Dave's RAAM adventure

I just saw an ad for someone looking to put together a crew for the Race Across America, aka RAAM .

In 1996 I saw a similar ad and hooked my buddy Dave up with a team for Italian rider Fabio Biasiolo who was the Italian endurance champ or something. So Dave got in touch with the people and after some negotiation, they flew his ass to California for the event.

As soon as he got there, things started going wrong. Fabio brought two of his crew over from Italy, a boyfriend and girlfriend couple Antonio and Leeza. Stateside, the operation was being run by a father and son team who were recruited by the race organizers. The night before the race was to begin, there were some beers drank, words exchanged, and a big argument in broken english and Italian almost saw the whole thing scrubbed.

Finally order was restored to some degree and the team set out for Day 1. It was agreed that the father and son would go in the motor home, while Dave, Antonio and Leeza would ride behind Fabio in the van.

Day 1 saw the crew head out across the desert and the tempatures reached over 100 degrees which presented two problems. The first, obviously, was the the rider was dying. The second was that it was boiling in the van. Leeza dealt with the heat by taking her clothes off. Not all of them completely off. But most of them most of the way off. This of course, had the effect of Dave driving around with a boner, trying to act as naturally as possible while looking at and not looking at Lezza the entire time. The first problem was solved with an ingenius idea. They purchased a hand held gadening sprayer. Leeza took over the driving and she'd pull up along side Fabio, while Antonio would spray him down.

All of that was going really well.....right up until Lezza got a little too close to Fabio...and swerved quickly to avoid him...which caused Antonio to fall out of the side of the van at 30 mph clinging to his garden sprayer.

Screaming and skidding and swearing ensued and they all ran back to find Antonio laying on the side of the road a total mess. Dave called ahead to the motor home for help and Lezza went into full on Italian freak-out mode....running around in circles screaming, throwing her hands in the air and her braless tittles flying all over the place.

When the father and son arrived they put Antonio into the air conditioned motor home to assess his injuries. When they all stepped outside to discuss what to do next, the impassioned Lezza jumped into the drivers seat. Before anyone could react, she fired up the motor home peeled out.

So there they were. In the middle of the desert. The rider, the father, the son, Dave, and the van. And there went the motor home off into the distance.

Fabio, didn't speak any english and they didn't speak any Italian, but through gestures they decided to plod on for a little while and hope that Lezza and Antonio would return. They continued on until they got to the first sign of civilization then Fabio had to stop.

The plan had been to have Fabioride 20 hours and rest 4 hours a day for the first three days. This would give him sleep in the air conditioning, give him a chance to recover with some IV fluids, and give the crew some down time. Instead there weren't even half way through the first day and they found themselve parked next to a convenience store, in some desert town, feeding Fabio soft drinks and tastycakes, and having him try to sleep in the sweltering heat of the back of the non-air conditioned van.

When the father and son went inside, Fabio opened up one of the coolers and pulled out an IV bag. He looked at Dave, the only one he trusted at this point, and gestured to him as if to say, " please stick this needle in my arm". Apparently " no fucking way!" is the same in Italian as in English. Fabio asked again and got the same answer. Finally Fabio started jabbing himself with the needle....and after a while they both threw up.

Eventually that night Antonio and Lezza showed up, having come from a hospital. But by then it was too late. They had fallen too far behind pace, and more importantly too much mental and physical damage had been done to even consider going another week and another 2600 miles.

Two days later Dave was sitting back on my couch recounting the entire story to me.

For the 2,905 mile race, here is a snippit from DNF section of the official results page:

Did not finish (with miles):
Seana Hogan-2,010 miles
Lane & Rose Smith-1,717 miles
Paul Solo-1,588 miles
Aldo Calandro-1,468 miles
Reed Finfrock-1,283 miles
Beny Furrer-1,283 miles
Paul Carter-1,114 miles
Jodi Groesbeck-842 miles
Emmy Klassen-390 miles
Fabio Biasiolo-134 miles


epiloge: To his credit Fabio Biasiolo evenutally returned to the RAAM and finished as high as third in 2005. His bio can be found HERE . Dave also has a website, but its all about DJ'ing so I'm not putting it up here.