On The Pegs May 2020 - Volume 5 - Issue 5 | Page 69

On The Pegs
VOL. 5 ISSUE 5 - MAY 2020
69
Total I think I had 40 AMA national wins.
What appealed to you in hare scrambles?
To me it was more because of where I grew up, western Washington. People ob-
viously, when I first moved to the east cost were like, “You’re from the west coast.
It must be desert.” They see all the pictures of California and all that. But I lived
in western Washington and I grew up on single track, couldn’t get off the trail,
couldn’t take any quick lines because there were stumps and underbrush. It’s very
thick. That’s why hare scrambles to me it always seemed like I enjoyed them. They
were fun. I felt like I didn’t have to try near as hard. It just came to me very natu-
rally.
It seems as though Randy Hawkin’s new signee Mike Witkowski is sort of
like a young Jason Raines. Tell me about your riding style.
I feel that I was more a finesse, stand up a lot… When I was battling for GNCC
wins, I was battling Mike Lafferty. Lafferty was a big guy. He would bulldog stuff. I
was small and I was pretty little. Growing up in Washington, all the guys that I kind
of looked up to, they stood up a lot. They didn’t rev the bike. Very smooth and
fluid. When I first moved to the east coast I spent a lot of time with Shane Watts.
I mimicked and followed and rode with him a lot. So I tried to be more of a line
selection, go outside the rough stuff, inside-out in the grass tracks to miss all the
holes and stuff. I wasn’t really strong. I was in excellent shape as far as cardio, but
as far as a hammer, I was never a just go balls out type of rider.
Did you develop that smooth style because of how slippery it is up there in
western Washington?
Possibly. Where I grew up riding, it obviously rained a lot. It was weird, though.
I’ve never been a very good mud rider on the east coast because it depends on
the type of mud. Washington is very slippery and hard pack and wet. There’s not a
lot of stickiness like a John Penton where your tires ball up. But my track was kind
of 50/50. It had 50% brown clay that you couldn’t break it up with a pickaxe. And
then the other half of it was like river sand, so it was awesome winter riding. Me
personally, I feel I got my riding style just from watching my prior generation that
I looked up, like Jason Donners. He went to Six Days a number of times. I never
really won much in Washington because there were so many good guys that were
there. So they were all very smooth, calculated, stood up, and flowed really good.
I think that’s where I tried to be like them. You’re always trying to be like the guys