The REM business plan has always been to run safe, fun, well organized races that anyone whether pro or first timer of any age could participate in.  We have never put making a profit from racers as one of our priorities.  Unfortunately you have to make money off of racers to pay the insurance, ambulance, flagmen, scoring personnel, gas, radios, entries, copiers, computers, awards, permits, corporate taxes, state taxes, business taxes, and federal taxes.  Sponsorship money has always been hard to come by, we haven’t asked very many times for our sponsors to give us cash.  But, we do ask them to provide good stuff for our series, and product giveaways.   There are times that we have cancelled races, we know that when it rains SoCal racers won’t show up.   I personally like racing in the mud.  Not too many SoCal racers do.  You may say you will show up, but when it’s nasty you stay home.   No matter how good the conditions may be, if it’s raining 50 racers will show up.  10 will never unload their bikes, 10 will ride practice and then want their money back.  Ten are magazine or industry guys who don’t pay gate fees, entry fees, or for their bikes.  5 will break down.  That ‘s 25 racers who will hang and race no matter what the conditions are.  In the almost 2 and a half decades we’ve been doing races it has never changed.  Whether it be Carlsbad, Glen Helen, 2 strokes, or 4 strokes, recession or boom times, 50 riders.  When we cancel a race it is not because we might lose money, safety is always our number one concern.  We cancelled a race a couple of years ago because of predicted 70 mph winds.  We could not land a helicopter if we had to lifeflight an injured racer out.  We cancelled a race because the temperature was not supposed to above 44 degrees. We were concerned for our flagging crew who standing out in the cold for 5 or 6 hours might have suffered frostbite.  At Glen Helen when it is rains a lot there is a chance that the sheriff will shut down the entrance road.  What would happen if we had to transport an injured racer and there was a river running across the road?  REM is not a club, I make the decisions, I make mistakes, but I take the blame.  We are not run by committee.  There is no group voting.  We have learned from our mistakes, and we have set the standard.  More of our ideas have been copied by others than I like to admit.  But, the one idea that has not changed and really pisses me off is that safety still takes backseat to profit for way too many people in this industry.  Count flagmen, count radios, is there a staffed ambulance with a paramedic, do they make proactive or reactive changes?  Racing is dangerous stuff.  It’s all good to like the guys running the races, but when they look at you, is all they see a dollar sign?

Is it just me or has the media completely jumped off the cliff, or is it just the internet mentality?   Or is it just the times we live in?  However,  if you look back into history hate, prejudice, stupidity, and moronic behavior have a tendency to repeat themselves in each successive generation, it is just the messenger or medium that delivers it that has changed.  

It amazes me how quickly the media or masses will turn on someone.  One day you are the people’s hero, the next vilified as the worst person since Jack the Ripper.   Need examples, Tiger Woods, Charlie Sheen, President Obama, Adam Lambert, Jason Lawrence and even Ricky Carmichael.   I was on the floor of the San Diego SX the year that RC was booed louder than any racer had ever been booed in my memory.   I was amazed, embarrassed, shocked, and befuddled.   Why does an athlete get booed for changing teams?  I understand that you have the right to voice your opinion, but I’m pretty sure that Honda had a really good year the year they picked up RC.  If you are so angry why buy the product?  I’d bet that most of the idiots that booed him now talk about how much they miss the GOAT.   I’ve known Adam Lamberts family for 25 years.  He is a really nice, polite, well spoken and intelligent person.  I knew he was gay a long time ago.  To watch how he was vilified for basically being gay was disheartening.   I always have hope that we are beyond the hate that seems to bog down our civilization, and I am increasingly disappointed.  A couple of years ago one of the mags did a blurb about there being a gay motocross racer on team Suzuki.  It was like watching a chumfest at a shark convention.   There was a lot of disturbing chat about the subject.  In the end, no one was outed, no one came out of the closet, but it did show a dark side to a lot of internet chatterers. 

We are currently being bombarded with the Reed-Stewart drama that has seemed to follow these two for several years.  The MX chat rooms are filled with who’s at fault, who’s a bad guy, who’s a good guy.  I am starting to think  that the internet has been taken over by a bunch of 300lb unemployed internet hackers, who have never owned a dirt bike much less race, live in their mothers basement, and whose only sexual encounter is with a cotton hand puppet named Luigi.  Did anyone ever think that maybe just like the hordes that follow WWF we are being manipulated?  That we are following this stupid dramatic storyline like a shut in follows a soap opera.  It is not enough to go to a race, or watch a race for the pure love of the sport.  We have to have a storyline, a plot, a bad guy, a hero in a white hat.  But, we are not alone, it seems like most popular sports have followed this business plan over the past few years.  And not just sports, life itself, the drama sells whether it be in your workplace or on your tv.  Personally I’m sick of it.  Drama is your home burning down, a loved one getting cancer, having your car stolen.  What a couple of overpaid prima donna’s do on Saturday night doesn’t make my house payment and it isn’t even that entertaining.  Just race.

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.

Did you ever ponder what a fly was thinking nanoseconds before it realized it was going to get smashed into oblivion by the swatter in your hand.   I can tell you, it’s similar to “OH CRAP!”  You know, I consider myself a somewhat intelligent person, despite the fact that I am a motocross race promoter, and that in my spare time still enjoy racing motocross.  I know not to stick my finger in a wall socket, I learned that at a very young age.  I know not to clean my air filters with gasoline next to my water heater.  I learned a long time ago not to speed thru Poway,  and to not argue with a cop.  I have thousands of hours on a quad.  In fact I have worn out 4 of them just riding around the race track on prep and race days.  On flat ground a couch is a pretty easy thing to operate.  Put that same couch on a hill, or off camber or sideways over a berm and any number of things can take place.  And as I can attest none of them are very good.  I know there are very talented quad racers out there, and I know there are plenty of recreational quad riders that love their couches, and there are a lot of people out there that use their quads for work; farmers, hunters, surveyors, people hauling their garbage cans down the hill from their mountain top estates to the road below.  Last I heard the OEM’s sell way more quads than they do race bikes.  I always watch with wonder whenever I see one of the quad pros leap their quads off the top of the hills on the National track.  I admire the bravado it takes to do that.  I can tell you from first hand experience you are all crazy.  A sandwich short of a picnic, your elevator doesn’t go to the top floor,  not the sharpest tool in the shed, you get the idea.  Despite the fact that it is the easiest and quickest way to get around  the race track I include myself in the above description.  I know better, I preach safety, at my previous job I spent more time on safety than I did on actual work.  Ask my kids, I am safety conscious to a fault, I have made them miserable on many occaisions with lectures about safety and the consequences of letting your guard down even for a moment.  I got really lucky this past Saturday.  But for about 6 inches my family would be planning a memorial service for me today.  I had one of those moments on Mt Whitney Saturday, when I realized just how close I came to extinction.  There was a rock about 50 feet from the top of Mt Whitney, while it was off line I knew that later on in the day as lines shift that it could cause a problem if someone were to hit in on the way down.  I had tried before practice to get to it, but the hill is so steep at that location that I just could not get to it.  After practice during the riders meeting I decided to try to unlodge it by running it over with the quad.  I had actually already tried it once earlier but had failed to catch it with the rear tire.  I have successfully done this dozens of times.  Catch the rock with the rear tire,  lock up the rear brakes and get it to roll down the hill, or catch it with tire and drag it far enough that we can get to it.  Let  me preface this with the fact that I have rolled a quad several times over the years.  I can remember each incident with amazing clarity.  The most interesting one was having a 350 pound quad chase me down a hill, despite knees that make orthopedic surgeons quake with fear I managed to outrace it to the bottom of hill before it could collect me.  Not too long ago I flipped this quad over on myself trying to cross the track.  I was caught underneath it for a few seconds and while there I was contemplating what a dumb ass I was.  So back to Saturday,  I started down the hill, thinking maybe this wasn’t the best way to do this. The track there is a sheet of decomposed granite polished smooth,  I rolled over the rock just like I planned.  It caught the right rear, but when I locked it up it pitched the quad to the left which is a wall, it also dropped the left front into the loose dirt kicked there by practice.  So it kicks the grizzly to the right, drops the front into the loose and begins a quick highside.  I’m thinking “shit, everyone at the riders meeting is going to see what a dumbass I am” as it throws me over the right side onto my right shoulder going downhill.   As I hit I rolled over and was just beginning the process of thinking where is the quad when I see this 350 lb behemoth rise up on it hind legs and  before I can get completely out of the way come crashing down on my left side.  Then bounce its merry way down the hill.  My first thought was “gee whiz that really smarts”.  Well something like that.  I was laying face down facing the uphill.  My headset had come off and whacked me upside my bald head.  I lay there for a second thinking how I really f’d that up, and  I was hoping that the  whole fiasco had somehow gone unnoticed by the crowd around the riders meeting.  With a great deal of discomfort I stood up, I had rolled a distance down the hill and was able to get enough footing to stand.  I reached down and put my headset on only to hear my lovely wife say “Frank……..are you alright?”  in a very slow drawn out manner that is her tone she uses  when I screw up.  I waited a few moments to reply as I was counting fingers and toes, making a mental list of my injuries, and hoping that when I turned around no one was watching.  I finally responded something like give me a minute.  I stood there for a few more seconds just thinking about how lucky I was to not be very dead.  When I turned around  I saw was what looked like everyone in the world watching me.  And then I looked at the quad.  It was a good distance from me down the hill sitting on all four wheels up against the berm at the three quarter point of the hill.  The back rack was bent down against the rear tire, and sitting there underneath the left tire laughing at me was the damned rock that started this whole sordid affair.  By this time Dirt Bike Editor Ron Lawson, 3X REM champ Dennis Boulware, and MXA’s John Minert had come to my rescue.  Needless to say I survived, why I don’t know.  I did something that even though I have done  many times was stupid.  I took a risk with my life, my families welfare, and the well being of REM.  If the quad had hit me 6 inches closer I am pretty sure it would have killed me.  Add to this the fact that I was wearing a headset and not a helmet and it screams your a really big idiot.  This was a wake up call for me.  While I am bent, battered, and bruised I will recover, but it could have been much worse.  Thanks for all the calls, emails, text messages, and well wishes, see you on the 16th. 

Not appreciating something until it’s gone. Whatever it was that is gone always seems to get better and better as it fades into the rear view mirror. We all have examples of this. Whether it be a track that is now gone, a race, a family get together, a friend, or a job. I hear all the time about how people miss Carlsbad Raceway. My reality is I miss the drive, I miss the layout, but not much else. REM ran races for over a decade at the World Famous Carlsbad Raceway. When it was open you could not get racers to actually come there. I raced many CMC events there for many years before I started REM, unless it was a big event not too many racers would show up. The same with our stint there, most of the time we had under a hundred racers, many times 50. Have a practice and it would be crowded, but no one wanted to race there. I raced CMC events where 30 racers showed up to race. For years we tried to get racers to attend our races. But, we always heard the same thing, the place is a dump, the track is worn out, the management sucks, the people that run the gate are mean, the track never changes, they water it too much, they don’t water it enough, I hate blue groove, I hate the hills, there are no jumps, it’s too fast, or my favorite it’s too old school. Someone has made those same comments give or take about every track that is now closed and gone. The same with every product, shop, race, organization, team, or racer. They all have their haters until they are gone, and then they were the greatest thing since chain lube.

A side note, remember how everyone always talks about how the Carlsbad USGP always had 30 or 40 or even 50 thousand spectators. The owner once told me the biggest crowd they ever had for any race was 15 thousand, guess what, that is the same number that show up for the National at Glen Helen today.

Some of the things I really miss, Dunlop 695’s, Barb and Alan at Knobby Shop International, Rick Johnson at his prime, 250 2 strokes as the premier supercross class, watching the pro’s at Commotion by the Ocean, Motoworld on ESPN, having an open class National Championship, good knees and being able to run, and night racing on Wednesday’s.

I’ve been doing REM for 24 Thanksgivings now. I have no idea how long I can continue. The older I get the harder it gets. Unlike most organizations the promoter of REM (me) does everything. I’ve never been comfortable sitting in the building on raceday, or walking thru the pits shooting the shit with everyone. I try to be involved with every aspect of the race day, whether it’s dragging fire hoses, fixing the gate, or loading an injured racer into the ambulance. This doesn’t make me better than anyone else it just describes who I am. We have now promoted close to 1000 races. During that time I have missed 3 races at Carlsbad, and been at every race we have ever held at Glen Helen. It looks like sometime in the very near future I will be missing some races to take care of a medical issue I’ve been dealing with for a number of years. The doctor says I may be off the bike for 6 to 8 months, that is going to drive me nuts. But, if I have to miss being at REM on a race day that is going to kill me. If this all happens I don’t know if you will miss me, but I can guarantee you I will be missing you.

The State of REM.  A lot has happened since my last adventure in word play.  First is the new web site.  While it is not perfect, and people have complained, it will get better as I learn what I am doing.  As for the complaints, our last site was over 10 years old and was looking dated, and many just don’t like change.  Hopefully we will make www.remsatmx.com one of your favorite sites to visit.  Unlike the last site we have a lot of room to grow.