The 1993 Adelanto Children’s Crusade

They waited, row after rainbow-hued row, looking like futuristic knights, in their riding gear, under a camouflage-patterned desert sky with black, grey, and white clouds, as a brisk breeze blew away the dirty white smoke that plumed from the exhaust pipes of their machines.

Amid the snarls of engines warming up, two yellow-helmeted racers on white Yamahas at the end of the front row held a hasty shouted conference.  Their hands sketched in the air the turns and twists of the race course ahead.  They appeared to be ten to twelve years old.

In the middle of the row, an eleven-year-old rider on a yellow Suzuki adjusted a strap on her white shoulder-padded skeletal chest-and-back protector.  She rubbed a red-gloved hand along her white-and-red Cordora pants tucked into mid-calf-high riding boots.   She wore a long-sleeved red jersey under her armour.  Her shiny brown hair flowed from under her white-and-red helmet down to the middle of her chest and back.

The warriors turned their eyes to the starting banner, an orange cloth rectangle with the words ‘Desert Vipers’ printed in black block letters on it.  A pair of burly clean-shaven club members wearing bright orange windbreakers, red t-shirts, and red baseball caps held the banner aloft with two poles.

The banner fell forward.  The row of riders roared down the town street like greyhounds chasing a rabbit.  Around the first corner they ripped, racing out to the shrubbed desert.

One row at a time, the rest of the platoon followed.  One fellow’s red Honda reared up on its back wheel.  He flung his body over the handlebar, easing off of the throttle.  The bike trembled for just a second.  The front wheel came down and the racer sped on his way.

A yellow-helmeted warrior with green elbow pads stood on the foot pegs of a white Yamaha with a red seat as he raced over an elevated dirt-and-wood bridge with orange guardrails.  A white-and-red helmeted knight riding a black-seated Suzuki followed hot on the Yamaha’s wheel.  Bikes and riders flew off the end of the bridge, landing just beyond the bottom of its ramp.

Yammy zipped over a trio of small hills, soared off the last one, and slammed to earth on his front wheel.  Right behind, Suzi sailed over all three berms and hit the dirt on her rear wheel. 

Handlebar to handlebar, both bikes zoomed through a wide right-handed curve, their masters extending onto the dirt track booted right feet.  


A roostertail of dirt followed Suzi as she roared past Yammy along a straightaway.

The sharp oily odor of exhaust smoke mingled with the mellow smell of freshly turned soil as the combatants snaked through an ess, leaning their mounts deep into the curves.

Straightening out, they jammed through the tunnel under the bridge.  The riders abruptly slowed and putted through a chute of hay bales to the start line for another go-around.

This is fact-based fiction.