Anaheim Supercross.  I read a lot of what has been said about the opening round of the 2010 Supercross season on the web so far.  I was there.  I was the fly on the wall.   I took a few photos, but those are all personal and, I won’t  share.  But, I will share some observations and some insider insight.  I’ve been to a lot of supercross races over the years.  I started shooting pictures and doing the story’s covering SX in So Cal for the San Diego Off Roader years before I started REM.  Over the years I saw a lot and reported little of the inside stuff that I saw.  Today though it seems that a lot of people put a lot of words onto the world wide web that really don’t know or don’t see what is going on.  Now keep in mind what I write is my opinion or my interpretation of what I saw.  Some names will be omitted to protect the guilty. 

James Stewart is one fast motocross racer.  If you think his race is not planned out from the start you are naïve.  He has a solid history of stalking the lead rider and pulling the trigger in the late stages of the race.  He has done it more than once, and as long as he doesn’t fall the plan is solid.  Why he does it I’m not sure.  He could easily pull a McGrath; get a holeshot, charge for the first couple of laps gap the field, and then put it into cruise mode while doing nac-nacs.  If you think his closing on Dungey was because the Suzuki rider was making mistakes, think again.   It was a calculated move that he has done many times.  It was tough to do with Carmichael because they were basically the same speed. 

Works parts are not doled out to just anyone.  While there is no doubt that JS gets every works part available, his teammate Josh Hill was using last years works forks that were  turned down to fit into the 10 works clamps.  While it was obvious by the Yamaha logos on Team JLaw’s bikes, graphics, and truck that the Lawrence team is getting some support from Yamaha there were no Yamaha works parts on either of the 450’s the team was running.  Is Larry Brooks under too much pressure?  He looks like he escaped from a Survivor episode.  He told me he hadn’t lost any weight but it appeared to me he’s lost way too much weight.  For god sakes Larry throw in a cheeseburger or two.  Villopoto led 450- A practice out for its second qualifying session.  He got about a half a lap and dropped it which apparently was the source of his injured wrist.  Up to that point he looked pretty solid.  He was definitely slower after the fall.  Stroupe looked very uncomfortable on the 450.  After watching the tv broadcast he needs to learn to hold his tongue, he just makes himself look bad.  And speaking of the tv broadcast what was with Reeds potty mouth, he knew he was on live.  Being an aussie is not a defense. Big James is almost as big a celebrity as is his son.  He sat in front of us in practice and more people wanted their pic with him than any other racer who was sitting in the same area.  I looked at the million dollar Bugatti parked near the pits.  Sorry I wasn’t impressed, I would have been way more impressed if that person had used that money to purchase one of the many struggling motocross tracks and invested the money back into the sport.  Driving that car is just an invitation for trouble.    Chad Reeds wife is definitely pregnant.  And Reed walked by me four times to and from his coach and the Kawasaki pits.  He did not look nearly as thin as he did during last year’s Nationals.  And he was armed with a banana. The Thor gear he was wearing was downright ugly.  Villopotos Thor gear looked much better.   Bring back the KTM 65 racers, the half time entertainment is brutal.  I’m sorry but unless you take out Stewart and Dungey the pack was half a lap behind.  There were a lot of 450 pros just riding around enjoying the nice weather, or at least that’s what it looked like.  I know what they are doing is very difficult and I sure could not do it.  But, come on are the first and second place rider that much ahead of everyone else.  If you think racism is limited to just a few I am sorry to disappoint you but it is alive and well with some idiots in the Supercross crowd.   If you think NIKE is going to be happy just making some special boots for a couple of its riders you’re fooling yourself.  They pay one of their athletes more than the entire US MX boot business makes in a year.   They seem to like motocross, and they can own it if they choose.  Be prepared for more NIKE products in the future.  Why did Ace whats his name play the anthem, he's a Monster guy, (you didn't think they only sponsored atheletes did you?)   Surprise, the race was not a sellout.  The boo boobs were out.  Stewart was booed but not nearly like RC was booed at the same stadium not that many years ago.  The minute Stewart passed Dungey the crowd headed for the exits.  Every time I go to a stadium it enforces my belief that they should not sell beer.  Big props to Yamaha for supporting so many teams, and continuing to support the privateer with contingency.  It seemed like there were more Yamahas entered than any other machine.  Whatever changes they made to Stewarts Yamaha after practice did not help him in the whoops, he was hanging onto it for dear life several times in the last couple of whoops.  Unless something bad happens my pick for the west is definitely Weimer.   Canard will give him a run, but Pro Circuit all the way.   How painfully uncomfortable must it have been for JLaw management with the placement of their semi directly across from the huge Monster display, that’s all I’m going to say on that one.  Too me having watched this series for a long time it’s just more of the same.  I don’t see much different than any other year as far as racers or racing go.  Yes, the economy has taken a toll.  The AMA has made it so there are fewer pro’s trying to make the program, the promoter has made it so you can’t walk thru the pits most of the day.  Couldn’t they make it so that most of the spectator action that seems to draw the biggest crowds is moved out of the pits and to a fan experience area.   I’m not against open pits, but get the foot traffic that is there for the extracurricular stuff out of the working pits.  Well, like I said these are my personal observations.  You may or may not agree with me.  My money  is on Stewart, Weimer in the west.  I don’t know about the east, by the time that rolls around I will be waiting for outdoors.

RANT 1-5

You don’t know what you’ve got till its gone.  I talked to my good friend Terry Boyd today.  As many of you now know Terry is not going to be doing the on floor announcing for Supercross in 2010.  Terry was REM’s first announcer.  He was working a morning radio show in San Diego and was racing with us at Carlsbad.  I asked him one Saturday if he would want to try his hand at announcing, he was a little hesitant, live announcing is unlike anything else.  You have to be able to talk for a long time, improvise, keep track of what is going on out on the race track, try to be entertaining and not say anything too crude.  If you come from a scripted, censored, highly produced area of entertainment it can be very difficult to jump into announcing and be good at it.  Terry was very good at it and we had a lot of fun.  He was the master of making up nicknames for every rider.  Who can forget “I  just wanna finish McGinnis” or “Sid the squid”, or “the ironman Failing”.  Anyway in some small way I helped him get his Supercross gig and he has always been grateful and plugged REM when he could.  If you listen to the so called afficianados of the internet on any of the moto chat (bullshit) forums you have about half of them celebrating.  Let me point out a few things, every word that is said at Supercross is scripted.  I’ve seen the book,  the powers that be don’t allow ad libbing.  Working the floor at any Supercross is daunting.  For one thing most stadiums have had a delay on the PA for years, so when you say something you hear it several seconds after you say it.  I was interveiwed once by Larry Huffman, the delay is so disconcerting that you literally forget where you are in the conversation if you aren’t use to it.  The noise on the floor from the bikes, the crowd, the other people on the floor, and the producers talking to you in the headsets, the sound system, etc will make you dizzy.  I’m not exagerating it will make you feel dizzy and disoriented.  To get around like Terry does from one spot to the other means you are sprinting the whole night.  It only looks like a small area from the stands, you run several miles during the night.  One of the biggest problems that no one has figured out is the bad sound systems, half the time the average person in the stand has no idea what is being said because of those systems and the bike noise.  Trying to get the riders to say something intelligent is not always easy especially with the delay, in the old days most of them had no coaching on what to say.  Today the privateers still  struggle while the super star pros are coached to say the same boring “ I want to thank” speech over and over.  Why do they do it, it’s in their contract to say it.  Supercross has become a big business.  For most of the evening sponsors drive what is said, they want to get their message across no matter how poorly that message is written.  Again that comes from the book, the announcing crew has to say it verbatim.  Old timers get all misty eyed when they talk about Larry Huffman or the announcers of old.  Guess what, Terry has announced Supercross for 23 years.  Longer than all the others combined.  He has interviewed Glover when he could still win,  Rick Johnson when he ruled, Jeff Ward when he ruled, Jeff Stanton when he ruled, Jean Michel Bayle when he ruled, Jeremy McGrath when he was the king,  Ricky Carmichael when he was the greatest of all time, and now into the Stewart era.  How many generations of racers have only known being interveiwed by Terry Boyd.  Like a lot of things in life we don’t always appreciate what we have.  Terry started out as a motocross racer first.  Not too many of the current crop can say that.  I am going to miss him at the races, I don’t like monster truck or fmx style announcing.  I’ve got a feeling that many of you will wax poetically in the future about how we miss the good old days, and Terry Boyd.

With unlimited visibility and a window seat I spotted one in my travels that looked like it might be a track outside of Chicago. Now I know if you are a motohead you are thinking “not so”. If you live in So Cal and you fly anywhere you will see dozens of motocross tracks public and private dotting the terrain. Get out of Cali and it’s not the case. I spent 4 days in Memphis and driving all over Mississippi this past week. Not once did I see a dirt bike, or even a sport quad in nearly 1000 miles of driving. On my third day I did spot one of the industrial looking quads all camo’d out with gun racks on a trailer. It was shortly after that, I saw my first street bike of the trip. But, not one dirt bike.

If you live in So Cal you know you cannot drive five minutes without spotting a dirt bike in the back of someone’s truck. And you can’t drive more than 10 minutes without spotting a race bike. Whether or not it is actually used for racing or practicing you never know, but it will have numbers, pipe, graphics, etc.. Not only that, I didn’t see trucks driving down the road with stickers on the rear windows. No FOX heads, no Alpinestars, no in memory of’s, no mini number plates, no little stick people families, not even a not of this world, nada, zip. I have no idea why it’s so different.

You read it on the moto forums all the time about how big moto is. How it should be the national pastime, how it should be live 24-7 on tv. I have a feeling that most of the country would disagree with us. In the big scheme of things motocross is pitifully small. Disagree with me if you want but the last place guy at most PGA events makes more purse money than the winner of most pro mx events. Until sponsors like Ford, Bristol-Meyers, Fed Ex, and Sony start sponsoring teams and events on a major league level we are small potatoes.

The reality is a MLB pitcher with a .500 winning percentage can get a 30 million dollar contract for three years in this economy, for working something like 35 days a year throwing a little white ball. Chad Reed is buying his own insurance policy to get a couple of million to win the Outdoor Nationals. I understand the difference, a ball player travels to many more games on a chartered jet, risks foot fungus from the locker room every day, showers with a bunch of grown men, risks cancer from chewing tobacco, risks clap from baseball groupies, and an occasional line drive to the noggin. You cannot really compare motocross to most other sports, yes there are fatalities in many other sports, yes they take risks, there are injuries.

Yes, they work hard and are very good at what they do. If you have ever played golf you know how hard it is to hit that f’ing little ball. Are they worth the millions that get dumped into that sport. The sponsors say yes. Far more people will go out and hit that little white ball this weekend than will ever race motocross. Motocross is a niche sport. Not everyone can or will ride a motorcycle, and of those only a handful will ever take up dirt biking. And even fewer will ever compete on a dirt bike, let alone turn pro. Everyone plays ball in school, baseball, basketball, football, soccer, even golf. Very few of those ever get to race moto. Those folks play ball with their kids, get them into little league, pony league, everything possible.

But, mom is always in the background to tell them motorcycles are too dangerous, and you will only ride them over her dead body. It is difficult for someone who does not have the Passion of the Moto to understand this sport. Back to my trip to the south, upon further review Mississippi does have several motocross tracks. They have dealerships that sell motocross bikes, they have websites with races advertised. Why I did not see there, what I see every day in So Cal I haven’t a clue. Maybe everyone was working and doesn’t have time to practice during the week. Maybe they don’t waste money on stickers to advertise other people’s business or agendas. I don’t know, but I found it fascinating. I found perfect riding conditions.

Plenty of land to ride on, plenty of water, everything was beautiful and green. People were friendly, minded their own business and didn’t seem to have all the hidden agendas like here in Cali. Kevin Windham lives in Southern Mississippi on the border to Louisiana, he could live anywhere but he chose there. I have no idea what it would be like to race in the middle of summer when the temp goes up with the high humidity. But, my visit it was 85 with 90% humidity and it didn’t seem that bad. Plus I got to see something I hadn’t seen in a long time, rain, heavy rain, green grass, and $2.20 gas.

Would I live there? I don’t know, could I live without the drama that is So Cal? It was nice to get some perspective though. Motocross is just something that a very few of us do on the weekend, and that seems to be the way that most of the rest of the US of A sees it.

You can always reach me at info@remsatmx.com