Canadian Jeffery Pillon is the 2008 GNCC 35+ C bike Champion. Sounds like he had a good year, right? Well, not quite. While training for his 2008 run last January, Jeff woke up one morning in an Arizona retirement village to find his bike stolen. Luckily, his compassionate wife sent him money to buy a brand new bike and he was able to finish his trip in style and come back to have a successful year in 2008. So what brings this funny guy from Canada down to the U.S. to pursuer a GNCC Title? Let's find out.

So, Jeff, I heard you had a rough start to 2008 with your bikes getting stolen, can you tell me a little more about that?
Well, let me start a little ways back. In 2007 I gave GNCC a try. I gave them four races. Over the winter I bought a two stroke and got it all ready to do racing. I really loved the bike. In January, we went down to Arizona with some friends. It's pretty cold in Canada so we went down there to warm up. We woke up on the fourth day and mine and another guys bike were stolen. It was pretty devastating.  I had just put a new Rekluse clutch in on the way down. The bike was ready to go.

What was the first thing you did when you found out your bikes were missing?
I was the one who found they were gone. I yelled so loud everyone in the house woke up! No one heard the bikes being stolen but they all heard me yell!

What happened when the police got there?
Well, the police came and we told them we had them all locked up. Apparently in that part of the country locks don't mean that much. We were at my wife's parent's winter house. The funny thing is when we got there, my wife's parents have a house in Sun City in a retirement committee. It's a suburb . Everyone is over 50. We kind of joked around like "who's going to steal this bike? They can't lift it down off the trailer. Yeah, I bet some old man is going to try to!"  I don't know, maybe they heard us making fun of them! The police figured the garbage men locally have been marking houses and tipping off their friends. It totally caught us off guard.  You feel a little leery at a hotel but at a retirement community? Whoever got them, they did it good. They took the locks and everything.

How did the rest of your trip go after that?
We had a great trip. We actually went that day and rented Harleys for the next few days. That helped distract us and get us through the next few days.

So did you buy a bike as soon as you got home?
I bought the same exact bike down there so I could still ride. When I called home to tell my wife, she knew how much riding and my bike meant to me and one of the first things she said was, "Go ahead and look for a new bike. I will find a way to get you the money."  And she did. A guy knows he has a good wife when she is that understanding! We met some really good guys from Arizona who hooked us up for bikes to borrow. They made sure we had everything we needed to ride that week. There are a lot of good people in the bike world. I called Rekluse and told them about my bike being stolen and they gave me a new clutch. I literally had just put that clutch in. I called and said, "I don't know if there is anything you do."
Later, when I called them and told them I switched to KTM, they told me to fill out a resume and they sponsored me. At my age, to be picking up a couple of sponsors seems pretty cool!

How long from the time your bikes were stolen until you raced again
That was the very end of January, one month away from the first race in the series.  That first race in Florida was just awesome. Travis Pastrana was there and I didn't want to bug him, but I just stopped to say hi and he hopped down to talk to me for like 15 minutes.  

How did the theft affect your year?
That was kind of a bad start to the year, but the rest of the year went awesome. I won the opener in Florida and I won Georgia on the way home. I went to every race except New York. I was pretty stoked. I had a great year. When I told the story I probably had some tears in my eyes. Bikes are kind of like our children.

Did you ever hear about your old bike again?
I actually got the bike back this year. The police called in early December and left a message that my bike was in a wrecking yard. The story gets better as it goes on.
I called the wrecking yard and I was pretty excited, but not very hopeful. Long story short I have a bill of $140 bucks for towing. Hey! I didn't park it illegally, it was stolen! They were charging me twenty bucks a day for storing it. So now I'm selling the parts off on eBay. I even did a Power Point about the trip. I show pictures of the whole trip and the picture of the bike when I got it back.

So what are you hoping for this year?
I'm going to bump up to A class this year. KTM is sponsoring me this year as well as STS Powersports, Rekluse and also Absolute Tool Technology. That's the company I work for. I really have to thank the partners of my shop. They let me take off to go to races. My big races will be the GNCCs, another series in Canada and the ISDE in Portugal. So, I'm going to skip the B class and go straight to A. I'm going pro in Canada. I'm only getting older and if I want to race pro this is the only time I can do it. In Canada, is a whole different level of pro. Most of the guys work Monday through Friday. Nonetheless it's pretty exciting. I've really bumped up quite a few classes, so I'm really training hard. I've been riding indoors in a local track to keep in shape. I'm really optimistic I can get in the top 10 of the A class. In Canada, I will break the top 5. It might be in the bottom of the top 5, but I will break it.

You said you joined racing pretty recently. How did you get your start?
I joined a local club in 2000. The Erie Ramblers Motorcycle Club. Through those guys, they introduced me to all sorts of racing. I picked up off road racing and I've been addicted to it ever since.

It sounds like you have a lot of people to thank.
I just got to really make sure I thank my partners and my wife Stephanie and daughter Kaitlyn for letting me go racing. A lot of people ask me if I'm really married, because I get to put so much time into this. The best part is that they love to come with me and make it a family trip. It's good for us as a family actually. Obviously, I thank my partners so they don't kick me out of here.  Oh, and I can't forget, being from Canada, to thank Bob and Doug MacKenzie, too.