For some many years, my younger brother Edward and his buddies have been heading out on weeklong dirt bike treks into the wilds of Baja California. A good number of those riders are from Wisconsin; making the long haul out west each year for their adventure.
This past summer, Edward and his buddies decided at the last minute to enter the Baja 500 race instead of their annual fun ride. They purchased their bike the Wednesday before the Baja 500, worked overtime to prep the bike and were the last entry (registered at the door) to the race. They finished middle of the pack.
For this fall the same crew planned ahead and entered the Baja 1000, which took place in mid-November. They arrived Saturday before the race to get settled in and to do a pre-run of the course before the race started at 6:30am on Tuesday morning. The team has several riders, with each rider running a different portion of the race both on race day(s) and on the pre-run. My brother was running some of the opening legs, and was the one riding the actual race bike on their pre-run.
Our Dad was part of Edward’s crew leap-frogging from checkpoint to checkpoint to give Edward fuel and a spot of water.
By early Sunday afternoon Edward was a couple legs into the pre-run, and had run the first stage, gassed up at the first checkpoint and was into the second stage when he hit a deer. Edward has had more than his share of injuries over his 37 years, and he knew he had hurt himself pretty badly. His helmet mounted radio earphone and microphone were ripped right out of the helmet and the bike suffered some significant damage.
Edward said that while he gathered himself up, a truck drove up from the side and a local collected the now dead deer to take home for dinner. Edward knew he was hurt bad and needed a doctor and figured the quickest way to get to the crew was to ride back up the course to the last checkpoint – then head across over to the highway, and take the route his crew had taken to meet up with them at the next checkpoint.
He then proceeded to ride his bike more than 70 miles in this injured condition, most of that off-road. In a few short hours he would not be able to even stand.
He met up with my Dad and his crew and they put Edward in the back of his SUV and loaded up the motorcycle on the bike carrier, and started the long trek toward the United States to get Edward to a hospital. Pre 9/11/01 someone in a situation like Edward’s could have made a call and a helicopter would come down from San Diego to rush the injured person to a US hospital. But in the post 9/11 era, those emergency flights are now illegal. Only scheduled flights may cross the border. Had the accident happened during the race, the race officials have helicopters and medical facilities set up, but this was three days before the race, and they were on their own.
It took almost ten hours to get Edward to a US hospital. Edward was in excruciating pain, slowly bleeding to death, and passing in and out of consciousness. My Dad later remarked that during the whole trip my brother only said one thing, which could be deemed conversational:
“I think perhaps I should get a dune buggy.” (Edward thinking to himself that perhaps he might have fared better in that accident had he been in a dune buggy instead of on a motorcycle.) When I heard of this I almost fell out of my chair laughing.
They drove hour after hour in the rain toward the US all the while Edward’s condition continued to deteriorate. Once at the border, they simply pointed to my brother in the back of the SUV covered with blood and they asked the Border Patrol Officers where the nearest hospital was. The Border Patrol did not check ID’s, ask about nationalities, or any other bureaucratic nonsense, but instead quickly gave some quick (and poor) directions and told them to take off.
After getting lost and getting more bad directions, which were of no use, they called 911 and were directed to a nearby Fire station where they were met by an ambulance. Once in the ambulance they passed several hospitals and went directly to a trauma center where Edward was taken directly into surgery. The time was now 12:30am Monday morning, almost 10 hours since Edward’s accident.
Edward was in surgery until the next morning. The prognosis? The removal of his spleen. The doctors told my father (and later told Edward) that he had come close to bleeding out.
My brother did not wake up after the surgery until Monday night – some 20 hours after he had gone into surgery. Even then he was pretty much out of it. He was later transferred to another hospital to continue his recovery.
In the meanwhile his team made makeshift repairs to the bike and got ready for the race. The team soldiered on without Edward, even though the bike had a bent exhaust, and other problems as a result of Edward’s accident. The team was disappointed in their finish, but they did cross the finish line, and finished 20th out of 54 motorcycles in their class. To me that is an admirable finish under good conditions.
Epilogue: Edward is home and doing well!
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(Sunday 11/11/07) |
(Sunday 11/11/07) |
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(Sunday 11/11/07) |
(Sunday 11/11/07) |
The view from Edward’s support vehicle as they race to the next checkpoint.
(There are seven other support vehicles for other racers in the photo ahead of them.)
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(Monday 11/12/07) |
(Tuesday 11/13/07) |
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(Tuesday 11/13/07) |
Tuesday (11/13/07) |
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(Wednesday 11/14/07)) |
Reporter: Eric Paulsen 
E-mail: ericknowschrist@yahoo.com
The Robinson Connection: Edward is Eric's brother. Julie is Edward's wife. Charlie, Marimae and Maggie are their children.