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Not long after selling my CR480, I still had the itch to ride. I bought this bike brand new
from Burnsville Sports Center. Obviously, it was much more tame than my previous bikes, but
it had the advantage of being quiet and street legal. There were a few areas on the south
side of the Mendota Bridge where I would ride. One track was hard packed and relatively smooth.
Someone had built a few jumps and even a rhythm section. I got to the point where I could double
through the rhythm section which gave me a confidence in those types of obstacles that would
later come back to haunt me.
There was also a sand track I would ride it at that got quite rough. Oddly enough, despite it's
lack of long travel and soft spring rates, I could go pretty fast in the sand with this bike.
The suspension was balanced, the handling was good, and the smooth power made it easy to
control. I was riding there once and there was a guy there with new KTM motocross bike. I
think he raced, because he had numbers on the plates. I passed him several times and I think
that he got so irritated that a guy wearing jeans and riding a dual sport was passing him that
he wicked it up to pass me back and ended up crashed pretty hard. Most of the time, I would
ride alone. Riding by myself on a easy to ride bike gave me the idea that I could be
competitive if I started racing again. The seed was planted. It was only a matter of time
before I was racing again.
After two years of electronics school, I graduated with my Associate degree in Electronics and
started looking for a job. I didn't find one in Minnesota right way, so in the fall of 85,
I made the decision to go back to Virginia. I was going to get a job, start racing again,
and everything was going to be like it was before, except without the hassle of being in the
Navy.
A lot had changed in the two and half years that I was gone. Most of the people that I had gone
to the races with and hung around with had gotten married, moved away, or quit racing. I
couldn't find an electronics job and ended up as an electrician's helper working for a little
fascist, pulling wire outside in the cold weather, and trying to anticipate what tool or
material Mussolini Jr. wanted me to fetch from the truck. The worst part is that the pay was
low. Now that I had to pay for apartment rent, storage space, and food, I actually had less
to spend on racing than I did at the end of my Navy career.
Although I used the XL for alternate transportation, I knew that I would have to sell it in
order to buy a race bike. I really took a bath when I sold it. My budget for a race bike
suffered because I got so little for it, but I guess I was desperate. I really missed that
bike. I had a lot of fun on it and it was really low maintenance. I tried unsuccessfully to
replace it a few years later (see Chapter 17) which is part of the reason why I didn't ride
for so long. But, I get ahead of myself.
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