Kicking Up Dirt Read online

  The child specialists there sat me down with some puzzles and tests, simple stuff designed to test intelligence, hand-eye coordination, and so on. Here’s the thing—I’m really hyper and sitting still is slow torture for me. Generally I can’t even stay put long enough to watch much TV. As you can imagine, I lost interest in the doctors’ tests almost the second they placed them in front of me. Based on my decidedly ADD performance, they deduced that my inability to talk was due to mental deficiency. I was “mildly retarded,” they said. On top of that, I was “lazy,” and my parents should stop “spoiling” me. “If she points at something, don’t get it for her,” they said. “She should learn to say what she wants.” The news sent my parents into a tailspin. Mildly retarded? First they felt shock…then confusion…then anger. It didn’t make any sense—other than being silent, I seemed pretty bright to them. If they said “Go get your milk,” I would go get my milk. What they didn’t realize was that I was already learning to lip-read.

  In the end, it was my mom, not the doctors, who finally figured out what was going on. One day, she accidentally dropped a bunch of pots and pans behind me, and I didn’t flinch. She thought this seemed odd, so she took some more pans up behind me and started banging them, right there. I didn’t react. That’s when she began suspecting there might be something wrong, not with my intelligence but with my hearing. Six months later, specialists at the University of Michigan confirmed her suspicions—I was profoundly deaf. They diagnosed me almost immediately, after a series of tests. The tests took place in a dark room, and I sat on a chair with my parents behind me. The specialists observed how I responded to various noise-making tools—like monkeys with cymbals and other toy animals. Of course, I didn’t respond—I couldn’t hear a thing. Having endured a year of not knowing what was wrong with me, the news came as a relief to my parents. Finally they knew what the real problem was. And this time it didn’t feel like a mistake.

  We were ushered into a small office with one of the specialists straightaway. “I am going to teach you a few very basic things,” he said. This would be our very first introduction to sign language. He showed us how to sign words like “apple” (made by closing your hand and placing the knuckle of your right index finger against your cheek) and “milk” (made by clenching either hand). My mom says she’d never seen me look so happy—at last, we could communicate with one another!

  The doctor asked my parents if they’d consider getting me fitted with cochlear implants, electronic radio devices that are surgically implanted behind the ears, beneath the skin. They can help extremely deaf people like me develop some hearing sensation—but one of their downsides is that any kind of physical impact can be dangerous for the wearer. As such, they limit the amount of contact sports you can participate in. My mom and dad talked to other young deaf people and most of them said the same thing: “Don’t get the implants!” For several years, doctors would urge my parents to reconsider implants, but they didn’t feel comfortable making a decision on my behalf. When I was around eight years old, in third grade, they discussed it with me seriously. They said they would support whatever decision I made. But I felt the same way they did—I was fine the way God had made me. I’m so grateful they didn’t just steam ahead and have the surgery done. My life would have been very different if they had; I might never have become a motocross racer. Even today, we talk about it and I know I’ll never get the implants—I don’t even want a hearing aid. Not that it would make any difference.

  Several members of my family were appalled by the news of my deafness. And it didn’t help that my parents seemed so relaxed about the situation. After all, to many hearing people, deafness seems like a tragedy. They can’t imagine a world without music, for instance, or going through life without knowing what your name sounds like. Well, I’ve never known any different. To me, being deaf doesn’t feel tragic at all. I just have a different way of experiencing things.

  Immediately after the diagnosis, my parents drove me up to Northern Michigan to visit Grandpa Motorcycle. During the drive, they started figuring out a plan of action, laying out some broad goals for themselves and for me. First things first—they were going to learn sign language, so they could communicate with me. Then they would research schools for me. It all seemed surprisingly manageable to them. In fact, people sometimes wonder why my parents didn’t freak out more when they found out about my deafness. But it’s just not their style. My mom and dad have always rolled with the punches and adapted to whatever God has given them. Their reaction, or the way they describe it to me, was, “OK, cool. She’s deaf. Now at least we know what we’re dealing with.” Grandpa Motorcycle was almost as calm as they were about my deafness after the initial shock, at least. The way he saw it, if his son and daughter-in-law were OK with it, then so was he.

  It took a few moments for the dust—and the emotions—to settle. Then the whole family started the process of adjusting. There was a whole new world for us to explore.

  Total Communication

  In my family, we’ve become very used to having to fight for things, and one of our very first battles was with the state of Michigan. At the time, Michigan was an advocate of “oral deaf education,” in which the focus is on learning to speak and lip-read combined with use of hearing aids and cochlear implants, rather than a sign-language-based education. But my parents were more drawn to the alternative, a “total communication” program, which places as much value on signing and finger-spelling as it does on things like lip-reading and voice.

  My parents found themselves pressured to put me in an oral program, a path they didn’t feel was quite right. In their opinion, American Sign Language offered a more effective way for us to communicate with one another—but the state insisted my parents at least visit an oral program before making a decision. So they did—my mom and dad checked out an oral program nearby and visited four or five different classrooms.

  “Every classroom was filled with kids working on saying the word ‘apple,’” she later told me. “They seem to spend all day trying to say this one word!” By this point anyway, I was already signing the word “apple.” I could also sign what color apple I wanted, and how many pieces. My parents felt it was more important that I spend my days following a regular curriculum of math, English, and science, so they stuck to their guns, and we started a home-based total communication program straightaway.

  Hearing babies start absorbing language right after they are born—but I was nearly three years old, and I had almost no concept of language whatsoever. We had some catching up to do. My parents enrolled me in a preschool program with hearing kids for a month. A sign language professional started coming over to our home twice a week, working for an hour with my mom and me. The first few sentences we learned were really basic—like “What do you want to eat?” and “Do you have to go to the bathroom?” Then my mom took photos of everyone in the family, and next to each person’s photo, I would draw his or her sign name, which was always based on a memorable object or thing I associated with that person. That’s how we came up with “Grandpa Motorcycle.” Deaf people often create shortened sign language names for their friends and family, based on whatever thing they remind you of the most. My grandma on my mom’s side, for example, had a dachshund, so she became “Grandma Hot Dog.” I had always associated my dad’s dad with motorcycles, so he became “Grandpa Motorcycle.” Now that’s what everyone calls him.

  My mom says I was good at signing right off the bat. Within a year of my diagnosis, I was able to ask for all my favorite foods in sign language. When I was three and a half I enrolled at a school in Dearborn called Whitmore Bolles Elementary, a hearing school that made special provisions for deaf kids. Academic classes were with deaf students, and I could interact with the hearing kids more closely during activities like PE and Girl Scouts. I attended Whitmore Bolles from 1994 to 1998.

  In hindsight, I know I was lucky that my parents were willing to invest so much of their time into helping me communicate�
�so many of the deaf kids I met at school, those born into hearing families, told me their parents hadn’t been able to invest much time into learning sign language with them. The Fioleks, on the other hand—we had a whole language of our own going. McDonald’s was two little arches with your fingers, for instance. And there were more personal signs—whenever I was acting up or getting hyper, my mom would take the palm of my hand and run her fingers over the edge of it until they fell off the edge. “You’re over the edge, Ashley,” she would laugh, and immediately I would calm down. Just something about feeling her hand on mine made me relax. In public I was shy, but when at home with my family I could be incredibly boisterous, never wanting to sit down or stay still. “You were an angel child at school, and at home you were a hellion,” my mom jokes today.

  In the meantime, my mom and dad had started taking adult sign language classes at night school. And they made friends with other deaf families, families that “adopted” us and introduced my parents to the deaf way of life. My folks would be invited to parties where, quite often, they were the only hearing people in the room. My mom admits it was hard to adjust at first. But they were supremely grateful for the love and acceptance of the deaf community, a community my parents had no experience with whatsoever.

  My dad was just as involved as my mom when it came to learning sign language and to learning about deaf culture, which was unusual, my parents learned. Apparently, when hearing parents have a deaf child, it’s generally the mother who takes on the burden of cultural integration. But my dad was all over it. He had so many things he wanted to talk to his little girl about, after all—like motocross.

  Andrew Campo

  chapter 2

  THE GATE DROPS

  Grandpa Motorcycle

  Grandpa Motorcycle, my dad’s dad, has had faith in me right from the start. They say he’s my number one fan, and he follows me to races all over the country. He hates to fly, so he’s logged thousands and thousands of miles in his old Ford truck, crisscrossing the nation in the name of motocross. Like my dad, he’s small. Unlike my dad, he has a thing for wild-colored jean shorts.

  There’s no doubt the Fiolek obsession with dirt bikes started with him. In the 1970s, while living in Dearborn and working at General Motors, he cofounded a road bike club called Kings and Queens. This hobby segued into motocross and enduro racing—trail racing in the woods for long periods of time. In enduro you don’t go as fast as you do in regular motocross, but you do have to weave through the woods for hours and hours, navigating gnarled roots and overhanging branches. It’s not for the faint of heart.

  Signing with Grandpa Motorcycle.

  The first time I ever got to ride a motorcycle was up at Grandpa Motorcycle’s cabin in Wolverine, a forest town in Northern Michigan. There isn’t much to do—only a couple of restaurants and no movie theater—so you pretty much have to make your own fun.

  I was just one and a half years old when my dad sat me on the gas tank of his bike. We disappeared into the woods, following the trails, with mom on her quad next to us. That’s my earliest memory—being on the front of my dad’s bike, feeling like I never wanted to stop. If they did ever pull over because it started raining, I would start yelling and bawling. I guess the cold and wet never bothered me—they still don’t.

  You could say we’ve always been an outdoorsy family. I mean, who wants to watch TV when there’s a whole world of fun waiting to be had outside? Even in the winters, which tend to last forever in Michigan, we’d make the three-hour trip up to Wolverine every weekend. We didn’t care about the freezing wind and the snow—my dad would hook up snowboards to the back of my mom’s four-wheeler, and we’d scoot around for hours in the ice and slush. Going through muddy winter puddles was always so fun—sometimes it was hard to tell just how deep they really were. There’s nothing quite like parting the brown waters on your bike and emerging on the other side, soaking wet.

  I’ve been riding in chilly conditions since I was young, and it’s helped me deal with extreme weather as a professional motocross racer. With the cold, I get to a point where I just don’t feel it anymore. And on the rare occasions that it does bother me, I just think about Grandpa Motorcycle’s cabin and how there was always a crackling fire and a cup of hot chocolate waiting for us inside. That always warms me up, even if it’s only in my head.

  My first solo “ride” at an amusement park.

  In the summertime, the weather in Michigan flipped to the opposite extreme—we’d spend languid humid days swatting away clouds of tiny bugs and drinking lemonade. But so long as I was moving, I didn’t mind the stickiness—the breeze kept us cool. We would see deer, squirrels, and raccoons as we wove through the Wolverine forest, and even in its thickest depths, we never felt alone. The forest, the riding, the pine-scented air—everything about Grandpa Motorcycle’s cabin was magical, and even though he sold it a few years ago, it holds a special place in my heart. It always will.

  Forest Ranger

  The cabin sat at the top of a hill, and at the bottom was a small dirt track with a couple of little jumps. My dad learned to ride on that track when he was a little kid, and that’s where he first put me on a bike too, before I could even walk. He had bought me my first bike, a Yamaha PW50, a tiny little thing with training wheels. Perfect for a three-and-a-half-year-old speed freak like me! It cost my parents around $1,000, which was a lot of money for them, but they had a feeling it was something I really wanted. How right they were!

  One day, up at the cabin, my dad pointed to the track at the bottom of the hill.

  “You want to go down there on your new bike?” he signed. I nodded. It was time for my first real ride.

  The track was overgrown, riddled with roots and vegetation, so my mom and dad spent a full day clearing it, getting it ready for my big debut. Because I was so young, only three years old, the memories are foggy, but my parents tell me I zoomed round and round on that little baby motorcycle for hours. When I fell off—which was every few minutes or so—they’d pick me up and put me back on. I’d be whooping with excitement and laughing, according to my mom, who was amazed at my already insatiable appetite for riding.

  Soon enough, the little dirt track at the bottom of the hill just wasn’t cutting it anymore—I was five years old and ready to hit the big time. I wanted to be riding out in the woods with my parents and Grandpa Motorcycle—not sitting on my dad’s lap. I begged my parents to let me go out with them. They didn’t need too much convincing; they have always encouraged the dare-devil in me. As has Grandpa Motorcycle.

  “Let the girl ride her bike,” he told my parents. “If she thinks she’s ready, she’s ready.”

  They dressed me up in my kids’ gear. Little helmet, knee pads—the works. The weather was beautiful—it was spring and the ice had just melted. I still had my training wheels on, and I couldn’t wait for the day my dad would unscrew them—but that was still a few years down the line. For now, I was just excited to be going on my first big solo ride among the pine and birch trees that surrounded the cabin.

  My dad took off first, on his green Kawasaki. He signaled at me to follow him. I twisted the throttle on my minibike and followed his lead as we headed out into nature. All I’ve ever known is silence, but somehow the quiet in the conifer woods feels heavier. I caught sight of the shadow of my mother’s four-wheeler behind me. I knew she was there, keeping an eye on me. I figured Grandpa Motorcycle was right behind her. Most people, when they’re riding, can hear people coming up behind them, and they use their voices to communicate with one another, shouting over the sound of the engines. Because I can’t hear anyone or anything, I was already starting to use my sixth sense, my rider’s instinct, observing each and every change in my surroundings, always staying alert for any possible obstacles ahead of me.

  After a half hour on the trails, we came upon a tarmac roadway. My dad signaled for us to follow him, and we rode single file along the side of the road. We must have looked like quite the little motorcycle
family—three generations of Fioleks doing what they love best! I saw a restaurant ahead of us in the distance, and my dad signalled for us to pull into the parking lot. My parents let me walk into the restaurant first, and I strolled in holding my little helmet under my arm, feeling proud as could be.

  During those years, between the ages of three and seven, riding was just for fun. None of us thought about my racing. The only knowledge I had of competitive motocross was gleaned from sitting on my dad’s lap while he watched motocross championships on TV. In the nineties, motocross wasn’t on the television very often—if you did catch a motorcycle race on TV, it would generally be supercross. But on those days when a moto-cross race was on the tube, it became a family occasion, and we would all sit close together and cheer on our favorite riders. My dad used his basic sign language to tell me tales of epic battles between champions in the mud, and I lapped them up. I wished I knew what it felt like to speed around a track with a bunch of other kids on bikes.

  * * *

  Motocross vs. Supercross

  Motocross and supercross are two sides of the same action-sports coin—the major differences lie in the length of the track, and the jumps. Today, jumps are among the most exciting—and daunting—elements of a motocross race, in which a rider speeds up to a dirt hill and is sent flying into the air. A double jump consists of a series of two mounds, and in a triple—one of the toughest jumps to pull off—the rider clears all three mounds in one jump. They are the highlight of any motocross race today.