Marshfield, Missouri

On a cool spring day in 1999, random chance put me at the same trail intersection as Matt Sellers. In the deep woods of Missouri’s St. Joe State Park, we chatted a few minutes, chased each other through the trees for an hour, and began a years-long partnership driving to more dirt bike races than either of us can remember. Countless hours sharing the cabs of our respective pickup trucks have us knowing more about each other that most grown men should. We don’t agree on all topics, but we see eye to eye on one thing: Never allow John Stichnoth to pick the route. In 2001 we (or me, actually) learned there aren’t any shortcuts to the Marshfield round of the Missouri Hare Scrambles Championship (MHSC). Southwestern Missouri road maps never tell the whole story, and what’s usually missing is never-ending 35 mph curves on state highways. Today we’d stick with Interstate 44 all the way to Marshfield, then head out of town to the race site.

And what a trip. Gorgeous skies and mild temperatures greeted us at Round 6 of the MHSC, where I nearly ended my race before it began. Practice laps are a thing in this series, and the course preview allows riders to acclimate before letting loose and rearranging some dirt. But the dirt was just too good. I couldn’t help rushing through the whole process of registering for the race, gearing up and sprinting out into the woods. Matt’s eyes rolled as I fired up my Kawasaki KX250 and ran it back and forth across the staging area. Just warming up the engine, I suggested to myself, knowing full well Matt wasn’t buying it.

He joined me near the starting field and we dashed into the trees. I pulled ahead, once again treating the practice lap like a high speed chase on the 405. The twisting trails loosely followed a creek through the property, rising up through the hardwood forest to high ground and then descending down toward low-lying valleys. Every so often we exited the woods into a pasture and sprinted across thick grass before returning to the dense canopy.

With Matt well behind, I closed in on a slower rider and scanned ahead for a spot to pass. If I’d given a care about practice lap etiquette, the rider would have pulled over at his leisure and allowed me to pass, but patience is a virtue for which my inner self never came to terms. A shallow creek seemed the right place to dart around him. My front tire disagreed, passionately. The whole front end slid out and the bike dropped into the stream, on its side, while the silencer burped underwater exhaust fumes. Thus began a panic attack not unlike a gate agent announcing the door to your aircraft is about to close and you’re still settling the bar tab at Chili’s. If water reached the airbox, the carburetor would happily take a drink and shut down the engine. No Bueno. I’d then find myself unscrewing the spark plug on dry ground, flipping the KX250 upside down like an 8-year-old working on his bicycle, then hoping gravity and a few pulls on the kick starter would eject all the water from the engine. From there, I’d wring out the air filter and hope the engine fired before the race began.

This chain of potentials, like most of my misadventures on two wheels, came from experience. In roughly three seconds, the motorcycle would either be upright and ready for more abuse, or coughing its way to a quick stall. I lunged toward the KX250, grabbed the handlebars and jerked the bike up and out of the water just in time to twist the throttle and launch a water cannon out the silencer. Quick work saved the engine, but the drenched packing material silenced about as many decibels as earmuffs at a Metallica concert. I exited the creek and searched for Matt, now somewhere ahead.

Half a mile later, Matt’s orange KTM contrasted with the lush greenery of the Marshfield woods as he weaved through the course. His smooth and deliberate style would soon be interrupted by a noisy Kawasaki closing in from behind. He moved aside and cocked his head to the left, visibly recoiling as my exhaust note punctured the air like a chainsaw at 2:00 a.m.

Eventually the silencer packing material dried out and the KX250 returned to its normal pitch. Back at the pickup truck, Matt pulled off his helmet and examined my bike, convinced I’d lost the entire exhaust system somewhere out in the woods. He compared my engine to a leaf blower running full throttle inside a yoga class.

An hour later, the usual throng of riders proceeded to the starting field, some arriving early to stake out the best lines and others preferring to relax on the tailgate with a package of Carl Buddig sliced turkey on white bread. It was that kind of day in Webster County, Missouri. Eventually racing called and I searched the starting grid for others in the A Sportsman class. Along the way, MHSC youngster Ryan Rohleder shouted a hello. Ryan has won the 200C class at every event he entered this year and is the son of fellow racer John Rohleder. Both are MHSC regulars, following a familiar family trend of generations following generations into racing. The elder Rohleder bore an uncanny resemblance to Warner Sallman’s 1940 portrait of Jerusalem’s most famous carpenter, displayed so prominently in countless churches. John’s charisma, short sentences and perpetual motion suggested he’d taken more than a few I-bet-you-can’t wagers and probably came out on the winning side more often than not. On a dirt bike, his style could best be defined as an answer to the question, “How would I ride if I cared little for personal safety?” To me, his looks were Sallman’s version of Jesus, with wilder hair and a willingness to risk his life for entirely different reasons. He was Crazy Jesus. Matt thought this hilarious when I first brought it up, and between the two of us, the name stuck.

I wished young Ryan luck and then spotted the perpetually cheerful Gary Mittleberg on his blue Yamaha and squeezed in beside. Along with the rest of the A Sportsmen, he left me standing when the 15-second board dropped and I two-kicked the engine. With so much experience trailing the pack into the woods, these poor starts didn’t really bother me anymore. There’s a certain anxiety that comes with leading the first minutes of a hare scramble, which may actually be worse than the dread of 10 other motorcycles moving forward while mine sat idle. So I did one of the things I do best: I rationalized. Hunting is better than being hunted, right?

Just ahead of me, Tom Huber did his own hunting near the back of our pack, leading me through the rocky first half of the course. ATVs had raced through here in the morning and widened the trails. With just about every stone now exposed, the loose terrain challenged my Bridgestone tires. I slid around corners and hoped all those winters of my youth, spinning donuts in the snowy barn lot, would pay off. As it turns out, snow riding does not exactly translate to classic Missouri ATV trails. The front tire would not track where I aimed the handlebars and the rear wheel did more of the steering, mostly in wrong directions.

So I pursued Tom and hoped for a quicker pace in the second half of the course. The transition from two-track to singletrack should have helped close the gap, for the trails had narrowed to the point I could have mistaken this place for my homeland. Nothing says “Illinois” more than a grapevine wrapping around my neck, and the Marshfield woods declared, “We got that!” The vine nearly yanked me off the seat while I searched for a good line through a muddy gully. Rocky ledges brought me back to the reality of Missouri, where I gained a few spots and finished the first lap in 6th place.

Like last year, white paper plates appeared on random trees, offering various notes of encouragement, observation, and fact. A particularly rocky section of creek bed had been named in honor of the notably absent pro-class rider Doug Stone, while some of the tighter trails were identified as the creation of Jon “Spud” Simons. These sections carried the Spud Cut label, meaning the trail often passes between trees spaced narrower than handlebars. One message announced regular MHSC racer Todd Corwin’s affection toward goats, using a seemingly impossible terminology for that type of relationship. Perhaps I needed to learn a few more things about Missouri.

Man-goat relations aside, bigger issues arrived in the second lap. After a first-lap crash, Kevin Ruckdeschell approached from behind and pressured me just ahead of a grass track. Like so many native Missourians, he shined in the wide, rocky trails. I let him pass after we exited the woods, then tried my darnedest to keep pace in the narrower sections. A small bottleneck of riders slowed Kevin’s progress through tightly spaced trees, and I latched on to his rear tire near a short section of muddy singletrack. His pace slowed and I shouted words of encouragement. He responded by dumping the clutch and spewing mud in my direction.

Kevin’s enthusiasm for racing is matched with a dynamic personality that shines in every conversation we’ve ever had. If I need a good dose of positivity in my life, I’ll head straight for Kevin. And if I ever needed to improve my position in an MHSC race, mostly likely this would require heading straight for Kevin. In the heart of Missouri’s finest dirt bike trails, I optimistically pointed my KX250 toward his rear tire and closed in. Kevin sensed my presence and pulled over to let me lead. I could only put a short distance between us in the tight trails, and we checked through the scoring trailer just a few seconds apart.

On the third lap Kevin closed in and passed by on the ATV trails. I pushed through the rocky mess of stones, now sliding with more confidence into small berms carved out by a several hundred motorcycle tires. Finally, Marshfield felt like a dirt bike race. And when the trails narrowed, I honed in on Kevin like an ice cream truck in July and gradually reeled him in. The KX250 wasn’t exactly a weapon of choice to chase down Kevin’s purpose-built KTM woods machine. Within these tightly spaced trees a well trained cross country runner might have kept up, and my green bike would rather have been screaming across a motocross track. Kevin’s bike needed no aftermarket finagling with flywheel weights or suspension modifications to tame it down for trails. My converted motocrosser preferred heavy throttle and clutch work and body English to slice through the trees, while Kevin powered through like a tractor. The advantage was his, until Kevin committed a rare error. His front tire clipped a poorly placed rock, sending the bike sideways. Somehow he avoided bouncing off about 10 large trees before regaining his direction, but this put me even closer to his rear tire.

Kevin then demonstrated an act of charity by revealing a sweet new line around a rock garden. We passed through this section with ease, and then raced toward a large log where I planned to make my move. Most riders chose a longer route to avoid direct confrontation with the fallen tree, but I planned to cut inside and hop over the log. If Kevin took the longer path, my shortcut would put me ahead. This plan might have worked to perfection, had I reacted in time. Instead, I missed the shortcut and followed Kevin around the log.

In the muddiest trails near the end of the third lap, Kevin veered wide left to avoid the worst of the ruts, while I veered slightly less. The alternate lines eventually merged with the main trail, where I squeezed by Kevin and moved into 4th place.

Ahead in the third spot, Todd Corwin began lap four a minute ahead of me, while Kevin continued to charge from behind. I’d gapped him just enough to put him out of sight, but I knew with even one small mistake I’d see a blur of orange zip by. The wide trails in the first half of the lap had been fully de-ATV’ed and actually came with a hint of fun. When the trails narrowed in the second half, I closed in on #122 Nick Bryant, last year’s 6th place finisher in the Junior class and now a competitor in Ryan Rohleder’s 200C class. This narrow part of the course made for difficult passing and I followed Nick for a short time. He disappeared around a tight corner and then suddenly reappeared, hung up on a log. With no time to react, I smacked into his rear tire and sent the poor guy to the ground. I felt terrible and should have stopped to help. Instead, I charged on and left Nick to regroup on his own, fearing Kevin would catch up and pass me again. Little did I know, he whacked his knee on a tree root and slowed down on the final lap. Kevin would have stopped to help Nick Bryant. I didn’t, and it haunted me the rest of the week.

Soon after bumping young Nick off the trail, the scoring lane appeared near the staging area and I checked through in 4th place in the A Sportsman class. Todd Corwin finished 45 seconds ahead, while Slade Morlang edged out Gary Mittleberg for the win. Fourth in class was good enough to crack into the top 20 overall for the first time in 2004, which is always difficult in this intensely competitive hare scramble series. Perhaps I’d earn more top-20s if I embraced the Crazy Jesus style. Maybe I’ll let my hair grow out and take on more dares. Or, I might just stop knocking youngsters off the trail. We’ll start with that.