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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.
