Canada Heights

Toronto is cool because we can actually road trip it from Morgantown--it's about the same distance as Detroit, making it about the closest Supercross race to home. Unfortunately, our road trip skills have faded a bit lately, with Olympic beer-drinker Dave Brozik working in Florida for the winter, Mike "Fubar" Farber only working 2 out of every 3 races, and photog Matt Ware getting all chicked up, as we say, and not attending as many races. Even DC hasn't run as may events, since he has baby #2 now and was probably spending some time on this whole NPG/AMA/DMG deal. And I'm engaged, which should cut back on the road partying skills. But hey, fame is fleeting in the love business. One day you're the guy getting married and the next time you're the guy getting caught cheating at the U.S. Open (it didn't stay in Vegas).

So this year's rotation included me, "Bad" Billy Ursic and Andy Bowyer. DC let us use the company Toyota Tundra (biiig brakes. ummm, beefy). Problem was, the truck is owned by Toyota and has California plates, which aroused some suspicion when we drove across the boarder on Friday. The goal is to NEVER let the Canadians know you're at a race for work, because rumor has it they will tax you on the income, or even worse, try to produce paperwork to find out why they didn't have a Canadian do the job. In may case, I guess I was taking announcing work away from Brian and Trav from the insane Canadian Nat's shows on Speed. I feared the interrigation. "Mr. Weigandt, can you prove to us that you're able to scream "holesheeeeaaaaaaatttt" better then a Canadian?"

In fact, last year Ware and I drove in, and when they saw Matt had like 10 g's in camera equipment, and three boxes of motocross magazines and posters, but wasn't going to Canada for business, they got suspicious. We actually had to get out of the car and stay in a room while they checked the car without us watching!

I was determined to play it cooler this time. Even though we had a company vehicle that Toyota owns, we were NOT coming in on business. I reached back into my archives, summoning the acting skills that powered me to the lead in my high school musical (a good ten years before there was "High School Musical").

"Who owns this vehicle, sir?"

"Actually Toyota does. Here's the registration."

"So this is a company vehicle? How did you get it?"

"Through work."

"What do you do?"

"We work for a magazine."

"A magazine? How do you have a truck then?"

"We traded it for advertising."

"And what's the name of that magazine?"

At that point I needed the acting skills to kick in. No way in hell did we work for a motorcycle mag. I quickly started thinking of a magazine title. I thought that Toyota may advertise in an outdoor magazine. All I needed to do was think of a fake title for an outdoor mag. What's out there? Outdoor Life? Field and Stream?

"Sir, the magazine is, Outdoor...Stream."

OUTDOOR STREAM!!! I said we worked for a magazine called Outdoor Stream!!!

He believed it and let us go.






"The magazine