Kilometre 97

As I rounded a sweeping curve on a quiet gravel track etched into a rocky mountainside, I stared at my trip meter. Kilometer 95 … 95.6 … 96. I took a deep breath. On the Kilometer 97 column in my roadbook, there was a tiny checkered flag. I didn’t need to learn ASO-approved French to know what it meant: a symbol for the rally finish line – a minuscule black and white flag of eternal glory. One more click and I’d cross the Hellas Rally Raid finish. Me, on my tatty old DR650. 

It almost felt like time stood still for a moment as I rolled towards Kilometer 97. Everything suddenly became sharper, brighter, more vivid somehow. I could hear water rushing through a rocky gorge below, and the roar of my engine reverberated in a cheerful echo across the valley. The smell of hot dust, petrol and pine trees hit my nostrils. The sun, floating in an impossibly blue sky, beat down on the lonely track and the perfectly still mountains around me. 

The trip meter read 96.6. 

In my wildest dreams, I would have never imagined entering a seven-day cross-country rally race with hundreds of motorcycles, quads, and SSVs. Hellas Rally Raid in Greece is the largest amateur rally in Europe, and if someone had told me a few years ago that I’d be starting at Hellas, I would have laughed. 

I mean, I’ve been at this adventure riding business for a while now, but I mostly just potter around places. (Hell, it took me three years just to get from Arizona to Chile. Granted, I’d get off the road here and there, and Lucy, my faithful steed, endured more crashes, burnt clutches and clumsiness than I care to admit.) My skills and speed, in comparison to “real” rally riders, are akin to those of a bewildered, beached penguin in the midst of a flock of elegant swallows. 

Still, a weird set of circumstances, a little bit of luck and new tires led me to Hellas, and I had survived all seven days of the rally madness.

Now was the defining moment of it all. My front tire was about to cross a magical line that would transform me from a rally hopeful to a rally finisher. I braced for… well, for something. There would be the rally staff at the finish line. And the photographers, too, I guessed, and people would wave, or even say “congratulations.”

But as I rounded the last corner and the trip meter clicked 97, I realized there was nobody there.

I’d been so slow that the rider ahead of me had crossed the finish line over an hour before, so everyone had just packed up and left.

I stopped in the middle of the track, listening to the water in the gorge. I could feel the heat blasting off my tired, grimy, mud-splattered Lucy. A tiny rock bounced off the wheel rim.

If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, does it make a sound?