Words and photos by Steve Matthes

(Channeling my inner Andy Bowyer) ... Alright everybody, we have left the domed stadiums behind, the sun has set on the AMA Supercross Series and the warriors are taking it outside. The mud, the sun and the ruts are the enemies now and the boys will be pulling the cables longer and harder, stretching them to the limit and unleashing hell in each and every moto. The riders who win outside are truly men among boys and there is no doubt in my mind that only the strongest will survive the grueling 12 round AMA Toyota Motocross Championships and ascend into the gates of moto history with RC, Hannah, Johnson, Jeff Ward, and Clint Bowyer.

With that out of the way, grab some cocoa because this is a long one!

The start of the AMA Toyota Motocross Nationals presented by FMF got underway under cloudy skies at Glen Helen and it was a good start to the series. The track was better than in the past as there weren't too many “drop out of sky” jumps. I didn’t see or hear of any broken wheels like I did in prior years. There was a crap-load of sand brought in and, as usual, massive hills and step-ups everywhere. One thing I always thought was that Glen Helen was too dangerous and they over water it and make it stupid rough to try to prove who "the man" is (and RC earned the title almost every year which hurt the actual racing). This year it wasn’t dangerous and there wasn’t much water laid down.

So in an effort to bring you readers the best possible “Observations” column out there, I bought a camera off some guy named Bigwave Billy and I am going to add my own photos to the columns. I have ZERO knowledge about cameras and taking pictures and stuff. I asked Steve Cox, Simon Cudby, Eric Johnson and GuyB questions all weekend and they all told me different settings and things and confused me even more. Anyways, I want to thank them for all the help and also setting up my camera for the different conditions that occurred. These are my photos and I don’t think that anyone is in danger of losing their photography job to me.

And I already lost my lens cap early in the day on Sunday, so I’m off to a flying start.

This just in: James Stewart’s knee is all good. I can’t believe some people thought he was a dark horse or maybe wouldn’t be ready. (Um, wait, that was actually me.) James crushed the competition by grabbing the lead two corners in and checking out for a dominating 1-1 performance. He looked fast and in control and there’s nothing else to be said here. Just a great show put on and an ass-whipping by Stewie. I wonder if he was sore or hurting after the race or the next day, because he never looked to be really pushing it. He was doubling off the finish line and landing in the next turn on the downside of a huge whoop. He made it all look so easy ... like that time I won a trip to the local buffet.

I should’ve known that Stewie was good on Saturday when I was getting crap from his mechanic, Mike Williamson, about saying Stewie was a dark horse going in. Mike and I usually joke around non-stop but he was very serious when he told me that James was healthy and going “Warp 9” and dropped some lap times on me from when Kawasaki shared the track with Suzuki two weeks ago. I questioned that maybe Stewie’s fitness wouldn’t be there with the long layoff and Mike said that wouldn’t be a problem. And it wasn’t.

One of the favorites going in, before everybody realized that James Stewart was good to go (or BERTJSWGTG), was Honda’s Ben Townley. BT101 was actually my pick on numerous websites, podcasts and web sites because he’s always been a better MX rider than SX and he’s been down in FL just getting ready for GH for months….

Except the dude needs to be wrapped in some bubble wrap or something because he keeps getting hurt. I heard this weekend that he has a hurt shoulder and then .8 seconds after somebody told me that, the Honda guys and BT drove past me in the cart going to the Asterik medical center with his boot off. Ok, no big deal, maybe a tape job or something I thought, but then following behind him walking were the girlfriend and the mechanic looking like they were following a funeral procession. When the mechanic decides to not work on the bike and go with the rider to the medical tent, things aren’t good.

Considering all that, BT101 rode pretty well in the first moto, he was closing in on Tim Ferry for 4^th when he crashed. In the second moto, his bike failed on him early in the race. I called a bunch of Honda dudes to find out what broke on the bike and amazingly enough, for the 438^th consecutive time, the spark plug failed.

But then I did some more digging around and heard it was a transmission problem. BT went 6-32 on the day and looks to be in tough shape all season with nagging injuries.

Last week on racerxill.com, we had some predictions from the staff posted up and Mike “Foobs” Fubar said that Austin Stroupe would get second and “win three nationals” this year. I just laughed at crazy ol’Foobs and chalked it up to the heavy drinking and all the “ZZZubway zamwiches,” but who’s laughing now? Austin won his first national ever with strong 2-3 moto scores on the day. Austin gutted it out in the first race and came from 5^th to 2^nd when he passed his teammate Brett Metcalfe with just two laps to go. In the second moto, he went from 1^st to 4^th with a crash and a bobble and the overall win was going to go to his other teammate Ryan Villopoto, when Austin got the two points he needed by motoring by Metcalfe with, you guessed it, two laps to go. Great ride by Stroupy!

Another guy that was a favorite BERTJSWGTG was Mike Alessi. Mike has been recovering from a collarbone injury for a while and practicing at Glen Helen and up by his house, which is 20 minutes past Glen Helen. In short, Mike knows the soil and used his still strong starting skills (say that 5X fast) and went 2-2. He was good at sprinting in the beginning and getting away from the pack. Mike rode strong and will be a factor this summer, especially if Stewart goes down once or has a bike problem.

My buddy Tim Ferry went 4-4 but shoulda went 3-3. But if if’s and but’s were candy and nuts, I’d gorge myself on them. Anyways, he was in third in the first moto but got passed by Davi Millsaps on a downhill. In the second moto, Big Red caught Millsaps and got by him but then he said he attempted to hide a secret line from Davi and changed his up but Davi went around him on the outside like he was standing still. So that strategy didn’t work out and Red had to catch back up but went down on a table top with two laps to go and settled for 4^th again.

Another thing that’s interesting is Timmy telling me that “I can’t believe I got beat by a guy wearing a Camelback [Alessi] and he wasn’t even on a KTM.”

The world is going to hell. At least that’s probably what some people in the industry were thinking when YoT’s Jason “MySpace” Lawrence grabbed the holeshot and ran off for the first moto win. It was his first ever win in MX as well. It was a very impressive ride, he was pushing pretty good and got out of shape a few times late in the race which allowed Stroupe and Metcalfe to creep up. He settled down on the last two laps and kept it straight for the win. The second moto didn’t go as good for J-Law as he could only get a fifth but his speed was there; he just didn’t get the holeshot like the first moto. He very well could’ve went 1-1 on the day with another start.

You can watch a lot of the action from Glen Helen on the Racer X Motocross Show on Motocross.com, which launched this weekend with David Bailey joining Jason Weigandt in the booth. Bailey just knows motocross so well it’s ridiculous, and that Weege guy, well….

I’ve got a guy that I’m cheering for this year and it’s Sean Hamblin. We all know his story by now, the-old-guy-who-came-from-nowhere-to-a-factory-ride-and-got-lots-of-cash-and-then-didn’t-ride-any-good-and-people-said-he-partied-too-much-and-now-he’s-back-where-he-started thing…. You know, that old chestnut. Anyway, Sean is back from a disastrous European stint on a full privateer TUF Powersports Yamaha (yes, TUF sells Yamaha, check it out at tufracing.com) and is almost as privateer as you can get. He was pretty open and honest in an interview with me you’ll see later on in the week on racerxill.com. Sean went 8-8 on the day and was very impressive in the second moto on his #105 Yamaha when he went from 19^th to 8^th. When I texted him on Sunday night, I made sure to tell him that he rode great and to keep the Sean Hamblin of ’04 locked in a closet and just bring Sean from ’02 to the races.

His bike looked pretty good also, suspension by the KYB guru Ross Maeda and motor by Andrew Langston! Yes, Grant’s man-friend and nephew is doing motors now down in Florida…. who knew? I just thought Andrew was good at “accidentally” acquiring your tools in his toolbox.  Sean also made a joke about me dusting off my wrenches to come work for him and I don’t think he was drunk.

Ryan Villopoto looks like he may have lost a little bit from last year. He’s usually dominant at the Helen but could only muster a 5^th in the first moto after getting a not-so-good start. Yes, he won the second moto but didn’t look as fast or smooth or something…. Or maybe the kids have all picked it up. We’ll see if RV can get back to crushing his competition at Hangtown.

I felt like I finally belonged in the cool guy group when I secured a secret VIP pass to this Monster Energy three-story thingy that was all set up and looked like….well a monster I guess. It was the perfect place to watch the races from and probably have some beverages and can you imagine all the VIPs that were up there! I was a baller……until I walked by a bunch of people that were standing there and tried to get up to the top. The guard told me that there was a maximum capacity of 60 on the roof and you see all those people you walked by? They are in line waiting for people to come down. So once again, I was not cool.

Andrew Short had a bad day. He was one of the guys that could’ve won BERTJSWGTG was a fifth in the first moto and had a DNF in the second when his shifter and shift shaft broke and he was forced to pull off. He and his teammate BT are already a bunch of points down in the championship but it’s a long summer. A couple things I noticed about Andrew this weekend was that he wears a really tight jersey (probably to show off how buff he is) and that he switched from a Renthal Twinwall bar in SX to the crossbar-less Renthal Fatbar. This is done for flex reasons on the rough outdoor tracks. Townley also switched up his bars up for MX.

I bought a couple of songs from iTunes this week and it might be the best $1.98 I’ve ever spent. “Every Rose Has a Thorn” and “Something to Believe In” have made their way onto my iPod and let me tell you that Poison really hit it out of the park on these two songs.

My fellow Moose rider, New Zealand’s own Cody Cooper, held up his end of the bargain as a sleeper pick going 14-6 for 8^th OA. He was moving to the front in the first moto before losing his rear brake with a few laps to go. In the second moto, he was fourth up the hill before getting passed by a few guys. Good ride for Chicken Coops and his Suzuki City team.

There was some controversy in the decision of the AMA to change up the format for qualifying and practice. Last year at Hangtown and Mt. Morris there were so many guys in the unseeded practice that there were lots of complaints; the guys couldn’t get a fast lap in and they were justified. I think there were 70 guys in one practice last year! So for 2008, on Saturday, the AMA decided to have the seeded riders in a “free” practice for 15 minutes and then they were done. The qualifying procedure was to have the rest of the field split equally into two practices and the top 12 go to the motos. The guys who didn’t make it in the top twelve had to race a 20-minute LCQ on Sunday morning. 10 seeded+24 qualifiers+6 LCQ=40 man field. But then the top teams complained that the seeded riders needed more practice (despite almost every rider telling me last year to get rid of Saturday practice as a way to improve the nationals) and the AMA then allowed them in the two qualifying sessions as well. The teams bitched because some of them had two guys in one practice and two in the other and - heaven forbid - the riders from the first practice would have to be by themselves and maybe open a water bottle on their own after their session ended because the team members would be watching the other guys.

The AMA officials I spoke to gave me two different answers on how it’s decided who gets in which practice. One guy told me it’s done in tech inspection where each bike is staggered into different practice sessions. That led to a team manager telling me he’s going to get his guys to hold back at tech to ensure they get in the same practice. The other AMA official told me it’s totally random; two guys in a tech inspection row can be in the same practice. So I still don’t really know how they divide the guys up but I do know that one group was considerably faster than the other group and heavy hitters like Ryan Clark, Josh Summey and Kyle Lewis missed qualifying and had to ride the LCQ and people were not happy about this.

I figured I would break this into another paragraph to let you guys gather your thoughts…Ok? But the AMA’s point about this is, again, it’s really random and one time one practice might get a smooth/rough track or a downpour while the other one gets the opposite. They cannot control how/where/if there is an advantage for one practice. Another source of anger was that after letting the seeded guys have a second practice, the AMA wasn’t able to differentiate the times from seeded or not seeded, so they decided to not post the seeded times so no team/media could see the times of a James Stewart or whomever.  From what I understand, that will be fixed for this week at Hangtown.

A couple of other notes from all this would be that if there aren’t 10 seeded guys at the race, the difference will be made up in the LCQ, so there will ALWAYS only be 12 taken out of the timed practice. Also the first set of practices are “free” so they do not count and finally, I felt sorry for Ryan Holliday and Jay Mitsowitz because at riders meeting they had all this new information to pass on and the Glen Helen loudspeaker was directly above them talking about vendors row and hot dogs and nobody could hear all of this info. Sometimes the AMA cannot win for trying.

Joe Gibbs Racing has a new sponsor! It’s not Outback Steakhouse, or Tide or Crest or any other big-time NASCAR corporate sponsor. To the surprise of absolutely no one, it’s an energy drink! Spike beverages has signed on for what must be a ton of cash because they took JGR off the shroud and replaced it with a giant can of Spike. The team riders, Josh Summey and Eric Sorby (who is a test rider and just riding until regular rider Gavin Gracyk comes back) had ginormous Spike stickers on their chest and Leatt braces and helmets.

I was going to make fun of Eric Sorby because I don’t know what he was wearing under his jersey but it was some sort of under-protector that made him look massive and it moved up and down like it was a sheet of plywood. I won’t make fun of him because he crashed pretty hard in the second moto and knocked himself out for a bit. I don’t think he’ll be at Hangtown but I heard he’s OK. I’ll settle for making fun of Summey’s second moto TLD gear. Usually Troy’s stuff is pretty nice but this was a green, yellow and red thing with some lightning bolts straight out of the comic book Thor. But nobody ever said I was a style king so what do I know?

Think James Stewart’s not serious this year? One of the AMA guys told me they saw him bicycling with his trainer Aldon Baker at 6:45 a.m. the morning of the race.

I think this might be the most interesting story of the first two rounds this year: Former AMA Rookie of the Year, Juss Laanssoo, the Estonian wrecking ball, has recovered from his wrist injury that’s robbed him of the last two years and he is trying it again. He’s decided to race Glen Helen and Hangtown and if he doesn’t do well enough to get picked up by a team, he’s going to retire and go home. Well, stage one of the comeback is over and he finished with a 17-29. Not so good for the “Juice” but maybe Hangtown will bring him some better finishes. I don’t think in all my years of racing, I’ve ever seen a guy be harder on himself than Juss. He was so close many times to punching himself in the nuts while he was racing SX and struggling a few years back.

Another guy that’s been quietly working away and getting ready for the first national is Steve Boniface. After turning down a couple of rides that he thought weren’t that good in the winter, he got himself a Honda 450 and hunkered down and rode privateer style. Ol’Kermit did pretty well also, with 11-12 scores and 12^th OA. I spoke with him after the race and he said he’ll do Hangtown and then a French GP (on a Yamaha) and then come back and ride some more nationals.

The “RC” of Sweden was at the Helen. Andreas Hultman, with help from Stefan Elvin of Mxdream.com, rode a Honda and made the motos. He didn’t fare very well and I tried to watch for him but then kept forgetting every moto. Clearly, the people of Sweden have never seen "The RC” ride much, maybe they called him that because he likes RC Cola?

I was in the announcers tower watching the second set of motos and near the end of the Lites race, I was doing the math for the overall scores for announcer “Rocket” Rob Buydos when I totaled the scores wrong because I was under pressure and felt like everybody was looking at me. Rob then proceeds to announce the wrong winner and when we figure it out, he tells everyone at GH that it was me, that I’m an idiot and I was using Canadian math. Thanks Rob!

Guess who I ran into at Glen Helen? None other than your 2008 AMA Supercross champion Chad Reed! Reedy was very open and honest with me on what has been going on with his contract status for next year. Myself, Weege, Steve Bauer and the Scott Goggle guy heard some very interesting things from the champ for sure. I highly doubt it will happen but I do believe him when he told me that he’ll go retire and go back to Australia happy if things don’t work out for him over here. Could he pull a “Brad Lackey” and go away? Y’know, I just don’t know…he might.

Jeff Alessi was fast at Glen Helen also, he’s got an unusual deal with Moto XXX for the nationals. He didn’t want to wear O’Neal gear and Sidi boots because of his Alpinestars clothing deal so what he’s doing is essentially leasing a ride from the team. For the first six races, Jeff gets a bike from XXX, all the team sponsors and a mechanic (a Kiwi fellow we call “Kiwi”) and pits out of the WWR truck with some modified XXX graphics. Anyways, Jeff was up front in both motos and settled for a 10^th OA. Good ride but it could’ve been better if he’d been able to last longer, as a flu earlier in the week leveled him late in the second moto.

David Vuillemin had a miserable day at the opener, 16-18 for a 17^th overall might be the worst he’s ever done at a national where he didn’t crash or have a bike break. To me he looked a bit down on power up the hills and start straight … and remember Mike Alessi is probably 50 pounds lighter than him! His knee is bothering him as well from San Francisco and he needs it cleaned out, right-hand turns affect him the worst.  You will probably hear by the time this gets out that DV has signed with Bud Racing to do the MX1 class on a Kawasaki in 2009.

I don’t normally do the whole fantasy SX/MX thing because as I’m sure you loyal readers know, I’m wrong about things quite a bit. But once again I have been sucked into my buddy Brett Dailey’s fantasy league for the Canadian Nationals. My motoleague team name is Brawling Badgers (real scary-like to intimidate my opponents) and once again I finished near the back of the pack. Thanks for nothing, Beets and Klatt!

Team Yamaha’s Josh Hill had a rough day. He had clutch problems in the first moto but even then he was way back early on and not really going that fast. In the second moto, I’m not sure if he had a problem or not but he was not the same Josh Hill we saw during SX. He finished 15^th and I’m sure better days lay ahead for him. There’s another picture at Transworld MX of his ass hanging out of his pants again as well. The Weege covered this “long lower back problem” that Josh has in a blog last year.

Thus was the first time I ran into Josh Hansen since I wrote a critical column in Cycle News about him and just to confirm, he’s still not happy with me. He was calling me “sick” and when I asked him if it meant I was cool, he said it definitely did not. I also spoke with Mitch Payton about him and he says Hanny is calling him and he’ll take a look at Hansen after the MX season is over for a spot on the team because as Mitch said, and I agree, “The kid can ride.” Two things, for sure, if Hanny got a ride over there, he’d be on a bonus program only and he’d have to take the ring out of his lip.

I also ran into Ron “The Dogger” Lechien at Glen Helen and we had a good laugh about his appearance on the webcast, he said he was trying really hard not to swear and not to say anything bad because “I don’t wanna end up like Wardy and get ruined on the internet!” Payton told me this weekend that in 1987 they were invited to test pipes with Factory Kawasaki at Carlsbad and Jeff Ward went out and tested a bunch and gave Mitch great feedback. They put one on Ronnie’s bike and he did a lap and then went over to some cliffs and started jumping them for a while before coming back in. Team manager Roy Turner asked him about the pipe and Ronnie said that he forgot to think about it but just whatever Wardy said! Classic Lechien.

I heard that Hill broke up with his trainer Ryan Hughes over the fact that Ryno also picked up the now injured Broc Hepler as a client. Apparently, Hill gave Ryno an ultimatum that he couldn’t cheat on him when Hepler moved up to the 450 class, and it had to be Hepler or himself and Ryno chose Hepler…. Maybe Broc just treats him better and doesn’t forget birthdays and stuff?

Also in trainer news, Ryan Dungey (who I didn’t even talk about, but he looked good also) broke up with his trainer Johnny O’Mara and I saw him talking to Aldon Baker after the race so maybe there’s some courtship going on there. How long before Ryan gives it up to Aldon?

What is it with the trainers? Aldon Baker, Ryan Hughes and John Louch are some of the high-profile guys in our sport and they seem to jump around a lot to different guys. Louch has trained Langston and Hansen and now has Millsaps. Baker has had RC and Townley and now Stewart (maybe Dungey soon). Ryno lost Josh Grant, Hill and Lawrence and now has Hepler. I can’t keep up; can we get some sort of guide for these guys? At least man-friends stay the same. Joel Bueller, Raddo and Alley have been rocks for their guys.

Still on the subject of trainers, despite the weather being overcast most of the day and pretty cool temperatures, halfway through the second 450 MX1 moto there were only 27 guys still going around the track. Thirteen guys had already DNF’d or DNS’d! I think that proves that Glen Helen was still not for the weak or timid.

***INDY MOVIE SPOILER ALERT***

As any regular reader knows, I’m a big fan of Indiana Jones and I couldn’t wait for the premiere on Wednesday night at midnight at my local theater.  I even bought tickets ahead of time online and my wife (bless her heart, she went with me on a workday and she’s only seen one Indy film) and I went an hour and a half early to beat the rush! No need to as there weren't that many people there and there were way too many previews but the movie finally started and I was as giddy as a schoolgirl…for 20 minutes until Indy hides in a fridge (?!?) and survives an atomic bomb blast. After getting blown in the air 18 miles, he just gets out and dusts himself off. Or maybe it was the time a guy was straddling two jeeps and having a sword fight while the jeeps go blasting through the jungles and he’s getting hit in the nuts with plants? Or for sure when said dude gets sucked up into the vines of the jungle and is hanging there until some monkeys come along and “show” him he can swing on the vines back to the jeep battle. Listen, it’s a movie and I’m all about suspending belief that stuff like that can happen but when the filmmakers treat me like I’m a 10 year old, I start getting a little pissed. The movie got worse and worse from there and had flying saucers, natives who just showed up for no reason, aliens etc., etc. Horrible movie, I almost cried. Seriously. They ruined Indiana Jones!! Do not see this movie if you like Raiders of the Lost Ark. If you’re a kid and love special effects and monkeys and dumb things that happen for no reason, then go. However, if you fit that description, why are you reading Observations? Let me know your thoughts at matthes@racerxcanada.com.

Ok, I gotta go, I’m going to hang myself thinking of the fact that my childhood movie has turned into a Burger King promotion. I have a small segment in the Racer X Motocross Show thing this week so keep an eye out for that on Motocross.com and I’ll keep doing “Observations” for the nationals that I go to, which for now is the first four. Thanks for reading and remember, send in your feedback to matthes@racerxcanada.com