Vurbwes Chilidog
I’m still in awe; I seriously can’t believe I finished what I would consider the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my entire life, The Inaugural Gypsy500. Given that I’ve done a week-long endurance mountain bike race across Canada, spent an unaccountable amount of sleepless nights the past 20 years editing to hit deadlines, and managed to finish dozens of massive projects with an infant that didn’t quit screaming for a year, I hope that it speaks to the gnarliness of what we coined ‘A Fundurance Race for the Weekend Warrior’. Somehow, someway, this 8-hour and 20-minute race topped all of that, both mentally and physically – granted the physical part was my own doing, which most certainly impacted the mental portion as well – but it’s my time to boast that I SMOKED the odds of finishing this race. This is my Tale from the Gyp, a story from the Couch to 500.
We started the Vurb Shred Tour in 2021 not long after the resurrection of vurbmoto. The genesis was always rooted in the grassroots level of the sport, where people like me-fanatics that lived and breathed racing at any point in their life-could come out an have a fun ass weekend without the pressure of competition. Just to remember what it was like to throw a leg over a dirtbike, all while reminiscing with old friends and having the crew at Vurb drown you in Coors Lights as the sunset on the tractors prepping the course for the next day. Our accountants quickly told us that having fun was great and all, but without ROI we would sink faster than the Titanic. Apparently giving away a QuikTrip’s worth of booze and Oscar Meyer’s Hotdog Factory in weiners wasn’t the ticket to success. Thus, we switched formats a bit and headed back into raceland, where we’ve still employed the same have fun, low pressure mentality, however that decision just made all this feel a bit too traditional in my opinion. It made me miss why we started all this to begin with; a reason to round up your entire race crew from 2003 and spend the weekend together talking about how fast we were back in the day.
Heading into 2024, I wanted to bring back that vibe and style as much as possible. Jason Macalpine and I had been discussing the Transmoto race style (an Australian team endurance race) for quite some time and I was hesitant because, frankly, America doesn’t really seem to embrace fun-loving new race formats. But I was desperate to change things up from the conventional two moto dirtbiking format, and decided it was worth the gamble to lob this idea into the air and see what happened. After all, between Vurb, Gypsy, and the insanely epic RMX / Mesquite Moto crew we had a very high-caliber marketing slaughterhouse. We all decided to pin this thing down for our first Vurbmoto Shred Tour this year, and so the shit talking began, even though no one at Vurb had raced in over two decades.
After ONE single spin bike session that lasted 30 minutes, quite a few days shredding the gnar on our local Idaho mountains, and thousands of reps with 12 ounce cans, I spoke with my wallet – as VitalMX would say – and I decided it was time to get out my checkbook, and not tell my wife, and I covertly picked up a brand new 2024 YZ250f on the way to Mesquite last week. I was in heaven… until Friday practice.
I went out very early in the session so the track would still be “smooth” but I quickly figured out, despite being the 150th bike on the track and within the first full lap, that the Gypsy500 would be much more of an undertaking than I could’ve imagined. By the time I made it around to the finish line, I definitely knew I was in over my head. The last time I raced was in 2004 and my endurance was non-existent. I was smoked after ONE SINGLE LAP at half speed. Instead of freaking out, I started concocting my personal strategy in order to fulfill my goal of finishing this insane race. A race many people showed up to as beginners, first-time racers, weekend warrior status, or like me, just looking to have fun with their friends and throw a leg over a bike for a couple laps. But if all of them could do it, so the hell could I. No way I was going to let my brain convince me otherwise.
Saturday morning came and I was a bucket of nerves. What in the hell was I doing? Vurb Team One, which consisted of myself, Eli Moore, Brett Cue, and Jason Crane, looked good on paper with two professional level riders, but between Jason and me, we probably hadn’t logged an hour of riding time in the better part of a ten years. Again, I pushed those thoughts away. While I planned to start the day, we decided it was best for Brett Cue to get the start and put in a solid lap before handing it over to me. My first lap felt pretty good and I started remembering how to ride a dirtbike again. I then passed off to Crane. He took a 7-minute break during his lap but thankfully still came around to pit lane for his swap to Eli. While Eli went out in crush zone, Crane quickly made the decision he wouldn’t survive this race and sadly opted out of Vurb Team 1, putting us down to a three rider team.
Now, leading up to all of this, I’d been doing the math in my head, and with a four man team I figured I’d probably do five total laps. Honestly, that lap count even seemed far-fetched for me to achieve. With Crane dropping out, I started calculating and quickly realized how much of an idiot I truly was. But we marketed this thing as an anybody could do it race, so I was hell bent to keep my head down. As the laps clicked off, my skill level improved drastically each time out, while my stamina and muscles proved an inverse relationship. Somehow I found the balance of skill and perseverance that allowed me to survive 17 minutes of hell (I haven’t mentioned how insane the sand was on this course) each time the bike was handed to me.
Halfway in, the 250 minute mark, I think our entire team was on the verge of F this. But we were pretty much neck and neck with the Electric Gypsies, something I couldn’t have fathomed at the beginning, and the shit talking in the pit had hit an all-time high. At that point, even though my entire body was screaming, “STOP THIS DUMBASS,” we couldn’t stop… we wouldn’t stop… thanks to Miley Cyrus.
Mean Team Gasoline (Brett, Eli, and me) strategized pretty hard this last half to put us in the most advantageous position to beat out The Electric Gypsies. I personally wanted to finish this thing out, so Brett and Eli pulled extra weight to let me rest up for the final push. At 4:15, Brett hauled ass into the pit with a solid two-minute gap on the Gypsies, we swapped transponders, and I took off faster than Lightning McQueen. Then disaster struck as I hit the first turn after pit lane. MY BIKE STARTED SPUTTERING AND SAID NO MORE BRO. I couldn’t believe it, but a brand new bike we’d just put 10 hours on it without an ounce of maintenance, what did I expect? I wasn’t too far from the pit, so I asked myself, “What would Ryno do?” I started sprinting with the bike as fast as I could and landed back at the pit just in time to see Anton Wass from Stark land in the Gyspy pit to begin their exchange. It was now going to be a battle to the bitter end.
Next in their lineup was Matty Macalpine, Jase’s Brother, who is pretty damn fast. As I jumped on Eli’s bike with stiff ass suspension, I knew this last push of the race was going to be the toughest challenge I’d faced all day. Somehow someway I managed to stay ahead of Matty until the top of Mt. Everest where he came in for a block pass faster than Maverick buzzed the tower. It scared the shit out of me, but I was a mere handful of turns away from finishing the damn thing! With a few deep breaths and the sadness of defeat, I made my way to the Far Out Finish Line and officially took the checkered flag for Mean Team Gasoline.
My wife and son were waiting on me just on the other side, and it chokes me up right now trying to explain the elation that I felt in that moment. The feeling of accomplishment. The feeling of pure and utter exhaustion. The feeling of happiness. The feeling of hugging my family after achieving this completely unrealistic goal. The feeling of being able to celebrate this moment with all of my best friends on dirtbikes. I hadn’t felt this type of emotion in such a long time, if ever honestly… From the couch to the Gypsy500, I/we did it!
Halfway through the race, I internally planned on never doing something this stupid again. But that magical 500 mark made me realize I can’t wait until I get to do it next time. FYI, we did finish 50th of 220 teams. Gypsy? 49th… Not a bad days work! SO. MUCH. FUN.
I’m a freakin’ dirtbike racer, again.
