Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1970's

ELocal hotline • ~ t 00 ,...; Hold her, Dad, hold her! Training wheels whip Candy Ass Enduro By Larry Langley BARSTOW, CAL_, FEB. 9 Woke up early Sunday morning to the sound of rain pelting down on the trailer. Well, the rain stopped before the start of the enduro and it made for bitchen traction. Luckily. CRC was providing a nice five-foot Ah, the sweet taste of success (burp!) 10 trophy for the best club. The idea was to enter 15 riders wi th the ten best scores counting. About 10 clubs entered teams. CRC also threw in an interesting "special test" for the club teams. The first loop was harder than the aver age family loop. Part of the problem is the Barstow area itself. Sin ce it consists mostly of sand and ro cks with little hard-packed desert other than roads, the little bikes tend to have more problems. One section was difficult for some as it had a rocky uphill and then a fairly steep rocky downhill. There 's a fine line between too hard and hard enough. CRC screwed up an d had checks less than three miles apart, which had some riders really baffled. This was a very unusual mistake for CRC. They usually have all chec ks and mileages spot on. The finish of the first loop was a " secre t " chec k and you had to come in right on time, you couldn 't co me in early. If you didn't read your riders instructions you blew it. The second loop, at 24 mph , was extremely fast. Those tight ca nyo ns, twisty sand washes, and rocks are very challenging at 24 mph. The rain had caused the tum arrows to cu rl and you couldn 't tell which way the tum went. Valuable time was wasted looking for the trail. At one spot a lot of riders got lost and ended up on the trail backwards. 1 almost hit one head on. CRC had two checks plotted in this section but the checkers couldn't find their posts. It's a shame because the next check wasn't until about 25 miles out. . One rider told me he busted through the tough section and was doing very well and was frustrated when all the late runners started passing him in the . flat , easy stuff and got back on time. The second loop was laid out very well but 1 heard of riders being lost on later numbers. Some riders claimed the ribbon was down. If so it was down •• after the club teams on the earlier numbers came through. Th e SRA ribbon for the Calic o End u ro next weekend in th e same are a was th e same color as C RC's. After all the club teams finished, th ey ran the "special test" which consisted of a three-and-a-half mile loop with two challenging uphills. The club team was clocked and the key time would be when the 10th rider came across the finish line . This called for strategy from the teams. Most put their best riders first and when they cleaned the hill , they stopped and helped the other · riders up. The first hill was deceptive in that it wasn 't very high . But it was chewed up and had rock ledges in it. Most riders pushed up. I'd say only two o ut of 10 cleaned it. The Training Wheels M.C. swept aw ay th e club trophy by winning bo th th e enduro and the special test. They beat out the U RA "A" team by 22 seconds on the special test. They now have a fine five -foot trophy to find a place for. Results Enduro Club Training Wheels PVDR Bar Benders URA uA"Team URA "S"Team Bacchus Dust Makers occes Special Pts . 4 20 31 44 57 74 428 531 Test 0 6 12 3 9 40 40 40 Total 4 26 43 47 66 114 468 571 This set of do wnhill whoops was not a good place to back of~. Right? Sled Rider Hare & Hound By Jim Stewart L UCERNE VALLEY, CM•., FEB. 9 Racin g under perfect conditions, the only tw o CZs to get in the top five in their class were Kevin Hasten 's overall winner and Phil Stumbo, the first overall Novice. When most of the riders cam e out to the race , they thought that 120 miles in dusty Lucerne Valley was not going to be fun. But the Sled Riders changed this impression. First they did a rain dance and it rained the night before, making for no dust and super traction. Then there was a bitch en long, fast smoke bomb run and another 115 miles of well marked co urse after th at. Bryan Bennett is most likely at the lead sometime during any District desert ra ce , but the problem is he never finishes there or seldom at all. This week he was leading at the bomb, followed by Kevin Hasten, Ron Wright, and Bo Haaren. Hasten's rear shocks were not working well, causing him to look slightly out of control for most of the race, but he still won. Ron Wright passed him on ce on the third loop, when he caught Hasten sleeping, but Hasten passed him right back before the ch ec kered. Meanwhile, following a two-minute wai t after Hasten and Wrigh t finished, in rode the fastest pie-plater in District 37 , Scott Hardan o n his 400 Husky with two flat tires ! Working his way up sever al positions and finally p assing Dave Taprik for the 250 class win was T ak ah ashi sponsored Benny Padilla at fo urth overall. Dirty Dave s till finished fifth overall, second 250, but was complaining of being sick. Dan Dawson from the Simi Valley Club, Chris Austin of the Cactus Cats and Terry Davis of the Checkers were the on ly other Experts to beat the first overall Amateur Tracy Walters, who looked to be out for a trail ride with his box st ock Suzuki. Bob Rutten traded in his 100 Hodaka for a 125, and in doing so, traded class wins. Rutten was l Oth overall and Jeff Kaplan was not too far ahead of his racing buddy Robbie Parma, who was first 175 Amateur. Charlie Hamill was just flying on his 100 Penton. Tucked in and bouncing fro m jump to jump brought him in first trail bike. Trudy Beck was also doing some of t he same, taking first Powder Puff with a good lead. In fact, if Trudy had been an Open Amateur, as high overall as she finished, she would have gotten a transfer ride in that class. Dawn Grant finally gave up riding in the 175 Novice class and got her Powder Puff numbers, then went out and took second overall in her new class. • •. Results in Results Section. ·1

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