, he remarked, “What a way to see the United States!” RAAM’s CEO Fred Boethling, who pointed out that Morris had only been through 1/3 of it, and that perhaps a full RAAM would be good. Morris replied, “Well now we have a crew that definitely has some experience, that’s for sure. We were all rookies coming into this event. But for me, rather than ‘Race Across The West’ I kind of considered it more ‘Ride Across The West.’ I found myself ogling at all the sights, always looking around. The scenery is so spectacular I had to try to remember, ‘Oh yeah, it’s a race!’” Of the many memories of the race, Morris mentioned that the descent from 10,250 foot La Manga pass is among the most exhilarating, “Doing the downhill in the dark was an experience I won’t soon forget!’ The rookie rider and rookie crew learned much over the past days, “Going with the sugary sports drinks came back to haunt me big time. The first day the guys were telling me that I was leading up until checkpoint four. Then I hit the wall. And then we starting buying Subway sandwiches and having real meals.” He continued his assessment of his effort, saying “It’s an investment to come down here and do this. The number one thing that we learned was our budget, our experience, our equipment—you can see how the top guys, Baloh, Robic, they have a huge crew. Us, just three guys and a mini-van!” That minimalist approach was effective enough to make him the sole finisher out of nine solos who began the Race Across the West. While there is still one solo woman of course, Leslie Holton, it is unlikely that she will make it to Taos before the time cut-off. But word is that she will continue for an unofficial finish. RAW was begun last year as more or less an experiment to see if a sort of junior version of RAAM could be developed. In these two years it has proven to be a tough event, tougher than many of its participants seem to realize. Boethling offered these observations on the high attrition rate of RAW, “There are many reasons for that. Mentally you’re thinking ‘RAAM, 3000 miles. We all know that’s tough.’ RAW is only 1044 miles, only a third. You don’t have that same level of concern about it. The other thing is, a lot of people will go with a skeleton crew and no RV and the reality is, you really do have to have the full boat otherwise you are going to be sleeping in the ditch, like Dallas here. That’s like the RAAM of old, the way it used to be done.”