Marshfield, Missouri

Listening to stories of the mechanics who care for the machines of professional dirt bike racers, I always marveled at their meticulousness maintenance routines. After each race the motorcycles were disassembled almost completely, cleaned carefully and reassembled with a gaggle of new parts. Nothing was left to chance.

I, on the other hand, rolled the dice on just about everything. My finance career had blessed me with enough earnings to replace most parts at will, but darned if I wasn't cheap. Rarely would a spare part exist in my garage, waiting patiently for the future, unless an act of God made it so.

Such was the case when I changed the rear tire a day before the Marshfield hare scramble. The rear wheel bearings were, as my dad would say, shot to hell. Of course I had no extra 6005's lying around the garage, so I did what any weird-logic cheapskate would do in this situation: I loaded the bike in my truck and drove the wobbly-wheeled KTM to Matt Sellers' house on Sunday morning, ready to race.

Upon arrival, Matt jerked the rear wheel from side to side, rolled his eyes and educated me on the catastrophic potential of riding on bad bearings. The lecture was effective. Rather than risk destroying my fancy-dancy Talon aftermarket hub, I took up Matt's offer to use his two spares. One minor problem, though: The Talon hub required three bearings. I carefully evaluated the alternatives: Install two new bearings and leave the crappy one to chance, or ride on bad bearings and buy a $250 hub.

Half a minute later, tools lay scattered about the garage floor, new bearings were located, and in record time my wheel wobbled no more. Matt's mechanical skills put mine to shame, and yet I wasn't done annoying him. In fact, I had much more in store for this trip, starting with my poor navigational skills. This time period of road travel still involved wrinkled maps stashed in glove boxes and guesstimated arrival times. As we neared the town of Marshfield, the vague directions printed on the MHSC schedule pointed us into town, then back the opposite direction for several miles on country roads. I suggested we exit I-44 early, avoid the backtracking and knock 15 or 20 miles off our trip. So convincing was my case that we did just that and then spent an unworldly amount of time on wandering 2-lane roads. Our "shortcut" added at least 30 minutes to the trip and ruled out a practice lap. On the bright side, the signup line was pleasantly short.

The word from riders who followed the MHSC directions and arrived in time for a practice lap said the course was very tight, a bit damp, full of logs, and of course littered with rocks. I wasn't sure what to make of "very tight", given Missouri's propensity for wide trails, nor "full of logs." Most of these riders had never experienced a Roselawn or a White City, where a tight trail was measured by how much narrower the trees were spaced than the width of handlebars. My version of "full of logs" was a freshly harvested Michigan forest. Could the Marshfield course have this, plus mud and rocks?

Yes it could, and it did. After a respectable 5th place position heading into the woods, I began to believe the practice lappers. But for the rocks, these first few miles took me back across the Mississippi River to a familiar type of trail, where speed kills and precision wins races. Knifing through the trees, I quickly passed for 4th place, then followed another rider for several miles. His one small bobble left just enough of an opening to beat him to the next corner, where I took over 3rd place.

Far ahead, the two class leaders had long since disappeared. These were the times when a race took on a solitary form. The positions had been established, and other than an occasional fast B rider from another class catching up from behind, I soloed the trails.

Indeed, the first half of the course was Roselawn tight and White City muddy. Along with 12-inch diameter logs strewn at angles across the trail, the race had the makings of an old school hare scramble. I would soon learn that in Missouri, these kind of woods have their own title: Spud Cut. Named after trail boss Jon "Spud" Simons, who surely must have spent some time east of the Mississippi and enjoyed it, Spud Cut was to an average Missourian what rocks are to an average Illinois rider: Unnatural.

For me, though, Marshfield was the best of times for a guy who was finally developing comfort in rocky terrain and knew a thing or two about tight trails. I thought I knew a bit about logs, too, but my skills would prove otherwise. On my second tour through the course, one of those angled logs appeared around a blind corner and sent me to the ground, unapologetically. The low-end grunt of my 300EXC was enough to raise the front tire over the log without even a hint of clutch work, but the rear wheel failed the challenge. As it turns out, logs and dirt bikes are best met perpendicularly. Odd angles draw in the rear tire and send the back end of the motorcycle skidding to one side or the other. A thin coating of mud only amplifies the skid, making these logs the most unpleasant of sorts. Before I could kick out my leg for a quick dab, the rear end of the bike jerked to the left and fell on its side. With a tug of the handlebars, the still-spinning rear tire cleared the log and I quickly uprighted the bike, ready to rejoin the racing.

Not to be outdone by the angled log, a dense canopy of tree branches grabbed hold of my goggles on that second lap. The tear-off tape ripped in half, and like a 20-foot tail of a kite, fluttered though the breeze. The tape floated freely until an inevitable jerk of resistance pulled my goggles to the right. The string of clear plastic found a branch which would not budge. Its free ride was over.

My own ride, certainly not free, continued with a field of vision shrinking like rain on a windshield. First with small speckles of mud, then large blotches of gray and brown, the goggles became a hazard. On the third lap I pulled them down around my neck and left my unprotected eyes to fend for themselves. I could not be bothered to pause at my pickup truck and grab another set of goggles, for I was too frugal to invest in a backup set, and even if I had been so forward thinking, a pitstop could put me out of contention for a $5 trophy. Blindness was worth the risk, apparently.

Near the end of this lap was a point in most races when the lead riders in the Pro class would announce themselves with high-revving engines, ready to pass me in an instant and drift out of sight in a handful of seconds. But that moment never came, not in the third lap or even my fourth and final pass through the course. In this late stage of the race, I dared say the course was to my liking, but as I'd learned so many times before, one unfortunate incident can quickly put a curse on the day. Sure enough, I found that curse, but it wasn't mine. Bad luck came to a rider in the Women's class, who sent her bike down into a steep ravine. Only a rope and a team of sweep riders could pull that motorcycle back to the trail.

I met the checkered flag at the end of the 4th lap, with the log incident my only blemish of the race. Matt missed the 4th lap cutoff and had already loaded his bike and changed into street clothes when I arrived. He really wanted to go home, but I wouldn't let him just yet. This race felt good, and I had positive feelings about the results, so we waited. When the scores showed a 3rd place finish, we waited longer, as the official rules allowed a 30-minute protest period for anyone who felt shortchanged by the posted lap times. When the protest period ended, we waited longer yet while trophies found new homes.

I was, to put it quite simply, a pain in Matt's ass.

Using the official MHSC driving directions in reverse, we arrived in Wentzville an hour later than Matt would have preferred. I had spent the better part of a day testing the patience of a friend, and for his consideration a trophy found a new home in my growing collection of awards. I knew then, whenever the chance to experience Spud Cut came about, I would be there, annoying anyone who dared join me.