Jasperite completes Tunisian rally

Bob Jones is on a dirt bike, lost in a sand storm somewhere in Tunisia. He can’t see the horizon and can only hear the sound of his own engine and the occasional wind gust. The experience is a lot like being stuck inside a white-out storm on top of a mountain, the Jasperite said. Except on a mountain, you don’t have race cars, quads and trucks steering blindly around you at speeds that can kill.

“It was quite the experience,” said Jones.

Jones recently partook in the Rallye Oilibya Tunisia seven day rally that races through the desert wilds of the North African country. The race started near the capital city of Tunis on May 1 and traveled in a circular route, cross-country for 1,737 km. Terrain types included everything from blinding expanses of salt flats and cracked clay, eucalyptus groves, mediterranean beaches, sand dunes that can sink down more than two metres, and lots and lots of rock. If you’ve ever seen the Dakar Rally, it’s pretty much the same thing, although in a more condensed and shortened fashion. Professional drivers compete in the event to help make a living and people have broken bones and died on races far shorter and easier than the Rallye Oilibya Tunisia, said Jones. 

Jones was one of only two Canadians competing in the bike category of the race (out of 27 dirt bike riders, most were Europeans). An amateur rider, he managed to finish 25th. He says he wasn’t concerned about his finishing position because while he’s done multi-day rally races before, this was the first time he was able to complete one.

“I’m not a professional at all,” said Jones, who works in Jasper for Parks Canada and volunteers for the fire department. “The racing gene has been in my blood for a long, long time. So to finish, and to finish in better than last place, that really meant a lot to me.”

Being an adrenaline junkie comes down to a simple question of perspective: what looks crazy to one person, looks like fun to another.

“It’s just a good time. Simple,” said Jones.

Some of Jones’ friends are at a loss when explaining why Jones would want to put himself in the middle of a North African desert for a week.

“He just wanted to do it for a long time and he committed himself to it and went out and did it,” said Stewart Laing, who has raced dirt bikes with Jones for years. “I don’t think anyone could really get inside his head beyond that.”

While Jones said the race was a blast, it was anything but easy. He said the hardest thing about riding through the desert was the mental stress. He explained when you’re riding across a deadly desert at somewhere between 50 to 150 k/ph, it’s far too easy to get hurt if your focus wavers. That means you are watching the terrain constantly, wondering, mentally maneuvering, searching for the best way to get over what’s right in front of you. Jones said his brain was on edge constantly. 

But, currently, his focus was also glued to his maps. He also had to scan the horizon constantly in a search for markers that would let him know just where he was. He had to hold his body nearly upright off the seat all day so he could look at his map on the raised dash and at the horizon at the same time. Over the course of an eight-hour day of riding, there’s not a lot of time to rest.

“It was incredibly straining, mentally. You do get tired,” said Jones. “I only went down once, and that’s really not that bad.”

Things could have been worse for Jones, but luckily, he had a lot of help from friends before the race.

Scott Sherlow has known Jones for more than ten years. He estimates that he put 150 hours into Jones’ 2005 KTM 525 EXC bike and its Meca System rally kit to get it ready for Tunisia. Jones himself put in something like 500 hours, Sherlow said.

“Probably more,” said Sherlow.

Sherlow has a special set of experiences that helped him ready the bike for the Tunisian desert. He works as a welder for Parks Canada and has been stabilizing sand trucks on the Icefield Parkway for years. 

Sherlow said that the problem with sand is that when it gets between machine parts and vibrates, the friction can wear through wires and lines very easily. Electrics can go haywire, fluid lines can rupture and the vehicle can be left steaming black smoke in the middle of nowhere.

He used the same principles he uses to protect those winter sand trucks (“Sand just gets everywhere,” he said) to keep Jones’ bike from breaking down in the desert.

“A lot of tie downs and wire ties, that was the secret,” said Sherlow. “You take all the wires and basically tie them together so they don’t have a lot of room to move and that keeps them from rubbing together.”

Sherlow, who checked the rally’s website every day, sometimes every hour to find out Jones’ spot in the race, said that he couldn’t be happier that Jones finished this race.

“For a bunch of guys from this town in the mountains to put this all together, basically as a bunch of privateers, I think it’s just a job well done,” said Sherlow.

“It’s unforgiving,” said Sherlow of the desert, explaining that he and Jones had to think about every detail on the bike. The desert would not let them get away with mistakes.

“I couldn’t have done it without these people,” said Jones, pointing to a list with people like Sherlow and Laing on it. “They made this happen, without a doubt.”

Jones says that he has plans to head overseas sometime soon to partake in another rally. He’s not totally sure where yet. He’s still thinking about it. For now, he’s just happy to remember what it was like to race under the desert sun and sleep under a Tunisian moon.