CROSS-COUNTRY DIRT BIKE RACE

I am a mechanic. Well, I am a mechanic by trade, anyway. What my friends call me is “that guy who you never see without a bike of some form or other”. Although they usually shorten it to “bike guy”. I take them apart, I put them back together, and I do what I can to improve them even by a percentage point at a time – the bikes, that is, not my friends. I am serious about bikes. Too serious, say some of my mates, but you just have to laugh that stuff off when you see how their faces drop when a soccer team playing in England (where they have never been) loses a match. Too serious about bikes? No way. No such thing.

I will confess to loving bikes though. Bikes and biking. I have ridden a Harley, I have ridden more Kawasaki’s than I could remember, I have enjoyed just about every different classic motorbike that I could possibly think of. Nevertheless, I also like dirt bikes. Down at the garage this comes in for some … gentle mocking. However, some of the course runs I go on, if you were to take a Harley you would come back home as part of the bike. They would bury what they could salvage and leave the rest for the crows. No, at times a dirt bike is just what you need. If some people disagree with that, well, I will send a nice bouquet when they try some of the jumps I’ve made on a dirt bike with their big hog.

I have recently been entering statewide cross-country dirt bike races as quickly as I can find them, because the enjoyment to be had on these days out is something that I simply have not found anywhere else. I even win sometimes. Take last weekend. I was in a race with a course of about 27.5 km, and about 2.5 of that was over flat terrain. The rest of it was bone-shaking, stuntman defying goodness that you can only experience on a dirt bike. It was classic, I won, and I have never enjoyed myself more. However, I did fall off – twice – and on the first occasion, I really hurt my hand. It was bleeding. It would have stopped me winning if I had been going fast at the time, but it was on a tight corner and I had slowed right down.

I pulled out the hydration pack I had stowed in the carry-case on my bike, and cleaned the wound well enough to get to the end of the race and get it properly seen to. In so doing, I set a new course record as well, so I was pretty chuffed, all things considered. Without that fall, I would have won by more and broken the record by more. Without my dirt bike – on anything more powerful – I would have hurt myself really badly. In addition, without the hydration pack? Well, I do not think I would have won the race, put it that way.