From the moment you head north up New York’s Route 8 toward New Berlin, it’s as if time stops. The Colonial homes, flag-draped main streets, lush rolling pastures and local plant powering the region’s economic engine could be any bucolic Hometown USA.

It’s actually the home of horsepower and crossing over that geographic threshold – like some bad Twilight Zone opening – sees all your worldly concerns fade to gray for the next three days. MX Rewind 2023, now in its 13^th year at Unadilla Motocross, draws racers and their contingents all the way from Canada to California by the thousands. There’s the lure and legacy of Gravity Cavity, Horsepower Hill, Screw-U, Skyshot (if you’re crazy enough) and even the humble white barn that’s been there forever. It’s where American motocross truly took a stand some five decades ago and probably your best shot at experiencing time travel – not to mention riding this national-level outdoor track.

“The priority today is having fun,” event coordinator and vintage racing mover/shaker Fred Guidi said at a morning rider’s meeting. True, there’s no shortage of friendly bench racing and bonfire talk – including a few “The other side sucks!” taunts – at the close of each day. Before those guards get let down, however, you’re pinning it to the limit, receiving and delivering a faceful of roost in nose to tail competition. Those mists of time that obscure New Berlin for one weekend every June are, in this case, the snarls and swirls of 2-stroke smoke. Wake up and smell the pre-mix.

Broken Records

Last year’s MX Rewind was both my first race and first time to ‘Dilla. So, another father-son five-hour trek north was much-anticipated across the past 12 months. We both had our fair share of hurdles this time around yet loading up early Sunday afternoon, beer in hand and badly needing a bandage from the medical staff, I already can’t wait for June 2024.

Event officials said 2023 attendance set another record for the fourth year straight: a stated 1,580 riders came out compared to last year’s tally of 1,356 bikes. That latter figure came from Jill Robinson, daughter of late Unadilla founder Ward Robinson. She has helped run the show since 2010 alongside her brother, Greg, and told me last year in an interview about off-road riding preservation that Unadilla is comparable to Daytona or Fenway Park. It’s both a special place and highly significant to the sport it hosts; her father also “timed it brilliantly” in the late 1960s when he saw those rolling landscapes as an arena of power.

So what exactly brings us back in record numbers year after year?

• On an annual basis, Unadilla only opens its gates a handful of times and if you’re not racing professional-level motocross, chances are you’ll never turn a lap here.
• The preparation, grooming, adjustments and attentiveness of course workers and groundskeepers makes for a seamless experience. You pay your money, but you get plenty in return.
• The camaraderie: nothing beats waiting in the chute for your second moto, laughing with the guy who tried to poke a wheel in around a tight turn and found no such luck. The same goes for your neighbor back at base camp: Wherever you are, Marty, we hope home beats sleeping in an old Willys wagon.
• Where else can you count on a full gate of fire-breathing YZs, CRs, KXs, RMs and the rest of their European counterparts? As one friend said, this is his Super Bowl and summer vacation rolled into one.

This three-day celebration of fast things from the past included memorializing the life of late Czech racer Jaroslav Falta, with daughter Martina Faltova Cope in attendance.

“It was 45 years ago next month that I met her father,” Jill Robinson said of Falta, who raced Unadilla in the 1970s and was honored with two CZ parade laps on Saturday and Sunday. Static displays of classic CZ twin pipers and Falta replicas helped put a human touch on vintage iron.

‘Well, that’s Racing’

Poor Mert Lawwill, whose time to shine in “On Any Sunday” was darkened by a string of bad luck and a broken $2 throttle cable. The weekend was littered with countless similar examples. Really, if you weren’t worried about jetting, fighting a bike that wouldn’t start or stay running, shearing off a foot peg or in moderate pain from short-travel suspension, did you really race at MX Rewind?

If it weren’t for bad luck, some wouldn’t have any luck at all. Here’s a short list of our own “luck” throughout the weekend:

• Forgotten supplies at home, requiring mixing jugs and funnels made out of water bottles from the dumpster.
• A square barrel Maico that wouldn’t start and once it did, took the tow of shame off the track during practice. An engine mounting bolt soon after went missing and, as if a sign from the heavens, the machine was retired for the remainder of the weekend – except for stripping it of carburetor and throttle parts.
• A generally reliable 1974.5 Maico 250 that wouldn’t fire on the line and needed a bump from a gate worker to get going… one whole lap into the first moto. Going 2-1 for a trophy here was a saving grace and sanity check.
• A broken throttle cable on a third bike that was cannibalized and MacGyver-ed into operation minutes before it needed to be on the line, later grabbing a WFO holeshot – bodged cable stops and all.
• Running back-to-back motos, from the final of the first round to the first of the second round, without an intermission. Eight laps in 20 minutes was hard enough; 30-minute motos shall remain mindboggling.
• Looping out of Gravity Cavity and taking a damn good slam while watching my shattered front number plate go sailing through the air. Not the best way to close out the weekend early.
• Sleeping on the floor, fuel hoses randomly unplugging themselves, a tweaked ankle during practice, car troubles on the way home and so on and so on. At least the weather was nice.

Luck and Legends

From the minis to the masters, MX Rewind offers a test of both mettle and machine (so long as it’s pre-2009). Soon to be 78, New York native and American motocross frontrunner Barry Higgins has stood tall through those mists of time. He was there with Ward and Peg Robinson at the beginning, and he’s still here pushing a bike to the line.

“Two hole shots and two wins – can’t complain about that,” he said early Sunday morning.

The AMA Motorcycle Hall of Fame member, inducted in 2000, remembers when the initial start was a straight shot sweeper leading toward Gravity Cavity and two-foot-tall grass covering the track only came down as riders ripped it up themselves. MX Rewind still shares glimpses of those days when a European-inspired rugged and “natural” terrain track was the norm. Bouncing the rear end up a washboard Horsepower Hill late in the day, I couldn’t help but think of Hannah and O’Mara springing their way through the rough stuff some 35 years ago.

Maybe that’s the point of it all: ghost riding the lines of long-gone leaders around a legendary circuit. Time goes on, albeit a bit slower at MX Rewind. The morning sun melts the valley mist and the weary rub the sleep and grime from their eyes one last time. The loudspeakers click on and there’s always that first bike of the day to break the silence as it barks to life. The sensory cues of competition are everywhere: It’s time for one final fateful day of racing.

“All in all, you couldn’t meet a better bunch of people,” Higgins said of the temporary foes and longtime friends you try and outgun in the first turn. “Nobody knows how lucky we are that Greg and Jill kept this going.”

Author’s note: For high-resolution photos from all three days of MX Rewind 2023 at Unadilla Motocross, visit karlcphotography.com.

Unadilla MX Rewind 2023 Photos