Crab Orchard, Illinois

In my second full year living in St. Louis, I'd come to discover this land offered year-round riding opportunities. A slightly milder climate made winters a breeze, compared to the frozen tundra I knew of Northeastern Illinois. In that cooler climate, the ground solidified in early December and thawed in late February. Without studded tires, riding in the winter months was a difficult motivation. Not so along the Interstate 70 corridor. Hard freezes just didn't happen. Snow came, but retreated quickly. With a minor warm spell I could load up my dirt bike and ride, and today was that kind of day.

On Saturday I begged for Matt Sellers to do the driving to Crab Orchard, as my GMC Sonoma had just deposited most of its radiator coolant onto my garage floor. He obliged, and we headed to the Little Egypt off-road park in his truck. With temperatures set to hit 50, we seized the opportunity for one last race in 2000.

The Little Egypt hare scramble was part of the Mid-South Cross Country (MSXC) winter series, for those riders who wished for no off-season. My body had pleaded for an off-season after the White City hare scramble in October. I compromised and gave it four weeks rest ahead of today's race.

Kentucky and Tennessee hosted most of the MXSC events, but the series ventured north to Southern Illinois for the Little Egypt event. The club property was an old strip mine, now open to the public with help from a grant from the State of Illinois. The property had been left as it was when mining activities ended, which is to say it was perfect for dirt biking. Endless 20-foot ridges of dirt, overgrown in 30 years' worth of trees, made for rough terrain and challenging trails. Rains the night before dampened the soil just enough for Matt's Algorithm to hold true once again.

In these days of my racing misadventures, technology had ever-so-gradually taken hold of the off-road racing scene. Electronic scoring was a thing, with bar code stickers and hand scanners now fashionable. Like the Missouri hare scramble series, the MXSC embraced bar codes on helmets, but neither had electroni-fied the registration process. This held true for every race I'd entered to date, as internet-based signup procedures were nearly a decade off in the future. The Little Egypt event was typical of most, where a gate fee was handed over at the entrance to the property, a parking spot was secured in the staging area, and the first stop from there was the end of a line of riders waiting patiently to fill out entry forms and sign waivers. A Saturday trip to the ATM machine was customary, since entry fees were paid almost exclusively in cash. Start to finish, the signup process might take 30 minutes or more.

Next up was unloading bike and testing to make sure all was still operational from the weekend maintenance routine. I always scanned the entire outer surface of the motorcycle, looking for anything suspicious in the morning light of the staging area. Sometimes I'd see a bolt I'd neglected to check for tightness or notice a minor detail like a tiny sharp end of safety wire emerging ever-so-slightly from the handlebar grips. Some of the smallest imperfections could make for a distracting or downright uncomfortable two hours of racing, and I would have none of that. I only wanted to feel the vibration of the 300cc engine between my legs, the input from handlebars against my wrists and arms, and the suspension doing its thing. I didn't want to feel any of my 20 pounds of riding gear...no rubbing or chafing, no buckles unbuckling or pieces flopping. I viewed my gear as a baseball fan would consider a highly competent umpire, unnoticed during the game. It's just there, doing a job, creating no fuss.

With the bike ready to race, I threw my riding gear, fired up the KTM and cruised to the grassy field where riders lined up in starting rows. To an observer unfamiliar with the hare scramble genre of off-road racing, this field must have seemed an exercise in chaos. Nearly 200 dirt bikes and their riders darted in and amongst the gradually forming lines across the grass, searching for their classes and securing the best positions to put them most quickly at the first turn. The ones with entourages had their spots reserved while they warmed up their bikes and practiced dead-engine starts off to the side of the starting field. Other riders idled back and forth across the rows of motorcycles, eyeing fender-mounted score cards for clues to where their classes were located. All the while, club members paced the rows, guided riders to their proper classes and attempted to reign in the mayhem.

After 15 or 20 minutes of this, the rows were established and a man with a flag, positioned near the front of the riders, signaled for quiet with a throat-slitting gesture. This was repeated by riders like a bucket brigade to the back rows, and all engines gradually dozed into silence. The man shouted pleasantries and a few basic instructions, then gave the go-ahead to warm up engines. After a minute or so of a deafening buzz and a large haze of exhaust fumes, he again signaled for silence. Within 30 seconds, he waved his flag and the first row of riders kicked their bikes to life and sprinted to the first corner. This was opportunity for the remaining riders to warm up their engines again, followed by another call for silence.

This process repeated about a dozen times, once for each row. My Open B class was positioned near the center of the rows, allowing several opportunities to evaluate the sprints of the classes in front. My row was too wide to get a good count of all the riders, but the scoring results would later show 17 in our class. Dead-engine pandemonium only requires a couple of riders on a starting line, but 17 was a virtual guarantee for spectator entertainment. I was a bit nervous. The 300cc two-stroke, a bike of choice for woods racing, filled most of our field, along with a handful of larger-bore motorcycles of various colors. Most were the orange hue of KTM, now taking over woods racing as Japanese manufacturers abandoned the two-stroke trail riding market. In good hands, these bikes were capable of ripping the snot out of grassy fields. Mine were not those type of hands. I simply hoped to survive the start.

I did, while dodging wet chunks of grass spewing from the tires of riders out front. Our first task was navigating a grass track running parallel to Illinois Route 13. When our turn came, the grass track had become a quagmire of muck about 30 feet wide. I slid around each turn as if the course was covered in snow.

Soon enough, we were corralled into the woods, where the first mile or so was a first gear off-camber section full of bottlenecks. Strip mine properties are ideal for these narrow sidehill trails, with their endless ridges. In muddy conditions, the sidehills leave little room for error. If either tire leaves the trail, a certain amount of pushing or lifting is usually required to return the offending tire(s) onto the beaten path. I made it through without issues, but others didn't. Lines of impatient riders were stopped, waiting out the struggling rider or searching for alternate routes. The late-fall foliage made clear vision through the trees, which tempted many a rider to explore alternatives. The challenge was finding a ridable path above or below the bottleneck. An occasional brave rider would test the limits of traction, most often running up the high side of the off-camber and usually sliding back down to the established trail. Sometimes these attempts would create another bottleneck.

Eventually the first-lap chaos thinned out as the riders separated. Next up were a pair of roller coaster sections, where the trail led us up and down 8 or 10 consecutively steep ridges. Somewhere in here I failed to climb a ridge and considered a longer option to the top. A club member stood by, daring me to try it again. I did, successfully.

At the end of the first lap my bar code was scanned, same as the Missouri races. The MSXC added a bonus: A stop light indicating a successful scan. When the light turned green, the scan was recorded and riders were free to continue. A large digital display then indicated the rider's position in his class.

In the early miles of the race, Matt had passed me, but on the second lap I caught up and passed him in an open section. My main goal, as with any race I compete with Matt, was to stay in front of him, but these were long, tiring laps. My physical conditioning was typical of winter, which is to say...poor. I had tried to rid my body of its never-ending aches and pains by laying off the free weights, and November was the traditional end-of-season for bicycling. I was just plain out of shape. At the end of the second lap, I was hopeful that time would run out and I could go home.

Of course that didn't happen. I trudged around the course once more, then checked my watch and tried my hand at mental math. My internal calculator said four laps. I was only halfway to the finish. This course, with its endless ridges, prevented any kind of flow, for several reasons. Foremost was the tightly spaced trees, which are typical of new growth forests. Many of the Illinois hare scramble and enduro courses are made from old pastures where cattle no longer graze, now grown up in the same kind of 5-inch-diameter trees. The ridges didn't actually impede flow, if ridden in a parallel direction, but the MSXC wasn't about to make the course so easy. A hundred yards of easygoing trail was usually about it, before the course was routed up and over a ridge or two. At the tops of the ridges, the downside was usually out of sight until the absolute peak, at which time I had a millisecond to point my front wheel toward to proper downhill path. Any other way down was usually a recipe for a tumble.

Near the end of the third lap I considered quitting, but stubbornness prevailed. I soldiered on, struggling through the long off-camber section and roller coasters. In the last open stretch before the finish line, I could see Matt at the truck already loading up his stuff. He had completed three laps and called it a day. My four laps put me only one spot ahead of him. If only I had known. Three laps would have been just right.

As it were, I ended the 2000 season with an average finish. Other than a few notable exceptions, I felt mostly average throughout the whole year, despite my efforts on and off the bike. I would certainly not be one of those riders like Lars Valin, with his steep learning curve and rapid progression toward the Pro class. My goal, earning a spot in the A class, was a distant dream. But regardless of my skills on a dirt bike, I was thoroughly hooked on racing. The 2001 season couldn't come fast enough.