Chapter 10!
Ok guy’s, I just wanted to explain some stuff that if you didn’t pay attention in chapter 2, you might not get some stuff in the later chapters. The USMXN series is a series that in the end, the People from the whole US compete in it. But for the first 4 rounds, the 4 regions, northwest, southwest, northeast, and southeast will compete by themselves. So mark would do four rounds in the southwest. Then after the first 4 rounds, the top 10 in the points will move onto rounds, 5,6,and 8. In the rounds 5,6,8 the 4 regions will become 2-the west and south. So Mark would compete against people from the northwest as well as people from the southwest. After 3 races like this, the top 10 people in the points will move on to rounds 9,10,11 and 12. In these rounds the whole US competes against each other. Round 12 is the Final round. If anyone doesn’t get it, ask me and I’ll re-explain it.
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Mark’s mom had been crying a little bit when they said goodbye. At least she hadn’t done it in front of Marks teammates, he would have never heard the end of it. Mark’s parents had promised to go to round 11, the final round, and round 7 which was only about 25 minutes from their house. But they couldn’t go to any other rounds because they had to work on the weekends. Mark’s dad worked at a bullet factory. He ran a lot of the machinery and he was the best at it, so he had to work a lot.
‘I wish he could come and see how good I’m racing’ Mark thought.
Mark had received an FMF silencer and pipe in the mail for his 85 from FMF since they were now officially his sponsor. Mark had also told them that he got a 150. They said that they would give him an exhaust for it when they got to the next round.
The drive to the next stop of the USMXN series was about 8 and a half hours long. Mark tried to go to sleep for a while, but couldn’t get to sleep. He started reading a magazine.
“Whoa!” Mark exclaimed. “We have an ad in this magazine!” On a page there was an ad that said TPA racing and it had a picture of each of the TPA team members riding.
“Why didn’t we get individual ads?” Matt asked.
“Because then whoever got their picture in it would be the only person who would,” Jordan said. “And then you guys would all be mad that you didn’t get your picture in it.”
“You’re right,” Kasey said, “I wouldn’t want everyone mad at me for the rest of the trip.”
“How do you know that you would have been the one in the ad?” Mark shot at him. The argument went on for a while then they finally settled down. Mark’s interview wouldn’t appear in the magazine for a couple of weeks.
Mark finally managed to fall asleep for 3 hours and when he woke up they still had 4 hours to go. They had left at 8 o’clock on the morning and were hoping to get there by 5 or 6. The ride was immensely boring.
When they got to the hotel Mark was so stiff from not moving in the car for 8 hours he got out of the van and ran around the parking lot. When he walked in he saw Bobby and Stephanie and their parents coming out of the hotel restaurant. Since the team had spent 4 days at home it was Thursday. The Andrews must have been there a couple of days.
Mark waved to them. Bobby came over to him, but Stephanie just kept walking with her nose in the air.
“Is she still mad about Saturday?” Mark asked Bobby.
“Yeah, she is,” Bobby replied. “And she has a big crush on Blake Gopy.” Mark scowled. “Don’t worry, she’ll eventually figure out he’s a jerk,” Bobby assured him.
The next morning Mark spent 2 hours in the weight room since he hadn’t been exercising. He walked back up to the hotel room at 7:30 drenched in sweat after just spending 35 minutes on the treadmill.
At breakfast Jordan told them that they were going to go to an off-road ORV area. When they got there they saw it was HUGE! There was over 2 ½ miles straight of natural sand whoops. There were not very many jumps, but there were woods, whoops, sand, and so much fun that they wanted to come back again the next day, but then they remembered it was the race the next day. They continued riding until they could see the sun going down. Mark had ridden the 85 for the first half of the day, and then switched to the 150 for the next half of the day.
On the ride back Mark said “That 150 is so much fun! I can't believe how much easier it is to ride than my 85.” The rest of the team had all tested it out, too.
“I wish my dad would have bought me a new bike while I was at home,” Matt said.
“Me too,” said Keenan and Kasey together.
The next day they went to the races at 6:30 in the morning. “Sign me up for Supermini, too” Mark said to Jordan as he went to sign them up. The rest of the team went to walk the track. The track had a lot of step ups and step downs. Mark had always been better at step ups/down than most kids his age. A part of this track, like the track before it was made of bark, which made it smell weird. The whoops were also HUGE. There was one other thing about this track. It had cement starts. Mark hated cement start pads! He never got good starts with cement. When he told Jordan this, Jordan said, “We’ll just have to trust your ability to pass people then.”
Mark was sitting on his new 150 at the cement starting gates for the Supermini qualifier. He was nervous because he had never raced Supermini. But he didn’t have time to think about that then because the card went up, then sideways and the gate dropped. Mark tried to get off the cement quick, but he just spun out and was one of the last people to get off of it.
He came around the first corner and saw most of the pack ahead of him. This is when all those hours of practicing was really gonna help, he thought. The qualifier was 5 laps and after 2 laps, his pit board said he was in 3rd. He didn’t know the person that was in 2nd, but he passed him fairly easily. He saw the leader. He was on a Suzuki and his chest protector said his name was Mike Steward. It took him another lap to catch up completely but he couldn’t pass him. He had tried twice. Mark started to realize where Steward’s weakness was: The Whoops. Mark started focusing on getting right on Steward's tail. When the whoops came Mark sped across them which leveled him neck and neck with Steward. Unfortunately for Mark, Steward got ahead again, and took the heat win.
Mark was going to have to figure out how to win against Mike Steward
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Thanks olderndirtmom for proof reading this chapter. :)