Friday arvo grasstrack

Years ago when I organized my first event without a club (Bush to beach 2 day trailride) I invited a few mags. I had always loved magazines so to meet Tom, Clubby and Tuffy was a blast. Although I knew TF was local it was surprising how close he was and baffling how he didn’t like extra tight singletrack in Piney.

When I asked what he liked he replied grasstrack, I told him I have a good grasstrack and Friday arvo grasstrack was born. Initially, it was only designed to hear inside stories about ADB. For years I had read about how slow Tom was so I didn’t give it much thought.

The DR650 was good to go, bald tyres and zip ties, Wolfy my next door nieghbour liked carving tracks in with his tractor and slasher, the tighter the better with as many off-cambers as he could find, nothing changed there, this week.s is in the same style.

By constantly moving the track, not allowing many people on it makes for a slippery rut free blast which it still is today

Tom Turned up that first day on a trick XR250 that had won it.s class at the thumper nats with Ashcan not Tom behind the bars. I didn’t prepare, practice or even drop my air pressure in my bald tyres and promptly got my ass handed to me.

It was sobering to be flogged by someone as “slow” as Tom despite riding a mighty big tanked DR650 so I started practicing, walking the track and more practicing. We ended up with some really good battles, great close racing if only for short times. As you had to crack the DR early to keep the XR insight I would occasionally knock Tom down but he always came back for more.

Over the years I learned how to get a DR around fairly well, embarrassing the odd rider on motocross bikes if they couldn’t ride.grass very well. Not that it was a level playing field, very undulating actually with a home-court advantage.

Unfortunately, life sometimes gets in the way of fun and grasstrack days have become few and far between but with a fresh track carved in last week we did a few laps before I tore out a valve stem and arrangements have been made for a rematch this Friday.

I better fix my tyre and run some laps this week, we can’t have it being fair.