Red to blue
By TMX Archives on 7th Jan 05
Happy New Year! And thanks for taking the decision to read my column. Happy New Year! And thanks for taking the decision to read my column. If you happened to read the last issue, I mentioned that my final race with Honda would be at the Cardiff supercross and it was.Only one night of racing was the arrangement for that event and for me I wish there was more than one night. I had a seven-lap heat race and a 10-lap final. Seventeen laps in total I raced and that amounted to around 11 minutes in real time.It probably took me about half of that time to figure out how to get through the whoops properly. Anybody who is reading this who was also riding that night may agree that the whoops were particularly difficult. Once I worked out how to blitz on top of them I was very happy about this and found myself wanting to ride over them again and again. But the race was over - surprise, surprise...The race was over before I had progressed to the front. Story of my life. So I got second and yet again it reminded me that if I had made a better start I probably would have won. Maybe.Mike Alessi was there and looked fast. Very strange handlebar position though. I read about him all the time shooting his mouth off and talking real big about how much he is going to win against Bubba, RC and co but I found when I spoke to him or his dad they were both very shy and pretty quiet. One-word answers mainly to most of my small talk questions. Perhaps he did not understand my Northern Ireland 'whattaboutye' accent!Young Alessi possibly had something to say if he witnessed Jason Rennie's long distance jump that night in Cardiff. My heart was in my mouth watching Mr Rennie come down the stands, onto dusty concrete, onto the slippery supercross surface, onto a slippery ramp and up into orbit.I don't know what the distance was but it looked around 200ft! Nobody likes to come up short on a double and I know every MX rider at some point has - so imagine what Jason Rennie must have been thinking at the point of take off? Anyway, I am glad I was there that night to see him do that horrendous leap and I hope I'm never there to see him if he comes up short!After all the action was over for the night I got out of my red Alpinestars race kit for the last time and donated it to the Laurie Squirrell fund for auction. It's one of many small donations that will hopefully together amount to a substantial sum. Please support this where you can.The following weekend myself and around 10 friends (bet you didn't think I had that many friends) headed off to a quiet part of Ireland for a spot of bog hopping. Although it's physically quite hard, I reckon I would have no problem doing this day after day. I love it.We were lucky to have no rain over the course of the two days and this year we went up a level of organisation by introducing a fuel van. In the past we would have used petrol stations in villages to fill up from but this year we chose not to.We all had lights on our bikes too which was also not the norm and knowing the characters in the group I feared the possibility of ending up on top of a wet Irish mountain with a bunch of loopers looking to experience pitch black bog biking! It never happened, thankfully!Sam Wilson won the supermoto quad championship in 2004 and he never rides a solo and Justin Reid - the former British quad champion - also doesn't have much two-wheel history. Some of you may not know this but quads have a thumb operated throttle and bikes have a twist grip. Sam and Justin both decided that because they are both pure quad men - used to a thumb throttle and not so familiar to a twist grip - that for the bog hopping it would be much safer to fit a thumb throttle to their bikes! Scary! Even scarier is the fact that they were both riding fire-breathing 525 KTMs. Both guys survived quite well but I'm sure at times they had their doubts.Sutty, the good fella that he is, got on a plane and came over to visit me at home for the interview that's featured in this issue. As usual I didn't have anywhere near the time enough to do all the stuff I thought up to use in the article. Maybe next time an overnight stay should be incorporated into the trip. Sutty would get a chance to sample the 'black stuff' then.My friend Davy Mulligan has organised and ran a charity football match and auction over the last few years and again this year it was a super fund raising event. He tells me this year it raised around 5000. I did not play this time round and missed the on-field craic. I felt the risk was a bit high and decided to save my ropey knee for my world domination project that I am currently working on.I also gave the Boxing Day trial a miss for the same reason but I did go up for a walk round and looked at a few of the sections. The new four-stroke Montesa was out and I hear from the trials guys that it is pretty awesome. Sounds different, that's for sure.I guess soon it will be the fashion to have a four-stroke trials bike. Just like the good old days before I was even born. Speaking of fashion, I must go and clear out my wardrobe from red to blue. Red is so last year!Happy New Year,Hot Dog aka...