Great Weekend !
Well, Mark & I went to the last AMA races for the year up in New Jersey Motorsports park this past weekend and met up with all my Pro Racer buddies (list too long to write out) and met some of the pros I never spoke with before. One of the nicest low key guys I met was Dane Westby who totally rips out the Daytona Sportbike class (does awesome burnouts after race is over - probably down to the dam rims!! lol)
Hung out with the infamous Scott Russell as I do every year and sat up in the tower where they call the race from -Anyone who doesn't know Scott and goes by what they hear from him calling races, probably had same thoughts I had on him long ago. That he was like a punch drunk southern guy rambling on and not all that impressive. HOWEVER - I will say this, that guy is without any doubt one of the BEST and kindest guys ever in person and goes WAY out of his way to make you a friend of his!! Truly salt of the earth folks- I swear! He LOVES hanging with my dog Russell - which I had to break news to him that he wasnt named after Scott. The water bowl was last years gift from the Yamaha team and signed by everyone. Speaking of that - The guy who won the #1 plate last year (by total fluke and bad calls against Josh Hayes) is Josh Herrin. If you know about this Josh you know he was just fired from the Moto 2 team that picked him up last year after his AMA win. IMHO he was NOT ready at all to go overseas for this, and obviously couldn't even finish a race despite get anywhere up in top 25. He showed up this weekend but no one gave him anything worthy of a handshake more or less, despite any true fan love. LOL. Poor guy walked around by himself all weekend. Mark attended a ...... contest Sat night and Herrin bumps into him at bar- literally, and the guy has zero personality.
Having "hot pit" passes enables you to walk thru the hot pit areas where they warm up all the bikes and where the racers mount up before their race. The smell of race gas is overpowering for sure! The head of Graves Yamaha racing gave me all sorts of cool swag from their 10x10 posters, bunch of race team shirts, a HUGE cardboard cut out of Josh Hayes standing behind his R1 (Wait until you guys see what I do with this! lol) and probably about 50 cans of Monster Energy drinks since that is their sponsor!
Since I cannot ride like I used to back in my racer days, I just attend these events to stay connected. So that was our weekend and as usual the 4+ hour ride up was SMOOTH in my 2500. BTW - Jersey has the BEST prices on diesel fuel Ive ever seen too! Here in Virginia you are at $3.78 on best days. Lowest price I saw in Jersey was $3.23 which was a definite fill up to say the least!
We didnt take too many photos since the coolness of it all has worn off now. Here are a few pics for anyone who knows who I am with. I ran into Eric Wood in the tower which floored me since I hadn't seen him in over 20 years! The Penguin Racing School was the one I attended up in Loudon, NH to get my CCS race license many moons ago! Him, his brother Jeff, and father Jerry are all legends in racing and run a super school.
Thats it folks. Nothing special to report and you have probably been bored reading this to this point. LOL. Only excitement was the Superbike race Sat in luring rain and watching Roger Hayden and Josh Hayes scrap it out with each other for the win - which Josh initially won but they took it away saying he passed on a yellow flag - so he took 2nd that day, but of course swept the field on Sunday taking home the win and more importantly the #1 plate again this year - right where it belongs!!
Gunny out..................
