White City, Illinois

As club venues go, I tend to have a binary relationship with the Cahokia Creek Dirt Riders property. Races here make me feel great or not so much and there's little in between. The club operates a great piece of land in south-central Illinois and we are fortunate to be allowed to race here, but holy mud hill, this place is a challenge when the ground is wet. Today we were within hours of a joyous race course, and then, in an instant, everything changed. Rains came twenty minutes before the starting time. Goodbye joy, hello Matt's Algorithm.

For those unfamiliar with Matt Sellers, he only joins me for Illinois races if it rains during the event. It's uncanny, his ability to bring about precipitation, simply by crossing the Mississippi with a motorcycle in his truck. He will not reveal his methods, but I believe Matt has access to a complex meteorological algorithm which is released upon entering the Land of Lincoln. I thought we were in the clear at White City but Matt decided otherwise, so here we were, setting up for the race in a rain shower. The trails would be slippery.

Matt and I both entered the Open B class of the "SOIL" (Southern Illinois) hare scramble series. White City was one of four clubs hosting races each year as part of a regional series in the southern third of the state. Even though I'd made Missouri my top priority this year, the SOIL races were short drives from home and I entered as many as my schedule would allow.

On the starting line, the rain tapered to a sprinkle. I shielded my goggles to preserve their clarity, which worked well enough until the green flag was about to fly. When it did, the goggles had already picked up enough precipitation to render them mostly useless within minutes. Matt's tire spun slightly less than mine in the slippery starting area, putting him a couple bikes ahead of me as we charged towards the woods. He disappeared from my clouded vision, and then most everything else in front of me went blurry. Off came the goggles, for the second race in a row. My black eye from Kingman was still noticeable and I was tempting fate.

I was also pressing my luck with just about every change in direction. To the layperson, a set of knobby tires might seem foolproof for navigating wet trails. But White City, and Illinois in general, is a special kind of mud. If there's such a thing as "hard" mud, this is it. In the black clay, especially in the low areas around the creeks, the knobs rode on the surface. Without a berm or a rut to guide the front tire around a curve, the motorcycle was like a short track speed skater who fell on the ice. Eventually my direction would change, but something solid usually had to intervene. Imagine navigating a motorcycle through a snow-packed trail saturated in a bath of pork lard, and you have White City after a rain.

On the first lap, I found that successfully reaching the top of a hill was solely a product of my momentum at the bottom. On the way up, the rear tire was little more than a clay polisher. The front tire, in a directional sense, was like the rudder of a cruise ship. Given enough time, it would change my trajectory, just not always as quickly as I preferred. For most of the hill climbs, I simply prayed for good traction at the bottom, held the throttle open in 2nd gear, and hoped for the best. This worked well enough until I lost traction on particularly steep hill, tipped over, and spent about 5 minutes dragging the bike back down to the bottom. I picked a better line to start my climb and made it up on the second try.

The course was a long one and with the wet conditions, I was on pace for three laps. The rain ended shortly after the race began, but the first lap seemed like a marathon. The second was more of the same. Somewhere in the middle of the course, I arrived at a tricky off-camber section which had deteriorated to nearly impassible. It was a short climb out of a low area, using a narrow ravine to reach a higher area of the property. The Cahokia Creek club grounds were full of these ravines, leaving only one one option through, and I was forced to deal with this one. A single rut was cut along the side of the ravine with a tree root growing across it, about halfway to the top. I gathered enough momentum to force the front tire over the root, but the rear tire spun helplessly. These are some of the most energy-sucking obstacles on a hare scramble course. I dismounted, dumped the clutch and pushed on the handlebars with all my strength, again and again. Finally, the rear tire spun its way past the root and I was on my way to the top.

By the time I began my third and final lap, the mass of dirt bikes still on the course had cleared away much of the slime left from the earlier rains. In the low areas, small berms of clay goop had formed around the outer edges of most of the turns, leaving them much easier to navigate. In other areas, the trails became somewhat tacky. Had the race began now, I probably would have enjoyed myself quite a bit. But even with improved trail conditions, some sections were torn up with deep ruts, especially where the course passed through gullies and mud holes. Some riders were struggling to scale hills and blocking the best lines to the top.

Near the end of the third lap I took an alternate path up a hill, to avoid a downed rider, and found myself next to a group of club members who implored me to turn around. At the top of that hill, after all that effort, they wanted me to go...backwards? The course arrows were in plain sight, so I ignored the group and continued onward. Apparently I had taken a shortcut, and the club gentlemen took issue. My rider number was recorded and one minute was added to my finishing time.

After the race, I discovered my penalty when the positions and times were posted. The minute added to my time left me in second place. I located the the scorekeeper and questioned the penalty. I was one of a number of complainers with similar penalties who found him before I did, and by this time his patience had run out. I pleaded my case, that the downed rider left no other way up the hill. He peered straight into my eyes and coolly stated "There's always another way around." He also suggested that if I pushed the issue any further, I wouldn't get second place or any place at all. That's when I decided it was time to walk away.

He was right. I should have turned around. I could have been disqualified entirely, so I was glad to have been so close to my first class win in such challenging conditions. In the mayhem of a two-hour mudfest, I'd unknowingly passed Matt, who rode well on his least favorite side of the Mississippi River and took home 4th place. We had driven to the race together, and during most of the trip home he repeated "Every time I go with you to an Illinois race...."

Matt's Algorithm, proven yet again.