I am writing this from Buenes Aires where I am waiting the arrival of my team.

Thought I would let you know how I feel about no longer being in the Rally, I was very upset and was unable to comment earlier.

In short I am angry and very sad at the same time, the Dakar Rally is an event where everything has to go in your favor in order to finish, unfortunatley this year I was not so lucky.

It seems that nothing went my way, right from the beginning; with three months to the Dakar I broke my hand, my bike arrived 1 1/2 months late to Canada, I contracted the swine flu and had to deliver the bike for shipping while very very sick, my tire order not arriving at all.

I think the Dakar Gods were sending me a message and I was not receiving it.

At risk of sounding like I am feeling sorry for myself here is a summary of my 2010 Dakar Rally.

Scrutineering: every little thing that could go wrong went wrong, they actually had to replace my GPS before I could pass scrutineering.

Day 1: official start in Buenes Aeries, bike number 73 parked directly beside mine in Park Ferme is so close that it is against my leg while I am installing my road book.

Suddenly the crowd starts screaming, (for a photo of me I thought)

I turn and realize the bike beside me is a ball of flame, I run with my bike and hide behind a race car.

Day 2 Stage 1: I am up at 3:00 am for my very early start, The Bivouac is very large I cannot find the exit, I ask two ASO officials how do I get out, they point to an exit and say you go that way, I leave and the thought crosses my mind that I should be getting a time card, I think to myself I guess they are going to give them to us at the start of the special.

The Liasson that morning was very dangerous, the fog was extremley thick and I could not see anything,I am praying I don’t run off the road.

As I hit KM 89.7 another rider riders up screaming something to me, turns out he is telling me ASO has told him to send me back to get my time card, I am now 1 1/2 hours away from the bivouac.

I head back and ride 89.7 km back to retreive my time card.

When I arrive I am told I can not start as it is to late, they tell me my Dakar is over I must go home. I fight like a wild man they are convinced that if they don’t telephone the head of FIM that I might kill somebody, they call FIM head guy and I am granted permission to start, I ride like a man posessed to get to the special to make my start time so I am not kicked out for failing to start the special on time.

Unfortunatley they fail to tell me that the route has changed and we are actually starting on KM 50 and not KM0. I ride the first part of the day with nothing matching my road book, finally able to correct it at the first CP.

Day 3 Stage 2: I wake up at 2:00 am with violent cramps Diarrhea and vomiting this continues all night, I have taken 3 Immodium tablets and nothing has changed, at 6:00 am I am concerned that I am not going to be able to take the start.

I head to the infirmary and the doctors give me medicine, this helps slow the vomitting down and ease the cramping, does nothing for the diareaha.

I can not eat or drink with out vomitting, all I can hope is that I can finish the day and hopfully feel better in the morning

GPS quits working at the start of special and can not be repaired, I am parenoid I tell every official at every CP its not working (the penalty for no GPS is automatic expulsion, unless it is mechanical issues).

Having no compass makes the off track sections almost impossible because they are 100% cap headings and I don’t haqve a working compass, I have to rely on spectators to point the way.

I make it through the stage, through Rain, Fog, Dust, and sickness, but not before having two very big crashes.

In bivouac, doctors insist that I am hooked up to drip to rehydrate as I can not eat or drink and it has been a very long hot day.

Bed early.

Day 4 Stage 3: Up early for start, feeling very s***ty, still can not eat or drink.by now I am two days with out food or water.

On Doctors instructions I am attempting to drink flattend coke, cramps not as bad and am not vomitting still have very bad diareha, not feeling great, but feeling I might be finally starting to ovecome this illness.

Long Liasson to sart day about 280 KMs, mandatory fuel stop at start of special, bike is running good at this point.

Fuel up as required and head to start, immediatley into the start bike not running quite right, this is really deep sand and the way the bike is running the sand is very difficult to ride.

At KM 9, I must climb about a 25 foot sand hill that is stepped, bike won’t go up, it just dies when I open the throttle, I get stuck and spectators help. I ride another 600 meters bike quits again. Acting like it is running out of fuel, check to make sure I have fuel, keep on going,.

KM 16 enter a Rio that is all fesh fesh about three feet deep, this is not a normal Rio it is more like a a very narrow canyon with 50 foot shear walls. Temperatures are close to 50 C .

I am a good sand rider , the way the bike is running I am unable to ride this sand, can’t keep the bike running at a high enough speed to control it in the sand, it is very frustrating takes me 5 hours to go 26 KMs I drop the bike at least five times, because of the way the bike is running I can not get any flow happening, every 100 meters front end washes out I am exhausted. I hit KM 30 bike quits and will not start. there are two other riders here one with the identical fuel problem to me and one near passing out from heat exhaustion.

ASO doctor and assistant are here waiting to assist riders, they had been sent out by ASO due to the extreme heat to provide racers with water and medical assistance if required.

Doctor tells me all hell has broken out, many riders have quit at checkpoint one and are unable to continue, so many riders are in trouble before checkpoint two that they have pulled the press helicopters into action as rescue helicopters every available helicopter is being used for rescues.

He says he can not stop me but he would recomend that I do not attempt to go further it is very dangerous, and I could die out there and the heat is extreme, there will be no helicopters available to rescue me if I get in trouble.

I decide to press on despite his advise, at KM 39 my bike gives up for the last time it does not have the power to get me up the hill to exit the RIO.

I am stuck and also realize I can not go any further with the bike in this condition. Soldiers come by and show me a route back to the bivouac, I ride very slowly back.

Arrive at Bivouac, I am provided the next days road book ,they do not take my navigation equipment away from me, nor am I listed as a non starter (a good sign that I am starting) .

I find out from my team that over 100 riders did not finish the stage, ASO can not send them all home or the Rally would be over, there are rumors that the stage is going to be nuetralized.

As I have not officially been told I am out, I prepare to start the next days stage, I am again sent for a rehydration drip.

Day 5 Stage 4: I am up at 4:30 AM road book done and installed, all dressed and ready to go.

I arrive at starting area, I am told that I can not start, I put up a fight, my argument is that I actually finished more way points then many of the riders who are starting, I say that I am aware that more then 100 riders did not finish the stage and they are allowed to start.

I argue the only reason I was unable to proceed was nothing in my control, It was all on ASO, I had been given food poisoning by ASO food and now they had also poisoned my bike.

Well you know by now how effective my argument was.

I fully plan to send an official protest to both ASO and FIM at the conclusion of the Rally, there were over 100 riders who either did not finish the course that day or cut the route.

My theory is that ASO realized they could not kick over 100 riders out that early in the Rally and still have a race. The reason I was chosen was that ASO believed I had already been given a reprieve on stage 1 with the time card issue and they needed to eliminate some of the riders who cut the course, I along with 15 others were eliminated.

I have no problem with the FIM rule if you cut the course you are out, my problem is that you can not say only selected riders are out, we should either be all out or all in.

Another example of the double sided rules Annie Seel (whom I like very much, and I am happy to see her still in the Rally), Annie fell into a very big hole during a special section, she called a helicopter and Etienne Levigne himself pulled her bike out and sent her on her way. ASO rules clearly say that if you call a helicopter for any reason it is automatic expulsion however they let Annie continue. Great for Annie not so great for others who were kicked out for the same thing.

I am sounding bitter, sorry gang.

The frustrating part, I was very sick and my bike was not running this was not anything I did or did not do. I was provided bad food and bad fuel by an organization whom I had paid a significant amount of money to make sure this sort of thing did not happen.

The terrain in this stage was very difficult, but at no point did I feel I could not ride it. The events that caused me to be eliminated were beyond my control and that is very frustrating. Mix in the ASO FIM politics and it makes me crazy.

I have been asked if I will be back for 2011, and I can honestly not answer at this time.

I have raced Rallys all over the world many on terrain much more dificult then the Dakar, to know I could have ridden the terrain and to be out this way is very hard to for me to deal with at this time.

My initial gut response is to give it a rest for 2011 and just focus on the other World Rallies. Once I am home and had some time to absorb what happened I may have a different mind set.

Thank you all for your support this year, I look forward to seeing everyone when I am home, to share my tales with you over some fine Kickstart Coffee.

Take Care and thank you again for all your support and encouragement.

Regards

Don

Sidestands are both useless and unnecessary in the dunes.

The first 30 kms of the stage was very rocky initially with some bad cliffs – on edge of mountain with sheer drops of over 1000 feet and the road wasn’t any more than 8 feet wide- just wide enough to get the trucks up. Then it was some very fast gravel with huge washouts – entire sections of the road gone. 150km an hour sections and entire parts of the road missing. Then we had fech fech for about 6kms interspersed with sections of gravel and huge rocks. The last couple kms were small dunes with treacherous drops (that’s where David got hurt). Total distance for the special was 218 kms. Overall though I had a great day. My mechanic Bernie is starting to get my bike dialed in for me. Tomorrow (Stage 5) is going to be very hard … we have a 20km section of large dunes, in addition to that we have some small sections of dunes. It is going to be hot and tiring tomorrow plus we have 200kms of liason. ..Don

Today didn’t start out too well for everyone here in Morocco as two of the ERT technicians were killed and three of the organization officials were seriously injured in a car accident en route to the start of the special. Our thoughts and prayers go out to their families and co-workers who must now carry on without them.

Now to today’s stage —>

As a result of the accident we had a two hour delay which was really tough as we were sitting in the hot sun with no shade at all. The course today was very very rocky, in fact, every single member of our team did not like it. The 690 KTM enduro that I am riding is definitely not suited for this kind of terrain – the suspension is absolutely stock so it cannot absorb the kind of impact the bike is receiving…so it is very difficult to ride. My body is taking a huge pounding, particularly my injured hand. On the positive side I went from last place to 5th place on Stage 1 and today I only dropped 1 place. Given how hard I was fighting the bike, I am pretty happy with that, in fact just happy to have finished today. The rest of the team had their own issues. David Dickinson (from UK) had an encounter with a rock that resulted in a big crash – he damaged his bike pretty good and will have some nice bruises tomorrow, but other than that he is ok. The same cannot be said for Rick Hatswell of Vancouver. I visited him in the medical center tonight and he showed me his xrays. It looks like a very bad break in his leg. He seems to be in good spirits…last I saw him he was trying to convince the medical staff to allow him a beer which they declined. Justin Carter (UK) is fighting the flu and feels pretty rough tonight. Tomorrow we encounter sand and sand dunes. I am hoping that the KTM will perform better in that terrain.