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Finger Lakes State Park
Columbia, Missouri
6th of 11 in Open B (trophy)
Another repeat of Westphalia, with Matt finishing in 5th place and me in 6th. This time he beat me fair and
square. Columbia can be terribly muddy this time of year, but today conditions were about as good as they
get. I got off to another decent start but rode like a fool for the first 5 minutes or so. Matt passed me after I
went down going around a slow corner. I caught up to him while he dug himself out of a mud hole at a creek
crossing, but then I got hung up there, too. We both got going again at the same time, but he lost me when I
took a slower line through a section. The next two laps I could see him ahead of me on the motocross track,
but I never could catch him. When I tried, I kept crashing, once on the motocross track right in front of the
spectators. I did get the balls to do the big double jump, but I went over it with the bike almost vertical. The
landing was soft, but it scared the hell out of me and I didn't try it again. Plus, I couldn't slow down in time
and overshot the next curve, passing dangerously close to a group of spectators. Actually it was kind of funny
watching them try to decide if they needed to scramble (fortunately they didn't need to). On the last lap, the
bite valve on my Camelbak came off again, and just like at the White City enduro last year, it started
siphoning out the water and providing an unnecessary nut cooler. Matt finished about 3 minutes ahead of
me, but they gave out trophies through 6th place, so we both took home some hardware.
April 9, 2000
Roselawn, Indiana
6th of 22 in Open B (trophy)
This event was the fifth consecutive Sunday I had raced, and my body was starting to feel the effects. All
week my back had been sore from a hard landing off a jump at Columbia, and my throttle hand had some
soreness. Roselawn normally has only one enduro each year in August, called the Summer Bummer. But
this year they added a Spring race to the schedule, called "Brrr in the Bush." Based on the early morning
temperatures and the narrow trails, this was a good name for the race. Last year I earned my first-ever
enduro trophy here, so in 2000 I decided to move myself up to the B class for enduros. The week before the
race, I happened to see that one of the club members heading up the race was an active participant in an
internet discussion group called dirtrider.net. His name is Bill Steele, and what really caught my eye was
that he lives in Bourbonnais, my old place of residence. I exchanged e-mails with Bill and got some route
information before the race, and he hooked me up with another Bourbonnais guy who was looking for
someone to share a row with. Funny how all the time I spent in Momence and Bourbonnais, I never came
across any enduro riders, but now that I'm 4 hours away, I meet two guys from that town who are into the
sport. The guy I rode with, Ryan Baker, has a buddy who he usually rides with but couldn't go to the race. He
said they know a few riding areas around Kankakee, one with a 6-mile loop. Geez, all those weekends I
drove down to the farm to ride my measly 3-mile trail...these guys drive a few miles outside of town and ride
on weeknights!
Anyway, Ryan raced the C class, and right away I could tell he would probably be moving up soon. He rides
a Kawasaki KDX220, which works great on the narrow Roselawn trails. We started on row 32, which was
good because at least 100 riders had already cleared the trails for us. They ran us through the same
8.5-mile loop around the Naked City airport (our setup area) and I lost 10 points in the section. As always,
they gave us a nice long reset to gas up and head out on the road.
The next 20 miles followed familiar trails to a checkpoint that began the long 20-mile all-woods marathon. I
started following a fast guy and kept up pretty well until I hit a tree and went down. It was a small tree, but it
got stuck between the back wheel and the sidepanel, so I had to spend some time dragging the bike away
from the tree before it could be uprighted again. The rest of the section was fairly uneventful, just a lot of
narrow trails and some very loose "sugar" sand. There was one log, however, that stood out. It was about 3
feet in diameter and they made us ride over it. Ryan and I both agreed that it was the largest log we'd ever
had to cross. They had another long reset at about the halfway point, and it was there that I noticed my
odometer was not working. Thanks to a bonehead oversight, the cable was flopping loose against the
wheel and stretched itself out of the odometer drive. I had forgotten to strap the cable to the fork. Turned out
that it didn't really matter because the major timekeeping sections were over with, and there were numerous
signs posted that listed the mileage.
The last loop was through the same section we started in and I finished it with no problems. My final score
was 61, my best ever. I tied with another rider in my class, but beat him on tiebreakers and got 6th place.
Not bad, considering the huge size of the class. Ryan did well in the C-class, despite bruising his foot, and
finished in 3rd place with a score of 74. Not bad for a guy who's only been racing for a couple years. The
season was going well, and but for a couple of mechanical problems I might have won trophies in all 5
races to date.
April 30, 2000
Oakley, Illinois
10th of 16 in Big B
Great weather and dry conditions made for a large turnout, considering this was an Illinois race. The C
class had over 30 entrants, and my B class was also big. They started all of the B classes in one row, so
there must have been 25-30 guys all gunning for the same corner. The start was in an open field with a
quarter-mile of wide-open acceleration and then hard braking at a 90-degree left-hand turn into the woods. I
was mid-pack going into the corner and never really got by anyone else during the whole race. This was one
of those races that I never found my groove, or hit that "zone" where everything feels fast and easy. The trails
were so hard-packed that at times the rear wheel wanted to spin out even when going straight. The club has
a small motocross course that we went around, which then led back to the open field where we started. At
the border of the motocross track and the field, there was a nice little jump that I was hitting in 4th gear and
sailing 30 or 40 feet across the cultivated dirt before landing softly and then pulling hard on the throttle. Other
interesting obstacles were a troublesome log sitting high across the trail and a tremendously steep 40-foot
downhill with a hard right-hand turn at the bottom. Anyone missing the turn would have taken a cool swim in
the Sangamon River.
At the halfway point the engine started to cut out, and eventually the bike ran out of gas...again. I filled up at
the truck and probably lost 5 minutes. A few weeks later I finally found the culprit-a hole in the fuel line that
wasn't very noticeable. Back on the course, I finished up the race uneventfully. Had I not stopped for gas, I
probably would have placed high enough to bring home a trophy.
