Betty's revival

 Story time:

Back before I started this blog, back when I was just starting to bud as more than a recreational racer, I was working at my first dealership job a couple of years out of MMI. A badly beat up dirtbike came into the shop. It looked like it was used for cleaning mine fields on the wrong end of a bull dozer. The owner apparently got some wild hair to go desert racing and took it out to vegas for the Mint or something like that and got the desert bug bad. I must have impressed him with my ability to straighten and fix up the old bike because he asked me if I wanted to go race Baja with him. I had just won a national amateur WORCS championship and my desire matched his enthusiasm. He bought a brand new XR650R and left his credit card with the parts counter. I built my dream bike. We named her Betty and the three of us went south of the border for the Baja 500. Without any support crew or real Baja experience we finished and had a total blast. Next was the 1000. It was a point to point peninsula run, much more logistical than the 500 mile loop we did before. With the help of a few good friends on the crew including my own Mom who nearly suffered a nervous break down due the extreme insanity that are Mexican highways, we managed to finish the race in 32 hours. Betty had the ever loving shit flogged out of her for 32 hours! The war stories were too many. We were bloodied, bruised, and beat to shit but poor Betty looked so much worse. This was the last year that Honda offered it's pit support to racers on the XR650R. A move to transition everyone to the new CRF450X platform. So A new 450X was purchased and I did what I do to a bike with an open budget. Here is where the story gets hard for me to tell. It all started when I was working on the bike after hours at the dealership on the bike and I was not allowed keys to the place so when the other senior employee there was ready to leave I had to put down my wrenches and go home. Somehow I forgot to fill the engine up with oil... Never will I forgive myself for this awful blunder. The bike went 40 hours before the transmission stated to whine. I was gutted. Nobody made me feel worse than myself. I tore the engine down and everything looked fine. A testament to Honda's rollerbearing cam and overall durability. We gathered a 3rd rider and with two crew trucks we headed to Mexico. Before crossing the border we stopped for a meal at an interstate side steakhouse in San Diego. After dinner we came out to the parking lot to only find one of our trucks. In the parking space where our other truck was parked was only the ignition key switch tumbler. Lots of gear and pre run bikes were gone but our race bike and old trusty Betty were in the truck we still had so we decided to continue. We shouldn't have. The next day south of Ensenada a speeding conversion van on lowly inflated tires swerved around us and then a few miles later we saw it crashed off of the highway while at least half a dozen Mexicans crawled out and then stood grimly while a girl whaled from inside the upside down van. I helped my EMT buddy crawl in the van and we extracted an infant. I held the tiny small lifeless body in my hands. It's head was horribly smashed. Everybody just looked at me. Finally my EMT buddy said there is nothing we can do. I set the poor thing down on the ground and walked away. The next day while pre-running the 3rd rider broke his foot. The next day while pre-running the 450's transmission again began to make concerning noises so we decided to make ol trusty Betty our race bike. The night before the race Betty's lighting coil stator burned out. We finally threw in the towel. It was a long quit drive home. My Baja racing days were over as was my relationship with my teammate. But 15 years later the ol enthusiastic guy came through the door of my shop and said I want to sell the bikes. But he couldn't see selling ol Betty to anybody except me and he couldn't see selling anything to me but rather to bestow ownership. The bike had been sitting out side leaned up against a dumptruck under 4 feet of snow. stripped of it's carburetor, birds living it ol Betty's air box. What a sorry sight but he knew I would bring her back to life. Welcome home Betty.