Saturday, January 14, 2012

Ohio Will Always Mean Slimey Glop And Moonshine To Me

Yes, moonshine. We may have been in Ohio to race, but one of my favorite memories of Jeepskool 2010 will always be watching Tara, Max's soon to be Mrs., getting ploughed on some home made spirit we were given because we seemed nice, or something. It could also be that its one of my favorite memories of this weekend because otherwise it was a bit of a horror. At least we got to share the pain with good friends. Aside from Max and Me, there was the aforementioned Tara, Queen of Moonshine, as well as two of the North Carolina boys: Alex, the Flying Bratwurst, who had managed to break or tear or generally ruin himself and wasn't racing this time so was Designated Team Chauffeur
leaving the riding for "Team BSA Power! Yeah!" to Chad, the Buckeye Brisket.
He's on the right, with fellow Ohioan and BSA-poker-with-stick-er Rich B at a meeting of the minds on the way to the race.
Once again we were plagued by rain, which took a Chicago Jerry course that would have been pretty nice dry and turned it into a 3 mile long Path of Earthly Torture. The rain held off for the race itself, but it was a gray, damp and crummy start anyhow.
There was standing water everywhere, and the woods sections possessed mud so slimey they became nearly impassable.
Despite that, Max managed to slither his way to first in class with Four Friggen laps of that hell.
I tended to emerge from the woods looking slack-jawed, spaced out and pretty kooky eyed
With all the spinnin' and sliding, Chad properly incinerated his clutch over the course of a lap and I fared little better, managing 2 Whole Laps in an Hour! I had managed to get around before the leader came through, so even though it was just after the hour I was informed "you can go again...if you want". I think I just kinda laughed and went back to camp for beer.
 The next day they shortened the course down to a mile or so and ran it just through the weird pea gravel in the quarry bottom, which seemed impervious to rain. It was an exciting development because the previous day that gravel had seemed like a break from the mud. Max treated it like a sprint and was having fun despite his chain continually getting thrown, prolly because gravel had been getting between chain and sprocket and gumming up the works.
For me, it seemed better than mud, and started off decent enough.
But I was just too sloppy going through the gravel and began getting bogged down in it. After what seemed like 400 short laps through that stuff I was wasted.
Chad put in a great ride, though it didn't start so auspiciously. Having borrowed some clutch plates and dealt with some water ingestion issues, he was able to get his bike to the line where it gave a fit trying to start at the drop of the flag. He got it going but by that point was 2 and a half minutes behind me. But! Just to show you should never count out a big meaty dude wearing sunglasses on a dirt bike, he ran solid and steady and passed me for the win. Fecker.
Racing squared away, it promptly rained and we left, as any wise person would. Hooray!