My very first motorcycle race was an AMA District 36 Benefit hare scramble in Fernley, Nevada, when I was a teenager. I was running near the front of my class when my Husqvarna 500cc four-stroke’s shifter somehow came loose and fell off, sticking me in third gear, which was far too tall for the upcoming sand hill that I knew was on the course after having circulated it on the previous laps. I tried my best to slip the clutch up that damn hill, only to smoke the plates and leave me with no forward drive. My first off-road race produced my first DNF. Worse yet, as I sat there at the bottom of that hill with about half a dozen other riders who were done for the day, I proceeded to wretch my breakfast all over a sage brush as the adrenaline of the ride began to wear off.
Then there was the time at the Cow Puncher Hare Scrambles where I found out that very same Husqvarna was illegal to ride because it didn’t have the necessary spark arrestors in its dual mufflers, and I was forced to ride my ancient Honda XR200R against a sea of green Kawasaki KDX200s in the 200cc class. It turned out to be one of my best-ever off-road race finishes, seventh out of 30 starters.
As I sit here typing this, I am doing so with a right hand that looks like something a monkey would wear thanks to it getting smashed into sawdust by a rock punted at me from the rear tire of a Vet rider on a Honda CR500R at the California City GP in the mid-1990s. That one required a major reconstructive surgery complete with rods and countless hours of therapy just to get the hand to work even remotely like it used to.
The point here is that off-road racing delivers the kind of wild-and-wooly, unpredictable adventure that you aren’t likely to find in any other form of dirtbike racing. Here are 10 great reasons to give it a go.
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