It’s July! Middle of the summer, but getting closer to the end of racing season, unfortunately. There’s still plenty left on our schedule, though.

Firstly, I’d like to announce that my wife and I had our first baby, a boy, on June 3rd! His name is Loic (rhymes with heroic) and he’s been the most amazing thing to ever happen to me. He’s now 7 weeks old and it’s awesome to see how much he’s changing and learning. He made his first appearance at the race track this weekend and did awesome. My wife and I are looking forward to the day we get to see him on a quad. Right now we’re just enjoying how he is small and new.

7 weeks old.

Like this, Dad.

Welcome Loic!

He’s a natural.

My beautiful family.

Speaking of racing, I made it back to Quadcross Northwest’s round at Straddleline in Olympia, WA. Straddleline has a beautiful location and a great event facility. The motocross track is medium sized and changes every so often to provide different levels of challenge to racers. Nothing is too huge though, making it a great track for beginner MXers to learn the ropes and get comfortable. It made for some excellent racing!

Dan Dehut and I battling during the second moto.

On Saturday I went out for practice, but had a few jetting and suspension issues. I made some adjustments for my second practice (thanks Eric Mott for your help and loaner parts), but didn’t entirely fix the problems. I pulled myself out of the ProAm race at that point. I’m not in the points for that class, it was going to be close to a full gate, and I don’t need to be in the way by not clearing the jumps I needed to because I wasn’t confident in my bike. I felt like a wimp for not running two classes, but it did afford me some extra time to help some other people at the track. If I got the bike dialed to where I was comfortable on it, I could enter the Pro Am race on Sunday. Read More

Last weekend was the opening round of Quadcross Northwest at my “home track” of Horn Rapids in Richland, Washington. I’ve never been much of a motocross guy and practiced it more out of necessity to race WORCS. When I switched to desert racing, I pretty much said good riddance to that whole flying through the air thing. I never felt particularly good at MX, and was much happier flying through the dust and desert at high speeds! A couple years ago, at the inaugural year of Quadcross Northwest, I took it up again for most of the local season while still racing in Mexico. In part to support the new series, which was a great thing for Northwest quad racers, and also in part to support a fellow racer who I believed had a great chance at winning the series. I raced the Pro class, but on an old bike. With 20s. And desert suspension. We’ll say it was fun, but it sure wasn’t pretty!

And as you might know, I took all of 2013 off from riding and racing, got married, started the baby manufacturing process (Baby Brown is due in early June!), and spent a lot of time on my mountain bike riding with my wife. My first time back on a quad for training was February, just a week before my first race back (see that report here). The first round of Quadcross was cancelled in March due to weather conditions, and fast forward to April, here we are at the opener for the MX season. There I was, still on a desert bike (my MX bike is still getting some extra attention), still on desert suspension, not ridden much at all in the last few years, nor ridden any MX in several years. BUT, I at least had some MX tires this time around, so I wasn’t completely going in like a goon. I have to give a big thanks to Ed Teixeira at Teixeira Tech also. I called him to talk about some parts for my MX bike, and he was also able to help me turn my desert setup into something more MX friendly. Ed is super knowledgeable about all things suspension and I have loved riding with his parts since I started using them years ago. The Teixeira components work great for desert, XC, MX – you name it. Read More