A Year Ago

The last time I raced MX was a year ago this weekend at the Vet Nationals in Reddick Fl. I have only ridden my dirt bike once since then and that's really hard for me to believe. I once thought I could never give it up, that they'd have to pry my cold dead hands off of the handlebars. But alas, I just stopped wanting to ride it.

I started out in 1981 racing enduros which is a timed event run over single track through the woods. Back then it was mostly new trail at every event and we only made one pass over the trail. The events usually lasted 3-4 hours and were run rain or shine. Man I was so unprepared when I first started but over the years I learned the ropes and ran the whole FTR series until I got tired of enduros and starting racing MX, then I got tired of that and went to Hare Scrambles, then back to enduros, and then; well you get the picture.

We had a good group from this area that would go to all the events so that kept the interest up. Running a series where you race whether you really want to or not isn't always fun. I can remember sitting on the starting line in a torrential downpour at Daytona and not being able to see dry ground as far as I could see. Or hearing the driving rain and thunder in a Charleston S. C. hotel room while trying to get to sleep the night before the Swamp Fox Enduro. Wow I can think of a bunch of them now that I got started; waiting to get into the Crooms State Forest while the sun beat down at 7:00 in the morning and knowing it was going to be 95 by 10:00, the way the van smelled filled with bikes, gas, and old Wendy's bags when you first got into it the morning of the race in the hotel parking lot. How damn nervous I would get waiting for my row to start!

So I've done the race thing for a long time. I never made a dime doing it; in fact it cost me thousands of dollars and untold years chasing little plastic trophies. While most of the people I knew outside of moto started families and did the "normal" thing, I couldn't be bothered with all that stuff. I just wanted to ride. Well, over the years the land to hold events on went away and the enduro trails became crap. The Hare Scrambles were mostly south of Ocala on land that was flat as a pancake and usually a swamp. The MX tracks just had to put in more supercross style obstacles, run shorter motos, and have a class for everybody who came through the gate so it took 12 hours to get through the program. At that last race a year ago, after I finished my second moto, I rode the bike back to the truck, got off, and threw my gloves in the truck bed. I knew then that was the beginning of the end.

I squeeze the clutch lever every now and then when I walk by the bike in the shop. I still haven't put up my helmet and gear bag from that last ride; in fact the bike still has Reddick mud on it. I rarely look at it as I pass by on my way to load the Stumpjumper and the Epic up for another ride. When I started this cycling thing my moto friends said "it's another one of his phases, he'll be back" but I don't know about that. It's been a year and I'm more enthused about my bicycle now than I was when I started.

Isn't it great to start something new at 54? My point in all this old man's rambling is that unless the ride puts a grin on my face I'm not going to be doing it. Life's too short to spend much time worrying over your hobby.