This is edited from an article I wrote for the December 1990 AMA District 23 Newsletter. The original article was intended to convince Enduro clubs to make their Enduros and Hare Scrambles more beginner friendly as well as to provide a humorous look at my early Enduro career.

I’m editing this article now to remind prospective first time racers (in a humorous fashion) that we were all beginners once, so they should not feel too intimidated and should give racing a try.

C-class riders: people we need to think about. The 1991 season will mark my fifth year of racing here in Minnesota. Although I’m hooked, not many new riders are becoming racers and not many kids are becoming riders. I think we can do a few things to make this sport even more fun and rewarding for everyone, especially those important beginners.

While we Minnesota enduro and hare scrambles clubs put on the best events around for the beginner, (believe me, I rode Reinbeck Iowa two weeks ago and my neck is still bleeding), we can do much better--and with very little effort. I hope the following pieces of my riding history bring back a few memories of what is was like to start riding and racing. For those who have never tried racing, remember, everyone was a beginner once and not all of us started when we were young. It’s never too late. For the racer who does not belong to a club, membership in a club makes the racing experience far more enjoyable and benefits us all. For all you club members out there, please read my suggestions at the close of this article. Finally, read between the lines, and put yourself in the shoes of a beginner at your type of events so we can minimize the intimidation and uncertainty of the beginner to make dirt bike racing fun for everyone.

I remember when I was learning to ride in the summer of 1977. I was 10 years old. I’d received a sixties-vintage Honda 50 under the Christmas tree that year. Dad had NO IDEA what it would eventually lead to! Thanks Dad! I would wait until dusk before I would venture out into the field at the edge of town because there were lots (about three) of “big” kids on “big” bikes (junior high kids on Yamaha GT80s!) and they made me nervous...

I went through the usual course of getting bigger and better bikes. The Honda 50 was replaced by a 1980 Suzuki TS 185 (dual purpose). Each bike seemed huge when I first got it and slow when I sold it. Then I saved enough money for a brand new 1982 Yamaha IT 175. I was 15 and king of the ditches! It was with this bike that I discovered speed. I also discovered that all those cool moves in the magazines were more dependent on rider skill than just buying a better bike.

Nature took it’s course, I turned sixteen, got a drivers license, and soon realized that I couldn’t meet or impress girls by riding in a ditch. So I traded the IT for a Sport Bike. Wow, was that thing a rush! I was king of the streets! Then it snowed. I was reduced to a rebel without practical transportation.

So far this has been your basic childhood (a lot of people will tell you: "yah, I used to have a dirt bike...when I was a kid"). Then something unusual happened. I missed my dirt bike so much I wanted another one (in addition to something I could drive in the winter). My parents didn’t ride, my friends didn’t ride, I’d never ridden anywhere other than the local ditches, but I was hooked for life. Strange.

I put the 84 Interceptor 500 up for sale. Fate dealt me another good card in the form of Bruce and Tangi Schaapveld. They wanted to trade a XR 250 for my bike, and when I asked them where they rode, they said they rode enduros. Even Tangi rode enduros! I had always dreamed about riding an enduro since I bought my fist Dirt Bike Magazine in 1976. But alas, dirt bike racing was for wealthy super-beings who ate right, worked out all day, and lived in California, wasn’t it? Bruce and Tangi explained to me that a lot of normal people rode enduros right here in Minnesota and that the events weren’t all as tough as the ones pictured in the magazines. They said the Backus enduro was coming up and it would be a good one to try.

The result of this was my father and myself sitting in the fly spec that is Backus MN. with no sign of a motorcycle race, or even a motorcycle, wondering where the 1987 Backus enduro was to be held. It turned out that the Backus enduro is near Akeley, unlike the Akeley enduro, which was somewhere else. To find the Backus event, we kept stopping at gas stations and getting directions to where the attendant once saw two kids on an ATV with fishing poles. During one of these wild goose chases, we stumbled upon a truck with a bike in the back and followed it down the sand road that led to the camping area for race.

I was the perfect example of the first time racer; my dad and I drove in with my XR on a 22 foot tandem axle car trailer. The scene looked far more serious than I had bargained for. It seemed everyone had those exotic bike you only read about; KTMs, Can-Ams, Husqvarnas and the like. Each bike was spotlessly clean and seemed to have a special trailer just for the bike, many of which proudly displayed team and sponsor insignia. INTIMIDATION! I hadn’t even ridden on a real trail and I was about to race these people?! Eventually we found a spot big enough to park the “flight deck” between a couple other racers. Luckily, I’m an information junkie, so I’d read everything about enduros I could find, and I was able to find and blunder through sign-up with the AMA card I’d purchased ahead of time. I drew minute 12 and retired to the tent (pitched on the trailer) to write my will.

Between dad and nervousness, I didn’t sleep a wink that night. I rolled out of the tent at 7:00 to see everyone already working on their bikes. The nice guy camped next to us (Mark Deal, do you remember this?) showed me some of the stuff no one tells beginners and lent me some duct tape to attach my score card.

Like every beginner (and some experts) I had to be told to turn off my motor since this was a dead engine start. I started the event a minute late, since no one told me that I was supposed to leave as the starter flipped the card to my minute. I wanted to salvage at least a little dignity, so I gassed it (and no doubt roosted the start crew like a spode). I hadn’t ridden on a trail, in the woods, in a race, or in sand before. So it should have come as no surprise that I hit my first tree about a hundred yards into the race, in full view of the crowd at the start. A this point in my career, I was incapable of going fast enough to really hurt myself, so I just bounced off the tree, lost my balance, and flopped the XR on its side.

With all the pandemonium at the start, I’d left the choke on. That, combined with the fact that I’d never really dumped the XR before, led to about ten minutes of kicking until I figured it out, opened the choke, held the throttle open and got it running. When I got a break in traffic, I blasted off toward the next tree with my name on it--twenty feet away. It was time for a new strategy, survival. Soon I settled into my first rhythm; first gear in the woods, second on the two-tracks, and third on the roads.

When I got to the first reset I was proud of the fact that I’d researched and understood the time-keeping involved in enduros and knew what to do. I took about five minutes to reset my odometer and check my time. It was then that I realized that the reason everyone was staring at me was because I was thirty minutes late and wasting time fiddling with my odometer. So off I went with my tail between my legs to get passed by the entire field one more time. Once everyone passed me, I started feeling more secure. Eventually the first checkpoint (I thought) appeared at the end of a sandy road. I gassed it, hoping not to look as slow as I really was, and shifted up... to third. The “check” that I came to an abrupt halt in the middle of turned out to be a group of camera wielding spectators. Feeling really dumb again, I took off and promptly crashed in a sand berm ten feet from the “check”.

Eventually the first loop was over. I was back at the truck and dad was hopping mad at the “irresponsible jerks” who were riding so fast through the camp area. Not what I needed at that moment. I grabbed a quick drink and headed out to get passed some more.

As the race wore on I crashed more frequently, losing count at thirty. The XR became my enemy. The other riders were now wheelieing past instead of just roosting me. One poor soul tried to pass me on the right just as I was pulling over,... to the right...to let him by. I also felt bad when I wedged the XR so hard between two trees in a tight section that I had to get off the bike to pull it out while a patient A-rider waited for me for me to pry it loose.

I learned many lessons the hard way that weekend. But luckily a lot of good things happened: the people I met were nice and helped me, I finished the race with 120 points and without houring out, I wasn’t last in my class and trophies seemed within reach some day, the weather was good, the race was a good choice since it didn’t have any killer obstacles, I had made a good bike choice with the 86 XR 250, and nobody yelled or laughed at me. Overall, the experience encouraged me to come back. The positives far outweighed the negatives and I did come back for more, at Nickerson, once I had forgotten how painful and expensive it was...

At Nickerson I paid my money to camp and race, rode about 2 miles, got a $44 ticket from the Sheriff for not having a license plate (along with almost everyone else in the race) and went home. If this had been my first race instead of my second, I wouldn’t have come back.

By the end of the year, I was looking for a club to join. Several actually turned me down because “they were full” or because I was a C-rider! But The River Valley Enduro Riders welcomed even slow guys like me and were the most fun people I’d ever met. I’ve been a loyal member ever since.

The next year (1988) I rode most of the series, won my first trophy, and met Tom Corr at Grand Rapids Enduro and we became racing buddies, riding and racing every chance we could. This made it even more fun because we about the same speed and we never knew who would come out on top. Over the next couple years I watched my scores SLOWLY getting closer to the B-class winners, and I told myself I would never forget what it was like to be a beginner...

It’s 1998, another season is about to start. I’m 31, married (to a woman who races enduros!), getting slower, riding a three year old 95 KDX200 in the A-class and still having fun. As I look back from here, I realize that that first race was probably the most important point in my riding career, and a very important point in my life, since riding has influenced who I am and gives me a perspective on life most people never get. If things had been just a little different that hot dusty summer day in 1987, I’d be a very different person, than I am, and that would really suck. Think beginner.