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The days following the wedding, my brothers and I train daily while the girls stay busy.
Oh, and Shade and Scarlet break the internet on their wedding night when Shade posts an Instagram picture of them in bed. Completely inappropriate photo of them, clearly having sex, but it’s their wedding rings in focus, everything else is blurry enough to keep him out of hot water. Scarlet’s wearing his sunglasses in the picture, her body spread out before him. Like I said, they’re having sex, but it’s the caption that sends women into a craze. Up until their wedding, nobody knew he was getting hitched. They managed to keep it a secret. Hell, nobody even knows she’s pregnant yet. Anyways, can you guess what his caption is?
I’ll wait.
Give up?
It was:Welcome to the dark side
Who the hell knows what it actually meant, but on any note, it had over twelve million likes on Instagram and Scarlet become the most-hated girl on earth.
A week before we leave for Baja, Shade nearly backs out because of Scarlet being pregnant. She’s worried and rightfully so. The Baja 1000 is dangerous. So many things could go wrong and do. Her concerns, and those of all the women in our lives, are completely justified. Racers die there. Our dad died. Sure, he didn’t die from a crash, but it just proves how dangerous off-road racing is. You start in the middle of a city, but most of the race is run in the middle of nowhere and extremely unpredictable.
In Baja, sadly, safety doesn’t come first. The rules are subjectively followed and loosely based on interpretation.
Given the dangers and the fact that my brothers hadn’t been doing much of anything aside from freestyle, I thought about racing it myself, but I didn’t want to. Strangely enough, given my tendency to disappear and carve my own way in the history books, I had no interest in doing the ironman at Baja. In fact, I didn’t even want to race it unless they were.
Two weeks before Thanksgiving, we make the trip down to Mexico for the race. With Scarlet being five months pregnant, Shade worries about her traveling and the risk of infections and diseases, and something about a parasite he is convinced the baby is going to contract.
Because of that, Scarlet stays home. Then Amberly decides Mexico isn’t a place for her and River, and Ophelia got sick with the flu. I hate being away from her while she’s sick, but I can’t back out of this one.
That leaves Shade, Tiller, Ricky, and me along with our bike mechanics.
Sixty-five miles south of the US border, in Ensenada, there’s a race through the desert, cities, even crowded streets in ultimate tests of patience, stamina, and skill.
For that reason, we spend a week preriding the course, memorizing every detail from sunrise to sunset riding ten to twelve hours a day.
Preriding the course is essential when you’re dealing with untamed wilderness in the middle of fucking nowhere—jumps, cliffs, ditches, ravines, and worse, sabotage. Locals think it’s cool to, you know, hide a fucking bumper in the sand and watch riders nearly kill themselves on it in attempt to see carnage.
Days before the race, the city fills with spectators. It’s unlike anything most prepare for. Thousands of people gather in the city that usually survives off tourism and cruise ships, but when SCORE International takes over, it’s like any other professional sports event. Cameras in your face everywhere you look, women, drugs, alcohol—it’s all there in excess. We partake in none of it. We’re there on a mission and though I know Tiller wouldn’t mind the cocaine, he resists for obvious reasons.
The day leading up to the race, we sleep. I call Ophelia that afternoon and check in on her before I leave the hotel room.
“Hey,” she answers on the first ring. Coughs, then clears her throat. “I was hoping I’d hear from you before the start.”
Yawning, I reach for my bag on the floor, stuffing my helmet, goggles, pants, and jersey in it. Searching the floor, I find my neck brace near the bathroom. Not sure how that happened, but Tiller was in here earlier looking for his gear and when he can’t find something, he starts throwing shit.
“How are you feeling?”
There’s crying in the background, probably from Berlin, when Ophelia sighs. “A little better.” And then her voice lowers. “Scarlet made me chicken soup. It’s awful.”
I laugh. “Yeah, her cooking skills are about as good as her driving.”
Shade, who’s lying in the bed across from me, smiles and grabs his junk under the sheets. “But her dick sucking skills are off the charts.”
I snort.
“Gross!” Ophelia says, having heard him.
I laugh, as does she when suddenly she’s silent, her fears getting the better of her. “I’m nervous. I heard about the locals setting booby traps. Is that true?”
I try to deflect conversations like these, but they’re inevitable. “Yeah, they’re out there, but that’s why we preride the course. To memorize it and know what’s coming so that if we come up on something that doesn’t quite look familiar, we can adjust.”
That seems to pacify her, but I can tell the distance in her tone hasn’t settled her fears.
“I love you,” I tell her. “So much.”
She sighs. “I love you more.”