Water…water…and more water….that pretty much sums up
Sunday’s NETRA Rocky Mountain Hare Scramble in New Hampshire. We drove up to
Alton, NH Sunday morning to hit this race, in hopes that the predicted rain
storms would miss us to the south. We weren’t that lucky. It rained hard in the
morning, to the point where the pit area where we were parked was about 6
inches under water. I felt bad for the guys that raced the morning race, as the
visibility had to be next to zero, and my buddy Brian said the trails were just
a long stream. Anyway…this is New England, and they don’t cancel races
here…period. So I gathered my stuff and geared up to duke it out for the next
couple hours with my race buddies and mother nature….mostly mother nature.
My game plan was pretty simple…SURVIVE…bring the bike
and body back in one piece, try to find a way to have fun with this and I
should be ok.
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| Photo by Art Pepin |
I got a decent start, but the first few turns were all
grass track and with all the water I just could not get good traction and kind
of just tip toed around. As we entered the woods I was about mid pack. The
woods sections were actually not as bad as I expected…yes it was muddy, and yes
there were a few deep swamped out areas, but overall it was surprisingly
decent. The biggest challenge was to keep goggles
clean. I went through all of the roll off film on my
goggles within the first lap and had a heck of a time seeing anything, but I
didn’t want to take my goggles off either….it’s all fun and games until
somebody loses an eye…ha. After lap one I pulled into the pits to get new
goggles….dad had my EKS brands with a fresh roll of film ready, slapped them
on, slapped me on the back, and I was back out….I think that was by far the
fastest pit stop ever for us (no fuel)…dad and I had agreed before the race
that we were trying to go the distance without a fuel stop since they announced
that they were cutting the race down to 4 laps (9 miles each)…yeah, we are the
gambling kind. Lap 2, 3, and lap 4 went pretty well, what a difference being
able to see makes. I had a couple small crashes (more like tip overs) but
overall no major problems or incidents. Once I realized where I was as far as
positions go, I saw that there was no way I could catch the leaders unless they
made a major mistake, and I had a pretty good gap built up on the guys behind
me so I went into survival mode….make the bike last, conserve fuel, and bring
it home.
On the last lap I did get a little scare as my fuel light came on (the
Husky has a little warning light, I’m not sure how much fuel is left once it
comes on). Fortunately I was already out of the long woods section and on to
the grass track so I knew I didn’t have that far to go, and worst case, I could
probably push the bike to the finish. I didn’t need to…we cut it close, but I
made it with a little bit of fuel to spare. I rode a decent race, adjusted to
the conditions and didn’t try anything crazy. I ended up with 3rd
place in A open and 14th overall. I’m happy with that for this one –
The bike and I survived just fine and I had a ton of fun!
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| Photo by Art Pepin |
This was a double header weekend for my parents as my
sister competed with her water ski show team (Holland Aqua Riders) at the
regionals (they took 3rd as well!), so mom went to support her at
that event while dad helped me with my race. I know this was a tough one for
them (can’t be in both places at the same time). A huge shout out to Art
Pepin at www.offroadpaparazzi.com for the photos!
Thank You to my sponsors….could not do this without
your help!
Kenda Tires, Fly Racing, Magical GoGo, EKS Brand
goggles, FMF, Panic Rev Ministries, Halls Cycles, and mom and Dad!
Until next time
Hunter “747” Neuwirth
PS: For those of you that actually paid attention
(Thank You), you will have noticed that my race number for this race was
447…that’s because the NETRA series scores differently and 747 would mean I
would be in a different class. We ran out of sharpies and paper so we actually
had Steve at STS whip up some new number plates for us.