My time in Missouri has introduced me to more rocks than a Colorado quarry, and the Sedalia hare scramble course could have been carved from the best of them. In the dog days of summer, Sedalia combined rocks with dust and heat. The practice lap trails revealed a course which could have been confused with any number of Missouri venues on the south side of the state, with its steady dose of angular stone. These are not the smooth, rounded rocks common to the oldest geological regions of our world. A bit of traction can be found here, at the expense of rear tires. Within the span of a 2-hour race, the rocks work the knobs into the texture of a dog's well-enjoyed chew toy. The tires get one chance to prove themselves, then they're off to the scrap pile.
I left St. Louis early in the morning with enough time to rendezvous at Matt Sellers' home in Wentzville and arrive in time for practice. Three hours later in Western Missouri, the pouring rain at home was nowhere to be found. Sedalia was dry as a bone. Matt brought a pop-up awning for shade and shared it with Lars Valin, an up-and-comer in the 250B class. Lars had parked beside us at the previous round of the Missouri Hare Scrambles Championship (MHSC) and we enjoyed his company again. He was a case study in understatement, arriving in a tiny Japanese car pulling an even smaller trailer. His carefully chosen words and soft-spoken demeanor belied a hard charging racing style. This guy was going places. Little did we know, those places would eventually include multiple top-5 overall finishes in the MHSC and several trips to the International Six Days Enduro (ISDE), competing on U.S. club teams around the world. In 2000, Lars was working towards a MHSC class championship and qualification for the A class the following year.
My forearm still hurt from the Roselawn tree encounter, so naturally I forgot to pack my elbow/forearm guards and even more naturally, my forearm bumped a tiny twig of a tree on the practice lap. Sore again, and the racing had yet to begin.
At the starting line, I took a spot next to Kurt "Pizza Man" Mirtsching. At this point in my MHSC experience, I was still trying to figure out the actual names of my competitors in the Open B class. I didn't know Kurt's real name yet, but did find out the nickname came from his ownership of a well known pizza joint near the University of Missouri in Columbia. Shakespeare's Pizza was one of those college town joints everyone visited during their four or five or seven years on campus, and Kurt had the personality and drive to make it successful. He noticed my chest protector wasn't properly fastened and without hesitation, fixed me up. Nice guy, that Pizza Man.
Kurt had his own custom Pizza Man jersey, making him easy to spot on the race course. Our class also included Jeff "Cookie Monster" Kuechenmeister. Jeff was leading the Open B class in points and very fast for our intermediate class. I wondered what my nickname would be, should I spend enough time racing the MHSC. Possibilities included "The Sticknocker", "King of Cheap", and "That Guy Who Crashes A Lot". I liked my chances for the latter.
Cookie Monster grabbed the holeshot when the green flag signaled the start for our row. Matt entered the woods in second place, followed by Pizza Man on his burly Honda XR 4-stroke and I on my KTM. I settled into the dust trail of the riders ahead and eventually worked my way past Pizza Man. Matt had put a gap between us, but reappeared while struggling to cross a log. Pizza Man lurked behind us, using his physical strength to muscle his large motorcycle through the dust and heat.
An hour into the race, I crashed and landed on my sore arm. Pizza Man passed me while I struggled to remount. I hadn't exercised much since Roselawn, and the energy wasted in the crash sucked the life out of me. When the white flag at the scoring area signaled my final lap, all I could do was limp to the finish. My energy was gone.
Near the end of the lap, the sound of an approaching motorcycle alerted me to the possibility that I was about to be passed. The engine noise resembled Matt's KTM 300, but surely he couldn't have caught up to me...right? I had passed him on the first lap and not seen him since.
But then, I was about to.
Two hundred yards from the finish line, Matt roared by and took 4th place by a couple of seconds. Like the rag-in-airbox incident at Roselawn, the story of "The Pass" would be told and retold for decades. We packed up our bikes and gear and cranked the air conditioning in the truck, blowing dirt out of our noses most of the way home.
