It was a $600 20 year old four door 317I with over 340k on the clock.
I wanted to escape the small town trouble I was getting into and
follow the national off road WORCS series. I found that my bike fit
quit nice into the back seat after I removed the wheels, forks and
handlebars. At 40 mpg I wonder why I don’t still travel to races in
such a fashion. I would arrive to a race-paddock swarmed with giant
semi trucks and grey hound bus sized RV campers and easily find room
for my bike stand. While I would assemble my bike with a special
pride. Some people would strike up a conversation about how I was
keeping the soul of the sport while most people would just stare. At
round 3 of the 12 round series such a conversation was struck with the
Maxxis tire support truck and before I knew it I had a job spooning on
50+ tires at every round of the series. At $10 a tire I was now paying
my entry fee and some of the travel expense. By the halfway point of
the season I was a known face at the WORCS races. The races were
spread across the western USA; SoCal, Utah, Arizona and up to
Washington state. Washougal MX was the first destination of many for
my then 6 week old Border Collie pup Baja. I remember showing up to
the locked front gate in the middles of the night and like always I
slept out beside my car in my old mummy bag. I tied some nylon chord
around my pup and held it in my hand but when I awoke to the
procession of big rigs entering the gates my pup was gone. As soon as
I crawled out of my fart sack to the laughs of passer bys my little
black and white buddy came leaping out of the dense forest to lick my
face with the pungent stink only puppy kisses hold. I ended up taking
a job in Seattle for a month and a half followed by two weeks working
in Vegas on a big trade show while being put up in the now demolished
Sahara casino. I returned home to Colorado a man that the boy I was
could never have become but from following a dream. That summer I
stuck that little Beemer axle deep in Pismo beach as the tide came in
and filled my floor boards as the local Cali bros filled my pockets
with hashish in admiration for my mode of travel. On a lonesome
blistering hot stretch in Nevada I punched out my broken sunroof in a
desperate rage to get cool air. Within a mile the pulsing wind made me
turn around to retrieve my sunroof and duck tape it back into place.
I would often pull off into truck stops, driveways, and vacant fields
and dump out onto the ground to sleep only to awaken to a bustling
California fruit stand or a lot lizard in a crack come-down frenzy.
Many a midnight songs were cranked through that CD player. Many
friends were made at the races. Even a pit tootsie or two snuck some
naughty in that little car. My hard sweating work on the tire truck
changing tires between my races helped my push myself. My racing
results were on par with some of the top racers. I was invited to eat
dinner with the best of people in the paddock from the everyday mom
and pops to people like Destry Abbot. The late Nathan Woods once let
me sleep inside the back of his toy hauler. I was pickep up by some
sugar daddies to race for Team USA in an FIM Asia Enduro round in
Thailand. Simply because of how I did things. By the final round of
the year I won an amateur over all class championship. All this with
no real source of finance. Just the desire to race. That winter I
bought a van and since then I have chased my never ending dream. The
adventure will always be whatever we make it to be…
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