Tebbetts, Missouri

Let's be clear about one thing. As a racecourse, Tebbetts is the Pamplona of hare scrambles. Like running with bulls, one must wonder how so many individuals can move so fast, at the same time, without losing an appendage or two. Combine this with its place on the July calendar, when most of Missouri is a recreation of life on the sun, and you have an enigma rivaling the Bermuda Triangle. However is it possible to win here?

The answer lies in perseverance, recklessness, a certain level of folly and bit of luck. For me, two out of four was all I could muster (read on, and decide for yourself which pair). I did bring the advantage of experience, having suffered here twice before, the last of which had me setting a two-hour speed record my trusty KTM 300EXC. The best idea at Tebbetts is to forget about turning the handlebars. There is little in the way of tree-dodging or triple clamps slamming against steering stops. In the same way a road racer never seems to use his arms to change direction, this course was an exercise in body language.

The property, on the other hand, was an exercise in perfection. Gone was the absurdly narrow motocross track, smack in the middle of a forest. In its place were 150 new acres of virgin trail, untouched by filthy, demon-knobs of back rubber. In reality, the fresh dirt had in fact been graced by the wheels of dirt bikes, out of necessity for the sponsoring club members to mark the trail. But to be virgin is to have never seen a racing dirt bike on its precious soil, so these new acres met the classification. This tidbit of knowledge came from the main landowner, to whom Matt Sellers opened a conversation before the race. Matt is a deceptively friendly person, generally subdued and perpetually relaxed, but able to strike up conversations with random individuals in the same way I engage barn cats in careless banter. It's natural but unexpected, and here we were in discussion with a person revealing no outward evidence that he owned the joint.

His joint, as Matt and I discovered in a casual practice lap, exceeded our expectations. With assistance from mild temperatures and timely rains during the week, the course proved more beautiful than a gas station selling kerosene. The icing on the proverbial sponge cake came in those new acres, adding 2 or 3 miles of unspoiled delight. Make no mistake, though: The place was still fast. Even on the practice lap, energetic racers whizzed past as if running home to a fresh batch of Hot Pockets. I expected to see more unfettered speed in another hour, when the green flag would wave us into Missouri's version of Calle Estafeta.

Joining Matt and I on the starting line was none other than Kurt "PizzaMan" Mirtsching on his big KTM 4-stroke. These were the days when electric starters, like the one on his bike, carried a perception of novelty. Most dirt bike engines still came alive with a healthy kick of an oddly shaped metal stick, but KTM had launched a mission to render the starter lever extinct. Like an early-model Segway, e-start conceded a delicate balance between cool and unnecessary. In some ways this fit Kurt perfectly. Was it really necessary to restore classic Rolls Royce cars, build model airplanes and race dirt bikes? Of course not, but it sure was cool. Such was the electric start, as demonstrated not so much in how quickly his engine fired to life, but more so in its effortlessness. Kurt simply locked eyes with the flag person, pushed a tiny red button and launched forward in 3rd or 4th or whatever ridiculous gear allowed by a large-bore thumper. The two strokes fired more quickly, but Kurt's four-stroke laid on its power and torque smoothly, easily beating me and Matt to the first corner.

For a short while I followed my two classmates in a normal mid-pack position, then witnessed Kurt crash amongst the rocks and trees. He and his KTM escaped unharmed, as I discovered a few minutes later. The woods transitioned into a pasture, where Kurt accelerated with a roar and easily passed on my right. His meeting with the ground illustrated the difference between falling over on a dirt bike and crashing just about any other motorized vehicle. The dirt bike seems designed to survive most rider errors with barely an objection, but crash the same way on a road bike, ATV, or snow machine and one is likely to witness a yard sale of plastic and metal parts littering the landscape.

Ahead of me, Matt endured his own crash, this one an confrontation with a tree. I passed as he paused beside the trail, standing guard over his fallen bike. Body language usually conveys a rider's status in these situations, and Matt's was a combination of "I'm ok" and "How does Al Gore reconcile environmentalism with an affinity for corporate jets and mansions?" With that, I carried on to the new section of woods, where Kurt once again fell victim to a slide-out. In the kerfuffle, his countershaft sprocket lost a few teeth and his race was mostly over. Today was shaping up as a battle of attrition.

In the second half of the course, I found myself within a staple of Missouri hare scramble courses: The creek bed. The terrain of these parts often centered around a medium-sized waterway cutting a path through rolling hills. Over millennia, water cleaned away soil and left a bed of angular rocks and silt. During midsummer, water levels often fell and race courses could be run directly through the center of the creek. The Tebbetts course included an especially long version of this feature, where a little time could be gained, depending on one's desire to kamikaze through the rocks. Alternatively, an unfortunate gamble could throw away an entire race's worth of effort.

I was interested in neither, plodding purposefully through the rocks and silt and an occasional splash where the creek flowed. A brief portion was filled wheel-high with dark water, where certain riders twisted their throttles and upshifted, seemingly oblivious to the impeding risks. These were the same type of crazies who ran toward Pamplona's bulls. For the motorcycle variety, speed was the ticket to victory, and they weren't about to let a bit of H₂O put a damper on those dreams. That level of daring just wasn't part of my DNA, so my front wheel remained low through the water and nearly disappeared before slogging up and out of the creek depression.

Matt and Kurt ghosted me throughout the remaining miles of the race, but I knew the possibility existed of both riders lurking behind, just waiting to capitalize on an error. Had they kept within earshot of my bike, the opportunity might have come about an hour into the race, when I caught up to a fellow KTM rider who seemed slower than my pace. In the woods, where trees and brush and rocks block just about every opportunity to pass, I carefully scanned ahead for any type of inside line or alternative route. I soon found a hot line on the inside apex of a corner, requiring only a log-hop to exit ahead of the other rider. But alas, the log lay nearly parallel to my path and we arrived together at the end of the curve. With a sharp smack of our handlebars, we demonstrated the legitimacy of hare scrambles as a contact sport. In these instances, one can lay on the throttle and continue the contact, or back off and concede the line to the other rider. I chose the latter and never saw him again.

Nearly two hours into the race, I passed through the scoring trailer and caught a faint audible of Matt cheering me on. I could only assume his day ended early, or quite possibly the delusionary voices of an exhausted body had taken over my mind. Either way, this fourth lap would be my last, and I vowed to finish it in one piece.

The bike, on the other hand, presented a different proposition. Halfway into the lap, the exhaust note changed slightly, then considerably. With each change in direction the decibel level seemed to increase exponentially. I was suddenly riding 10 chainsaws, all sawing trees simultaneously. After a mile or two of bleeding eardrums, I paused alongside the trail to assess the situation, where a large gap between the header pipe and silencer tube caught my eye. This skinny tube, five inches in length and connected to the fatter part of what is sometimes referred to as the muffler, had completely broken off, leaving the header pipe to belch out a tune worthy of a Quiet Riot concert. Apparently, silencers really do silence. On a positive note, a silencer-less dirt bike fools slower riders into believing a Pro class racer is closing fast, thereby scaring them off the trail. During that time I was approached by overall winner Steve Leivan, who prepared to lap me near the end of the course and surely exited the property straight to a visit with the nice folks at Miracle Ear. During an interview after the race, I imagined Cycle News magazine writing their Tebbetts story with only a single quote from Steve: "Huh?"

Through the final stretch before the finish, all eyes and ears gravitated toward the loudest bike in the land. Back at the truck, Matt had indeed retired early and suggested I finished 5th or 6th in class. His shattered rear fender and red marks covering generous portions of his body demonstrated the results of three crashes on the first lap. Matt had wisely concluded that today just wasn't his day. We packed up and drove home, where I learned my finish was a respectable 3rd place. I couldn't help but feel a bit like I'd conquered Tebbetts, even though I wasn't anywhere close to winning the Open B class and several dozen riders in other classes had finished better overall. But with ringing ears, I slept well that night.