The Times, Trenton New Jersey

Driving passion

Wednesday, July 17, 2002

By ANDREW D. SMITH
 

On days when he is lying in a hospital bed, recovering from his latest motorcycle injury, Clayton Keeler often vows to give up motocross.

But despite sustaining two broken legs, five broken ribs and a punctured lung in the past 15 months, the 44-year-old Keeler cannot abandon the sport he loves.

"There have been many times when I asked myself why I keep doing it. But it never takes me long to remember the answer," said Keeler, a Hopewell Township resident who wants to bring motocross to Trenton by building a $25.5 million indoor arena.

"Words cannot describe the feeling I get from riding. It's like I'm in synch with the universe. And it's worth all the risks and all the pain," he says.

Now, Keeler's passion for motocross is driving him to risk something other than his health. Co-investing with a partner named Frank Smollon, Keeler is gambling his life savings - money he has earned as an engineer who owns the construction management company Witherspoon Inc. - in an effort to create a unique facility for extreme sports in Trenton.

The 230,000-square-foot complex, dubbed the XArena, would include two motorcycle tracks, a 100-foot-tall wind tunnel for indoor skydiving, a pro shop, a restaurant, a night club and other amenities.

Keeler, who has yet to complete agreements either with lenders or with the city, won't specify how much he's putting into the multimillion-dollar project, except to say that it is everything he has.

And given what he knows about the devotion of motocross riders and the absence of comparable facilities in the area, he is happy to make such a huge wager.

"Passion governs my life, not fear," Keeler said. "I take a lot of risks, and sometimes I get burned. But on the whole, my life is incredibly rich and incredibly satisfying because I've always realized that you can't win if you don't play the game."

Keeler, whose business manages small and mid-sized construction projects for clients like Merrill Lynch, has spent the past decade dreaming about building an indoor facility for motocross and other extreme sports. But the true genesis of the idea came more than 30 years ago when a 7-year-old Keeler took his first spin on a mini bike.

After just a couple rides, he was hooked. And he soon began saving for a bike of his own.

Keeler, who grew up in Medford and attended Shawnee High School, quickly became an expert rider. And when the sport of motocross migrated here from Europe in the early 1970s, Keeler lived for racing his off-road bike over dirt tracks with massive jumps and hairpin turns.

But racing took a back seat after Keeler left home for Drexel University. And it stayed there until 1990, by which time Keeler ran his own company and had enough free time to rekindle his old love.

Over the intervening years, Keeler earned an undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering and worked seven years at York International in New York. He moved to West Windsor because of the train service and decided to stick around the area when he started his own business in 1989.

Witherspoon Inc. employs 14 people and oversees construction projects of offices and the like for Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, the city of Trenton and other customers.

Keeler enjoys running Witherspoon, but it has never been his only interest.

Over the past few years, Keeler has been living out a dream that has nothing to do with motorcycles.

"I've been studying at Drexel part time and working toward a doctorate in mechanical engineering," he said. "It doesn't help me at all professionally, but I've always been fascinated by the science and I decided it was worth my time."

Keeler has already earned his master's degree. And he is hoping to win his doctorate with research concerning ways to detect faults in heating, cooling and ventilation systems.

Away from academic life, Keeler continues to race his motorcycle. And he teaches 10-year-old son Grant to do the same.

"We didn't push him into doing anything. He absolutely loves it," Keeler said. "In fact, he's surpassed his old man already. He was ranked in the top 20 nationally for his age, and I'm nowhere near that high."

According to Keeler, Grant has reached the point where jumps regularly carry him 70 feet or more - and the point where his mother can no longer bear to watch him race.

But Keeler, who regularly packs his family into a motor home each year to tour the motocross circuit, understands his son's joy. He still races with the rest of the over-40 set, despite his recent string of broken bones.

"Motocross is an inherently dangerous sport, like skiing. But I've really been having some bad luck lately," Keeler said.

"Normally," he continued, "I can go two or three years between major injuries. But I'm not upset about the way things have been going lately. You have to be prepared to accept the risks. That's just the way life is."

Copyright 2002 The Times. Used with permission.