42ND ANNUAL MOTION PRO NEVADA 200

[MotoFactory]

We all have bucket lists. Maybe you want to qualify for Loretta Lynn’s. Maybe you want to do the Dakar rally. Maybe you want to ride in Costa Rica.

For me, it’s not about riding in exotic places or participating in legendary events. I’ve been doing that for over 50 years. Now, it’s about going back and doing it right. That means taking it a little slowly and enjoying the people that make this sport great. This weekend was a perfect example of that. I drove up to Caliente, Nevada with Pete Murray and we rode the 42nd annual Nevada 200. I got to hang out with some of the coolest people on the planet for three days. We rode some excellent trail together, got a little sick from questionable chili together, drank beer, told stories and had a great time. It doesn’t get much better.

Pete Murray crashed almost immediately on day one. It’s good to get that out of the way early.

This kind of stuff is overdue. As I said, I’ve been blessed with the opportunity to race motorcycles all over the world. All of these were great experiences, but they were races, which means you rush through it all with such focus that you miss anything that isn’t directly in your field of vision. Now, I want to revisit all those places and take a good look at what I missed the first time.

Nevada is an obvious target. I raced the Best in the Desert series for years, did some MRAN events, rode the Nevada Rally and did the Nevada 2000, but it was all with racing blinders. This weekend I got to look around and enjoy a number of people I hadn’t seen in years. It starts, of course, with Scot and Kristi Harden. They were on the racing treadmill along with me for over 40 years, but now they just want to get together with old friends and throw the kind of party that takes place on the trail. Rodney Smith is now a part of the Harden Off-Road team and helps put together the event along with a long list of crusty characters. For example I’ve known Chris Carter because his company Motion Pro makes such great tools. At the Nevada 200, I got to know Chris as a rider. Same thing is true of Mike Spurgin of Taco Moto. For a couple of years now he’s been my go-to source for dual-sport information. Guess what? The reason he knows so much about dual-sport bikes is because he rides the hell out of them. 

A side-note on Spurgin. He will talk your ear off about dual-sport bikes. That’s a side effect of passion. On Saturday’s part of the trailride, I got a flat front tire and was looking around for a suitable rock/motorcycle stand when he arrived. He parked his Beta 350RS and proceeded to hold my bike so that the front wheel was off the ground for the next half-hour. He talked the whole time, of course, but in a good way that helped make the task easier. Another rider named Kevin also stopped to help. Up front, I have to confess that I don’t accept help graciously. I’ve written columns about that. Even if I do things wrong, even if I do things in such a way that it’s painful to watch and even if it looks like I might not get the job done at all, I prefer to do the work myself. Ask anyone. I need to hand it to Kevin. I repeatedly threatened to fight him, but he stayed and helped me through the task. The reason it took so long was because everything went wrong. I had ridden too far on the flat and the tire and the rubber strip that covers the spoke nipples had rotated out of place. Eventually I had to take the whole tire off and start over. My ISDE days were long ago and that fact was apparently obvious to Kevin. He stayed and fixed my errors despite my lack of civility. Mike, I think, was entertained by the whole process and kept it light whenever tension escalated.

I rode a Husky TE300. It was perfect.

Another rider who I always enjoy is Lendon Smith. He’s the owner of Seat Concepts, which is a company that’s doing quite well these days. Lendon was broke 15 years ago, but stuck with his fledging company when it probably would have been much easier to work construction. Now that seats are a thriving business, he has a bucket list of his own and it looks much like mine. Pete Murray and I coordinated with Lendon beforehand–if he was going to the Nevada 200, we were going. One of the side shows is an on-going contest to see who bleeds the most when we get together. Both of us are blessed with paper-thin skin and virtually every ride ends with horrendous wounds and blood leaking through our sleeves. For both of us, the injuries are generally quite superficial, but look fearsome nonetheless. This weekend, I finally bested Lendon, which has been an on-going pursuit for several years. Pain is temporary, glory is forever.

Pete’s favorite bike lately has been the Beta 200RR.

Pete Murray is one of my very best friends and we ride together almost every week. I think this is a testimony to my strength of character, because Pete has always been much faster. It can get old, but I deal with it. Lendon and Pete are going to embark on an adventure that doesn’t involve me later in the year. They will be on a U.S. team at the Vintage Enduro Trophy in Zschopau, Germany. Lendon is a veteran of the event and sees Pete as something of a ringer. He has even offered to procure the bike for Pete to ride: a 1978 Maico 250. Pete’s footnote in history is that he was the last rider to earn National Motocross points on a Maico. Noted: Lendon didn’t offer me a spot on his team.

Skyler Howes was on the ride for the second year in a row.

Pete was also annoying because he went unscathed by the Great Chili Scandal. Scot and his crew always make a big pot of chili for the riders to enjoy at the end of day one. This time the chili was a little off. We all ate it anyway, and most of us had to deal the consequences all night. Not Pete. Years of riding Maicos left him with the ability to tolerate anything that was long past its prime. That’s not true of Brock Harden who believed he had an iron gut. The iron apparently rusted through and sent him scurrying into the brush on the morning of day two. He says he wiped with a rock. I don’t know how that’s possible. Brock stepped on stage during Saturday evening’s banquet to present his dad Scot with one of the famous Whistledick Awards for his part in the chili caper. “Whistledick,” as anyone who has ever raced in the greater Nevada region knows, is a term of affection coined by Casey Folks years ago. At the Nevada 200, Whistledick awards are presented to riders for their misdeeds on the trail. Pete Murray, I think, has four. Now Scot Harden himself has one.

Oh, yeah, we also covered 200 miles of trail. It was excellent. It turns out that this band of questionable characters was originally brought together by a love for riding. Now what keeps them coming back is a love for each other.

Pete added to his whistledick collection.

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