Yesterday I was at Ponta de Pedra, about 100km (~60 miles). It was the first enduro of the season. Ponta de Pedra is a very beautiful beach, with a calm sea, perfect for swimming andkids. The place is very calm and small.
The efforts to go to the enduro began friday night. My car, a 91 vw gol, had a not-working cassete player in it when I bought the car. Some time ago, I sent the stereo to fix it and a hard to find transistor made me car sound-less for a long time. Friday evening, he gave my stereo back and I finished installing it by 1am. I burned the water temp gauge in the process... Oh well, at least I could drive to Ponta de Pedra listening to Iron Maiden.
Saturday morning I woke early and went rent a two rail motorcycle trailer. By 11am I was on the road!
There in Ponta de Pedra, I was guest of Adson, a guy who races in my class and own a house in that beach. At night, we subscribed to the race and I got a new Compass enduro computer, to replace my old and illiterate PaceMaker 3. P3 is a good device, but it doesn't speak "brazilian enduro" language, so, many neat and needed features doesn't work on it. The new Compass will make my life easier... Trophies, here I go! Well, that was the idea...
Sunday came and I got my starting time, 9:25:30. One rider each 30 seconds, beggining at 9:00:30. Lots of folks! In the first 20 minutes of race, I was confused with the Compass, the P3 have four buttons, but I really need operate just two during a race. Compass have 12 buttons, one for zeroing the odometer, other to increase mileage, other to decrease, other to adjust this and that... And the display is much different. I was lost! To make things even worse, when I was getting the feel of the Compass, my bike refused to climb a very small hill. Blocked main jet. Again. IdaSpode advised installing an inline fuel filter. I did. Where the dirt came from? I just cleaned air filter saturday, and it's dust tight, no sign of any dirt getting past the filter. Oh well, such is life...
I rolled my bike to under a bush and start tearing the carb apart. It's a pita cleaning this carb, because you must remove the intake manifold and there's a damned screw that is very hard to put it on when the engine is cold, now imagine a 250 oil cooled four stroke under a 30C sun. My fingers still hurt from the burns. Well, 35 minutes later I was 'back' in the race. Back? More or less. After 20 minutes, you have "houred out" and is no longer oficially racing. But I could skip some rests and get back on time. At least that was what I hoping for... The trail was very technical, much different from the open roads of last year. This time, we had lots of single track, with lots of direction changes and **lots** of speed changes. heh, I like this way, but not when I'm late...
After much riding, I was back under 20 minutes, 17 minutes to be precise, when I took a wrong way, losing 15 minutes to find my way again and crashing while trying to go fast! I made a fast turn and the dried leaves from the just harvested cane sugar made the front end slid and ground, here I am!
35 minutes late again. Not good. Luckily enough, there was a section on asphalt, with a given speed of 54 km/h (33mph), which is, btw, the max speed allowed by the rules. I put my chin over the gastank cap and revved the max I could in 6th gear, achieving a incredible speed of 117km/h (73mph). I can't believe my bike could go so fast
We went through a farmer village, in a hill, where I could not brake and crashed bad, both my knees hurts now as I type and my handlebar is now bent in a new way. The roll book holder flipped forward, but Compass didn't ever moved a tenth of an inch! Sturdy thing!
Then the race went throuh large cane sugar plantation. Large ones. Gigantic plantations to be exact. The thing is so big, so gigantic that there is six lanes dirt roads for the trucks and agricultural machines. And here is where lies the famous massape soil. This soil is perfect for cane sugar. (side note: cane sugar isn't brazilian native, but it loved this soil, making more sugar than at it's native land) Massape is a black-ish to brown-ish soil, a kind of clay. When wet, it dries on top, leaving a sticky, stinky black mud under. I saw that sea of dried mud and late as I was, instead of slowling and swerve, I aimed to the middle of the mud, at about 60km/h (37mph, this great enduro computer have a speedometer) and obviously, got stuck. Funny is that I got mud all over the bike and me, not a single spot remained clean. I wish I could watch that from outside insted of on the bike. My googles became useless, covered with two centimeters of sticky black mud. My enduro computer and roll book holder became covered with mud. This mud wasn't so deep, so I could get out of the mess, but I was filthy!
I arrived the return point, a gas station and could, finally, get back on time. I drank a pepsi twist (pepsi + lemon) and cleaned the numbers on my bike so checkpoint crew could see it... My bike turned from blue to black, and I was stinking. Adson's GF took some pix, I hope she sends 'em to me, so I can put a page at my website.
Time to return! I was enjoying riding at the proper time, with time to watch the nature. It's very beautiful at Ponta de Pedra, woods, the sea, even the damned massape clay is nice to watch (don't step on it, lesson learned the hard way, again). Until I got lost. Duh, I must be reading impaired or something. That's when Adson arrived, his odometer cable snapped and he was riding without the enduro computer, so, he couldn't tell where to go and he needed a rider to guide him. When a rider follow another instead of navigating himself, we call him a "carrapato", tick in english. Adson was following a guy who got lost in the same spot I was, so he dumped the guy and decided to follow me. Good, because I found the way and the other guy didn't, I saw him, in front of me, taking a wrong turn. Bye bye competitor!
I was later again, 10 minutes, and riding fast. So was Adson. 100 meters before the last checkpoint, the little clip that holds the chain master link flied from the bike to an unknown place, making my chain wegdge around the rear hub. Nothing broke (just little scuff marks on my swingarm), I have a spare master link and was back on the trail, got the last check point almost 20 minutes late...
We arrived at Ponta de Pedra sound and safe, but with the pride deeply hurt. Also, my front number plate, just above the headlight, and front fender got neat new scars from the crash where I hurt my knees. Hardest crash of the year, so far and definetely, will be one of the top ten...
120km in 5 hours and half. Cool.
We went to Adson's house, for a shower and lunch at a local bar: beans, rice, eggs, and a large steak. Beers to wash it down of course!
Unfortunatelly, we too took too much time between shower&lunch and put bikes on Adson's pickup and my rental trailer, when we arrived at meeting to see results, everybody was gone, we were late by almost one hour! hehe, entire day racing late and still late to get the result. So, I don't know my finishing position! :-D
When I get it, I'll post, but for sure, I'm screwed. There was 12 on my class and I hope to finish top ten and get at least a medal....
Let's see if I do better on the next!
Tiago Rocha
Recife - Brasil
www.diariodastrilhas.cjb.net