My local riding club (Crow Canyon) is a private club , but we hold open events a few times as year to help pay the bills... One of those events is our annual KTM Day's ride event. It was held on November 5th and 6th... KTM brings a full complement of their new bikes, both track and trail. KTM Days allows anyone the opportunity to try out a new KTM, or bring your own bike and enjoy the facilities. We also have several vendors on site with gear, parts, supplies, food, etc. The week preceding the event the weather was warm for this time of the year (mid 60's), and had been dry. Mother nature blessed us with some decent rain on Thursday. There was a few last minute changes to the MX track (which everyone loved) and the final prep was made to the track and 3 different trail loops. The trail loops were one exclusively for those testing / trying out a new KTM, and the other were a AA 8 mile loop of mostly single track, and the other was an easier 6 mile double track loop for families and quad / side-by-side riders. The kiddie track was also prepped. The weather for the weekend was scheduled sunny with temps in the low 70's.
Saturday I volunteered to be a flagger on the track... (It's so much fun watching the little guys blasting around the track). I arrived at 8:00 AM... the main parking lot was almost full... We had to open other areas for parking to accommodate the larger than anticipated crowd. As a club member, you get in free as long as you have your club ID. With that in mind, Saturday we had 600 paying riders, plus those who came to support the riders... We counted over 1,200 people through the gates Saturday.
While working as a flagger, I couldn't help but to notice the ratio of smokers on the track... the sound was awesome, as the smokers outnumbered the stroker by a 4:1 margin... Now many of the track riders normally rode a stroker, but was there to try out a new smoker... Wow it's really fun to be that close and watching the talented riders just abuse the track, and watching one rider in particular, keeping a 150 pinned as he was blowing past the 450's... Yes he normally rode a 450, but just wanted to tryout a 150 just for grins... of which we had plenty of. He was whipping that bike over and around everything... I talked to a few guys after their rides and they were just full of smiles ear to ear... Loved the new 2 smoke Katooms.... They were struggling with what their next bike purchase would be... deal with the cost of maintaining a stroker, or jump ship and get on a smoker.... I also worked the kiddie track, and laughed my arse off watching the little guys buzz around on their 50's 65's and 70's... they were just having a ball... Even the woods riders, the smokers far outnumbered the strokers... Plus it was so funny watching someone on a stroker kicking and kicking, and kicking trying to refire their bikes... when their buddies on a smoker would stab at the kicker once and ride off...
Sunday I didn't work, so I had the opportunity to ride my KTM 380... Again we had close to 600 paying riders, and another 600 non riders through the gate ... Since there were so many fast guys on the track and I'm so damn slow, I headed to the trails... The AA loop was a bitch... There was a lot of guys that didn't understand the difficulty of an AA loop... some parts of the AA loop were more difficult than their skill set. Honestly they should have stayed on the double track (at least on just a busy day). My son and I helped several guys up some difficult single track hills, and guided them over to the double track. They were more than happy to ride the double track... With the amount of riders there, the marked loops kept everyone going in the same direction, so you could run the trails as hard as you wanted without worrying about some idiot coming the wrong direction... I also ran the easier loop a few times and saw many, many groups of families... It was a great site to see watching Dads, Moms, and several kids riding together. At one point there was a bottleneck as a family was trying to get everyone up a mildly difficult hill... It was so cool watching Jr. on his 50 trying to climb the hill and fail... everyone was encouraging to try it again... We helped him down the hill and he'd try it again, and finally the 3rd try he cleared it... all who were there erupted in cheers when he made it to the top... Yea you could see the grin on his face even with his helmet on... By then end of the day, I was spent... I think I rode the AA loop 3 times and the easy loop twice. I did make a few laps around the track, but was so tired I realized I needed to get my fat ass off the track and call it a day.
What a great weekend... it's sad to see the season winding down.
