Life on Two Wheels | Editor’s Blog 4

Life on Two Wheels | Editor’s Blog 4

I’m not sure if this blog idea is gonna fly. The weeks seem to pass by so quickly that it’s honestly hard to keep track of what I’ve done. Haha! Last Saturday as I sat down to chronicle my week, I had just gone on a great road bike ride with my daughters to one of our favorite breakfast restaurants. Being able to spend so much time with my kids has been the biggest blessing throughout my career; thanks to the flexible hours I’ve always maintained (write and edit at night, so that I can test, shoot, or do what I want during the day), I’ve always been able to be really involved. I’m proud to say that I never missed any of either of my daughter’s high school soccer games, performances, etc. It’s been a blessing.

The rest of last Saturday was spent trying to be as handy around the house as possible: I washed my kids’ cars, replaced the brake pads on one of them, fixed some broken stuff around the house, and washed my mountain bike in preparation for Sunday’s scheduled outing.

Sunday

The Rokform iPhone case is amazing because it not only protects your phone from impacts but also because it has a powerful magnet on the back that you can use to mount it places, like the dashboard of your car or a random sign to take a self-timer group photo. Well, I’ve got the mounting part dialed, I just need to perfect the self-timer. Haha!

On Sunday, a group of us – myself, Dommer, Chase, ARay and my wife’s co-worker Julio – decided to drive up to Skyforest to ride Skypark at Santa’s Village. Apparently, Santa’s Village has been around for many years, as it has multiple restaurants, shops, and activities like roller skating, zip-lining, hiking, go-karts, etc. for families to enjoy. In recent years, an expansive network of mountain bike trails have been added, and it has quickly become one of my favorite riding parks to enjoy. The up trail is only about a half-mile or so long and takes about 10 minutes to climb. From the top, there are several different down trails that range from mild to jumpy to technical. 

ARay, dropping in off a fun wood drop…approximately five seconds before he ate shit.

The Skypark trails are all a lot of fun, and I especially enjoy the wood features that they built on some of them. To gather footage for his fledgling YouTube channel, blogger ARay asked me to grab some riding footage of him hitting an optional drop on a trail called Knotty or Nice. I pressed the stop button a millisecond too quickly, as he landed the drop, raced over a skinny wood bridge, then tucked his front end on the fire road below and ate shit in front of a group of spectators. 

In addition to scraping up his elbow and tearing his jersey, Alex also blew apart the Alpinestars Vector helmet I gave him a few months ago. It did its job! 

On Sunday evening, I remembered that I needed to line up a guest for the Monday morning 6D Helmets Kickstart Podcast. Because it was an off-weekend, I figured I’d try to get a guest who had something to say about either the Summer X Games or Loretta Lynn’s Amateur Nationals, both of which had happened in the week prior. Since his little brother Jett nearly won the biggest class at Loretta’s, I texted Hunter Lawrence to see if he’d be down to join us in the SML office Monday and he quickly agreed!

Monday

Hunter Lawrence showed up at the SML offices bright and early Monday morning, and he brought his pup Milo along. HLaw seems to be healing up quite well after suffering a broken collarbone a few weeks ago when the connecting rod broke in his engine and sent him over the bars. Anton and I had a great chat with Hunter on the show, and you can CLICK HERE to have a listen if you haven’t already.

This bike is the best medium sum of money I have ever spent. The Specialized Stumpjumper makes me smile.

After work, I knocked out a quick MTB ride through Chino Hills State Park. When I first started pedaling all I ever rode was the Skyline fire road climb in Corona for nearly two years. When someone told me about the riding area in Chino Hills State Park, I was blown away by the variety of trails the area offered and I promptly switched to CHSP for 90% of my rides for a little while. Getting there is kind of sketchy as you park near the start of the Santa Ana River Trail, then sneak through a golf course and illegally cross a set of train tracks to access the park. I’ve never been hassled, but I’ve always been waiting for the inevitable. Anyway, I rode until the sun started to set, then turned around. On my way back, Taka Higashino replied to a text I had sent him, asking if I could use his bike for a photoshoot. “I just got back from X Games, bitch,” he replied. “But I leave for Australia for the Crusty tour tomorrow. You can pick it up but you have to keep it until September.”

I figured that since I would be at Taka’s house picking up a bike we should do a podcast, so we knocked a really funny one out at around 10 p.m. Taka’s story is pretty amazing and much cooler than I ever imagined. Basically, he came to the United States with $6000 and no real plan. After riding a local motocross track for a few weeks, he searched Google Earth to find some freestyle ramps. The next day, he drove to the location and knocked on the front door. Mike Metzger answered, and the rest is history. CLICK HERE to listen to our broken English podcast. It’s a great listen, I promise!

Tuesday

Mike Sleeter in action.

On Tuesday, Honda invited SML to join them at Fox Raceway to take delivery of our 2020 Honda CRF450R test bike. In order to be fair to all of the media outlets, our impressions of the refined MX bike are embargoed until Monday morning. To be honest, on paper the changes made to the CRF450R don’t seem massive, but as we all know; small changes can produce big results. \ to see Honda’s Jason Abbott run through the bike with me. Mike Sleeter joined me at the Honda launch and put the bike through its paces. As usual, our opinions about the bike were very similar, and we both left the track with smiles pon our faces. A quick study, Sleeter has taken up photography in recent years and when I went out on the bike he grabbed my camera out of my truck and snapped a few pics of me.

Photo by Mike Sleeter

It should be noted that just in time for Tuesday’s test, Fasthouse sent me a pair of size 32 pants and I love them. In addition to fitting better than last week’s mistakenly ordered 30s, they are vastly improved over the original Fasthouse Speed and Style pant. Stay tuned for a Track Tested product report this week!

Later that afternoon, I met my friend Cole King at Skyline to take him on his first MTB ride there. I’ve known Cole since he was a baby, as he is the son of one of my big brother’s friends. Cole works at Troy Lee Designs and bought a Santa Cruz a few months ago and we finally linked up for a ride. Weighing all of about 130 pounds, he ripped up the hill with ease and we conversed the entire way up. On the way down, I showed him the Troy Lee and Block singletrack downhills and I’m pretty sure he’s hooked!

Wednesday

On Wednesday morning I went to meet Mark Finley at the Fox Racing headquarters in Irvine to talk about some future story ideas. I was pumped when he surprised me with a gear bag full of a new MX20 gearset. We talked a lot about the new line of goggles in the MX20 line, and you can read about them by CLICKING HERE.

After Fox I drove deeper into Orange County to visit my Ninja Turtles teammate Raffaelle Benny Tozzi at the Bell SoCal offices. Bell just launched new graphic schemes and Benny thought that one of the new ones would match a set of new O’Neal gear that I’ve taken a liking to. 

The Bell Moto 9 Flex helmet that Benny gave me is rad, as it combines high gloss areas with flat panels and even some thinly painted carbon fiber areas where you can see the weave of the material showing through. I know that this photo I snapped of it does it no justice…it looks rad, I promise! Anyway, the Moto 9 Flex is one of my favorite helmets as I have complete faith in the technology behind it. And believe me…I’ve hot my head in just about everything!

With the 2020 Kawasaki KX450 being delivered to us the following day, SML tester and my best bud Pat Foster drove down from Bishop to conduct some quick business in Temecula before meeting up with Chase and me for a quick pedal through our favorite trail system in Murrietta. I got Pat into mountain biking a couple of years ago and man, is he hooked! 

Do yourself a favor and zoom in on Pat’s face.

On the way down the hill, we decided to session one of the jumps on the trail and Chase got an exceptional photo of Pat. While the action is pretty cool, it’s his facial expression that is money. Haha!

Leaving Murietta and heading home towards Corona, I decided to see if ARay wanted to meet up for dinner since my wife had a get-together with some of her girlfriends going on at our house and we were told to fend for ourselves for dinner. As Pat and I pulled into Wood Ranch BBQ, I was stoked to see that Bradley Taft and Adam Entinknap were also joining us for dinner. Taft holds the lease on the condo where Ray lives, and the 722 stays with them when he’s in SoCal for riding or testing.

Bradley Taft, Alex Ray, Adam Entiknap and Pat Foster: delightful dinner company.

I was cracking up because I didn’t know that the 722 and Pat knew each other, but apparently, they did. Deuce started talking about PFo’s six-pack abs and pulled up photos on Instagram from the Foster family vacation to Hawaii. I was dying. A conversation about time in the gym ensued, and Pat maintained that all he does are 100 pushups each night. The guys weren’t buying it.

When the conversation turned to Pat’s racing career and his Suzuki support ride alongside Chris Wheeler and the late Tyler Evans came up, Alex wondered out loud how many women Evans must have enjoyed in his prime. “Bro. I’m sure the numbers were probably insurmountable,” exclaimed Entiknap, “But I’m sure the quality wasn’t top-notch.” I nearly shot iced tea through my nose.

Conversation from there varied from Taft’s on-hold racing career to the 722’s upcoming beef jerky flavor release party, to ARay’s Skypark crash… I’m fairly certain I got Adam to commit to recording an intro for our 6D Helmets Kickstart Podcast. I can’t wait to hear what he comes up with…

Thursday

Pat Foster on the KX450.

On Thursday, we met up with the guys from Kawasaki at Milestone MX to take delivery of the 2020 KX450. The bike swept through the TransWorld Motocross shootout last year as it was all-new and amazing. To be honest, I don’t think the bike needed any changes and I am sure it will be a contender for our shootout win coming up here in early September. Pat was equally as impressed with the ’20 bike as he was the ’19 and you can see his impression video by CLICKING HERE.

Superstitious much?

I had a blast on the green machine and even busted out the new Fox kit that Finley had given me the day before. The last time I rode a KX450 wearing Fox gear didn’t go so well and that fun fact popped into my head around lap 10 on the bike and I decided to call it a day. Haha!

Friday

On Friday, I had planned to work on test bikes in my garage all day, but I got a text late Thursday night from my buddy Mike Nittel who owns Roys Cyclery. For a guy who owns a bike shop Mike barely gets out to ride, so when he asked if I would join him Friday morning at Skypark I quickly agreed. ARay joined up and of course, the day was pure comedy. Since he destroyed the Astars helmet I gave him, he was forced to wear his 6D trail helmet, which has to be at least one size too big for him. I’ve owned two 6D trail helmets and loved them because they are super and are very comfortable. Most of all, though, I never looked as funny in mine as Alex does in his. Hey Bob, I think you need to send Ray a size small…

Poor Mike, working on the trail on his morning off.

Anyone who has been riding a mountain bike for any length of time knows that it’s a no-no to grab multiple downshifts under power, and especially when you are standing up and pedaling. Well, that’s exactly what ARay did and he promptly snapped the chain on his new Specialized Stumpjumper. Of course, he didn’t have any tools or spare parts to fix it, so poor Mike had to do the job. I’m just hoping that GoPro on his chest was running and we will get to see some bike fixing action in his next vlog…haha!

Saturday

Photo by Cynthia RIvera/Bermside Photography

They say that Saturdays are for the boys and that’s exactly how today went. A large group of friends met up at Milestone MX to spin some laps together and I had a blast riding with my old buddy Casey “Nephew” Davis for the first time in months. Riding and testing during the week is fun and all, but the bottom line is that it is still work when it you really break it down. Riding on the weekends for fun is what keeps my love for motocross burning strong, and today fanned those flames, big time.

Until next week, stay safe but have fun!

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