It’s fitting that for each passing hour of an enduro, the razor-edge limit that racers live and die by, vastly different themes appears.
For competitors, one hour is just a blur of tan sand, green growth and sharp brown on repeat. Some even start to suspect that it may never end. But for the rest of us – the chaperones of your friendly checks in and out – these same 60 minutes offer a calculated collection of observations rooted in time-keeping tradition. Every second, ticking by in the tens of thousands from dawn to dusk, drastically changes the tone of the time as another entry in the Sandy Lane Enduro log book is written.
What’s going on in someone’s mind hours after they’ve left the start with untold time yet to go? “Eyes up, breathe, and grip the seat with your legs,” one racer told me beside his bike still bearing last weekend’s Curly Fern scars. “Most importantly, have fun.” And what exactly is the significance of the seemingly arbitrary hour-long limit to proving your dirt worth? It’s the time-honored measuring stick that goes beyond being burned a few points for being early or late, but we will defer to the expert’s explanation here.
If you’re more than an hour off the pace for the next scheduled check-in, it’s safe to assume that this just wasn’t your day. The reasons for this are numerous and unpredictable, but the result is the same: you’re out of contention and it’s time to pack it in because you have “houred out.” That all said, here’s the 87th annual Sandy Lane Enduro… “houred out” into its own distinct 60(ish)-minute snippets.
Start Control: 8 to 10:07 a.m.
Greetings from the Interboro Gun Club, way down in Greenbank, New Jersey and already buzzing with hundreds of ECEA racers, Meteor Motorcycle Club members and assorted volunteers who see the value in land conservation over outright preservation. Pickups and camper vans spew out their weary and dew-covered contents to build a field full of firepower. In the still chill of morning, you can visually count crank rotations by two-stroke smoke rings leaving the pipe in rapid succession.
Brandon Scharff, an Ocean County Competition Riders club member from Mount Holly, New Jersey, simply said that “nerves” were on his mind leading up to go time. Today was going to be his first real shot at time-keeping, having done well enough with hare scrambles but wanting to get in on the enduro action with fellow OCCR members. Having moved up from Florida, and then finding the Pines as a suitable place to ride, he “got into the woods and never looked back. All the pain goes away once you’re on your own out there.”
Key time strikes at exactly 9 a.m. The ground reverberates in alignment with engine RPMs as each row of riders approaches the line and thunders off. Aboard a humble KDX that I watched blur by the finish five hours later, one rider in the next-to-last row told me that if you’re not chasing points, don’t feel like pulling over mid-single track to let angry people by and just want to go out for an experience with your friends, the 66th row is the place to be. The wall of sound that just kept inching forward finally hits its reprieve. With the last departure, silence returned and so did the ringing in our ears.
Controlled Burn: 10:08 a.m. to 12:40 p.m.
The brains of this whole thing, a behind-closed-doors book-keeping operation, is where we turn in one set of clocks, paperwork, flip cards and Bic pens in exchange for another grab bag of goodies. Asked what his favorite part of the day is, Meteor Motorcycle Club President Frank Kaminsi said it’s “the whole sign-up process. You get to see friends old and new – it’s kind of like a meet-and-greet.”
With that family reunion over, we’re ordered 20 minutes up the road past scrub pines and cranberry bogs towards Chatsworth. Then it’s back down into some unpaved paradise past the tangled web of trail bosses who’ve gleefully weaved something for other club members to piss and moan and curse about later. The area has been pre-strung with caution tape, mileage markers and paper arrows – all of which will be removed in short order to erase any evidence we were ever here at all.
The ground has very clearly been purposely burned and such a scorched earth policy leaves nothing but crisp charcoal underfoot and sooty tree trunks at handguard-level. It’s time for a controlled burn of our own with an early 11 a.m. lunch break. No, there’s no seat time for the check mates, but there is a grill, warm weather and lawn chairs! Time waits for no man, though. As we start looking at those fancy clocks they gave us, it’s probably time to start configuring the check.
Controlled Chaos: 12:41 to 3:15 p.m.
The ominous approach of a few hundred riders is heard, not seen, as it arrives in an unpredictable style. The first few racers are almost always a mystery, followed by duos and trios chasing each other’s tails like hungry dogs let loose off the leash. Headlight shrouds are shattered and race numbers left illegible, but the RFID zapper tells the tale of who’s racing against the clock just right.
Time flies by in a series of bursts until it doesn’t… and then it drags. Workers out in this literal and figurative field wait to see if anyone else is going to turn up as the frantic pace of even 1:41 p.m. turns into the curiosity pieces of 2:41 p.m. A good many of the same smiling faces we saw four hours ago have been replaced by 1,000-yard stares as they are faced with another wall of woods, another sandy single-track tail and yet more mandates on the roll chart. The sweeper finally relieves us of active duty and we bag it to join the rest of the herd in its journey home.
Mission Accomplished: 3:16 p.m. to Close
Wharton State Forest encompasses some 125,000 acres across Camden, Burlington, Atlantic counties. The small towns and cottage industries that once existed here hundreds of years ago are all but gone, but the “Garden State” promise remains. Wharton is still slashed by so many hard-pack dirt roads with names like Lost Lane, Spring Hill and Sooy. They often end where asphalt – and all the trappings of modern civilization – once again take over. But while you’re out here, just as there are laws of the jungle, there are rules for the woods.
I feel like I’ve accomplished something. I challenged myself and made it to the end.
Jimmy Ivy, who raced 45-plus A-class, emphasized that being able to rapidly “read trail” through tight sections – when all the directional arrows are mounted so low to the ground and the guy in front is blocking your view – is a rather useful skill. “I feel like I’ve accomplished something,” he told me at roughly 3:30 p.m. when asked about the state of one’s mind once the ground miles stop adding up. “I challenged myself and made it to the end.”
The end is the beginning all over again. Racers emerge from the tree line, pound the last bits of pavement and buzz by the gun club to make it back to the staging area. You can almost see the relief on their faces as they strafe down the road while a good many “thumbs up” signs are mustered. It makes sense that the bottom of the day is just like the top. After all, time is cyclical and with this 87th edition accomplished, the roll charts are wound back as we roll on to the next.
Greg Adomaitis 