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(Note from Editor... I promised Brad I'd give him the opportunity to re-write this before I published it. I lied, well I didn't really lie. I just got tried of waiting. Pinhead, anytime you get me a re-write, I'll replace this... Yes, Beck gave it a once over.)

I really did it this time. Remember how I bragged to you guys that I was going dirt biking in New Zealand.

I should have known I was getting in over my head when this Kiwi guy (Reece Jones) told me he had a track in his back yard. Within hours of my arrival we were suiting up to ride "in the back yard". As we rode, a track attendant used a bulldozer to temper the landing from one of the jumps. A short landing appeared particularly lethal on this one since you'd be jumping into a hole. If I was ever to try this jump, fourth or fifth gear was clearly mandatory. I avoided it altogether.

I guess I should have known I was in trouble when saw the listing for the standings at Kiwi's motorcycle club. He was rated #1 in the expert class, and #2 in the Wildman competition. I asked, what's this Wildman thing? In short, it's a free-for-all class where anyone can enter any motorcycle. The winner was a nationally-ranked MX Pro in New Zealand.

I should have packed my bags and begged for mercy, but the guy was on a mission to demonstrate his hospitality though making sure I got my fill of riding. To compound my shortcomings, and keep pace with my usual brain-dead form, I skipped all workouts throughout the holidays (3 weeks before the NZ trip) and took a riding trip to Southern California that returned me home only 4 days before I left for New Zealand. Good call, ******* (dork).

Anyway, the Kiwi gave me a '96 CR 250 with an FMF exhaust. It was in class shape. Unfortunately, the power curve on this bike was the truest approximation of a Kronecker's delta function that I've ever seen. For non-mathematicians this means the power was identically zero everywhere except for one point. At the redline, it felt like infinity, or at least a close approximation of it.

Long and short, we rode for two days at two tracks, one enduro loop, and at a National forest site until my hands where literally bloody. At the third moto track I reduced to crying about my hands and Reece ran loop after loop without me.

Relief came with the short break we took to watch the NZ national supercross that night. Being under dressed was my only pain! I think my body temperature dropped about 10 degrees that night, but this was minor in the scope of the other pains, since it could be fixed with 1/2 an hour under the shower with only the hot water on.

Next morning Reece was pushing a top-off ride in the back yard and I succumbed. Sounds easy, huh? After 1/2 lap I was ecstatic because I'd realized I could relieve the pain from my hands by pinching the bars with my fingers, avoiding contact between my bloody palms and the bars altogether. The relief brought such joy that I neglected the serious compromise in throttle control. I crashed twice in the subsequent lap, the second time landed me on my *** (backside) after the bike came down from a radical jump in a standing wheelie. Like I said, no throttle control. So Reece just went around and around the track while I ... took pictures, and rubbed my *** (backside).

My *** (backside) has taken on the color and tenderness of Bryce's after he jumped of that cliff at the Rubicon.

All in all, I came back "totally fulfilled" with my weekend of riding. It may be a good thing that New Zealand is so ******* (let's just say hard) hard to get to. I think that my performance has truly earned me the name of a candy-*** (rear). Besides, it looks and feels like it fits. It's red, tender as hell, and couldn't be any riper (Nice, just what we wanted to know!).

All is well now,

Pinhead