Saturday, Apr. 05, 2008

Veteran off-road racer fights cancer

By Jeff Morrow

Kennewick’s Stan Toland should have been at his chemotherapy treatment session Friday.

“I told my doctor no,” said Toland. “I’m racing this weekend.”

He’s been fighting colon cancer now for four years, and although it has been in remission for the past eight months, it’s coming back again for the third time.

Toland, 66, tries to compete in the Desert 100, an off-road motorcycle race, every year. It’s one of just three motorcycle events he races in. But it is the most important to him.

Toland has won his age division (60 and over) in four of the last five years. The one year he didn’t win, he didn’t compete.

But he doesn’t need a race to make him feel alive on a motorcycle. When he was in his early 20s, his brother-in-law got him hooked on motorcycles, and he’s been riding since the mid-1960s.

“I ride almost every other weekend,” he said. “I go out to the Juniper Forest. I just enjoy it. You’re out there by yourself.”

This weekend’s Desert 100, put on by the Stumpjumpers Motorcycle Club, is held near Odessa. The course is a 50-mile loop that traverses some unfriendly geography.

“There are no trees,” said Toland. “There’s plenty of sagebrush, a lot of rolling hills, and a lot of lava rock. It’s pretty rugged land. There’s a creek you have to ride across. There are deer out there. I did have three deer run across the course in front of me a couple years ago.”

Toland says he has just enough of a gas tank in his KTM motorcycle to go 51 or 52 miles.

That’s good enough for his division, which goes only one loop. But those in the open class must make two loops for the 100 miles, so they have to gas up after the first loop.

Roughly 850 riders are expected to compete this weekend, and the start is a free-for-all.

“We all start in one long row, stretched out,” Toland said. “They shoot a cannon off and everybody takes off toward the start of the course.”

When they see a smoking pot, they know they’ve hit the course. It’s key, Toland explained, not to fall off your motorcycle during that starting period. Meanwhile, you’re busy passing others — or being passed by them — on a trail that can have large rocks in the middle of it. It can be chaos.

There are between six to eight checkpoints that each rider must go through. It takes all of a few seconds to check in. But miss one and you’re out.

Get a flat tire, go to the closest checkpoint. But you’re usually out of the race. “It’s exciting,” said Toland. “There are a couple of straightaways where you can get up to 60 mph. It starts spreading out after a few miles. But you ride as fast as you can personally ride without killing yourself or crash.”

Toland lost a close friend, Basin City’s Jerry Siegfried, at last year’s race.

“He died of a heart attack,” Toland said. “He had a stent put in several years ago, but he got his release. He was out on the course when it happened. I rode past him and didn’t even know it happened. They were giving him CPR.”

Toland’s daughter, Tia Flynn of Coeur d’Alene, broke her collarbone four years ago while competing. Flynn, 47, blames her father.

“He bought me a bike when I was 10 and I’ve loved it ever since,” she said. “He got both my sister and I involved.”

But Flynn also said Toland has gotten hurt out there.

“His doctors, I don’t know what they think of him,” she said. “He broke a port in his chest where they put the chemo in. It crushed it. They had to move it to the other side of his chest. It’s why my mom (Sherrie) was fired up about him racing.”

Toland sheepishly admits, “My wife really gets (ticked) when I ride.”

Toland will wear a special chest protector this weekend, because he won’t give this up.

“I take chemo every two weeks and I’m sick for four or five days,” he said. “I’ll keep doing this, but it depends on how long I last. There are new chemos coming all the time. Being active works for me.”

His daughter understands.

“He’ll probably die on his motorcycle,” Flynn said. “What does he have to live for if you take this away?”

Toland put it another way:

“Why stay home and feel sorry for myself?”

— Jeff Morrow 582-1507; jmorrow@tricityherald.com

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