It All Begins Here
My Story – More Than a Race
At 65 years old, I’m preparing to race the 2026 Baja 1000 as a solo motorcycle rider in the Ironman class. The Baja 1000 is the longest continuous off-road race in the world. I will be on a motorcycle for more than 30 straight hours.
I’ve tried before. Twice.
And I failed both times.
If I finish this time, I’ll become the oldest person to ever complete it in the nearly 60-year history of the race.
But the real question isn’t what I’m doing.
It’s why.
It Started With Loss
I grew up in Northern California, the youngest of three boys. By the time I was seven, loss had already entered our home.
In 1968, my brother Mark was killed in Vietnam.
Ten years later, my father died in a motorcycle accident.
Faith in our family was not casual. It was forged in grief.
A Dangerous Prayer
Before my brother deployed to Vietnam, my mother prayed a dangerous prayer:
“Whatever it takes to bring my husband to You.”
And in that moment, she sensed a question press into her heart:
“Even your son?”
She recoiled at first. Then she surrendered.
“Not my will, but Yours.”
Months later, two Navy officers walked up our gravel driveway.
My father was shattered by the loss of his son. And in that broken place, he surrendered his life to Christ.
I didn’t understand any of that at seven years old. But something eternal was being built in our family — and in me.
Looking back now, I can see it.
The Calling I Didn’t Want
I had raced Baja many times on teams. Ironman — one rider, one bike, the entire race — was never something I desired.
I hate endurance sports.
But at age 50, after getting serious about my faith, something strange began happening. During my quiet times, one word kept surfacing:
Ironman.
I assumed it meant triathlon. I trained. I raced one. I hated it.
Then one day, staring at an old Baja 1000 sticker from a race I did in 2007 on my truck, it hit me. That had been the 40th anniversary of the Baja 1000. The next year would be the 50th.
Ironman… the Baja.
My brother had been killed just months after the very first Baja was run. Something connected in me that I couldn’t shake.
Doors began opening. Sponsorships. A nonprofit in my brother’s name. Media attention. It felt aligned.
Then the desert intervened.
The Whirlwind
While training in triple-digit heat, my bike failed. I was stranded alone in the Mojave.
I found a thin strip of shade under a Joshua tree. As I sat there, wind began to build around me — not passing through, but circling. Sustained. Intense. Almost contained. It lasted for several minutes.
I grew uncomfortable. I waited. Listening. Expectant.
Then it stopped.
The next morning, I opened a borrowed chronological Bible I had been reading and found these words underlined in red by the Bible’s owner.
“His way is in the whirlwind and the storm and clouds are the dust of his feet”
Nahum 1:3b. Remember those two sentences!
The confirmations didn’t stop after that.
The next few weeks, Nahum surfaced again and again in unexpected places. Casual conversations. Random mentions. It caught my attention, but I was still cautious. I don’t go looking for signs and I didn’t want to manufacture meaning.
Then something happened that removed all doubt.
During a breakfast meeting with a friend — the former CFO of our company — I told him the entire story. He listened quietly and then said, “John, I believe God is speaking to you.”
I told him I was taking it day by day and then I challenged him to start taking time out for the Lord and carve out quiet time, as I had done. It is a life changer, I told him.
An hour later, he called and asked if I was sitting down.
He said our conversation had convicted him about neglecting his quiet time. So he grabbed a random sermon outline from a stack on his desk, about an inch thick and looked at it.
He sent me a photo.
The sermon was on Nahum 1:3b. The same two sentences about the whirlwind.
That was the moment it stopped being coincidence.
Everything that followed felt aligned.
Then I Crashed
HARD!
I shattered my collarbone and severely bruised my ribs six weeks before the race. I had surgery, plated the collarbone, and raced anyway. Severely undertrained and not fully healed.
I made it 538 miles. The race was 1,138.
I failed.
One year later, I tried again — healthy this time. Documentary crew. Funding. Momentum.
Halfway through the race, mechanical failures and mental collapse ended it again.
Two attempts. Two failures.
Then silence.
For six years, I barely rode. I didn’t believe God had abandoned me. I believed I had misread Him somehow. He is perfect and I am not. It had to be on me.
Calling without clarity is heavy. I carried it for years.
But I finally let it go.
The Call Returned
In 2023, my oldest and dearest friend was diagnosed with aggressive cancer.
We had known each other since we were five. We had taken a cross-country motorcycle trip together decades earlier. As his body was failing, his faith in Jesus deepened.
One night on a family prayer call, he said:
“What do you do when everything the world says makes you a man is gone? That’s when you find out if you’re truly surrendered to Christ. My faith has become so strong that for the first time, I can truly give thanks for cancer.”
I was floored.
The next morning at 5:00 a.m., one word entered my mind the moment I woke up.
“Baja”
I said it out loud.
“Nope.”
It kept coming – morning after morning.
I had zero desire to do this, and not even sure why I would do it. But I prayed and told God that if he wanted me to do this, I would have to know 100% it’s from Him and not me.
Then during another Zoom prayer call, his wife quoted Nahum 1:3b — twice. Those two sentences.
Later, she didn’t even remember saying it.
The silence was over.
My friend passed away in June 2024.
And I knew this was no longer about veterans. Or documentaries. Or proving something.
It was about obedience.
Still Struggling With It
You might think I jumped in immediately.
I didn’t.
I was twenty-five pounds overweight. This would cost a lot of money. The training would be brutal. I would be 65 years old, and I didn’t want to do it.
But something changed in me through my daily quiet times.
This race was no longer an ending.
It was the beginning of the final chapter of my life.
A chapter shaped by failure, risk, doubt, and purpose.
Purpose to encourage people who think it’s too late.
Purpose to speak to an identity beyond work or status.
Purpose to live what I claim to believe.
One Last Confirmation
After struggling with this for almost a year after John’s death, on May 31, 2025, I asked my wife Anna if she would support this.
She said she would — but made it clear I would have to train harder than ever before. She admitted she didn’t fully understand it all, but she would stand by me.
That Monday morning, June 2nd, I had breakfast scheduled with my friend Keith — the same guy who had been there in the desert years earlier and had been with me through the entire “ordeal”. He had no idea of any of this.
The waitress took our order.
I asked for eggs — very soft.
She looked at me and said,
“Ironman?”
I froze.
Keith looked at me, confused. The silence felt like an hour.
“Are you?” He asked. I looked back at her
She asked again,
“Are you training for an Ironman?”
“Actually… today is my first day.”
She nodded and walked away.
I just sat there — incredulous. I’ve been ordering my breakfast like that for decades and this is what she says? On the very first day of my decision?
The doubt I had been carrying for years was suddenly gone. God knew I needed that last push.
Then It Happened…AGAIN!
I trained hard for a year, lost over 20 pounds, and was building the right kind of muscle. I had some setbacks with my 2017 Honda, including rebuilding the engine, and finally broke down and bought a brand new 2026 Honda CRF450X, fuel injected.
It’s just money, right?
I had lost some valuable riding time, but my plan was to hit June hard. My body was ready, and I would increase the workouts while spending a lot more time riding in the Mojave Desert.
It was the perfect plan.
Until June 19, 2026.
I planned a four day trip to visit my brother Eric in San Felipe. We would catch up, and I would ride several hours every morning and evening. Friday morning went well. I had my GPS with me so Eric could track me while I rode alone.
That afternoon, I headed south toward Matomi Wash. I was starting to feel good on the bike again. I wasn’t pushing it, but it was coming back.
Then everything changed.
There are two accidents in my life that I simply cannot explain. The first was six weeks before the 2017 Baja 1000.
This was the second.
One moment everything was fine. The next, my front tire hit a large rock off the side of the trail. I never saw it. I was suddenly in the air at about 40 mph.
When I came to, I was sitting on the ground facing the direction I had just come from, leaning against my motorcycle seat. I still have no idea how I ended up like that. Well, I actually think I do.
I took inventory.
Right arm, good. Legs, good.
Then I moved my left shoulder.
My forearm was lying in the dirt as if it belonged to someone else. I could move my fingers, but they didn't feel like mine. I moved my shoulder again and felt the bones above my elbow hitting each other.
I knew it was bad.
I said inwardly to God, “I can’t believe You did this to me again! I didn’t even want to do this!”
I was angry. I had spent a year preparing for something I never wanted to do in the first place, believing God had called me back to it. And now I was lying alone in the Baja desert with a badly broken arm.
I needed to yell something and I needed to get it out and at the top of my voice I yelled, “Though You slay me, yet will I trust in You!” Job 13:15.
That was absolutely NOT what I wanted to say so I yelled again...and the same words echoed through the desert.
The words almost felt as if someone else were saying them.
Then I said them a third time, this time to myself and I surrendered it.
Once again, I laid it at God’s feet.
I was able to contact Eric through my GPS. Just after sundown, about 90 minutes after the crash, he found me.
Thirty-six hours and three ambulance rides later, I was in a San Diego hospital. Surgery followed Monday morning.
I didn’t have much hope for Baja.
Four weeks later, my surgeon told me I was much farther along in my healing than she ever expected. If things continued, she thought I might be able to ride again by mid-August as she knew I would ask.
And that is exactly what happened.
As I write this on October 2, 2026, I have been able to ride about eight times. I lost three months of hard training and riding, exactly the opposite of what I had planned.
But somehow, one piece after another has continued to fall into place.
Two chase teams. Vehicles. Lodging. People stepping forward at exactly the right time.
The race is now just weeks away - November 13th.
And one thing I know for certain: if I finish those 964 miles, God will get the glory, because there is no way I can do this in my own strength.
This has been a 10-year journey, with a lot of silence in between.
Now I wait to see what He is going to do.
This Is More Than a Race
The outcome is unknown.
Telling this story publicly without a guaranteed finish is risky.
But without risk, there is little reward.
And maybe the greater reward isn’t the finish line.
Maybe it’s who I become on the way there.
Maybe it’s obedience.
I just don’t know…
If you want to follow along — the preparation, the doubt, the growth, the lessons — the journey continues on Facebook and Instagram.
Let’s find out together where this road leads.
Now you know the story!
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