Polo, Missouri

A lucky racer visits his local physician on Monday morning. The less fortunate meet non-local doctors on Sunday afternoons. I've done both, and following the Polo round of the Missouri Hare Scrambles Championship, providence put me in front of my physician the day after the race. Dr. Joe and I have developed the kind of relationship in which I'm comfortable referring to him as "my" doctor, which means we see each other more than I'd care to admit. He is the non-judgmental type, in my presence at least, absent of raised eyebrows or tsk'ing when I describe the absurdity which brought us together. Dr. Joe listened patiently to my experience at Polo and my symptoms, which I'd already self-diagnosed from what I learned watching four seasons of NPH on Doogie Howser, M.D. I felt confident I'd broken a collarbone or separated my shoulder (or both).

That which brought me to the medical facility began with a trip to the furthest reaches of Missouri, where 8 hours of driving (round trip) is the price for two hours of pleasure. This kind of distance allows plenty of time to ponder an injury, and that's exactly what I did on the way home, after turning over driving duties to Matt Sellers. Polo is the western-most venue on the MHSC circuit, approaching a no-man's land for off-roading. A couple hours' drive further west and the lush woodlands of hare scramble racing give way to a dry, treeless prairie. Had I been raised in Central Kansas or Eastern Colorado, I might never have experienced dirt biking in the woods.

Thankfully, those cards weren't dealt and I found myself parked next to a pair of portable toilets at the Polo staging area. Yet another ranch-type property, this one was owned by 250B racer Adam Ashcroft, who offered up his land for the enjoyment of the MHSC contingent. Adam is known in racing circles not only as a solid rider and an all-around good guy, but also as the nephew of another dirt bike loving Ashcroft named John. The elder Ashcroft's future Wikipedia page would describe him as the current Attorney General of the United States, the former 50th governor of Missouri and a former U.S. Senator. A year earlier, Mr. Ashcroft had lost his Senate seat to Mel Carnahan, who (I am not making this up) was deceased when voters elected him. Where I come from, dead people do the electing, not the other way around, but in the great tradition of Missouri politics, when you elect a lifeless man his seat passes to his spouse. Thus, John Ashcroft lost his Senate race to a dead man's wife.

Not lost on Mr. Ashcroft, but unmentioned on Wikipedia, was his affinity for dirt bikes. During the previous year's Supercross series, he made a campaign stop in St. Louis while the motocrossers were in town, dropping in to say a few words at the TWA Dome. Somehow he convinced Suzuki's legendary team manager Roger DeCoster to let him begin his introduction by borrowing a Greg Albertyn-replica RM250 and taking it for a spin around the starting area. In the crowd that night was your humble author, witnessing Mr. DeCoster regret his decision almost immediately as Mr. Ashcroft performed a wheelie in front of 50,000 spectators.

The Ashcroft dirt biking legacy would live on at Polo, where Matt and I parked next to Lars Valin and his entourage. Lars had been forcefully advanced out of the 250B class last year, due to his 20th place overall finish in the season's standings. He was now a member of the A class, just two years removed from the C class. His success came on a Honda CR250, not exactly admired as a woods bike, and Lars mastered the rocks without a [gasp!] steering damper. No more did he fight his way through the various B classes to earn overall points. Lars was a permanent fixture on the second row of the starting order, and based on his performance in 2001 he would likely line up with the AA class on row #1 next year. Matt and I, on the other hand, could only hope for row #3 at best, which only happened every five races or so as the B classes cycled through a revolving order.

With the aroma of hot feces in the air, I suited up for a practice lap around this new venue. Sometimes referred to as a "sighting" lap, our free pass through this course, or any for that matter, was just another chance to see how quickly I could ride through the woods. Matt kept close while I marveled at the tight trails, full of logs and dust and rock ledges, and clearly laid out by motorcycle people for this motorcycle-only race. For our enjoyment, the sponsoring club set up a section with two options with signs pointing left or right, labeled "Easy" and "Hard". Ten yards from the signs, neither seemed particularly different, so my ego pointed me toward the more difficult option. A few seconds later the difference became apparent. The hard route curved its way down a rocky hill, where a 2-foot rock ledge awaited. I bravely launched myself off the ledge, and just as I had nearly recovered from the landing, a foot-high log appeared out of nowhere. Saved by a panic wheelie, I joined up with Matt, who had chosen the easier option. For this risk I gained approximately half a second.

An hour later I took a spot beside Kurt "PizzaMan" Mirtsching on the starting line, who inquired as to why I adorned my KTM 300EXC with such an array of duct tape. During my explanation I could sense a certain incomprehension. Was this just for show, or did the duct tape serve an actual purpose? Kurt is a thinking man, and I suspected someday, perhaps after a long night which turned into an early morning at Shakespeare's Pizza, tomato sauce and onions and cheese would blur his senses into a realization that yes, duct tape is magic and should in fact be adhered to motorcycles.

The duct tape certainly did not translate to a good start, or for that matter a good ride. As the green flag waved, my nervous left hand let the clutch lever loose and sent the front wheel high in the air. I followed this unintentional stunt by knocking my hand guards against every third tree in the woods. With half the Open B class ahead of me, I searched for alternate routes within the narrow trails and found each option slower than the main line. One by one, riders passed by. A small section of young willow trees, packed as tightly as a carload of Blue Line commuters in Chicago, knocked my handlebars to the steering stops and I fell over. A rider following closely behind could do nothing but wait for me to drag my bike out of his path.

By this time Matt and PizzaMan were long gone. With a deep breath, I tried to settle my nerves and think about the long race ahead. I was barely two-thirds of my way through the first lap, in what was most likely a 4-lap affair. If I could just get past the Yamaha ahead of me, with its severely flat rear tire hanging halfway off the rim, I could hone my concentration and hammer through the course.

We broke out of the woods into a pasture, where I grabbed a handful of throttle and moved to the left of the limping Yamaha. He also moved left. I moved further to the left, and so did he. Was this guy for real, with his ridiculously flat tire? Were we a pair of Shriners practicing choreography for a 4th of July parade? Of course not. I simply needed to be ahead of him, so I moved deeper into the rough grass, where a rock or a sleeping fawn would have remained unseen before impact. I encountered neither of these objects. Instead, I found something worse.

Much worse.

The tall grass opened into a small gully, at first no wider than my tires nor deeper than my rims. In third gear, however, terrain changes quickly. In little time the gully widened, deepened, and broke into a jagged mess through which no motorcycle could possibly steer itself. Grass roots had retained some of the soil, while other chunks separated. At the exact instant my inner thoughts suggested this would turn out not so well, the bike began a series of contortions comparable to a bull rider ejected from Bodacious or a Superbike racer in the midst of a high-side. My body separated from my bike. I was flying.

As they say of skydiving without a parachute, it's not the fall, but the landing which hurts. My landing came about 20 feet ahead of the bike on rough turf. First to impact was my right shoulder, then helmet. The world spun while I tried my best to remain conscious. A few seconds later I regained my senses and felt sharp pains through my shoulder and knee and was convinced I had broken my collarbone or damaged my shoulder. Somehow I summoned strength and shut out the pain just long enough to lift up the bike and kickstart the engine. With stubbornness at my side, I completed the lap and was scored for the race.

One ice pack and a quart of Gatorade later, Matt finished his race and we loaded the truck. An uncomfortable night of sleep awaited, then a visit to Dr. Joe in the morning. Racing would take a pause for several weeks as I recovered from nothing more than a nasty shoulder bruise. Providence, indeed.