Saturday, January 31, 2009

2008 in review

Is it really 2009?
How do it get here so fast? It's hard to believe that a year ago I was at California Speedway racing in my first race on my new race bike. A whole new world opened up to me with that new machine. With all the riding I did on a motorcycle that was really set up to race with all the modern components of racing I grew a lot. In some ways I did a lot better than I thought I was going to, in other ways I did worse. I guess I just kept upping my expectations. The better I'd do the better I'd want to do. I had some close calls, like nearly high siding that first race weekend, or coming together with that Buell at the AHRMA race, or even when I got hit twice on the first lap at Thunderhill, but with all those close calls I wouldn't have it any other way. I made it to 10 race weekends in 2008. I missed out on the last AFM race because of my broken ankle. Oh well. I got to meet and become friends with some cool people that I hope I will know for a long time. People like Steve B, and Robin G, even crusty old Zoran. Others like some of the sponsors that I got to know really well like Jennifer at Werkstatt, or Dave with Catalyst Reaction. Racing is an amazingly intense community that really brings people together and bonds them.

The economy for the most part in 08 was good, and I tried my hardest to avoid work, and just ride. I had worked on my ass on in 07, and saved some money up which made the work avoidance even more possible. It was tight a few times, but I always managed to scrape by and buy that new rear tire!

What does 2009 hold in store for us? Well I'm going to focus on work more this year. Racing all over California was awesome, but it left me drained. Not just money but mentally. Always trying to figure out how to pay for the next race or how to adjust my work schedule so I could make the race. It was really intense, and so much fun, but I need to give myself a break. Oh and there's the money part too. I have a really cool project that I am working on with Trisha's company @ E2k. It's called CutandPaste http://cutandpaste.com/ and should be a challenging thing to be apart of. Because I need to be able to focus on it I'm not going to do much racing until the end of the year. I would like to make the AHRMA race at Willow Springs again so we'll see about that. CutandPaste is going to take me to 7 US cities and 4 in Asia so I'm going to be traveling a lot in 09. I'll try to write about my adventures here as ofter as I can.

Below is a picture I made up to give my sponsors in 2008. I like to look at it. It reminds me of all the damn good times I had.