| 2002 Race Reports |
 |  |  |
April 28, 2002
Kahoka, Missouri
2nd of 13 in Open B
For the average dirt bike racer, the starting line of a hare scramble rarely determines
the outcome of a race, since 2 or 3 hours in the woods is an eternity compared to a
couple-second deficit going into the first turn. But when you give your competitors a
2-minute head start and lose by 36 seconds, the start seems just a little bit important
-- more on that later.
The 2002 version of "The Mulekicker" National Hare Scramble was held in the familiar
surroundings of Mike Burkhart's backyard motocross track a few miles outside of
Kahoka, Missouri. This event falls on the schedules of several hare scrambles
series and attracts riders from the mud-infested District 17, the Iowa guys recently out
of hibernation, some national-caliber pro's, and the usual handful of racers who drive
very long distances to attend a national event. Burkhart's meticulously prepared
course was punished with steady rains for much of Saturday's races, and by Sunday
the formerly grassy parking area looked like a cattle feedlot in November. But the
rains had ended and some course re-routes kept the trails rideable...sort of.
At the starting line, the Open B class shared the 5th row with the 250 B class in the
same open field as past Mulekickers. As the green flag started each row, the mud
spray from spinning wheels shot up in a high arch, landing about 3 rows back. The
AA's mud only made it to row in front of me, but the next three rows pelted me with
enough mud to make the bike look like I had already been around the course. When
the green flag signaled our start, my engine was silent as the 20 or so riders on my
row charged for the first turn. Several kicks later, still nothing. I pushed the bike off to
the side and kept on kicking while the two rows behind me departed. I don't really
believe in the whole plug-fouling thing. I just keep kicking, swearing, and kicking
some more until the bike starts. Usually it does. After two minutes I was beginning to
wonder. Eventually the bike fired up and I began my journey through one of the
nastiest courses I've ridden in a long time. The first groups of riders had turned the
trails into a series of ruts, some already so deep that riders were struggling and I had
to wait my turn to get through. In one particularly deep rut, I patiently waited for the guy
in front of me to spin his way out. I dropped my head down to keep his mud spray
from contaminating my goggles, and when I lifted my head, it was about 3 pounds
heavier thanks to a fresh coating of sticky clay on the top of my visor.
After a couple of slide-outs, I slowly got accustomed to the track and plodded my way
through the course. The layout was similar to previous years, with the woods
sections connected by wide-open blasts through open fields. Except this time, the
open fields were complete slop and anything less than third gear was risky. I was
averaging about 10 mph but slowly caught and passed several riders by the time we
first made our way onto the motocross track. The track is laid out on a hillside and to
make it rideable in the mud, over the years Burkhart has dumped truckloads of
sawdust on the track and worked it into the soil. In the summer, it resembles a sand
track. While sand is more fun to ride when wet, saturated sawdust is somewhat like
riding through the loose silt found in creek beds, except it's softer. It required a good
deal of power to climb the hills on the track, and over the whoops the bike's front end
tended to dive down into the soft stuff. The first short run through the motocross track
contained one of the steepest hills and the bike needed every ounce of power to
make it to the top. After another few miles of woods and open fields, we came back to
the track for an extended ride around most of it, then back to the woods and a long
stretch of grass-turned-slime track. After that, another quick return to the track
preceded the scoring trailer. I thought that first lap would never end.
Lap #2 was eerily quiet and I encountered few bikes and lots of creative alternate
routes around the deep ruts and mud holes. In some cases, riders had abandoned
the woods altogether and cut through the open fields. The semi-honest racer that I
am, I tried to keep within spitting distance of the arrows until I dumped the bike in an
off-camber section. With an extra 40 pounds of mud, the bike was not easy to pick up.
In fact, The Rock would have cooked up a sweat trying to get the thing back on two
wheels. After that, I took every advantage of the shortcuts created by others and may
have added some new ones myself. Just past the halfway point, I picked the wrong
rut after navigating a nasty gully and got stuck just as the pro's were lapping me. A
group of 4 or 5 came through that section like a friggin' 100-car freight train and
literally slammed their bikes through the gully. One guy fell over but was quickly
helped by spectators and the rest charged through like they were riding in dry loam.
Unbelievable.
Just after the start of Lap #3, I gassed up near the staging area. Matt's fancy
transparent gas can was sitting next to my red Wal-Mart special, apparently unused. I
couldn't remember passing him and wondered if something went wrong, but I
couldn't see him at the truck. By this time, the boys were flat-out cheating on the
course. But who could blame anyone - most of the original course was made up of
2-foot ruts. In this part of the country, there is no rock base to contain the ruts...they'll
get as deep as your bike can make them. The creek crossings were still in good
shape, thanks to many logs laid down in 5-foot sections to help us get through. But
the trails that were close to the fields were mostly being bypassed entirely. Only one
checkpoint had been set up in the woods, and I even saw guys bypassing that to
keep out of the woods. About halfway through the lap I came upon Matt sitting along
the trail with an overheated bike. I stopped for about half a minute to see that he was
O.K. and then took off. Within a couple minutes my bike started steaming heavily and
I pulled into an open field (now part of the trail) and shut it down. Another poor guy on
an air-cooled Honda XR was having similar problems. I dribbled some water on the
radiators and they immediately sizzled, a sure sign of a hot engine. So much mud
had packed its way into the radiator guards that only about half the normal airflow was
reaching the radiators. A few minutes later I restarted the bike and took it easy for the
rest of the lap. At the scoring trailer I was told I had finished in 2nd place. Not bad,
considering the conditions. When I saw that I had missed the win by 36 seconds, the
"what-if's" started playing in my head...what if the bike had started normally? What if I
hadn't got stuck in that one nasty rut, or had only stopped for 4 minutes to cool off the
bike instead of 5? As they say, that's racing.
The sweep guys came and went, but an hour after I had changed clothes and loaded
up my bike, I still had not seen Matt. Finally, just before the trophy presentation I saw
him walking across the motocross track. After three hours sitting idle in the woods
and getting hosed by the sweep guys, Matt gave up and started walking. He did not
look pleased. But his 7th place trophy was a testament to the attrition rate.
As I'm writing this, the Disney Channel is re-running Motocrossed for the umpteenth
time, the story of a girl mixing it up with the boys at the track. Missouri's own Amanda
Lappe was one of only two entrants in the women's class brave enough to mix it up
with the boys at the Mulekicker...as the hottie-mom on Motocrossed said, You Go Girl!
(coincidently, the same words used by the boyz at the playground the last time I
displayed my stellar ball handling skills). After protests, Chuck Woodford was
awarded the overall win, followed closely by Scott Plessinger and Jason Raines.
Their 5 laps in 2.5 hours is nothing short of amazing.
May 26, 2002
Kingman, Indiana
5th of 18 in Big B
Every so often I get the urge to take in a race near the Motherland, also known as
God's Country, the place I grew up in Eastern Illinois. The riding there is much like
Kahoka, Missouri, where the dirt is black, the mud is even blacker, and rocks are
something people read about in National Geographic. At the farm where I used to
play ride, I once buried the back end so deep that I had to borrow a winch to extricate
my bike from a Finger Lakes-style mud hole. In that part of the world, water-filled
gullys and ruts are like Al Gore on the campaign trail: appears fairly innocuous, but
you suspect there's something dark and dirty beneath, the depths of which can only
be surmised until you get sucked in and have to be pulled out with help from powerful
Republicans, er, a really strong winch.
Anyway, the Memorial Day extended weekend was a good excuse to visit the farm and
race the Kingman, Indiana hare scramble. Since the location is not too far across the
Illinois border, Kingman is part of both the Indiana (D-15) and upper-Illinois (D-17)
district series. I had ridden the course two years ago and it was the most like our old
farm trails as anything I had ever raced. Dense woods, deep mud, moderate hills,
and slower speeds were highlights of that race. As I walked the course this time, the
trails were in decent shape despite some rain earlier in the week.
Before the race, I was reacquainted with the D15/17-style parade lap, in which a club
member leads all the riders around the course. Unlike a Missouri-style practice lap,
where you can start anytime after the club clears out the ATV's and can ride at race
speeds if you choose, the Kingman parade lap was a sluggish freight-train of 100
riders slowly navigating the course. The parade lap wasn't much of a warm-up, but
more of a chance to preview the course without having to walk it. So the arm pump
that normally works its way out of my system on a Missouri practice lap was in full
effect just after the race began. I had a decent start but killed the engine about 200
yards later, after rubbing bars with another rider. Most of the woods were tight, but
there were a couple of short GNCC-type sections to get up some speed.
Near the end of the first lap, we were directed back to the starting area for a restart.
While waiting for the other riders to emerge from the woods, we learned that shortly
after my row left the line, someone in a row behind us had been injured and the back
row had not been able to start while the injured rider was attended to. Strange that
the only times I've ever seen a restart at a hare scramble have been at this race (see
the Kingman race report from 2000). The second start was similar to the first, except
that I didn't kill the engine in the first 200 yards. I settled into a decent pace and got to
know the course pretty well over the next 7 or 8 laps. In some ways, it's nice to be able
to remember the finer points of the trail in a 3-4 mile-per-lap D17 race, versus an
MHSC race where guys like me get in 3 or 4 laps on an 8-10 mile loop. The
downside is knowing those nasty places will come up twice as often. The toughest
section was near the end of the course, where the trail dropped down into a
water-filled ravine with some very large rocks that many from that part of the country
had probably not seen since their last trip to the Punch Bowl at Turkey Run (Indiana
folks will get that one). Finally, I was able to use my rock-riding experience
somewhere besides Missouri. But just after that section was a rapidly deteriorating
creek crossing to remind me that I was still in Indiana.
At the last uphill climb before the scoring barrels, I saw my sister and nephew
cheering me on as I finished my second lap. Laura and Kyle came to see firsthand
what their crazy brother/uncle does on the weekends. I saw them a few more times
as I completed the next 5 or 6 laps. Most of the creek crossings were kept in good
shape with the help of bridges, but I did manage to get hung up on the worst one on
my next-to-last lap. Fortunately there were plenty of guys standing around to pull me
up the creek bank. I finished the race a respectable 5th place in my class. While I
was loading up the bike and waiting for the results to be posted, Kyle, age 7, watched
the mini-bike (50-65cc) race and asked the question few mothers want to hear:
"When can I start racing?" The answer was something to the effect of "when you don't
live in my house anymore." Tough luck, kid.
Kahoka, Missouri
2nd of 13 in Open B
For the average dirt bike racer, the starting line of a hare scramble rarely determines
the outcome of a race, since 2 or 3 hours in the woods is an eternity compared to a
couple-second deficit going into the first turn. But when you give your competitors a
2-minute head start and lose by 36 seconds, the start seems just a little bit important
-- more on that later.
The 2002 version of "The Mulekicker" National Hare Scramble was held in the familiar
surroundings of Mike Burkhart's backyard motocross track a few miles outside of
Kahoka, Missouri. This event falls on the schedules of several hare scrambles
series and attracts riders from the mud-infested District 17, the Iowa guys recently out
of hibernation, some national-caliber pro's, and the usual handful of racers who drive
very long distances to attend a national event. Burkhart's meticulously prepared
course was punished with steady rains for much of Saturday's races, and by Sunday
the formerly grassy parking area looked like a cattle feedlot in November. But the
rains had ended and some course re-routes kept the trails rideable...sort of.
At the starting line, the Open B class shared the 5th row with the 250 B class in the
same open field as past Mulekickers. As the green flag started each row, the mud
spray from spinning wheels shot up in a high arch, landing about 3 rows back. The
AA's mud only made it to row in front of me, but the next three rows pelted me with
enough mud to make the bike look like I had already been around the course. When
the green flag signaled our start, my engine was silent as the 20 or so riders on my
row charged for the first turn. Several kicks later, still nothing. I pushed the bike off to
the side and kept on kicking while the two rows behind me departed. I don't really
believe in the whole plug-fouling thing. I just keep kicking, swearing, and kicking
some more until the bike starts. Usually it does. After two minutes I was beginning to
wonder. Eventually the bike fired up and I began my journey through one of the
nastiest courses I've ridden in a long time. The first groups of riders had turned the
trails into a series of ruts, some already so deep that riders were struggling and I had
to wait my turn to get through. In one particularly deep rut, I patiently waited for the guy
in front of me to spin his way out. I dropped my head down to keep his mud spray
from contaminating my goggles, and when I lifted my head, it was about 3 pounds
heavier thanks to a fresh coating of sticky clay on the top of my visor.
After a couple of slide-outs, I slowly got accustomed to the track and plodded my way
through the course. The layout was similar to previous years, with the woods
sections connected by wide-open blasts through open fields. Except this time, the
open fields were complete slop and anything less than third gear was risky. I was
averaging about 10 mph but slowly caught and passed several riders by the time we
first made our way onto the motocross track. The track is laid out on a hillside and to
make it rideable in the mud, over the years Burkhart has dumped truckloads of
sawdust on the track and worked it into the soil. In the summer, it resembles a sand
track. While sand is more fun to ride when wet, saturated sawdust is somewhat like
riding through the loose silt found in creek beds, except it's softer. It required a good
deal of power to climb the hills on the track, and over the whoops the bike's front end
tended to dive down into the soft stuff. The first short run through the motocross track
contained one of the steepest hills and the bike needed every ounce of power to
make it to the top. After another few miles of woods and open fields, we came back to
the track for an extended ride around most of it, then back to the woods and a long
stretch of grass-turned-slime track. After that, another quick return to the track
preceded the scoring trailer. I thought that first lap would never end.
Lap #2 was eerily quiet and I encountered few bikes and lots of creative alternate
routes around the deep ruts and mud holes. In some cases, riders had abandoned
the woods altogether and cut through the open fields. The semi-honest racer that I
am, I tried to keep within spitting distance of the arrows until I dumped the bike in an
off-camber section. With an extra 40 pounds of mud, the bike was not easy to pick up.
In fact, The Rock would have cooked up a sweat trying to get the thing back on two
wheels. After that, I took every advantage of the shortcuts created by others and may
have added some new ones myself. Just past the halfway point, I picked the wrong
rut after navigating a nasty gully and got stuck just as the pro's were lapping me. A
group of 4 or 5 came through that section like a friggin' 100-car freight train and
literally slammed their bikes through the gully. One guy fell over but was quickly
helped by spectators and the rest charged through like they were riding in dry loam.
Unbelievable.
Just after the start of Lap #3, I gassed up near the staging area. Matt's fancy
transparent gas can was sitting next to my red Wal-Mart special, apparently unused. I
couldn't remember passing him and wondered if something went wrong, but I
couldn't see him at the truck. By this time, the boys were flat-out cheating on the
course. But who could blame anyone - most of the original course was made up of
2-foot ruts. In this part of the country, there is no rock base to contain the ruts...they'll
get as deep as your bike can make them. The creek crossings were still in good
shape, thanks to many logs laid down in 5-foot sections to help us get through. But
the trails that were close to the fields were mostly being bypassed entirely. Only one
checkpoint had been set up in the woods, and I even saw guys bypassing that to
keep out of the woods. About halfway through the lap I came upon Matt sitting along
the trail with an overheated bike. I stopped for about half a minute to see that he was
O.K. and then took off. Within a couple minutes my bike started steaming heavily and
I pulled into an open field (now part of the trail) and shut it down. Another poor guy on
an air-cooled Honda XR was having similar problems. I dribbled some water on the
radiators and they immediately sizzled, a sure sign of a hot engine. So much mud
had packed its way into the radiator guards that only about half the normal airflow was
reaching the radiators. A few minutes later I restarted the bike and took it easy for the
rest of the lap. At the scoring trailer I was told I had finished in 2nd place. Not bad,
considering the conditions. When I saw that I had missed the win by 36 seconds, the
"what-if's" started playing in my head...what if the bike had started normally? What if I
hadn't got stuck in that one nasty rut, or had only stopped for 4 minutes to cool off the
bike instead of 5? As they say, that's racing.
The sweep guys came and went, but an hour after I had changed clothes and loaded
up my bike, I still had not seen Matt. Finally, just before the trophy presentation I saw
him walking across the motocross track. After three hours sitting idle in the woods
and getting hosed by the sweep guys, Matt gave up and started walking. He did not
look pleased. But his 7th place trophy was a testament to the attrition rate.
As I'm writing this, the Disney Channel is re-running Motocrossed for the umpteenth
time, the story of a girl mixing it up with the boys at the track. Missouri's own Amanda
Lappe was one of only two entrants in the women's class brave enough to mix it up
with the boys at the Mulekicker...as the hottie-mom on Motocrossed said, You Go Girl!
(coincidently, the same words used by the boyz at the playground the last time I
displayed my stellar ball handling skills). After protests, Chuck Woodford was
awarded the overall win, followed closely by Scott Plessinger and Jason Raines.
Their 5 laps in 2.5 hours is nothing short of amazing.
May 26, 2002
Kingman, Indiana
5th of 18 in Big B
Every so often I get the urge to take in a race near the Motherland, also known as
God's Country, the place I grew up in Eastern Illinois. The riding there is much like
Kahoka, Missouri, where the dirt is black, the mud is even blacker, and rocks are
something people read about in National Geographic. At the farm where I used to
play ride, I once buried the back end so deep that I had to borrow a winch to extricate
my bike from a Finger Lakes-style mud hole. In that part of the world, water-filled
gullys and ruts are like Al Gore on the campaign trail: appears fairly innocuous, but
you suspect there's something dark and dirty beneath, the depths of which can only
be surmised until you get sucked in and have to be pulled out with help from powerful
Republicans, er, a really strong winch.
Anyway, the Memorial Day extended weekend was a good excuse to visit the farm and
race the Kingman, Indiana hare scramble. Since the location is not too far across the
Illinois border, Kingman is part of both the Indiana (D-15) and upper-Illinois (D-17)
district series. I had ridden the course two years ago and it was the most like our old
farm trails as anything I had ever raced. Dense woods, deep mud, moderate hills,
and slower speeds were highlights of that race. As I walked the course this time, the
trails were in decent shape despite some rain earlier in the week.
Before the race, I was reacquainted with the D15/17-style parade lap, in which a club
member leads all the riders around the course. Unlike a Missouri-style practice lap,
where you can start anytime after the club clears out the ATV's and can ride at race
speeds if you choose, the Kingman parade lap was a sluggish freight-train of 100
riders slowly navigating the course. The parade lap wasn't much of a warm-up, but
more of a chance to preview the course without having to walk it. So the arm pump
that normally works its way out of my system on a Missouri practice lap was in full
effect just after the race began. I had a decent start but killed the engine about 200
yards later, after rubbing bars with another rider. Most of the woods were tight, but
there were a couple of short GNCC-type sections to get up some speed.
Near the end of the first lap, we were directed back to the starting area for a restart.
While waiting for the other riders to emerge from the woods, we learned that shortly
after my row left the line, someone in a row behind us had been injured and the back
row had not been able to start while the injured rider was attended to. Strange that
the only times I've ever seen a restart at a hare scramble have been at this race (see
the Kingman race report from 2000). The second start was similar to the first, except
that I didn't kill the engine in the first 200 yards. I settled into a decent pace and got to
know the course pretty well over the next 7 or 8 laps. In some ways, it's nice to be able
to remember the finer points of the trail in a 3-4 mile-per-lap D17 race, versus an
MHSC race where guys like me get in 3 or 4 laps on an 8-10 mile loop. The
downside is knowing those nasty places will come up twice as often. The toughest
section was near the end of the course, where the trail dropped down into a
water-filled ravine with some very large rocks that many from that part of the country
had probably not seen since their last trip to the Punch Bowl at Turkey Run (Indiana
folks will get that one). Finally, I was able to use my rock-riding experience
somewhere besides Missouri. But just after that section was a rapidly deteriorating
creek crossing to remind me that I was still in Indiana.
At the last uphill climb before the scoring barrels, I saw my sister and nephew
cheering me on as I finished my second lap. Laura and Kyle came to see firsthand
what their crazy brother/uncle does on the weekends. I saw them a few more times
as I completed the next 5 or 6 laps. Most of the creek crossings were kept in good
shape with the help of bridges, but I did manage to get hung up on the worst one on
my next-to-last lap. Fortunately there were plenty of guys standing around to pull me
up the creek bank. I finished the race a respectable 5th place in my class. While I
was loading up the bike and waiting for the results to be posted, Kyle, age 7, watched
the mini-bike (50-65cc) race and asked the question few mothers want to hear:
"When can I start racing?" The answer was something to the effect of "when you don't
live in my house anymore." Tough luck, kid.
Kahoka, Missouri
Kingman, Indiana
Kingman, Indiana
