MIDLIFE continued from pg 49
try this at our age. (I guess not that many people get into Motocross at age 40.) Eventually we convinced
ourselves that we wouldn’t get run over by swarms of Motocrossing teenagers. We attempted the “big boy” track for the first time. We went around it once, never got out of second gear, never got any air. But also never once pooped our pants. Success! Over the next few months, we
went to the track when we could, usually on Sunday mornings while the young punks were sleeping in and the track wasn’t too busy. We stayed on the big track now and were even
getting some “wicked air” on some of the jumps – the smaller ones, that is. A few times I did get some air on one of the bigger ones. I nicknamed that experience “the nut crusher” because of my poor landing technique. In time, our speed started to
pick up, and we were moving at faster-than-power-walking speeds. We were really getting into this MX thing. We discovered that people tend to ride like hell for about 15 to 20 minutes, then go take a break. It was during these breaks that the track dog “Bear” (at least, that’s what we called him) came around to say hello and to get a nibble of our sandwiches. We really started to get the
hang of it. We started riding a bit faster. And that led to our first falls. Dan was the first. He was going around a corner and things just got away from him. The second and more dangerous time he was on the right side of the track lane. He was approaching the track exit on the left. He moved over to the left, oblivious of one of the punks passing him on that same side. A mild collision occurred, but no one was seriously hurt – hopefully with lessons learned. A few weeks later it was my
turn to fall. I was going around a sandy corner without enough speed. There were no injuries, just embarrassment. But I was used to that. Those were the lows. The high
for me was watching some of the footage taken with my helmet-
54 BOUNDER MAGAZINE
www.bounder.ca
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