With the major snowstorm behind us and some of it slowly meltiing, racing season quickly arrived. My son and I decided to hit the first race of the year here locally, the 3 hour tag team harescramble.
It was a beautiful day as we headed down the driveway to the 3 hour tag team harescramble (Karl was going snowmobiling, he's a bit smarter than Pat and I as you will see)
I showed up without a partner, Josh, the owner's son told me I did NOT want to ironman this one. The sign up lady said some guy on a Gas Gas 250 was looking for a partner, but another dude said he would track him down to partner with him. So I didn't sign up, told the signup lady that if anyone was looking for a partner send them my way. Got an offer to ride with a guy but I wasn?t sure I really really wanted to ride my newly rebuilt bike. Ran into Jason Seehorn, he told me that there was a guy looking for a partner because that guy was going to ride with the guy Jason hooked up with. Asked Jason what he looked like, what was he riding, what was he wearing, where was he - duh I dunno, he wasn't naked though (MEN don?t remember what other guys look like apparently ). :bonk:
So I wandered down towards where Pat had parked our truck at the very end of the pitrow, stopped to chat with everyone I knew along the way. A lady came up to me "Are you the lady looking for a partner?" "Well, yeah." "My son needs a partner, he was going to ironman it but decided since he hadn't ridden in 4 months and just rebuilt his bike from when it seized at the Chile ISDE he wanted to partner." "Hmmmmm, let's talk!" :applause: So we went down to the sign up table and found her son. I told him we could do Jack & Jill or Heavyweight because I was on a CR500. He thought Jack & Jill sounded good, then he asked if I was on dirtrider.net. Um yep, I'm bbbom. He laughed because as he said, not many people ride CR500's and he is SpeedyManiac from dirtrider. He's been posting on there almost as long as I have. And he was the guy on the Gas Gas 250 that the other guy was looking for. Cool and he was already parked down at the end close to us to they just moved into our pit, him & his parents. I introduced him to my son?s buddies and our pit crew, my son had two other buddies racing besides him & his partner and their parents were there to help pit.
My partner, Steve, opted to forgo the parade lap because he figured he'd have plenty of time to get covered in mud. I did the parade lap but hung back to avoid the big clusters and roost.
Track was slimey with standing water in all low spots, mud everywhere, some frozen rutted sections and more mud. I mean there was mud EVERYWHERE, with ice underneath all the waterholes and some waterholes were huge, others not so bad. I figured out that most of the waterholes weren't too bad so I was passing people through the water. Goggles were useless so went without them.
I started, it was a dead engine start but at least we didn't have to straddle the front fender this time, I would have fallen on my butt if I'd had to do that. It took 3 kicks to fire the 500 up ? grrr, it always starts first kick! I almost caught the other Jack & Jill team that I knew until I got stuck behind a pile up in a mudhole. I felt good the first lap, the new piston in the 5hunny was giving him all kinds of power and the new fork springs were working. I tagged Steve off, grabbed some water and next thing I knew the pit crew was yelling here he comes. He was back quick so I took off for lap 2 for me and about 3/4 of the way through, I came up on a guy on a Suzuki that seemed to crack the throttle a little more in the real muddy spots, not sure if that was because he heard someone coming up on him or if that was just how he rode but he was giving me a mudbath. I woohoo?d him and got past him while he was avoiding the water, I just blasted through the water, think I may have spashed him just a bit. After the mudbath he?d been giving me, I made sure I gave him the same courtesy as I passed - did I mention I had a brand new IRC M5B 120/80/18 on my bike? :busted:
Then I crashed in a mudhole and the Suzuki guy woohoo'd me as I was laying there. :rant: Luckily I went over on the left but the bike kept running and I was worried it had sucked silt into it. Well I wasn't going to push it back to the pits so I fired it up, first kick and it seemed fine so off I went. I was going to catch that guy now and woohoo him again! I caught him shortly afterwards and gave him my most feminine woohoo, followed by some good roost.
Tagged Steve, and pulled my seat off to see what it looked like in the air box. Silty, damp, silty. Steve's mom said my bike sounded funny when I went by on the long straights. Yeah I noticed. So Steve pulled in after 12 flipping minutes (did I say he was fast, but he was fast in MUD too), and we waved him on because I thought we only had 30 minute left and I was afraid I was going to seize my bike. I called Karl who was snowmobiling at home and happened to catch him on a break. He gave me some instructions, I told him I'd call him back, check the bike out as per instruction, seemed okay, Steve came in again - the guy is FAST! So off I went. I forgot to change my gloves out so had to work on holding on to the bike. Stalled in the frozen ruts, that's how I discovered that they were frozen. Biffed it hard over the bars in one slimey section where my front tire unexpectedly found a rock, stalled again later and had one almost over the bars episode where a mudhole was quite a bit deeper than I had expected.
I tagged Steve for his last lap and wouldn?t you know it, he showed back up from his lap at 3:50 pm, meaning I got to do ONE MORE MUDDY LAP! I was TIRED now so I just tried to ride as fast as I could (because slow was more work than fast) and not screw up. I stalled at least twice and had a couple almost tip overs that I saved. Finally making it to the checkpoint where they collected our armband. I told Josh he had outdone himself this time and he just smiled! My bike was running great but it still sounded funny and there was silt in the airbox. I didn?t have a spare air filter or grease or a clean spot on my body so I didn?t dare pull the filter to look under it. Hopefully it didn?t suck silt, won?t know until we actually get the truck unloaded and clean some of the mud off the poor thing.
People were unrecognizable, everybody was MUD from head to toe. The field was really thinning out from attrition. There were muddy bikes stuck, muddy bikes parked off to the side, muddy riders walking into the pits from their bikes. When I took off my coat and it's 25 lbs of mud and realized that there was no way I was brushing my hair, it was caked with mud along my neckline and it looked like I had eyeliner on from the mud around my eyes.
My son after the race:
My son and I after the race (like the hair? I worked like 3 hours on that do)
My bike with his new piston, new bearings, new tires, well at least they were in the morning.
Pitrow, about the best part of the whole track
They processed the results quickly - yaaaaaaaaa and to my surprise, Steve and I won the Jack & Jill Class - woohoo, I definitely owe that to my partner! My son and his partner took 3rd in Lightweight and his other friends took 4th in Lightweight. There were 81 team entries, 39 finished, we were 20th overall and Pat's team was 13th. My sons friend (old dudes that race with him) and his partner were 10th, he was sure to point out to my son, because they beat him but my son did tell him to enjoy the moment.
The boys and their trophies:
Steve and I with our trophies:
Linear Mode
