mx775

My neighbors think I'm strange. As nice people, they have never walked up and said this to me, but it's apparent from the looks they give me on Monday mornings, which is when my girls and I usually roll my bike onto the driveway to wash it.

As I drag out my instruments--hose, spray bottle with Simple Green, steel wool, stiff brush--my girls, ages 1 and 4, amuse themselves by kicking around a soccer ball or spraying each other with another spray bottle filled with water. As they romp, I get down to business, reaching and bending around my bike to hit all the normal trouble spots.

The weird looks usually come when the neighbors start arriving home from their jobs for lunch. Apparently, to the non-motocross people of this world, there is something odd about a grown man and his two young daughters washing a bike Monday after Monday, scrubbing away at grease spots and dirt clods while the rest of the world toils away at their 9-to-5 gigs. I know this because there is always a pause between them exiting their cars and going into the house--a there-goes-the-crazy-guy-with-his-bike-again sort of pause.

I don't feel bad about this. Truth is, I have a job, but I'm off on Monday mornings (my schedule is weeknights and Saturdays.) So I don't feel any guilt about horsing around with my bike while they are at their grinds. Also, I've never cared what the rest of the world thinks about my motocross habit, because I learned this simple fact long ago: the worlds of motocross people and non-motocross people often have some irreconcilable differences.

Most non-motocross people have a hobby of some sort: they have boats; they garden; they restore furniture, etc. But these casual hobbies lead them to think that motocrossers should treat motocross in the same breezy, part-time way that they treat their activities.

But of course, we can't.

Motocrossers, or at least the ones who are like me, never stop thinking about their sport, and, in time, this obsession comes to define them. So we end up looking a little crazy to the rest of the world, like people who've let their hobbies overcome them. Which, in a way, is exactly what we are.

So it's weird to my neighbors, the way I drag my girls and bike onto the driveway every Monday. They won't ever understand what drives my routine, but it's as natural to me as rain: my bike is dirty; I need to clean it. It may seem repetitive or narrow or even insane to them, but to me it's none of those things. It is simply me--and my girls--taking care of something that's important to me.

I'm hoping that my girls will understand this too when they are grown up. But even if they don't, I'll always have the images of them as children in clothes spotted with dirt and soaked in Simple Green to remember fondly.  

Posted by beaupre716 at 09:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Photo courtesy of mxdad

As of last month, it had been nearly a year since I had raced a dirt bike. My last race had been in November 2008, one week before I had an awful yard sale that resulted in four broken ribs, a broken collarbone, two compressed vertebrae, a separated shoulder and a collapsed lung.

After spending a week in the hospital, I wasn't in a racing mood for some time.

But when I heard Stead was going to run again last week--nearly one year to the day from my last race--it occurred to me that my distaste for racing had faded a bit. And when a friend suggested that I come race a couple of motos and take some photos for the web site, I surprised and scared myself when I said, "OK." 

Immediately, I went searching for ways to make my comeback race safe and stress-free. My first step was to tell my dad I would race our beloved 1983 CR480 rather than my 450. The 480 seemed like a good choice because A) it's a 27-year-old bike, and you can only put so much pressure on yourself when you're riding one of those, and B) I would face less of a chance of tangling with anyone in the first turn because the 480 always either pulls a massive holeshot or finds a false neutral halfway up the start. In either case, I would probably be all by myself in the first turn.

Still, I decided to ride my 450 in Saturday practice (to leave the 480 for a Sunday surprise.) But even on my modern bike, it was clear in practice that my speed was not outstanding. Granted I've been passed enough times for it not to be a shock, but the ease with which adolescent racers were passing me was depressing. Thank God for the 25+ class, I thought to myself.

Nonetheless, on Sunday morning I rolled an extra-clean version of the 480 out onto the track with high hopes. Unfortunately, within a couple of laps, the 480's pinging was deafening. There wasn't enough octane in the tank, and the 480 wasn't happy about it. Maybe that was why it threw off its chain guide on the last lap of practice (leaving the chain to go flying off seconds later.) Either that or that 27-year-old chunk of plastic had finally worn out.

In any case, my dad decided that he might have an extra chain guide for the 480...in his garage...in Carson City. Two hours and 70 miles later, it turned out that he did not. Still, I did have my 450 in my garage, so my dad picked it up. Sure, it was still caked with mud from Saturday, and its tires were hopelessly bald (threw new ones on the 480 instead,) but it would allow me to do something besides stand around with a camera all day.

I won't bore you with the details of my races (I began to type about them, but soon realized I was boring even myself.) Let it suffice to say that I went 2-DNF out of four 25+ Pros, with the DNF coming after my muffler came apart in the second moto. (A quick lesson: never try to put a spark arrestor on your exhaust unless you're sure it was made for it. It may bend your muffler core, which will fatigue and break after a few heat cycles, which will cause all your packing to blow out like confetti at Mardi Gras.)

At the end of the day, I had had a pretty good time racing with friends, and I had officially returned to racing after a pretty good layoff. I didn't have too much to complain about...besides the need to replace my wasted exhaust and obsolete, 27-year-old chain guide.

A good comeback, all in all.

Posted by beaupre716 at 09:10 PM | Permalink