DNF

The MR340 was just last week. 434 human-powered boats set out from Kaw Point in Kansas City last Tuesday morning, not long after Nick and I set out from Camaná, Perú. Amazingly, 377 (87%) completed the race within the 88-hour time limit. (Usually more like 2/3 of the boats that start go on to finish the race.) It’s a grueling ordeal, combatting the summer heat, various states of exhaustion, and mental preparedness for 340 miles across the state of Missouri. After several years of it playing at the back of my mind, I finally entered the race in 2016, along with Robin Bobo in the Mixed Tandem category, finishing in 66 hours with the support (ground crew) of my father, Rudy Bradburn.

Apparently I didn't get a photo will all three of us together, so that's Dad and I just before the start of the race at Kaw Point, and Robin and I about halfway through, getting ready to set out from Jefferson City on the second morning.

What an experience! It was awesome. The next year, I returned to volunteer for the event, and was honored to serve on the illustrious Reaper: the boat you never want to see ahead of you. The community that has formed around the MR340 over the past 13 years is an excellent one, and I look forward to being connected to that community for years to come.

Aboard the Reaper.

As I followed posts about this year’s MR340 on Facebook through and since the end of the race, I became particularly interested in the stories of those who Did Not Finish, listed as “DNF” in the race results. Much of this interest comes from the position Nick and I find ourselves in with our own epic summer trek.

It’s been an awesome moto adventure, and very excellent to see the breadth of sights we’ve been able to see in such a very short time. The world is a big place, and it is marvelous. And to feel the miles instead of just manifesting in airports to explore disparate locations of interest has been fascinating. There’s so much life in between airports…in the interstices.

Not going to find a flight to the Sign Post Forest in Watson Lake, Yukon...

...or to the Big John statue in Helper, UT...

...or to ride with fellow motorcycle adventurists in Costa Rica...

...or to this amazing overlook at Popanova, just south of Medellín, Colombia.

We’ve had delays, though. We were hit right off the bat with mechanical issues in Alaska. We overcame that set-back and were back on course before we hit Mexico. We got turned back at the Nicaragua border, subsequently electing to delay even further to await a couple traveling companions: Jeremy and Steve. Nonetheless, we still got to Panama City with extra time to see some sights before boarding the Stahlratte. On the other end of that sea voyage, though, we hit our biggest snag so far: what turned into a 2-week delay in Cartagena. But even after that delay, it looked like we still had a shot at making it to Ushuaia. We spent a bit more time moving slowly through Perú’s mountainous (gorgeous!) interior than we expected, which precipitated our most recent delay. The dirt and mud of the mountain roads (fun!) resulted in leaky front forks on the Super Teneré. We stopped at a motorcycle shop in Nasca, but they referred us the bigger city of Arequipa. We got here and after some discussion were told the parts could be shipped within 3 days and installed immediately. But here we are, going on 7 days later, still awaiting parts. Not easy to service these big bikes here in Latin America, where 99% of bikes are 250cc or less.

The bike I rented in Cartagena was 180cc: well-sized for most cities down here.

When we were told of the 3-day delay, I re-visited the schedule once again. Rocks and hard places, man: tough decisions. But still do-able to make it to Ushuaia.

When the delay extended through the weekend, it all went black for me.

Despite the beauty surrounding us here in Arequipa — a relaxing city high in a mountain valley, surrounded by white-tipped peaks — I retreated into myself through the weekend, It was a chat with Sarah that helped me face the very real possibility that we won’t see Ushuaia on this trip; or, that if we see Ushuaia, it will be at the end of a flight rather than by land.

It's marvelous to face reality with Sarah!

We haven’t made any firm decision on this yet, and likely won’t until we’re on the verge of crossing into Argentina from Santiago, Chile. That’s when we’ll need to make the decision to turn south toward Ushuaia or continue east toward Buenos Aires. But the moment it became clear that our stay here in Arequipa would be extended through the weekend, it also became clear that I needed to reconcile myself with the idea that we may not finish the trek that we set out to accomplish: to travel by land from Prudhoe Bay to Tierra del Fuego.

As I’ve read in several reports on the MR340 Facebook page, although a disappointment to DNF, it is sometimes the right call. For those who DNF in the MR340, they’re often headed home, to recover from heat stroke or to repair their sleek, carbon-fiber boats. Nick and I are fortunate: our adventure doesn’t have to end. A DNF for us would merely mean that the last couple weeks of our journey would take on a different shape than we’d originally intended. We will certainly continue south from Arequipa. We’ll still take on the N. Yungas Road and take in the Uyuni Salt Flats. We’ll still drive from Alaska to Argentina, a feat to be proud of. We just may not feel the miles all the way down to the southern tip of the Americas.

There’s still time for this to change, of course. We continue to play things by ear, as we have the whole adventure. On the phone today (Monday), we were promised the bike would be ready tomorrow (Tuesday) afternoon, which would mean we could be on the road early Wednesday. That’s our current hope, though hope has become quite seasoned with salt at this point, as many times as it has been quashed. In the end, hope — a creature of the future — is merely a distraction from the present, the only moment in which life is actually occurring.