
ADV Motorcycle Cannonball
Interviewing adventure motorcycle creators and authors is a key feature of the podcast. Aaron and Taylor speak with adventure travelers from various backgrounds, aiming to inspire listeners to embark on their own journeys. The duo often discusses a wide range of motorsports, including motorcycle rallies, TSD rallies, checkpoint events, and anything related to adrenaline and horsepower!
ADV Motorcycle Cannonball
Death Before DNF: The Joey Evans Interview & ADV Cannonball Rally News
Joey Evans talks about his journey from a paraplegic to a Dakar Rally finisher. He also gives updates about his personal and professional life today.
Taylor and Aaron discuss the 2025 and 2026 ADV Cannonball Rally and other notable motorcycle nonsense.
To learn more about Joey, book him for a speaking engagement or order his non-fiction work; visit his website.
Episode Sponsor: 12th Annual, Wailin Wayne Weekend, September 3rd -7th 2025
Support us directly on Patreon HERE
Buy us a Coffee HERE
The Motorcycle Book and Film Clubs.
The Living List Document GOOGLE DOC
Contact the Podcast Podcast@ADVCAnnonball.com
Contact Aaron for ADV Rally Inquiries RM@ADVCannonball.com
ADV Cannonball Podcast Home
ADV Cannonball Rally Home
GPS Checkpoint Rally & Event App Home
ADV Cannonball Rally on Facebook
ADV Cannonball Rally on Instagram
ADV Cannonball on TikTok
ADV Cannonball on YouTube HERE
Welcome to the ADV cannonball podcast where we discuss all things on two wheels, the adventure bike cannonball, and other motorcycle related nonsense. Season three episode nine. Welcome to adventure cannonball podcast. I'm your host, Taylor Lawson. And today, I am joined by my co host, Aaron Pufal.
Welcome. What's up, big dog? I don't know. I think maybe you get the big dog award. You've been you've been you've been nailing down the, the rallies over there in the West Coast Of The United States.
Yes, sir. We have the big Touratech rally west. It was in Plain Washington, which is near Leavenworth, and it was a it was a big success. However, first, we shall not forego the procedure. What are you drinking, and where are you?
Oh, that's a really good one. And I wanna ask you about Leavenworth. So I'm in Sweden. I'm, I'm not in the studio where I was last with Robert Baldinger. And today, I am drinking a Deepa double IPA.
It is here we go. It is a mighty double IPA from the two beer city, city. Explosively aromatic, fresh, and A little bit fruity. A little bit fruity. Deepa, baby.
Deepa. And you? What are you drinking? It's a a a a local Washington top cutter IPA. Very nice.
I think I was partaking in a few of those when I was out there last. Yes, sir. It's a nice we call this a session IPA. Cheers. Is that is that did that name come about?
Someone told me the name recession ales is so that you could drink them all day, and I can't drink anything all day. But is that really what it came? Is that is that the origin of that? I don't know, but it sounds appropriate. If you're gonna have a session of beers, you want something that's not, you know, 7% alcohol.
You want something that's, like, 6% alcohol, not nine, like a double IPA, like block my calendar. I'll be drinking for the next four hours, four hours. That's impressive. I'm old, man. I can only get a few hours and then right to bed.
I don't know what it, I got to get finished this beer. And by the end of this, by this podcast, obviously are my words. We're so wild. It's really, it's really impressive. Impressive.
They get more impressive as the, as the episode numbers increased. That's what that's, that's one way to describe it. So, Towartec Rally. Tell me about it. I have some questions for you.
How long was the rally? The rally ran from Thursday, technically, to Sunday morning, but really, Saturday night is the big send off. I arrived on Wednesday, set up. It was great. The weather was fantastic.
It was really dusty and warm, but it didn't really rain. So because everyone camps. Well, most people camp. Some people ride into Leavenworth if they're smart and get a hotel overnight, but most people camped, and, the weather was fantastic. There was 1,500 rally goers and, they knocked out a bunch of obstacle courses, training sessions, guest speakers.
There was probably 20 or 30 vendors there And, yeah, Turotech puts on a great rally, and I would call it a big success. A big success. Yeah. And I think one of the things that that, we'll cover at the end, maybe we'll keep that as a bit of a cliffhanger to the end of what actually constitutes a successful rally. Indeed.
Indeed. And I will go ahead and upload all of our pictures we took, sometime before this episode drops. So I'll send out a newsletter, and I will post it to our news feed, on the various different, RSS feeds. So what's interesting is that it was the ABR festival was at the same time. Yeah.
This is a huge, huge deal. It is. I always say that The UK and European motorcycle culture is is, second to none. And after seeing some overhead pictures, drone footage of the ABR festival, and I watched a few videos late last night, one of them from Robert. And it is an amazing event, and I and I can't wait for us to, attend maybe in the next next couple of years.
That'd be amazing. But what an amazing amount of people. That's huge. I think that the 1,500 is impressive. I think about, like, Skoog we went to that was had the cap at it, a 100 a 100 riders.
And then by the time, you know, it's a small space. But, again, it's really the focus is on riding, and there was, I think, 150 people there. So to have 10 times that at 1,500 is impressive, for the one that you did in Touratech. And then to actually have 20,000 at ABR in The UK, that is that's super impressive. Yeah.
I think they're all distinctly different. So I think Skoog and the Touratech rallies are decidedly riding focused and training focused rallies. So you go to one place, you set up camp, there's some vendors or things like that, but there is riding, there are tutorials, there are led rides both on and off road every day. And I don't think the AVR sort of ABR festival really is a rally like that. I think it's more of a gathering place with things you do on-site.
And I saw some some challenge courses, but I don't think the focus is on riding. I think the the focus is on culture and just a celebration and a festival as opposed to a rally, but I definitely wanna go. That's for sure. Yeah. Absolutely.
A a buddy of mine, Sven, that I met when I was he was in my rider group or shall I say I was in his rider group. And, he he's the bike actually I rode. It was the same, the Tenere, the 700 that I rode that had the twin pegs on it, and it performed so well in the sand. And I was like, I gotta get those. So I did that.
And I've been chatting with him, and he rode his bike there. He rode a KTM there. When it was a, Sven, you're gonna you're gonna kill me for this. A big KTM. More comfortable for the road.
Anyway, but he rode there, and it took a couple days to, to get back as well. Anyway, he talked about what an amazing event it was there. And, also, just so you know, Aaron, when Robert was there, he borrowed a set of twin pegs for your GS that he's gonna ride in the adventure cannonball rally. Nice. I'm happy to bolt on whatever he wants.
It's fine with me. Yeah, man. Cool. Anyway, Sven, thanks very much for the, the updates of your trip. It looks pretty amazing.
And by the way, four bikes in your garage. Really? Four bikes? Listen. We all have, addictions.
I also wanna mention quickly about that that festival is that I saw some videos and many of our podcast guests were, special guest speakers at the Abar festival, Elizabeth Beard, Austin Vince, and today's podcast, Joey, and, Linden Poskett. So a lot of our recent guests were featured at the ABR festival. So that was really cool to see the synergy between our podcast and the festival. Yeah. It was nice.
And there were some other podcasters there as well, actually. I thought it was really cool. They were up there having a chat. And the guy started. He's like, so does anyone here actually listen to our podcast?
It was kinda he was very self deprecating and super genuine, super nice guy. Yeah. But he obviously knew the answer to that because he saw his his downloads. That's called downloads. Exactly.
Yeah. So that's called the humble brag, by the way. That's that's the the humble brag. Yeah. You know?
Yeah. But I have to say, though, it's not bad being number two. That's right. Someone's gotta be number two, baby. Someone's gotta be number two.
Oh, sorry. I want to mention that we posted the it was approved. Sorry. The GPS Checkpoint Rally app is now available on iOS, and we are working on the Android version right now. But I will tell everyone right away that iOS is inherently more stable than Android.
It's not a programming issue. It's the nature of the platform. So I would encourage everyone to, focus on the iOS app. And, if anyone wants to use the GPS checkpoint rally app for your rally or you want to beta test it, just go to advcannonball.com and navigate your way to the app page and go ahead and send us a request via the form. But, yeah, super excited to finish beta testing and have the rally up on the iOS store.
It was a big journey. Yeah. Congratulations on that. You put a lot of hours into that. Yeah.
There's about a hundred hours into just development and beta testing. So it was great. It's also quite cool that Joey Evans had that opportunity or you had an opportunity to to have a chat with Joey Evans. Yeah. Linden Poskitt said you have to go talk to Joey.
And, of course, the amount of preparation involved in these things is several weeks. So it took us some time to to read his book, look more into his story, and then go ahead and set up an interview. He's he was in South Africa, but the, the interview went great. Yeah. Nicely done.
And with that, I think we should roll the interview. Registration is now open to the public for the next ADV cannonball rally. All riders on any motorcycle are welcome to join the adventure. Whether you're looking for an exciting and highly organized coast to coast ride with a group of like minded riders or a friendly competition for cannonball glory, it doesn't matter. Everyone can participate.
Head over to advcannonball.com to secure your rally starting position today. Now back to the podcast. Joey Evans, welcome to the podcast. Hi, Cheers. Good to be here.
Great. Thanks very much. I know we have a a huge delay in the audio, so everyone will have to, bear with us with their technical, difficulties. And everyone knows that I'm not the host of the podcast, Taylor is, but we're gonna do our best to struggle through this. And we're so very pleased to to have you on the podcast.
You are the author of Pera to Dakar, and welcome to the Motorcycle Book Club. Hi. Thank you. Good to be here, man. Thanks.
Excellent. Linden Poskett, was recently on, and he said you have to go speak to Joey. And I went and read your book for the second time, and, you know, it was a tough read at the beginning, but maybe we should start at the very beginning. You weren't into motorcycles as a kid, but maybe you can tell us what your first motorcycle was and what brought you to motorcycles. Yeah, for sure, man.
Yeah. I grew up, one of six children, just outside of Johannesburg, South Africa. And we didn't have a lot of money in that kind of stuff. And so, you know, I, I liked the idea of a motorcycle, but it, it was something that was, you know, just wasn't achievable at the time. And so it took me until I was 26 years old and I was working.
I was working in a factory. We built, we built pumps and things and, saved up enough money and bought my first, secondhand motorcycle. And the first bike I got was a, it was a two fifty two stroke, which was it was a CR Honda. And man, that thing was pretty wild for a beginner to get a motocross bike, two fifty two stroke right off the bat. But, I just loved it, you know, and I and I started off riding with buddies and, with a bit of motocross.
And then I and then I got into, like, the the freestyle stuff a bit. I wasn't I wasn't a great freestyle rider or anything like that by any means, but but just got into that, started loving that sort of world. And then I moved into more enduro and off road type riding, and I think that's where I really found my passion, you know, racing cross country and mountain valleys and forests and crossing rivers and, you know, being outdoors, that was, man, I I just loved, off road and enduro. Maybe you can describe the first race that, you know, brings about your accident. What kind of race was that?
What were you racing? And, maybe just to describe the event to us. Sure. Yeah. So I was, it was the 10/13/2007, and I lined up at the start of a race.
It was a it's a place just South of Johannesburg called Heidelberg, and, you know, it it was an off road race. It was called a hair scramble is what we call it here. But I know like in a lot of different countries, what some countries call enduro and some call off road or hair scramble, it varies what it is. But basically it was a race where you'd be racing through through rocky little mountains and crossing rivers and through forests and that type of thing. Pretty fairly high speed, not slow like an enduro type thing, pretty quick.
And it was part of a championship and I was lying second in the championship and it was the second last race of the seat. So it was a it was a big one. You know, I really wanted to win this race that I could, you know, have a chance at this championship still and going into the last race. And, it was it was just a normal day. You know, we got up early in the morning, you know, you drive out and you set up your gazebo with your buddies and you, you know, you're all kind of kidding up there and filling your camel backs and joking with each other.
And it was just a normal, normal Saturday race morning. And then we lined up at the start and it was a, it was a mass start, but in your classes. So, man, I'm trying to think back now, it's a long time ago, but we were probably like 20 guys all lined up together shoulder to shoulder, and we're basically gonna race across, we call it bushveld, so like a field grass and some rocks and some ant hills, that kind of stuff. But at the other end of that field, it goes into a farmer's gate, and then you go, everyone has to pass through that gate. And a lot of this kind of racing was done in our winter, which is very, very dry, and so there's a lot of dust.
And so it's really important to get to get a good jump and, you know, you wanna get through that gate as as quick as you can, you know, one of the top first few guys, because if you're anything from like fourth, fifth, further back, you can't see any, you know, with all the dust. And so you just fall further and further and further, further back, trying to wait until you see, so you don't crash. And, and it, and it's kind of like lose the race almost in that first corner. So it was, you know, I'm standing there on that start line, you know, at the normal sort of stuff, you know, you shake your hands out, you grab the bars, you started your back, you're moving at a bit, you're waiting for that flag to drop, you know, the nerves are going and I'm like, man, I've got to get that corner, got to get that corner, got to get that corner. And, I didn't remember anything after that.
And the next thing I remember is, waking up and I'm lying in the dirt, my helmet's off and I'm looking at the sky and there's just faces looking down. And what had actually happened was going into that first corner. I've got a pretty good start. You know, it was what the guys tell me. You know, obviously, like I said, I don't remember it, but they said I was like one of the first couple of guys into the corner.
But there was a guy behind me that came in just too hot and he kinda just, as I was in the corner, he was just overshooting that corner and he kinda teed me out, crashed into my rear swing arm and, we both just went down hard. And then obviously with the you know what it's like in those first corners, you get ridden over by a couple of guys as well in the process and all that sort of stuff. And yeah, just, was unconscious. Obviously, hit my head really hard and was unconscious for several minutes. And then as I'm waking up these faces, first thing I realized is that I had thought I had dirt and stones in my mouth.
I started spitting this out, but it was it was actually my teeth. And I I'd shattered twelve of my teeth, some of them just right down into the gums and just cut all my tongue up and mouth's all full of blood and things. And then we realized that, my legs were my legs were leaning against a buddy of mine. And as they stood back, my legs just fell to the ground. And I just said to the paramedics, I said, I can't feel my legs.
And then my whole changed. It can happen anywhere. You know, if you go online and you look at a a dashcam video montage, you know, I don't care if it's on a racetrack or you're riding your big adventure bike going on a simple adventure. It can happen anywhere. You're just running along, and it's no fault of your own, and it happens at an intersection even.
Obviously, there's a there's more risk with with racing, but at the same time, it can happen it can happen anywhere. And then you end up in the hospital. And this was this was the hardest part for me to to read. And by the way, your book is available, on Audible, which which is great. But it is, I wanna say, cringey, but that is not enough.
It is so hard to listen to, and your fortitude was extraordinary. Maybe, if if you don't mind, is is try to tell people where you got the courage to overcome what you experienced in the hospital. Yeah. Well well, just to quickly backtrack a little bit, you said it can happen anywhere. And I think for all of us guys that ride, you know, as you know, you know, all your listeners are riders and things.
And it's like for all of us, all the guys listening now, they've all crashed at some point. You you know, you might have just toppled over in a stream or you might have had a big flinger right through the bush felt or whatever. There's a we've all crashed. And what all the guys will know as well is sometimes you'll have a major crash. Like it's a big high speed, really crazy kind of crash, and you'll walk away with a couple of bruises.
And then you'll have another one where you're in the forest or something and you'll literally tip over, but your foot was between two rocks and you snap fib, fib, and then you break your wrist on the way down. And it's literally a two mile an hour crash. And you're like, you know how? And so it's, yeah, it can happen and definitely breaking my back and paralyzed was something that I thought, you know, you think it happens to other people. You know, these kind of things do, but it's it's it happens to just everyone, you know, or anyone I should say, you know, where it's just like a just a little click, you land just slightly awkward.
It lands in a certain way. Something just doesn't go and boom, your whole life changes. So it's Yeah. It's, I know we've all walked away from once going like, sure, that could have been a lot worse, you know? But, yeah, it was one of those, you know?
But it happens. And in racing, it obviously is dangerous. And so those chances are increased. But, yeah, being in that hospital was that was tough because, when you look back now with my story and my journey and that kind of stuff, it's just a chapter of that book. But at the time, that was the last chapter in my life is how it felt, you know, that this is where it ends, not where it begins.
You know, this is life's done. And it was it was especially tough, you know. I was, you know, I was married and I had four daughters, and it was actually the day for my oldest daughter's eighth birthday to crash. And so we get to the hospital and basically the next morning, it's her birthday party, all that sort of stuff. And I'm at the hospital and everything's just upside down.
And, you know, definitely as a dad, I thought, man, I've messed up bad here. You know what I mean? Here I am now in a wheelchair the rest of my life. And, yeah, it was a lot of really, really tough, tough, dark times. But, you know, one of the things that was in those darkest times, the first thing we realized is that I can't think of your whole life, can't think of all the areas this is gonna affect and all the problems and challenges.
It was too much, you know? And so we just focused one day at a time, you know, and I say we, because my wife Meredith, she was with every day in the hospital and, you know, we really got through a lot of this together and we we just focused a day at a time. So you get up in the morning, you'd be like, all right, and what do we need to do today? And it's physio and it's eating right, trying to figure out, you know, obviously all the toilet issues because you lose all bowel control, your bladder control. It's like, yo, it's incredibly, really difficult.
And it was just like, alright. Just today. And we just do it like that. And we just kinda ticked off days, hacked through days one by one. And, you know, I'm a I'm a pretty positive guy.
You you know? I'm I'm you know? And so majority of the time, I was I was very positive. I was like, yeah. We got this man.
We whatever it takes, but it grinds you. It grinds you, you know, every day still paralyzed, still struggling, still and it was it was hard. But, you know, I had a goal, prior to to the the crash to to raise the deck already. That was the that was the big goal. And, in that hospital, I remember thinking like, man, if I could come back in this, you know, and go into that, that that would, man, that would be that would be really summing.
And it kinda like gave me goosebumps when I thought about it and, you know, it would kinda make, you know, you can feel that swell inside of you going like, sure dude, that would be epic. And then at night I'd sometimes dream I was walking again or I was running, I was riding again and I was doing these things. Then you wake up the next morning, nothing, you're just still paralyzed, your legs are skinny. They don't move. Can't feel anything.
You're wearing nappies. You've got a bag of urine strapped to your leg. Your teeth are all smashed out. And, you know, a couple of weeks in or whatever, and it's just like, yeah, no, this is my reality the rest of my life. So it wasn't that I was super positive all the time and I was always like, yeah, man, I'm coming back.
And it was like a cool superhero story. It wasn't like that. It was like, there were days I felt like that, but there were days where it was dark and it was hard and I'd lie in bed at night. You know, you'd wake in the middle of the night and just cry. And it was just so hard to face every day.
So it was a battle, man. It was a battle. Yeah. For sure. And you talk about that same small goals in your racing and your riding.
You talk about one day at a time, one small achievement at a time in the hospital. And then when you're racing, you say one rock at a time. I'm gonna make it to the next hill. I'm gonna make it to that next goal in the middle of the desert. You know, it really works, and it's, a lesson we can all take from that.
We don't wanna give away too much out of your book, but at some point, you you get back on a motorcycle. At what point did you think, wow, this is a great idea. I'm gonna get back on a motorcycle. Yeah. I think very few people thought that was a great idea.
But but it's interesting that because, you know, there also be some of your listeners that have had, like, really hectic stuff happen in their lives, you know, where they've had, you know, either a big crash or a near death experience, or, you know, they might've had like cancer or strokes, all the sort of horrible things that can happen to us. And, a lot of people, when you have like a near death experience, you know, something really hectic, they often say, like, well, man, you're so lucky to be alive. Obviously, now you're going to complete change your lifestyle and be a lot more safer and a lot more like, you know, don't take any risks and stuff. But I think for for many of us to go through this type of stuff, it makes you wanna live more. You realize how quickly it ends, man.
You realize, like, you know what it's like when you when you have someone close to you, you know, pass away. You know, I'd I'd there's a lady that I know, you know, very well for many, many years, and she passed away just a couple of days ago now and this week or in the last two days, so it would have been like Friday or Saturday and today's Monday. And she was coming up to 60 and she was telling me a lot about the stuff she's gonna do when she retires and stuff. And boom, she never made it. You know?
And you look at that, and you, man, what a tragedy, man. If she'd known she was gonna go, man, she would have quit her job, man. She would have done all those traveling with her husband, her kids, and all the stuff she wanted to do, and that kind of stuff. And so when you have an experience, where you have a death one, you suddenly go like, woah, man, I was not ready to check out, man. There was still a lot I wanted to do with my life and that kind of stuff.
And so if anything, it makes you wanna live more. It makes you wanna you don't wanna die, but you wanna make sure you're living that full man, that you are ready to check out at any time. You want to make sure that you're ticking all those boxes. And so if anything, it made me want to ride, more. It made me want to chase that deck of gold more.
It made me want to, travel and do the things I wanted and to take more risks with my life, you know, as in, like, as in stuff outside of my comfort zone, you know, not like I wanna die, but I wanna full this life, man. It's it's because it's gonna end at some point. When you have a close one, it reminds you of that. I think we seek motorcycles. If you are that person, we seek motorcycles not because we're necessarily adrenaline junkies, but it's a little bit of a purpose.
I think life, especially now, is so easy that we we seek difficult things to do, but the road to the car is not easy, speaking of difficulty. Maybe you can describe what it takes even to submit your application to Dakar and your journey to submitting the application. Yeah. I think probably the hardest thing, I get you know, was was was telling people, Hey, this is what I'm doing, because you get judged a lot. You know what I mean?
Anytime you want to do something big and crazy, whether it's motorcycle racing, you're opening a business or whatever it is, you know, you start putting it out there and you know what it's like. You're gonna get some people going like, yeah, you can totally do it. And other people are like, yeah, you're nuts. Or have you ever thought of this? So I think that's a bit irresponsible.
And what about your family? And you know what I mean? You're gonna get a lot of all that sort of stuff. And so to be honest, one of the hardest parts is like putting it out there and I, and I'd mentioned it here and there, you know, I had this goal still and stuff and, you know, we're, we're pretty dismissive, you know what I mean? Especially in the beginning, you know, you're still paralyzed.
You mentioned something like that. They're like, okay, this guy needs to get off the morphine. It's a little too many drugs his boys on. And so it's like, there's a, there was a bit of that, but, so any kind of big goal though, it starts with little steps. And if you look at something like racing the Dakar for a guy who rides adventure bikes or that kind of stuff, it just seems like such a massive list goal.
You know, it really just seems crazy, but if you break it up, it's actually very achievable for almost anyone. You know what I mean? Like, obviously, it depends on on your age, you know, physically and and things like that, but it's like, it's very achievable. You know, you kind of break it up. And so for me, it was a case of a right, I'm going to walk, and then I need to learn to be able to get on a motorcycle, and then I need to be able to start a bike and be able to ride a bike.
And then slowly but surely, we just started ticking all these little boxes and then it came right now you got to race and because you got to qualify to race back off. And so then that first time I lined up with that first race, it was about three and a half years after breaking my back that, that I once again stood on the start line of race. And man, my heart was thumping and I hacked my way through that race and it was ugly enough. I got lapped six times, finished stone last and got through one lap in three hours and other guys were getting through six laps. It it was terrible and it was very humbling and very difficult because in my mind, I was not that guy, but physically I'm that guy.
And that was when I used that strategy, like 10 moments, 10 moments, 10 moments and just kind of hacked my way through that lap. And then, yeah, then I started to, build from that. And so now I've done a few little races, little local hair scrambles, little local off roads, finishing stone loss, getting laps, not finishing whatever it took, you know, but just ticking over. And then you start finishing races and, you know, still near the back and all that sort of stuff. And then just slowly start building that.
And then I had to do some multiple day races and we had a really good series here in South Africa a few years ago. It was called the Amagesa rally. And it was a rally we had once a year. We raced to the Northern Cape, which is a beautiful, kind of desert area, like similar to Baja, those kinds of places. And, we did some races there, multiple day races up through Botswana, through the bush valve there, with wild animals and all sorts of cool stuff, and slowly just kind of built up, built up, built up.
And I got to the point where the only thing I now needed was a big international rally. And so suddenly here we are now, and it's probably now about seven years after breaking my back and I've literally got one more hurdle to go. And I we took all the savings we had as a family and I bought a place on a French team and I went to Morocco to go and beat the Mazuga rally. And that was the last thing I needed for that Dakar CV and I finished that race. We raced for like six days or whatever through the Sahara.
It was super cool, super cool race. Came back, decided, hey, man. We're gonna we're gonna pull the trigger on this. And we pulled in a CV, and we sent it in, and we waited. Wow.
That's quite the journey. And, people may not know, we don't often talk about it, but in Dakar, more than seventy people have died during that competition. And, you know, we run a small little adventure rally, and navigation is so important for, for success and important for safety. I know in one of those rallies, you had an incident with a fence and that was due because of a, a road book error. Maybe you can talk about that navigation incident.
Yeah, man. There was a there was a few crashes along the way. It wasn't a smooth sail. Those ten years, you know? Yeah.
I went ahead a fence. When was that? 2015? Yeah. 2015.
We we the the the road book was was correct. The problem was we started in the wrong place, and it was right near the start across a big pan. And so suddenly this fence came up just I can't remember how far now, but long before I expected it. It was early morning. The sun was just being over the horizon.
You get that kind of twilight and you got the dust hanging in the air and you're racing flat out across the salt pan, on the border of Namibia and Botswana. And suddenly you just see a fence just stretched out right in front of you and tried to scrub off as much speed as possible, went into the fence and, you know, catapulted the bike. Just, yeah, kind of destroyed the bike, but I managed to fix it and carry on. And I ended up finishing that race, you know, with bent bars and all sorts of stuff. And I finished like nights, you know, super late.
That was the second last day. And, and then, yeah, I just slept for, for a couple of hours and back on the start line and, and, and managed to finish. But I had another one, up in the border, on the border of Mozambique and Swaziland, whereas doing another event, they were, where I hit a cow. And, and that was another big one. Yeah.
You know, and there's a whole story around that, which the guys will read in a book, but it's, yeah, it was, yeah, lots of little setbacks. It was certainly like you, you feel like you make progress, you progress, things are going better and boom, you just take another big hit and things go back, And, anyone out there who's got their own business will have this. Anyone out there who's working on a big goal will have it. Things are styling and making progress and like, yeah, I'm gonna rock this and then poof, just from left field, something comes along and floors you again. But I guess that's where that resilience mindset comes in, where you're like, okay.
Cool. Pop it on your back. You go, like, bring it on. Let's go. Keep going.
Yeah. You come up with a great, saying in your book, and I think we could all learn from it. It's death before DNF. And, you know, you've really you've really embraced this, this this motto. And, eventually, you do make it to Dakar.
And just the financial commitment and the fundraising and all that is is a great part of your story, and we should definitely dive into that. But maybe you can talk about the actual race, what it was like to to be there, and your race took place in South America. Maybe you can kind of paint the picture of finally getting there and finally achieving that goal. Yeah, man. Wow.
That was you know, so obviously, I, you know, got accepted and and, which blew my mind, you know, and I, when I opened that email and it said that I was accepted, you know, that I'm racing that car, it was just man. Oh, it was also that whole feeling of like, oh man, what have I done? You know, now we got to go and do this thing. But, it was, it was, it was super cool, man. And, you know, with South America, it was, Bolivia, Paraguay, Argentina.
2017 was the year that I raced, and that was actually where myself and Linda met for the first time. And since then, we've become really good mates. Actually going over to Rory's daughter's christening, in a couple of weeks, in The UK. So, yeah, we've we've we've we've hooked up many times over the years, ridden in a bunch of different countries and stuff as well. But, yeah, it was that was where we actually met.
But it was, it was cool. You know, we got over. So so anyway, yeah, board the plane, get over to South America and you start with all the scrutineering and it's big holes and you got to get stamps in a book of all these different things. And you've been going crazy for the last six months trying to like tick boxes and get everything organized. And for me, it was raising money as well that I wasn't sure if I was going or not right up until the last minute in terms of finances.
And so it was really tough. But, yeah. And then you're there and you're seeing the factory KTM trucks and all the other teams and you're sitting down at breakfast there and there's Sam Sunderland and there's Toby Price and, you know, there's all these kind of top races. And it was, it was like, what am I doing here? This is crazy.
You know, I'm some, some, you know, pretty, pretty crappy rider from Johannesburg, you know, and it was, it was, it was really cool. And with South America, one of the things with Dakar being there, obviously with all the places it has been, the fans in South America is incredible. It was insane, like on a totally different scale to Saudi and Africa. Just because there's so many people there and they were so passionate about it. And so you felt like rabbit.
It was crazy. People were putting babies in your arms and take photos and you couldn't go anywhere. You know, go to a petrol station, fill up the bike and you get mobbed and people are just, you know, photos, photos, photos, photos, sign this, do this. It was like, it was crazy. I wanted to say like, no, no, you don't need my signature.
You don't know how crap I am. You know, really, it was crazy. But it was so exciting, man. And then we started with a prologue and, just crowds and crowds and you just ride around this little prologue area and yeah, it was, it was cool. And I remember we started the little time trial thing.
I can't remember how long it was now. It was a long time ago, but it was, I probably wrote a book, but it's it all I could think of is like, don't fall, don't fall, don't fall. And the guy literally in front of me pulled off, fell on the first turn. It was like a slick off camber rock, you know? And he went and I was like, man, poor Joey.
Just so I kind of like tiptoed around it and just got through it. And then the day started to tick away. I got through day one and got through day two and got through day three. But by the end of day three, I was destroyed. I was racing for an average of like sixteen hours a day, sleeping for about four or five hours each night.
My hands are already listed. I'm I'm sunburned. My lips are split. I'm I'm just my body is just destroyed. I'm I'm everything hurts.
Everything aches. I'm I'm and I'm lying right at the back. And I and, I guess that was the first time I realized that I'm out of league, you know, I don't belong here. Like, I I am destroyed. I'm literally destroyed at the end of day three of a thirteen day race.
And that was a tough one to accept, and it was a lot of thoughts of like, I need to just go home. I'm not good enough here. I don't belong here. This is crazy. And I used that same strategy of one day at a time that I used in the hospital and got up on day four, went and raced on day four.
And day four was a root day. There was actually one section where there was a June field at high altitude and 18 riders all went out that day in that June field. And remember, there's less than 140 starters, so 18 guys is huge, you know? And I don't even know if they've had other days like that, but it was along with those guys was my teammate, Walter Blanche. So there was three of us that that you raced it, and Walter was a mate of mine from Cape Town, and he burned out his I think he burned out his car through his motor, in those June fields, and he was out the race.
And I didn't know that at the time. And when we got back to the bivouac and realized he was out, and then he it took him like two days or something to try and catch back up to the race. Because that race moves on, man, and you're stuck out in the dunes, you get pulled out, and you end up somewhere, and then you got to try get a taxi and try to get it was crazy. But anyway, it took him a couple days to catch back up to us in the truck. And, yeah, he had a good cry when when he when he caught back up, and that was that was hard, you know, to see a guy.
He was a better rider. He did, man, he was gutted. It was really tough to see it. And I'm hanging on by a thread still and I'm ticking away. The day after that, the other South African was David Thomas, and he had a big crash in the mountains.
I actually came across him in the mountains and he'd broken his leg in eight places. And I stayed with him and helped put him in the helicopter and then got back on the bike and carried on. And you see guys every day, with broken bones, getting medevaced out, guys, just in a bad way. You hear about, like you mentioned now, about seventy guys dying a race, and that's what everybody thinks about, you know, how you could die in that race. Yeah, you could.
It's a very, very small percent. You know, it's like, I don't know, like maybe one percent of riders die in the race, but it's I guess that's big, but you know what I mean? It's it's, but you don't realize how many guys got home. These massive injuries, life change injuries. Because if you look at it, anyone who's at Dakar, they're not just some dude at a local race.
These are guys that have raced extensively for years. They've ridden bikes for years and years there. These guys can ride. These guys are tough, man. No one's quitting because they're tired.
No one's quitting because they broke a finger. You know what I mean? These are not those kind of guys. They're gonna You gotta do something really, really hectic. So if you've got, on average, like 40 or 50% of the guys not finishing the race, there's a small percentage that are mechanical, but the majority are massive injuries.
You're talking broken femurs, fib tips, collar bones, necks, backs, whatever, arms. It's like massive injuries, internal injuries, all sorts of stuff. And you, when you're at the back of the race, like I am, and the, you see those guys, you see those guys getting medibacked out and you're just seeing every day injured guys and you have close calls with trucks and close calls with cars and that danger isn't some danger of, yeah, it's a dangerous race, it's in your face, man. And like when you do a local race, if it's dangerous flat out in the dust and trying to keep up, tap off and you choose and you go like, okay, cool, make it a little safer. I'm just gonna make sure I finish and stuff.
You can't do that at Dakar because the slower you go, firstly, the more guys pass you, you're just in dust again, and then you get caught by the cars and trucks. And then it gets really, really dangerous. So there's, you go too fast, it's dangerous. You go too slow, it's dangerous. In the middle, it's dangerous.
You can't escape it. And that was the biggest shock at Dakar. It's just like every day, like, this is insane. This is crazy. And you realize, hey, this is how guys die.
It's not like it's very real. Very dangerous. So, yeah. And I just hacked through the days, you know, dealing with this danger as best you can and just that mindset of like I mean, you said death before DNF just now. My wife hates that phrase by the way.
But it's, it is, you have to have that kind of mindset of like, whatever it takes, man, because when you're there, you start thinking clearly and going like, is this worth it? Is this a smart thing to do? It's not. It's not smart. It's not worth it.
You shouldn't be there. It's any kind of sane person wouldn't see that a mile away, but but you're there. You've spent years preparing for this. You spent the money, put everything on the line. You better believe you're gonna do everything it can, everything you can for fourteen days and see if you can get that medal.
No? And so you just suck it up and you just go, go, and go, and you just have to kind of robot it. That alarm goes off at 03:00 in the morning and you sit up, get out that sleeping bag, and you shove that pasta in your mouth. And even if it makes you, you know, makes you wanna vomit with every mouth, you gotta get that those calories down and you put your kit on and everything hurts and everything's rubbing and sore in all the same places and and fill that camel back. Get on that bike and you just you don't think.
You start thinking, is this reasonable? Am I injured? Should I quit? Is this is this wrong? Will my knee recover after this?
Will my wrist recur? No. There's no time for that. You're there to finish. And it's especially dangerous for motorcyclists.
And I understand that, you know, the organizers are always trying to make it, safer. They're always trying to make it, a little less dangerous for motorcyclists. But maybe you can tell your story of how a car, again, no fault of your own, a car almost ended your race. Yeah. So the cars and trucks passing you is is crazy crazy.
And, you know, I've raced in Baja as well now. And, and and those trophy trucks come past you, you know, for for the American guys who have done those kind of races. I know you have a few races over there that are where you race for cars and trucks and things, and it's they'll know that it's scary. No matter how much notice you get, if you know they're there, they know you're there, whatever, it is scary, scary, and super dangerous. And at Dakar, I was getting passed every day, cars and trucks, often in the daytime, often in the nighttime.
I finished, I think, two days in the light. Every other day was in the darkness and I think I went to two riders briefings the whole race because I was just arriving after riders briefing every night. So, really at the back, but on the second last day, I entered into a semi arid desert, and it was a we call it a Tuisberg, but, so what would that be? A jeep track, like, you know, those two parallel tracks that wind their way along. And, over the years, they've got, like, Brindipa, so it's like two parallel ruts, and they're filled with fish fish, which I think you guys call silt.
The guys in Australia call it bull dust. It's that super fine talcum powder stuff that just kind of puffs up everywhere and they were filled with that. So as bikers, it's really hard to ride in that kind of terrain. You can't really see the ruts and you're trying to keep up speed and it's puffing up all around you. So you can do maybe 40 or 50 kilometers an hour tops through that kind of terrain or a guy like me can at least.
But cars and trucks with the four wheels that just snap tracks into those ruts. So these guys are flying through there and these guys started to catch me and they have these little buttons in cars and trucks where they buzz you and it's normally about they're only about 200 meters away when they do it. And, my alarm goes off and I turn around and this guy's 20 meters back. He's doing like double my And I try to swerve into the vegetation because you're just sitting in one of those ruts because there's vegetation on the sides kind of here and there, so you can't ride outside. And I try to swing my bars over to get out the way, but right where I am, that rut is just particularly in that front wheel, just drags up against the inside of the rut.
And I've already committed my weight going over, and I just bike just goes down, and I separate off the bike as it hits the ground, and the car misses me by just a couple of centimeters. But he just slams straight into my bike and then comp rides just right up in the side. It's just you can't win for losing. Right? But Sure, man.
The story of getting that bike back together as best you can is amazing, and it's in the true spirit of that particular race. You mentioned your wife earlier, and she's obviously a part of the story. You know? She's a remarkable woman. You know?
She pushed you in a wheelchair. She's changed your diapers. She's helped you with catheters. She's helped you in the middle of the night. 100%.
What role do you think she's played in your ducard journey and your and your recovery? Oh, massive. You know, massive. You know, she's, she's played such a huge role. You know, when you when you're in your darkest times, you know, and once again, your listeners will you know, a lot of guys will relate to to this, you know, when things are going good and everything's styling and you're, you know, earning lots of money and you're doing good or whatever, you know, oh, man, there's lots of people that'll stand by your side, but it's when you're in those dark times, in those hospitals or, you know, in those really difficult moments, you know, it takes someone who really cares for you to to stick with you in those sort of times.
And and it was yeah. It was it was tough, dark in that hospital, you know. And and then, you know, but together, we kinda hacked it out. You know, we we made a decision in that hospital, that we're gonna do this together, you know, whatever it takes. And she would say, hey, you gotta promise me that this is that we're gonna be all right.
I said, we will be all right. You know, I I can't tell you I'm gonna walk in. I can't tell you if it's gonna you know, physically what's gonna happen, but it's gonna be all right. And I'm gonna get positive and I'm gonna do everything I can. And we did that.
And through the years, she would back me. And a lot of times, she doesn't agree with different things, whether it's to raise Dakar or whatever those kind of things are, but she gets that it's important to me. And I think that's what really made it work for us is that it doesn't have to make sense to her, but she knows it makes sense to me, and so she she supports me because it's important to me. And and and that's something that's really helped us is that kind of think each other like that. That's important to her.
It seemed to me, it doesn't have to make sense to me, and vice versa. And when it's like that, it works. And and so, yeah, we we kind of she's really being massively supportive, but it's also a balance, I get a lot of guys who say to me like, Oh man, man, I wish my wife would let me go riding more or whatever like that. And it's not like it has to be a two way street. Yeah.
You know, one of the things that I wrote about in the book was like when I went to Dakar, I made like gift bags for every day I was away. And I wrote on those gift bags, you know, where I'd be and how many kilometers I'd be riding, the start place, the finish place, a little bit about the stage, that kind of stuff. And then I'd put a gift in each bag for every single day I was away for my wife, and I think I put a gift for every second day for my daughters. And so every day I was away, I'm on the race. They get to wake up in the morning and open that gift bag and that kind of stuff.
And it's like, that was a hassle to do that. Holy crap. I'm like counting down days to deck on, and I'm driving around stores trying to find gifts, but it was it's important. And so it's like for a lot of guys that like wanna ride and stuff, you gotta find the balance, you know, you gotta there's gotta be times when you're riding, but you know, are you spending the time in between doing the other stuff that balances it out or are you just being selfish? And through the years, there's been times I have been selfish and there's been times where I haven't ridden enough and I'm not doing enough of that stuff and I'm miserable and frustrated and that kind of stuff.
And so, you got to keep the balance, man. You got to ride. It's important you ride. It's important you chase the adventure you need and do the stuff you need as a guy, but you got to balance it out, man. You got to be doing all the other stuff.
And if you do it, you get the balance right, yeah, life's pretty awesome. You expose a lot of personal details, about your journey and your recovery in your book. That took a lot of bravery. At what point did you decide to tell your story in the form of your book? Man, it was you know, I I never people would say to me, you know, when I was heading up to Dakar, they were like, oh, this is crazy.
You should write a book, you know, about, like, from being paralyzed to qualifying to race the Dakar Rally. That's so cool. And and I thought I thought, yeah. It is, but it's like I mean, there's tons of stories about people with physical challenges. I mean, the Paralympics is full of stories like that.
You know what I mean? There's so many you you know, a lot of this kind of stuff. And then, you know, I thought, well, no. I don't know if I would, you know, kind of thing. It would be cool if I finished.
You know, that that would be super cool. And when I was hit by that car, that kinda changed everything because I was like, if I can finish this, now we have an engine. Do do you know what I mean? Because, you you know, that was really like that that was, like, crazy. Do you know what I mean?
How that whole setup played out? And I know you don't want me to say too much about it because of the book and things, you know, so I'll bite my tongue a little on that. But the way things played out off that car, that was crazy. And so, yeah, coming back home after that, it was a couple months later and I decided, yeah, I'm gonna write this book and I was offered a ghostwriter to write it. And I was like, cool.
Yeah, it makes sense. You know, I'm not a writer or anything like that. And I was lying in bed about 02:00 in the morning thinking about this and I was like, no, I've got to write this myself, man. You know, it's not going to be the same if I just tell stories to someone and they write it. And so I got up and, and I pulled out my computer and I started writing and I can only type with two fingers.
So it was two fingers, and I started writing till the next morning, and I phoned the publisher, and I was like, hey. I'm writing this book myself. And she was like, okay. But, you know, you got three months and I need a finished manuscript. And then she sent me an email, and she was like, right.
You need to write this many words a day, then you need to check it on weekends, then you need to and she gave me a full breakdown of, like, a schedule and I stuck at it. And three months, it was 10:00 at night at the last day of three months, you know, how I finished, you know, right at the end. And, and I sent in her I sent her a finished manuscript and she read it over the next weekend and she phoned me on the Monday and she's like, cool. I'm publishing a book. And it was, and then, you know, obviously, it needed some copy editing and I said to them, I said, hey, man.
You gotta just do light copy editing, you know, fix tenses and spelling and that kind of stuff. But I want when people read it, I want them to hear me speak, you know. I want it to be I wrote it like I was chatting to buddies around a around a bonfire, you know. That's what I wanted them. It must be like that.
And and so, yeah, she did it and and and then it was, published. But it was when I started writing it, I wasn't sure how to write it, to be honest, because, you know, I was thinking like, okay, cool. I race this race on this day and I finished in this in this position. And then after that, it was like I was lying this far in a championship and I was trying you know, like, that's how a guy writes when he or how a guy talks and talks about racing and stuff. If you chat to anybody about their races, I'll tell you where they finished and how they crashed and that kind of stuff.
But suddenly, I'm writing chapters about being in hospital and realizing I don't have bowel control and bladder control and I've gotta I've gotta, you know, wear nappies or or diapers, as you call them, and I've gotta, you know, I've gotta use catheters and and and all this sort of stuff. And I'm like, man, I don't really wanna tell all the guys this sort of stuff. You know what I mean? This is, like, pretty personal. And and as I was there, I thought, you know what?
There's a lot of guys out there that struggle with difference. You know? We know that like, as you get older, like prostate cancer, you know, all these kind of horrible things. And, and so I know there's other guys out there that'll that'll have similar issues and and there'll be guys that have other issues that are that are hard and difficult and personal and all that sort of stuff. And I thought, you you know what?
If I'm gonna do this, I've gotta be all in. And and that was a tough thing to do, you know, because it's it affects everything. And so it's, I decided that's what I'm gonna do. And I'd write stuff and I'd kind of like just kind of like close the laptop and be like, cool, man. That was that was I don't know if that's an overshare.
You know what I mean? And it it makes you vulnerable and that kind of stuff. And and I was like, you know what? We're all in. And so it was, it was just all in.
And so I did, I kind of like put it out there, you know, warts and all, hearts on the sleeve kind of stuff and just hope for the best. But, I must say it's been really, really cool, the feedback. I still now, I mean, it's, I mean, I wrote that book now years ago, and still now I'll get messages, you know, weekly at least, where someone will message me and be like, man, I read your book and I just want to say thank you. And, you know, guys who have, you know, accidents or illnesses or, you know, struggling financially or whatever it is, and it's, it's cool, man. So I'm stoked about it.
And I think people who read your book always wanna follow-up. So maybe you can tell us how your recovery is going now. Yeah. So, I mean, I still deal with a lot of issues from the spinal cord injury. So I still can't run or jump or those kind of things, but I can walk pretty good.
You know, most of the time people don't notice, you know, if I'm tired, I'll limp a bit, trip on steps and that kind of stuff. But, but I, you know, I function pretty good. But, yeah, I still can't run or jump, still can't feel hot or cold or pain sensation below my chest, so I can feel touch, which is why I've got proprioception and I can walk, but, still can't feel that other stuff and, can't sweat, below my chest and I still have to self catheter every day. So, I have to self and yeah, but it's, for an average guy, they see those catheters and you explain where they go and it's, it makes them, cringe. But it's, but for me, it's a zero issue, man.
I've been doing it for, you know, what's it now? Like, we're in now, like, eighteen years. You know, it's man, it's just part of my life. I don't even think about it. It's not an issue.
So I'm good. You know, I'm good, and I and I and I and I wanna keep riding bikes. You know, since Dakar, you know, I've ridden bikes in in I think it's close to 50 countries now. You know, I've been able to ride all over the world and, you know, ridden some with Lindens, ridden some of the ridden a whole bunch of adventure rallies with KTM, New Zealand, Australia, Norway, Greece, Portugal, France, all sorts of places. I've ridden with guys, up in Chester in California, ridden with my buddy, Matt, in Canada, all over The Middle East with people there, United, Kenya, Egypt, just so many places.
And it's, obviously motorcycles has been really tough in terms of what it's taken for me, with the spinal cord injury, but man, it has given back a 100 times what it took. And I had to be able to meet guys all over the world and ride in places and, yeah, it's just been incredible. Another one I did was in 2020. I went and raced the Africa eco race, with Linden, non team races to places, which was another fourteen day race through North Africa. And you got to go watch that series on his channel, races to places.
It's called race to Africa. And what's it? A race to Dakar twenty twenty. And, not to give too much away, but, but I hit a camel in Mauritania on the second last day. So there's there's more stories, man.
There's lots of more stories. And so, yep. And then since then, it's still ridden. And then I went and raced, the Baja one thousand, last year in 2024. And, I tried, you know, I raced the Ironman class and I DNF'd, you know, which was, man, that hurt for a guy like me to not finish a race.
You know, I'd finished eight big rallies in a row prior to that. So that was, man, I was gutted not to finish that. I got to a mile around about five eighty five and I'd been racing for twenty seven hours straight at that point. And just, man, I was physically destroyed like eight hours before that. And I just hacked and hacked and hacked and hacked and freezing cold.
And, you know, I made a lot of mistakes with with Trish and all sorts of things. First time in Mexico, I'd rocked up two suitcases. I was like, it was a mess. But, but, yeah, I'm going I'm gonna go back this year in November and see if I can go and finish that one. Which fits directly in line with your entire book of I'm coming back for more punishment and some would call it more adventure.
And That's it. At this point yeah. At this point, I wanna give you the sticker. I have to mail it to you, and it's our Cool. There's only 100 of these in the world, and it's the certified badass sticker.
But I feel it's underselling it. I think it should be crazy SOB or something for you, but I will I will send that to you. And thank you for super cool. Yeah. Thank you for sharing your story and inspiration, and it's a awesome motorcycle story, and it's a story of perseverance.
And where can people, book you for speaking engagements, and where can people buy your book? Yeah. My book's available on on Amazon, and it's you can get it in a print on demand, so you can get a printed copy, or you can get the audible the sorry, the the ebook. So you can you can, you know, read it on, you know, on a on a Kindle or whatever you want like that. And it's also available on audible and a whole bunch of other of those sort of, what do you call them, audiobook sites.
And so so you can listen to it, as well. So, yeah, whatever suits you best. You know, often the audio version is pretty cool for most bikers because a lot of bikers are not big readers, you know. So, yeah, but that's where it's available. In terms of booking me to speak, my website is joeyevans,um,.co.za.
So it's a South African based site, joeyevans.co.za. And, yeah, I speak all over the world. For guys, we have conferences. I've spoken in over five countries now. I'm gonna be at the ADR festival in The UK in a couple weeks.
And I've spoken I spoke at a rally for the guys up in Mount Shasta, Northern California, spoken in Vancouver for some of the adventure bike riders up there as well. But, you know, I do all the corporate events, you know, medical ones, you know, investment companies, all that sort of stuff. I've got a few coming up in The States as well. I've got one in in Salt Lake City in August, and then I'm gonna be in, actually, I'm trying to think where is Boston. Is it Boston?
No. Chicago. Sorry, man. These are all very different places to me, but Chicago and then also in South Carolina. I've got a few coming up there, and then I'll be there for 1,000 as well.
So you're gonna be in The States quite a bit this year. And, yeah, if you guys would would like to like me to come and speak at one of their events, just fire away. Great. I'll, I'll put all those links down in the down in the show notes. Oh, not at all.
An absolute pleasure, man. And thank you for contacting me. I I I super appreciate it, man. And I wish you guys all the luck with your show, and I hope you cover many, many cool motorbike stories. Alright.
Thanks very much, sir. Appreciate it. Awesome. Ladies and gentlemen, could I please have your attention? I've just been handed an urgent and horrifying news story, And I need all of you to stop what you're doing and listen.
Cannonball. Hey, Cannonballers. Thanks for subscribing to our podcast. We appreciate it. If you're not a cheap Canadian and want to buy us a coffee, head on over to buymeacoffee.com, or better yet, buy us a case of sweet ass craft IPA.
We'll visit on patreon.com. Links are in the show notes. Now back to the riveting podcast in progress. And we are back. Nice.
That was a good one. What an amazing story. It's tough. Like, the first few chapters is, like, I don't wanna say cringe, but it was so difficult to listen to. But, the perseverance and the family and and all of that to to this journey all the way to the car and then even just the story about the the car race is is really amazing.
So it is worth a read. If you don't read, it's worth a listen. Him and his wife read the audiobook on Audible. It may be available on other places, but it's definitely worth a read. It's, it's a great story, and it's about motorcycles.
So, hey, why not? Yeah. And, I can see for sure why he is a super successful global sensation in terms of being a motivational speaker, corporate events, or anywhere he goes. He is super, super positive. Yeah.
It's rare to find a motivational speaker that isn't, how do you put it, about some squishy topic. Like, I overcame whatever. No. No. No.
I had this terrible thing happen to me while doing something badass, and then I went and accomplished something that especially men can relate to. And his honesty about the troubles he had along the way and continue to have can help all of us get through whatever we're going through. Yeah. That that part, I'll I'll step into that here in a second. But what really stood out for me was his comment about people who have experiences such as his or near death experiences.
And then afterwards, rather than taking things a little slower, they take more risks. They wanna live life to the fullest because they've just come back from the brink, and they know how quickly it can all be snatched away. So they really go out there and they live it. And then as you mentioned a moment ago, it's like taking it one step at a time and looking at that getting that one thing achieved and moving to do the next thing, the next thing, and the next thing. And then at the end, you look back and go, I've achieved all those steps to get here in his case to get to that car.
Yeah. And I'm trying to find a way to incorporate his his saying without plagiarizing too much, or maybe we'll just plagiarize it and give him credit. Give him credit. But the deaths before DNF is is so awesome. Right?
So when you're in the middle of the adventure cannonball and it's raining and you're in the mud somewhere in the mountains, just remember, if Joey Evans can do it, death before DNF. Although, in truth, we don't really want anyone to die. It would make a great news story. I think we'd really benefit from it. But, no, in all honesty, I think, that's a price too high to pay for success.
It's it's too high. It's too high. It's It's interesting. I think about that. Reminded me of a friend of mine.
So Ross and Allison is some couple that I worked with, and I was on a 45 meter yacht years ago. And, they moved to Canada. He became, you know, super successful. He was one of the, if not the youngest harbor captain in Halifax, Nova Scotia. The, sorry, a pilot.
So means any boat, any ship, any size, anywhere in the world, he can be the master of, which is super impressive unto itself. He had a 35 foot sailboat. He was having a you know, enjoying that. And his next door neighbor was always talking about how they were tricking out this 45 foot boat because when they retire, they were gonna go to The Caribbean and have this amazing experience. And I don't know if it was before or after retirement, but it turned out that it didn't make it right away.
And then all of a sudden, there's this boat that they've spent all their money on trying to get ready to go to The Caribbean, and Ross bought it. And, I've been following him and his wife, Allison, and they're they just got back. They took their two little girls, and they just traveled down the East Coast from Halifax all the way down to The Caribbean. And I'm not I think, yeah, all the way in The Caribbean, if not The Bahamas, for sure. And now they're headed back.
Like, I just got I just read their post today that they're, they're on the way back, and she she really talks about how it is to sort of live life and recognize that when you start doing things like this, it seems like you've done it this way your whole life, but then you really haven't. It's just been this moment in time that was so big because you stepped out of your comfort zone, and that's something that Joey talks about, is stepping out of your comfort zone. Yeah. For sure. And all these events, whether it's a simple tour tech rally that you're gonna go to and you're not sure if you should go do the obstacle course or a major life changing thing, these these little inspirational stories to these massive stories like Joey's can offer to give you a good good kick in the butt.
Yep. Absolutely. Scrutineering aspect, I thought, was really intense. Linden Poskett, the Enraces of Places movie, he really captured this in grand form. He showed this.
He showed what scrutineering was, and he was pretty funny. He was like, well, let's see if I pay my bill. And he's and he's, and he's going around. So you really see what that is, and, Joey mentioned that as well. So I think that's quite cool.
And then his description of Descartes, Joey's description when you interviewed him is he laid it out so clearly. And one of the things that that, that I I actually wrote down because I thought it was quite cool, he's like, there's no place to go to make it safe. You know? He said, if you go too fast, it's dangerous because you're just going too fast. And if you go too slowly, then you get run over by, the cars and the trucks, and then you get stuck in their dust.
He said and then, that's dangerous. He said, so if you drive too fast, it's dangerous. If you go too slow, it's dangerous. And in the middle, it's dangerous. So you just can't escape it.
No. Absolutely not. And this is a really this is the most dangerous motorsports race in the world. I think, like, seventy people have died doing it. Right?
So let's make no mistake. It's it's a very serious thing. But your starting position is important. And even in our little rally or other little rallies, it's it's really important that, if you're able to sign up early to a rally or if you're able to come back to a rally, the smaller the rally number that you have, the little bit of an advantage you have. And on a rally that's on the public streets, how do you say it?
If you are looking at placing well and the rally happens to be going through some little town, it is advantageous to be one of the first people through that little town. So the farmer's, you know, wife isn't coming out with a broom pissed off that everyone's, you know, ripping through their small little town. So whether it's Dakar or a little rally like ours, having the smaller rally number is different. But unfortunately, when you're on a motorcycle and you are mixed with traffic, especially, fast cars and trucks, man, that is something that is, that is uniquely dangerous, and he illustrates it really well in his book. Yeah.
Think about that. So when I when I I had a chat, when we did the the cruise show, I mean, talked about SCOOP, that's something that Dawn talked about is that, our group went through, and then her group ended up coming through after us, and the farmer was already pissed off. So that by the time by the time we got there, we had gone through it. And then they had to kinda go back and, you know, and and kind of, you know, and, you know, stroke his head and tell him it was all going to be okay if we weren't a bunch of bandits. Well, you may be a bunch of bandits, but you know, you're trying your best not to do wheelies past it as fast as barn, you know?
Yeah. Apparently, someone someone had, someone had made some egregious error and they were going so fast. They had the heat of slide the back wheel through to make it slow down before they take him out. Hey. Listen.
We all got to live once, right? Hey. You know, it doesn't make it doesn't make them bad people. No. Absolutely not.
Hey. I want to ask everyone who's listening. If you could please go to whatever platform you're listening on and please give us a five star review, not a four star, a five star review that helps appease the algorithm gods is really, really important. Actually, just take just take ten seconds. Like, why explain that?
Just explain it. Yeah. So when you search for, like, motorcycle podcast, only the most popular ones get pushed to the front. So in this case, only the number one podcast ever goes to the front. And the only way the algorithm knows people are listening is by reviews.
So if if people are reviewing and putting five stars, we just get buried from the podcast that's been around for fifteen years, and it's really it really turns into a unfair monopoly. So the only way to combat that is to have people leave five star reviews. Yeah. And if you are like me and you listen on multiple platforms, feel free to leave us a five star on all of them. And I will pay in sweet ass IPA.
There we go. Absolutely. Alright. Thanks for thanks for explaining that. Yeah.
So it's important. Right. So let's talk about, what constitutes a successful rally. Yeah. So we are sold out for 2025, and we have a wait list started.
So it's our first wait list. So I've come up with, a mechanism for that. So whoever wants to be on the wait list is some work involved in that for me. So when people gonna wait list, I need to put them into a form and I need to post it on the website. So I've come up with a $25 nonrefundable fee, and that just gets you on the wait list.
And if a position becomes available, may it be, you know, one of the competitors has a life event happen, or they're no longer a badass, then then you can Not nice, Aaron. Then you can take that position over, and you'll get sent an email with an invoice that you have to pay immediately, and you will take over that rider's position. So that is the mechanism I've come up with for wait listing. Yeah. It's also quite it was actually quite convenient that at the same time you had cancellation of number five spot, Robert Baldiger signed up to do the ADV cannonball.
So he got that low position. So the new sign ups is, number six is Sean Ross. He's from Flat Rock, North Carolina, and he is on the best bike, which is a twelve fifty g s a. Number 40 is Dan. Dan is from Travelers Rest, South Carolina, and he's on a fantastic 1,200 g s.
And then my favorite so far, someone who really understands the spirit of the cannonball, his rally alias is captain chaos, and he is from Harris, New York. And he is on a uniquely, equally as unique, bike. He's on a Aprilia, so that's awesome. His, his roommate is Jay. Jay is on a v f r 1,200 x, and wait list one is Dion Earnright, and wait list two is g s Jake Adventure from Cincinnati, Ohio, and he is on a twelve fifty g s a.
Oh, that's cool that his name is Jake Adventure. You gotta you gotta give him that. I'm not sure if people just don't want their name showing up on a public list or they're just trying to be creative, but we'll call you whatever you wanna be called, man. That's awesome. I just yeah.
Just call. That's it. Just show up. By the way, the pictures of your van so you you finally got the build out down on that van. Right?
Yeah. You took it to the to the rally. Yeah. I'm gonna post the pictures of the van on socials and on the news page as soon as I get that editing done. But, yeah, it worked out great.
It was fantastic. It performed the way I want it. However, I did learn that even though I have a fancy inverter, you can't run a high pressure fan for blowing up the inflatable display because that load is a different kind of load. And I blew my big main fuse the first time I tried to use the inverter. So, anyways, thankfully I had a spare fuse and I was able to keep the electrical system running.
So there were some lessons learned for sure with with the van. Yeah. It's not always good when you blow your big main fuse. That's for sure. No.
A 150 amp fuse is not something that you wanna do lately. But, hey, listen. We've all blown our main fuses in life, and, you know, this is just the lesson we learn. These things happen, man. These things happen.
How how many spots do you have left for shipping and from where or to where? Yeah. Their only shipping available is after the rally, and there are two spots left. So if you don't wanna ride home and you live on the East Coast or anywhere between the West Coast and East Coast of The United States Of America, there are two spots left from the finish line in LA, and we are happy to take care of you. Fantastic.
I have one thing left to say. Is there anything you wanna add before we wrap this up? Twenty twenty six adventure cannonball rally is now open, and you can go ahead and register on the main website. And as you as you stated earlier, the sooner you sign up, the lower the possibilities of getting a number. Yeah.
That's right. No. No. No. No.
I I said that wrong. The the greater the possibilities of getting a lower number. There we go. That's alright. We all know that you've had one double IPA, and it's all going downhill from here.
Because, you know, it's 9%. I'm only halfway through. What does that say about me? That says you're a cheap date. Yeah.
Fair enough. Alright. The one last thing that I'd like to add is that, Saskia Kaspari, we, had a great interview with her. Aaron, when you get to the editing on that, brother, it's a long interview. I think we got one more thing beyond this.
It's a long interview and, it's a great story about her. She started off doing a trip that was going to be a motorcycle trip to take, you know, some time to get from, The Netherlands down to Dakar, and then she was gonna do something else with the bike or bring it back or ship it back. And then she ended up continuing. She just she took five months, turned her like, got enough money to sort it out, and then just kept traveling for two years, and we talk about her trip. So it's really fantastic.
Yeah. Fantastic. I'm looking forward to editing that. And it's the summer schedule, so we will post that in exactly two weeks. This episode is brought to you by the twelfth annual Wailing Wayne rally in Nelsonville, Ohio, September 2025.
And I will post that link in the show notes, and let's roll the outro. Thanks for listening to the ADV Cannonball podcast. Please give us a five star review on your preferred podcast platform. That really helps us with the algorithm gods. All hail the algorithm gods.
You can buy us a coffee on buymecoffee.com/advcannonball, or directly help save this sinking ship for the price of a pint at patreon.com/advcannonball. Follow us on all the socials with the handle at a d v cannonball. If you'd like to send us a question or comment for the air, or if you are a musical artist and want your royalty free music played on our podcast, or if you'd like to contact us for advertising opportunities, email us at podcast@ADVcannonball.com. Thanks for listening. And remember, don't be an ADV weenie.
Keep your right hand cranked and your feet on the banks.