Texas treat
By TMX Archives on 15th May 03
staying in Texas for the past month and I've found a surprisingly large number of national-calibre motocross tracks in the area. I'VE BEEN staying in Texas for the past month and I've found a surprisingly large number of national-calibre motocross tracks in the area. Even with so many great riding locations, there hasn't been much need to leave the house because Heath Voss has a 100-acre ranch with two gnarly SX tracks - I say gnarly because every bump, whoop and triple is over-sized to scary proportions!Plus there's a two-and-a-half-minute outdoor track, two corner tracks and a NASCAR-like oval they refer to as the 'Whirly Bird'. There are also multiple hill climbs, a hare scrambles course, a pit bike play area, random freestyle jumps, a sand track and many half-built courses that look to be under permanent construction. Heath uses the machinery - he has enough to start a statewide construction company - to change and add new sections to his tracks daily. But Heath doesn't build small and work his way bigger - he just builds huge! And if we look at it quivering for more than two days, he simply changes the track so we can get more speed on our approach.I always find it interesting to see how other riders handle themselves - both riding and personality wise - without the pressure of race conditions. For better or worse, it seems that the same person never shows up at the race track. It's amazing to me how people like Kevin Windham and Robbie Reynard can actually ride faster and seem to have more confidence in practice. Most of the world will never see a rider's true potential.If you went to any of the races this past year, it would seem that Voss was a very conservative rider who would probably be a top candidate for a sport like golf or maybe bowling (sorry Heath). He rarely takes unnecessary risks at the races and looks like he has the freestyle capability of Mike LaRocco (sorry Mike). Now that I've had some time riding with Heath down in Texas, my opinion of him couldn't be more different.He has a resting heart rate of 29 which rivals that of Lance Armstrong and he can whip his big ol' 450 thumper upside-down without breaking a sweat. He has no fear of any obstacle on the track and he blitzes his whoops, which are twice as big, more vertical and further apart than any I have ever seen. If you don't enter them tapped out in fourth gear you don't have a chance! To this day, I have yet to make it through without coming to a stop or endoing.Yesterday, unfortunately, Heath was knocked unconscious when the bike pummeled him into the ground on one of his newly-built death traps. It was the first time I saw someone knocked out, eyes rolled back in his head, shaking uncontrollably and wheezing because the wind was knocked out of him all at the same time. But later that day, Heath was back on his dozer, building another death trap section that rivaled Hell-Track from the '80s bicycle movie Rad. Heath is a lot tougher than I'd ever expected.As I look up from my desk, there's a pit board with a list that Heath's coach wrote down before he left. Number one on the list is 'Corner like Kent'. As it turns out, multi-time 250cc National MX champion Kent Howerton lives just a few miles from Heath's place in Texas and can still ride with the best. His style is old-school and he can't jump very well but, man, is he tough to hang with on the corner tracks. He would be a force to reckon with in the new sport of supermoto if he decided to come back. And while we're on the subject, congratulations to Jeff Ward for passing Jeremy McGrath on the last lap for the win at that supermoto race in Fontana which was something I didn't expect would ever happen!With Kent's connections to cars - he tested cars and tyres for a living after motocross - we were able to go race around his old testing grounds. We brought his shifter cart and were pleased that it smoked the BMW M3 and Ford Mustang by more than 15 seconds on a course just over a minute long. I could only muster up third fastest on the day and will never live it down that my bus driver, Cam, who prefers the title of 'transportation-engineer', beat me by a whopping two seconds in the Mustang. As I now understand, four-wheel drifts equal fun but lack the speed of boring precision.On a closing note, I would ask everyone who reads this column to punch Robbie Reynard in the gut after every race he fails to make the top five. That guy is faster now than I've ever seen him and I hope he shows everyone how fast he really is this year. Good luck Robbie. And thanks to Heath and everyone in Texas for letting me hang out and visit with them.Words by Travis Pastrana, courtesy RacerX Photo by Bingo