Trail Rider Magazine

24 Trail Rider www.TrailRider.com Topping the vintage (short course) racers was Nick Sanford on an MX360 in the Historic Open class, with Chilly White pu ng his 370 Frontera in the P2 slot. Fred Hoess finished 13th overall (because they don't separate the vintage and PV scores) but easily topped the post-vintage field for his third PV overall. Suzy Moody won the inappropriately named Powderpuff class on her IT200 (trust me, there wasn't one Pow- derpuff line out there!) just seconds behind Vintage 200 winner Kevin O'Brien on a Hodaka Super Rat. Lendon Smith rode his IT465 conserva vely for a P7 post-vintage finish. Fred, Lendon, and Chilly were originally going to ride both the vintage and mod- ern races, but plans changed faster than a GNCC pit stop. A er riding the sigh ng laps, Fred and Lendon switched from riding solo to riding as a team, alter- na ng laps. That was the plan Sunday morning, but a er thrashing their bikes through the sloppy vintage race, they decided not to destroy their bikes in the hundred miler and sat it out. Chilly, though ul tech- nician that he is, figured he'd do the 100-miler on his Frontera to get in more prac ce me for Poland. As you'll read below, those good plans got sidelined in short order. The course needed to be swept out a er the vin- tage mudfest and that's where my "fun" began. I met up with the young sweep guys and we kind of leap-frogged around different parts of the course so nobody got too worn out. The rain had moved back in, and my goggles quickly became useless. A few minutes later my glasses were useless as well, so crappy vision became the order of the day. A er several riders came out of the woods on foot, we sent word back for a four-wheeler to pull broken bikes out of the woods. Trail boss Tobe Moore and I rode the course backward to find a pair of ITs sunk to the gas tanks in a quagmire that had developed at the bo om of one of the easy lines coming down a sub- stan al hill. A er a brief discussion, the easy line was ribboned off and the 100-miler racers would have to take the hard downhill line and the sunken bikes would have to wait un l later to be yanked out. The primary focus was ge ng the course cleared and all riders accounted for so the 100-miler could get underway. Back at the start, wet, half-blind, and fairly well exhausted, I heard the scoring crew on the radio looking for someone to wipe numberplates and flag at the scoring trailer. I weighed ruining my bike and possibly working myself into a heart a ack ver- sus wiping off muddy numberplates and quickly volunteered to be a wiper, probably saving the EMS crews from having to do CPR on me out in the woods someplace. I watched the start and then walked over to assume my newfound job where I wouldn't be a liability, killing myself on the course. Everyone expected Nick Brawner to be first through the scoring chute a er the first lap, but a guy on a Husky came through about 3 minutes ahead of the leader (Nick) and promptly pulled off the course. I'm pre y sure he took a cross-coun- try shortcut just to be done with the misery! Nick was the first true leader and held a top 5 spot all a ernoon. He finished 5th overall but first in the solo category to retain his crown. Two teams of two riders each finished just ahead of him, but they did not have to stop for gas, goggles, gloves, or hydra on, so Nick is s ll the King of the GP. In past years, the checkers flew right around the three-hour mark, but this year, they found the race barely halfway through a er three hours. The organizers decided to shorten the race and make it nine laps instead of 10, and I'm sure nobody griped about that. The bikes and riders coming through scoring told a tale of misery and hardship. The top riders came through covered in mud but anxious to keep going. Most of the rest of the pack looked relieved to see scoring (where many of them called it quits a er a cou- ple of laps), and then some looked like German soldiers walking back from the Russian front, shell-shocked, exhausted, with shell-shocked eyes peering out from mud-covered faces. Towards the end of the race, a couple of senior riders pulled up well short of the scoring chute and parked, wai ng to see the checkered flag displayed before limping through to finish. One guy said, "If I go back out there again, you're gonna have to come a er me with a body bag. I don't even know if I can make it back to my van!" There was some momentary confusion at scoring since everyone had assumed Nick Brawner was the front-runner. This was not the case as two of the teams had go en by him while he pi ed. When the decision was made to shorten the race, the team riders had already gone through scoring and were back out on the course. They ended

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