Daytona Road Trip: Part Three

It's been about 10-years since I last raced the Alligator Enduro right outside of Daytona Beach, Florida. It's a far cry from all of the typical Bike Week activity, yet manages to up on entries every year, amounting to over 500 riders. This year was no different. Blessed with perfect conditions from the day's previous rain, I was in for one heck of a ride.

My mount for the event was an Enduro Engineering KTM 576 EXC which you will read about in the July Dirt Rider. My minute had more National Enduro championships combined on it than you could shake a stick at. And that wasn't counting mine or Alan Randt's... cause we don't really have any. Mike Lafferty and Dick Burleson were sharing the two remaining spots on our minute, so it was a mystery to me that I had requested an ICO enduro computer on my bike at all. Like I told Alan: "Just put it on there so I don't look stupid." Then Dick shows up with nothing but a crossbar pad. And he's an engineer!

I was basically an enduro factory rider for the day. Not that that gets you any special treatment really. Unless you consider that my bike was so prepped that all I had to do was ride it through tech inspection. That's special!

I got the two-minute refresher course on timekeeping and how to read the display on my computer, as if that was going to be needed. All I had to do was keep Mike in front of me and Dick behind, but as soon as our minute came up, Dick floored it. We bounced around for the first few miles and settled into a pace. It seemed that Dick and his KTM 125 were going to give me a run. That is, until we hopped out on a sandy road section and I stretched the throttle cable and let him experience all 576cc of roost. I then tucked back into the woods in front of him, all the while chasing Mike.

After a bit of time keeping we got into the first real special test and I was learning to ride by Braille, Florida style. See, the short palm trees cover everything and at the same time slap you in the face. So you can't see the ground and if you try the palms slap you for trying. It's better to look at the pine trees in hopes of seeing an arrow to give you a general idea about an approaching turn. Even then, the turn comes up too fast and you have a hard time catching the rut cause you can't see it in the first place. Then when you think you have it figured out, a bunch of palmetto roots throw your wheels into a spastic dance that rivals full on desert headshake but with both wheels at the same time—good thing my bike made 50 hp to deal with it!

After wrestling the beast through most of the first section, passing tons of beat, tired riders, I missed a turn and my nemesis Dick, who was on my heels, hit the right trail and took off. I worked my butt off for the remaining few miles and managed to squeak by the old guy around a slower rider and beat him in the check by a mere two-seconds, just one second into my minute! It was going to be one of those days, I thought.

I fiddled with my suspension at the gas stop as Dick told me I was riding the big bike really well. At that point, I was thinking that the race would only get tighter and tougher, and he was going to beat me. Now I'm not really competitive, that is until Grandpa Dick here started acting like it was nothing and was giving me everything I could handle.

Mike was hauling like the National Champion he is and I got about three seconds of riding lessons leaving every check. Then the real battle began. With all his experience, Dick was getting into those checks before me. And he still knows how to turn it on to 100% instantly and make up time right from the beginning. I'd take a few turns to get going and he'd be pulling me. I'd wait till it opened up and use my power to my advantage and then it would tighten up and he'd slither away. I've never seen anyone go though trees like he did, I think he's part ghost. I'd hit the same set of trees and it was like pinball with the handlebar ends even though our bars were the same width. Lucky for me the second loop was a bit faster and much more flowing with a few nice fire roads in really deep sand thrown in so I was able to get past and put some time on him and I snagged a few checks a minute up on the old guy.

Typical of the Alligator Enduro, I'm told, are the rounds of protesting that go on, and this year was no different. Many riders liked the course so much that they rode several sections of it twice, blaming the course markings. And then there are all the guys with burnt checks trying to get them thrown out.

It took so long I was able to completely rebuild the top end on my Two-Brothers minibike [which siezed during the Mini GNCC practice] while fetching the missing pieces of piston out of the transmission before the enduro results were posted! After all there were a lot of really good mechanics standing around, though I don't think Alan [Randt, factory KTM mechanic] will ever offer to hold a wrench for me again. It turns a bit ugly when that small task somehow turns into having the motor on the bench inside of his race van with oil spilling out all over the floor. How quickly one can become the unwelcome houseguest. A can of cleaner and a roll of paper towels later, my name wasn't being prefaced with four-letter words; good thing they finally got the results posted.

I had a great time and even won the Open A class. Mike won the Overall, Dick humiliated a lot of kids by winning the 200 A class and Alan even took the Senior A class. And as I was picking up my cool Alligator trophy I ran into this grey haired guy named Jeff Fredette carrying the high-point A trophy. The only thing I could think was that another senior guy had beat me. That's picking on a bald guy for sure!

For overall results from The Alligator Enduro, Click here.

Next on the schedule was the Daytona Supercross were I got to watch some great racing (Click here for Daytona Supercross results.) and then flee back to the motorhome for the long drive up to the GNCC round in Washington, Georgia. I have no idea what I'm riding but I check in later with a report!

—Jimmy Lewis

More Daytona Road Trip stories:

Part One: The Mini GNCC
Part Two: The Orange Crush GNCC
Part Four: The General GNCC
Part Five: Millsaps Training Facility