By Billy Rainford
OK, what did I miss the past 2 weeks? I’ve finally made it back to my home office and it feels good to be able to sit at my own desk in my own house and get back to business as usual.
As i’m sure you’re very bored of hearing about, I was out in Kamloops, BC for the past 16 days looking after my mom with advanced dementia. It’s great to spend some time with her a couple times a year, but she makes it very difficult to get any work done. If you’ve got any familiarity with someone with the disease, you know they don’t like to be ignored.
I managed to get a couple podcast interviews done without her wandering in and starting to talk or interfere in any way. Before pressing “Record” on either of them, I warned of the possibility af her getting involved in the conversation, but it didn’t happen this time.
Anyway, I’m home now and it was great to be able to get up a bit early and go to the dog park and then make breakfast for Emily before she headed off to work at the hospital. Some dark-haired girl from a Kansas musical had a pretty famous quote about this very situation…
My flight included a short layover in Vancouver. We were late getting out because there was an elderly lady who needed a lot of attention getting on the plane before anyone else could get on. She was on oxygen and coughing a very wet cough. Oh, and I’ll give you 3 guesses where she was seated…
Yes, directly behind me.
Say what you want about wearing a mask, but I’ve been doing it on flights since the 1990’s. No, not on every flight, but if it was going to race a triathlon somewhere, I and most other tri geeks I knew did the same thing because if there’s a way to help avoid the very common post-flight sickness then I’m willing to try it.
At one point, the lady behind me had her head stuck in a bag as the oxygen flowed from the canister into her nostrils. It wasn’t a great situation, to say the least. There’s a chance I would have preferred a crying baby to this! No, let’s not go that far.
Anyway, once we finally got to Toronto at 1:30 am, we all had to stay seated while the medics and a few firefighters came onboard to get her off the plane in a little rolling chair.
I doubt anyone had a connecting flight at this time of night, but it’s funny to watch as people think the delay while someone sick is taken care of is the worst thing to ever happen to them. People were exhaling hard in disgust as this poor woman with obviously worse problems than a 15-minute delay was taken care of.
Hey, while I’m ranting, you know how irritating people are that stand up in the aisle as soon as the plane lands? Well, I’d argue that the people who line up for Zone 5 while Zone 1 and 2 are lining up to board are even more annoying.
I normally travel with a backpack full of camera gear, so there’s no way I can volunteer to have my carry-on checked like they always seem to beg for before a plane is loaded. It can be pretty stressful waiting for that inevitable moment when all overhead space is taken up with jackets and backpacks full of tee shirts are stuffed in. This time, however, I just had a small laptop bag to place “under the seat in front of you,” so I was in no rush to get on the plane and it was such a nice change.
I parked the van in the Park N Fly economy lot and finally got to it at around 3:00 am and headed southwest on the 401.
I stopped in at an On Route at around 3:30 and grabbed a toasted bagel with cream cheese and a tea at the Tim Hortons near Guelph. This place was so dirty and gross that I even shot some video of the condition it was in. I’ve never done that before but this was next level gross! Do I go all Karen and send it in to “head office” whatever that is? It was “that bad,” as Jeff McConkey always used to say.
Did I eat my food? Of course I did.
Did you see that Tanner Ward, Dylan Wright, and Dario Zecca are boarding the podcast train? I think they were the last 3 people on earth to start one…
I’m not sure how it’ll go, but Ill give it a listen. We’re likely the only place on earth where the multi-time and current defending motocross champion and a top 3 contender are doing more than being guests on a podcast, so it should be interesting to see how they do.
Hang on, there were 3 other people without a podcast! 🤣
Danika White, Jessica Longname, and Lexi Pechout have also started a podcast called Bikes, Berms, and Brews and have uploaded their first episode:
Oh, and do you remember Noel Flatters from SuperFine Media who reported on the AMA Endurocross series for us? Well, he’s branched out on his own and started an Enduro website called Enduro Media Official.
Enduro news is a pretty tough sell on a Motocross website, so it’s great for that discipline of two-wheel racing to get his attention. We enjoyed his coverage this season.
Good luck with this new venture, Noel.
As I was packing my 9800 on Friday getting ready for my Saturday flight home from Kamloops, I got a message from Carl Bastedo at Motopark about Kade Walker being at Royal Inland Hospital in downtown Kamloops. Carl didn’t know that I was in Kamloops, so when I read the message I told him I was there on my last day and would love to go see Kade if that were possible. What an amazing coincidence!
He made a quick call to Kade’s mom who lives in the city to get the OK for me. Kade gave it the thumbs up and I was excited to get the chance to visit him.
I got my mom into my sister’s car and we were off the the hospital.
Mom wouldn’t put a mask on when we entered the hospital, so she wasn’t allowed to go up. Uh oh, now what? I won’t go into details, but the leaving the house part had challenges of its own… The young girl who was volunteering at the sign-in desk at the front door said she was actually a psychology major and wouldn’t mind looking after my mom (and her little long-haired Chihuahua service dog, Trip). I warned her about possible outcomes and gave her my cell number to text if and when it all went off the rails and headed up without her.
I won’t say much but it was so great to see Kade after that horrific situation that happened at the Baja 1000. As I said in the Instagram post, he’s got a long road to recovery ahead of him, but if he puts the same effort into that as he does in his racing then the sky is the limit for him.
After spending some time with Kade, I never did get a message from the girl downstairs, so that was as good as that possibly could have gone!
Let’s flood the hospital with cards and whatever else! He’s on the 7th floor in the Gagliardi Building at Royal Inland Hospital – 311 Columbia St, Kamloops BC V2C 2T1, Canada.
We’ve got Cole Thompson, Julien Benek, and Guillaume St Cyr out in California hitting all the Supercross practice tracks getting ready for A1.
Good luck, guys. We’ll have Jessica Longname there from Tree Three Media covering the western swing of the series for us, so watch for that.
It’s almost time for our annual awards, The DMXies. Your input is also required as we hand out our People’s Choice Rider of the Year award. We started this a few years ago and it’s been fun watching which rider has the biggest booster club. I’ll post about this ASAP so you can get ready to rally your troops and pick someone this year.
I just received a box from Muc-Off with everything you need to get your bike ready to put away for the season, so watch for a “box opening” video when I get a chance to dig into it. I’m sure it’ll set up the #739 Yamaha YZ250 2-stroke nicely for a few months in the garage.
Have a great weekend, everyone. Next Monday will actually be Christmas Day! Wow, when did that happen?! I’d better hang up and hit the mall! I hope that got you through a nice cup of Monday morning coffee.
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