The Baja Story – The Calling

I had been racing motorcycles on and off since 1977. After moving to Southern California, I started racing in Mexico in the late 1980s. In 1992, after a few solid results, I was invited to race on a team in the Baja 1000. That first race hooked me. Over the years, I raced roughly ten Baja 1000s and Baja 500s — always as part of a team.

The Ironman class was never on my radar. One rider. One bike. The entire race.  Are you kidding me? Like I said, I hated endurance sports. 

When I turned fifty, something shifted in my life. I made a deliberate decision to take my faith more seriously — not casually, not culturally, but intentionally. I committed to daily Bible reading, memorization, sermons, and quiet time. For the first time, Scripture began to make sense as a unified story instead of disconnected pieces. My faith deepened, not emotionally, but structurally.

Then something strange began happening.

During my quiet times, the word Ironman entered my mind — not once, but repeatedly. Day after day. I tried to dismiss it. Eventually, I assumed it meant triathlon Ironman. So I trained. I raced a sprint. I hated every minute of it. What was I missing? I was confused and frustrated, and I still had no idea what God was doing.

One day, while filling my truck with gas, I noticed an old Baja 1000 sticker on my window from 2007, when I had sponsored a team that raced to Cabo San Lucas. It was the 40th anniversary race. As I stared at it, I realized the following year would be the 50th anniversary.

Then I thought of my brother Mark.

Mark was killed in Vietnam in 1968 — five months after the very first Baja 1000. The realization hit me instantly and unmistakably: Ironman… the Baja In Mark’s remembrance.

For the next eight months, doors opened — and they didn’t stop. I started a nonprofit veteran organization in my brother’s name. I raised funds for stand-up wheelchairs. Troy Lee customized a helmet. Mission Motorsports sold me a bike at cost. Nothing was forced. Everything aligned. I kept walking through open doors.

Then the desert intervened.

While training in brutal heat with my friend Keith, my bike suddenly locked up. I was stranded in the open desert with no shade. Keith rode off to get the truck, leaving me alone for nearly an hour in triple-digit heat.

I saw a Joshua tree in the distance. From where I stood, it looked like nothing more than a single stalk—no branches, no promise of shade. It was high noon, the sun directly overhead, and I knew better than to expect relief from a tree like that. Still, I walked toward it.

When I reached it, I saw what I couldn’t see from a distance—an upturned arm extending just enough to cast a narrow strip of shade. I sat down beside it and felt immediate relief. The heat broke just enough to breathe again. My mind went, almost instinctively, to the book of Jonah in the Bible, where God mercifully grew a plant to give him shade in the desert heat. So I was in a spiritual mindset for sure.

As I sat there, I began to hear the wind. At first it was subtle, then steadily stronger. I looked to see a funnel cloud not far from me and thought it might give me some brief heat relief, but it just stayed in one place, which is unusual.  What seemed like minutes passed and the funnel stayed constant, deliberate, almost contained. I was actually to the point of feeling uncomfortable in what was about to happen. 

That’s when my thoughts shifted from physical to spiritual. I wondered—half seriously, half in disbelief—Is God about to speak to me? Is this one of those moments? I found myself listening, waiting, fully expecting to hear something. Not because I was searching for a sign, but because everything in me felt… ready to hear Him!

Then, just as suddenly as it began, the wind stopped.

The desert went silent again. No explanation. No voice. Just stillness. And I remember thinking, almost disappointed, Well… that was a bit nothing. When Keith showed up, I shared the story and we had a good laugh about it.

About six months earlier, I had been at a friend’s house and noticed he owned a chronological Bible. I remember telling him I had always wanted to read one straight through that way, and without hesitation he handed it to me and said I could borrow it. I had been reading it every morning as part of my quiet time, moving through it slowly, one section at a time.

The morning after my experience in the desert I opened his Bible to the next scheduled reading. It took me to the book of Nahum. I don’t remember ever spending much time in Nahum before, I don’t think many people even know it’s a book in the Bible. 

But this time was different.

Next to Chapter 1, my friend Mark has written a red checkmark next to the chapter and underlined two sentences in red, specifically Nahum 1:3 (b). That alone caught my attention. Up to this point, Mark had underlined very few sentences, so this was a rare occurrence (and never a checkmark!). And yet here, at the very start of Nahum, two lines stood out unmistakably:

“His way is in the whirlwind and the storm,
and clouds are the dust of His feet.”

I just sat there staring at the page.

When I asked Mark about it later, he didn’t remember underlining it. No explanation. No story behind it. Nothing.

I closed the Bible and sat quietly with it for a while. Was it coincidence? Possibly. I didn’t know what to make of it. But it was enough to stop me in my tracks—and enough to make me start paying much closer attention.

The next few weeks, Nahum popped up several times out of the blue with people.  I still wasn’t convinced it was much more than coincidence, but I wasn’t closed either. But then something took it to a whole other level.  

During a breakfast meeting with a friend and also the CFO of our company, were discussing his sudden retirement. I told him the story. He looked at me and said, “John, I believe God is speaking to you.” I told him I didn’t discount it, but was taking it day by day. I then asked him about his quiet time (he was a believer) and he admitted he hadn’t been very faithful. I shared with him how taking that time was changing my life and that he now would have much more free time. He said he would take that to heart. 

When I got back to the office, he called me about an hour later and asked if I was sitting down. He told me our conversation had convicted him about his own lack of quiet time, so he decided to do it immediately. He said he had a stack of Saddleback Church sermon notes on his desk—an inch or so thick—and without thinking, he grabbed one from the middle of the pile.

Then he sent me a picture.

The sermon was on Nahum 1:3b!

After the call, I fell to my knees. I now knew this was something beyond me.

Everything that followed felt inevitable. Sponsors. Media. Momentum. This had to be God.

….Next: THE FAILURES