Spray Paint

Hey everybody! Yesterday my family all went to help spray paint our Sprinter. Yes, the results are pretty awesome! "Sassinator" is written on both sides in BIG bubble letters. We also made stencils with all our names on them. My dad used those to put them all over the front and back of the van. I think it kind of looks like a bunch of bugs are on it. But it's something different for sure!

Now we're going back again to work on it some more. I hope it ends up being even more awesome. See ya! -Greg

Ho Ho Ho

Hey everybody! Happy holidays! Christmas time is here and the weather outside is cold and snowy. How exciting. The past week has been pretty eventful for me. Not all in good ways either! My school had finals in the beginning of this week, and those went pretty good for me. I feel good about getting those done. Now it's winter break, so there's no school for two weeks. Yay!

Over the weekend my dad and I started to prepare our motocross van to be repainted. We are thinking about doing some graffiti on the side of the van. I really hope that comes out looking awesome! Anyways, one night my dad and I worked kind of late and it had snowed quite a bit outside. We could barely get out of the driveway at Dan Cobb's house! That's where we are painting the van. Luckily we did get out of there. But it didn't get much better after that. You see, we were with my dad's work van... It's a wonder it even still works. Well that night it decided to stop working about four times when we were in the middle of the road. But thankfully we did get home.

On Christmas Eve my family and I went to a cool Christmas play thing at a big church. It's the one time of the year that I actually go to church. That was pretty cool. Our friends, the Lung family, was also there. We went to their house to hang out and have dessert later that night too. My family is pretty cool in the fact that we open presents on Christmas Eve. Yay! So that's what we did.

Now we're all on our way to spray paint our van. It's all primed and ready to be painted. (after some sanding... Darn.) I'll post some pictures of our van later! See ya! -Greg

November

Hey everybody! I haven't updated my blog in almost two months now, so that's not very good. I have just been a little bit too lazy. But a good thing (actually bad thing) is that you haven't missed much! Not much has been going on here in the Midwest in the beginning of winter. I have gone riding a few times, but not much. Wrestling has also started. That's going all right for me, but nothing spectacular.

I did turn 17 years old on November 11th, though! How exciting is that?! For that occasion I went bowling with a couple of my friends and got some money. Success. December has also started. So far it has been a pretty good month. Not too much is happening, though, so it has been pretty boring. Hopefully I have some more adventures soon. I guess this is how the off season of motocross is every year. Oh well.

I did have a pretty awesome Thanksgiving. After eating a ton of great food at the Favro's house, my family and their family all went to another families house to have dessert. There I also had a ton of dessert! Pumpkin pie is just too good.

Right now we are down to our last full week of school before finals, so I am mostly just reviewing in my classes. I'm actually writing this in one of my classes because I have nothing to do. So I guess this week is mostly pretty pointless. I could have gone to Georgia this week, but the timing is just a little off. Hopefully I will go in a couple weeks. That's pretty much all my plans other than wrestling for a while. Oh the joy.

Oh, I also found a cool website where you could find out anything you want. HowStuffWorks.com is awesome!

Well have a nice day everybody! If anything exciting happens, I'll be sure to post it. Bye! -Greg

Randomness

Hey worldwide readers! This time of year has really slowed down my motocross. Intense rain and cold weather just seem to make people less eager to go outside. So the last time I rode was actually last Wednesday. I have been using some of this time to ride bikes with my friend Jesse and others. Saturday I went on a sweet mountain bike ride with Chris Favro to a forest preserve nearby. Did I mention it was pouring rain at that time?! Yeah, it was. But that just made it funner, I think. Sketchier, too. Can't forget about that. Also, my dad decided to let me use his bike. His really expensive one! I think that bike was quite a bit better than my bike. The front brake could use some work, though.

With this time I have also thought about school a little more. Ok, not really. I think about it the exact same much all the time. But I'm thinking about positive thinking and stuff like that. Anything can be done with positive thinking. Optimism. I'm trying to be optimistic about everything, which I have actually been for years. I guess I'm just thinking about what I've been for a while now. Comprende? It's just an interesting subject.

This weekend my parents painted the living room and kitchen of our house! A cool shade of green now dominates our downstairs. I'm glad that's done with now.

Also, wrestling is going to start in about two weeks. I'm trying my hardest to be optimistic about that right now! But I think it'll be fine.

That's all I got for now. Hopefully some more interesting stuff happens soon, which it will! See ya! Have a great day! :D -Greg

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