code brown

Sweat oozing from my pores stuck me to my sleeping bag as two county sheriffs

argued with the meth addict outside my tent flap. She wanted to go to prison. They reused to

take her. It was a classic battle of immovable force meets irresistible object and neither side

was giving in.

I could care less. I had a bigger problem than two county mounties trying to reason

with a whacked out camper because down deep in the warmth of my sleeping bag was an

unwelcome brown gift knock, knock, knocking on heaven’s door. I was clenching with all the

concentration I could muster, fighting nature, desperately trying to hold back the flood gates. I

was losing.

Oh God.

Twenty four hours before all was well. It was Sunday, July 14, 2019 at Laguna Seca

Raceway in Monterey and after watching Jonathan Rea dominate the last race of World

Superbike the paddock was in full party mode. The international World Superbike crew and

the core group of volunteers of the paddock crew that have kept Laguna Seca running for

decades slave relentlessly from team arrival on Wednesday to Sunday’s final race. With that

weight lifted, the party had begun. Odd thing to party on a Sunday night, but after holding it

together all weekend, partying just made sense.

I had done a myriad of duties that weekend to help out: medical corner worker, pit lane

security, fan lap escort, helping set up the go cart track and anything else to get my hands dirty

with racing grime and glory and like everyone else I was cutting lose. After four days of

dehydrated labor, my weary body was craving water. Instead, it got tequila.

The paddock crew, World Superbike administrators and anyone else who happened to

walk by got sucked into our boisterous clog that night drank as we drank, ate, then drank

some more, swapping racing stories in drunk English, mangled Spanish, garbled German and

slurred French. Waving gestures of racing lines in the non-drinking hand are the sign language

of the racer, no interpreter necessary. And as expected, when people with a type A racing

mentality are sent floating down an endless river of alcohol, bad decisions come swiftly. Mine

involved a donut.

In my defense the donut was on top of the garbage can, sitting there innocent looking,

all shiny, sugary and tempting, within easy reach, protected on top of the rank pile of hollow

beer cans, sticky tequila bottles and empty plastic potato salad containers by a clean, sterile,

polite looking napkin. It was a safe kill. My tequila soaked brain couldn’t come up with a

reason not to eat it. So I ate it.

What could possibly go wrong?

Then, with partially chewed donut leaking out of the corners of my mouth I turned my

head to see one of the paddock workers gawking at me. I shall not mention his name here

because all references to people real or tequila generated will be withheld to protect their

innocence. Suffice it to say that Morgan has managed the likes of racers with last names like

Bostrom, Spies, and more. In other words, he is much smarter than me. He rightly questioned

my decision.

Our conversation sounded like episode 92 of Seinfeld, The Gymnast, where George

Castanza’s girlfriend’s mom catches him eating an eclair out of the trash.

“It was not in the garbage, it was above the garbage,” I said to Morgan, quoting

George, donut ejecting out my mouth with every syllable. “Hovering. Like an angel.”

I should have stopped there because when you are using George Castanza quotes to

explain your life, you might as well pin the throttle and aim for the wall. It’s game over. Under

Morgan’s scrutinising eyes I finished the donut and partied on.

Monday morning came and with it the pounding sledgehammer of reality. No need to

check my pulse, I could feel my left ventricle contracting in my temple. Adding to the suffering

was the realization that I had a 450 mile day ahead of me, needing to reach my campsite in

Klamath Falls by nightfall and afternoon temperatures forecasted to be in excess of 110

degrees in the crack of California’s northern valley. I should have bolted out in the cool of the

morning to beat the heat and arrived in Klamath Falls by early afternoon to sleep off the

previous night.

Compounding one bad decision with another, I instead went to breakfast with the

Laguna Seca paddock and World Superbike crews. By tradition, they all go to Monday

morning breakfast at El Toro cafe just down the highway from the racetrack, a rite of passage

where everyone gathers at the same table like the cool kids at lunch, filling their stomachs with

all manifestations of greasy evil to ward off last nights demons. Getting invited is special. I

couldn’t say no. I dragged my hungover, dehydrated, sleep deprived body to El Toro,

attempted to eat, stayed later than I wanted, and swapped shirts with the French World

Superbike director who I had partied with last night.

I still have the shirt. Being a French medium, it is way too small for my 6’2” frame, but I

like because it reminds me of that night. To this day it still smells like tequila.

I was at El Toro cafe until well past ten in the morning, temperatures in the valley were

already in the mid 90’s and climbing, my head felt like the boiler room of a steam locomotive

and I had yet to do a single mile. It was going to be a long day. I needed to shorten it.

Through many years of travel I have learned that speed limits in California are not limits,

merely suggestions, gentle reminders in case you feel like being a good citizen and obeying the

law, in case you want to be nice that day. Few people obey them, most just ignore them and

then there are those of us that treat California like the Autobahn. Guilty.

I stuck to freeways, chose the far left lane, pinned the throttle on my VFR800 with its

camping gear bungeed on the back and weaved through traffic like Barry Sanders picking his

way through a confused secondary. I was red bullet with a mission.

The drawback to the speed was the heat. Speeds I cannot admit to here drove the

bike’s temperature to critical while the forced blast of triple digit heat to my body drained what

water my body had left. While my bike’s gas tank may have been full, I was running on empty.

Every two hours I would try to cool off at a rest stop. I filled the disgusting bathroom

sink with cold water and submerged my helmet. No liner removal, no face shield lifting, just

throw my helmet in and hold it to the bottom of the sink to soak, then throw it back on, water

dripping down my face, get back on the bike and pin the throttle. One thing I didn’t do was

pee.

Hours came, then went, then came again. An endless conveyor belt of farmland blurred

by off my shoulder at speeds that should have landed my bike in impound and me in jail. I

rode, and rode, and rode. A trance came over me. I became detached. Speed that should

have scared me seemed like standing still. Cars around me became harmless objects, toys

even, things to be played with, weaved through like a video game with no reset button.

Cars around me weren’t real. Speed wasn’t real. I wasn’t real. Everything beyond my

faceshield was only a dream, out there, somewhere. My body leaned into corners without me

thinking about it. My throttle hand moved on its own. I never signaled. I never touched the

brake. I never ate or drank water.

A voice talked to me inside my helmet. I was doing fine, my helmet voice told me. Your

not delirious, it said. You’re doing great, making good time. Just keep riding the voice told me.

The faster you go, the sooner it will be over. The voice made sense. I should listen to the

voice.

I did whatever the voice told me to do. Go faster. Faster still. Keep weaving through

traffic. Pass that long line of cars. It told me that it was okay that the digits on my dash were

blurry, that my long, slow blinks were normal, that it was okay to not feel my right wrist, or no

longer hear the engine. Just keep riding, it said. Just keep riding.

So I did.

I love Taco Time. Maybe its the salsa, or the deep fried crisp burritos but for sure its the

magic they pour onto their salty tater tots absurdly naming them Mexi-Fries. Whatever it is,

Taco Time is my kryptonite. Seeing one in Klamath Falls with its tall neon sign, greasy scent

and promise of deep fried goodness sucked me in like a lost sailor seeing a distant siren,

saving me from being adrift on the sea of reality.

You’re okay, the voice said, it is almost over, so why not celebrate with a feast? The

voice told me to pull in. Good thing I had someone with me in my helmet or I would have

gotten lonely.

The teenage girl at the counter made the weirdest face, forehead furrowed, eyes wide,

mouth agape, body frozen. What she was looking at? I was fine. I was not sweaty, or dirty, or

delirious, and I definitely was not babbling incoherently, talking to myself while the voice and I

agreed about our order. We argued for a bit but we finally decided to order one of everything.

I ate like I had just discovered food. For 30 minutes I devoured food like a starving lion

on fresh kill, through three burritos, two orders of Mexi-Fries, cups of salsa and three refills of

root beer. I put burritos away like Joey Chestnut plowing through hot dogs on the Fourth Of

July. The voice told me no water, it would take the place of much needed calories. I did not

question it. And somewhere, down there, way beneath, buried under all those burritos, Mexi-

Fries, salsa, gallons of root beer and lingering tequila, there was still a donut.

I pitched my tent at a free roadside campsite five miles north and crawled into my

sleeping bag. Belly distended from the food, the voice told me I had done a good thing by

eating all that greasy food, that it would help kill my dwindling hangover, and avoiding water

was a good idea. Thank you voice, you were a good companion on the trip. It would have

been a boring trip without you. Then the voice fell asleep and all was quiet in the tent. The

voice must have been tired. It worked hard today. In the silence I succumbed to the food

coma. A sleeping bag never felt so good.

Part Two

Two in the morning came like a brick to the head, snapped out of my dead sleep by the

flashing blue lights, the arguing of a gravely smokers cough and the crackle of voices over

police radios. What was going on? Was I dreaming?

After a moment to get my bearings, I realized that outside my tent flap, a whacked out

drifter, the kind who occupy free campsites for weeks at a time, was stammering and shouting,

begging the sheriffs to take her into custody. Wisely the sheriffs refused, but she persisted. All

of this commotion happened at the door of my tent, a foot from my head.

Then I got hit.

The blow to my stomach was severe, like getting a triple digit fastball to the gut it

instantly doubled me over, curling me into the fetal position. But unlike getting beamed, this hit

came from inside of me, from the lower bowels of my GI tract. Whatever hell I had unleashed

on my stomach in the previous 24 hours, whatever abuse I had heaped on it in the form of

tequila, lack of water and abundance of Mexican food was piled on a donut from the garbage

that decided…well…it was time to come out. Right The Hell Now. All of it. Immediately. It

was a full blown, phasers set to kill, DEFCON 5, Code Brown.

Curling into the fetal position from the pain had the undesirable side effect of cracking

open the gates of hell below, so I grabbed a pillow and squeezed it to my stomach, extended

my legs to full lock, ankles flexed, toes pointed and clenched shut the gates of hell. Sprinting

out of my tent was not an option because running through two agitated sheriffs with their

hands on their weapons belt, losing patience with an uncooperative and highly hopped up

civilian seemed like a bad idea, especially if I ran though the scene like Forest Gump scoring a

touchdown. Once I stared running, I was running, no matter how bad they would have told me

to stop, or how many shots they fired.

So I waited. And clenched. And waited. And clenched. And sweated. And waited. It

was a long hour.

Three in the morning and the whacked out girl finally spun into the dark and left. The

sheriffs muttered something to one another, laughed, climbed into their cars and drove off. I

had sweated so much in the past hour that my sleeping bag was soaked, my extended legs

were cramped and the pain came in contractions about two minutes apart. I was fully dilated.

It was time to give birth.

Peeling off a sweaty sleeping bag without unclenching your butt cheeks is harder than it

sounds. I think it should be a new Olympic sport. Fabric wants to stick to you and your legs

but you must never, never, ever, for any reason, leave the full lock position. Somehow I

managed, and as soon as I stood upright, something changed.

Standing and clenching, it turns out, is not as effective at stemming the tide as lying

down. Odd way to discover it really, but I did, the hard way, for as soon as I stood up, some

measure of control was lost. Not all of it, but enough so that it required strategic hand

placement and proper grip upon the flood gates to ward off Code Brown. To make matters

worse, the night was deeply black. There was no moon, no lights in the campground, nothing.

I couldn’t see the other tents in the campground, I couldn’t see where the campground pond

was and I absolutely, could not see where the pit toilet was. Sonofabitch.

I walked like penguin, stiff legged, wobbling side to side, left arm extended ending in

flexed fingers and right fist holding shut the doors of the caboose of Poo Train number Two.

Steps were measured, long enough to make progress but not too long to lose control. My

inner thighs were clean so far, and I wanted them to stay that way. I chose the zig-zag

technique, blind luck would get me there eventually.

And it did. After my eyes adjusted I saw a block building with two doors. That had to

be it. Code Brown time bomb was ticking below, about to go off. I found the door and as

soon as I touched the handle, things happened.

It must have been the mental effect of finally realizing that I was home free because as

soon as I started to open the door, the flood began. I didn’t fight it. I threw the door open and

burst inside without thinking.

Big mistake. As soon the door closed behind me I was sealed in total blackness. Black

so deep that I couldn’t see my feet, couldn’t see my hands, couldn’t see the door behind me

and I could not, absolutely could not locate the toilet. It was too late. It was happening. So I

guessed.

I took a chance and dropped my shorts, the act of bending over forcing me to finally let

go, unclench, let slip the dogs of war, betting and hoping that there was a toilet somewhere.

There HAD to be.

What hit the wall behind me sounded like a water balloon hitting asphalt. There was a

muffled firing sound, a split second of silence, then a thud, then a splash. I was still bent over

struggling in the dark to get my shorts fully down around my ankles. I quickly sat down to find

that somehow, by sheer luck, I had caught the right edge of the toilet seat. Fluids lubricated

the plastic lid and slid me onto the center of the pit toilet where at last, finally, I was home free.

My bowels emptied themselves of everything: the multiple burritos, Mexi-fries, root

beer, breakfast at El-Toro, latent tequila and buried deep down, the last remnant of the evil,

forbidden donut. Legs extended and toes curled I grasped the sides of the toiled seat for

stability like a passenger on a motorcycle. Projectiles hit the bottom of the pit toilet with such

velocity that I felt the blue disinfectant splash up and hit my backside. Echoes from down below

sounded like a buffalo in birth pangs. Honestly, I have never heard a buffalo giving birth, but

when I do, I’m sure I’ll say, “Oh yeah, that brings back memories.”

Thirty minutes. It must have taken a full thirty minutes until I felt safe enough to leave

my good friend pit toilet. I was still in total blackness so time had no bearing in that little world,

but it felt that long. I blindly reached over in the darkness to feel the metal extension to my

right.

There was no toilet paper.

I laughed uncontrollably. Surely it couldn’t get any worse. I felt around on the ground

and found an empty toilet paper tube with a few squares left. It would have to do. I got the

most out of those poor little squares. I left the pit toilet to go find the hand wash station.

There was no hand was station.

“Are you F%@&ING kidding me?” I screamed.

I knew the general direction of the campground’s pond so I stepped lightly between the

tents and walked until my toes hit water, doing my best to clean up with no light to check my

results. It was better than nothing. I went back to my tent and crawled into my sweat

dampened and now frigid sleeping bag. Exhaustion put me to sleep.

I woke up stuck to the insides of the sleeping bag and peeled it off like a banana, finally

coherent enough to realize how rank it was. It smelled like dead whale. Leaving that

catastrophe for later, I filled my water bottle and drank water. Finally, water. I drank, and

drank, and drank. Water never tasted so good.

I rolled up my sleeping bag as is, packed my tent but did not change my clothes.

Anything that touched my body would be ruined instantly and I decided to minimize the

damage. All packed up and ready to go I thought that it would be a good idea to use the

bathroom one last time before I mounted up for the 450 mile day ahead. I went to the same pit

toilet as the night before and opened the door.

The scene inside was apocalyptic. It looked like a bomb had exploded, a brown, sticky

bomb. Brown coated and ran down the walls, it covered the floor, the toilet seat, everything.

And I swear I saw a few faint, desperate brown handprints above the empty toilet paper holder

on the wall, chronicling my desperate search like some caveman painting. I thought about

what to do. Really, I had only one option.

I closed the door and walked away.

It was a long 450 mile ride home. There was more straight line flying and more triple

digit heat with triple digit speeds but this time I had normal breakfast. And I drank water. Lots

of water. I stopped to drink water wether I wanted to or not. The voice didn’t come along for

the journey, but I am sure it was proud of me.

Arriving home my blue eyed bride greeted me with open arms. All she got was a

Marshawn Lynch like stiff arm. It seemed timely to bring out another Seinfeld reference.

“Don’t touch me,” I said. “I’m hideous.”

I peeled off my crusty clothes in the laundry room and walked naked to the shower.

Warm water rejuvenated me as it poured over my weary frame.

It ran brown down the drain.