10/11/2008 – AZZY MX

“Hey get up, dipstick” Dawn sez. I say, “C’mon, I’m not late” thinking I have to work. Oh wait, it’s RGN MX day at Azzy. So we pack up our bikes and the one-eyed dog – the FIBs are off.

I can’t remember such a beautiful mid-Oct day. Holy schmoley it was nice. 70 and sunny. We git to Azzy bout 9:30, get thru The Line, and head out for P1. I’ve never run the full Azzy MX track but it was great. The soil was perfect and the layout fun, with nice mix of singles, doubles, elevation changes, and sand. There were also a lot of confusing blind jumps and corners. Particularly, one single on the front straight landed me in a near endo cement bog (must remember to launch off jump on the LEFT) and another single would drop into a tight right-hand corner (must remember to launch off jump on the RIGHT). All the meanwhile, kids keep jumping over my head. The smaller doubles were fun but the bigger ones were painful.

Dawn and I added more compression to help our short landings and started P2 about :45 minutes later. P2 was more fun with the extra track knowledge. There were so many different lines in each corner so it was fun to try different ones. Towards the end of P2 I was behind Kevin Kilkenny when he went down in the triple before the finish line: his bike was sideways in the middle on the track and his body was rolling left. I couldn’t stop and went thru the middle, barely missing bike and body. After some front end realignment later back in the pits, bike and rider were ok for the race.

The RGN “practice” started at 12:30. I gated next to Tammy. She explained the start procedure to me. After she was done, I sez, “so you go first and then the gate drops?” Awwww but at least she got it. Board goes sideways then the gate drops and we’re off. Tammy and I did a little square dance at the start which put me towards the back. Unfortunately this caused me to miss Shane’s spectacular freestyle stunt on the first jump that was the talks of pits afterwards (later he joked “I was doin good till the first jump!”.) 4 laps of chaos later, the checker flag waved. What a hoot. Special mention to the first timers Wendy, Jen, and others – nice!

For Dawn and me it was fun to see all the Team Milwaukee gang and as usual, thanks to John for the arrangements. The format was super and I hope it’s on next year’s schedule.

- Pistola

rgn moto
1-j.beckman 165
2-d.kilkenny 218
3-pistola 7
4-j.altmann 617
5-t.baker 80
6-t.flemming 366
7-j.bunne 41
8- dawn 11
9-shane k 531
10-p.kilkenny drz
11-a.kerber 35
12-fish 40
13-j.rodreiguez 1
14-m.martinich 81
15-k.kilkenny 25

rgn b(little bikes)
1-sierra 966
2-jenny 05
3-wendy-o-dirt