So there I was, looking down the barrel at middle age and getting the urge to throw a leg over a dirt bike, something I hadn’t done for at least 25 years.
It was December 2005 and my family and I were living just outside Phoenix, AZ. Somewhere along the way I had come across a flyer for an off-road motorcycle race – the Kilauea Crusher (named for the gravel company whose land it was being run on) in Wickenburg, AZ. I thought it would be a cool thing to go see on a Sunday afternoon, so I went to check it out. By the time it was over, I was absolutely 100% hooked. Watching the eventual winner Destry Abbott effortlessly destroy his competition had me thinking “hell, I can do that….”
Where it all started – Desert Wells, Florence, AZ circa 2006 on a 1993 XR250L
Before the week was out, I was the proud owner of a 1993 Honda XR250L. OK, not exactly the optimum bike to build ones racing fortunes on – it was slow, heavy, and massively outdated – but it was a start….and it was mine, baby!
Over the course of the next five months, I spent nearly every waking hour out in the desert on that bike re-learning how to ride. I crashed. A lot. But as time passed, I began to spend less time picking gravel out of my teeth and more learning the general principals of going as fast as you can without killing yourself.
Fast-forward to March 2006. Barely two months on the bike and, being the cocky bastard I can sometimes be, decide it’s time to go racing. Sunday March 26th, I find myself lined up with 60-some-odd other riders at the starting line of the Rockstars Rain Dance GP in Peoria, AZ.
Spot the NOOB – Bob ‘racing’ the Raindance GP March 2006
How’d it go? To say I had absolutely no clue what I was in for would be the understatement of the century. God, I sucked. Barely made one full lap (a whopping 5 miles or so if memory serves) before before calling it a day. Arm pump, leg pump, dehydrated….completely, totally exhausted. Came in 66th out of 67 riders in my race, and I think #67 must have either died at the line or been a figment of someone’s imagination. Talk about a reality check.
From this point on though, my new routine became woodshed ….practice ….race …..woodshed …..practice …..race. I still crashed a lot, but my philosophy was – and still is to this day – if you’re not crashing, you’re not trying hard enough; if you don’t overreach, you’ll never get any better. And day by day, little by little, I started getting better.
The move back to North Carolina in July 2006 brought with it a whole new set of challenges as I adapted to the decidedly un-desert-like terrain and got acquainted with the sheer joy of riding on wet clay and mud. The good news is that I had the good fortune to meet the Czysz family, owners of North Carolina Motorsports Park
Mark Czysz at the Denver Classic circa 2007
Mark Czysz is the kind of guy who absolutely lives and breathes dirt bikes – it’s all about riding, and that sort of hardcore enthusiasm can’t help but motivate anyone who’s around it. For 2007, Mark put together a loosely-organized hare scramble race team called Team Krusty Racing. TKR was made up of Mark, me and several NCMP regulars, with skill levels ranging from barely novice (me) to really talented A-class racers. It was during this season where I went from kind of flailing around to really starting to hone some skills. The guys I rode and raced with were all, to a man, very, very good riders, providing me with this fairly impressive pool of talent from which to learn. It was a great summer, and I was fortunate to be a part of the whole thing.
I raced the full 2007 season of the North Carolina Hare Scramble Association on that ratty old XR250 and somehow managed to get somewhat competitive. No top-10 finishes that year, but I was consistently battling for position (rather than riding around in dead-last place like the previous year) and developing some good-natured rivalries with a couple of the other racers with whom I always seemed to be banging bars with from race to race.
My 1996 KDX200. This, unfortunately, was the Craigslist pic from when I had to sell it.
The 2008/2009 seasons were spotty. I wasn’t able to race either season much due to various economic factors. In early ’08 I had picked up a Kawasaki KDX200 as my new race bike. I was still spending a lot of time practicing at NCMP, and this new 2-stroke machine helped up my game considerably. I raced it a couple of times and got my first real peeks at the top ten but never quite broke in. Unfortunately, I had to sell the KDX due to the aforementioned economic reasons, which left me only with the old XR. I tried racing it one more time but got my ass handed to me in Denver, NC at the 2009 Denver Classic on 8/16. I’d actually gotten a great start and was leaving the rear half of the field behind and catching the front pack when several miles in, forgetting for a moment that I was on the XR250 and not the lighter, faster, more powerful and better handling KDX, I tried to wheelie through a set of nasty ruts. Bad idea. The XR doesn’t handle anything like the KDX, and I crashed badly when the front wheel came down sooner than intended and in a different rut than the rear, sending me right into a stand of trees. It was ugly, and for all intents and purposes ended my season.
VCHSS Blue Ridge 1, May 5th 2010. Finished 5th in class.
In early 2010, with the aforementioned economic problems behind us, I was able to go bike shopping. Ended up with another KDX because they’re cheap, easy to find, and you can race ’em. Got back into my practice routine, focusing primarily on tighter, gnarlier single-track skills, and started picking up some real speed. I was now hanging right with guys who only a few short months ago were leaving me in the dust. Things were looking up 🙂
May 5th, 2010 – Took 5th at the VCHSS Blue Ridge I race
June 20, 2010 – Took 6th at the VXCS NC Motorsports Park race
All during this time, I was experiencing pain in my left knee. Not just while riding, but when doing anything – walking up and down stairs, kneeling, carrying stuff. I wasn’t too worried – chalked it up to being a relatively active guy…and ::cough:: age ::cough::. At any rate, I didn’t take it as a sign of anything serious.
In the mean time, there was something about the way I was riding that wasn’t quite right. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but despite the recent good finishes, I felt my speed wasn’t where it should be. In the slower, tighter, nastier stuff I was getting hard to beat, but when it opened up, I couldn’t hang the way I needed to.
Then one day it hit me. While looking at some race pics, I noticed that I was not positioned on the bike quite the same as the faster guys. My body was forward and practically vertical, while theirs were furher back on the bike but their heads were still right over the number plate. The next weekend while practicing at NCMP, I tried it. You want to know how much faster I was? Like immediately faster? Scared-the-living-shit-out-of-myself faster. No lie, blazing fast. Just like that. Body/weight positioning…all this time, that’s all it was. I had to park the bike and call it a day while I made mental peace with what just occurred, because it totally freaked me out.
Diagnosis: Osteoarthritis 8-2010
The next weekend, I’m at my favorite local super-secret practice spot, about an hour or so into the day and riding great when I notice my knee feels like someone’s driven a nail through it. Brutal, excruciating pain. Apparently my knee was already in pretty bad shape, and this different body position I was using while riding was the final push over the edge for it. A couple of doctor visits later, I’m diagnosed with osteoarthritis in the medial compartment of the left knee. So, just as quickly and unexpectedly as it all started, my dirt riding days appeared to be over.
In December 2010, I went under the knife for a tibial osteotomy, an operation that changes the angle of your lower leg so that more of your weight is carried through the good side of the joint, taking pressure off the bad side, relieving pain and hopefully buying a decade or so before full-on knee replacement becomes necessary.
A week after the operation, 12-2010. You can see the cut and associated hardware, and the synthetic bone filler that didn’t take.
Recovery from this operation was difficult. Out of work for six weeks, most of which was spent hobbling around on a walker. It sucked, but recovery time from this type of operation is measured in months, and sometimes, years.
In March 2011 it became apparent after a follow-up set of X-rays that the bone wasn’t healing properly. On April 4th I went back under the knife for a bone graft, where they took a wedge of bone from my hip and inserted it into the top of my tibia. They also implanted an electronic bone growth stimulator under my skin to help speed things up so I would be back to 100% – or as close to it as possible – in time for the busy season at work. Another two weeks out of work, plus the bone-healing clock was now back at zero again.
2005 Kawasaki Z750S – cool, but didn’t move me.
In the time between the two operations, I had picked up a street bike (2005 Kawasaki Z750S) in hopes of capturing some of that rush I felt on the dirt, but it didn’t happen. The things I had to do on that bike in order to get even a taste of the adrenaline I got on the dirt bike were going to get me killed, absolutely no question abut it. So, after much thought and deliberation, I finally craigslisted the 750 in August and then, with my leg finally on the road to recovery, did the only sane thing I could think of, which was to pick up a 2007 KTM 300 XC-W, a bike with an even more ridiculous power-to-weight ratio than the Z750. For the woods….this would either end well, or spectacularly bad….
Alright then, so what about the knee and not riding dirt again and all that? I dunno, what can I say… I love riding and I love racing. I could sit around and be miserable, or I can adapt to the situation and make the best out of it. Woods racing demands that you’re in a standing position on the bike a very large percentage of the time. I can’t do that anymore. So maybe what I can do is learn to race in a seated position. The KTM’s suspension is world-class, so there shouldn’t be any reason it can’t be made to work properly with a seated rider, right? My first attempts at re-valving the suspension have actually gone pretty well, so we’ll see where it goes.
Back in action: VCHSS Cross Trails race 11-16-2011.
The first day out on the KTM was awesome. Awesome. It took a couple of hours to shake off the rust of almost a year of no riding, but then it was all good. It didn’t even matter that whatever skill I once had seemed to have completely vaporized in the down time. With this motor, this suspension, and an ambitious training schedule, I just may be able to rebuild some competitive speed, even with all the hardware in my leg.
So there you have it. And now, for better or worse, I have three races scheduled for the remainder of 2011 – October 16th, October 30th, and November 13th.