Well the Nathan Woods ride day turned out great. The weather was great, cool and cloudy, perfect riding conditions. The soil was damp and tacky.
There were at least 400-500 folks in attendance, and there were a lot of the who's who in the off road riding world, from SX/MX, WORCS, Desert, National Enduro etc.....
Tom White was mc'ing the event most of the time and was doing a great job of keeping folks appraised of what was happening, and doing the raffle later on in the day.
The track was prepped for a national and there were tons of pro's ripping it up.
Gary Jones and Brad Goolseby led riders on an A and B trail ride around the Glen Helen outback area's. I went on the A ride, and directly in front of me most of the time was Grant Langston. In our group there were many other top pro's and past champions of various disciplines. This trail ride started out as moderate one, and then got really tight and twisty up and down canyons that reminded me of Idaho City's ISDE qualifier.
All was well and good until mile 6 when my fuel pump quit. Thankfully it quit at a road crossing as if it had quit anywhere down in one of these canyons it would have been really hard to get it out. I was there by myself for a while until a Kawi rider came along looking for the group I had been in, and he ended up going back for a tow strap.
Before he could come back, a group of riders came along the road. The first rider asked if I needed help and I told him that help was on the way. The group rode off and then one guy on a Suzuki came back and offered to push me back to the pits, at about the same time Ron Lawson from Dirt Bike Magazine came up in a mule and offered a strap for the Suzi rider to tow me with. I looked at the Suzi rider and recognized him, asked him his name and it was non other than Rodney Smith. Ron snapped a picture of Rodney and I, and then Rodney proceeded to push me with one foot on my right peg up some pretty steep hills, then I would coast as fast as I could go down the hills. He only had to push me up two and I was able to carry enough momentum to coast up some other hills.
Back down on the National track, Rodney pushed me across the track and all the way back to my truck!
I changed my wet clothes and went over to join the raffle and auction in progress. Lot's of stuff raffled off, jersey's from: Stephan Everts, K-Dub, Woods, Short, and on and on. Casselli and another guy got in a bidding war over some kind of ball cap, it ended up going for $750 bucks. All of this money ended up going to Amanda Woods, Nathans widow. Including the two checks I wrote, one for the gate fee, and another for raffle tickets, both payable to Amanda.
All in all it was a great send off for Nathan with a lot of stories from folks that had raced with him over the years. We should all be so lucky to have such a eulogy as Nathan got today. It was true celebration of his life.
Dale
