Return To The Tiddler | Chapter Three: Sit Down The Kool-Aid

July 30, 2019

Jeff Crutcher is one of a kind. Although we grew up a few hundred miles apart, rode all of the same Midwest tracks, and know most of the same people, our paths didn’t cross until 2015. In the time since, Crutcher has become one of my closest friends, has come up with dozens of creative ways to profit off his passion for moto, raced multiple rounds of the Lucas Oil Pro Motocross Championship aboard a KTM 250 SX two-stroke, works a full-time job as a delivery driver, and wrote a now-gone blog for TransWorld Motocross. Because the basis of Swapmoto Live is something for everyone, Jeff is a perfect person to contribute to the site from time to time.

You can support his efforts with some of the merchandise he’s made with MUF.

Preface: This was a hard one to write in two equal ways. One is of body, and one is of mind. I had to take my time, ensuring I didn’t go in guns blazing with a sweeping spray of frustration toward the entirety of pro motocross. Time heals wounds of all kinds, and my medicine is still digesting.

Thursday Night Motocross has been a multidecade stronghold in the PNW moto scene, and something I’ve wanted to participate in for years. I wanted to kill two birds with one stone in dialing my bike for the northwest soil type and ambient conditions, and tack a pin on the proverbial moto corkboard- all at the low price of $15. Honestly, I told myself probably 200 times “I’m not racing at PIR, that’s not why we are going all this way.” Yet by Thursday, I had talked myself into racing the 125 Expert class for kicks, to get a little track time, and to loosen up before the natty on Saturday.

In one hand I had my sensibility of anything-can-happen, in the other being a moto racer saying, screw it let’s race. Practice was great and I got out of the gate real nice, considering I haven’t dropped the hammer on a concrete start since 2008 at Oak Hill am national. Siting second, I was playing it safe. Sure I could’ve cheap seated the dude in first on the final lap for the W but that would make me as happy as winning an argument on the internet. Second was fine with bigger fish to fry. Portland is a breezy city with the wind channeling from the Pacific Ocean along the Columbia River valley, and PIR is a track lined with streamers and banners to give it a pro-level presence. However, the person in charge of resetting the banner that divided the pro booter triple and the amateur lane did not do a professional job of keeping the slack out of the streamer when they placed it for the ams. Like a four-mast schooner, the streamer creased right as I was about to click into 4th gear tapped and was perfectly blown into my handlebars by the damp sea-breeze. It wrapped me up and I went ejecto-seato-cuz. I picked up myself, my bike, and my visor, and limped through the finish line.

As the night progressed my left wrist turned into a swollen sausage casing from the slam. Angrily, I went to sleep in the van before we left PIR. I woke up the next morning in the parking lot of Washougal from the pain of my wrist and my jaw that I clenched in my sleep from being absolutely disgusted with myself for racing. It seemed so unfair, all this distance and all the logistics and the great efforts to be set up to rail on Saturday, pulled out from underneath me over a trophy. It took several hours on Friday to swallow the fact that I can’t change my sprain and the day would just be painful. Do I wish I wouldn’t have raced? I honestly have not decided.

Saturday morning, my Christmas Ham of a wrist was feeling a hair better but the swelling continued. Then the luck piled on more and while sitting on the starting line for round one of timed qualifying, it started RAINING again. After last weekend’s quagmire, I was not mentally ready for more mud. Yet there we were, just taking whatever mother nature dished out while the track had already been overly soaked.

I’m going to openly say this; the way the tracks are prepped and faced for the nationals absolutely sucks. I’ve heard it from many angles- the extra deep ripping and heavy watering are to create a race surface that will slow down the bikes. Taste that for a minute. What does it say about professional racing when the engine performance is so out of control that we cannot trust the riders to ride within their limits on ideally prepped surfaces? That’s no different than if the NBA raised the goal height another 3 feet to prevent dunking because the risk of falling to the floor is too great when an athlete jumps. Also, the speed walls and straight-up jump faces do not belong outside. Obstacles like the Fly 150, LaRocco’s Leap, that ridiculous monstrosity at Glen Helen, and some of the step-ups at Ironman continue to get bigger and bigger because the engines go faster and faster. Let the legend live on, keep supercross indoors.

However, everyone that committed their $245 entry plus $11 to $13 convenience fee (that slides up and down on who knows what metric) rides the same track in their qualifying session. Each qualifying session gets massively different track conditions, so that’s why I worded it specifically with “in their qualifying session”. I cannot change this, I can only observe the transparency in cavalier attitude toward fairness to all riders that paid to race (everyone).

Making my laps around the slippery course with a bum wrist was as much fun as scooping hog shit for free. Full disclosure- I rode like a squid. I still gave every berry I could find, and after both sessions with medical tape holding my clutching and gripping power together by literal threads, I finished 46th in qualifying. In the LCQ, a 7th place finish was salvaged and equaled 3rd alternate for moto 2. These are the very best results I’ve ever had at a national, and yet I didn’t make it into the cut. I went to the line for the race as a backup man, praying that 3 guys would not show up. Even though I could not be uber-competitive, I just wanted to ride a national course that was not representative of a water crossing, for once.

39 riders showed up. My transponder was cut off. Awash with Pandora’s Box of emotion, it took about 30 minutes of getting my mental ducks in a row, and I came away with sobriety. The name Jeff Crutcher will never appear in The Vault, but when I grow older and look back I’ll be proud for giving the effort of any measure.

Initiative number one has always been to have fun. Go back and read everything I’ve ever penned about racing, they’re always laced with a priority toward a good time. My two-stroke bikes, my riding style, my attitude, and all factors considered makes Saturday nationals like fitting into a square peg in a round hole. I know where the good times roll: where all the bikes lined up are burning mixed fuel. There are a handful of promoters and companies that specialize in two-stroke performance parts that sponsor high paying races across the country, like the event I went to weeks ago at Spring Valley in Abilene.

Doing this dance 10 times yielded memories and good times, but as the AMA official’s snips chewed through the zip ties fastening transponder number 137 to my left fork, I realized I was not built to salsa with the beat of the drum that MXSports offers. After these races now I know it’s time to set down the kool-aid, find the door to escape the mirrored walls, fog machines, and glitzy lights inside the club, and walk into the shadowy alley behind the building into the smoking section. No $350 lanyard required.