What a weird weekend. First off, started Thursday morning with a sore throat that turned into a full blown head cold by Friday afternoon. Yippie. Saturday I took the bikes out to practice and run the Sportsman Am race but only make 3 practice laps before having to call it quits. Couldn't breath and started getting tunnel vision. Cold illness mixed with 100+ temp I'm sure had something to do with it. Anyway, track was awesome. Really wish I could have raced it. Fast forward to Sunday morning. I finally convinced my brother to give quad racing a shot so I put him on my other quad, '05 TRX450R. First time racing anything other than cars on the street here and there (yes I know, not smart or legal but we were young and dumb once). So anyway, he ran the same class I do, Over 30. This is the first time the 250R has been off the property since the mud race at Oak Hill where I ingested a bunch of water into my bottom end. So I'm kinda curious to see how she runs and hoping nothing comes up. Well, the day wasn't without drama. 9 in our class and I'm thinking hard pack start, high rpm in 2nd gear. Nope. Hooks up and bogs big time off the start. So much that I clutch and downshift into 1st and by the time I hit the first corner I'm in 7th. It's that bad. But going into the 4th corner that starts the woods, I'd worked myself into 4th. Fast forward 1 lap. R starts cutting out. Almost like it's too rich or dropped a jet but wouldn't clean itself out. So I limped it around the 2nd lap thinking to myself I'm just going to finish and collect some points and try and hold onto my points lead. Not happening. I couldn't get on the pipe because it was bogging out so bad I had to run just off the pipe but couldn't let it idle because it would die. Finally on the 3rd lap it was getting so bad, I actually pulled into the pits because I was worried it would die in the woods and I'd be stuck and wouldn't finish at all. I found a couple of my buddies and hopped off and told them to take a quick spin and see if they could get an idea of what was wrong. Well, my buddy jumped on and killed it. But when he was starting it, it sounded like a wet fart. That's when I noticed what looked like a mouse's a$$ sticking out of the silencer. Completely plugged tight. So another buddy of mine found a stick and started pulling at the packing to get it out and then moved the inner baffle out of the way as it was sitting cocked off the the side, loose. Cool! If you've ever ran with the water plug in the silencer, you'll know what I'm talking about. Now that that's out of the way, time to go! Added 3 minutes to my lap time that round but I was back off to the races. Pun intended. Not sure where I was at that point but passed a handful of people and it only took about a half lap till I started getting a migraine from the exhaust sound. No packing=pretty loud. Went back to the trailer later and found out I'd scored a 2nd place finish behind the guy I'm battling with for points. So all said and done, I actually accomplished what I wanted to which was to just get a descent finish with this cold I've got and minimize damage but in the end, I couldn't have asked for a better result really considering the circumstances. And 1st finished 4 minutes ahead of me. So remove that 3 minute pit stop and I only had lost a minute to him over 8 laps. Oh well, another round in the books and my brother actually finished 4th his first time out! Now 4 of the riders had heat issues or mechanicals but that's part of xc racing. You have to know your limits and pace yourself which he did and reaped the rewards. 3rd was only 20 seconds ahead of him but he didn't know that. Kinda kicked himself for not trying a little bit harder. But live and learn. Sorry for the long post. Thanks for reading and on to the next round...
