At St. Louis, the Mississippi River is a 2000-foot border separating the soft and supple soil of Illinois from the harsh, jagged-edged terrain of Missouri. Belleville falls on the soft side, with one caveat. The Belleville Enduro Team property is a former strip mine, left in the same state as when the minerals were fully extracted. The soft and supple was removed, leaving an underbelly of thick clay. That's what the BET club has to to work with, and today would be a challenge.
After two days of rain leading up to Sunday, the course was almost too slippery to walk. I did anyway and passed by the infamous hill which knocked me unconscious last year. I considered taking another look as a sort of emotional closure exercise. Up to this point in my racing, the Belleville knockout and the White City beatdown were my most significant competition injuries. I'd never been left unconscious on the side of a trail and I felt lucky that day. But the hill was not part of this year's course, so I kept walking.
The club decided to scrap the motorcycle route altogether and have us ride the ATV course. Even with all the mud, the trails would be fast. Of course, to go fast, one must make his motorcycle go. At the starting line, mine did not go. I will admit, dead-engine starts put my nerves on edge like no other part of a hare scramble. It begins in silence, fixated on a flag person standing a safe distance in front of the starting line. Every rider searches for any sign of the flagman's movement. My right hand has the throttle open slightly. My left hand holds in the clutch. The kickstarter lever is extended and my right foot is perched on top of it. My left foot rests on the ground for balance. I've already positioned the piston to top dead center, giving the engine maximum compression the moment my leg forces down the kickstarter.
I wait. I focus my eyes. The flag drops. I throw down my leg against the kickstarter lever.
Nothing.
More kicks, still nothing. I must push my bike away from the starting line or be run over by the next row, nervously waiting their turn. Row after row departs while I kick and kick. The entire starting area is now filled only with spectators, and me, still kicking.
Finally, the engine fired. I sprinted through the slippery course and quickly caught the tail end of the Trailrider class, struggling through a mud hole. I squeezed through the bottleneck with help from the unwritten rule that everything is traction at a hare scramble, including other bikes and their riders. I was still far behind and trying to make up time.
As expected, the laps were short in distance and quick in speed. The BET property borders a highway, and the club routed some of the course parallel to the road. I was keeping up with cars, blasting down that section in 5th gear. Other sections were simply a choice between 10 or more ruts, some deeper than others. The mud holes grew wider as riders searched for better ways through. As one rider would become lodged in a rut, others would move to another rut on the left or right, deepening those ruts, which would then cause another rider to get stuck in a new rut and the whole process would begin anew until a 5-foot wide trail became 50 feet across.
A few laps into the race, I sensed my front tire was losing air. I continued racing through the mud, hoping for the best, but an hour later later the tire went dead flat. I limped back to my truck and called an end to my race. Those unfamiliar with this type of racing often marvel that I would consider this kind of day fun. Based on results alone, the race was a failure. But I was continuing to learn, at a race which didn't really matter much. In 2000, my focus was not the soft and supple. I had my sights set across the river, in the rough and nasty.
