I got the bike at the awards banquet. Orange was a long way from Norfolk, so meeting at the banquet worked out pretty good. I took the month of December off from riding. After the banquet, I rode the bike once, real easy just to break it in. Then, I got to go the Florida Winter Series.

The track I believe had the name West in it and was located within the city limits of Orlando. I'm quite sure that the track no longer has races. I had never been to the Florida Winter Series before, but I had read about it for years in the dirt rags. Foolishly, I signed up for A class. I was unaware of the unwritten "sign up at least one class lower than you are" rule. I was a bit out of shape, way out of practice, not used to the bike, not accustomed to the deep powder sand, and taking my half year of experience in A class against national caliber amateurs.

Luckily, there were a few guys that were as slow as me that I got to dice with, but the guys in front were way fast. I remember getting lapped by Kevin Foley in the whoops. It had gotten very rough, I was too tired to charge anymore, and was basically just floundering. I was going down a long rough straight when he came by, in about the middle of the powerband of the big Yamaha, in what must have been fifth gear. He just hit the top part of the whoops and must have been going close to 30 miles an hour faster than I was in that section. I think I finished 18th out of 27, which seemed OK under the circumstances.

I adjusted to the bike pretty fast. The power was pretty smooth, it handled nice, and the suspension was much better than the Maico. I had trained hard, got to practice quite a bit that winter, and thought I was ready to do something in Open A. Things didn't turn out that way. The first couple of races were all at clay tracks that were pretty muddy. All winter, I had practiced at a sand track, so I really felt awkward in the slippery clay. I was finishing about as well as the previous year, which was a disappointment to me. Then at a track in Elizabeth City, I broke my wrist and was out for a while.

My time off was not really used wisely. Several distractions had crept into my life. The first was that there were now women on board the ship. Up until then, I really didn't have a regular girl friend when I was in the Navy. Somehow, the invitation to "camp in my van and watch me race" didn't have too high of a success rate. But now that I was working with women and wasn't spending all my time and money on racing, I was able to go out more. I also had friends now who shared my love of live heavy metal music, so I went out to see bands, drink beer, and all that kind of foolishness. In short, I had discovered all the things that I had scarified to race and had lost the rabid dedication that I needed to offset my mediocre talent level. To make things worse, I was now a short timer and was getting ready to get out of the Navy and move back to Minnesota.

I raced the bike a few more times with mid-pack results. I did have what I consider to be my best A class race. I got the holeshot out of 32 riders and finished 6th overall. This was on a sand track near historic Fredericksburg that would get fast guys from Maryland. They were pretty tight with the trophies, so I didn't get one, but I think my name was in Cycle News.

After I got out of the Navy, there was about a 2 month break where I didn't race (see following chapter) and then I raced a few times back in Minnesota. I had dropped back to B class, because I thought (correctly) that the racing was more competitive there. Even in B class, I didn't trophy. Looking back, I didn't give myself enough time to get back into practice or learn the tracks, but I was discouraged with racing. I didn't know where to ride, I didn't have a good place to work on my bike, none of my old friends seemed to race anymore, I was running out of money, and I was about to start going to electronics school. I thought I may race again once I had a decent job and a garage, but, for now, I was done.

When I sold the bike, it was very strange selling it for a reason other than getting money for another one. Unbeknownst to me at the time, the bike lived on for many years after I sold it. I sold it to a local Cycle News contributor who I will refer to as Rolf O, which, well, you know the disclaimer by now. I guess he rode it almost into the 1990s.