Monday Morning Coffee
By Billy Rainford
Welcome to another work week. Actually, if you’re in the moto news biz, Mondays are a bit of a relief! I remember when I used to work in retail…
I used to manage a running shop out in the Point Grey area of Vancouver, BC. It was retail and so expectations of a ‘normal’ work week went out the window when I took the job. I knew I’d be saying goodbye to a lot of my weekends. People would always say, “Ya, but it must be nice to have Monday and Tuesday off to get things done!” Yes and no.
You remove yourself from the usual weekly and monthly pattern of normal society. Yes, I enjoyed being able to get my grocery shopping done when stores weren’t crazy busy, but it became pretty boring. I found myself wanting to be shopping when everyone else was!
I also began to dread Friday nights. I missed that feeling of 5pm on a Friday meaning I had completed another week of ‘working for the weekend.’ Saturdays were the busiest days of the week for me – weekend be damned! Sundays were only better because we didn’t open until noon and closed at 5. The pace was equally as intense as Saturday but it was only 5 hours.
And being the manager, I had all the stress of employees needing to go for breaks when we were all helping at least 4 customers at once. Seriously, it was like that every weekend. All I could do was send them for breaks and work a little harder while people went and had a sandwich. We would literally get people walking in the door asking if they had to take a number! “Nope, just grab a seat and one of us stressed-out maniacs will help you out!” Boy, did it ever help when I finally discovered coffee!
Wait, what was your question? Oh yes, there wasn’t one…
I’ll tell you what really helps: loving your job! I can’t wait for weekends nowadays. It’s not because I have them off to just hang out and do nothing. It’s that I now look forward to heading to the races and doing this amazing job. So when Friday rolls around, I get the same feeling of relief that people with Monday-to-Friday, 9-5 jobs get and it’s great.
Unfortunately, sometimes ‘normal life’ duties take precedence over heading to a dirt bike race, as was the case this past weekend. There was an AMO Ontario Provincial race as close as they get to my hometown of London, Ontario, and I just couldn’t go to this one. Now, I don’t want you to think I simply slacked off and went to the beach to play volleyball. I had legit family stuff to attend.
Anyway, it sounds like it was a pretty great weekend of racing at Gully Mor. I wondered, as I headed the opposite direction Saturday afternoon, whether all the race vehicles going the other way on the 401 saw the Direct Motocross van and thought I was lost!
I found this Gully Mor logo on the TVRMX.com site.
Royal Distributing Fox Racing KTM Canada rider, #148 Cole Thompson, showed up to win the fastest classes. Click HERE to check out the complete list of results.
MXGP of USA at Glen Helen
I was at a family gathering Sunday and would, every once in a while, sneak off to my laptop to check in on the racing action from the MXGP of USA at Glen Helen. I was able to find a crazy Italian feed online and watched what I could, live. You had to give the American riders the advantage heading into this one but it was still a bit of a surprise to see just how well they did in the MX2 class.
Congratulations to Jessy Nelson and Shane McElrath on their dominant performances. They were 30 seconds up on 3rd place in the second moto! The first moto saw the Americans – Nelson, Chris Alldredge, McElrath – sweep the podium. Unfortunately, there were only 25 riders listed, so there was quite a bit of space on the gate.
I was happy to see how well MXGP champion, Romain Febvre (It’s a Brett Favre thing) did against some very fast AMA riders. He didn’t have to push it but still wound up taking the overall with 1-2 motos.
#35 Josh Grant showed, once again, that he goes really fast at Glen Helen and wants a ride for the 2016 season. Any takers? We shall see. His 3-1 motos gave him 2nd overall. He led the second moto while Febvre chased him down and then fell, remounted and chased him down again but ran out of time. Impressive ride by both riders.
Canadian, John John Pauk, put another notch on his ‘experience belt’ and lined up at the USGP. Cool, he’s listed right there in the results as ‘CAN.’ He finished 28th overall.
‘Friend of Canada’ (FOC) Riley Brough from Utah also lined up and scored himself an MXGP point. He took 24th overall.
Click the button to see next page in these PDF releases:
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Unadilla GNCC
Parts Canada Thor Husqvarna rider, Tyler Medaglia, traveled south (?) to Unadilla for the GNCC race. He lined up in the top class – XC1 Pro – in New Berlin, NY. Tyler summed up the event this way:
“I had fun, learned a lot and am happy with my speed.” – Bigwave photo
“I was pulling away with top 3 for first 2 (45 mins) laps and had to pull in for gas. I lost a bunch of time and lost sight of them. They brought a 350 tank instead of 450 tank by mistake. Then I was 6th for most of the race, caught and passed back into 4th but crashed in mud hole trying new line and bike wouldn’t start. I ended up losing a lot of time because the bike was upside down. Went back to 10th, had to pass 2 leaders of XC2 and 2 more guys in XC1 to get back into 8th by the end.
Felt I rode good [but it’s] frustrating losing sight of leaders because of pit stops using stock tank unscrewing it etc. But I had fun, learned a lot and am happy with my speed.”
I cruised the overall results looking for other Canadians:
33. Phillippe Chaine – X2 Pro Lites
47. Paul Petrin – Sr. A (40+)
84. Jeremy Daudelin – 4-Stroke A Lites (Pick it up, Jeremy! Stop dawdlin’! Sorry, had to.)
132. Loic Leonard – 4-Stroke A Lites
164. Theo Lepley – 200 B
194. Francis Filiatremere – 200 B
257. Wil Mason – 250 A
DNF Marc-Andre Beaudoin – 250 A
DNF Francis Ouimette – XC2 Pro Lites
Canadians in the Amateur results:
183. Aaron Wilkins – 250 C (22+)
223. Claude Leonard – Golden Masters (60+)
253. Jonathan Mainella – 250 C (17-21)
311. Andrew McGill – 250 C (22+)
339. Karl Giroux – Open C College (14-21)
343. Francis Geoffrion – Silver Masters (55+)
436. Francois Matteau – Super Vet C (35+)
529. Walter Pope – Golden Masters (60+)
530. Pierre Bariel – Masters C (50+)
537. Joel Lepley – Elite Masters (65+)
544. Jacques Trahan – Masters C (50+)
619. Natasha Lachapelle – WXC
648. Gabrielle David – Women Amateur
If you’ve never tried an Enduro race, there are usually races well into the fall, so go line up and have some ‘fun.’
Full event results can be found HERE.
Live Video Broadcasts for the Canadian National Arenacross Tour
It was announced at the end of the week that the Canadian National Arenacross Tour Presented by Royal Distributing will be broadcast with live video. Yep, it’s true, Valvoline is the title sponsor of this venture that will see me and Andy White at the helm in the ‘booth’ while Ryan Gauld from Guaranteed MX runs the show down on the floor and Chris Pomeroy from MXP takes care of the rest. All we need is Jeff Morgan from Motocross and Offroad and we’ll have all media represented! It should make for a a great series that you can watch in REAL TIME. Finally!
Rounds 1 and 2 kick off this Friday and Saturday nights at the Western Agri Plex in London, Ontario. Click this LINK and snag your tickets for some great racing action that will feature most of the top Canadian riders you’d imagine and then some! Jacob Hayes (You remember him. He almost won the Amsoil Arenacross title last season!) and Chris Blose will be there too representing the Monster Energy Thor Kawasaki team. It should be a battle! See you there.
OK, that takes up to noon. I hope you enjoyed a nice cup of coffee there. I did. Oh, we’re also less than a week away from Jeff McConkey‘s foray into the world of Enduro racing. And not just any enduro – The Corduroy Enduro! Big thanks to Husqvarna Canada for hooking us up with a TE250 and Canvas MX for the personalized gear Jeff will be sporting for this event. I hope they didn’t want it back in ‘like new’ condition…
Thanks for reading and have a great week.
Oh, and if anyone can help our old friend Rod Matechuk from RMR Suspensions get two stolen bikes back out in the Abbotsford, BC area:
If anyone can help in finding two bikes that just got stolen from my shop. YZ250f 2014 with decal kit ser# JYACG34C8EA002221 Lisa’s bike with #241 white on blue and a 2015 FC450 Husqavarna #VBKUXP430FM357964 with black on white #539. Any info leading on recovering one or both bikes will pay reward. 604 832-0220
