In '74 I was racing the new Kawasaki KX250 in the Expert class.  I really liked that bike and did well with it.  Late in the season my motocross karma was starting to run out.  I had a very fast and scary endo at Agency and broke my shoulder. Even worse I tweaked the frame badly on my KX.  I was also going to college and was starting to realize I didn't have the time or could afford to do both.  That crash and the cost to repair the bike made me face some hard choices.  It was time to let go of my dream of racing motocross.

By the Summer of '75 I didn't even have a dirt bike for the first time in many years.  I decided I would take my gear to a local race to see if I could sell some of it.  At the track one of my buddys had brought his 125 and 250 but then decided to only race the 125.  He offered up his KX250 to race if I would like.  Hmm....the heck with selling the gear let's race!

I had a blast but fought arm pump by late in the motos and still managed 5th place after not even being on a bike in months. I knew when I finished that day no matter how much fun it was things had changed for me and I had other priorities. I never raced motocross competitively again after this.

This is the photo that started the moto press photography job for me.  I actually attended the '75 TransAMA in St. Peters on my own and submitted my images for the heck of it.  Next thing I know one of them ends up on the cover and the editor asks me to attend more National races the next year and they will pay me to do it.  At the time I would've done it without pay for the all access press pass so it was a win win for me. 

By '79 I was working full time in sales and traveling around the country during the week.  I could no longer find the time to take race photos on weekends.  Instead I was back competing but this time it was Hare Scrambles.  I found this type of racing less intense than motocross but no less physically demanding.  It combined the skills of motocross and also included technical single track sections on a much longer course.  As an added bonus all classes raced together for two solid hours.  You could compete against the entire field regardless of engine size and skill level.  I was having fun and placing near the top and I won my class several times.  Some of my motocross friends from earlier years were doing the same.  Now it was my turn to be on the cover.  That's me on the left turning inside the KTM rider in the first turn and transition into the woods on my 175 Suzuki.  That bike was not that fast and I can remember thinking, how could I be at the front with this little thing? 

That little Suzuki handled pretty decent but you had to keep the throttle pegged to make it go.

Recently I found a copy of the full edition of a 1979 Checkered Flag News.  There on the next page with me on the cover was coverage of a GNC Qualifier motocross race on the same track I started out racing 6 years earlier at Lake City.  Another local racer who was just starting out winning the mini mini class was future multi National Champion Jeff Emig.  I had raced motocross against his dad earlier but never really knew him at the time.  A little six degrees of separation to current racing coverage on television even to this day.

I continued to race Hare Scrambles in the Kansas City area right up to the point I moved to North Texas in 1982.  Here I am in '80 on my Suzuki PE250.  You will see these same boots on the next page...........from just a few years later.  Once I moved to Texas I focused on career and family and sold my dirt bike during the first year there.  I didn't have the racing buddys to hang out with anymore and it just wasn't the same.  It would be 22 years before my next bike.