Saturday, May 1, 2010

A Fresh Start


I'm turning over a new leaf. I must admit that between riding, facebooking, church activities and any number of other things that pop up on a daily basis, this blog has taken a back burner. I'm going to try VERY hard to not let that happen again. My posts will probably be shorter but hopefully more frequent.

The last week has had quite a lot of excitement. One positive thing is that a company contacted me about doing freelance work for them. All Terrain Research (ATR) is an offroad prototype and manufacturing company. They're owner, Jeremy Bratcher, contacted me and asked me to contribute content to their website. He said that he enjoyed my writing and thought that providing an inside perspective on the industry would be interesting to his readers. I'm SO thankful for the opportunity as it gives me yet another outlet for my musings and I'm actually getting paid for this work!

Last weekend my roommate and our company owner Wes Miller again talked me into racing a WORCS event with him. I've actually already written several recaps of the event, one of which was for ATR so rather than write another one, I'll post it here after Jeremy posts it to ATR's website. In short the race was spectacular. I almost took the holeshot (beating everyone to the first turn) and was able to lead for two of the first three laps. I finished the race in third place which was COMPLETELY unexpected. I had so much fun and was again so blessed by all the kind people in this industry.

Thursday: For as long as I can remember I've wanted to build a full on race quad. Money is no option, the best parts, just make it as cool looking as possible. Well we had a $15,000 limit but the quad we built was definitely one of the coolest I've seen. Dirt Wheels magazine was putting together a story on modified 450 quads and we offered to build the Polaris since they sponsor our freestyle team. While we had the quad almost a month prior to the shoot, we didn't receive all the other parts until this past Wednesday, including the motor which we didn't have until 9pm on Wednesday night.

We started on the quad at 6:30am on Thursday and Wes and I returned from dropping it off to be dyno'd at 1am Friday morning. Paint, assembly, graphics, studio photo shoot and finally the dyno. It was a long day but SO fun being a part of one of the most insane creations I've ever seen.

Friday: Yet another experience that I am going to write about in full and will post later. Needless to say the opportunity was spectacular. Dirt Wheels was testing all 6 of the race quads at the world famous Glen Helen Raceway. Simply being there was monumental for me as I've heard about this track for years but never actually been. I threw my gear bag in just in case they were in need of another rider but didn't expect much. I'll leave it at that until I put the story together but it turned out to be one amazing afternoon!

And that brings me to today. One organization I've been seeking to get involved with for some time is called Riders 4 Christ, a team of freestyle motocross riders devoted to spreading the message of Jesus Christ. I've tried multiple times to touch bases with them but was unsuccessful until recently. About a month ago I connected with Jimmie McGuire, a professional freestyle rider and one of the directors of R4C. We talked about adding a quad to their line up and have been in contact off and on since. Today I spent the afternoon at his house playing music and jamming on some worship songs that we are going to play at a worship service next week.

To cap it all off, as if you haven't read enough already, I FINALLY made some updates to my personal website so if you're not completely board checkout LocalHeroesNW.com

Thanks, check back soon and often. I mean it this time :)

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