Joliet Mx Helmet Cam

Hey guys!  A week ago Norman Madiberg came here from Estonia to ride some mx.  Here's a little video I made from our first day riding at Joliet.  Check it out!



Since then we've gone shredding at Kody Kamm's track, which was sick!  Riding until dark for two days was epic.  I also got a new 450, which I rode out at Kamm's.  Maybe another video will be coming next week with some 450 action from Georgia. ;)

See ya! -Greg

Joliet Mx practice

Hey everybody! Today is the day of the Indianapolis supercross. Norman Madiberg and his dad arrived in the US last night. A good way to start the trip, right?

So anyway, after finishing my homework and getting about 6 hours of sleep, I was expecting to just go straight to the supercross. But my dad came up with this idea to go ride somewhere before going to watch!

We packed up and left for Joliet Mx. I had never ridden there before. I've only been there once before, but it was just when my dad was riding around there.

We arrived and started shredding soon after. The track was super hard packed with quite a lot of jumps. There were two tabletops that you could actually double over, too! That was kind of scary.

While there I got some helmet cam footage, rode with "mad" max malatia, and just plain shredded.

Since we're going to a place with a lot of people now, we had to get a little cleaner. Nothing a little dip in the lake couldn't fix.

That's it for now. Indianapolis sx, here we come! -Greg

Keithsburg Hare Scramble hell, in a good way

Hey everybody! Today I did my first race of the spring, and it couldn't have gone better. After watching James Stewart destroy everyone at Daytona, my dad and I decided to leave right then at midnight.

We were off, and I was sleeping in the back of the van. I woke up when we were driving through some sand bumps. I knew the track was supposed to be sandy, so I thought we were close. It turns out that there isn't really an address to the track, so I actually just picked it out on the map on our gps. We went a little off course... We were almost getting stuck in some of the deepish sand. Uh oh! Luckily we got out of there and back onto some real roads. We got to the track at about 4:30 AM.

The morning was filled with observing how everything was run. Dead engine start. And then banzai for the rest of the time! Except for the checkpoint, of course.

My start was at 11:45 AM. I was all geared up, camelbak ready, gas to the brim. I was in the third start of the 11:45 race. 201-Open B. In front of me were AA and A.

Start, holeshot, go! I didn't even see anyone in my class for the whole race, except for when I was lapping people. In the second lap I fell over twice after getting past some A guys. That wasn't fun.. But I got back up, passed them, and kept chugging along.

I ended up falling a third time, as well. Up to the gas fill-up at about 50 minutes (which I had to do because I was running a stock tank), I hadn't found my camelbak tube. Oh boy. I found it later on, though. The last couple laps were pretty much hell. It's just sand bump after sand bump there. Before the last lap I came in at 1 hour 43 minutes. If I would've been just 2 minutes slower I would've finished!

So the last lap was filled with thoughts of finishing and battling the leader of the A class, who I caught up to. I passed him, felt dead, he passed me back. Going through the last section I caught up to him. We were side by side in the last turn! He ended up edging me out to the check point line. Yes, a check point line. All I wanted to do was go lay down at that point...

I couldn't lift my arms at all anymore at the end. The constant whoops had killed me. I felt almost as bad as when I had heat exhaustion last summer. These races are tough!

My 100% goggles were just awesome. Somehow I didn't even pull a tear-off. My AXO gear stayed strong, my AGV helmet kept my noggin safe from the trees, and my TZR tuned suspension worked awesome. A lot of my passes happened through the deep sand whoops sections.

My dad actually spent all last week rebuilding my bike with Tom Zont at his garage. Thanks guys! Like Tom said, it would've meant that I sucked if I didn't win with the totally rebuilt bike. Luckily I didn't suck. :D

So my experience at the Keithsburg hare scramble was really good up to the riding part! I need to work on my fitness some more.

Last week I jogged for 1.5 hours. I thought that meant that I could do this race fine. It's so different trying to push all the time in a race...

Later guys! -Greg

Fred Bud Helmet Cam

Last weekend I ventured out to an awesome sand track in Illinois for some practice.  I also wanted to do a helmet cam of it after my last attempt failed with the camera crashing to the sand following an incident with a tree branch.  The track at Fred Bud is roughhhhh.  Believe it or not, it was actually groomed a week before this ride.  Check it out!  There's a little bit of trail riding on the track as well. :D



-Greg

Fred Bud... 3 hours

Hey everybody! Today I'm just getting to posting about my riding at Fred Bud on Saturday. It may be because of two things: I'm just lazy, or I just got done recovering from it.

I went to the sand track and kind of just started riding around, checking out the track and everything. After about 10 minutes I was like, all right, let's recuperate a little before doing some Motos. But no, that was not the case.

I ended up going out right away again, not knowing what I was getting into. Somehow I ended up going on a 3 hour moto...

During the first hour I was just kind of focusing on riding, getting the lines good, flowing. After the first fill up I was still feeling good, pushing pretty good. I started feeling some numbness in my feet from the vibration of the bike.

Almost 2 hours in I ran out of gas! I thought I blew the bike up because it was making weird noises and was starting to bog like a blown up bike does. So I started pushing the bike back to the van. My dad ran over with a gas can, though, so I got back riding pretty much right away.

The last hour seemed the longest. There's a lot of thinking going on during a 3 hour ride compared to a 15 minute ride. I guess one of the benefits of all that thinking was that I started thinking about my riding technique more. I was gripping more with my knees, putting my hands in a tennis style grip to reduce blisters, and looking ahead more. I was even trying out a technique of kind of tilting my head to the inside in turns to turn sharper. I think they all helped.

At the end of the ride I was pretty fricken tired. But somehow not as tired as I thought I would be. Maybe I saved some energy by trying to just ride smoothly. Sounds like a positive to me!

As for video, there isn't really anything. In the early part of my ride the clip broke off... (dang tree branches). My dad tried taking some video, but I'm just not gonna use it. Yep, just not gonna use it yet.

See ya! It's almost time for some riding again tomorrow! -Greg

Racine GoPro Fun

Hey everybody!  Here's another video I made.  Looking back, the last video I made was way too monotonous.  So to add some flavor, I got video from a bunch of different angles!  I think this one came out well.  That's probably because I did this instead of my lab report. 



I think that's enough video from Racine... The great outdoors are just around the corner.

See ya! -Greg

What I do on Wednesday nights

Hey everybody! I now finished my first GoPro video after a half a year off! This is about what I do on Wednesdays. No, not the boring stuff, like eat lunch. I'm talking about the more exciting stuff! More exciting stuff can only mean one thing: dirtbiking. So check out this video!

I spent pretty much my whole time at home Thursday making it... So I guess from this you can deduce what I do on Thursdays as well.

This was shot entirely with a GoPro HD Hero 2 camera. I wasn't sure what video quality I should've used, so I just used the default 960p 30 fps. I think it came out awesome!

Watch in HD if you want some HDness.



See ya! -Greg