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First dirty race of the year, first dirty race for me in a few years, and of course it has to be at Southwick.
Got to the track about 8:30, just in time to sign up and watch the first practices head out. Luckily they let the old bastards have last practice. Sand is kind of interesting when I'm used to riding hardpack. Luckily, a couple sections were still frozen pretty solid so I felt a little more at home there. Got a couple of slow laps in to figure out where the track went and try to learn to ride in the sand.
First moto (30+C) was still early. Got a decent launch off the gate, then got bounced around in the first turn. Rode conservatively, battled with a guy on a 250 2-smoke for a bit then went around him on the outside. I was having a blast, feeling a little tired but good on the 3rd lap when I got a little cocky in a turn, knifed the front, and went over the bars. No big deal, sand is soft and the bike's still running. Pick it up, hop on, try to take off and the front wheel pushes and almost throws me off. Stop, get reset on the bike, try to take off, and it throws me on the ground. Turns out I had enough sand in the brake lever to lock the front wheel. Got the sand out finally, got going again and take off, now pretty much exhausted. Got lazy in another turn and went over the bars AGAIN, perfect. Leaders passed me (took me a minute to get the bike going again this time) so I finished the lap and took the checkered flag.
Second moto got a bad start, figured I'd chase a couple guys down. Went into the second turn and HOLY SHIT the whoops got DEEP. Lines that I was flying around in the first moto were now 3 foot deep whoops. Started to get arm pump so backed off and finished all 4 laps. Tired. Holy shit tired.
Ended up not quite DFL, but close. Had a blast, want to go back soon. Amazingly, I'm not feeling too bad today, just a little stiff but nothing too bad.
On a side note, there were some really fast guys there. John Dowd, Mike Treadwell, Robby Marshall, and a few other guys were flying.