Tebbetts, Missouri

Prior to the 2002 racing season, I joined the legions of vision-impaired risk takers and had my eyeballs lasered to perfection. After LASIK, I bade farewell to the twice-daily ritual of contact lens maintenance. Motorcycle races came and went without a thought of vision or the consequences of losing it through a misplaced lens. At the Tebbetts hare scramble, my refurbished eyes kept me in the race after a goggle malfunction, when just a season earlier I probably would have pulled out under similar circumstances.

July generally brings about the Missouri dust season, when heat comes on strong and skies dry up. Cruising gently through the Tebbetts pasture in my GMC Sonoma pickup truck, a cloudy contrail followed me to my parking spot. The land had baked well in the midsummer sun.

Each of these rural properties comes with a history, and I discovered a bit of this one’s past while waiting my turn in the registration line. I glanced down at what appeared to be flat, white rocks lying on the grass, then realized they weren’t rocks. These were tombstones, some dating to the 1850s. Under our feet lay the bones of some of the earliest settlers in Callaway County.

History aside, the motorcycle racing here would be fast as always. Last year’s section of new singletrack had been replaced with the same high-speed trails which have confounded me since my first attempt at Tebbetts in 1999. Some of the old guard competing here mentioned its style similar to the courses of the premier Grand National Cross Country (“GNCC”) series in the eastern half of the U.S. The mystique of the GNCC and its world class racers had me contemplating a visit to the series, until this news came my way. They can have their off-road speedways. I’ll stick to singletrack.

But singletrack, or at least the narrow version of it, would be in short supply today and certainly nowhere to be found as the green flag waved my class into a large grass track. These wide sections, zigzagging through pastures, were heavily marked with endless strands of yellow caution tape and designed to put space between riders before sending them into the woods The grass may have widened the space between us, but when traveling at 40 mph, the gaps narrowed quickly. Amongst my group of 16 riders, hard on the brakes to squeeze into the woods, I found myself packed together no differently than if the start had been a direct line to the forest’s edge.

Within the widely spaced trees, dry conditions quickly put up a fog of dust from the 8 or so riders ahead of me. At a small ravine, Kurt “PizzaMan” Mirtsching found an inside line and passed by quickly. I’d seen the shortcut on the practice lap and considered it too rough to bother with, but PizzaMan muscled his KTM through with little effort. The ease by which he sailed by distracted my clutch hand and suddenly the engine stalled in the depths of the ravine. Deep within a cloud of dust, I restarted just in time to see the last-place Open B rider move around my stationary 300EXC.

The back of the pack is a lonely place, even for someone as familiar with it as me. But a saving grace of a 2-hour hare scramble is time. Three minutes into the race, I still had a chance. Not so long ago the only hope for improving my position was other riders’ mistakes. Today, I felt like I could earn my way back into contention, so I dumped the clutch and powered my way up and out of the ravine. In little time I caught up to riders who had overtaken me and found a fine advantage of a wide open course: Passing lines. The common underbrush of an Illinois-style hare scramble simply didn’t exist here. A combination of old-growth woods and cattle grazing was enough to make the terrain appear as if home developers were about to construct McMansions. As long as I could avoid rocks hidden by grass, I could jump outside the established trail and blaze a new one.

This pushed me ahead of several riders, and then I found PizzaMan again, inside a section of woods recently harvested for lumber. I took a play from his book and roughed out a line which put me in front, then focused on riders ahead. By this time, slower riders in other B classes appeared here and there, but I couldn’t tell who was who. Every motorcycle was a passing opportunity, and pass I did. Better positions were nice clean air was nicer. To follow on a day like this was to suck dirt.

One area I didn’t have to suck dirt was the long creek bed, which for unclear reasons did not present any problems at any point during the race. In fact, I actually passed riders in this section. On the first lap, with the various B classes still spaced closely, I delighted at the sight of (mostly) Missouri natives struggling through here. They surely grew up riding in these conditions, and yet I maintained their pace. Perhaps, after entering more than 30 rocky races since I moved to St. Louis, repetition had cured me.

I couldn’t separate my arm from the handlebars long enough to pat myself on the back for my stellar comeback on the first lap, but I surely would have if I’d stopped long enough to realize I was about to have a problem. Near the end of the second lap, I jerked my roll-off string to advance clear tape across my goggles and found the string dangling in my hand, completely detached from the goggles. So much for clear vision. A few miles later I yanked off the googles and tossed them into a grassy area near the property entrance. With a little luck, perhaps I’d find them later. For now, I could see clearly.

The spacious trails should have offered less room for error, with such wide distances between trees. I never once wished for narrower handlebars, yet I found the ends of my hand guards rubbing the same amount of bark as any course east of the Mississippi. Magnetic were those trees, and ripe for high impact. Here at Tebbetts, first contact would knock the handlebars into an unwanted direction, like most trees on any race course. But the higher speeds sent me towards unchartered woods with much less time to correct my trajectory.

My unprotected eyes guided me to the end of lap two, burning with irritation as I began lap three. A couple miles later I met a pair of slower riders, each kicking up dust while I searched for a way around. We approached a pool of standing water, black as night and imperceptible in depth. The two riders ahead stuck to the main line through the water, while I scanned a minor shortcut off to the side. One thing about shortcuts: They must be taken at full speed. All trail lines converge, and I’ve survived a fair share of bumps and rubs while merging. To be first upon convergence requires a confident throttle hand and an undeniable compulsion to beat out the other guy. With this in mind, I charged through the standing water, arms tense and engine racing. My KTM dove in, deeper and deeper…good God, I’d found Lake Michigan. The bike carved a wall of water which drenched me all the way to my underwear. When I resurfaced, the two riders slowed up after witnessing my spectacle, apparently fearing for their own safety. I passed by with clean eyes, shouting out my appreciation.

Just over 90 minutes into the race, I checked into the scoring trailer and began an uneventful fourth lap. By now, riders had fanned out across the course and left me only a handful of dusty passes to execute. Pre-LASIK, had I ditched the goggles, the gritty dust would surely have put an end to my race. As it were, I completed four 11-mile laps, averaging around 33 minutes each. From dead last in the Open B class, third place at Tebbetts was as good as a victory.