This is the one Bill Gusse wanted to kill me over, do I see a pattern developing here or is every one out to kill me?

Round 5 of the National enduro series was also a district 15, points paying event. Since district 15 (Indiana) only has 5 enduros on the schedule, we are pretty much obligated to show up, unless like me, you could schedule a vacation and have a good excuse to be out of town. Usually my gal and I go scuba diving but this year she went with another woman, yes I’m concerned but that’s just another form of that old mental training the opposite sex can throw on you.

The weekend before Ohio, we had our first district enduro, it was the Plymouth Blackhawks annual spring enduro, but like every where else they too are suffering land closures and the course was shorter than ever, 45 miles actual. But boy it was fun trail and when ridden like sprints race, plenty exhausting. But in no way did it prepare you for the Welston Ohio enduro the next weekend. Kinda like the Loretta Lynns ISDE qualifier preparing you for the Six Day. With the short course at Plymouth the scores were very very close and in my class I lost 3 positions in less than 7 seconds. My buddy Mark won second place in the 125 class on his new TM. You would have thought he overalled the way he was flitting around granting interviews and shaking hands,

“Marzocci, Hydraulic clutch, Great Daves, zeros, possibles, Pirelli, Acerbis, race gas…..”

“Shut up we want to go home.”

“Nupe, gotta wait for my trophy, sorry you slower guy’s didn’t get one. Oh look there’s some body that looks like Merle Acord, better go talk to him, you guy’s load the truck and figure out who has to ride on the cooler.”

Mark marches off, still dressed in his gear, his new tie dyed Mooch jersey really did look cool.

“I hate him, don’t you guys?” I growled.

“Yea, but not as much as we hate you!” Skippy said.

“Hey look I said I was sorry for flipping out this morning, enduro computers do that to me. I’ll buy you a new tool box, I had no idea it would smash up that bad when I stomped on it.”

“Stomped? You stomped on my toolbox? Hell look at it, you kicked the shit out of it then ran back and forth over it with the truck! Both you and your dog were chewing the handles off my screwdrivers!

The next week end certainly separated the casual from the hard core, 141 miles of southern Ohio trails in the mud, any finishers would be hard core, hell any of the starters had to be pretty hard core, no posers here. Although there were only a few rows of AA riders the club still had about 240 starters, pretty good turn out for such a gruesome race.

The same day only a few hundred miles away in Illinois promoter Bill Gusse was hosting what used to be known as the Illinois State Championship cross country race, it’s a real bear. Usually it is the last race of the season after all the other series have ended and has a good turn out, deep with talented riders. Around here it is billed as THE race, about the best replacement for Blackwater that I’ve seen.

But noooo, must not have been “high profile” enough, some body came in with a little bit of money and a TV camera and had to change things, and not for the better either. I’m pretty sour about the Moose people scheduling a fun play race against a serious, point paying, National event. If our off road family isn’t small enough already, now we have the Suzuki people splitting us up. Gee every one acts like Randy did something wrong and has cooties or something, not in my mind, Randy is the king and the rest of you yellow yen chasers should step back and evaluate why you are here, or not here in this case. Remember McGrath quit Honda because they were telling him what he could and could not do. What is more important to you, nickels or balls?

Sure I agree the National Enduro series is not as popular as it has been but popularity has nothing to do with how good something is. What are we going to do? Just quit going to them because a hand full of Californians think they are not “high profile enough”? These guys think Tokyo when you say East Coast. It sure isn’t Randy’s fault or Lafferty or any of the riders that were there, the problem goes back to our sanctioning body, the AMA, experts in stagnicity. Sure they can sell coffee cups and lapel pins but as far as promotion they suck. Look at what they have let happen to Flat track, they are doing the same thing to Enduro, or the National Hare Scrambles series. GNCC is going great guns, Super Cross attracts 60,000 fans, others than the AMA are promoting both.

The AMA is our sanctioning organization, this means we play by their rules when they say, this is a good thing, and we need rules. This is where it should stop though, but the AMA has gotten into the business of selling clubs “event insurance”. I guess the AMA is the only affordable option, this would be a fine practice if their intentions were truly sincere. But, the AMA is owned and controlled by insurance companies. I’m not exactly sure how it all works, but you and I, as AMA members, do not own the part of the AMA where the money goes. Super Hunkey could tell us more if he would. How can we expect fair representation by an organization biased by one of the most crooked and manipulating industries in the world? Any wonder our sport is dying on the vine as the mother root sucks up poison.

Now we have the Suzuki guys chiseling away at what little base we have. Wow you’re probably amazed any one would denounce such a fine company, you won’t find any one else saying bad things about it. Why? Since I’m on another of my “what’s wrong” rampage I’ll tell you, Suzuki has special events and testing parties for the magazine people, and they all get to go riding in Washington or Colorado or some other exotic riding destination. That is if you only write good things about Suzuki.

Clipper taught me that “A Newspaper man should have no friends”.

Southern Ohio enduros are as tough as they get, rated second in the world only to Poland as the toughest place to ride. Historically our nations best riders have been from the Southern O area. Sure other places may have bigger and steeper hills, deeper and sloppier mud holes, but what Ohio has on every where is the slickest mud on earth. Scientist have found large quantities of Teflon, silicone, WD-40 and used car salesman in soil samples. Slick isn’t the word for it, hell at sign up they recommend an ice axe and crampons. It is not uncommon for spectators to slip and fall. Super Dave Conti relives this section of trail:

“Well I waz gone alone dis grabel wode, and everything was ao-tay, den weh wint inta sum grass, anna da front wheel warsh out, sum men’s hep me up den I gotta stuck in dis rut and I push and I push, finally I get to this sign that sez “Teach Intersection”. Dare were more men’s dare and dey started tellin me wada do, “rev it up, turn on your light, honk your horn, OK that’ll be 50 bucks!” I want to thank my sponsors, Azuki an Moothe. All right, thanks Super Dave.

Sure every one has their “worst place to ride” and it’s easy to avoid those places, just don’t go, and that’s what a lot of Indiana riders did, you know the week before at the 45 mile Plymouth enduro you would have thought district 15 was one of the biggest most competitive districts around, but only a hand full of riders showed up at Ohio, no kids either, I think there was only one Indiana guy under the age of 35, that was John Machino and hell he’s no kid at 27 and a father of two that’s pretty grown up. Some how all us good old Indiana boys got put on rows 47 through 54, the last rows, and the 47s pre-entered, that puts two hundred riders on the trail before us, yep 200 rut digging mud slinging machines of destruction on the trail ahead of us. You might have thought they had a utility class where backhoe’s and trenchers raced the same trail. Hell who needs arrows? Just put your front wheel in the rut and go! See ya in 141 miles, that is if you can make it up the hills and trough the water holes. Many did not, most riders dropped out at one of the first 3 checks, at check 3 I dropped a 49 and considered myself lucky, wait, if I had been lucky I would have dropped out at the first check right? But no I kept plugging along riding at the bottom of my hour, thinking I can quit when I hour out at the next check, but I kept rolling in just a few minutes too early and they would send me on. After mile 60 I only saw a couple of other riders, and they were stuck, I rode all by my self for hours. At one gas stop there was just the one car, waiting for me, every one else is gone. It was really a creepy feeling being out there all alone and I thought about the guy’s who stayed home because they don’t have enduro computers, right now mine is flashing –75, yep I got an hour and 15 minutes behind schedule and was able to catch up and finnish on time, well maybe not “on” time but “in” time, I dropped many 50 point sections and still didn’t have the highest finishing score, I had 446 points and some guy in the Vet B class had 363. Even with my stunted education I can see that my score was higher but they gave the other guy the prize, a brand new Pirelli front tire, every body hates me.

I guess your probably more interested in who won than how inept I am. Doug Blackwell on a Yamaha, Doug is well known in the GNCC series and the Mid-South Hare scrambles series for wearing Answer Product pants, he is kinda new to Enduros but certainly no stranger to slick mud and ruts. Good job Doug. No no no, we want to know who won between Hawkins and Lafferty! Well Michael did by just a few seconds over Randy. It is amazing that after all the miles and obstacles these two guys will be fighting over mere seconds, they must be riding at the very top of their own and their bikes potential, but to come in with in seconds of each other still amazes me. You know maybe if they were on the same minute one following the other they could set the same score, but they were on different rows and no way of knowing how fast the other guy is going. That makes three wins and two seconds for Lafferty but Hawkins shows no sign of letting up on him. The next race is June 29th up in Stavish’s back yard, Minnathota way.

Interesting tid-bit, on Tuesday morning after the race, I was able to look up the results of this race on the Cycle News web page, 13 days later I can still not find the results for the Suzuki run. I ask everybody and they shrug their shoulders and remark “it must not have been a Suzuki rider.” Finally I call Jeff Fredette to get the story. Jeff answers the phone cause I recognize his voice. He asks me who is calling and I tell him, he says Jeff isn’t here but you can talk to his mom, in whispers I can hear my name and Jeff’s plan to go out side and cut his own phone wires. Hello she says and I start questioning her: Who won the Moose run, and what kind of pants did they wear?” “Jeff, MSR.” “Thanks, good bye.” Click. Now I wonder, I mean I really wonder, you should wonder too, how much “news” Vs “propaganda” we the dirt bikers of America are being fed and by whom. How long can we ignore the man behind the curtain? “The all and powerful Press has spoken.” On Moto-World the Moose run was shown for two minutes and eleven seconds. The story goes that the film crew had to be begged to stay for the finnish, and were gone when second place rider Brian Keegan crossed the line ten minutes later in his Fox pants. Paul laughs at me and my new discovery of corruption. Super Hunkey is laying in his hammock in his Speedo’s laughing at me and my naive thinking, screaming “Cervesa”.

What do you think? Please send us a letter, or a E mail, nothing fancy, Paul will soup it up to make you look smooth, who are you rooting for, who are the bad guys? What brand of bike makes you want to put your hand over your heart and sing the National Anthem? Would you like to see more pictures of my dog? I am asking for directions here, can you help direct me in the way?

I haven’t related enough of the Ohio hell facts, like having to run along behind your bike with it’s front wheel off the ground so the foot pegs don’t get stuck in the rut. Or having to drag your feet for miles at a time just to stay upright, or getting into a rut and having to lift your feet above your waist for clearance. Try this at home, while sitting on the toilet, lift your feet way up and hold it. Occasionally a foot would dangle and snag on something and get ripped around behind you, soon your being drug along in a Superman posture, but your arms give out way too soon. On the way home we came up with a new invention, you know those things the acrobat’s hold in their teeth when they do stunts? Well we want to mount one to our handle bars and when you need to you just bend down and bite on it, let your feet drag and just hang on with your teeth. It sounded like a good idea at the time. At one point I rode my bike off a creek bank and it went in the water front wheel first standing straight up and down, water was up past the head light, I was sitting on the opposite bank resting and watching my enduro computer flash –54, -55, -56, I waded around in the creek looking for solid ground, turns out the only hole is right where I had dove in, I think the trail had run the other direction in the past.. I was stuck and all by my self, then, very faintly, I could hear another rider, some 100 yards off, kicking on his water logged bike, as grim as things seemed this was a reassuring sound. I lifted and grunted till I thought my guts were coming out of my mouth and slowly the suction let go of my front wheel, I had to lay back on the ground to rest and take a small stick and push my guts back down my throat, tic tic tic, -63-64-65. Eventually I get my self out of the rut and ready to tackle the rest of this particular mud hole, I revved the living daylight out of the bike and ran along side of it occasionally stepping into ruts filled with water that took me to my waist while 6 inches away the bike stayed high and dry in 3 inches of water. I probably put more miles on this bike in the next 100 yards than I did all day. Ringggga RINNGGGGGa mud and water were slinging 50 feet in the air, the piston moved faster than money out of my pocket, ringggaaa. My thoughts were, “You will either drag us out of here or you will blow up trying”. I think to myself, is this what the Italians had in mind when they built this beautiful TM? I think is this what Great Dave had in mind for his 1997 250 work of art? See Great Dave’s is the shop who loaned me this bike, I will write a full report on these Italian hybrids as I acquire more information but right now I can tell you they don’t over heat and the clutch never missed a beat, trust me when I say I was abusing the machine, I am an expert on abuse, one of the few fields where I claim to be an expert and have had state mandated classes on abuse, most abuse shows up in social misbehavior, but if you’re out in the woods and there is nobody around to hear, does a motorcycle being wrung to death make a noise? Now I’m not going to tell Great Dave I sat in one place and ran his bike to death, I’ll tell him I was racing Lafferty and Hawkins down this fast two track and she just let go, but right now I am a hater of machinery, imagine some one being mad at metal, I hate you piston! I’ll be reincarnated as a wrist pin, hell awaits. The terrified motorcycle slowly drug my immense girth up and out of the mud. I wonder what I do weigh when I’ve got on all my gear and it’s soaken wet and covered with inches of mud.

I wallowed along and with in a few miles I had gotten suck again, absolutely miserable, the computer continued to tick off the minutes –71 –72, yea, I would have probably smashed it with a rock but I was lost in a sea of mud. Sitting there next to the bike I noticed it was not really stuck, when I had impacted, the G forces had driven the pegs into the ground and stopped me cold, not enough momentum I think to my self and pledge that if I get out of this mud hole I will not get stuck in another. The other third of the brain is thinking well no you won’t get stuck, you are out of the race stupid, it will be all black top back to the pits, cold miserable black top road, all the way, big baby quitter/looser. I hate you another third of my brain says and we ride off again. But the trail starts getting easier and faster, some two track road that led out on to some miles of trail through reclaimed mining areas, the TM really fly’s in the open stuff and pretty soon the minutes are clicking off my computer, I remember there is a gas stop ahead and a couple of short resets. I skid up to the lone truck at the gas stop with –64 flashing, the two guys’s there ask me if I’m all right?

I’m frantic, “Gas Gas Gas! Hurry!”

It is so cool to see two people at the same time and place, where one guy is bored to tears and the other will pee his pants to save the time. It is as crazy to think I can catch back up on time as it was to be mad at the piston. Think of the needle in your volt meter slamming back and forth from peg to peg with such ferocity the glass is becoming loose and the needle is all twisted and bent, yea, that’s my brain.

“Hurry urry urry”

“Man you all right? You don’t look so good.”

“Urry” I whimper.

Could I make it to the next check? Not if I got stuck again, so I raced on, very carefully too. We rode in some really neat places in this section, the trail went right down the middle of this creek with running water in it, the banks were well above our heads, several hundred yards then the arrows pointed up a tributary and there it was, the final mud hole, this is all that stood between me and the finnish. I stopped to inspect, but that was no big deal because I was hardly moving anyhow. I chose my line, a straight one left of center, snicked the bike into second gear and rolled forward and at the appropriate time revved the motor and dumped the clutch. The bike shot straight ahead out between my legs and out of my hands and flew dead level and straight across the mud hole and wound up leaning against a tree high and dry. Myself on the other hand didn’t fare as well, my legs failed to respond to my brains instructions to run and I face planted into the mud, I did a modified breast stroke to the other side, remounted the bike and rode off into the sunset.

It was cool pulling into the pits hours after the rest, most of the Indiana guys had packed up and gone home, the other Mooch guy’s were bitching at me cause they were out of beer since they had been back at the truck since 9:45. Fourth place finisher Matt Stavich came over and shook my hand a couple of times just for finishing. Matt started adding up my score card, he disappeared around behind the van so he could concentrate, shortly he hollered out, “Need a pen” then with all the checks extended and no sixty minute penalties he just laughed and said “I cant add this up there are 3 or 4 hundred points here!” There is my trophy, I’ve been racing Southern Ohio enduros since 1983 and it feels really good to finnish a good tough one, I dropped 446 points and I’m happy about it. Matt’s partner Kirk Kellerman was so impressed he bought a Bulmoocho shirt, this will elevate him to the position of “Best dressed man in Minnathota.” Mike “Bud Man” Slecta bought a shirt too but instead of money he traded a case of beer for it, how appropriate.

See this is the good part about enduros. Once you get past all the politics and corruption there at the core still lies the most challenging diverse sport in the galaxy, where even on a bad day, slow pokes like me can come out a winner.