Motoring at Merwin

 Round #12 of the Forward Motion Hare Scrambles Series was held in Merwin, MO.  The location is the Midwest Extreme Park which has a sweet outdoor MX track and about 9 miles of trails. 

First up was a little pre-ride of the course.  One of the reasons we are traveling to these events is to ride some new areas.  Unfortunately there aren't very many open areas to ride so this is a great way to check out the awesome places to ride throughout the Midwest. 


Best Family sport.... I can not think of many sports that can match motorcycle racing.  It is a great family sport that allows a family to build life long bonds. 

20 long years...It has been over 20 years since I lined up behind a gate full of riders.   To tell you the truth I was a little nervous and actually felt very nauseous before the race started.  I would actually prefer that all these events used a gate and/or had a live engine start.  I see no reason to have a dead engine start.   We practiced several starts before the event.  Christopher stalled his engine on the first one.  I can remember my first start.  It was down in Homestead, Florida.  Some of you old Motocross guys will remember this.  Instead of using a gate we used an ultra long rubber band that was stretched across the starting area.  The starter would release the rubber band and off we went.  Back then I earned the nickname "Mr Holeshot".  As you can see by the second photo below the name can still apply :-)

Two in a row....The past two weekends have been good to me.  I got good start at both events and had a lot of fun riding the courses.   I flowed very well when I kept to my own lines and was by myself riding my own race.  I continue to have trouble passing riders in other classes.  I actually crashed once and nearly took my head off on a large tree branch yesterday. Both times when trying to pass others riders who failed to yield to a faster rider who isn't even in their class.  I can see not yielding to a rider in your class, but if a rider in another class comes up behind me yelling to get by, I let them safely by.  That is the key word - Safely.  Besides dead engine starts, this passing problem is the only negative about this sport.  Anyway,  it has been a long time since I was able to say I won two events in a row.  

Still a lot of learning....Christopher is a very good mountain bike rider and can out climb me and show me how it is done over very technical terrain; however, the old man still has a sport he can be on top.  I will give this to him.  He is trying to improve and is having a lot of fun in the process.  He got a dead last start and had a couple of mishaps out there Sunday, but still battled back to earn 2th place on the day.   One other good thing is that I think he has finally come to the conclusion that the old man is correct that he needs to start focusing on his strength and train on a regular basis.   It takes a lot of strength and coordination to "make" one of these 250 machines do what you want it to.