Nearly to a rider, it was agreed the 2004 installment of the annual Variety Rider's harescramble was one of the finest courses the club has put together in recent years. If there was any complaint, it was the arrows could have been used a little more liberally in a few spots.

The course was flowing, the tight sections opened up right when they started to piss you off, the few hills were challenging but easily doable, there was just the right amount of logs and there were just enough creek crossings and greasy banks to keep things interesting.

All in all, it was a great course on a beautiful day for riding. If you didn't have a good time, you fouled a plug or you ate some rotten turkey 30 minutes before the shotgun fired, or both.

Here are the class winners reported on race day. (See the Variety Riders' Web site for complete results for the District 17 classes, as well as results for the trailriders.)

AA: William Hardesty, #20
Open A: Andrew Sloan, #103
+30A: Tim Ferrell, #406
+40A: Wally Mika, #619
+30B: Evan Borski, #511
+40B: Reagon Rhodes, #716
Big B: Jesse Keith, #209
Little B: Todd Middleworth, #314

For his part, midwestmotocross.com Editor James Holter scored seventh out of 10 in a tightly run +30B class (doing five laps in 2:10 while the leader did five in 2:04).

Next week is the final harescramble event at Fox Valley Offroad for 2004, and promoter/owner Gerhard Ward has his work cut out for him if he's going to put on a course as nice as that laid out by the Variety Riders. Stay tuned.