Ping,
What the hell is wrong with fans at races? You carry in a big cooler full of soda and adult beverages for the race and can't seem to walk five feet to the nearest garbage can?
My family attended the recent Indiana National and stuck around to let the traffic thin out a bit. Looking down every hill as we walked out was trash thrown everywhere. Most of the garbage cans were still only half full!
Guess I have a little more respect for the track owners and hired help.
IL Moto.
IL Moto,
Sadly, that isn't just race fans. Unless you are attending a Greenpeace function, chances are any number of people gathered together drinking beer will leave an otherwise trash-free environment looking like a landfill. Maybe they think the price of admission gives them the right to throw their waste wherever they want, or maybe they are just drunk crap bags; we can't be sure. I don't want to go full tree-hugger here, but people treat this planet the way they treat their favorite bar: They go on and on about how much they love it and then they pee on the floor and carve their name into a table with their keys. Hopefully you used that teachable moment to explain to your kids that only complete jackasses would leave their junk scattered around like that, and if you ever see them do the same thing they are out of the will. One year I'd like to build a tree stand at a wooded race and fire off air soft pellets at anybody who throws their trash on the ground. I could use a second gunman if you aren't busy.
PING
G'day Ping!
I just sold my YZ450 last night. With a 15-year-old son and another two kids under 2 years old, I'm enjoying my weekends with the kids (and a few beers) rather than spending it riding, so my bike was just collecting dust, and with my awesome local track (Park4MX) looking more like a freestyle course than a motocross track, you've gotta be riding more regular than once every few months (providing you don't wanna die), and my diet of beer hasn't really made me fitter either. I still love motocross; I have every supercross and motocross review on VHS and DVD that I like to watch all the time and watch whatever live stuff I can, my question is: Can I still call myself a "motocrosser"??? I've had bikes on and off since I was a kid and I'll probably get another bike in four or five years when the kids get older, but I just don't have the urge to ride with my bundles of joy bouncing around, destroying my house. How often do you ride these days? You were a pretty good rider; is it hard for you after you haven't been on a bike for a while? I'm guessing you just dust off the cobwebs and you're back at it, throttle pinned just like Anaheim '96. Anyhoo, might go have beer... :-)
Sent from "Peachman the ???"
Peachman,
It sounds like you are doing the respectable thing here, and there is no shame in putting your selfish wants aside to spend more time with your children. In fact, that is what good parents are supposed to do. Once the kids get a little older it is easier to take them riding with you or sneak off and do some riding on your own without overloading your better half with toddlers. As a true, longtime fan of the sport you can still call yourself a motocrosser with pride. That said, I'm a little concerned you are headed down a slippery slope with the beers and beers and more beers. A little Stella, Amstel Light, and Sam Adams on the regular and obesity will be on you like a truck stop hooker at a Flying J's. A little love handle can be shed, but once you have a boiler out in front of you, it takes an incredible amount of work and discipline to get back to looking like you aren't "with child." And with a massive beer belly you can pretty much kiss riding goodbye. You thought five-lap motos were hard before you were a gigantic fat-ass? Just wait. I'm just throwing that warning out there… watch the beer intake and the sausage lovers pizza with extra sausage.
I'm not riding as much as I'd like to, and I definitely find it more difficult to get comfortable on a track. When I was regularly riding once a week I could hop on and feel totally comfortable within a couple laps. Arm pump wasn't an issue and I could put in twenty-minute motos without a problem. Lately, I've been lucky to get out a couple times a month and I notice the difference. It takes me much longer to feel like I'm not going to die on bigger jumps, and my arms are so pumped up I lose most of my grip strength in just a few laps. Hopefully I can start squeezing in some more laps soon.
PING
Ping
I have a question that I would think is obvious. Why don't the riders have a second or third pair of goggles attached to their bikes (Velcro on bars...) during mud races so they can replace on any part of the track instead of having to pull into the pits? Would this not save them time and their eyeballs at the end when they just toss their goggles and don't want to take the time pulling in?
I await your answer.
Oliver Lee
Oliver,
I'm hoping you were just hammered drunk when you wrote this question because it is just not well thought out at all. So, you contend that riders should have goggles attached to their handlebars with Velcro so that they can change goggles without having to pull into the mechanics area for new goggles? Is that right? Here's why nobody does that: Because that doesn't make sense. If you haven't noticed riders are completely covered in mud by the first turn in a race like that, so anything sitting on the bars would be a disaster. Even if they wrapped them in something there is still a good chance they would have dirt inside the goggle when they pulled it over their helmet, and they would have dirt bouncing around inside the lens. On top of that, there is no significant time to be gained by stopping somewhere on the track versus stopping in the mechanics area where your crew can hand you a towel and the fresh goggles. Either way, they still have to stop so no time is gained. Trey Canard did try something interesting this weekend by wearing two pairs of goggles at once. This seems like some ridiculous thing that Ronnie Mac would do after a case of PBRs, but the idea came from Japan's Akira Narita during a particularly muddy Japanese national. Trey pulled on his roll-offs first then put a second pair of goggles with just tear-offs over the top of them. The idea was to get a lap or two out of the first pair to catch the heavy mud and then throw them and finish with the underneath pair. Brilliant, really, as long as you can see through all that. I imagine your vision would be about as clear as if you opened your eyes underwater in the ocean without goggles. Canard looked like a genius, though, as he took off and won the second moto. Thanks for the query, Oliver. Take it easy on the booze.
PING
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