Number plates from recent KTM championships. Pretty cool, eh?

I’m sitting in a Panera Bread in Los Angeles killing time with Wattsy before our redeye flight back to Charlotte. It’s been a pretty wild week out here in California, but I’m really ready to go home! I’ve been kind of scarce on updates throughout the week as we’ve been going pretty much WFO the whole time and there hasn’t been a lot of opportunity to spend time on the web. I’ll try and give you all a rundown on what it’s like to spend 4 days in California with Shane Watts.

When Wattsy asked if I wanted to go to California with him to shoot for his next installment of his DirtWise series, I of course jumped at the chance. I wasn’t too sure what I was getting myself into, but free trips to California don’t come around too often, and given the awful weather in NC lately any reason is a good reason to go somewhere warmer!

I met Shane at his house at 5:30am on Thursday and we headed for the airport. The next thing I knew we were in LA, picking up our Dodge Ram rental truck and heading to the KTM race headquarters to get the 2010 KTM 150XC Wattsy would be riding and eventually racing at the Hare and Hound.

My borrowed 2002 MSR gear matched the borrowed 2001 KTM 520 pretty well!

As soon as we got to the KTM shop, I saw my old buddy Donny Macan the KTM GNCC team semi driver, and he took me on a tour of the race shop as Wattsy discussed business with a few KTM execs. The shop was so, so, so freaking cool. Mechanics were hard at work on bikes for PJ Larsen (who is filling in for the injured Tommy Searle), Kurt Caselli, David Pearson, Cory Buttrick, and Russell Bobbitt. I can’t imagine that there’s another factory race shop in the USA that has their supercross and off-road guys all in the same building, right next to each other getting worked on. It’s cool to see a factory that puts off-road up on the level it deserves to be.

I won’t bore you with too many details, and will try and fill the rest in with photos. But basically we spent the next two days riding and filming on some of the coolest and unique terrain I’ve ever seen in my life. We hit up Beaumont three times — where I proceeded to tumble down a steep hill on a borrowed KTM 520 with all of my camera gear on my back, and then nearly huck myself off a 300ft cliff when my front wheel washed out on me. After that we headed to the high desert around Victorville and did some riding and filming out there as well. For an East Coast guy, it was quite the change in scenery and conditions and I definitely had an awesome time. With the recent rains they’ve had out here, the conditions were absolutely prime and I’m glad I got to ride in California in what is the best the state has to offer all year.

Trails for as far as the eye can see. Epic.

Oh, and how could I forget, Wattsy hadn’t made arrangements for a place to stay before we got out here, which totally freaked me out. I’m a total plan ahead kind of guy and Wattsy is a make plans at the exact time their needed kind of guy, but it all worked out! That basically sums up the whole trip, we’ve been flying by the seat of our pants, but it has been pretty cool. Shane had a basic idea on what we need to film for the video, and we got it done, plus some fun stuff on the side. Oh, and I didn’t have to sleep in the back of the pickup, which is awesome!

I’ll end this post here, and try and write some more about the Hare & Hound race in another post

Getting ready to roost!