Issue link: http://trailridermagazine.uberflip.com/i/1456806
18 Trail Rider www.TrailRider.com As you can tell from the knuckles, there was plenty of ght, notchy trail at Sumter. With that being said though, there were s ll quite a few fun and flowy sec ons that made up for it. The heavy rain we got on Friday made for near-perfect condi ons come Sunday. The dirt was also less sandy than I remembered, with a li le more loam and topsoil. The course wasn't terribly rough on row 19, just a few braking bumps and chop here and there. A few of the "hot lines" had already been burnt in, but not many. That is the one small bene- fit of a later row, especially at Sumter. There are lots of turns that get straightened out in the scrubby areas once the Pro1 riders go brush-hogging through the trail. Speaking of "hot lines", partway through test two I started to smell smoke. Normally I would start panicking about my clutch and/ or engine, but I'm on a much more reliable bike than I used to be, and this definitely had a pleasant aroma of woodsmoke, not the acrid smell of a hot clutch. We cross a road, and I find the source of the smell. A controlled burn had recently been done in this sec on of the forest. The trail became a light ribbon of sandy soil, snaking through the ash and debris on ei- ther side. The burn had to be rela vely fresh, because several mes in this sec on I passed logs that were s ll smoldering. One of my favorite moments out on the trail was when I ran across a pit board leaned up against the tree. Wri en on the pit board in all caps was PHOTO AHEAD. I made sure to flare my elbows out with extra aggression and try not to make a stupid face. A erwards, I couldn't decide if I thought it was funny, or if I was offended that the photographer thought we looked so bad last test that we needed a li le heads-up this go-around. While we're talking about looking bad, we're approaching the end of the ar cle, so I sup- pose this is the part where I need to start talking about my results. I plan to contribute to Trail Rider off-and-on throughout the year, and readers will no ce a dis nct pa ern: If the race went well, I will immediately start talking about it and probably bore all of you to death.