Three years ago in July, I was two months into my St. Louis journey and looking for my first taste of the Missouri off-road scene. I found it in the March of Dimes hare scramble at St. Joe State Park. Up to that point in my riding adventures, a baseball-sized rock on a trail was a novelty. Imagine my surprise when I set foot on the sand-flat staging area of the park, then entered the woods in the heat of a 94-degree day. Finding a spot on the trail without baseball-sized rocks was the real novelty. After that day I nearly packed up my belongings and moved back to Kankakee, Illinois.
Since then my rock-riding skills had improved to the point where I could mostly tolerate the beating of endless, sharp-edged rocks, and even put up with 94-degree days on a dirt bike. But that didn't mean I enjoyed it, not any more than a muddy ride through Illinois ruts. St. Joe State Park was simply there, inviting me to test my limits. Nearing the end of my third decade of life, I gravitated toward these challenges like a mosquito to a electric bug zapper. Sometimes it stung.
This year's version of the March of Dimes shaped up like most others, with heat and dust and park rangers enforcing the rules. The sponsoring motorcycle club found itself on probation for last year's 100-mile grand prix, which began late and lasted several hours longer than the rangers expected. The 2001 version had no in-town start, no 16-mile laps, and a distance considerably less than 100 miles. A standard 2-hour hare scramble on an 11-mile loop was just fine for me.
The club allowed two options for practice, one a full lap around the course and the other a reduced 3-mile loop. I chose the shorter loop with hopes of saving energy for the race, yet still exert enough effort to work through my usual case of arm pump. Whatever the reason, if I could ride hard for a short time and then rest, the arm pump was usually gone when the racing began. As it turned out, the short loop was a poor representation of the larger course, twisting through the most open, sandy and dusty areas, but it served its purpose. When the time came to line up in the starting area with the Open B class, my clutch hand was loose and my forearms pain-free. A surge of energy came from within, fluttering through my chest and arms as the A classes kicked up clouds of dust.
Beside me on the starting line, waiting and watching with the same anxiety, was Matt Sellers. He too joined often for Park Hills races in the non-public area of the park, where to arrive at this oasis for dirt bikes is to drive past the Missouri Mines Historic Site, a monument of past lead mining. The industrial complex, long since shut down, remained as a reminder that this land lived in an altered state. The sandy staging area made for treeless, desert-like riding, with trucks and trailers and RVs backed up to a graded, winding path where dirt bikes would fly by and stop for a splash of gas. If not for the surrounding trees, one could mistake this place for Nevada.
A glance across the scrub brush quickly puts those Nevada dreams to rest, with the mini-desert giving way to woods rising above the sand, where hidden remnants of past mining expose themselves to racers. The trails cross paths with old railroad tracks, random metal pipes stretching across the ground and concrete foundations of long-forgotten mining structures. Certain races make these leftover relics part of the course, creatively intertwined with the trees and the rocks. St. Joe State Park was a unique place to race a dirt bike.
Today's race would begin like most March of Dimes events, with a dusty sprint across loose sand, followed by a turn or two, and then a mad dash toward a narrow opening in the trees. Seconds after the green flag, Kurt "PizzaMan" Mirtsching jumped out a couple positions in front of me, his large-bore KTM four-stroke broadcasting a low, piercing message of dominance. Even with my 300cc two-stroke, I was no match for his machine in a drag race through sand. He proved this again a short while later, when a group of riders missed a turn and backtracked to the marked trail. The train of racers included yours truly, and I just happened to recognize our mistake a nanosecond before the others. I hit the brakes and turned back in time to take a position one spot ahead of PizzaMan, also part of the group. He followed me to our next pass through open sand, and with a simple twist of his throttle, PizzaMan's bike lurched ahead as if he'd lit an invisible afterburner.
My bike plodded across the sand to the next entrance into the woods, where mid-week rains had blessed the dirt. Whatever a knobby tire was designed for, this was the stuff. Even with grayish rocks poking up from the soil, all riders picked up extra speed, including an enterprising rider from behind with an extraordinary determination to swap positions. I could sense his nearness, like the feeling of an airport traveler following a bit too closely on the way to the gate. At every corner his front tire edged within inches of my rear wheel, his engine thumping furiously in desperation. This was a man on a mission to win. As I extended my leg around a curve in the trail, his front wheel ran over my foot. I let him pass.
On the same lap, PizzaMan reappeared just before the second checkpoint in the woods. As he spun out attempting to climb a hill, I slipped by and cruised for two more laps. In that time I fell once and was lapped by the top two Pro riders. I felt the rush of air freely flowing through my vented jersey, a new addition to my racing wardrobe. Why I had never tried one of these was a mystery clouded in a fog of frugality and senselessness.
The race slipped by quickly, and before I could wish for it to end, the checkered flag appeared at the scoring trailer. My March of Dimes was now but a memory of the best St. Joe State Park can offer a dirt biking fanatic. Even better, I had topped both PizzaMan and Matt in the Open B class, coming home with a health body and bike, with bragging rights over friends and rivals.
