I’m a freelance writer (which no one seems to understand, they just associate me with Racer X because RXI is the juggernaut of moto media) and need to save money however I can because the expenses are out of my pocket. So when I looked at the national schedule and saw that Southwick and Steel City were back to back, my first call was to my friend Billy Ursic, who does something for the magazine. Something real important I think.
I thought I could fly into Pittsburgh, see the Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton, drive to the ‘Wick and then stay back at Ursic’s all week and go to Steel City, turn around and fly back out of Pittsburgh. Like the two chicks-one cup thing, it would be two races-one flight.
1Me
This is the RXI photo archive room. There are so many treasures in here, it's ridiculous.
So Southwick came and went, and on Monday morning I went into the palatial Racer X offices here in Morgantown, West Virginia. The web guy, Keith Burgie, went home to Maine so I got to use his desk. The very first person I saw on Monday morning was Weege, who just looked over and said “Hey Keith” and kept walking as if a dude who is literally twice the size of Keith was not sitting at Keith’s desk.
Of course, I had a busy day planned for Monday. Observations needed to get done, an interview with Michael Byrne needed to get transcribed, I had some Pulpmx.com work as well as my English magazine, DBR, demanding a column as it was deadline in the land of tea and crumpets.
None of the above got completed on this day.
I remember the Weege wrote a blog about how the RXI offices is where work goes to die and I never understood why. After all, it’s an office -- where else would you go to work? The problem is that everyone in the office is a race fan and there was an epic national at Southwick just two days before. So there was a ton of bench racing going on. Weege came back and talked about stuff, Ursic is just on the other side of the wall and he came over. John Perry came over from the MX Sports side and wanted to talk about John Dowd. It was just a free-for-all of talk and discussion. Also, like the new monkey in a zoo, everybody seemed to congregate around my desk.
Everyone but DC that is, he’s at Steel City cutting the grass and picking up garbage for this week’s national. He’s been as scarce as Jason Lawrence at Southwick.
And then there are the phone calls that I made and received all day on Monday. Reedy, Short, Jim Perry, Dean Wilson, Ross Maeda, Denny Stephenson, a couple of Canadian riders all either called me or I called them to talk about the race, silly season, a bike blowing up, fork bushings for my brothers '81 YZ465 and other assorted stuff.
So that’s the deal. It’s weird, I know, but it was strange for me to go in and talk to so many people during a day. Usually it’s me and the hounds (Hank, Fred, Buddy and Annie) at home working and they don’t really distract me too much besides wanting a scratch on the head every now and then.
Other highlights of the week so far: - Going to the legendary Mario’s Fishbowl one night. I had never been there but had read about the place since the newspaper days. It was smaller and stinkier than I thought it would be but had a certain sense of class about it. Or maybe that was just Brozik. When I tried to order a Corona, I about got kicked out of the place and was forced to get a giant beer in a giant… wait for it… fishbowl.
1Me
This is my view when I look straight ahead. At least I get to see The Bomber in all his glory.
- Having the now annual Racer X Fantasy Football draft last night at The Weege's was fun. Weege had never really been in one of these leagues and resisted the urge to draft everyone from the New York Football Giants. Of course my team rules, Denny Stephenson’s sucks and the best part of the night was Jason Thomas being unable to figure out how to log on to Yahoo to take part in the draft. This snafu made his team go into autodraft mode and the laughs and giggles we got watching the computer select Kyle Orton, Brandon Marshall and Braylon Edwards was awesome. Having him on AIM and going bonkers at the same time was like those Mastercard commercials. Priceless.
- After the draft we settled in to watch some classic motocross on a VCR. Y’see, The Weege has a massive box FULL of tapes and he picked a special one just for me. The 1999 Indianapolis SX where one Timothy Ferry goes out on a well worn Noleen Yamaha and podiums. I happened to be spinning the wrenches and the race happened to be on ABC. Nice memories to be sure, just another race where Ferry and I beat Jeremy McGrath.
But the tapes wouldn’t work and now Weege is in full panic mode. When he inserted the tapes in the machine, the whole machine would shut off. And that was for every single tape he tried. It’s like every single tape he had had a shelf life until September 1st, 2009. Heartbreaking for him.
We settled on a DVD of Pontiac ’84 that he had purchased a while back and the best thing about it was how many times Jeff Ward had his shirt off. It was April in Pontiac. Very cold I’m sure, yet we saw Wardy outside carrying a bag of groceries (??) down the tunnel and then, in the pits, another two shots of Wardy just standing there with no shirt on. Everything about the DVD was classic, from Ward to seeing a security guard scratching Bob Hannah’s back to the works Hondas.
After that there was a DVD viewing of the 1993 125 Daytona supercross where a young Tim Ferry finishes third. He admits that him and second place, Yogi Lusk, got tired and that’s why Doug Henry won. The night wrapped up after that and I have one more day here in Morgantown.
There is only one thing for sure that I would bet on happening and that is you don’t know what is going to happen next.
I gotta wrap this up because the ice cream truck is here. Serious.
I'm gonna go do what I do best.
