Day 2 - we ride. The bus showed up to transport us to the track at 7:00 am. Pretty damn early but nobody was late. Everyone was eager to get out and start rippin’. We arrived at the Spring Creek MX Park facility after about a half hour ride through some picturesque Minnesota farmland. And speaking of picturesque, wow! What a great facility. The track looked mint and the factory Kawasaki rig sat there before us shining in the early morning sunlight. Twenty brand-spanking new KX 250Fs lined up under the awning. As I was introduced to my bike and my mechanic, Brett, I was having a hard time keeping the smile off my face.
Made famous by Chad Reed’s big get-off at last year’s National, the Chad-a-pult is now one of the most famous/ infamous landmarks in American Motocross.
We suited up and the sound of bikes began to fill the air as one by one, riders started filing out onto the track. As some of the guys started circulating at speed, the first thing that really struck me was the sound these bikes were producing, or maybe I should say the bark. These bikes did not sound like 250Fs to me. I heard a few other guys mention the same thing. My mechanic (I love being able to say this by the way) set my ride height and sag, plus we adjusted my levers. I was ready to go. One thing I should mention is that my 250F resume is a very slender one indeed. I’ve had very little experience with the smaller machines. My preconceived notions of this bike were that it would feel light and maneuverable but probably would be noticeably
down on power, especially when compared to my CRF450. Immediately, I was impressed by how snappy and responsive the motor felt. As I started to cut some laps around Spring Creek MX, I was equally impressed with the strength of the powerplant all through its range. Spring Creek has some major elevation changes that you just can’t appreciate when seeing the race on television. The 250F however was pulling my 190lb frame up these big, nasty hills with ease. The newly designed Dunlop MX51Js were hooking up really well, which also surprised me a bit as I had judged them to be more of an intermediate tire. Spring Creek is downright sandy in spots but no problem, the tires worked great. I checked the rears out on a bunch of the bikes after the two
days of hard riding and there was very little sign of wear on any of them either. Good job Dunlop on the new hoops; only available on the new KX 250F and through your Kawasaki dealer. We pounded a lot of laps and put about six hours on the bike on the first day. I couldn’t imagine a better day of riding; maybe if there were some ice cold beers on the bus on the ride back to the hotel. Wait a minute. Is that a cooler I see? These people from Kawasaki think of everything. After we cleaned up and par-took in a couple cocktails, it was off to dinner where Gauldy and Palms had me rolling with some great moto road trip stories. After dinner, Fro held court and regaled us with some MX des Nations tales that were definitely worth the price of admission. The weather forecast for day two wasn’t good. It was supposed to rain but thankfully the moto Gods smiled on us. We arrived at Spring Creek and were greeted by yet another beautiful day. The track workers had obviously been busy overnight. Some sections of the course had been tilled up very deeply and as the first few riders hit the track, even some top pros were paddling through sections. It didn’t take long for the circuit to start setting up so we geared up and prepared to hit it. The softer conditions definitely changed the handling characteristics of the bike. Gauldy took it out first but pulled back in after only a few laps. He felt that the front end was packing due to the softer conditions. Our mechanic, Brett, stiffened up the front end and Ryan felt like it worked a lot better for him like that. I, on the other hand, found the change in settings to be too stiff for me and I couldn’t get the thing to corner at all.
Fro still has plenty of speed and style. One of my all-time favourite riders, it was pretty cool getting the chance to hang out and ride with him for a couple days. Here he is modelling the new Shift Retro Gear.
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