We were off to Devils Ridge in Sanford, NC for the next AHRMA race. It was Max's second, and my first. We had been poking around the woods a bit and I was feeling better about dirt riding. Max was improving by leaps and bounds and was on his way to getting pretty darned good on his Triumph. He was already miles beyond me in riding ability. This would also be the first race for our friend Jay from North Carolina. He had managed to get together a 250 Triumph T25 he called The Field Pig. We made a helluva sight at the start, Max and I in our black BDU shirts and crummy, homemade number plates. I decided, for some reason, I needed to wear leather-friggen pants for protection from...stuff. I didn't know what I was doin', they nearly gave me heat stroke. Jay was properly dudded up in his leather road riding jacket, road helmet and jeans. None of us had camelbacks. It was a warm day. Bad, bad, bad.
We must've looked like a circus act to the other riders. It was still some ways off before the AHRMA regulars realized we just LIKED these kinds of bikes, and were quite serious about wanting to do well on 'em.
For me the sighting lap was a rude awakening. This wasn't woods riding, this was hard. I was the last out of the woods and wasn't sure I was going to be able to line up for the start. My front brake lever had come adrift and between that and already being beat to death on the Sighting Lap(!), all I could manage was slurred words and heavy panting. At camp Max was busy stealing a footpeg for his bike from a friend who had ridden his Triumph roadster to watch us race. Another friend, Alex, got my brake lever sorted, and with my brain still fried I got on my bike and lined up. We soon realized that's just what you did, you got to the line and got to work. It became pretty natural...but at the time I was convinced I was gonna die on that course. I made it around the first lap by repeating in my mind "one lap, just get one lap". One lap done, I started telling myself "one more lap, just one more lap", and on it went like that. Which was another thing that never really would change; no matter what, no matter how bad you feel, for some reason you just keep going until they tell you to stop.
Towards the end I didn't have much left. I stalled the bike trying to get out of the way of a faster rider and couldn't restart the bike because I had a death grip on the clutch and was too puddle brained to realize it. Eventually, a lone brain cell got jiggled loose and I dropped the clutch, got it started and managed to finish. Jay had gotten himself off course and was in a ditch, but also managed to get his bike across the line. The lack of camelbacks meant we were dying of thirst, but our Carolina friends were lifesavers, handing us bottles of water during the last part of the race.
But we survived, and oddly...really enjoyed it.
As I recall, Jay's words were something like "I feel like I've been beaten with boat oars by a bunch a' merchant seamen".
Dammit, that was a good day. And I never wore those leather pants again.
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