Once we arrived in Bark River, we followed Evan Evans team in, we quickly got our pit, registered, thru tech, the drivers meeting, and were ready for practice. One thing that is so great about the WSORR staff is their genuine sincerity when talking with team members. The staff workers at registration greeted us warmly and were happy to see that we were able to make it. We know this trip was a last minute decision for us, but a lot goes into consideration when it comes to making a trip this big. We would like to express our appreciation to the WSORR for not charging us a late registration fee, when we were totally expecting to pay it. We would also like to thank Irene for re-introducing herself to us. Back in 2005 she was with CORR, before the whole WSORR/CORR change took place, and she helped watch our daughter (7 months old at the time) so that we could both debut in our first ever CORR race (http://www.brmoffroad.com/corr_2005.htm). Now we're proudly racing as much as we can with WSORR and hope to hit more races this year and all of them in 2009.

The Bark River track is awesome. At Rounds 1 & 2 in Wheatland, MO we were told by Tiffany (WSORR) that "Bark River will knock your socks off." She was dead on. The 1.5 mile track is fast, exciting, challenging, and has several elevation changes from the natural terrain. We were pretty slow in practice as we were trying to learn the track, just ask Mike Vanden Heuvel as he went blowing by us. Mike also won all 4 of his races on the weekend, very impressive! Although we would have benefited from a few more practice laps, we were anxious for Saturday morning practice. Friday night there was a pretty good rain shower that passed thru and it caused practice to be canceled so the track crew could get things ready for the opening ceremony's at 11am. They did a great job too. The first race of the day was the Classix followed by the Enduro Trucks, who gathered most of the mud on their vehicles making the track pretty stinking awesome for every class that followed J.

We were ready to go at the drop of the green for round 5 on Saturday. We got an 'ok' start, mostly just trying to stay out of the way of the guys in the points battle (we missed rounds 3 & 4). But Jeff quickly settled in and began battling his way thru traffic. The BRM OFFROAD crew taped round 5 and it was exciting to watch and had a few good pointers for round 6 on Sunday. When the checkers waved on Saturday, we took 12th out of 16. Sunday Jeff was more confident with the track. No surprises, no worries. He got a much better start coming out of turn one in the middle of the pack. Going into turn one, Mike Vanden Heuvel led the way (and checked out). On the far outside were Mike Seefeldt followed by Terry Fitzgerald and Mark Steinhardt. Coming into the left-hander to take the green, Fitzgerald and Steinhardt got tangled up and ended up coming across the track and taking Jeff out. Smashing our new beadlocks, bending our left rear hub assembly, and spinning us out (along with a few others behind us). Thankfully the beadlocks did their job and we didn't lose a tire. It was Steinhardt who came across the track on us in Round 2 at Wheatland on the first lap to nail us and leave us with a flat... also forcing our hands at popping for the beadlocks (once again, money well spent). Jeff recovered from the spin and took the green in a distant 13th. Steinhardt and Fitzgerald were able to get straight quicker, must be the experience there, and took off. As Steinhardt was making his way up the back side of the track heading up the hill towards the rhythms, I looked back to check on Jeff in the Cemetery Corner to radio to him that there was a stalled buggy in the rhythms. I then heard metal on metal and looked back to my left to see Steinhardt in the vertical position and Jesse Plawman in the 384 resting on top of the stalled buggy in the rhythms. Steinhardt came down on his end and rolled into the wall. This brought out the red flag signaling a restart. Steinhardt was taken to the hospital and later released. Plawman was out with a messed up front left (blue buggy in photo). On the re-start, Jeff didn't do quite as well but was in a great battle with 4 other buggy's, just near the back of the pack. For a few laps Jeff was battling with the others, each of them swapping lead changes. Each time Jeff would get by 1 or 2 of them, he would mess up a shift and have to work his way back up. He finally got by Chris Ernster in the 381, Travis Dinsmore in the 343, Terry Fitzgerald in the 311, Jeff Villemure in the 379, and made a late pass on Daniel Martin in the 313 to secure a 9th place finish. The racing action, although it wasn't near the top, was very exciting as Barrett, Martin, Ernster and Dinsmore kept mixing it up. We had a great time, were much happier with our finish on Sunday, and left us wanting more.

There are several photos below of the 11 different race classes and each of those classes had exciting racing the entire weekend. It was once again a great time, both on and off the track and we look forward to when we can do it again.

Rounds 7 & 8 are just 2 weeks away, in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, and we would love to be able to make it, but it's a pretty expensive haul from AZ so we'll just have to see how it goes. Overall, it was well worth every dollar of diesel we pumped in the tank, along with the extra expense for necessary repairs on our last 10-hour leg back to AZ. We would really like to thank the Chevron owners in Milagro for their help and West Truck Service in Moriarty, New Mexico for being so helpful and getting us back on the road quickly.

Stay Young, Have Fun, PLAY!
 

stay young, have fun, PLAY!