It didn't stay in Vegas (Part 17 in a Series)

Friday’s Vegas banquet was as good as we could make it. After the writer’s strike, I did my best as a scab/scumbag to put together a script that could entertain even though we were honoring about 356,782,928 champions—and all in different sports. You think the amateur road race guys care that much about the Enduro guys? Trials and ice racing? So you’re working an uphill battle here and it took 10,000 words and 48 pages to get it done. Easily the longest paper I’ve ever written since the Graduate School PR Thesis I never finished. Luckily, AMA Racing Vice President Doug Neubeaur is a great guy to work with and work for. Doug used to be in charge of just the AMA amateur, but now that the AMA is purging and merging racing staff, he’s in charge of everything, and it’s the kind of positive move the AMA needs. Doug is one of the sharpest, funniest and most down-to-earth guys I know in this business. The new AMA, whatever it turns out to be, will be better at the very least because he’s in charge.

The highlight of the evening? The annual coronation of the AMA Sidecar Motocross champions. This year it’s a husband and wife team doing the winning, the husband rides and the wife hangs on as the “monkey.” In his speech, he said “I’m the only one here allowed to say I spank my monkey every weekend.” Then the wife/monkey challenged me to a race. I’m telling you, that would be epic fun right there.

Congrats out to Walker Fowler, a GNCC prodigy on both bikes and ATVs. Walker’s the next Barry Hawk in both ways. He dominated the Youth ATV ranks for the last three years, and also won his class in Youth bikes year after year, and then won the Overall Youth Bike Title this season. Right now Walker is the fastest 14-year-old in the GNCC Series on both bikes and ATVs, and he’s the first rider to ever win the Youth Rider of the Year Award from the AMA on both bikes and ATVs. Remember Walker, Ohio Ranger!

Also on Friday I got to catch up with guys I haven’t seen in awhile, like AMA Enduro Ace Mike Lafferty, who is one of the coolest dudes ever. Good riding this season, Junior.

After the banquet on Friday, it was on. We headed up to the 51^st floor of the Rio to their Voo Doo Club and I busted the Weege dance out. One of the boys in the group was sweet on one of the ladies at the banquet, and she seemed good on him, too. A few of us even put some Vegas odds on his chances. But our man Cernic decided it shall not come to pass, and blocked like Manute Bol. Game over—and unless you’re Special Greg, you don’t mess with Cernic.

Onto the EnduroCross. Too much to explain here, but the Saturday night drama involving the Knighter was a huge bonus. Before the race he told me he was actually really nervous with that $50,000 staring him in the face. For an off-roader, that’s a lot of coin. And remember, he was pretty steamed when he had to fly from EX round 1 in Denver to GNCC in North Carolina in the same weekend. This was supposed to be the pay off—if he could get it.

Well, he didn’t. KTM brought in one of the wildest personalities I’ve ever seen, Polish kid “Taddy” Blazusiak, and he had the stuff on this night. Knight was hoping the KTM peeps would just tell Taddy to lay off, but that’s probably a tough call when you really new to racing, you’re a Polish kid in front of a sold out crowd in Vegas, and you get $10,000 to win the race. He didn’t back off and Knight apparently wasn’t happy. He even ghost rode his bike over a 10-foot section of tires, but Knight told me that’s a traditional “end of the season victory celebration” and not an attempt to take out his frustration.

Anyway, it seemed like the whole industry was bracing themselves for Knight to flip the KTM rig on its side and just Hulk out on little Taddy, but I guess it never happened. Taddy was out front signing autographs and talking to reporters the whole time, and Knight didn’t appear until hours later. And even then they were in the same place and I didn’t see any friction. You know what the funniest part of the whole deal was? Chad Reed was there watching the race, and he came up to Knight and said “Hey, $50,000? I lost $250,000 in the first turn last month!”

Again, Chad is just a dynamo right now and I kind of like it.

It’s Thanksgiving so I gotta’ go. Have a good Holiday. I’m already pumped, because I rolled into small town Ohio with the girlfriend last night, and we immediately got drafted into a turkey calling competition at this local hang out. I just copied her home town grown turkey calling skills and we both made the finals, and got free t-shirts. That’s something to be thankful for!

Where Assignments Go to Die

And once again Vegas wins--a full 3-0 sweep of the season series against me. This time I had basically tapped out by Sunday morning. I felt so bad after a big night out on Saturday (starring seemingly every member of the off-road racing community) that I was sure I wouldn't be able to recover in time to even go to the AMA Racing banquet on Sunday night. But desperate times call for desperate measures. Sleep, shower, medicine and the gigantic Rio buffet couldn't fix me. So I resorted to one of the biggest mistakes in Vegas lore (easily as bad as say, betting it all on red or hitting on a 19): I started DRINKING AGAIN to feel better. And what's more, IT WORKED. Honestly I would have been miserable at that Sunday night banquet had I not tried chasing the hangover with wine, and somehow it worked. My whole goal on Sunday was to bro down with some of the MX guys who usually only see me as "the guy who does interviews with us and then dissapears." See I wasn't hosting or even working the Sunday banquet, which made it the last race-related event I've been to in which I wasn't working in like 5 years. Luckily, the wine saved me and I was able to function coherently and bro down just a tad.

I've got some great stories from Vegas and as always on this blog, the rules of what happens in Vegas stays there are going to be wiped out. But today I've had to focus on completing the program for the 2007 GNCC banquets coming up this weekend. So more tomorrow.

And if any of you know Steve Matthes, just tell him I died over the weekend or something so he doesn't try to get in touch with me any longer.

It didn't stay in Vegas

Because the blog melted down in Vegas, I now have to recap what happened out there a week or so later. Don't complain-- Vegas stories aren't supposed to be told at any time ever (have you seen the commercials) so this is still way ahead of those standards.

Anyway, Friday night's race was one of the boringest of all time, as Chad Reed showed that whether he has been working/training or couching/gaining weight (choose whichever you want to believe) he is still that man out of any supercross field that doesn't include the names Stewart or Carmichael (let's just ignore that little X Games glitch).

He got the holeshot in the main and pulled away slowly from Langston, and I'm sure that was the test everyone was looking for: could GL hang with the big dogs indoors. He was close, but Reed had him covered and basically it looked like yawner time for the rest of the weekend. Unless you count heading to the circle bar at the MGM on Friday night, when Matthes and Billy Ursic conned me into actually gambling and playing blackjack (by conned, I mean asking "hey you want to play blackjack?" and then I said yes). I promptly lost $40 and my mind because I hate spending money on anything let alone nothing, which I had just done. I was very angry at myself and promptly called the girlfriend back home (it was about 6 am back there) and apologized for spending he kids' college fund on gambling. However, I will not apologize if the spending involved cigarettes, alcohol or loose women....

Oh boy.

Anyway that was Friday. Saturday was a strange day because we had already completed all of our pre show work for Supercross Live! the day before so I actually got to roam the pits and be a real human being to the riders, instead of "the guy who walks around with the microphone all the time." It was an easy day until controversy broke out at the GNCC taking place way back in Ohio, as Chris Borich won the ATV overall but was later accused of turning off the race track as a short cut. So I was running damage control and trying to get to the bottom of the whole issue right up until showtime in Vegas--in fact, Carrie Coombs called me several times while I was on the air, so I really couldn't take the call. On the third call, I actually picked up the phone, held it to my mouth and said, "Yes folks we are on the air live here in Las Vegas for the US Open!!!" so she would stop calling.

So it was a bit more exciting way to begin the show, but then it got so much better in the main event when Reed--trying to get $250,000 by winning the holeshot and the main--drove so hard into turn one that he basically dove into it without his bike. I wonder if the holeshot counts if you slide over it with your body and not your bike? Either way he was down way before they even got to the holeshot line and all of the top dogs went down with him, and suddenly Jake Weimer was going to win the race and Josh Demuth had a shot at the overall, which was about the coolest thing ever.

By now you already know all of this, so I'll skip to the end and say that Tim Ferry tried to fight Reed to basically give Reed "the cycle," as in he had pissed off just about everyone in the building for the weekend. The only bad part is he did this on the same weekend in which Live Nation hung a boxing ring from the ceiling of the place, and it never parlayed into an actual match up there. Still, I'm all for Reed calling people out because it's exciting. Everyone is always complaining that these guys aren't talking junk or giving exciting interviews, well, Reed's bringing some heat with him everywhere he goes so love it (or hate it) just like we've been asking for.

After the race I had to write a whole bunch of stuff about the GNCC back in Ohio, which meant working while everyone else was partying. I wasn't happy about it, but at the same time you don't need a good start out here: the nights are long and there's always time for a come-from-behind effort. I did just that when I found a great line through the pack. SX PR guru Denny Hartwig got Ursic and I into this club called Tabu, and I got to do the Weege dance on these marble dance tables that are basically just a lawsuit waiting to happen. How can you have girls dancing in heels on a marble table that's only about three feet wide, which is probably soaked in liquid, and if they fall off they're crashing down onto the hard floor or the drink cart? And even if the drink cart did break the fall, imagine how pissed people would be if you crashed into their $900 bottle of vodka.

After all that dancing and such, it was back to the circle bar to see who was circling. Matthes was there with Racer X Canada's Danny Brault, who I used to know as the "guy who crashed DC's bike really bad at Steel City a few years ago" but will now be known as "the guy who rips the sleeves off of shirts." Honestly I had been looking to experience the tao of Brault, so when he asked if he could rip the sleeves off of the free US Open shirt I was wearing, I have him an obvious yes. Unfortunately he went way too far and started ripping off the whole damned shirt. It was at this point that Matthes suddenly was no longer with Danny and just happened to be in the same bar as him at the same time.

Then Danny tried pulling the same act with Kawasaki team manager Mike Fisher and Fish didn't like it, so Danny had to go around looking for a shirt to replace Fish's, and he paid some guy like $10 for a worn white undershirt (awesome deal for the guy who sold the shirt. Even in Vegas I can't imagine the undershirts the people wear are worth very much). Luckily Fisher was cool once he got the used undershirt on (surprisingly---would you want to just throw on some dude's shirt?) so everything was kosher. I started talking to Fish and KTM's Sel Narayana about training, bikes, basically solving the world's problems until an MGM security guy came over and said "sir you have to leave, your shirt is ripped." By then I had been, um, hanging in the bar for quite some time and feeling pretty talkative, so I said back to him "well if it's really a problem why have you let me stand here in this bar for the last three hours." Not surprisingly he didn't like that and said "Sir, your breasts are showing."

Again I said "well, if that's a problem, why didn't you tell me this earlier?"

He then said "Sir, if you don't leave I will call the police because you're trespassing (honestly, does that even make sense????)" but I figured at that point I had better just get out before he put me in jail. I wouldn't want the inmates staring at my exposed breasts.

So that was it--I had to leave the conversation with Fisher and Sel because my shirt was ripped. Only in Vegas...

Don't tell anyone.