Queen of Hornets

CHAPTER 1

WELCOME TO THE HORNET’S NEST

Hornets loved days like these. Nasty, aggressive, yellow bodied, mini-dragons, always-at-you, trying to eat your hot dog or get their head in your soft drink. Heat shimmered from the sand and gravel parking lot surface. Haphazardly parked colorful vans with portable canopies flaunting product brands and colored flags moved in the summer breeze. Color was everywhere along with the smell of charcoal grills, oil and two stroke engine exhaust.

Hornets are happiest in sandy heat. Hornets, not bees. There’s a difference. Hornets can sting you more than once and they will. Bees won’t sting at all unless they must. Bees are content in their flowers, at their business. You don’t find bees trying to share your hot dog. Hornets on the other hand love soft drinks, hot dogs and ice cream and are never really happy, just generally pissed off, ready to sting you at a brush of your hand.

"Okay. Here it comes," Bobbi Grumann thought. The hornet sound intensified. A memory of riding across a ground-hornet’s nest on her woods-motorcycle flashed in her head. It had been a tight trail and the hornets were all over her in a second. She got stung badly a few times, dropped the bike and ran. It took her an hour using a broken branch to pull her emergency rope loose from the bike, lasso its handlebar and drag the bike away from the nest to escape.

Her image of hornets sharpened as the whine around her ears picked up another octave, warning of an impending attack. She shook the distraction out of her head to focus on the figure out in the grassy field holding the shotgun. The figure moved the arm holding the gun almost imperceptibly and Bobbi released the motorcycle’s clutch at the instant the gun fired.

Screaming insect-sounds from the swarm of two stroke engines blotted out everything as they catapulted off the start line. The force of sudden acceleration pushed her toward the rear of the motorcycle’s seat. She focused on the two-track road across the field, the entrance to the course. A cloud of yellow, green, red and silver bikes rocketed across the field around her as she concentrated on hanging on and keeping her bike pointed at the trail opening.

The trail entrance began with a sharp right and she moved her front wheel almost imperceptibly, aiming at the inside of the turn.

A quarter-length out into the field the starting mob had thinned by half. Most of the four-stroke powered machines weren’t as quick off the line as the two strokes but she could hear their low frequency thumping. A number of them would be a factor when the going got steep or sticky, which would come soon enough.

Halfway across the field she was in the front group with a few riders who were correctly geared, had carefully walked the field, picked smooth lines and then gotten well-positioned on the mass start line to exploit their lines of attack.

A couple of motocross riders led her by a length. She knew they trained specifically for 20 minute motocross heats and would fade in the woods long before the three hour race was over. An old-guy spectator she had talked to in the pits said, My strategy would be to start out slow and then maintain that speed. The old fart had been half joking but she heard an undercurrent of good advice. Unlike the motocross boys who went off like a rocket and then exploded, she had always been a long haul freak.

The motocrossers reached the two-track and were gone, temporarily. The second wave was small and out of the corner of her eye she saw Pete Paisley’s Montessa on her left. There would be a duel at the trailhead. Paisley’s name made him sound like an interior decorator but he was big, gangly, strong, uncomplicated and very competitive. As they reached the corner Bobbi got inside, on the right, just where her well-planned line took her but suddenly there was Pete on her left, so close she could smell his Montessa. "Get down. Get down. Lean right. Pete got his right handlebar underneath her before she could get far enough under him and delivered a twisting nudge sending her directly into the saplings, tall grass and downed branches at the side of the turn. She whacked a few saplings and hit a log hidden in the grass. Crap!" Her front wheel twisted sideways and she fell.

The protective gear she wore made beating through the little trees inconsequential. She jumped up, restarted and rejoined the fray. But Pete had effectively put her in back of all the C riders, Dweebs and Juniors who, in the few moments she was down, had crowded into the two track doing something they thought was racing. She was pissed. This was one of the reasons she hated Hare Scrambles. There was no way many of these back-marker riders would last until the finish. Nor many of the front-runners either. She accelerated and settled down to wait. Soon she would start picking them off.

Her mentor Walt said, In motorcycle distance racing the back of the field isn’t quick, but it is dangerous. A mixture of inexperience, ordinary-to-poor equipment and marginal trail skills make predictions of what anyone in the rear will do a toss-up.

She favored the "get a wide spot with plenty of room and blast by approach to passing. Frequently novices wandered all over the trail and this didn’t work. Then the squeeze by tactic came in, with a yell you are on their right or left. Because back-markers are mostly trail stupid this look out I’m coming by," pass sometimes quickly degenerates into the Pete Paisley pass, leaving the victim in the bushes cursing at the passer. Luckily, along with their other skill deficiencies, inexperience included no focus, so by the end of the race back-markers didn’t usually remember who bumped them into the weeds, which was good. Because they were inept didn’t mean they were all skinny and nerdy and would not seek revenge.

By now she was picking her way through the back of the field. She would be just behind the front-runners when they also caught up to these back-markers around the end of the first ten mile lap. She would then get a bead on many of the front-runners as they got screwed up by these dawdlers who would still be out on the course in force. It would be too soon for attrition, poor preparation or broken machinery to have thinned the slow riders out completely. Plus she would have gotten to see the loop in all of its horrific grandeur at a slower speed. When the going got frantic again, which it would by lap two, she would have picked some good lines and be able to hold off the faster but less skilled, of which there were many.

She banked off the left side of a mud hole in about two inches of water, passing three riders sitting in the middle, up to their seats in murk and muck. Most of the layout people wouldn’t give you impassable water in the center of the trail but they would give you water deep enough for indecision to cost you, as it had these riders. She was in favor of the outside line, even out and around through the woods if possible. She didn’t like what she couldn’t see and even though she was very well set up for water it could be a killer if she sucked it into her running engine.

She had endured long straight shots of water obstacles following a two track woods road, or wide oval appearances on the single track, or murky crossing spots in slow moving streams or fast moving shallow water at rocky, river fords. Long straight two track mud holes were usually courtesy of the four wheeler users of woods roads who rutted out the track allowing water to collect. She always chose one of two lines, the middle, where the hump is formed between a four wheeler’s wheels, or tight right or left edge where it was usually shallow.

On stream crossings her preferred line was straight, with speed, taking the rippled rather than flat side of moving water, sitting back on the bike, particularly if an embankment rose up on the exit side. Blast through the hole, hit the exit and let her body weight go forward to help propel her up and out.

The trail opened up and straightened out and she accelerated. She could see some riders out in front, bunched up and going slowly. She remembered what the oldster at the start had said and rolled back the throttle. She wove through them matching their leisurely pace. "Easy. Easy. Hey," a friendly little wave, opening it up again when she cleared them. There was no cursing behind her.

Most of the loop was in the shade, a little steamy but direct sun wasn’t beating on the course. In the woods a motorcycle is a beautiful thing. Way too fast for mosquitoes; an occasional deerfly will get in the cone of still air behind a moving helmet but will soon give up because with all the protection most riders wear there is nothing to bite. She got to see the green and the flowers and the occasional wildlife as a passing pilgrim with none of the pain. Granted, she saw a little less when racing, but enough, and the smells of the woods were always awesome. She took a couple of deep breaths.

It didn’t take long to reach the back of the motocross crowd. She saw the first by the side of a rock garden stretch, of which there would be many on the course, rocks being a predominant feature of the terrain. He was about fifteen yards into the woods, probably having flown there after hitting one of the first rocks wrong. He was standing up, lucky he had gone sideways because the rock garden was longer than fifteen yards and a flying fall in these babies could have put some serious hurt on him.

She treated rock riding as a special skill requiring speed and split second line-picking. She spent many hours mastering both. At speed she looked as if she was skipping over the rocks. If you walked the same rocks up and down, across and with the cracks you saw how scary it might be to develop the skill. One key to her confidence was good body armor. Most of the top cross country riders came from a different world and didn’t wear much of anything other than the mandatory helmet. She was on the edge of the new wave, mostly taking cues from motocross riders. She wore CCM hockey pads and foam backed plastic shells for her shoulders, elbows and knees. In addition she had motocross boots with thick shin and ankle padding having taken some serious shots from stones, fallen branches and even broken a few toes on occasion riding with lace-up work boots. She skipped over long stretches of rock like a dancer.

The second motocrosser appeared, sitting in the ditch by the side of the woods road, bike by his side, his front wheel bent back touching his engine. He nodded dejectedly in response to her yell of You OK? and she motored on leaving him for the sweep crew.

The next two motocrossers were in serious oxygen debt which happened a lot after 30 minutes or so. She passed them as if they were hardly moving. Up until 30 minutes many of them were unbeatable. Of course 30 minutes didn’t get it done in a Hare Scramble and most wisely avoided involvement in cross country much preferring the speed, aerobatics, brevity and crowd adulation of their motocross specialty.

She thought she had seen about six motocross riders in the starting area but these four seemed to be it. Up in front she saw the back of an A enduro rider she knew who always wore a striped referee’s vest over his thorn-proof riding jacket. The A competitors, most from New England, were good and this one would not be as easy a mark as others she’d passed so far. She was lucky and a long rocky stretch let her skip past. He was quick in the rocks but not as quick as she and was wisely pacing himself not pursuing when she accelerated away.

As anticipated, near the end of the first loop she saw the rear of the front-running group hot on the tails of the back markers. She grinned to herself. Now Peter Paisley will pay the piper. She snuck in close and hounded the last few in the lead group until sure enough one of the back-marker dweebs fell over in a rut and there was a chain reaction taking down four of the leaders. She turned her head as she went by so they wouldn’t see her smiling.

The next five or six riders she picked off one by one, each in difficult sections of the trail where technique mattered more than speed and one little misstep could cause an engine stall. She was working her way up in the lead group now and a full two laps had gone by. The pace was quickening but she was in the flow. It usually took about five to eight miles for her to get feeling comfortable and now after three laps and over twenty miles she felt like she was part of the machine. She was looking where she wanted to go and holding her lines perfectly. She could feel herself closing on the leaders even though she could not yet see them up ahead.

She completed a couple of climbs, some rock gardens, a sandy stretch and then, there they were. Eight or so riding strung out on the single track, clearly visible as they wove through a tight section of trail. If there was a place she excelled it was here. She zipped through the trees like a needle. She had a bad habit of pivoting on trees with her shoulders on hard lefts or rights. Riding buddies who had seen her do this had warned she’d get into a tree too quickly one day and blow out her shoulder. She had ignored the good advice.

She reached the last rider in the lead group just as he hooked his bar-end on a sapling and snapped his wheel sharply to the right, tossing him into the woods on the left. She shot by the downed bike and rider going up and over the bike’s rear wheel during her pass. This was how it often was in cross country. No heroic moves by the pursuer just bad luck or a miscalculation by the leader. She looked at the back of her next target.

Abruptly the single track broke out into a series of short two-tracks connecting some fallow fields. It was a chance to go and they all did. She was wide open by the end of the first two-track and hit the field in sixth gear. She followed existing tracks in the grass. In these empty fields you never knew. The winter frost squeezed rocks out of the ground like lurking, hard little cow turds. Sure enough, up front to the right a rider squirted off his bike like god had grabbed him by the collar. He had hit something in the grass. He must have flown about twenty feet but he was already up and running for his bike which was screaming in the grass with its throttle stuck open.

She caught a few more of them in the next two-track and in the flat. With A class riders there was only full throttle and who has the fastest, best handling machine. This edge went to Harry Verioski who helped her tune her bike and choose her spring and damping rates. Full on, she went by them like a jackrabbit. Bikes built by Harry were unbeatable in straight line acceleration.

Now there were only a couple racers left with Paisley and she pressed the limits. Through the lap check she was right on them as she got the bell and yell from the checkers telling her this was the last time around. She gave Paisley credit. He was quick. The other two were taking turns sucking his back wheel, just waiting for a mistake.

Three quarters of the way around Bobbi’s bike was sniffing the tires of the two riders behind Paisley and when they realized she was there they started to get erratic, watching Pete for an opening and trying to make sure the door was shut on Bobbi behind them. This almost guaranteed an opening and, sure enough, one A rider tried to squeeze in behind the other in a tight section, clipped the front rider’s rear tire and was into the woods upside down in a heartbeat. At the same moment Bobbi squirted by the other bobbling A rider and was right on Paisley’s butt in the section just before the finish line. She yelled, I’m coming for you Pete!, which Pete probably didn’t hear anyway, but as soon as she had yelled her attack threat she felt her rear tire lose traction on the last corner before the trail opened onto the finishing field. The rear end slid out from under her. She went down, spun halfway around and was back up in a second. The A bike flashed by and he and Paisley crossed the finish line one, two with her in third place, not a second behind.

Her brother Leon and her friend Meg were waiting at the finish. What the hell happened in the first corner? Leon yelled about three times before Bobbi yelled back Back off! Leon stopped in mid-yell and he and Bobbi stared at each other both taking little, shallow stress breaths until Leon spat. Shit, he said, You had those mothers. Meg was off to the side just hopping up and down in place with residual excitement.

I’m not so sure about that, Bobbi said, threw her gloves on the ground and pulled off her helmet. She shook out her curly auburn hair. She kept it short to be comfortable under her helmet. She had been told it was attractive but her primary style motivator was