Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/125848
The water crossing wa s, uh , wet. 98 Miles through Indian Country By John Huetter Photos by Marcia Holley & Larry Langley SAN JACINTO, CAL., FEB . 17 The first thing we saw In the pre-dawn darkness was a circle 0 f Indians standing around a smoking cam p fire, the flickering light barely illuminating their craggy features. " If they start dancin ', I'm leavin '," o ffered my enduro-riding 6 driving campanion, squinting for an open space between the hundreds of vans and pickups which had, somehow, found enough gasoline to get out to th e base of San Jacinto Mountain and get back to wherever home was. The occasion for this gathering of motorized white men (And black and red, too) on Indian Territory was the Fourth Ann ual Soboba Grand Prix: 100 miles of racing over the natural terrain of the Soboba Indian Reservation ; seven long 14-miJe laps. After it was over, nobody was com p lain ing about the race being too short or too easy. Entry was limited, as always, to those riders who had the reputation, co n ta c ts, enough previous wins, knew somebody in the club, or bought somebody 's else's entry. The result was about 500 riders ranging in skill level from Malcolm S'!'!th ~d Jim Fishback to rank Novices who seemed very intimidated by the race and the terrain. After impound of the machines, an unscheduled moun tain hailstorm, and riders' meeting, the bikes were pushed to the start where rows of five were roped off at 10 -second intervals. In general, the organization and atmosphere provided by the small Soboba M.C. was good. There was very little of the "I'm an official, sonny!" attitude and the course was exceedingly well-marked an d flagged th roughout the full 14 miles. Help fu l flaggers and w illing Indian han ds were at the mu dhole and other terrain bottlenecks to assist rid er s who encountered proble ms they couldn't solve singlehanded. The course was incredibly fine for the first two laps with literally everything included except asphalt. There were real fifth gear sandwashes, dirt roads, woods riding, ridge running, enduro downhills, and, unfortunately, a fair amount of single file trail. As far as the bottleneck, ,?ne.at-a~ti~e s~uff goes, John and Kookie managed to negotiate it to the far side of t he river - and fin ish. we'll q uote W.C. Fields, to wi t, "I hate yo u." T he re was no way to actua lly race through those parts un less you physically ra n over the rider in front of you or push e d him off a cliff. Somehow, that didn't see m t he sportsmanlike thing to do. Enough riders ended up at the base of the razorbacks without being pushed over. Taking advantage of a second row star~ng nu mber, Malcolm Smith on a new 250 Husqvarna WR, gra bbed th e lea d and was smokin'. He doesn't look all that fast. He just keeps mo ving away from you, never seeming to get out of shape or make a mist a ke. Behind Malcolm, after two laps, was old ti mer C.H. Wheat on a Maico with all-out works suspension (Love those $90 shocks.) that literally glided over the whoop-de-does. Argh. The whoop-de-does. The first two laps weren 't bad, o n a course that