Welcome to the Two Wheeled Texans community! 
Feel free to hang out and lurk as long as you like. However, we would like to encourage you to 
FirstMan
0
- Joined
- Apr 5, 2005
- Messages
- 1,843
- Reaction score
- 0
- Location
- Yuma, AZ
- First Name
- Adam
- Last Name
- McCreight
Okay, I don’t know how famous she is, but her picture is now posted up as the AMA national advertisement. Since you cannot tell women from men, she is the one far left, center. Green helmet, red bike and purple outfit with black chest guard. (picture is on the bottom of this email)
I guess a story needs to go with the picture. To be honest, I have a wanted to run in a dirt bike race for a while now. I felt that I could learn from others as well as ride somewhere new. I have no desire to wreck hard, so I would ride it as a trail ride, hopefully finish the course and because I was taking it slow make fewer mistakes and possibly not be last. I chose I race close to where we live that wasn’t in the desert. I didn’t want to eat dust and hit speeds of 50+ mph while on a course that I have never been on. So the race in Globe, AZ was chosen.
We get there and we see a tough course. The people racing before us come to the tires a the end of the loop to slow people down as well as give the spectators something to see, and the riders look exhausted, worn down and beat. The worst part, this is that was only lap one, they have 3 more….
Time for our race. Terra decides to do a warm up loop around the rodeo grounds since the start of the race is a cold start and we want the bikes to fire up and go. I take off, do two loops and come back. Terra is still there. It is 20 minutes before the race and we are trying to find a spark plug wrench to see if she has spark and fuel at least. Well, it seems more than 5 seconds of choke is too much at 3500 feet and her plug is fouled. I had to leave before they got it sorted out, but with a battery getting weak, no kick-start on this bike, no spare plug and 15 minutes before race time I was sure Terra wasn’t going to be able to do what we have been working towards for a few weeks now.
6 minutes before race time, Terra comes down to the starting line. We are the 4th line to leave the starting gate. We see the 2 guys groups leave, and then it is the women’s, then us. There is 1 minute between starts. It seems my bike likes 3500 feet and I take off getting off the line first. This was a mistake, because my idea of a trail ride was blown out the water with stay away from the rest, they are going to run over me! I did well, for a while. But like all motor sports, the person who makes the fewest mistakes usually has the shot at winning. I lost it going up hill at mile 1.4 and was no longer on two wheels. I was pretty fast up to that point, it took 15-20 seconds for the next rider to catch up. By then I had the bike up, kick-start out, I let him by because this was not a race to me. Or at least I hadn’t planed it to be.
Some things to mention about the course. It was all hard pack dirt with no traction. I saw people sliding on nearly flat ground due to the hard surface. The hard surface only changed when it met silt. Yup, no sand, just talcum powder like stuff with rocks in it sometimes. The creek beads were not that bad, lots of rock, but that was actually the easiest part. The up hills were mainly hard pack with rock that caused you to slip, or sand coming out of a wash and then with no real speed you had to go up hill. One area had an X meaning danger and an arrow pointing down, it took me half a second, but I slammed on the brakes, heard a person cheer me on (corner worker) and then I dropped 10 feet down (vertical) with my front tire in the air all the way down into 2 feet of silt, I had to make a hard left as soon as I touched down and the up a hill that I could not see until I was at it. This was the steepest drop off in the whole race, but the rest of the race was not far off from this. There wasn’t more than 5-15 feet between turns, ever. That is about it. At the pit stop area at 7.4 miles, I quit. The next part was the tires and telephone poles you had to go across and I didn’t want to subject myself to that, nor be stuck on the course to keep on going for another loop.
Our friends that came to help us with the race walked over to where I was and didn’t antagonize me fore quitting, I appreciate that. Eventually Terra showed up. She was able to stop, reset and make the loop fun. After a break, she wanted to go across the tires and say she completed one lap. I found out that when I was playing racer boy up front, I was so tense that I pulled a muscle in my right forearm. I thought it was arm pump from being tense, but it was mildly worse. Later on, I couldn’t even hold an ice cream cone in my right hand. Now that is considered a major injury in my book.
Out of our class, 12 or so started the race, 6 riders made one lap (terra included), and only 1 person made all 4 laps. From talking to people, I would say at least 30% of the people didn’t make it to the end. Overall, I am glad we did it, I know Terra actually liked the trail so we will probably sign up for another; it just will not be an AMA national…
Have a great day.
http://www.putfile.com/sro1/images/144568
I guess a story needs to go with the picture. To be honest, I have a wanted to run in a dirt bike race for a while now. I felt that I could learn from others as well as ride somewhere new. I have no desire to wreck hard, so I would ride it as a trail ride, hopefully finish the course and because I was taking it slow make fewer mistakes and possibly not be last. I chose I race close to where we live that wasn’t in the desert. I didn’t want to eat dust and hit speeds of 50+ mph while on a course that I have never been on. So the race in Globe, AZ was chosen.
We get there and we see a tough course. The people racing before us come to the tires a the end of the loop to slow people down as well as give the spectators something to see, and the riders look exhausted, worn down and beat. The worst part, this is that was only lap one, they have 3 more….
Time for our race. Terra decides to do a warm up loop around the rodeo grounds since the start of the race is a cold start and we want the bikes to fire up and go. I take off, do two loops and come back. Terra is still there. It is 20 minutes before the race and we are trying to find a spark plug wrench to see if she has spark and fuel at least. Well, it seems more than 5 seconds of choke is too much at 3500 feet and her plug is fouled. I had to leave before they got it sorted out, but with a battery getting weak, no kick-start on this bike, no spare plug and 15 minutes before race time I was sure Terra wasn’t going to be able to do what we have been working towards for a few weeks now.
6 minutes before race time, Terra comes down to the starting line. We are the 4th line to leave the starting gate. We see the 2 guys groups leave, and then it is the women’s, then us. There is 1 minute between starts. It seems my bike likes 3500 feet and I take off getting off the line first. This was a mistake, because my idea of a trail ride was blown out the water with stay away from the rest, they are going to run over me! I did well, for a while. But like all motor sports, the person who makes the fewest mistakes usually has the shot at winning. I lost it going up hill at mile 1.4 and was no longer on two wheels. I was pretty fast up to that point, it took 15-20 seconds for the next rider to catch up. By then I had the bike up, kick-start out, I let him by because this was not a race to me. Or at least I hadn’t planed it to be.
Some things to mention about the course. It was all hard pack dirt with no traction. I saw people sliding on nearly flat ground due to the hard surface. The hard surface only changed when it met silt. Yup, no sand, just talcum powder like stuff with rocks in it sometimes. The creek beads were not that bad, lots of rock, but that was actually the easiest part. The up hills were mainly hard pack with rock that caused you to slip, or sand coming out of a wash and then with no real speed you had to go up hill. One area had an X meaning danger and an arrow pointing down, it took me half a second, but I slammed on the brakes, heard a person cheer me on (corner worker) and then I dropped 10 feet down (vertical) with my front tire in the air all the way down into 2 feet of silt, I had to make a hard left as soon as I touched down and the up a hill that I could not see until I was at it. This was the steepest drop off in the whole race, but the rest of the race was not far off from this. There wasn’t more than 5-15 feet between turns, ever. That is about it. At the pit stop area at 7.4 miles, I quit. The next part was the tires and telephone poles you had to go across and I didn’t want to subject myself to that, nor be stuck on the course to keep on going for another loop.
Our friends that came to help us with the race walked over to where I was and didn’t antagonize me fore quitting, I appreciate that. Eventually Terra showed up. She was able to stop, reset and make the loop fun. After a break, she wanted to go across the tires and say she completed one lap. I found out that when I was playing racer boy up front, I was so tense that I pulled a muscle in my right forearm. I thought it was arm pump from being tense, but it was mildly worse. Later on, I couldn’t even hold an ice cream cone in my right hand. Now that is considered a major injury in my book.
Out of our class, 12 or so started the race, 6 riders made one lap (terra included), and only 1 person made all 4 laps. From talking to people, I would say at least 30% of the people didn’t make it to the end. Overall, I am glad we did it, I know Terra actually liked the trail so we will probably sign up for another; it just will not be an AMA national…
Have a great day.
http://www.putfile.com/sro1/images/144568
