Daylight Savings Hell

Forgot to change the tinted shield on my helmet when we set the clocks ahead.

Welcome to my morning commute:

Trial By Fire Part II

I found myself at the Actiontown MX park in Dillwyn, VA for the VXCS cross country race I had been talked into by friends.  The week prior was spent prepping the machine, greasing and replacing bearings, new sprockets, new rear tire and giving it a good going over for small things that could turn into big problems in the woods.  One thing holds true for all forms of racing: most failures can be prevented in the garage.

What might not be preventable, and what was now most on my mind, was possibly breaking my aging body into a million pieces coming down off the first jump.  It had been twenty years since I flew very high on a motorcycle and it's not like I was very good at it.  Walking the track prior would have been great, but the group I travelled with was running behind, (go figure), leaving just enough time to register.  And then sit on the starting line for nearly an hour.

That's another truism of racing, apparently.  The waiting.  Sunday proved no different as we sat on the starting line, bodies and bikes growing colder by the minute in the 40 degree temps.  The two-stroke riders kept restarting just to keep some heat in their expansion chambers.  I knew if the KDX cooled off too much it would run muddy for the first minute, so keeping it hot was the only choice.

Finally they began waving the rows off in sixty second intervals.  The faster A and B riders were off first.  The start was dead engine, meaning he who got it lit first was usually first in Turn 1.  I was at a disadvantage due to being kick-start only, but I also knew this was a two hour race, there was no way to win it with the holeshot.  In fact, my plan was to dawdle on the start and let the quick starters lead the way.  I didn't want to get caught up in some first corner pile-up of thirty dummies from my class all diving for the lead.  So I took it easy.

Not easy enough, because I was about sixth into the first turn, with riders surrounding me, fore, aft, starboard and port .  I expected to be bumped and battered around, but was very impressed that no one made any contact.  These guys were riding with a lot of smarts and respect and as we all clear the first corner, I am already enjoying myself.

That is, until the first jump.  I am following another rider in my class as we approach what any motocross rider would call a small, easy, dare I say '"pussy" jump, but to me it looks like I am about to be hurled into the stratosphere like a doomed space shuttle.  I think I actually said a little prayer as I launched in third gear, off the edge of the world.  The one thing my brain keeps telling me is to spot my landing and be ready for it.  I can see that I am going to come up a little bit short on this tiny double, so I won't get a gentle landing using the downslope on the other side, but the top of the landing is rounded off enough that I won't "case" it and shatter my brittle bones.  The landing is a bit hard, but not terrible.  The shitty part is that my handlebars move forward from the impact and now I can't operate the brake or clutch levers without a huge reach.  The whole bike now feels weird, and there are more jumps coming up.  I can't trust whether the bars will move again, so I have to grip the tank on the landings with my knees and keep my grip loose on the bars.  It's not graceful, but I survive the entire first go round on the motocross track, saying a silent thank you to whomever designed it in such a forgiving way.

As we hit the woods I come to the first bottleneck of about fifteen riders and take the opportunity to pound my bars back into place with my fists, possibly refracturing my fifth metacarpal on the right hand (old snowmobile injury).  I keep reminding myself to calm down.  We've got almost two hours to go.  Make time by not losing time.  Don't fall. 

That doesn't last long.

The second half of the starting grid.  I'm in there somewhere, wondering when the hell things are going to get going.

Trial By Fire Part I

They told me Sunday's VXCS Cross Country race started on a motocross track.  They didn't tell me that we would be running the whole thing, once per lap.

At the age of 42, never having competed on a real motocross track, there really was no desire to do so.  Air is not something I am used to catching as a roadracer, unless I really fuck up.  Sure there were small jumps riding in the woods, four foot drops into creek beds and the like, but nothing that would have me eight, ten, twelve feet in the air wondering which might be the best way to land.

But here I was last Sunday, lining up with 150 other morons, getting ready to take a hot lap under combat conditions on a motocross track I had not seen until 30 minutes prior, had never ridden and really had no clue as to which way it even went.  On a motorcycle manufactured in the late 1980's!  How did I get myself into these things?

Come race off road with us they said!  You'll be good at it they said!  I cannot resist a challenge, and I have to admit to feeling just a little bit of confidence in my off-road riding prowess as of late.  I knew from my pavement experience that the true test, the only way to really know how good you are is to man up, gear up and put your ass on the line.  The starting line.

Gearing up man and machine.

Training Day

Might as well have called it "Ass-Whooping Day".  Spent a lot of time on the ground.  3" of snow that melted by noon made everything very slippery and of course the first place I headed to was the rocky/mud/roots section for a nice warm up of getting thrown down.

The next three hours were only marginally better.  My rhythm was off and sections that never posed a problem were proving daunting.  Let's chalk it up to the conditions and a worn rear tire, but deep down we know it's the rider.

Saturday is an off day, off the bike, but not work.  Ostensibly to save energy for Sunday, which will be my first off-road race.  Ever.  The pavement junky is going to try his hand in the dirt.  Pray for me, after yesterday, I'm gonna need it.

This is not happiness.

The Wall of Shame.  Note the green fender. That is my offering.

No New Tale To Tell

(Thank you to Love and Rockets for a great song and the title of today's blog, it's the best written part of it.)

I got nothing.  Here's a picture.

A long time ago in a country sort of far away, I raced a 1971 Suzuki Titan 500.  Here I am at a VRRA event chasing Toivo Madrus and one of the Hurst brothers (Chris or Peter, not sure which).

Hooligan

A large part of the reason I started road racing was because I lacked the restraint to act like a civilized human being on the street.  Not in the wheelies in rush hour traffic on the interstate way, but in more of a tearing around on backroads hell bent for leather way.  Either one is stupid and reckless, so thankfully racing and off-road riding mostly sate my need to act a fool.  Most of my street riding now is just commuting to and from work.  Shouldn't be able to get into too much trouble, right?

The problem is, there are certain motorcycles that just beg you to be a hooligan, with mischief and wickedness a part of their make-up as surely as gears and alloys.  These are the motorcycles we remember, the ones that beg us to be bad.  I own a classic example of one of these anti-social machines: a 1982 RD350LC.

Never officially imported to the US, I found this one languishing in a garage in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada in 2007, in need of a motor rebuild and purchased it for the princely sum of $375 Canadian dollars.  We have had a rocky, tumultuous, passionate affair.  Immediately the LC began costing me more money than planned when it was discovered not only did it need a top end rebuild, but the crank was damaged as well.  And it didn't stop there.  Two hair raising seizures later, that both ended in 90 mph plus skids when the back wheel locked up, I discovered one of the cylinders had an internal coolant leak.  I threw good money after bad at this machine, ended up with at least five times its resale value tied up in parts.  This evil princess wanted to take me for everything I had.

I would probably let her, too, because the sweet two-stroke music it makes on the pipe, that feeling in the first three gears as it lofts the front wheel makes all the bad stuff go away.  It's almost impossible to resist doing a wheelie at every stop light, the rearward weight bias and light weight almost ensure it.  This bike makes me want to ride like a jackass, while struggling to be a mature adult....

 

The Hum

Moment.  From the Latin word momentum, meaning not only short time, but moving power.

There are these moments after a long session on the dirt bike, when everyone else has packed up and gone, things are quiet and the day is ending.  The constant barrage of "braap, braap", silenced, the jostling, up down, elbows and knees bending in time to the bumps and whoops, over.  Gear is coming off, piece by piece, the perspiration evaporating and Monday coming quick but not yet.  And your whole body just hums.

I don't know how else to describe it.  An electric hum, low level vibration barely detectable running throughout.  Partially, maybe the onset of exhaustion, or shock at the pounding you just inflicted on yourself, but there's more to it than that, like the calm after the storm and before the next one.  A brief interlude prior to thoughts rushing back in a filthy deluge.  A peace.

I like to sit on the tailgate and soak it in, until the hum begins to subside.  Moving power indeed.

The end of the day, with nothing left but memories and mud.  And the Hum