I’ve gotten behind again…procrastination sucks. I’ve got to do
something about that one of these days.
When I left you last time, we had just finished the Sparkplug Enduro,
the first Enduro of the 2010 NMA season. The following weekend (April
18) we had a hare scrambles race put on by Team Tortoise Racing, the
first race of a 3 race series-within-a-series that TTR is promoting
this season, with the added bonus of free entries in all of TTR races
next season if you win your class in the 3 race series this year. Kind
of cool. These guys also work hard to scrape up sponsorships so they
can offer decent cash purses to the AA class, so they get REALLY good
racing out of the pro boys. This first round was held at Riverdale
Raceways, located on the banks of the Toutle River (made famous by the
flooding after Mt. St. Helens erupted 30 years ago). The track has
pretty nice sandy loam soil for the most part, uses most of the 2 MX
tracks on the property, and runs all through the woods for a total
track length of about 7 miles. We were blessed with really nice
weather again, too. I opted to sit this one out, as I wasn’t really
ready to ride, and Theresa was out of state, so I opted for the pit
support role for the weekend. Scott lined up with the second wave,
right behind all of those hungry AA guys. One thing the Team Tortoise
guys do that nobody else does up here is use live engine starts for
their Hare Scrambles. Scott hasn’t had nearly enough practice at
those, as it turned out, so when the flag dropped he lit up the rear
tire and got badly shut out in the short run to the first turn. He
came out of turn one in last place on his wave, and was already
shaking his head. He wasn’t setting the track on fire while we could
see him on that first lap, and he never really got his head into it
and pushed the whole race, instead just kind of cruising around. He
wound up in 7th place at the end of the day, out of the 12 guys in his
class. Not one of his better outings. In the weeks since then we’ve
had many talks about the importance of mental attitude, and it seems
to be working as you’ll see later in the RR. For Ben Baucum’s report
and photos of the race, see
http://www.examiner.com/x-9668-Portland-Motorcycle-Examiner~y2010m4d27-Team=
-Tortoise-Triple-Crown-Round-1-story-and-photos
(may have to cut-and-paste the URL).
The next weekend was the Seattle SX, no races on our schedule, so we
went to the race, screamed ourselves hoarse for Kevin Windham, and had
a really good time.
The following weekend on May 2, it was back to the grind with the
Shelton Valley Enduro. This is one of the crown jewels of Northwest
offroad racing, and was one of the 2 races that I tried last year on
Scott’s old 200 while my 300 was broken. I DNF last year, and damned
if I DNF again this year. The course took us through 60 miles of
really nice lowland trails before it came back through the start area
(the Mason County Fairgrounds), where the short course ended and the
long course went out for their final loop of 38 miles after a gas
stop. I had a blast for the first 45 miles, riding like I was racing
or something, and actually keeping up with Scott most of the time
(remember, this is the short course portion of the race, so most of
the speed averages are low enough to not kill the C class riders).
From mile 45 back to gas at 60, I discovered that I had pretty much
run the battery dry, and while able to easily keep to the time
schedule back to the known control gas, I was really over it by the
time I got to the truck. I knew the course after gas would be faster,
and they’d run us into the mountain sections of their trail system,
which has lots of gnarly hills and is pretty physically taxing to
ride, so I opted to bail out while I still had fond memories of the
race and no injuries. Scott had been railing all day, and when he left
gas he was right on par with the leader’s scores. Sadly, this was to
be a day of important life lessons for Scott. When we were programming
our computers that morning, Scott screwed up and entered a speed
change wrong. At gas (where I quit), they came off of a 12 mph average
to a 6 mph average for 2 miles, then back up to 12 mph. Scott entered
12-12-12. Oops! When he was done and I told him to double check his
program, he only looked to verify that he had entered as many lines of
input as the route sheet showed, but didn’t actually verify his
entries. Double oops!! Basically, as soon as Scott left gas without
me, his computer stared telling him he was late, so he wicked it up
until it showed him on time, and then burned the next check by 6
minutes!!! Scott figured the check must have been screwed up and it’d
get worked out after the event, took off, and then burned the next one
by 5 minutes. This was in a section where the majority of the long
course riders were lucky to stay on time, many of them dropped points
through these sections, but not enough to top the 49 points Scott
collected for the 2 burns. After the second one he figured out his
instruments were bad, so he dropped back and keyed off the minute
ahead of us and the minute behind us (the third rider on our minute
was toasted, and WAY back) and zeroed 2 of the 3 remaining checks.
Sadly, the damage was done, and there was just no recovering from
those 49 points, and Scott finished last of the finishers in his
class. Since season points are only awarded to competition license
holders, Scott wound up with 4th place points for the event, which
means he left Shelton in the points lead for the Open A class. Turns
out the guy that beat him at the Sparkplug Enduro at the beginning of
the season doesn’t have a license either, so Scott scored 1st place
points for that one.
We got a weekend off, then on May 16 it was the second round of the
Team Tortoise Hare Scrambles mini series, this one held at Burnt Ridge
Raceways. This place is absolutely beautiful, looking like a county
park with a primo red dirt MX track plopped down in the middle of it.
Mowed grass in all of the infield/parking/camping/pit areas, shade
from the big trees, just a fabulous facility. Last years race was bone
dry and horribly dusty. But this year we had rain leading up to the
race and dust was not an issue. I finally pulled the pin and lined up
to race a hare scrambles, racing the morning short course race (1 ½
hours). Again, TTR used a live engine start, and at this track they
even used their starting gate, which starts off of a concrete pad. I
spun the tire (first time I’ve ridden the GasGas with a knobby in over
3 years) horribly when the gate dropped, and went through the first
turn looking at the backs of everyone else on the line with me. Sigh.
I never really caught any of them either, unless they were lying on
the ground or getting up off of it. I had fun when we started lapping
slower riders from the start waves behind us (I was on the first start
wave), and actually started jumping the jumps on the track. It was
pretty slick in spots, and kept getting better throughout our race. On
the first lap there had been just a hint of dust in a grasstrack
section of the course, but after our first lap the dry stuff on top
was tilled into the damp stuff underneath, and we never saw a puff of
dust again. Mother Nature gave us a scare when it started spitting
raindrops on us in the last ½ hour or so, but the rain held off. I
wound up last in my class (Super Senior A), but I had fun riding the
course, and was getting more comfortable in the air all of the time,
too.
The drizzle came back just at the start of Scott’s race a little
later, but again it held off, and before long the skies were clear and
blue again. Scott started on the second wave, got a slightly better
start than I did, and settled in to a fairly fast cruise mode. The
wet, clay based soil didn’t really get along well with his fairly well
worn Dunlop 756 front tire, and he said he never got comfortable
turning the bike. He kept plugging away, though, and eventually
finished in 6th place in the Open A class. Not really the results he’s
hoping for, but he’s picking it up a little each race. For Ben
Baucum’s report and photos of the race, see
http://www.examiner.com/x-9668-Portland-Motorcycle-Examiner~y2010m5d20-Team=
-Tortoise-Triple-Crown-Round-2-story-and-photos
(may have to cut-and-paste the URL).
That brings us up to this past weekend (May 23rd). It was round 3 of
the Enduro series, the Webfoot Enduro held at the Walker Valley ORV
Park. Walker Valley is in the Cascade Mountains east of Mt Vernon,
Washington. It’s got fairly limited trail mileage thanks to the usual
land closure BS, but the Skagit M/C has worked really hard over the
years to keep what we can, and make the most of what we have. It’s a
pretty technical area with lots of elevation changes, lots of roots,
logs, stumps, and rocks. To make it worse, we had a solid week of
torrential rains leading up to the event. Scott raced there twice last
year in the wet, and was seriously bummed that he couldn’t use the
event as his throw-away after he screwed the pooch at Shelton. I was a
little concerned that his attitude was going to come into play again,
but Sunday was Scott’s day. Starting in the rain on a muddy road,
going up the muddy trail to find the first special test check in about
200 yards into the race (think “stone cold muscles”), Scott had to
wait for the 3rd guy on our minute to start first, then caught him
before the end of the test and lost some time getting by him, yet
still turning in a competitive test time. I, on the other hand, sucked
big time. It was slick and hacky, and my arms pumped up solid within
about 20 seconds. To make matter worse, my left hand went completely
numb, and pretty much stayed that way until I once again pulled the
plug and went back to the truck with another friggin’ DNF. I am now
firmly convinced that I need to start doing SOMETHING during the week
to prepare myself for these weekends. I feel lots of walking the hills
on our practice track and/or riding the trails on our practice loop
coming on.
Meanwhile, Scott was railing on to a clean, strong loop. He pitted for
gas after the first loop, feeling good and maintaining a great
attitude. He left for loop 2, and as he was out for the second go-
around the weather decided to cut us a break; it stopped raining, and
the clouds started to break up.
How gnarly was the course? On the second lap, Scott said they passed
many, many short course riders still stuck on stuff, or else barely
crawling down the trails trying to get themselves back. He managed to
keep clear of problems, turned in a couple more good test scores, and
finished right on time.
Then the fun ended. The club had a hell of a time with scoring,
eventually taking from about 2:30 when the last of the racers finished
(people were trickling back in for a couple more hours, but they had
all long since houred out) to 7:45 PM to finally start awards. They
probably put out 4 sets of results, but had a string of problems, many
computer related, that kept screwing up the posting. When they finally
got it done, Scott had held on to win his first Open A event, beating
the second Open A rider by over 90 seconds. He wound up 7th overall in
the event, and beat his buddy Ty Mount out by 2 measly seconds in the
overall (Ty is a 200A rider and won his class too). The club had
awesome brass medals custom cast for the event, and we were really
proud to bring one home in a nice jewel case with a “FIRST PLACE OPEN
A” plaque on it.
Now we have another weekend off before 3 more races in the next 4
weeks. I’ll try to be more prompt in my race reports.
Tim H
Thank you Tim for the report. I'm 1/2 way around the world in Scooter
country. As for dirtbikes, the most worth was a KTM LC4 dual sport
that I saw today. Looking forward to the next one.
Mike Baxter
wrote:
>I’ve gotten behind again…procrastination sucks. I’ve got to do
>something about that one of these days.
>When I left you last time, we had just finished the Sparkplug Enduro,
>the first Enduro of the 2010 NMA season. The following weekend (April
>18) we had a hare scrambles race put on by Team Tortoise Racing, the
>first race of a 3 race series-within-a-series that TTR is promoting
>this season, with the added bonus of free entries in all of TTR races
>next season if you win your class in the 3 race series this year. Kind
>of cool. These guys also work hard to scrape up sponsorships so they
>can offer decent cash purses to the AA class, so they get REALLY good
>racing out of the pro boys. This first round was held at Riverdale
>Raceways, located on the banks of the Toutle River (made famous by the
>flooding after Mt. St. Helens erupted 30 years ago). The track has
>pretty nice sandy loam soil for the most part, uses most of the 2 MX
>tracks on the property, and runs all through the woods for a total
>track length of about 7 miles. We were blessed with really nice
>weather again, too. I opted to sit this one out, as I wasn’t really
>ready to ride, and Theresa was out of state, so I opted for the pit
>support role for the weekend. Scott lined up with the second wave,
>right behind all of those hungry AA guys. One thing the Team Tortoise
>guys do that nobody else does up here is use live engine starts for
>their Hare Scrambles. Scott hasn’t had nearly enough practice at
>those, as it turned out, so when the flag dropped he lit up the rear
>tire and got badly shut out in the short run to the first turn. He
>came out of turn one in last place on his wave, and was already
>shaking his head. He wasn’t setting the track on fire while we could
>see him on that first lap, and he never really got his head into it
>and pushed the whole race, instead just kind of cruising around. He
>wound up in 7th place at the end of the day, out of the 12 guys in his
>class. Not one of his better outings. In the weeks since then we’ve
>had many talks about the importance of mental attitude, and it seems
>to be working as you’ll see later in the RR. For Ben Baucum’s report
>and photos of the race, see
>http://www.examiner.com/x-9668-Portland-Motorcycle-Examiner~y2010m4d27-Team-Tortoise-Triple-Crown-Round-1-story-and-photos
>(may have to cut-and-paste the URL).
>The next weekend was the Seattle SX, no races on our schedule, so we
>went to the race, screamed ourselves hoarse for Kevin Windham, and had
>a really good time.
>The following weekend on May 2, it was back to the grind with the
>Shelton Valley Enduro. This is one of the crown jewels of Northwest
>offroad racing, and was one of the 2 races that I tried last year on
>Scott’s old 200 while my 300 was broken. I DNF last year, and damned
>if I DNF again this year. The course took us through 60 miles of
>really nice lowland trails before it came back through the start area
>(the Mason County Fairgrounds), where the short course ended and the
>long course went out for their final loop of 38 miles after a gas
>stop. I had a blast for the first 45 miles, riding like I was racing
>or something, and actually keeping up with Scott most of the time
>(remember, this is the short course portion of the race, so most of
>the speed averages are low enough to not kill the C class riders).
>From mile 45 back to gas at 60, I discovered that I had pretty much
>run the battery dry, and while able to easily keep to the time
>schedule back to the known control gas, I was really over it by the
>time I got to the truck. I knew the course after gas would be faster,
>and they’d run us into the mountain sections of their trail system,
>which has lots of gnarly hills and is pretty physically taxing to
>ride, so I opted to bail out while I still had fond memories of the
>race and no injuries. Scott had been railing all day, and when he left
>gas he was right on par with the leader’s scores. Sadly, this was to
>be a day of important life lessons for Scott. When we were programming
>our computers that morning, Scott screwed up and entered a speed
>change wrong. At gas (where I quit), they came off of a 12 mph average
>to a 6 mph average for 2 miles, then back up to 12 mph. Scott entered
>12-12-12. Oops! When he was done and I told him to double check his
>program, he only looked to verify that he had entered as many lines of
>input as the route sheet showed, but didn’t actually verify his
>entries. Double oops!! Basically, as soon as Scott left gas without
>me, his computer stared telling him he was late, so he wicked it up
>until it showed him on time, and then burned the next check by 6
>minutes!!! Scott figured the check must have been screwed up and it’d
>get worked out after the event, took off, and then burned the next one
>by 5 minutes. This was in a section where the majority of the long
>course riders were lucky to stay on time, many of them dropped points
>through these sections, but not enough to top the 49 points Scott
>collected for the 2 burns. After the second one he figured out his
>instruments were bad, so he dropped back and keyed off the minute
>ahead of us and the minute behind us (the third rider on our minute
>was toasted, and WAY back) and zeroed 2 of the 3 remaining checks.
>Sadly, the damage was done, and there was just no recovering from
>those 49 points, and Scott finished last of the finishers in his
>class. Since season points are only awarded to competition license
>holders, Scott wound up with 4th place points for the event, which
>means he left Shelton in the points lead for the Open A class. Turns
>out the guy that beat him at the Sparkplug Enduro at the beginning of
>the season doesn’t have a license either, so Scott scored 1st place
>points for that one.
>We got a weekend off, then on May 16 it was the second round of the
>Team Tortoise Hare Scrambles mini series, this one held at Burnt Ridge
>Raceways. This place is absolutely beautiful, looking like a county
>park with a primo red dirt MX track plopped down in the middle of it.
>Mowed grass in all of the infield/parking/camping/pit areas, shade
>from the big trees, just a fabulous facility. Last years race was bone
>dry and horribly dusty. But this year we had rain leading up to the
>race and dust was not an issue. I finally pulled the pin and lined up
>to race a hare scrambles, racing the morning short course race (1 ½
>hours). Again, TTR used a live engine start, and at this track they
>even used their starting gate, which starts off of a concrete pad. I
>spun the tire (first time I’ve ridden the GasGas with a knobby in over
>3 years) horribly when the gate dropped, and went through the first
>turn looking at the backs of everyone else on the line with me. Sigh.
>I never really caught any of them either, unless they were lying on
>the ground or getting up off of it. I had fun when we started lapping
>slower riders from the start waves behind us (I was on the first start
>wave), and actually started jumping the jumps on the track. It was
>pretty slick in spots, and kept getting better throughout our race. On
>the first lap there had been just a hint of dust in a grasstrack
>section of the course, but after our first lap the dry stuff on top
>was tilled into the damp stuff underneath, and we never saw a puff of
>dust again. Mother Nature gave us a scare when it started spitting
>raindrops on us in the last ½ hour or so, but the rain held off. I
>wound up last in my class (Super Senior A), but I had fun riding the
>course, and was getting more comfortable in the air all of the time,
>too.
>The drizzle came back just at the start of Scott’s race a little
>later, but again it held off, and before long the skies were clear and
>blue again. Scott started on the second wave, got a slightly better
>start than I did, and settled in to a fairly fast cruise mode. The
>wet, clay based soil didn’t really get along well with his fairly well
>worn Dunlop 756 front tire, and he said he never got comfortable
>turning the bike. He kept plugging away, though, and eventually
>finished in 6th place in the Open A class. Not really the results he’s
>hoping for, but he’s picking it up a little each race. For Ben
>Baucum’s report and photos of the race, see
>http://www.examiner.com/x-9668-Portland-Motorcycle-Examiner~y2010m5d20-Team-Tortoise-Triple-Crown-Round-2-story-and-photos
>(may have to cut-and-paste the URL).
>That brings us up to this past weekend (May 23rd). It was round 3 of
>the Enduro series, the Webfoot Enduro held at the Walker Valley ORV
>Park. Walker Valley is in the Cascade Mountains east of Mt Vernon,
>Washington. It’s got fairly limited trail mileage thanks to the usual
>land closure BS, but the Skagit M/C has worked really hard over the
>years to keep what we can, and make the most of what we have. It’s a
>pretty technical area with lots of elevation changes, lots of roots,
>logs, stumps, and rocks. To make it worse, we had a solid week of
>torrential rains leading up to the event. Scott raced there twice last
>year in the wet, and was seriously bummed that he couldn’t use the
>event as his throw-away after he screwed the pooch at Shelton. I was a
>little concerned that his attitude was going to come into play again,
>but Sunday was Scott’s day. Starting in the rain on a muddy road,
>going up the muddy trail to find the first special test check in about
>200 yards into the race (think “stone cold muscles”), Scott had to
>wait for the 3rd guy on our minute to start first, then caught him
>before the end of the test and lost some time getting by him, yet
>still turning in a competitive test time. I, on the other hand, sucked
>big time. It was slick and hacky, and my arms pumped up solid within
>about 20 seconds. To make matter worse, my left hand went completely
>numb, and pretty much stayed that way until I once again pulled the
>plug and went back to the truck with another friggin’ DNF. I am now
>firmly convinced that I need to start doing SOMETHING during the week
>to prepare myself for these weekends. I feel lots of walking the hills
>on our practice track and/or riding the trails on our practice loop
>coming on.
>Meanwhile, Scott was railing on to a clean, strong loop. He pitted for
>gas after the first loop, feeling good and maintaining a great
>attitude. He left for loop 2, and as he was out for the second go-
>around the weather decided to cut us a break; it stopped raining, and
>the clouds started to break up.
>How gnarly was the course? On the second lap, Scott said they passed
>many, many short course riders still stuck on stuff, or else barely
>crawling down the trails trying to get themselves back. He managed to
>keep clear of problems, turned in a couple more good test scores, and
>finished right on time.
>Then the fun ended. The club had a hell of a time with scoring,
>eventually taking from about 2:30 when the last of the racers finished
>(people were trickling back in for a couple more hours, but they had
>all long since houred out) to 7:45 PM to finally start awards. They
>probably put out 4 sets of results, but had a string of problems, many
>computer related, that kept screwing up the posting. When they finally
>got it done, Scott had held on to win his first Open A event, beating
>the second Open A rider by over 90 seconds. He wound up 7th overall in
>the event, and beat his buddy Ty Mount out by 2 measly seconds in the
>overall (Ty is a 200A rider and won his class too). The club had
>awesome brass medals custom cast for the event, and we were really
>proud to bring one home in a nice jewel case with a “FIRST PLACE OPEN
>A” plaque on it.
>Now we have another weekend off before 3 more races in the next 4
>weeks. I’ll try to be more prompt in my race reports.
>Tim H
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> something about that one of these days.