Couches. Tractors. If you hang around with people involved in motorcycle racing long enough, you’ve probably heard all the derogatory terms towards quads. Though we share the same track, it seems like we’re in two different worlds. In an effort to bridge that cultural gap, I offered to race someone’s quad. They would just have to lend it to me for a race.

Not really thinking anyone would take me up on it, I was a bit surprised when Bob Lind offered to let me race one. Bob is the Quad Motocross class rep for District 23 and is also last years’ 250 A and Open A champion. His wife, Karri, quite a racer in her own right, was not going to be riding the rest of the season, so her quad was going unused. There’s nothing sadder than a race vehicle collecting dust. I agreed to make the sacrifice of riding it.

Just to unintentionally make things more interesting, the track that worked out for both of us to do this was Little Falls, a track I had never been to. I was going to try to learn the track and learn to ride this quad, all in two to four laps of race day practice. This was also a round of the District 23 Quad Premier Series. Bob has worked hard to bring in sponsors and race day prizes for this series. He’d be handling some details with that and racing both Premier classes, so I was trying not add any more work to his day.

After finally locating each other in the pits, Bob introduced me to Karri and her quad. As it turned out, I didn’t need to worry about taking up much of Bob’s time as Karri gave me all the help I needed. The suspension was set up for her weight, but since I wasn’t that much bigger than her, we just stiffened up the compression damping slightly all around. Other than looking it over between motos to make sure nothing was broken or hanging off, I didn’t do anything else to it the rest of the day.

The author’s ride for the day. It turned out to be much more capable of wining than he was. (Editor – Help Wanted, Caption Writer)

Page 1   Page 2   Page 3