Another amazing race put on by WORCS RACING; this time it was Round 3 at Lake Havasu, Arizona. It was 60 minutes on a gnarly, rugged course featuring a water jump, deep sand and it got hot quick for this Utah kid. Yeah, it’s been snowing like crazy and freezing temperatures in Utah County but it was worth it just to get out of the crazy winter at home. I got up really early Thursday morning to head to my grandparents house in Mesquite, Nevada; about a 5 hour drive. Everything was loaded in the Toy Hauler when I got there and grandma had the fridge full of meals for the weekend. It took us over 4 hours to get down to the course and track in Lake Havasu. The road through Searchlight and Needles is a bumpy nightmare so instead we went through Vegas then through Kingman, AZ and then down and over to Lake Havasu. This camping area that is set up for WORCS is super flat so setting up and leveling the trailer was pretty quick so my girlfriend, Piper and I was able to get in a bike ride on the mountain bikes over the London Bridge; pretty cool site.
Friday morning and all day was practice on the track and the last one was practicing on the full course. I run VP 110 and only had enough for today’s practice. We preorder fuel through WORCS and VP and they are supposed to bring it to the track on Friday through a Vendor they set up with. This time it was Honda Racing. Friday, a no show. Saturday morning, a no show; oh Crap! We were out of fuel for Saturday racing; 2 sixty minute races which because my 2022 Yamaha YZ450F which I was able to find one to buy at a great dealer Karl Malone Powersports in Hailey, Idaho, gets crazy good mileage or usage I knew that it would be over 2 tanks full of gas. I have an IMS desert tank that I need to install but didn’t have time to put it on; trim the seat and make it work so I was only running the stock tank. I wasn’t the Lone Ranger waiting for fuel. There were other riders expecting the VP fuel to be there. I want to make it clear that in no way was it the fault of the WORCS crew. We went around looking for fuel and found a friend that was racing his Yamaha 250 from St. George, Jacob who works at Factory Power Sports. Another friend of his was camped near him and actually had mis-ordered his cans of fuel (his dad did) and had a five-gallon can of 110 that he sold to us; alright, back in business and stopping the panic attack!
Okay, first race that I entered was the 15-24 Sport 450-B. It was a full line with a ton of experienced B riders ready to go. This track is brutal on the first left hand hairpin turn with everybody trying to get there first and then over the first table throttling up as fast as you can and then the full course and sixty-minutes of extreme adrenaline; that’s a given. I felt like I did pretty good for my second race of the season without any time in the snow to practice. I could have and probably should have finished in the top ten but for this race there were eleven guys who put in a better effort with me finishing 12th. Two racers in the field (yeah right; sandbaggers for sure) actually lapped the entire field. Not just me but the entire field! I’m not sure but WORCS was talking about bumping them. They are pretty good at watching this sort of thing.
Okay, the first race went okay but I was ready for the second sixty-minute race I had entered; the 450-B race. I had a great start and was battling in 5th place through most of the first lap effort on the course but on the back side in the sand, really deep sand, my throttle tube completely sheared away and lost power; oh great. WORCS pulled me off the course. Grandpa, my sponsor, my personal pit ol’ guy, ha, ha, (he’s going on 73), chief bottle washer, hurried up and grabbed a spare ODI set of grips and throttle tube setup. In our rush to install it to get back in the race we didn’t thread the throttle cable correctly or it didn’t set properly so I could only get half throttle; not enough to get me through the deep sand; no power so I had to pull off the course and got a DNF; bummer! Things happen beyond your control sometimes but you go to sleep that night and wake up the next day happy to be alive and ready to race again. Yeah, I absolutely love it.
