Logan Hare Scramble

Before a groan of “Oh, no, not another race!” escapes your lips, remember I told you I was behind on race coverage. After today, I’ll be caught up. That is unless the boys go to another race next weekend.

On to Logan…

Logan is about 2 hours west of us. We woke up bright and early, 5 am, packed our provisions, and hit the road at 6! Ay yi yi!!

Ben’s race was at 9:30. If you been paying attention, you will notice that Ben has a different colored bike. It’s not blue anymore. It’s orange. KTM orange! In my understanding (which is very limited, mind you), KTM orange is the best. I’ll share the story of Ben’s KTM orange at the end. For now, I’ll let some pictures do the talking.

Ben’s new bike is such a recent purchase that the race was really his first real ride on it. Plus, there was this hill that you just saw, (and he did fall over his first time on it- but not during the actual race) so the fact that he placed 4th is huge. This week, there were medals for all the riders in his class. Want to see Ben smile? Start talking motorcycles with him. He can’t help it!

Bill’s race was at noon so there was some down time. Bill took a nap and the rest of us just hung out and ate our provisions.

Luke wasted no time in transferring ownership of Ben’s old bike to himself. He’s got to get a leetle bit better on two non-motorized wheels before Dad will let him try out something with power.

But one can still dream…

Bill didn’t know anything about the Logan race beforehand. You can see a small glimpse of one of the hills the racers had to maneuver. It’s a bit daunting. Ben and I ran up and down it and steep is the word that comes to mind. Bill found out later that this one was easy. The rest- not so much! It took him 45 minutes to get to where we were because of riders jamming up the hill climbs!! We saw him again 30 minutes later and again in 25 minutes. The first lap everything gets clogged up because the riders are close together. As the race goes on, riders spread out, drop out and you also know what to expect so times get faster.

This time the track was 5 miles long. Waiting can get looooonnnggg! We had some visitors with us this race also, Bill’s parents.

Despite the long lap times, Bill did well. He finished the race- which is always his first goal. He learned A LOT- which is always another goal of his. He placed 3rd, which isn’t a goal of his, but I like to mention it.

Now for the story of Ben’s new KTM orange bike.

Bill was thinking aloud that Luke will be younger than Ben was when he starts riding/racing. If Luke shows any vengeance for riding like Ben has, he will be riding longer in the younger class than Ben. (Ben will have to move up next year.) That being said, Luke really would need a more powerful bike than what we have now. Ben, sitting in the back seat of the van, reading a book, and not really paying attention, suddenly springs to life pointing out that Dad could buy the bike now for Ben to ride. *chuckle, chuckle* I look at Bill and say that I agree with Ben. Ben doesn’t really have any shot at competing against the stronger bikes in his class with his little bike now. Besides learning how to just handle a more powerful bike, Ben also has to learn how to race against others. Can’t do that with a wimpy bike.

The short of the story… Bill hopped on Craig’s List Tuesday night, found the bike he was looking for in great shape, great price on Wednesday morning, picked it up Wednesday night, got a little work on it Saturday afternoon and Ben raced it Sunday morning!

The End

I could see this morphing into a “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie” type story. Can’t you?