One of the hallmarks of the Hoka Hey Motorcycle Challenge from the very start has been the poor or non-existent communication coming from the organizers. This situation continued right up to the award ceremony Wednesday night at the Broken Spoke campground outside of Sturgis.

The organizers had eventually announced that the winner would be named and the prize awarded at the Broken Spoke. But then Will Barclay was named the winner, and Barclay told an interviewer that he had already received his winnings. That left a question in many people’s minds about whether the award ceremony would still be held. With no word to the contrary, those of us in Sturgis planning to attend the ceremony assumed it was still on.

But there are two Broken Spokes, and the Hoka Hey site didn’t specify which one. I went to the Broken Spoke in town and nobody there had heard of the Hoka Hey. One helpful fellow checked and told me absolutely that the ceremony was not going to be held there. That left the campground.

We ran out to the campground a little before 7 on Wednesday and looked around for an event about to begin. There was nothing we could see so I asked one of the sound guys getting set up for that night’s performance by Gallagher. He had never heard of the Hoka Hey, it was now 7 sharp, and he told me that at the very least, there was not going to be any Hoka Hey ceremony on this stage.

Great. Do we stick around? Is there anyone who can answer some questions?

But then, at maybe 7:10, the owner of the Spoke got up on the stage and started talking about the Hoka Hey. And a few minutes later, there’s Big Jim Durham up on stage, and we have an event. So much for the sound guy having a clue about what was going on.

Ultimately the event came off, Will Barclay received his “rubber” check, and Durham announced that there will be another Hoka Hey next year, with a prize of $1 million.

I have one word of advice for Durham or whoever organizes next year’s event: communicate.

I honestly have no idea whether Durham is a scam artist as some people claim, whether the designation of Barclay as winner is totally legit, or what’s true and what isn’t. Without first hand information, and investigative resources far beyond my abilities, I’ve just done my best to sift through what people have said and check the facts I could check.

But let’s say that the whole thing was on the up and up right from the start, and all this skepticism and criticism were totally off the mark. Durham and the rest could have allayed an awful lot of these issues if they had simply communicated better.

• Release the list of competitors before the race begins
• Release checkpoint lists daily during the race
• Release the “photo finish” photograph that proves Barclay’s tire was four inches ahead of Frank Kelly’s
• Demonstrate to the media before the finish occurs just how the photo finish equipment is set up and will work

And there is so much more. If they had made a practice of making the whole event as transparent as it could be, there would not have been all these murky areas to raise suspicions. It would appear that there would still have been skeptics, but there would not have been this widespread doubt that resulted simply from the fact that no information was available.

And it also wouldn’t hurt if Big Jim would engage his brain more often before opening his mouth. It wasn’t the media that “got it screwed up” that he was claiming the FBI would administer the polygraph tests. Durham said that in so many words, and his statement is readily available for anyone to listen to. He made numerous other statements, too, that later proved to be incorrect or had to be clarified. Jim, you don’t have anyone to blame but yourself if you make a wrong statement and people call you on it.

So now the Hoka Hey is wrapped up, at least for now. I, for one, am happy to lay it to rest. But I’ll be back with more if there is anything more to report. There are some lawsuits out there . . .

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Biker Quote for Today

Helmet laws suck. They interfere with natural selection.

The word from Will Barclay, the putative winner of the Hoka Hey Motorcycle Challenge, is that he has already had his $500,000 prize wired to his bank account, so it would appear that some folks’ expectation that no payout would ever be made was unfounded. Still, as one comment on Examiner in regard to this said, “This completely exonerates the organizers of all improprieties associated with the race. NOT!”

Hoka Hey riders before the race (Photo: David Stephens)

Nobody has done a better job than Cyril Huze of stating the questions that Big Jim Durham/Redcloud ought to answer. I doubt we’ll ever see answers to those questions, however. But here’s the latest.

Quick Throttle ran an interview with Barclay and it’s an interesting read. The story was picked up by U.S. Rider News and in a comment on that story, Frank Kelly, or at least someone who claimed to be Kelly, disputed the “photo finish” decision that ruled him out of the money. Kelly and Barclay had been in a heat for the finish and agreed to cross the finish line together and split the prize. Durham announced, however, that there could only be one winner, and that winner was Barclay because Kelly had been disqualified.

Now, I say, “at least someone who claimed to be Kelly” because there’s no way be sure here whether someone else simply posted this comment and claimed to be Kelly. With that understanding, here’s “Kelly’s” comment:

I have a bit of heartburn with alot of people saying I was disqualified or that I disqualified myself, no such thing happened. My name is on offical checkpoint sheet. The reason I was told by Jim “Red Cloud” Durham that Will was the winner and we couldn’t split the pot is that the Hoka Hey Organizers said that there could only be one winner and in their “photo finish” Will’s tire was a couple of inches ahead of mine. I haven’t seen the picture yet. I was told from Jim “Red Cloud” Durham that if Will didn’t pass his polygraph then I was next in line to have to take it. I am not sure where this info is coming from but someone is getting lied too.

So in keeping with the tone set by Cyril Huze in his questions, I think it’s also fair to insist that Durham release the photo, as well as the particulars of how this image was captured. Are we talking about serious photo-finish equipment such as they use at racetracks? Or is the photo simply one shot by someone sort of close to the finish line, sort of almost perfectly in line with the finish line?

Maybe they did have that sort of precision equipment in place and in operation. But it is exactly these sorts of unknowns that will continue to cast a shadow over the Hoka Hey until solid answers are provided. And double-checked. Because if one thing is certain it is that Jim Durham is, at best, careless with his words. He accused me and other reporters of error when we reported that he claimed the FBI would administer polygraph tests to potential winners. “That’s another thing they screwed up,” he said. Well, I know I was quoting his words exactly when I wrote that he said that, because I heard him on the radio interview he did with KBBI radio in Homer, AK. And there are other, similar instances.

So, congratulations to Will Barclay, and kudos to all competitors who finished. But is everything about the Hoka Hey settled now? NOT!

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Biker Quote for Today

Biker: A drunk liar in dirty clothes who plays with a large vibrator in public.

I have a recollection that I may have been up on Pikes Peak about 35 years ago. Otherwise, I know I was up there 50 years ago. Suffice it to say, when I rode my Concours up to the top on Friday it may as well have been the first time. Oh my god, what a road!

Last week was race week for the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb, a race with cars, trucks, motorcycles, quads, sidecars, and a few divisions that have peculiar names because, well, probably because no one knows what to call that vehicle. Tuesday was sign-in and tech inspection, followed by three days of practice, and then Saturday was free before the race on Sunday.

I ran down to Colorado Springs on Tuesday to meet up with the racers I had made contact with via the Adventure Riders forum, and to get my press credentials. I went down again on Friday to talk to my contacts about their experiences in practice and hopes for the race, and to go to the top of the mountain myself. Then Sunday I went down one more time for the race.

Let me tell you, you have to ride that mountain yourself to really understand how incredible it is what these racers do. From the starting line to the top is 12.2 miles, and it took me about 30 minutes to cover that distance. Granted I was behind a couple cars with tourists who thought the 10 mph posted speeds on some of the switchbacks were excessively high. I ended up shifting down to first gear a few times when I would rather have stayed in second.

But it’s not like I was grumbling about them holding me back. I would probably only have shaved a couple minutes off that time on my own. So consider this: The top racers were shooting to make this run in under 10 minutes for the first time ever. That is to say, they would have needed to average 73 miles an hour the whole way up. Yikes! There is no portion of that road I want to take at 73 mph period, much less average that speed the entire way up.

Now, the 10-minute barrier wasn’t broken, so the record remains all of 10:01.41. And the fastest time this year was 10:11.49. Oh yeah, that guy was going slow!

So the race was fun and very interesting but the real trip was the mountain. If you’re coming to ride in Colorado you have got to ride to the top of Pikes Peak. Yeah, there’s a $12 fee per person but it’s worth it. And while the road used to be only half paved, there are now just two remaining stretches of dirt and the rest is asphalt. Paving is to be completed in 2012. So if you want to ride it while there’s some dirt left you’d better come soon. Or if you’d rather avoid the dirt you only need wait a couple more years.

For myself, I would have welcomed a dual sport bike on that gravel, but I did it OK on the Connie. And I’ve ridden over high passes before many times but I wondered if going up on a bike with carbs would be an issue by the time I got to 14,110 feet. No problem. It ran just fine. Remember though, I’m tuned for Denver elevation already, so if you’re tuned for sea level it could be a different matter. But I didn’t see anyone who was having any trouble.

Of course I’ll be adding Pikes Peak to the Passes and Canyons website. Hey, I’ve got the photos and the info now, and all I need is the time to get it done. I’ll let you know when it’s up. Till then, you can check out these pictures.

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Biker Quote for Today

Accelerate until you see God, then BRAKE! –Kevin Schwantz

We all know about the best laid plans of mice and men. Well, I had the idea in my mind that my main focus this week was going to be the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb, preparation and practice for which are currently underway down in Colorado Springs. I was down there Tuesday, I’ll be down there again tomorrow, and once again for the actual race on Sunday.

It was inconvenient that the Hoka Hey Motorcycle Challenge, which I also had plans to cover, was set to run through the same time period, but I figured no problem, I’d do a piece on the start of the race, try to touch in with my rider contact sometime this week, and then turn more of my attentions in that direction once the Pikes Peak was over.

What I didn’t count on was the huge amount of interest there would be in the Hoka Hey, and the surprisingly slight interest in the hill climb. I should have had a clue about a month ago when my web stats started showing a lot of traffic on the story I did about the Hoka Hey back in February. When I put up my first story on Examiner.com about the Hoka Hey it was like an explosion. Within a few hours that story drew more traffic than my Examiner page normally gets in two days, and generated more comments than I usually get in a week. And that was just the beginning.

A key to all this seems to be that very few other news sources are following this event. I put up a few articles and by default, the crowd came to me. The Hoka Hey organizers have links on their home page that presumably should go to their Facebook page, their MySpace page, their Twitter feed, and other places. However, while the anchor text is there, and the various pages they should point to are there, the code is not. Those links are dead. So the organizers are providing almost no information about their event.

In the meantime, my planned coverage has been thrown out the window. I planned to track Bob Peterson as he made the ride and he gave me the cell phone number of the main phone in the camper his support team is traveling in. I was to call them periodically and get an update on his progress and condition. After repeated calls, and leaving messages, I have never gotten hold of anyone. And Bob is French-Canadian, so his Facebook page for the ride is in French. I don’t speak, or read, French.

But hey, it’s OK, I’ve got other aspects of the ride to cover. For starters, it appears to many people that the whole thing may be a scam. It seems the organizer has a bit of shady history, and he definitely seems to lack in public relations skills entirely, at the very least. Some followers of the race are telling the naysayers to show proof or shut up, while others just don’t care. Truth is, there probably weren’t that many riders who truly thought they might win that $500,000 purse. For them, the ride and the adventure is the whole reason for doing this. And no matter what happens when they all reach Homer, AK, their experiences will be theirs for the rest of their lives.

So I have no idea where this story will lead next. And heck, at this point I don’t even know where the riders are. But it’s the Pikes Peak hill climb that is now more of a distraction, while the Hoka Hey is front and center.

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Biker Quote for Today

Motorcycle racing makes heroin addiction look like a vague wish for something salty. — Peter Egan

OK. I mentioned way back in February that the Hoka Hey Motorcycle Challenge was coming up this month and the start was yesterday. This a 7,000-mile race from Key West, FL, to Homer, AK, with a winner-take-all prize of $500,000 in Alaskan gold.

The only bikes allowed in this race are Harley-Davidson air-cooled V-twins. The entry fee is $1,000, so the organizers needed at least 500 riders just to pay the winner’s prize. Apparently they got about 750 takers.

I’m going to be following Robert Peterson, of Quebec City, in this race on my Examiner.com page. That arrangement came out of Robert contacting me to inquire about problems riding over Rabbit Ears Pass with a bike tuned to sea level or thereabouts. It creates some issues for me because Bob’s Facebook page on the race is in French. Presumably he’s French Canadian. But I have a cell phone number where I can reach his support team–and hopefully him, at least on occasion–and everyone on the other end of the line speaks English.

So the race got off to a difficult start yesterday, at least for a few riders. It’s hard to get it clear from the news reports but at least four, and maybe five, bikes crashed at approximately the same place around Immokalee, FL. It would appear there was some sort of hazard at that spot, else why would so many bikes crash in multiple crashes in just one spot? Who knows. But Bob wasn’t one of them.

An interesting thing about this event is the skepticism. The idea of awarding a $500,000 purse to the winner does sound extreme. One person commenting on my first Examiner story had this to say:

It’s interesting that by the rules, no prize need be awarded now. According to the rules they do not need to pay the winner if ANYONE gets in an accident or gets a ticket. There have already been several accidents as of this afternoon so it is entirely possible the riders will continue on for naught. Another disturbing point is that one of the “charities” targeted for funds is the Red Cloud Foundation whose relationship to Hoka Hey co-founder Big Jim “Chief” Red Cloud is unclear.

And I read in a H-D forum a comment by one guy who said he’ll believe it all when the money actually is given to the winner. I guess we’ll see.

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Biker Quote for Today

Harley-Davidson® motorcycles: Impeding the normal flow of traffic for over 100 years.

Here’s an interesting looking challenge. Have you ever heard of the Hoka Hey Motorcycle Challenge? This 7,000-mile run starts in Key West, Florida, and ends on the Kenai Peninsula in Alaska. The race begins on June 20, 2010, and the winner will take home half a million dollars in Alaskan gold.

Hoka Hey, the organizers tell us, means “It’s a good day to die.”

“HOKA HEY” was the roar of every warrior that rode into battle with Crazy Horse. Join us as we ride into battle. As we put ourselves on the line to find out just who we are.

More from the organizers:

Known as the Conch Republic since the city seceded from the union in 1982; Key West reflects the rebel spirit of the Hoka Hey Challenger and we couldn’t think of a better place to kick-off the Hoka Hey Motorcycle Challenge!

Key West is said to be the southernmost city in the Continental United States. It is also the southern terminus of U.S. 1 and State Road A1A. The Southernmost point in the continental United States is claimed to be at the corner of South Street and Whitehead Street and this is where our adventure will begin on June 20, 2010.

About the destination:

Homer is on the shore of Kachemak Bay on the southwest side of the Kenai Peninsula. In fact, Homer is just 15 miles away from the westernmost point in the North American highway system at Anchor Point, AK.

Homer’s most distinguishing feature is the Homer Spit, a narrow 4.5 mile (7 km) long gravel bar that extends into the bay. And it is here that our Challengers will find the end of the road. Plus, when the Challengers arrive in here; they will be greeted by one of the most enthusiastic and endearing group of people you could ever hope to meet!

The event is a benefit for the following charities.
Paralyzed Veterans of America
Warrior Weekend
Disabled American Veterans
American Gold Star Mothers, Inc.
Vietnam Veterans of America
American Indian College Fund
National Multiple Sclerosis Society

This looks like one to watch for. If you decide to run in it, let me know and I’d love to carry your reports.

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Biker Quote for Today

If ya ain’t flyin’ ya ain’t tryin’!

The Motomarathon is back in 2010 with four events on its calendar. “The Motomarathon Association,” says founding Route Master John Metzger, “sanctions an annual series of four-day rides over the best roads and most scenic routes in the nation, and now with organized sport-riding tours on both coasts.” Its first season was 2009.

Here is the list of this year’s events.

• Southern California Motomarathon – March 26-29
• New England Motomarathon – May 13-16
• Centopassi Motomarathon – June 25-28
• Colorado Motomarathon – September 17-20

With two inaugural rides last season, only six riders completed all the checkpoints out of nearly 100 participants. “With four events scheduled for 2010, it will be a challenge to nail every check,” said Metzger. “This should result in a national champion to be crowned by the end of the year.”

For more information visit the website or contact John Metzger, 303-641-1062, john@metzger.com.

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Biker Quote for Today

Ride Safe. Ride Hard. Enjoy the Ride!

Jason Hill and John Lowe went to Ensenada last month as J2 Racing to compete in the 2009 Baja 1000, but the race ended very early for them when John crashed and broke his wrist and other bones. That’s Jason on the right, John on the left.

While I quickly received, and passed on, the general information, Jason has now provided me with the full story, and what a story! I’ve started putting the whole thing up on Examiner.com in segments and you can read the first segment now. I’ll be posting the additional segments one per day until it’s all up there.

So what’s up next on my agenda? Well, when I initially made contact with Jason on the Adventure Riders forum I received a note from another fellow who asked if I’d be interested in covering the ALCAN 5000 via their team. Oh, OK, that sounds interesting.

In case you’re unfamiliar with it, the ALCAN 5000 is a team racing event with cars and/or motorcycles. They cover 5,000 miles (surprise!) and a good bit of Alaska and Canada. This particular team will have two cars and two bikes. The race isn’t until next summer so I won’t be doing much with it for awhile.

And then, asking Jason what’s next for J2 Racing, he says they now have their eyes on the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb. That’s great because I had my eyes on that, too. And it looks like I won’t even have to go looking for a team. This could become addictive.

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Biker Quote for Today

I ride faster than I should but slower than I wish. I know there is risk, but I balance it against skill and luck and that act is a big part of why I ride motorcycles and why I bother with a trip like this. – Neduro

I linked up with a team racing in the last weekend’s Baja 1000 and was hoping to be able to post frequent, up-to-the-minute reports on what they were encountering, how it was all going, and their general attitude/morale. Because I was not going to Baja with them, I was entirely dependent on them to feed me this information.

Frank Prince, of Big Magic Racing, during the 2007
Baja 1000. (Photo: Mark Hintsa)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/hintsa/ / CC BY-NC 2.0

Well, we all know about the best laid plans, and there was a reason television, in its early days, quickly switched from live programming to pre-recorded shows. When you’re on the air live and something goes wrong you can find yourself in a very awkward place.

I had discussed with Jason, one of the J2 Racing riders, just what I was hoping he could send me, and he had made it clear he would do what he could but he couldn’t promise the world, the race was his number one priority. I understood and accepted that. But I had hopes that he would find it no problem to update me frequently. And I told everyone I would be providing them with frequent updates. A bit of overconfidence on my part.

As it played out, preparing for the race became all-consuming and 36 hours after the race began I still had heard nothing. What’s more, the team had a GPS website that was supposed to show their location along the course, updating every 10 minutes. Checking repeatedly during the race the only thing it showed was that the GPS unit was in downtown Ensenada and not moving. Did something happen during the pre-running, knocking them out of the race before it even began? Did something totally unrelated foul up their plans and ruin everything? What the heck is going on down there? I really wished I was there.

Saturday night I woke up in the middle of the night thinking about it, and figuring I owed my readers some kind of update, in my head I wrote the gist of the piece I was going to put up come morning if I still hadn’t heard anything. Basically, I was going to tell them just what I’ve explained right here.

But glory be, come morning there was an email from Jason. The good news was that things went fine leading up to the race. The bad news was that early on in the race, John, the other rider, crashed the bike, broke some bones, and the event was over for J2. I still don’t know what the deal was with the GPS.

So of course it’s a disappointment for the guys, although they still seem pretty upbeat just to have gone down there to live out their boyhood dream. And it will still make for an interesting story once I have all the details. I’ll let you know when it’s written.

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Biker Quote for Today

The further you lean the less distance to fall!

I will indeed be telling the story of a racing team participating in the 2009 Baja 1000 race, which gets underway this Friday. I just won’t be following the team I started out with.

The team I am going to be following is J2 Racing. The riders are Jason Hill and John Lowe, two dirt-bike riding buddies in their early years who were reunited just two years ago after an extended loss of contact. Here’s how Jason describes their decision to do the Baja.

As we began catching up, John asked, ‘Do you remember when we were riding as kids how we used to watch the Baja races on TV and always said we’d run it one day?’ ‘Yeah,’ I replied. ‘Well, it’s time.’ And that was that. It took some convincing, but I finally agreed that it was indeed time, so we began incubating a plan.

I met up with these guys on the Adventure Rider forum. When my initial plans to go to the race and report first-hand fell through I posted a notice on Adventure Rider asking if there was a team going who would like me to tell their story. Jason quickly replied and the deal was set. This time I made absolutely certain to make it clear what our relationship is. I am not a team member, I am an outside observer, and my position is not to tell a bunch of fluffy stories that paint the team as perfect, it is to tell the story as it really is, true to life. Jason is something of a writer himself so he understands that false starts and missteps are part of life, and how you handle them is sometimes the most interesting part of the story.

So anyway, I won’t be posting the reports of their adventure here; that will be on Examiner.com. I’ll post links here to those pieces and if there are any interesting side notes that don’t really fit into the main story, I will, as usual, be telling those stories here.

Additionally, you can follow the team’s progress during the race in real-time on their SpotAdventures.com website.

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Biker Quote for Today

I’m sure I look a sight, with my filthy off-road gear and motocross boots on, drooling and staggering to the metal detector.