Pleasure Valley was a fun Regional. In the beginning I sort of felt like "Oh I remember now why I stopped racing D-5" but after just letting things keep going I realized they did a very good job and it was a fun weekend.
This is the first time I've actually completed a Regional event since 2013. The last four years I've had health issues and family deaths that have kept me from racing consistently. For me it was nice to just go out and actually complete a full practice day and six motos and actually enjoy myself without other things weighing heavily on my mind.
Pleasure Valley used to be my favorite track because when I was young I was a "jumper" but I found myself really having trouble with the jumps there. I spent the day Friday getting all the jumps dialed, including a massive case-job on the last step up triple of the old skycoaster section as they used to call it. I did end up clearing all that clean on Friday, but didn't jump it during the races. One moto in +45 two riders tangled and went down in a heap in that section, and the one guy got up and started walking to the side of the track.....right into me as I was landing. I drilled the guy with my left shoulder as I was hunching down to avoid him and never crashed but man was that scary. They had the yellows out for the entire moto there and actually several guys got docked positions for jumping on the yellow flag. I talked to the guy the next day and he looked like he got sucker punched by Mike Tyson -- his right eye almost completely swollen shut. Not from me hitting him, it was from the original crash. The other guy I believe had a broken collarbone or shoulder injury.
Plus 45 is kindof a scary class. I swear when they remove the "pros" and make it a sportsman class then all the people come out of the woodwork for their shot at glory. There were massive pileups every moto in that class.
I got lapped by Mike Brown all three +40 motos. Oh well. Spent a decent amount of time talking to him both at his truck and in staging, really nice guy to talk to. He said he had to leave there Sunday and fly to Argentina Monday for some event for Husky. I asked him in staging if I should use my holeshot device on the cement start and he goes "I don't know!" I said --- hey you are the one that used to race Nationals with cement starts and he laughed and said "yeah but I was on a 125 and we didn't have holeshot devices!" Kinda funny. For the record I did not use my holeshot device, and found that leaving that off coupled with blocks for me feet so I could plant my feet helped me a lot. Without locking the holeshot device I can barely touch the ground.
Made some new friends, fellow +45 racer there with his father and son and they were from Long Island, NY. Said basically all he does is ride at Englishtown, NJ since there is nothing else near him.
I did terrible, but the part that was really cool for me is that I raced 6 motos on a brutally rough track and actually had fun. It's been a long time since I've really had fun and came away looking forward to the next race.