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Winner Jack Penton elq)loys Pentonesque Body English on Trask Mountain. Penton takes Two Days at Trask Mountain I By Ron Schneiders McMINNVILLE , ORE., MAY 4 ·5 After last week's disaster In the desert at the Shamrock Quali fier, the Penton East team (Jack Penton, Tom' Penton, and Dane Leinbach) came to Trask Mountain hoping to regain a little stature on more familiar ground. And th is they did by winning the Trade Team trophy (the most im p or tan t) and two of the top three classes in which they were entered. If this were not enough the Penton West team consisting of Eric Jensen, Steve Hurd and Bill Frian t took second place for a solid Penton sweep. In third place was a determined Yankee team of Dave Latham, Don Cutler and Charlie Vincent all riding Ossas . All of the riders on these top teams earned Golds with the possible e xcep tion of Don Cutler. 6 The tri al th is wee ken d was from alm ost all stan dp oints one of th e best ever he ld . Now in th eir fourth yea r, th e Motor cycle A c t i vities Club of McMinnville has solved most of th e problems th at punctuated their earlier efforts. There were, of co urse, some minor gripes. Jack Penton, now a mature 2I -year·old, objected to having a sixteen-year-old doing' the timing on the special test, and the resul ts, as usual, were a long time in com ing. They were promised for 8 p.m., 10 p.m ., midnight, - "early in the morning" and so on. But as of press time they were still not officially posted. (The resul ts listed here were the product of a Jack Anderson st yl e 5 :30 a.m, raid on the club office and are therefore not guaranteed.) . But with the excep tion of those minor problems, there could not have been a better enduro. T he we ather was beautiful , sunshiny - clear and just cool enough for a jacket. This was the rust clear weekend in mon th s for Ore gon and today (Monday ) th e sky is agai n threatening rain in a tradi tionally rain y state (abou t 40 inches a y ear). Th is club has managed to have consistently good weather for their events. Someone is looking out for them. The trail was described by the be tter riders as "fantastic ," "great riding," "really enjoyable" and other such verbal ej acula tions of pleasure. And sin ce few riders enter th is trial who are not among the " b ette r" rider s, that is the prevailing view. Most "average " riders however, would find the trail to be very, very difficult. Each day the riders left the imp ound area at the YamHill County Fairgrounds and rode through town and up to the mountain on pavement. From there to the first check they encountered only moderately difficult trails. After the first check however, the difficulty increased immediately and enormously. , From the first check the riders went around a big loop twice, and in the loop were miles and miles of trail which were essentially just single, deep, muddy ruts. T he ruts were often so deep that it was impossible to keep your feet on th e pegs, so you would wind up "running" on top of the motorcycle while hanging desperatel y onto the bars. If your feet co uldn't keep up with the bik e, you w ould sudd enly be stretched out beh ind like a sq uirrel's tail. To add to the problem , you were continually going through trees with very little space between them,jumping muddy, half buried, catywompus logs and trying to avoid getting stuck in the deeper puddles. In the alternating light and shade, with steam ed up goggles, usually covered with mud as well, seeing where y ou were going was no small problem either. With the two loops and a beginning and end section, the rust day's run totalled 200 miles and was travelled at a leisurely 22 miles per hour. A good many riders complained that it was too easy, .and many arrived at most checks with lots of time. At th e end of the day almost one thi rd of the riders , about 65 , were still on goal. Malcolm Sm ith arrived at one check point 20 minutes early, and said he had seized his engine twice. To cure the problem he took a needle out of the carburetor and proceeded to file a notch on it so it would run a little more rich . At check number two, having no more minor problems to keep h im occupied, Malcolm commented that what was really needed was more rain. Even considering the class of riders represented, I don 't think many would have agreed. For the second day the schedule was . upped to 26 miles per hour and there was an entirely diffierent course, 17 miles longer than Saturday 's. Although somewhat different in character, it was not much easier and the faster schedule made it, in the words of Steve Hurd "like a 200 mile special test." In Sunday's section there was a lot m ore rock, along with a number of places where the trail dropped off rather steeply. There were also quite a few places where the trail would cross a small cre ek with absurdly steep banks. These were good places to get stuck just long enough to lose your Gold. In Sunday's run there were quite a few hills to climb and some of the smaller bike riders had real problems keeping ' the pace because they lost time pushing up hills. These special tests both days were just deeply rutted fire roads that offered little problem if you were going slow, .bu t at average speeds of close to 50 miles per hour there were large danger factors. A number of the riders commented that plain honest fear kept their speeds d ow n . But it was in the special test that this contest was decided both on individual basis and the team basis. The three to p teams all lost n o route marks (or penalty points) so in essen ce the difference among Penton East, Penton West and Yankee was just a matter of speed in the special tests and there was little con test there. Jack Penton, riding in the most difficult 250 class, beat the second and third place riders Car l Cranke and Malcolm Smith by nine and 19 seconds respectively. Eric Jensen; on the second place team, was fourth in th at class, trailing Jack Penton by 212 seconds. Dane Leimbach was an easy winner of the 100 class with the only Gold Medal in that class and Tom Penton finished second in the 125 class behind the newest Penton kid star, Joe Barker. In the 175 class, Billy UbI set a blistering pace on his Can-Am, winning the class and coming within two seconds o f be ating th e overall winner Jack Penton. But it was a wasted effort as teammate Tom Clark Jr. failed to finish, District 36 star Jim Jenkins was second in the 175 class, 254 seconds behind Billy Uhl. Husvarna had a very good challenge going righ t up un til a few miles from the end on the second day when Co sby Chestnut's bike lost a flywheel nut way up in the boondocks. Chestnut's team members were Malcolm Smith (third in the 25.0 classl and Ben Bower (second in the 500 class . . The third Penton Team also came very close with Lars Larsson winning the 350 class, Car l Cranke second in the 250 class . A third member, Mark Adent, for reasons unknown at this time, wa s disqualified on the second day . Rokon's effort failed when Jim Simmons lost six marks for a Silver, and Bultaco was doomed to failure last week. Their star rider Dave Ekins was unable to ride th is week be cause of a separated shoulder suffered in th e Sh amrock Bash.