Park Hills, Missouri

Dirt bike racing is fraught with physical risks. Anyone who competes knows this well, and sometimes we must be reminded. Today was that day.

In the morning hours leading up to the March of Dimes charity hare scramble at St. Joe State Park, riders cast aside the hard reality that when things go wrong, our bodies aren’t designed for motorcycle speeds. We assume we’ll leave the race with no more than bumps or bruises. We never think we won’t come home at all.

Jerry Hemann did not come home today.

Earlier this year, Matt Sellers and I shared a row with Jerry at the White Rock Enduro in Arkansas. That Sunday in March was the only time I’ve ever spent with Jerry, but we’re all family in this sport. The shocking news arrived later in the afternoon, as I parked my motorcycle and began packing up to leave the park. The details of the actual racing now seem insignificant, but I’ll tell my story with a heavy heart.

On a typical March of Dimes Sunday, Matt would have picked me up and driven us to St. Joe State Park, where we’d stake out a spot near the smoothly graded sand track winding through the staging area. But this morning I traveled solo, as Matt and his family arrived early so young Michael could race his KTM 65cc minibike in the youth competition. The journey was a familiar one. From St. Louis, Interstate 55 delivered me to Festus and then U.S. 67 to Park Hills. Finally, just after passing by Mineral Area College, I hopped on Missouri Highway 32 for two miles and entered the park at the Missouri Mines Historic Site. My truck almost could have driven itself, for no other place had I spent more time riding and racing.

The old lead mining buildings, faded and rusty and idled for decades, contrasted wildly among brightly colored trucks and trailers lumbering toward the parking area. Under a shady tent large enough to host a wedding reception, I registered for the event and searched for Matt. Endless vehicles and bike haulers lined the wide sand track, most equipped with pop-up awnings which seemed more for the motorcycles than the people. The March of Dimes hare scramble is always one of the most popular races of the season, given its proximity to St. Louis and the Illinois border. Some still remember the race as the Flat River Grand Prix, from back in the days before its namesake town joined with three other small towns to form the consolidated city now known as Park Hills. This year’s “tin” anniversary of Park Hills prompted no recognition for a decade in existence, its residents having little interest in a celebrating such an inferior mineral milestone. The town was born from lead, and by God they would celebrate four years from now with a party like no other, because when you make it to 14 years, that is a lead anniversary…so go pound sand, tin. Plenty was available in the staging area.

[Editor’s note: Sadly, it appears Park Hills did not celebrate its lead anniversary in 2008, or any other anniversary since then.]

Trudging across the silt and sand, I continued searching for Matt’s truck. The sheer dollar’s worth of toys in such a compact area might only be surpassed by Party Cove in Lake of the Ozarks, and even there it’s easier to locate one’s people. This place hummed with a similar excitement, driven by the park opening its non-public acres to racing. Twice, or at best, thrice a year, dirt bikers are allowed access to these couple thousand magical acres. Unlike the public area, this part of St. Joe State Park wasn’t tainted with rutted two-track and basketball-sized boulders, unearthed over many years by legions of recreational ATVs. The State of Missouri opened it up for a day, and the riders showed up in droves.

When I finally located Matt and his family, tiny motorcycles and ATVs screamed across the sand track and into the hilly woods. Amidst the dust and parents shouting encouragement, Michael’s tiny motorcycle sat idle next to Matt’s truck. The engine had seized mid-race. Later in the week, Matt would report a “smidgen” of play in the tiny lower rod bearing, which in engineering terms is about a quarter-inch. The little KTM, and Michael’s dirt biking, was done for a while.

The March of Dimes race often welcomes in the dog days of summer, much like my first competition here in 1998, after which I almost packed up and moved back to Illinois. But sunny skies and moderate temperatures shoved that memory far back in my archives, right next to jean shorts and Chumbawamba. The dog days would wait and so would I as Matt attended to his family. We suited up for a practice run across a partial lap, as is usual for this event. Course mileages tend to be longer here, which can drag out practice laps and risk pushing back starting times. We race here at the pleasure of the Missouri park system, so the sponsoring club takes no chances with delays. A short sprint through tight woods near the staging area would at least help acclimate us to the course, and we could save more energy for the race.

I fired up my Kawasaki KX250 and jumped onto the sand track, now filled with a giant dust cloud, and pointed my bike toward the trees. Just inside the woods, a young man on a Honda CR80 found himself stuck near the top of a hill and politely begged for help. With fresh visions of poor Nick Bryant on the ground after I knocked him off his motorcycle last Sunday, I parked the KX250 against a tree. The little CR80 had stalled and left its rider in an awkward position to restart the engine. Rather than fire it up myself and jockey the red bike up the loose rock, I threw a leg over it and coasted back down the bottom of the ravine. As a kid I’d always hoped to ride a CR80, or any other 80cc motocross machine, and now, 20 years older and 12 inches taller, it finally happened. At the base of the hill I kicked the engine to life, grabbed the throttle and slipped the clutch all the way to the top. Safe to say, the 12-year-old version of me could never have handled what the CR80 offered. It easily thrust me up the hill, where I handed off the bike to the youngster.

Back on the KX250, my warmup ride ended near the edge of the staging area, where a course marshal pointed toward the sea of bike haulers. Thirty minutes later a handful of the sponsoring club’s members fanned out through the crowd on dirt bikes and ATVs, corralling riders under the yellow tent for a brief meeting. The trail boss announced the starting grid was aligned behind the staging area, rather than in front, setting up in the sand flats just ahead of a hill rising toward the woods. This was different. All previous races here, we sprinted across a level field for 200 yards, then braked hard for a right-hand turn before dispersing into the lower regions of the park. At last year’s March of Dimes race, while my unreliable KTM 300MXC sat idle in the garage waiting for a local dealership to repair the transmission, I’d perched myself just beyond this spot and photographed each class of riders drag racing to the first turn. Today we’d vie for the holeshot by climbing a small grade of loose sand.

With a rear tire better suited for rocks, the KX250 seemed ill suited for the left side of the A Sportsman row. This end offered a shorter path to the first corner, but riders had to get there by climbing a steeper grade. I gambled by lining up on the right end of the row, then paused nervously while riders from two other A classes sprinted from the left side with little effort.

So much for gambles. But then…surprise! The 15-second board dropped, my engine burst to life, and I twisted the throttle to its stop. Turns out I didn’t need a sand tire. All it took was second gear and a boatload of RPMs, and the KX250 did the rest. From high on a hill, 100 or so spectators witnessed the rare sight of me and the green machine blasting across the sand among the lead pack, weaving through a short series of turns and reaching the woods in 4th place. For me, this was as good as a holeshot.

Inside the woods, a steady dust trail from the class leaders suggested the powdery, unshaded sand sections would resemble a 1930s dust bowl. For now, my singletrack vision remained clear as I passed for third and gave it right back when another rider squeezed more quickly between tightly spaced trees. Still in 4th place, I charged into the open space where our practice session ended earlier. A huge cloud choked out the sun. While others charged ahead, the dense fog left me riding blind.

Eventually the air cleared and a series of sand whoops delivered us to the longest, smoothest section in the park property: An earthen dam, a quarter-mile long. Leftover from lead mining operations, this embankment once held back water and created a lake. On a dust-free day, any rider could upshift into top gear and achieve warp speed here. But today, that kind of speed came with high risk. At the end of the dam, arrows pointed sharply to the left…if they could be seen through the dust.

Jerry Hemann didn’t see the arrows.

And neither did I, at first. Our class leaders, as well as a handful of riders from earlier starting rows, braked hard for the turn and churned out another huge dust cloud. I backed off the throttle and waited for clean air, then navigated the turn.

I don’t remember on which lap the ambulance siren wailed near Highway 32. That sound almost always means a rider is having a bad day on the race course…the kind of day we assume ends in the emergency room of a local hospital. Perhaps the rider shows up at the next race in street clothes and a cast, offering pit support for friends.

Today was not that day.

Jerry missed the turn. He continued a short distance to the end of the dam, where part of it had been excavated to drain the lake many years prior. This gap, he would never have seen coming.

My race continued through a choppy pass across sharp-edged rocks scattered about the sand flats. Greyed out by a steady, smoky haze, the course arrows pointed back toward the woods. The old growth forests of Missouri still live here, despite many decades of terrain-altering lead processing, and the mature trees in this section snuffed out much of the green and leafy underbrush. A trail boss could scan ahead and staple arrows to trees and barely touch anything else. No chopping out narrow paths through buckthorn or sumac. No detours around patches of giant ragweed. And here, on this side of the park, no ATVs. The singletrack zigged and zagged with ease and clear views, and most importantly, with flow. I comfortably pushed the KX250 through these trails in 3rd gear and wondered why all riding couldn’t be just like this, for if it was, I’d never need to cut down my handlebars. Nothing like this existed in the park’s public riding areas.

For most of a full mile I practically floated across the trail, feeling that special groove where throttle, clutch, brakes and handlebars become natural extensions of arms, legs and fingers. As a whitetail deer sprints through the woods without conscious thought of how to move its legs, so did I on the KX250, eventually emerging at a clear-cut swath under the path of high voltage power lines. There, on scrub brush beside a tower, lay Kevin Ruckdeschell. Clearly shaken, Kevin raised a thumb as I paused to ask if he was alright. I wasn’t totally convinced. Another rider paused, and Kevin repeated the same. I continued on, twisting my head for one last look as I pulled away and caught a glimpse of Slade Morlang. After battling through an average start and thicker dust, Slade wasted no time tracking me down and passed just ahead of the long-since-retired railroad tracks from bygone mining operations.

Another mile or two of slightly less flowy woods took us back toward the sand flats around the staging area. These open areas formed endless sand whoops where the KX250 shined…if the rider upshifted and pinned the throttle open. That rider was not me, but Gary Mittleberg happily demonstrated he was. His throttle hand twisted so quickly and with such fury that I thought he might have sprained his wrist. He accelerated ahead, bouncing effortlessly across each whoop on his Yamaha four-stroke. Close behind, John McDaniel charged even harder and passed me just before the scoring trailer.

So much for good starts.

I told myself the racing was far from over and perhaps I could find someone – anyone – in my class to pursue, but none came forward. Only the oddball obstacles of this former mining property appeared within the trees, most notably a multi-level concrete structure of the sort one might imagine from a dystopian video game. Built into the side of a hill and long abandoned, the structure projected out and over the rocky terrain below. We passed through two dark levels of whatever this thing was, all on concrete surfaces where I over-clutched, over-spun, and generally overworked myself trying to get through fast.

The mining property also included a small concrete bridge, under which we passed at the point of a 90-degree right-hand turn. Anyone sliding wide would find a hard wall redirecting their bike out of the corner. Through the underpass, I squeezed by the wall with a few inches to spare, then caught up to Ron Ribolzi in the A-Intermediate class. On a Honda, Ron maintained an aggressive pace and I followed his smooth lines. Passing lanes required either drag racing and braking late, or slipping through narrow trees on top of loose rocks. Neither felt ideal. We challenged each other through the end of the lap, where I held on to 6th place in my class.

Now at the halfway point, lapped traffic slowed me through some of the narrow trails and the fast, sandy areas scared me too much for passing. Somewhere in this third lap, one of my handguard spoilers broke loose and flopped around the metal guard. For reasons I do not recall, a few weeks prior I bought a set of these plastic flaps, designed to add more finger protection against offending brush and saplings. As usual, I bungled the installation, probably forgetting thread locking compound on the screws holding the spoilers to the hand guards. I’d done better in 1994 or 1995 at my first enduro, knowing absolutely nothing about timekeeping or how to dress for November racing. But I knew I needed warm hands and I had very little cash to spend, so I cut up a gallon jug of Tide laundry soap and made a set of orange spoilers for my yellow Suzuki RMX250. Today, the left spoiler slid to the outer edge of the handlebar and whacked my wrist with every bump. Zip ties on my Tide guards worked better, and I wished I’d thought up a backup plan for loose screws.

Back at the earthen dam, I caught up to Ralph Gerding, still riding fast in his mid-40s. The KX250 lacked enough speed to get around him in a wide open sprint, but later I found a spot in the woods to make the pass. Mercifully, the dangling spoiler fell off a minute or two later, destined for the collection of trail junk cleaned up by the sponsoring club.

Some trail junk never left the trail, mainly rocks of all shapes and sizes. Near the end of the lap, my knee found one planted firmly at the top of a deep rut. I whacked the rock so hard that without knee guards, I would have been carried out of the place. As it were, my knee still hurt like it’d been kicked by a donkey and my pace slowed enough for Todd Corwin to catch up. Early in the 4th and final lap he made his pass and put some distance between us, finishing more than a minute ahead.

In the end, I held on to 6th place. Gary Mittleberg took another A Sportsman class win, followed by Steve Dean and John McDaniel. The overall win went once again to Steve Leivan who appears unstoppable yet again this year. But all was overshadowed by the shock of the news spreading like wildfire throughout the staging area.

Jerry was gone.

We miss you, friend.