Tracking Dirt

Take one huge arena. Add tons of earth. Spread it around. Then bring on the bikes.

Byline: Jonathan Pitts
Source: SUN STAFF

Published on Saturday, January 15, 2005
Section: TODAY Page: 1D
Edition: FINAL
© The Baltimore Sun


It's tempting to dig up an old cliche to describe Lenny Mays' line of work: It's a dirty job, but somebody's gotta do it.

The construction man from Columbus, Ohio - in town this week with the professional indoor motorcycle-racing circuit known as Arenacross - is doing what he and three crewmates do every week between late October and early March: turning 3 million pounds of local dirt into a bike racer's paradise of well-packed straightaways, banks and jumps.

Tonight, when star riders like Josh "The Sheriff" Demuth of Texas and Darcy Lange of Canada buzz around the finished dirt track at 1st Mariner Arena, competing for cheers, cash and headlines, Mays and a handful of other earth artists will be fine, as usual, with anonymity.

"You don't work with the Arenacross Series to get rich or famous," said Mays over the roar of a John Deere front-loader as his crew worked the 1st Mariner floor on Wednesday. "You do it because you love the sport. That's how it happens. We're just a big old family out here."

Mays and his three mates - all employees of Clear Channel, the communications giant that owns Arenacross - hit Baltimore on Tuesday night, fresh off an all-night drive from Dallas. By Thursday afternoon, the track - 24 feet wide, a coiling three-tenths of a mile in length, 6 inches deep at its shallowest - was complete.

The pros began competing last night and will continue this evening. Local amateurs take to the track tomorrow.

The place will be clean by tomorrow evening, the concrete 1st Mariner floor empty of any vestige of dirt.

"It's a labor of love," says Mays with a laugh.

The work begins every year in the Fort Worth, Texas, office of Riggs Hipps, the man who oversees Arenacross, which is in its 20th year. Director of track construction for Clear Channel Entertainment, Hipps eyeballs the calendar of events for the coming four-month indoor season, scrutinizing the floor diagram for each venue. Using a custom computer program, he lays out the track blueprint for shows in arenas from Tacoma, Wash., to Denver, Dallas, Bridgeport, Conn., and, for the past six years, Baltimore.

"In theory, we lay out the same obstacles for each race," says Hipps, "but we also have some variation from race to race. We want to show the riders something new each week. You adapt to the dimensions of each arena."

Like most people on the circuit, Hipps, a one-time rider, learned the ropes through experience. Each track features, at a minimum, three sets of obstacles: what the biking world knows as "whoops," a "catapult" jump and a "rhythm section."

The whoops are between six and 12 back-to-back humps, each 3 to 5 feet in height. After rounding a sharp left-hand bank, riders face the spectacular catapult, a ramp 12 feet high, angled upward at about 40 degrees. (From that peak, they leap to a landing hump 50 to 60 feet away.) One hard right turn later, they enter the rhythm stretch, which is normally three quick double jumps or two consecutive triple jumps.

If there's enough room in the arena - as there is at 1st Mariner, Hipps says - the bikers then head into a flat straightaway toward the finish line.

Depending on what heat the riders are in - an early qualifying heat, say, or a final-round heat - a race can be from six to 20 laps around this hard-packed circuit. When the riders are keeping a good pace, a lap takes about 20 seconds.

"It's simple," says Hipps. "No matter what happens, first guy to the checkered flag wins."

At least $25,000 is at stake every weekend, with the winnings distributed among the top 16 riders. A star can make about $5,000 a weekend. Competing on the Arenacross circuit and others, including outdoor circuits such as the Clear Channel-owned Supercross, a top rider can earn a good living.

None could make a dime without the work of construction crews, and Hipps is lucky enough, he says, to have the best. His three Arenacross teams, each four men strong, are "extraordinarily good. I can count on them to know what they're doing, how to set things up, how to solve problems that develop" before he flies into town for final inspections Thursday.

Normally, Hipps says, Clear Channel contracts a local trucking firm to provide the needed dirt in any city. In Baltimore, the company hires CAMZ Corp., a 34-truck outfit in Edgemere. A year ago, CAMZ owner Chuck Campbell showed Clear Channel officials the dirt from one of his construction sites, the Eastpoint industrial park on Quad Avenue, and they were sold.

"They loved the dirt," says Campbell, who has ridden four-wheelers. "They said it had just the right amount of clay."

"The right stuff holds together well for takeoffs and landings," Hipps says, "and doesn't rut easily."

Clear Channel, which presents three racing shows locally each year, pays CAMZ to store the 3 million pounds of dirt year-round, to keep it dry, and to haul it in and out of 1st Mariner, a job that requires about 80 truckloads per show.

At roughly $20,000 per weekend, "it's a great job for us," Campbell says above the roar of his trucks as they rumbled into 1st Mariner late Tuesday night.

But even the best jobs can have their downsides. His grade school-age kids, Melanie and Zachary, are ace four-wheelers who have caught the bug.

"They love this stuff," says Campbell. "Now they're after me to build them a ramp."

Campbell isn't about to turn his kids into midair free-stylers just yet, but if he wanted to learn how to set up a proving ground, Lenny Mays' crew offers a world-class exhibition.

By Wednesday morning, CAMZ had left 1st Mariner Arena's floor looking like an untilled garden. Starting at 8 a.m., the Clear Channel crew members set about turning their raw material into a state-of-the-art motor-sports playground.

Baltimore's mild weather gave them a good start: Unlike the rain-drenched messes they faced in Texas and Ohio recently, where they had to work overtime with lime mixes and giant fans to ventilate their tracks, the dirt here was warm, clean and dry.

"Mother Nature can be a bear," Hipps says.

Here, though, the Clear Channel crew could get right to sculpting. Mays' colleague Dave Klinger, an old-timer on the circuit, worked a Caterpillar front-loader - a giant bulldozer with a shovel on the front - seizing up mountains of earth and piling them, in the rough shape of the jumps and ramps, in all the right places. A younger crewmate, Pete Henderson, operated a rubber-track John Deere skidloader in Klinger's wake, rocking the smaller, more agile 'dozer back and forth atop the mounds to pack them to firmness, then shaving them into shape with his front blade.

"Ask a regular 'dozer operator to do what they're doing, and he'd be clueless," says Mays as he takes a break from his job for the day, festooning the stands with banners. "Some people are artists with a paintbrush and paper, others with a pen. Those two are artists with equipment."

By 1 o'clock, the catapult section loomed above the center of the floor like the back of a coiled dragon. By 3, the humps of the rhythm section rose from the earth as if from the primordial ooze. The four turning areas, 45-degree earthen banks, took shape by 4, the undulating whoops by the next morning. By Thursday afternoon, bikers in ad-spangled outfits tested the circuit, their 250cc Yamahas and Kawasakis rising and falling amid the roar of engines.

But the work of a family is never done; even last night, before an expected sellout crowd of more than 10,000, the crew was expecting to get dirty. Henderson was to drop the gate to start the race - and to man a Bobcat bulldozer, filling in dirt wherever holes developed.

Klinger and Mays were to wave red and checkered flags as Demuth, Lange and the other riders whizzed around the circuit. And they're on tap to do the same for the pros tonight and for local amateurs tomorrow. On Monday, they'll set out for the next arena.

"It all comes together better than you'd think," says Mays. "If we weren't family, I guess it wouldn't. It's a good thing we like each other. And love the sport."

Dirt Facts

Total volume of dirt used: 1,400 cubic yards

Weight of dirt: 2,000-2,200 pounds per cubic yard; about 3 million pounds total

Number of truckloads hauled: 80, each weighing 37,500 pounds

Size of track-building crew: 4

Average time to build track (once dirt is on-site): 16 hours

Average time to disassemble track: 12 hours

Average thickness of dirt (straightaways): 6 inches

Height of "catapult" jump: 10-12 feet

Track length: About 0.3 mile

Width of lanes: 20 to 24 feet

National Arenacross motorcycle shows

Where: 1st Mariner Arena, 201 W. Baltimore St.

When: Tonight, 7:30 (professional motocross races and events); Tomorrow, noon (amateur races)

Tickets: Tonight, $18-$22 adults, $10 children (ages 2-12); Tomorrow, $16 adults, $5 children ($2 more if purchased tomorrow)

Purchase: 1st Mariner Arena box office, Ticketmaster outlets, participating Kawasaki dealers; online at Arenacross.com or ticketmaster .com; or by phone at 800-551- SEAT or 410-547-SEAT

Note: From 5:30-6:30 tonight, those with tickets may walk the track, meet riders and get autographs.

ILLUSTRATION: Photo(s)
GRAPH_SOURCE: GENE SWEENEY JR. : SUN STAFF PHOTOS