Season Opener, Round 1, NCHSA Series, Devil's Ridge Hare Scramble
 

This was my Sunday ride. :D

Yesterday was the season opener of the North Carolina Hare Scramble Association's race series, this year held at Devil's Ridge MX. I had planned to do the race from a few weeks back, and talked a few buddies from ADVrider into joining me. They were pretty gung ho before, but they were NOT happy with me afterwards, turns out it was a mudder, and a bad mudder at that.

I have some helmet cam that will follow, but it will take a few days to get that edited and uploaded. I'm inclined to just post the entire first lap and save the editing time, but it's pretty long. I got stuck real bad the first lap and it took me a while to get out. And I get held up and then stuck even worse on the 2nd lap. Good lord those mud bogs really suck the energy right out of you. I swear my heart rate hit 200 and maintained steady at red-line after that.

Some of the names mentioned below are ADVrider screen names. And that's how I'll refer to them here.

Thanks to Mrs TW for these pics, she took some really great photos with my crappy little pocket camera. I know getting camera duty kind of sucks, but they way I look at it, the person with the camera gets to tell the story, so we get to see the event through Wendy's eyes, and I think she did a great job of capturing it. I can't thank you enough. ;)

On to the photos ...

Setting up at our start row, I like getting the bike up there early to get the start position I want. Also, if the bike is up there, that means I won't be fiddling with it back at the pit and change something I should have left well enough alone. :rolleyes:

http://photos.smugmug.com/photos/811...zm9rv-XL-1.jpg


Back at the pit, Erek's and TD's bike are getting worked over by the pit crew.

http://photos.smugmug.com/photos/811...fJwUV-XL-1.jpg


While the ladies were catching up and enjoying the nice day.

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About time to gear up, here I am putting on my boots. Yeah I know ... you have to look close, but I'm actually in this photo somewhere. :D

http://photos.smugmug.com/photos/811...ieGmD-XL-1.jpg


Tourist, ncTrailBoss, and Lurch likely suggesting some ill-advised setup changes to Tree Dodger's bike.

http://photos.smugmug.com/photos/811...hcAkz-XL-1.jpg


Tarheel Wheeler gives the traditional ADVrider salute:

http://photos.smugmug.com/photos/811...hqmSJ-XL-1.jpg


Tree Dodger and Nobrakes - friends in the pits, mortal enemies on the track. :p j/k TD is a good guy! He passed me clean out on the track ... twice. Unlike that ncTrailBoss fella. :)

http://photos.smugmug.com/photos/811...xzTiP-XL-1.jpg


Erek, TreeDodger, Nobrakes, and TD's buddy. Little did we know what lay in wait for us out on the course.

http://photos.smugmug.com/photos/811...hy2xE-XL-1.jpg


Up at the starting area.

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Yep, the helmet still fits.

http://photos.smugmug.com/photos/811...PkWA9-XL-1.jpg

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A sea of bikes, we are out in that chaos somewhere:

http://photos.smugmug.com/photos/811...UE6my-XL-1.jpg

The launch:

http://photos.smugmug.com/photos/811...qXZEX-XL-1.jpg


Tree Dodger coming up by the pit area:

http://photos.smugmug.com/photos/811...7Ywcw-XL-1.jpg


Nobrakes coming up by the pit area:

http://photos.smugmug.com/photos/811...LABSk-XL-1.jpg


The track looped back up by, this is a few minutes later on the same lap:

http://photos.smugmug.com/photos/811...hUM9B-XL-1.jpg

http://photos.smugmug.com/photos/811...xwyLy-XL-1.jpg


Tree Dodger's buddy getting advice on which line to take. The smart riders in this race listened to bystanders and took the lines they pointed out. Take the wrong line and you'll likely spend the next 20 minutes trying to get your bike unstuck:

http://photos.smugmug.com/photos/811...NQbWR-XL-1.jpg


Nobrakes in the middle, with TD in front, same area. I remember that spot precisely, there was a big buried root right there that my back wheel is about to go over.

http://photos.smugmug.com/photos/811...MZsYA-XL-1.jpg


Nobrakes in front, TreeDodger close behind and getting a little sideways. That spot is slick, I did the same thing TD is doing the lap before, so this time around I was ready for it. This is such a cool shot - as gnarly as that track was, this was toward the end of the first lap and we both had our fair share of issues. At least I know I got pretty severely stuck once real bad that lap that held me up, not sure about TD but I assume he did the same at a different place, but here we are near the end of lap 1 and we are in the same frame. We couldn't have planned it that way if we had tried.


http://photos.smugmug.com/photos/811...oW9F2-XL-1.jpg


Nobrakes on the MX track. The MX track conditions were perfect. Definitely cannot say the same for the rest of the course. But it was fun, as brutal as it was.

http://photos.smugmug.com/photos/811...RsM9j-XL-1.jpg

http://photos.smugmug.com/photos/811...UJaCi-XL-1.jpg


Post race, just pulled in, man that was a lot of mud and the course was certainly the hardest conditions that I've ever ridden.

http://photos.smugmug.com/photos/811...Y4puX-XL-1.jpg

http://photos.smugmug.com/photos/811...TYYQ4-XL-1.jpg


Not sure who this is, is this Erek? If so, ouch dude! Did you do that during the race?

http://photos.smugmug.com/photos/811...SJHe3-XL-1.jpg

Trophy - what a hard race. I didn't finish that great, I felt like I could have done a whole lot better if only for two bad choices that cost me a whole lot of time getting my bike unstuck. But apparently a lot other people had similar troubles, so when it was all factored into account, my finish was good enough for a trophy. I must say, my spirits lifted 3 fold back at the number crunching station where they posted the official results and where I learned that bit of news.

http://photos.smugmug.com/photos/811...VRewD-XL-1.jpg

http://photos.smugmug.com/photos/811...jxCUb-XL-1.jpg


And after a whole lot of spraying and scrubbing I got all my gear and the bike cleaned up today. She sure looks perty all cleaned up, if I must say so myself:

http://photos.smugmug.com/photos/811...tMXwK-XL-1.jpg

http://photos.smugmug.com/photos/811...Av2Si-XL-1.jpg


The money shot:

http://photos.smugmug.com/photos/811...PsdAh-XL-1.jpg


And best one of all, one with my sponsor logos - VIU Racing, and AREA 51. :D It sure was great having a cheering section - it don't get much better than that. You don't realize how much that lifts your spirits when you feel like you can't go through one more mud bog, but then to come around and hear the encouragement, it's a big morale booster! That was a first for me. And never having had one, I didn't know what I was missing. Thanks again! ;)

http://photos.smugmug.com/photos/811...gzcgA-XL-1.jpg


That was one very difficult course, I must say.

Sweet pics. Looks like your season is off to a great start. Hope you get some more good weather so you can ride. Autumn is upon us down here and although I've been riding in the 100+ heat I'll welcome some rain and the cooler conditions it brings. It will be good to keep the dust down.

Nice pics NB, looking foward to the helmet cam video. I almost got that muddy on my last ride, took 2 days of cleaning to get it all out! :D

Congrats on the trophy. Looks like a good time except for the mudholes. So much of the east is soggy and sloppy. It's gonna take a string of warm sunny days to dry it out. It's great when the track is in that "sweet spot' when it's not wet and not dusty either.

Mike

Awesome! Glad to see that the bike came out clean...I was worried there for a second. Lots of nice bikes there, and some of the trail looked pretty decent, but that mud! Brutal! :)

Thanks for the kind comments. I'm having some technical difficulties with the video, seems the audio doesn't want to cooperate and is buzzing and popping. It's not on the original, so I'm trying to covert to another format to see if FCE likes that better.

In the meantime, got a couple more pics to share, these from a local photog. One of the start, and one at some point on the MX track. Nothing too spectacular. Too bad he didn't hang out back at one of the 289 mud bogs on the course, he could have got some pretty exciting photos. :eek:

http://photos.smugmug.com/photos/812255259_GGTQW-XL.jpg

http://photos.smugmug.com/photos/812257408_PUg95-XL.jpg

I don't see a KLX250 anywhere? lol

I do, in Deej's signature. :rolleyes:

But point taken. I'll make sure this is my last ride report here ...