In 86 years, the Sandy Lane Enduro has missed its minute just three times. All the while, the key time clock has ticked away like a time bomb toward the big one.
World War II meant pressing pause between 1942 and ’45. The COVID-19 pandemic claimed both the original spring date and the proposed fall rescheduling. So what about 2024? Well, the grinding gears of government at first and when that got pulled from the clutches, it failed to rain for more than a month and left behind dangerously dry conditions.
Making up for lost time then, north of 300 entrants some 60 rows deep were champing at the bit come a cloud-free sunny Sunday morning in the shadow of Batsto to get going across roughly 60 ground miles of single track, fire cuts, sand roads and blacktop to take a grand tour through Wharton State Forest’s 124,000 acres.
The Meteor Motorcycle Club’s annual event, part of the 17-stop East Coast Enduro Association’s (ECEA) 2025 schedule, went into the history books hitch-free on March 23. Thing is, its one of the season’s earliest time-keeping competitions in a year where the state Department of Environmental Protection’s (DEP) new map of off-limits off-roading areas in Wharton is officially in full effect – and that’s a particularly polarizing premise for dirt bikes.
On Taxation and Representation
Inside the confines of the Interboro Gun Club, where members sling sandwiches to put mutually beneficial micro-economics into action, Meteor President Frank Kaminski explains that recent history has been quite hectic for ECEA clubs. In dealings with New Jersey, there were proposals the larger association managed to get tossed (example: if an enduro entrant was caught riding illegally in Wharton at any point up to one year after a race they attended, that event would be denied its next permit), while others were still in early phases of testing (six participants carrying GPS devices to show state officials that the laid-out loop as approved is indeed what was run.)
With a handful of state park attendants on-site Sunday morning and well through start control and tech inspection, it’s clear that both sides meant business. “We recognize these guys have a job to do,” Kaminski said, and that includes Meteor sending a digital file of the proposed course to an ad hoc state committee in Trenton where its twists and turns are evaluated by plant, animal, historical, forestry and fire-fighting subject matter experts to limit risk and ensure there’s no damage done to surroundings.
“Ninety percent understand and agree with the forest being protected,” Kaminski said when asked about the mentality of people who choose to enjoy Wharton on two wheels. To the other 10 percent not following the laws as they now stand, he didn’t object to some tough love until behavior improves.
As one Ocean County Competition Riders member from Beachwood, New Jersey explained to me, the approval process to run these events is exhaustive and “once we’re done, you can’t even tell we were here.” An eight-inch-wide, single-file sugar sand groove is often the only evidence, leaving the site in the same utter silence it has enjoyed since time immemorial. He continued: “We love the woods just as much as anyone else… and it is state land. We do pay taxes.”
With the logistical hurdles cleared, the first rows of racers leave at 9 a.m. and the ground thuds and thunders with each departure. There’s the honorary first row for the late and lost and contemplative clasped hands over the crossbar reconsidering the brutality of the next five hours. Minute by minute counting up to 63, we release the whole procession into withering fire. The furious race against time is a battle each entrant has with the time bomb ticking inside their head and with nature’s malicious decision to plant two trees too close together.
East of nowhere inside the grand chess game between rooks, racers, bishops and bureaucrats, the checkmates get down to business. We merry few, volunteering for a pleasant afternoon in the forest with zero seat time, build the designated checkpoint in a way that’ll keep this runaway train flowing on its terminal path. Come the final stop all those hours later, where the shell-shocked riders emerge from the woods with 100-yard stares like survivors of Verdun, they don’t know whether to laugh, cry, hoot or holler. Bleeding forearms with jerseys in tatters up to the elbows, broken fenders, dented pipes, smashed headlights and in a total delirium, failing to follow the final red arrow on the tree that told ’em the way back to car and cooler.
Fear and Loathing on the Enduro Trail
The ground war between do-not-touch versus pack-it-in/pack-it-out has been raging for decades. It’s Barstow-to-Vegas come home to roost, and a topic I’ve tackled time and time and time again in hopes of showing the wider world a larger picture. You might not ride motorcycles (hell, you might even hate the things) but the local tax burden sure appreciates their lift. This coast-to-coast conflict has seen some lulls, long ago chasing the likes of quads and side-by-sides out of the picture to at least ensure everyone has a license, registration and insurance, but 2025 is different here.
The state DEP’s release late last fall of the Wharton State Forest Visiting Vehicle Use Map is, if nothing else, a temperature check on the current climate. “By clearly defining safe, legal vehicle roads, we’re improving access for responsible exploration while protecting Wharton’s diverse natural and cultural treasures, minimizing impacts on sensitive habitats and supporting the integrity of our shared public lands,” New Jersey’s assistant commissioner for state parks, forests and historic sites said in a press release. Moreover, the department announced in February a Trail Users Survey aimed at establishing “a system of trails that serves the needs and priorities of all New Jersey residents and trail users.”
‘There’s room for everyone if we’re conscious of maintaining a balance with nature and each other.’
Flip open the July 1990 and ’91 editions of Trail Rider Magazine and you’ll find stories about legions of South Jersey enduro club members volunteering their time to haul thousands of illegally-dumped old car tires and eight 30-yard Dumpster’s worth of refuse out of the woods. Enduro clubs like Meteor have long worked lockstep with New Jersey officials to keep everything related to the once-a-year competition kosher – and that’s non-negotiable given the use of state lands and public roadways – but it has proven impossible to please critics in all corners. If riding dirt bikes clear through a forest’s serene nothingness is our way of expressing appreciation, the naysayers will probably retort that we’ve sure got a funny way of showing it.
Look – this point-counterpoint attack could go on forever, with organizations like Open Trails NJ working to restore, maintain and champion increased and responsible state forest use in the face of mounting political pressures. Who’s to say that bending to the whims and wills of the latest release of “legal” roads is the final concession authority will seek? Give someone an inch in hopes of cooler heads prevailing, but they somehow always find a way to take a mile. To save yourself some headache, it’s not unheard of these days to only run in organized events. The logic: you get to ride the best bits of single track and other private land goodies out in the Pines where there’s zero chance of running afoul of recently-closed paths that you thought were OK, but the park ranger is now yelling otherwise and to please shut the bike off for a moment.
I hate to drink from the half-empty glass. As I type this on an overcast and drizzling Monday, knowing full well that the bulk of yesterday’s enduro evidence has already been washed away, the raindrops slowly fill it back up. More than anything, this particular Sunday was one of the region’s first warm days of the year and offered a beautiful afternoon in the wilderness. A barely discernible breeze blows and the withered old trees sway gently through it. It’s hard to explain how all-consuming quietness can be so utterly immersive. It’s here where staked claims to common ground begin to resonate.
Seth Carpenter is a Gloucester County native whose “View Jersey” video series explores those off-the-beaten path parts of the Garden State (you can view his treks out to Amatol here and a slew of other Pine Barrens derelicts here). Carpenter offered me a motorsport outsider’s perspective on what Wharton means to him when he’s busy “hunting down some old foundation tied to a bit of macabre folklore” as part of his project to “share how special New Jersey can be if you know where to look.”
In short, his passion for natural history strikes an equal balance with not letting the place be taken for granted. When it comes to traversing via “wheels, boots or hooves,” Carpenter sees how slippery of a slope things can be in the gray granules of sugar sand. “I’m equally as passionate about granting access to anyone who loves and cares about the place as much as I do. There’s room for everyone if we’re conscious of maintaining a balance with nature and each other.”
Reset to 100.00
Woodie Guthrie sang in 1940 about this land, our land, being made for you and me. That very same year, Pete Epley piloted a Harley-Davidson RL 45 – a 400-pound, 18-horse, 6-volt, un-sprung American V-twin, to victory in the seventh-annual running. Sandy Lane’s roll chart has truly seen it all, from Carranza to Quaker Bridge and back down the Washington Turnpike to Route 563 as another chapter of observed results scrawled into back-up books joins the volumes of Meteor history.
With the detonator dismantled and the final machines rolling back into the pits under their own power, one might argue that three hundred minutes doesn’t sound like a lot. Tell that to the proud legacy of purple hearts with their blacktop wind chills and knuckles busted at full speed on tree trunks. “I never though we’d still be putting it on in this day and age,” former Meteor trail boss and president Dale Freitas offered at day’s end around the societal and technological trends that somehow always seemingly serve to complicate. And yet, there he was hours earlier on Sunday, mobile device Velcro-d to the handlebars with a GPS app running, still doing his part to keep the show on the road.
What’s clear from the center of the storm is what’s so misunderstood at the periphery, so a final word from our National Park Service. “Put simply, conservation seeks the proper use of nature, while preservation seeks protection of nature from use.” Preservation is too passive for these parts, where stopping time to protect a pearl-clutching porcelain world is apparently the only means of keeping it safe.
Conservation is the active counterpoint, where the big one come 2034 – a century’s worth of sweat equity to cut untold ground miles of trail across 100 years of history – is the only thing the clock atop the time bomb might pause to reflect on for a moment… then keep right on ticking.
Greg Adomaitis 