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In October 2010, just about half-way through my first stage of The Furnace Creek 508 I looked out into the desert and thought how sweet the sky looked without light pollution. Then all of a sudden I was overwhelmed with the feeling of ‘How the hell did I get here?’ After a few minutes everything came into my head all too quickly and very disorganized (go figure).
The most prominent memory of what set the time line into motion was from my last winter in Massachusetts. I was living in my Mother’s basement to save money before I made the move to leave my hometown of Milford for a sunny and scary Los Angeles! During my stay in the “dungeon” I spent a lot of time converting this road bike that this weird hippie guy left on the  porch for years into a little fixie conversion. My friend Brad would come over and help me; we would goof off and watch YouTube videos, mostly on bike porn type stuff. Among these was a preview for a race documentary that blew us away. It was about a four person team riding through Death Valley for 508 miles, all on fixed gear bicycles…I was in awe! First off, Death Valley carried such an evil and inhospitable feeling when it was brought up in conversation and it’s where the Undertaker is from, so it has to be a terrible place. Second, it was 508 miles long and all on fixed gear bikes, that is just insane! So due to the all of these factors I watched this clip a lot (for stokedness) before I moved to Los Angeles in January of 2008.
Let’s fast-forward a year or so to the point where I’m living in the East Hollywood area of Los Angeles. I got this job at Pure Luck, working with this woman named Sasha Perry. We became buds and strangely enough she happened to be the brains behind this awesome documentary I was drooling over while freezing my ass off in a dank old-school basement in the Northeast. Through our friendship and being on the block, I was introduced to the rest of the cast: Max, Matt, Megan and Brian. They were all in this whole Swarm! group where they did awesome things like the Feel My Legs ride which I went out and rode just for fun one year and loved every hard ass hill I scaled. Later in the year, it so happened that I was keen to leave my old pad and I was able to move into a house with Sasha, Matt and Budge-all whom are Swarm!ers. During the first year of my stay at the Oxford Campus (our house), I got more into road riding. It really started with Sasha’s first time organizing the New Moon Century ride; it seemed like a fun thing that my housemate and friend was putting on, so why not give it a try? I think the most I had ever ridden before this was maybe 30 miles, but the day of the event I did the whole ride and it was great. After that I was looking like a “roadie,” spandex and all…something I said I would never be! 
From that point on it was like a snow ball effect: I did 24 hour mountain bike races (kona24 and the cool 24) and many more century rides, all through the support of the Swarm! people who were just stoked to ride and do things that just seemed a little out of control so I tagged along and gave it a try. Throughout the events and rides and hanging out The 508 loomed. Always a topic of conversation, it was an important and huge event in most of their lives. It seemed a little out of hand for me, just being fresh on the wh
ole endurance scene, maybe even too epic to hang with. 
And so it was that in the beginning of 2010 Sasha and I were having a casual conversation at work and the ever so looming topic of The 508 came up with the idea of us racing in it. I was into the idea and scared of the idea all at once, but I believe it was the best conversation I had in 2010. Bold, but true. So on October 2nd, after months of training, not training, crashing and really training, Sasha (director of the documentary), Megan (racer in the documentary) Jacob (dude) and I ( viewer of the documentary) started the Furnace Creek 508 as a four person team under the totem of Wild Burros! After hours of riding and a couple hundred miles, this brings me back to pedaling out of Trona in the dark, nervous as all hell, worrying about Towne’s pass and getting this calming feeling of how the hell I got here and putting together this string of events. Now I was in the middle of it, feeling rather overwhelmed by the sheer vastness of Death Valley, we were all doing well and focused on finishing with a good time, but more importantly on finishing! While Megan pedaled into the finish line in 29 Palms I got that strange soothing feeling, wondering how the hell I got here and answering that question with…It all started with this documentary I watched 3000 miles away in a cold, dark basement…Now what is next?