After a few months, I was giving some serious consideration to getting a bike again. I told my wife I was thinking about getting a motorcycle. Much to my surprise, she encouraged me to get a race bike again. She wanted to see me race. Even though I tried to warn her about how much it would take me away from the house, she said she was OK with it. I had a garage now, my wife gave me the green light, my job paid pretty well, I had a reliable truck, all things I never had when I was racing. I was much older, but I was in decent shape and didn’t have any serious injuries or ailments to deal with. It just didn’t make any sense anymore not to have a motorcycle.

I looked through the online classifieds and found a few that were in my price range. My price range was kind of low, so most of the bikes were a bit old. Even though this bike was the oldest I looked at, it had the fewest hours. It had probably been ridden a total of less than 10 hours (it still had the stock tire) and didn’t look like it had been crashed. It felt strangely awkward loading the bike into my truck. It wasn’t only my riding skills that were rusty.

My near total loss of bike handling ability aside, the bike felt really fast and good handling. Even though this bike was 9 years old at the time, it was the newest bike I had ever ridden. By the third time I rode it, my riding was starting to feel a bit more normal, but I still didn’t feel that I was riding in control enough to try racing. As it turned out, the third time I rode the bike was the last time that year.

My abrupt end in 98 and very late start in 99 was mostly due to a rental property which turned into a time and money consuming nightmare. I’m sure that I’ll write tales about that place some day, but for the purposes of this story, the important part is that it was sold early in the summer of 99, which finally gave me a chance to do frivolous things like riding a dirt bike and looking for land.

Actually, I bought the land that spring, but hadn’t been up there with the bike. I ended up riding quite a bit once I got going. The land is mostly a grassy meadow. After the grass was cut, I marked out a track with stakes. The ground is hard black dirt, a bit rocky. I rode there and a few other places. I was feeling quite a bit better about my riding. I knew that in a race, I’d at least look like I belonged out there, but I was kind of afraid of the big jumps at the race tracks.

Late that summer, I decided to try the Cambridge fair race. There were a lot of jumps there, but none were really huge air. I figured the Vet class would have about 10 or so guys, which is what I wanted for my first race back. It went OK. I rode alright through most of the track, but the stadium whoops just had me baffled. Every time I tried to go faster through them, I felt like I was going to crash, yet, nearly everyone was passing or pulling away from me in that part. I ended up finishing in front of one other person and I didn’t crash, so I thought it went pretty well.

Later that fall, I decided to race at Grantsburg in Vet C. I had been practicing some up at my land since the race. I had ridden in a bit of sand in gravel pits, but I quickly realized during practice that the deep, cruel sand of G’Burg was not like anything I had ridden in since I started riding again. It was everything I could do not to fall in every tight corner. I mainly stayed up by liberally abusing the clutch. I knew the ruts would be deeper and the whoops much bigger come the race and I wasn’t sure I could make it around the track without crashing, let alone at a competitive pace.

The gate dropped, I got a great jump, and suddenly I’m only seeing one person in my peripheral vision. I went into the first turn in second place. Unfortunately, the person with the holeshot is someone I would later become friends with, but at the time was the DTFP, “that damn thumper with the frickin paddle tire”. If just negotiating the thick sand wasn’t difficult enough for me, I was now trying to stay away from chest crushing roost.

My wife didn’t make it to the Cambridge SX race, so she was here to watch me for the first time. My dad was there also. He hadn’t been to a race since the early 80s at the latest. My wife was really getting into it. I could kind of hear her when I rode by. My great start did not change the fact that I was still really struggling in the sand. I managed to still be in third after the first lap, but then they steadily went by. By the start of the fourth lap, I was so tired, I didn’t know if I could make it another lap without encountering a “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up.” situation. In the second moto, I got about a mid pack start and ended up in about the same place. This time, I actually passed one person who was not on the ground. It was DTFP who had fallen several times after another good (for him, bad for following riders) start.

I rode a few more times that fall I didn’t get much spring riding in and then raced at Cambridge a few times in Vet C. I was around mid-pack. I was still getting good starts. That 89 seemed to have as much peak power as any of the new bikes.

I was starting to get to a point where I thought a newer bike would help me out. At first, it was such an adjustment just getting used to riding again that the bike was more than good enough, but as I started to get some of my skills back, I started longing for more bottom end, plusher suspension, and the better ergonomics that the new ones had. In about mid-summer, I traded it in for my next bike. I didn’t think to even ask if they would take it for a trade-in, because it was so old, but the salesman offered about what I was hoping to sell it for, so, with a bit of regret later, I rolled it into the show room and rolled a different one out. No longer would people confuse me with a much slower, Minnesota-born version of Damon Bradshaw.