That leaves the fall weekends in September and October pretty much wide open for the one-offs, those season-ending gatherings that track with the temperature, migrating from north to south. There’s the Baja Brawl and RedBud Grass Race in Michigan, the Racer X Maine Event in the far Northeast, the Travis Pastrana Pro Challenge in Pennsylvania, the Kawasaki Race of Champions in New Jersey, the Top Gun Showdown in Tennessee, the revived Ponca City race in Oklahoma, and more. These events offer a chance for racers and their families to get together at the racetrack one last time before winter, as well as a nice payday for privateers who struggle for attention and prize money on the big stages of AMA Supercross and Pro Motocross.

arshal Weltin ended his brief 2019 Lucas Oil Pro Motocross season by finishing 19th at Unadilla on a Husqvarna FC 250 and then, two weeks later, earning 15th at the Ironman finale aboard a KTM 450 SX-F. That made him the only pro rider in the 2019 series to earn championship points in both classes. But it wasn’t nearly enough to get him on a competitive team for 2020, so he decided to hit the road for a bunch of regional events in September and October that we’ll call the Pumpkin Spice Latte Motocross Tour.

eltin’s one-man tour began with a short hour-long jaunt across his home state of Michigan for the Baja Brawl at Baja Acres MX. Driving a Ram 3500 van and riding a KTM 450 SX-F he borrowed from Live It Extreme, he will soon have a 2020 KTM 250 SX-F, purchased by his father. Besides Live It Extreme, his biggest sponsors are Heli Realtors, Huron Appraisal Services, MMCR, Caro Motorsports, and FXR Racing. A true journeyman pro—he’s raced all over the U.S. and Canada, as well as a couple of seasons on the EMX and FIM Motocross World Championship tours—Weltin’s plan was to hit as many domestic races as possible to build up a war chest for 2020.

“I’m going to hit the road solo and take my van and just try to make some money,” the 23-year-old explained. “The Maine Event has a $15,000 purse. The Pleasure Valley one [Travis Pastrana Pro Challenge] has a $10,000 purse, and then a $4,000 250 purse. So [I’ll try to] make a few grand here and there and try to stack that towards supercross, or whatever I do next.”

“People forget the main reason why they got into moto,” the promoter Grzebinski says of his philosophy on the Brawl. “Spending time with their family, adventuring to cool places while meeting new people, and having fun riding their dirt bikes—it’s just badass.”

The winner of the Pure Michigan “Bad Axe” award for the weekend’s top finisher was Jace Kessler, who hails from Eagle, Michigan (no relation to Ronnie Mac’s bike), and won four classes at the Brawl.

eltin next drove 17 hours by himself to the northeastern corner of the U.S. to participate in the Racer X Maine Event (partially sponsored by this magazine), an awesome race put on by Danny Stuart and family at their MX207 track. Besides a quality (and rough) sand track, the event includes pit bikes, endurocross, a best-whip contest, and a huge Saturday night pit party. The Racer X Maine Event has steadily grown over the years, and it’s begun attracting riders from all over the East Coast. The always-ready-to-race Ryan Sipes and family came up from Kentucky, and his son Jack, just four years old, ended up competing for the very first time.

Sipes himself ended up winning the 125cc class after some excellent battles with local hero Justin Allen, and Weltin would take home two metal briefcases full of cash for sweeping the Pro classes. But both would leave the High Mileage Award to Cullin Park, who came all the way from Florida to race four of the B classes, win 11 out of 12 motos, and earn the Weekend Warrior honors. His only blemish on the weekend was the result of a mechanical failure.

“It’s beautiful here in Maine,” said Park, a first-time visitor to the Maine Event. “It’s a nice change from Florida, where it’s been absolutely brutal—it’s still in the nineties.” He was there as a guest of friends from Rhode Island, who in turn stay with him when they venture south in the winter. “The track’s been good, too, so I’m really enjoying it. The motos are long, too, which definitely helps me as I’m getting ready to turn pro, hopefully next year.”

“A huge thanks to everyone who came out to spend the weekend with us,” Stuart posted on the @mx207 Instagram account when he finally slowed down. “It takes a lot of work to put it all together but seeing the happy faces at the track and people’s posts about the weekend are extremely gratifying to see and read.”

eltin did skip the DC Vet Homecoming, a reunion-style vintage and vets race held at High Point Raceway in Pennsylvania. The DC in the title stands for my dad, “Big” Dave Coombs, who founded High Point Raceway in 1976 and ran it until his passing in 1998. Ever since, we’ve held the race in late September, and it’s grown into quite a gathering for riders young and old. Former factory rider Broc Hepler was this year’s grand marshal, and he helped the Racer X crew judge both the vintage bike and vintage memorabilia contests. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately for him), he had to leave before they kicked off the Saturday night karaoke contest.

One week later, Weltin did drive to Pennsylvania, only this time he was at Pleasure Valley Raceway. Longtime promoter and amateur motocross powerbroker Jeff Cernic has seen plenty of superstar riders put their names on events—Ricky Carmichael, James Stewart, and Ryan Villopoto, to name a few—so when Cernic decided to start a big fall race, he reached out to an old friend.

“I’ve known Travis Pastrana ever since he was a kid and I was sponsoring him on minicycles, so I called and asked if he wanted to be involved,” Cernic says. “I told him that we wanted to just put on a fun event for riders and their families and get more kids out to the motocross track.”

Of course, his old friend said yes, and the Moto-Tech Trailers Travis Pastrana $10,000 Pro Challenge was born. Pastrana has been there each time, and in 2019 he brought along a few other well-known friends, namely Damon Bradshaw, Mike Brown, and even Doug Henry. Besides full days of racing, the Pastrana event included a freestyle demo (starring Travis) and an evening pit-bike race—with eighty bikes! One class even acted as a qualifier for Pastrana’s own backyard pit-bike national.

“We had bands every night, pit-bike races, a race for dads—we had stuff going on all weekend long,” says Cernic, who also had a hand in the careers of Pastrana’s fellow Suzuki stars Broc Hepler, Davi Millsaps, Branden Jesseman, and Jason Lawrence. “I try not to ask Travis to do things very often, but when I do call, he’s always game.”

Weltin would add another win and another wad of cash to his stack by taking the Open A win over the veteran Mike Brown and fellow Michigander Joey Crown, who would immediately leave with his father Matt on a cross-country drive all the way to Pomona, California, where he would win the 125cc class at Red Bull Straight Rhythm—a different kind of off-season happening. As for the road warrior Weltin, he told us he was taking his time driving from race to race.

“I’ve been spacing it out,” he said. “I’m not really doing too much during the week, so it’s easy to kind of plan my trips and stuff. I went back to Michigan for a little while and hung out with the fam. . . . I’ve just been planning my life around these races. It’s been fun. I feel kind of worthless just sitting there during the week, but I’m always staying busy now—working out, cleaning my stuff, prepping, training. There’s always little stuff that’s going wrong you’ve got to fix. I’ve been my own mechanic, so you’re always running into things. I blew out a spoke and put a hole in my brake line.”

eltin was also doing the driving all by himself, and his next trip was to New Jersey for the Kawasaki Race of Champions at Englishtown’s Raceway Park. The KROC was celebrating its 43rd year in existence, making it one of the oldest and best-known of all these one-off autumn events. Unfortunately for Weltin, his luck did not go along for the ride, as he won the first Open Pro moto but then DNF’d the second time out. The overall win went to Bobby Piazza over Cory Carsten, the son of Jersey legend Barry Carsten. In the 250 class, Delaware’s Coty Schock came out on top in both motos, with Weltin settling for second overall.

KROC was also the third whip contest win for Jesse Pierce, who also won at Baja Brawl and the Maine Event. His next stop would be Las Vegas for the Dirt Shark Biggest Whip contest at the Monster Energy Cup.

rom the Jersey Shore, Weltin would next drive to Tennessee for another big annual race, the Suzuki Top Gun Showdown at Sam Gammon’s Muddy Creek Raceway. Once again, he would win the Open Pro class, with local legend Mike Brown second and North Carolina’s Jamal Porter Jr. rounding out the podium. Brown would also finish second in the Cody Gragg Memorial two-stroke race to Luke Neese, the son of his longtime Southeast rival Jim Neese.

Weltin’s luck ran out again when he blew up his own bike before the Muddy Creek event and had to borrow one, only to crash and end up sixth. But his Open Pro win helped make the last long drive home a little easier.

“It’s been pretty fun, but I’m ready for a break,” he said on his way back to Michigan, having decided to skip the cross-country drive to the Monster Energy Cup in Las Vegas, as well as the always-fun RedBud Grass Race back home. “I wanted to race as much as possible in the fall and build up some funds for next year. I have some great sponsors, but I’m pretty much a privateer, so I have to come up with money myself. This definitely worked out, winning between $1,000 and $3,000 per race, but it’s also been a long time away from home. Now it’s time to go back and start working on what 2020 looks like for me.”

So, will we be seeing Marshal Weltin again next fall at all of these races?

“Absolutely!” replied the 2019 Pumpkin Spice Latte Motocross Tour Champion. “It was all one great big trip.”