Riders stoked to mow the competition

Mud flew, crowds cheered and checkered flags waved for the 21st year of lawn mower races at the Amboy Territorial Days Celebration Sunday afternoon.

The day starts with time trials to determine the starting order come time for the real races.

David Newton said his wife, Kristi Thorson, was kind enough to share her mower after his encountered belt trouble.

“She was nice enough to let me ride it,” he said, adding he hoped not to flip one over that day. Again.

“Personally, I want to start on the inside, because that’s easier to hold your line when you come into that corner, and pushes them out,” he said. “Pushes the other riders out into the duff, slows them down, and you keep your speed.”

He’s been racing lawn mowers for about 12 years, and it’s grown into a family affair.

Along with his wife, his dad races as well, he said, as does her father, Kyle Thorson, who spread his habit to many others on the track that day.

“He got me addicted to it, and after that it was over with,” Marty Ebert said from his impromptu mower pit at the edge of the arena. “First time I rode one, I had to build it.”

To make his mower race-worthy, he fiddled with the pulleys that turn the wheels, removed the governor and tweaked the engine.

Riders get pretty creative with finding ways to squeeze more power from 8-horsepower lawn mower engines, he said, some build souped-up, alcohol-burning speedsters.

“Keeping up with them with a stock motor’s fun,” he said, with some pride.

Generally, the requirements are pretty loose, he said: maintain the general riding mower appearance, engine and frame. (The blades are removed.)

“Being a fabrication welder helps,” he said, adding he built his with scrap metal salvaged from work.

The races followed a day of precision falling, bucking logs at speed and other feats of chain saw mastery Saturday.

Sam Arola, chief of Fire District 10 and the one corralling all the racers, has been volunteering with the lawn mower races since they stared in 1996.

The camaraderie he sees among the competitors is among his favorite things about the event.

He pointed to one racer, a woman with a mower that was a bit more stock than the others.

“She’s never raced before in her whole darn life, and this is her first race. She’s got people giving her pointers and everything else,” he said. “So that’s pretty cool.”

Lawn mower racing in the area owes much of its start to the races in Morton, when two hardware stores held a race 40 years ago to show who sold the fastest mower.

Morton still holds a big race as part of its Loggers Jubilee event, and La Center, Battle Ground Yacolt and other towns once did as well, but the number of events has fallen off in recent years.

“We’re trying to grow it again,” Arola said. “It was doing really good, then the economy and everything kind of went to heck.”

Sunday’s crowd and field of races were promising, though, he said.

“Now it’s up and coming, so we’re doing good.”

Racer Lindsey Paris, who has been racing for nine years, spent years watching them with her father, who encouraged her to take a stab at it when she was old enough.

“My first probably two or three years was just trial and error, getting my lawn mower going. I’ve won a lot, and I’ve lost lot,” she said, adding she keeps going back to what her dad always told her: “‘It doesn’t matter, just ride your mower and have a good time.'”

Although everyone competes, and hard, out on the track, all the racers and their teams are like one. Everyone’s a competitor in a friendly competition. They’re like one big team, she said.

Her brother, Randy Paris, who also races, agreed.

“If you bump somebody, run them off the track, oh well,” he said. “At the end of the day, we’re all going to the beer garden to have a beer together.”