Funny thing, winning a race. Makes you feel like you have to win the next one, too. The Sunday after my big win in Iowa, I entered a hare scramble much closer to home, at the Splinter Creek club grounds near Fosterburg, Illinois. Matt Sellers joined me at my one-bedroom apartment in Creve Coeur, where I housed a GMC Sonoma pickup truck, a KTM 300EXC and a Kawasaki KLX650-C dual sport in a one-car detached garage. To say these were cramped quarters would be a bit of an understatement. I also stored an air compressor and a full suite of tools in that tiny garage. After races, I walked the motorcycle to my garden-level patio on the back side of my apartment building, hooked a water hose to the kitchen sink and washed the bike next to the sliding glass doors. I'd done this for two years now, and would continue for one more until purchasing a house.
For now, the arrangement worked fine and allowed me to dedicate my financial resources to an expensive hobby. Matt had recently used some of his resources to buy a new KTM 300EXC and brought it to Splinter Creek for its inaugural ride, and I must admit the bike was pretty. My 1999 version of the 300EXC was showing its age, even though it was less than two racing seasons into its life. The Fosterburg hare scramble was Matt's opportunity to break in his new ride properly, while I continued to run the bejesus out of my bike.
As Matt put his engine through a few warmup and cool-down cycles, I walked most of the course under cloudy skies and light rain. For me, these scouting missions are usually just an exercise in walking. Come race time, what I saw at a brisk 3 mph pace on my feet is usually a different view from the seat of a motorcycle. All I knew for sure is the trails would be slick and the hills had potential to make for a rough day.
On the starting line, only one other person showed up to race the Open B class with me and Matt. Our row was joined with the 200 B class in an odd starting format. The club decided the riders would straddle the front fender, looking rearward towards the rows behind. When the green flag dropped, the riders would dash to their seats and start their engines. I'd been part of this format in a past race or two and found that all it accomplished was another layer of mayhem. Nobody actually practiced dead-engine starts with their man parts riding a curved piece of plastic. The only beneficiaries of this format were the few who brought motorcycles with electric starters. While the rest of the field frantically un-straddled their fenders and raced to their kick starters, the electrics had already fired their engines and gained a second or two over the kickers.
Our row had no electric starters, so the green flag-drop began with about two seconds of silence before the first engines sparked to life. My two-kick start put me near the back of the pack as we aimed for the first turn. Within a minute I caught up to Matt and tried my best to bump him out of the way. We slid around the course for several minutes and found the rain had saturated only an inch or two of dirt. As the riders ahead of us churned up the trails, a dry, loamy soil appeared from below.
At a tricky, root infested hill, I found a quicker line and made my way past Matt. Within another five minutes I passed the other rider in our class, but throughout the race we would change positions several times. On the second lap I slid out around a corner, dropped the bike and saw Matt go by. I spent the next six laps trying my best to catch him, but never saw his shiny new KTM.
With its proximity to Alton, Illinois and the Mississippi River, the Splinter Creek club grounds were straight in the middle of ravine country. Early in the race, the steep, slimy descents into the low areas required riders to go easy on the brakes at a time when their instincts screamed otherwise. One extra tug on the front brake lever was enough to lock the front wheel and send a rider tumbling to the bottom of a ravine. Rear brakes were almost as unpredictable. A simple tap of the brake pedal could send the rear wheel into an instant fishtail. These were tricky trails at first, but this course was a rare one which became better as the race went on.
In the second hour of racing the course had improved so much that I almost forgot about my difficulties on the slick soil. Loamy dirt replaced the slimy mud as riders charged through the narrow, twisty trails, again and again. Any spots the sun could reach had dried completely, and most everywhere else the thousands of knobs on hundreds of tires had moved the slime off the trail and replaced it with loam. Around the outer edge of each tight curve was, at first, a berm of dough-like goop, soon to be dried out like a mason adding powder to a mortar mix. The course was on its way to perfection.
My riding wasn't quite as perfect, although I felt in contention for the win. Without seeing Matt since he passed me earlier, I figured he had finished first. When I completed my final lap and idled through the staging area, I saw him already at the truck. There's our winner, I thought. But alas, Matt had run out of fuel and finished a lap down. And unknowingly, I had let the class winner pass me on the last lap. I lost by 24 seconds.
Even without meeting my now-elevated standards, I enjoyed the race, and the short drive home.
