This was going to be my breakout race. The one where I finally get to ride terrain that I like and ride it the way I like to ride...fast. The part that I didn’t count on was that apparently everyone else had exactly the same idea. And most of them were faster than me.
Keith and I rolled out of Dallas Saturday morning for the 6.5 hour drive to Cravens Louisiana for the Piney Woods Enduro. The drive out was uneventful and we got to the race site well before dark and in plenty of time to sign in, go through the sound check and get our camp set up for the night. We requested an early row and were assigned row 9, which is where I usually like to ride. We put our numbers on the bikes and gas cans and finished up the camp chores then decided to drive into Leesville for some supper.
Leesville is on the edge of Fort Polk and you could sure tell that you were near a military base as strip clubs, liquor stores and tattoo parlors line both sides of the highway into town. As one of the locals said, you can get just about anything you want in Leesville :) We saw a lot of young people who were obviously in the military and I’m always amazed at how young these guys are. They may be just kids but they’re big and strong and full of piss and vinegar and I can say without reservation that we’re in good hands while these young men and women are serving. So after touring the town looking for some chow, we settled on Catfish Junction and I got a plate of blackened catfish smothered with crawfish etouffee and an ice cold draft beer. Man, it don’t get much better than that. As we in the South like to say: that there’s some damn good eatin’. That night I slept like a baby in spite of the Cajun frat party going on at the next campsite over.
Sunday morning was cool and clear...a perfect day to ride. The area had about an inch of rain earlier in the week and it looked like it would be dusty in the open areas but nice loam back in the trees. As it turned out most of the race was in the woods and dust was not much of a factor at all. We lined up at the start and got to meet our row mates. Phil was on a Husky 4-stroke and Raymond was on a Honda CRF 250X. Raymond is a friend of Jim Cook and I remembered him from our Red River Enduro last fall. As we were forming up our row at the start I apparently bumped my ICO and started it 44 seconds too early. This would be the first of many mistakes on the day, but this one wasn’t too big of an issue because the format of this race was different from most enduros. The race consisted of a series of special tests and each test was preceded by a long reset so in theory everyone would be able to arrive at the start of the test on time and from there you ride each test section as hard and fast as possible. Just to keep everyone honest they threw in an observation check in the middle of each test and an occasional secret check in the transfer sections.
Our minute came up and away we went and the guy on the Husky simply checked out and disappeared. Keith and I were pretty much on our own and Raymond was somewhere behind us. We immediately hit some fairly tight single track, all first and second gear stuff, and started getting down on time. When the terrain opened up again we wicked it up and were flying along down the trail a ways when Keith stopped and mentioned that there weren’t any arrows any more. I guess I was in a daze because if he hadn’t said anything I probably would have ridden halfway back to Texas before realizing that I wasn’t on the course. We turned back the way we came but couldn’t find where we lost the trail. Looking through the trees we saw some riders so we cut over and damn if we didn’t end up riding almost all of that first three mile tight section all over again. We rode like maniacs but when we got to the start of the first test we were down by 4 minutes. That little snafu cost us a *lot* of points. We lost 4 points at the known control check in which also added 4 points to our test section score. So that one error cost us 8 points no more than three miles into the race. The first test section was fun even though I was really pissed that I lost those points. The test consisted of miles of tight woods but nothing as bad as the Cajun Classic from two weeks earlier and not as bad as I remember for the last Piney Woods Enduro that I rode in ‘00. I think we came out of the first test with a disastrous 17 points plus 4 more from the KC at the start of the test. Damn. Two checks in and already we collected 21 points. This wasn’t looking too good.
At the first gas we heard of a few folks with flat tires, probably from the tree roots that crisscrossed the trail, but Keith’s KTM 200 MXC and my 300 EXC were holding up well. We hit the next test section determined to hang with the Husky on our row because that guy definitely had it going on. But early in the test I got lost yet again in some tight trees and unfortunately Raymond followed me. We both had to cut through the woods to get back on track but we lost a good minute or two right there. I was trying to catch back up to Keith and the Husky when I clipped a tree with my left handlebar which pinballed me into a head on collision with a Louisiana pine. The impact threw me into the tree, smacking my right shoulder really hard and knocked the ICO back into my Scotts steering stabilizer. Luckily the radiators were intact and the bars and levers were still straight. Thank God for Moose hand guards. After a quick inventory I remounted and this time I really put my head down and rode as hard as I could. Interestingly I found that when I used my usual style of short shifting to third gear I had a hard time keeping the bike on the ground which made it difficult to brake and corner cleanly. So I started just screaming the crap out of the bike while keeping it in first and second, unless I had a long straight stretch where I had room to air it out. The end result of this was that I didn’t have to shift and brake as much and I was also carrying good corner speed in the turns. In spite of getting lost and whacking the tree I still managed to catch Keith right at the end of the test. Unfortunately though I didn’t leave well enough alone and decided to pass Keith and go for the guy on the Husky. That extra 1% of input was too much and I had no more than gone around Keith when I hit a rooty rut and deflected off into the bushes. While I was extricating my bike Keith repassed and got me by a little under a minute at the end of the section.
We cruised in to the second gas and then on to the start of the 3rd test section which was reserved for the A/B riders. This time Keith was going to make sure I didn’t catch him and he and the Husky checked out right from the start. I actually prefer to ride with no one around so this suited me fine. I was running pretty much the same pace as the 2nd test which was plenty fast for me. Frankly I don’t think I could have gone any faster and lived to tell about it. I was pretty much tapped out in 2nd gear, hammering whoops between trees that were only a few inches from the ends of my handlebars. I got in the flow and was riding well when suddenly I noticed that yet again I had left the trail somewhere. I had to backtrack a long way to find the trail again. I got back to speed quickly but my time for the test was pretty well shot. By the end of the section Keith had me by a good 4 minutes and any notions of getting a trophy went down in flames. The final insult was when I got lost going back to camp. But it wasn’t entirely my fault. The arrows pointing the way simply stopped. Me and about a dozen other riders spent at least 30 minutes riding up and down various trails trying to pick up the arrows again. Finally I rode backwards up the trail back to the last check to get directions. After getting confirmation of the correct route back I staggered into camp and faced the dreaded task of packing up for the trip back home. By the time I got back Keith was already cleaned up and had everything mostly packed so my delay actually did me some good.
If you’re wondering how I managed to get lost so many times I guess I must accept a large part of the blame because I tend to concentrate on the ground ahead and failed to monitor the trees for arrows. Another part of the problem was that this is a public riding area so there were a lot of side trails and they all had recent traffic so there were tire tracks everywhere and being on row 9 meant that the trails weren’t beat in yet so all the side trails looked just like the race trail. Another thing is that Keith and I are accustomed to following ribbons more than arrows. Most of the Texas races have ribbons close enough together that no matter where you are on the trail you can always see a ribbon and Texas will generally cordon off the side trails with barricade tape. I’m not sure, but I suspect that the Forest Service would not allow ribbon at this event because none was used. Also, the SERA black arrows on white background simply don’t show up as well in the woods as the fluorescent orange arrows that TSCEC uses. One other issue I had was that while the club had lots of arrows in some places there were times where the arrows thinned out considerably. Before long I was so gun shy about getting lost that even in the test sections if I got to a place where I couldn’t see an arrow I’d slow down and start looking over my shoulder to see if anyone else was coming as reinforcement that I was on the correct trail. This added significantly to my time in the special tests.
My final score was a dismal 52, good enough only for 4th place TSCEC and 7th in my class. Keith finished 1st place TSCEC and maybe fourth in his class. But in spite of the trouble we had with getting lost I think the club did an admirable job in putting on this race. It takes an incredible amount of labor to lay out 77 ground miles of trail and my hat is off to SERA and ADR for giving us a wonderful course to ride. It was certainly challenging and I really enjoyed the special test format. I can’t wait to try it again next year...from row 20