OFF ROAD: Club keeps off-road riding strong By MARIO RENTERÍA, Sports Editor
Thursday, August 23, 2007 10:24 PM PDT
TODD KRAININ PHOTO
FROM LEFT: Cody Thornburg, Paul Kirby, Bill Thornburg and Cameron Corfman gather around a four-stroke KTM inside of Threat Racing in El Centro on Aug. 16. All are members of RoadRunner Offroad Racing Club and were the first motorcycle racing club to be formed in the Imperial Valley under the AMA District 38 umbrella.
For a moment a few years ago, motorcycle off-road racing was starting to go under.
That’s when a group of family and friends decided it was time to get involved.
“District 38 was almost defunct,” RoadRunner Offroad Racing Club president Paul Kirby said.
District 38 is tied to the American Motorcyclist Association.
After longtime off-road racing promoter Otis “Fud” Fudpucker died in October 2003, motorcycle racing in the Valley slowed.
“We thank Fud a lot for his contributions because he really took the sport to the next level,” Kirby said.
To keep racing alive, Kirby, family and friends had to do something.
“We felt, to keep racing going, we’d need a club that was tied in with District 38 and that could work real well with local and federal government to be able to keep racing going,” Kirby said.
That’s when the RoadRunner club was formed in September 2004.
“We had our initial meeting … in the Superstition area, at a weekend campout,” Kirby said. “We had nominations. … We basically formed what is RoadRunner today that evening.”
What started as a 20-member club has grown into a nearly 100-member organization. While the club has grown, so has District 38, which now has 400 members.
“We’re real proud of the fact that we resurrected the sport,” Kirby said.
What use to be one club organizing District 38 racing, RoadRunner now has four.
“That’s also what we were banking — other clubs coming into the district also,” RoadRunner vice president/treasurer Kirk Hester said. “We didn’t want to do all the work ourselves because we like to race, too.”
They organized their first race in January 2005 followed by five more the same year, and four last year including one of seven AMA Hare & Hound National Championship Series races. The national race attracts more than 300 national racers.
After two previous successful years, RoadRunner was looking for its third when it and other racing organizations, including four-wheel vehicles, ran into a snag.
The U.S. Bureau of Land Management came out with new regulations that stipulate all race routes had to be surveyed by a team of archeologists. The cost was about $1,200 a mile for clubs.
“We didn’t have that money. Our clubs are basically nonprofit clubs,” Kirby said.
Roadrunner didn’t give up.
“So we turned to (U.S. Rep.) Duncan Hunter (R-Alpine),” Kirby said. “Duncan wrote a letter to BLM asking them to work with us, which they did. … (It) made all the difference in the world.”
The Imperial County Board of Supervisors got involved and in conjunction with California state parks allocated about $900,000 from off-highway vehicle sales taxes for survey fees.
“So we went from nothing surveyed to almost 250 miles of race routes that the cars can use, the bikes can use,” Kirby said. “We’ve also learned to conserve these race routes.”
RoadRunner has been working with the BLM to conserve the desert as much as possible while continuing to race.
“We’re real proud of the fact that we’ve been able to partner with the BLM,” Kirby said. “We both have a stake in the desert. They’re out to preserve it, we want to preserve it, too, but we also want to race on it.”
RoadRunner will continue racing on it with its next District 38 race — the Rattlesnake Chase sponsored by Imperial Valley Cycle Center — scheduled for Sept. 23 at the Dip at Superstition.
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