Can a 70 Year Old be a Newbie?

Sierra Old Timers 36th Annual International Motocross

If you remember about a month ago I rode my first MX in thirty plus years at the So Cal Old Timers chapter round in Hesperia CA where in the second moto I knocked my friend down and thought I had just lost my invite to his house for a BBQ that night. Then I weenie’d out on Sunday’s race because it was really cold and windy. Well the weather was a bit better at the Marysville CA round. Friday’s practice weather was good, but Saturday’s race was cool and windy. The afternoon wind really picked up but Sunday’s weather was less windy and warmer.

After attending two rounds of Old Timer MX put on by two different clubs the one thing I’m most impressed by is their efforts to have a fun safe track and how efficiently they run the motos, as I said before they don’t mess around, they line’em up and go. The Marysville course held at the MMX track where they used the 8/10 mile sand track and actually crossed over a paved road twice where they added about 3/10’s of a mile of a slower more technical mixture of sand and loam. All in all I liked it.

Everybody hopes to have their own fifteen minutes of fame at some point in their life, well I had mine this past weekend. By Old Timer rules I was required to sign up within a certain rider classification then depending on how you scored they would either move you up or down in classification.

Well as it turned out I was in the wrong classification I think the closest anyone was to me was about thirty seconds in the first moto. On Sunday a friend of mine timed me and I was fifty seconds ahead after three laps in the first moto. Needless to say I’ve been moved up to the next classification. You know what though it felt good to be out front stylin. A legend in my own mind, basking in my own glory. Everybody should get to experience that at least once…. right?  My wife and friends thought it was great, Eric #33 thought I was a sand bagger.

As it turns out there was some pit falls to being so far out front. I had no one to dice with. During my last moto on Sunday it dawned on me that I had not used this time to continue practicing on some of the areas of the course where I was struggling. I just safely rode around those spots not trying to get better. On the flip side of that another friend of mine rode his first Old Timer event and even though he ended up first in each moto he had to work for it and his lap times improved throughout the weekend. I’d say we were very close in lap times when we were practicing Friday but I’ll bet he was three or four seconds a lap faster than me by Sunday afternoon.

The question now is do I want to retire a legend in my own mind or go to the event in Fernley, NV in the fall and take my chances on getting spanked in the new class. Well….I do have a few months to think about it.

Doug 21J

PS I rode my new 2012 Yamaha WR450F this past weekend and no I didn’t race with the lights on I unplugged them. I’m going to do a little write up on my impressions of the new fuel injected bike soon.