Short View of the

Crosstimbers Enduro

by

Steve Hill

When I saw OKC Cross Timbers race on the schedule I knew that I had to go. This city maintained park seems to be a rarity these days. An excellent place to ride that actually is open to the public for a nominal fee. Lake Draper is right next to the runway of Draper Air Force base so I was happy that I slept thru the night without one of those 200db 3AM wake up calls from the jets taking off next door that I've experienced there in the past. Did get to see some cool jets and AWACS the day of the race though.

The morning started out just perfect with a race time temperature of about 60 degrees. The trail seem to be in excellent loamy shape with a little dust in the open area. The club started us out with a nice easy 15 MPH that wasn't too hard to maintain. I felt good, my computer was working good, (It seemed that the mileage was a little off but that was probably my computer's tire size problem) Got to the first couple of checks with no problem but by the third check the club bumped the speed up to the 18 MPH and the trail got a little tighter and a little more wiggly. I was doing good in this test but I let the front wheel slide out in one of those sand corners which was just enough to drop a minute on the third check. After the check I got back on time with a reset and was cruising 18 right in the middle of my minute when I hear this bad, bad sound. Clunk, clunk CLUNK!@%^&*. The 400 dies and I look down and my chain is drooping down like a punch drunk boxer. Uh Oh, I look to see that my axle nut has vanished into the wilds of Oklahoma. I spent a couple of useless minutes to see if I can locate this missing dynamic duo of the spacer and nut but no luck. So time to see what was in the ol' bag of tricks.(i.e. my toolbag) At first I'm thinking man I really need to give the ol' toolbag a workover because its fallen into sad shape and I'm about to be stuck out here in the woods for some time to come. But I notice that I've got a front brake lever bar mount piece that is shaped in roughly the same size as my axle and just might jam into my swingarm. The piece is just a 1/8 inch too big. I decided to adjust the chain adjuster bolts out to see if it would hold any way and it seemed like it might stay with a little help. So I look thru my bag and find a REI velcro strap that I used to wrap up some tools in a rag that was just long enough to hold on the brake piece. I'm still thinking that this all looked a little too cheesy for the awesome power of my YZ400. So. I borrowed a little safety wire off another part of my bike and secured the velcro strap.

Time to test the McGivered rig to see if it would hold up. About 5 corners in the woods later is the next check. Which is kind of a bummer. But Hey, I'm just happy to be rolling again. I'm trying to find out where the road back to town is when about four guys roll into the check and I realize I'm just in the way. I'm thinking, "Well I'll find out at the next check". I started to ride a decent trail riding speed but this was becoming a problem with guys coming up behind me too much and yelling to get the hell out of their way.

I gave the ol' quick fix a good look over and it seemed to be holding up so, I started to blast down the trail at about 85% to 90% race speed just to get out of people's way. I soon was at my first of several resets that allowed me to get a little time back since I was about 35 minutes behind my pace when I started going again. I managed to get within 10 minutes of my minute by the end of the short course and hey I only dropped 113 minutes. Woo Hoo! Oh, well I hate to DNF at an enduro. I had fun and I'm hoping for a little better results at Memphis.