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 veteran 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."
