Trail Rider Magazine

38 Trail Rider www.TrailRider.com by the time it starts to pour, so I proceed calmly as my goggles fog up and my boots fill with water. Lack of visibil- ity slows my pace—the rain is a complete whiteout at times—but it slows everyone else's pace too. I pass one guy who has stopped by the side of the trail to turn his goggles around, then another, then another. I squint harder and twist the throttle. Not one to waste an oppor- tunity, I vow not to stop for goggle management until some solid object stops me. The world washes over my lenses in a bluish-grey blur and my tires bounce faithfully over obstacles that I can't see to avoid. Finally I get side- ways in the whooped-out section and relegate the goggles to the back of my helmet. The sky flashes above the scrub; I hear a low rumble beneath the racket of rain on my visor and the ring-a-ding of my bike. I pick up the pace until I'm back under cover of trees. The deep woods are dark and mysterious as they stream with rain, but I try to discourage myself from stopping like Robert Frost to ad- mire them. Eventually, lights in the distance sharpen my focus. Two bikes appear ahead of me, one a Honda, and the lighted one a KDX. I try to squeeze by them in another line, hit a slippery root and crash. An acrid mixture of sweat, con- densed two-stroke smoke and rusty New Hampshire dirt runs into my mouth as I pick the bike up. By the end of this, I predict, the rain is going to seem a lot less charm- ing. By the time I catch up with them, Honda Man has passed KDX Man and I am stricken with a new sense of ur- gency. If I want to make a third lap, I better move it. I take another single track line to get alongside KDX Man and powerslide past him into a tight corner. Honda Man is close ahead. I glue myself to his rear wheel, pull my clutch in and peg the throttle. He dives out of the way and I blast past. Unfortunately, at this point I enter Supergnarl Part 2, a cambered maze of trees, rocks and ruts preceding a nar- row and slippery bridge. I choose a bad line, get stuck in a rut, and Honda Man paddles past me. I begin to panic. Volunteers help me free my bike and, panting, I push it the rest of the way to the bridge. Directly across the bridge is an enormous hill. What was a smooth, dry ascent on the first lap has dissolved into a filthy waterfall. With zero approach speed, I make it halfway up, hit a mud-slathered rock, and get deflected 90 degrees off the trail. Panic gives way to despair. The poor sweepers—including Morgan's dad, unfortunately—hear the full range of my foul vocabulary as they haul my bike to the top, and I pick up a faceful of roost as I try to help them by pushing. I scrape the mud out of my eyes at the top, then wobble through the lumpy, slimy field track to the start-finish gates. Sure enough, my worst fears are re- alized: a sodden checkered flag flaps at me as I pass. Swearing inwardly, I park my KTM by the Element and sulk in the pouring rain for 40 minutes until Greg arrives. The rain stops, we get changed, and then we wait around at the sign-in tent until the trophies for the novice race are given out. I have won first place in the Women's class—I had a 50-50 chance of that, since there was only one other woman registered in same. Meanwhile, Taylor Johnston finished 4 th in C200, making her the first woman in NETRA to get promoted to B class through the hare scramble series. Not for the first time, I reflect that the Women's class is kind of a cop-out—though in its defense, it does give ladies who are new to racing a low-stress way to see if they enjoy it. Usually low-stress, anyway. Greg and I agreed that with the amount of people packed into the last line that morning, we might actually have experi- enced less chaos by riding in C250. And speaking of promotions, I did a little number crunching after the results were posted: True, my total race time was only five minutes faster than last year's, but last year I came in 99 th out of 116 finishers and this year I came in 86 th out of 114. In other words, I moved up from the 15 th to the 25 th percentile of C class, and if the trend is linear (don't laugh), I'll be accumulating points toward B class by the time I'm 30. Better late than never!

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