VINTAGE
MOTOCROSS HAS ME HOOKED! ENGLISHTOWN, NJ - RACE 7 OF THE 2007 ACR SEASON
The ride from Haverhill, MA to Englishtown, NJ took about 5 hours. Mark and I arrived in the late afternoon and entered the "complex". Englishtown holds NHRA Drag races, street course style car racing, shifter cart racing, practice motocross tracks, and the main motocross track. The place truly is a world class facility. It was kind of confusing when we tried to figure out where to camp. The ACR website said that we could camp across the street from the main motocross track. What that really meant is that we camped in the parking lot of the practice motocross track. The lot was level, but the lot lights were quite bright, they were running drag time trials, and the people who decided to camp next to us did not be quiet until about 1:00 AM. When Mark and I got up early the next morning we made plenty of noise for our camp-mates to enjoy. I was shocked to see that their idea of camping was to put an inflated mattress on the ground and then just sleep out under the stars. Ah, to be young and dumb..........
You can see from the pictures that Englishtown is totally man made - they started with a flat piece of ground and started moving in dirt. The track was really neat, and you can see the 5+ story hill they built, complete with 2 jumps up the face of it! At the end of practice with the RM465 I noticed that it seemed to bog after you had chopped the throttle, then cracked it back on. I really did not think too much of it, and then went out to practice with the RM250. I felt faster on the RM465, but Mark was taking lap times and showed me that I was about 5 seconds a lap faster on the RM250. Go figure. My first race of the day was on the RM465 - and the bogging thing got worse each lap. I finished the race and came into the pits. I really was not sure what was wrong, but I suspected that I blew a seal on the flywheel side of the motor. I pulled the flywheel cover and sprayed some contact cleaner into the seal while the motor was running. The engine died right away - sure enough, I blew a seal. My first race on the RM250 was epic. I got a top three start and held on long enough to take first place in my class. Mark told me that during the race they actually announced my name and that I was in first place! Race 2 with the RM250 I got a good start but I just did not have enough energy left - and got a 2nd place. I traded wins with another racer, so he got first overall with a score of 2-1 while I got second overall with 1-2. Next race will be on September 29th at the Flying Dutchmen MX facility in Pine Grove, Pa SEE YOU AT THE RACES!
FINALLY, a weekend where I came home with a trophy!