And now back to our program already in progress...

As we trudged from the ATV area back to the kart track, I remembered back to a conversation that I had with Tim Olson from Motocross Action magazine the night before. He had told me that when it was raining there was a river the that flowed across the track and you had to adjust the turn-in point for turn one. If you went too wide and tried to cut over at the normal spot it was likely that you would spin off the track and head for the tires. I put that on my list of things to think about as I did a course walk to see where else might be wet. I found a few spots that I expected to see wet and a few others where people had gone off course, drove through the mud and then back onto the track, brining mud and other debris with them. The Clark(e) brothers and I spent a little time clearing the biggest bits of dirt and tree off of the track before returning to the timing and scoring shed to see what our format would be for the finals.

John, our group guide from Dunlop, let us know that we would run two qualifying heats and two mains each race with 5 people. Both the heats and the mains were 12 laps long. We were randomly divided into two heats. Then, the fastest 5 were grouped into the first main with the remaining 5 running the second race. I drew the second qualifying heat and settled in to watch the first as the rain picked up again. There was some slipping and sliding and even a few spins. Even on the Dunlop racing slicks times were only 5-9 seconds slower in the pouring rain than they were in the dry, which I think is pretty good on a 40 second track.

Finally, it was time for me to qualify and I went about re-learning the track. I took Tim’s advice and swung very wide for turn 1, cut across the flowing water on the brakes gingerly, hard to the right and then back on the gas through the esses. I managed to qualify in the top half of my group and made it into the quicker of the heats. A short time after my heat, the decision was made to send the quicker of the two qualifiying groups back out to race first. We piled back into our favorite karts, did one lap and pulled up to the grid, picked up our spots and waited. I gridded 3^rd. The flag dropped and we were off. In the rain we had a few dicey laps and started to string out. Then with just a few laps to go, the unthinkable happened, the rain stopped and the track began to dry out. This added a completely new sort of challenge where the track would go from wet to dry very quickly. The second group got to run almost completely in the dry. The second group had slower times from qualifying but since the track was drying out, I wasn’t sure if my time would hold up. It did and I was able to add a few more points to my final score.

We packed into the bus and made for the waiting four wheel drive Chevy Suburban’s to take us over the now muddy trail to the Motocross and newly established SUV precision driving course. As soon as we got to the tracks we found that we were doing the Motocross first. The first thing that we found was a partically flooded track that had been re routed so that we didn’t have to contend with the swamps that had sprung up over night. We suited up and did a course walk with Ike. We all got a recce lap to get the feel for the updated track and then it was on to the race! To the line we went and in the very damp air we had to keep working the throttles to keep the bikes running. Again, as on the ATV course, we got the “3,2,1…GO!” count down and then we were off as quickly as we could be. As we all found the day before, when the ground in Virginia becomes wet it becomes very slippery. For the most part, the course was made out of sand, but on the final straight away, just before the table top the ground was a mix of wet grass and clay which made the approach dicey, at least for me. Through all this, I was still able to secure a solid second place just behind Kevin Clark. I was pleased with this since Kevin told us all about his extensive trail riding experience. Next it was time for one of my favorite activities of the whole week: time for eating lunch. All week long we had the most delicious meals. Salads and sandwiches for lunch and then feasts with soup, salad, steak, chicken and fish for dinner. The Clark(e) brothers, Egon and myself appropriated an Xterra and happily drove up to the clubhouse for lunch.