On the Road Again: West Bound and Henderson Down

(Ed. note: A couple of weekends ago some of our club members felt the need for speed that led them to the small hamlet of Henderson, Texas. On certain weekends, Henderson hosts the Central Motorcycle Roadracing Association and members say the races are always a good time. Mark your calenders; the next big events are scheduled for June 13-14 and September 26-27. Thanks to Dan Weber and Jimmy Moss for text and pix.)

On Sunday February 22nd four of us from the RRBMW club took a trip over to Oak Hill raceway outside Henderson,TX. Jimmy Moss, Kim Horton, Bobby Swink, and Dan Weber went on this ride.

Oak Hill is a tight 1.8 mile track that is well run by the CMRA (Central Motorcycle Roadracing Association) racing organization; the races are all 8 lap affairs and barring problems, click off without delay. We witnessed one accident complete with heli-evac.

We arrived and chatted with Noah Beard, a friend of Jimmy Moss. Some may recall that Noah talked to us about track days during a RRBMW meeting some months ago. Jimmy picked up some info on track riding schedules for 2009.

There were in excess of 200 racers at the track in a variety of classes, 125 2-strokes to liter bikes. The most popular seemed to be Suzuki SV650s. After watching a couple of races and chatting with others spectators, we figured out that the two fastest guys were really in a class of their own. The brand of bike is a minor part of the equation, we heard the "fast guy" mention while being interviewed that he'd been racing at Oak Hill for 17 years.

After 4 hours at the track we took a couple of FM roads back to S'port while Bobby peeled off for Arkansas. The ride was about 140 miles, a bit chilly in the morning but quite pleasant on the return.

You can get a sense of the track by going to YouTube.com and searching "oak hill".

Oak Hill's website is: http://www.oakhillraceway.net/