Red Bud Grass Race

Hey everybody! Last weekend I raced for the first time in a couple weeks. It was the Red Bud Grass Race! The day before, on Saturday, I rode the practice day there. The track wasn't too rough all day. Ok, by the end it was pretty rough. I rode all 3 of my bikes today: 125, 250, and 450. Let's just say they're quite a bit different! But I got similar lap times with all the bikes, so maybe they weren't so different? I guess since they're all Yamahas... You know.

After that ride day we basically didn't have much to do. Kids were walking around in costumes "trick or treating" while the sun was out. Unfortunately we didn't have any candy to give them. When we had nothing left to do, I just pulled out my math stuff and did some homework! Exciting, huh?

Then it was Grass Track time! At first I thought it would be slick with the dew on the grass, but it wasn't too bad. There were so many older people there too! I can see why. The track was basically all turns and no jumps. The track got really dusty by the end, though. And I mean plumes of dust floating through the air dusty. Luckily the watered the track before my motos! And speaking of my motos, I raced 125 B and 250 B. I had to make a decision about which two classes I should race, and I chose those. I just find the 125 easier and funner to ride than the 450. Of course. It's a 125!

My first race was for 125 B. To summarize it: Good start, descent riding, 4th place finish. Not too bad but not too good either!
After that moto, I had a 250 B race to do. It was going similarly to the 125 one I just came from, but that soon changed. You see, my dad recently put on a bigger front brake disc. On that dry, dusty track it might have not been too good of an idea for me. I ended up going into a corner and grabbing too much front brake. I must have hit some bump at the same time because my front end gave out and I fell pretty hard. When I got up I couldn't get going since there was dirt somehow stuck in my front brake lever which locked up my front wheel. Not too good. My dad ended up coming over there to fix it. But I was two laps down already, so I finished 29th in that one.

My second 125 B race was a whole lot better! I got a decent start and stayed behind the leaders. They both crashed on their own, so I was right there to take the lead! I kept the lead for the rest of the race. So I won it! With 4-1 scores I got 2nd overall.

My second 250 B race also went better. Once again, I got a decent start and I finished 5th. I just tried being smooth. So I went 29-5 for 15th overall.

It was a pretty good weekend overall. Most weekends are for me. And now it's time for school for me! Have a nice day! -Greg

Birthdays and Mazes

Good day my fellow followers! The past week has been filled with some birthdays around me. My dad turned 42 on the 5th and my sister turned 14 on the 9th! I'm actually pretty surprised at how fast these events are flying by this year. It seems like just yesterday that it was still hot outside. Now all the trees are turning funky colors and leaves are falling off. I don't like this time of year too much. Actually fall isn't bad, but it reminds me that winter is just around the corner. I have a feeling I'm gonna be freezing everyday once again!

I'm just trying to enjoy the weather while it lasts now. I went riding a few times over the week. Kody Kamm's track is really rough now! They brought in a ton of wood chips and the track is just difficult to ride on. But it's good practice for me. Wyatt came riding with me a couple days as well. Uhhh, I think the track was a little too rough for a guy that rides once every couple of weeks. But it's ok. I think he still had fun. Speaking of motocross, I made a helmet cam on Jarred Kimball's track last weekend. I was ripping around on my 125. My dad's featured in the video too! Check it out!



My sister had her birthday party at our house the night before she turned 14. She had a lot of friends come over! The music was blasting and the bon fire in our front yard was burning. I think they all had fun. Here are some pictures from that night.







Another night I went to a corn maze with my friend Wyatt. His mom said that she has been going to this big maze for 30 years on and off, but has never found all the checkpoints (or whatever they're called). So Wyatt decided that we should find all of them this year! He was talking about how we would be there for 6 hours and things like that. Ha! I think he forgot to take into account my presence. The first thing we did was a cool zip-line thing. We were maybe 40 feet up attached to a metal wire. The guy just said "You can go whenever you want." What?! That was kind of scary. But it wasn't bad. It was fun to be up there!

After our little zip-line ride, we decided to get down to business and find all 24 checkpoints. I took the lead with the map and flashlight. We knocked them out one by one, not missing a beat. I thought it was funny seeing people just randomly walking through the maze hoping to find a lucky checkpoint. We didn't need luck. Within 3 hours (including the zip-line) we found them all. It was the first time any of us found all of the ones in that maze. So that was pretty cool!

Next weekend I'm gonna go to a haunted house and hopefully not get scared. So that's it for now! You stay classy, planet Earth. -Greg

Motocross des Nations and more!

Hey everybody! It's been a while since I last wrote here. I've been spending that time writing in my school notebooks lately instead. I've done quite a bit over the past couple of weeks. And by quite a bit, I mean my family put well over 4,000 miles on vehicles. That's just in two weekends!

About two and a half weeks ago my mom and I helped my dad move a bunch of stuff from Illinois to Georgia. That was for our friend Dan. Some of the stuff was so fricken heavy! Dang, I was so glad when everything was loaded up. The drive down there and back up was pretty easy for me. I just had to sit. :P We didn't spend any time in Georgia really, except for the night, because I wanted to get home to race the Club 57 Challenge.

The Club 57 Challenge was in its second year this year and I didn't want to miss it. Last year it was a lot of fun and this year wasn't much different. There's nothing like 30 minute motos! I think I was one of the only people who did two classes. I was pretty much dead after that... In the 250 class I got 6th overall. My first moto, with a few crashes, didn't put me in a good spot for an overall finish. But the 450 class went a lot better for me. 2nd overall. Oh yeah! I actually raced the first 450 race on my 250 since my 450 wouldn't start. That wasn't bad at all, though. I think I want to do it again next year for sure!

The following weekend my family once again drove a long distance. But this time it was in a totally different direction! We went to Denver, Colorado to watch the Motocross des Nations at Thunder Valley. What an awesome event and place! The track was basically on the line where the Rockie Mountains start. It was sweet driving toward there seeing the mountains. The racing was amazing to watch from atop the Parts Unlimited stand thing. We wouldn't have had tickets to get up there if it weren't for our friend Chris Favro. Team Estonia was there as well. Some mechanical issues didn't put them in too good of a position in the end. They got 15th place. I'm thinking I want to be on that team in a few years... Yeah, that would be awesome.

Downtown Denver was amazing as well. There's a street, basically a mall, where you can walk at night. Just how it was there was pretty cool. I liked going into a souvenir store and looking around. Who comes up with all those funny T-Shirts and knick-knacks anyway?! They must be making some dough.

Lately I've been riding my 125 a lot. We got it back from Dan and Shane before we moved them, and it's just wanting to be ridden. It's easier to ride than my other bikes. But in some ways it's also harder. Just managing the power is kind of hard on the 125. By managing the power, I mean keep it from bogging or revving too much. Quite a bit different! I don't remember ever looping out while just riding before, but I managed to do it on the 125 a couple weeks ago! I was just going through some straight away thinking "I feel like doing something cool." Instead of just pulling my front wheel up a little, I lost control and crashed pretty hard. Intense! But I'm still riding that bad boy. Too much fun! :D

For an English project I made a pretty funny video about Chernobyl. I'm not saying that Chernobyl was funny, but the video I made is. Check it out here!

No animals were harmed in the making of that video! Yeah, it got quite a few people in class laughing...

Until next time... Stay classy planet Earth! -Greg

Red Weekend

Hey everybody! Last weekend was quite eventful for me. Or maybe it wasn't. It depends on how you look at it. But it was very red, indeed! Originally I was supposed to suit up in my red gear and ride on Saturday. But things changed pretty easily. My dad got tickets to The Indianapolis Red Bull Moto GP! It was a whole weekend thing, so we thought about when to leave on Friday night. It ended up being an easy decision... or hard for one of us. We decided to just leave right away at night because we had to be in Indianapolis pretty early. That meant very little sleep for my dad! I always get to enjoy getting to sleep in the van. :D

But we ran into a little problem right when we left... You see, we rented a movie from a Red Box on Thursday. We forgot to return it Friday, of course. So I had an idea to return it right away on the drive. We kind of forgot about it as we drove past a local Red Box in Wauconda. Then we had another brilliant idea to return it to one in a different city on the way.
-The first one: It was in a Jewel and the doors were locked since it was past 1 am.
-The second one: It was in a Wal-Mart and the doors were also locked.
-The third one: We visited a Walgreens, but there was no Red Box at that one!
-The fourth one: Finally, we found an outside Red Box next to a Walgreens. I made sure it returned correctly! I didn't want any more funny business with that. We had a drive to do.

I'm sure my dad saw plenty of red lights on the drive down. Lucky for me, I didn't. Sometime between 8-9 am we arrived at the Red Bull Moto GP! With our tickets, we were supposed to get infield parking. That ended up not working out very well... our van was too tall for the tunnel leading in. But this inconvenience didn't harm our days very much. We just had to walk an extra half mile to get in.

When we did get in it was like a different world in there. Tons of people and something going on all the time. It's crazy how much stuff was in there. Right away we checked into where our tickets took us. That was awesome! There was a big room with seating and tables everywhere. A bar was in the middle with free drinks all weekend. There were two lounging places, along with some motorcycle video game. Not to mention the free breakfast and lunch. And, of course, you could have as much Red Bull that you could possibly want. Yes, I can imagine it being difficult for some people to leave the place. But for my dad and I there were sights to see!

We visited the AGV/Dainese set up multiple times both days. It was one of many cool stores set up in there. We also visited Ducati Island. If you're wondering what that is, just imagine a Ducati factory spanning many years. There were so many red and white Ducati's in there! Ducati related stores were bountiful. It was definitely a heaven for Ducati lovers.

By the end of the first day my dad's forehead was pretty red! That is a product of not having hats or sunscreen. Great, huh? Somehow I didn't get sun burned. Yay! The day wasn't over yet, though, if that's what you were thinking. There was a big biker congregation to go to in downtown Indianapolis! My dad and I got out our bike and rumbled our way over. Ok, think about how I was talking about Ducati Island. Now multiply that by about a thousand. There was a sea of all kinds of different bikes including, yes, red ones! We walked a little bit to find somewhere cool to hand out. But that didn't take very long at all...

We found the Red Bull Energy Station! Free Red Bull, Geoff Aaron doing trials bike stuff, a flat track BMX guy, and three break dancers. That wasn't all, but that's mainly what I saw. All I can say is that Red Bull really takes care of their people! I don't understand how they can continue to pull off these unbelievable events.

The next day we continued our leisurely stay at the Moto GP. For some of the races we wanted to sit in the Turn 9 Stands. It didn't end up working in our favor. We needed red passes to get in. I didn't care very much. It was just a minor setback in our awesome weekend. The racing itself was pretty good, but I enjoyed the atmosphere there quite a bit more.

I'd like to thank Chris Favro for getting us those awesome tickets! We had a very rad time because of him!


Here's a picture of a bike that I liked a lot there. Can you say awesome?! I bet you couldn't before seeing this picture! Check that red out. ;)

As you can see, our weekend was exactly what the title of this blog says: Red. I used the word a total of 18 times in this text. I hope I didn't miscount...

That's it this week from your favorite blog writer (I hope), Greg Sassi. You stay classy, planet Earth.

Red Bud

Hey everybody! This half a week of school this week has been pretty sweet. Not too much homework and everything seems to flow great. That's already too much to write about school today! On Sunday I went to Red Bud with Cody VanBuskirk. It was the first time I had been there since my cut there a few months ago. The track was pretty much exactly how I remembered it: rough! Midway through my third session a blister I got that day popped. Ouch. I rode the rest of the session trying to not put much pressure on my left hand. I got a helmet cam of that practice, too. It should be at the bottom of this blog post if you want to watch it!

So things at Red Bud went pretty smoothly... except for Cody's chain snapping in our last session. Not too good. He didn't crash or go over the handlebars, so that was actually good!

Today I was shredding a little bit at Kody Kamm's house. I needed some practice. There were three of us riding together. The track was disked up, but it was all dry. That made it pretty hard to ride on... We then decided to just do a shorter track in the back which turned out pretty good.

To make up for my boring talk, here's a new video I posted! As the description says put on some music in the background, sit back, and relax. Enjoy! -Greg

School

Hola! This week was my first week of school. I don't know if you can really call it a week since it was only three days... Oh well! These days actually went pretty well for me. My classmates and I seem to get more respect everywhere now since we're juniors. I like it! I also like how we haven't gotten too much homework yet. Everybody always likes that! It's been fun hanging out with my friends at school, too. It's like we never left! Other than that I don't have too many stories from school so far.

On Friday morning before school I was thinking about going on a bike ride to exercise my legs and lungs a little. It seemed like a really good idea on Thursday night! When I tried waking up I couldn't! I did open my eyes, but I couldn't force myself to get up... Oh well. I think I needed that little extra rest anyways. I made up for it by going riding at dan's house in the afternoon. I thought a tornado or some huge storm was going to come through right before I went riding! It was pretty crazy! I think that just makes it funner when I'm riding alone.

Some interesting things are being taught to us in school. 7 ways to die, stupid people, A-drives, alternate meaning of the word sultry, and much more! Ahhhhh, school. Until next time! -Greg

Preparation

Hey everybody! It's been a couple weeks since I last wrote in. That's because I've been busy. Actually I haven't been busy. It's just that I have homework to do for school, which starts in about 4 days! I've been saving my summer homework for the end... ok, that's a lie. Lets just say I'm kind of good at procrastinating. :P At the moment I am done with 1 out of 2 things. I think the second thing should be easier, though.

My moto life has been very similar to the rest of the summer. I've just been riding a little less lately. I went to Dan's house a couple times. It was actually raining the first time when I was there and wet the second time. I think I like it a little better when it's wet. I think I got some pretty good practice in on the 450.

Dang, it's been a couple weeks but I haven't really done much. I did go to Six Flags one day with Matu and Shane. It was an interesting day to say the least. By the time we got there all the lines were huge! And we didn't really want to wait in line. We did find some rides with smaller lines though. 2 of them! Batman and the Iron Wolf. Batman went by really fast! I don't know if that ride was actually enjoyable, though. It was too rough for me. Matu and I felt dizzy afterwards. The Iron Wolf was a different story, though. We were almost to the top of the line when they stopped letting people on. What? After maybe 10 minutes I thought I had it figured out. Someone had thrown up on the ride and they had to clean it up. I guess I should expect that at an amusement park... I just didn't know it took so long to clean it up. That ride was pretty good once we got on!

After that day I decided that I don't really want to go to Six Flags anytime soon again. That's because 2 things are certain there: The lines are huge and the prices are unbelievable.

My mom also had her birthday party a few days ago! That was pretty cool for sure! I think we were preparing for it for at least 2 or 3 days. We made a lot of food for it. I think all together about 30 people came by for at least a little bit. So my mom's 35th birthday party was pretty cool! After that we had to eat the left over food for lunch and dinner for a couple days. So, yes, we made quite a bit of food.

That's it for now! I'm going to keep getting prepared for school. Bye! -Greg :)