Ok folks, here are a few pics that I was able to get at the start of the day.

  There was considerable dustage and my auto-focus lens was becoming fouled, so this is all I got, but a few of you can still have some braggin' rights!

 What a nice race!  What crappy luck I had !   

 After my normal mid-aft pack start, I had to slow to a near stop from lack of visibility. But I found out two things about my new Yamaha, one  is, it's extremely fast and...uh...whoopable, so I regained a few positions on the first long sand-whoop section, where they bypassed the sandy woods. As I rounded the corner at the end of that section, I was feeling somewhat redeemed, perhaps unstoppable. So I ran headlong  into a cloud of dust ( don't ever do this ). There were stopped motorcycles there.  The So I ran into a couple of guys, to...uh, help boost them through the sand. That's when I found out the second thing about my new scooter. I doesn't just 'spring' to life after a stall in the deep sand. Nope. 

 The next thing I knew, the dust had cleared, the noise had faded, & the only evidence that a race was going on was me. Sitting in a deep rut kicking my new scoot. It's a four stroke ya know.   

 Well now I'm last, really last, like the last person on the whole track... and somewhat...irritated, at my situation. However, this is racing, so off I went trying to regain some momentum.  Which I did. It was probably six miles before I started seeing dust from other riders again, but it gave me confidence that I was "reeling them in". Sure enough, I caught a few racers napping in the back woods & made the pass. Rounded the next blind corner, started a nasty rocky uphill, encountered a stalled rider, lost my line, stalled...( did I mention I have a new four stroke ? ) & found myself in last place again. 

  Of course I could sit here & tell you the whole story, but it kinda all sounds the same. Bad luck after bad luck. I'd get a drive going, then stall that damned four stroke. Get cruisin' again, stall again, make up a few places. Repeat.  The good news is, that it ended on the "make up a few places" cycle. So I managed to scrape up a tenth place finish. Just enough to move me into seventh in my class. I guess some other guys had worse luck than me!!

 Anyway, here are a few startin' area pics.

Click to enlarge of course.