Welcome to Quick Fill.

Things have been relatively normal here in Morgantown lately and by normal I guess I mean we’ve been stationary for a couple weeks now. Last Saturday I woke up in my own bed and frankly, I was a bit confused about the day. Anyway, I decided to run some errands and clean the car and house up but it wasn’t until I was driving to Lowes that I realized something. First off, I quickly realized there was a WVU home football game because there was gridlock traffic at 9 AM on an otherwise remote road. But the other thing I realized was how refreshing it felt to be home on a Saturday morning shopping at Lowes and being a part of the Mountaineer hustle and bustle around town. However, I don’t think I would feel that gratified if staying home on the weekend was something I did all the time. It made me appreciate the gypsie-life we all can relate to, which in turn made me appreciate the small dose of normality that I would most likely only be able to tolerate in small doses.

Race-action came pumbling through my Twitter feed early Monday morning though, and since then I’ve been glued to the ISDE website for updates on what’s happening in Germany. Being new to off-road, I didn’t really understand how Enduros worked”†let alone all the tricky components of Six Days. Luckily, Barry Hawk was here to explain to me how the special tests worked, the class breakdowns, and everything in between. Bolt-On gives an overview below, but I’ll touch on a few things I’ve noticed. First off, the whole idea of Six Days is gnarly and it truly separates the men from the boys, or the Women from the girls. I have been pretty impressed with Thad DuVall so far, especially after finishing as top American today. I mean if you think about the way it’s broken down, a guy like Thad should do well in theory. It suits every bit of his riding style, which has consisted of sprint-style tests generally between the 5/6-minute marks to about 15/16-minutes for the leaders. Where Thad has struggled in the past to put together consistent 3-hour races, he’s been able to pound out fast runs and so far it’s working. Let’s hope he doesn’t return to GNCC with his old “Bad Thad” mentality that he’s worked so hard to rid himself of this season, though.

KTM tweeted this morning that Mullins may be out due to a shoulder/collarbone injury after a big crash in Test 5, which sounded like just the news he didn’t need after the way 2012 has gone so far. But Charlie toughed it out and ended up killing it on the final test with a 7:49.07”†which was 14.25 seconds faster than second place! I’m not really sure what the outcome of Charlie’s injury is at this point, but kudos to the champ for making things happen at the end of the day.

I’m a little surprised our west coast riders aren’t putting up a better fight so far. While current WORCS champ Taylor Robert has held strong all week (currently top OA American), guys like Mike Brown and Kurt Caselli seem a little more off-pace than they should be. Russell Bobbitt finally picked it up today after slating the team’s worst time the first three days.

It’s mind-blowing to see how much faster the Europeans are on some of the shorter tests, like Antoine Meo (FRA) and Christophe Nambotin (FRA) pulled 7 seconds on third place’s Josh Strang in a less-than-six minute test. DuVall came in 13^th but a whopping 17 seconds slower than the leader. It doesn’t seem like much, but if you equate that kind of spread to a 3-hour GNCC race, that’s quite a bit of difference! But then again, that could mean we’re going to continue to see the Americans move up in the final days as fatigue and injury start to set in. Only time will tell!

This year’s Ironman GNCC will once again go pink in honor of October’s Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Things are pretty similar to how they’ve been in the past. We will have a pink podium backdrop again, which will be signed by all podium finishers and auctioned off later. This year all proceeds will go to Crawfordsville’s local FAITH Alliance organization. More information can be found here.

I’ll pass it over to Bolt-On so he can finish up with the ISDE talk.

Here’s @JaredBolton:

For those of you who may not have realized it, the reason for having two weekends off after Unadilla is that this week marks the 2012 running of the International Six Days Enduro, taking place in Saxony, Germany this time around. The ISDE is a pretty big deal as it’s pretty much the Olympics of off-road racing. It’s pretty cool because the GNCC Series is being represented pretty well over there with Charlie Mullins, Thad Duvall and Andrew Delong as the full-time GNCCer’s along with some names you may occasionally see on a GNCC course, such as Russell Bobbitt, Mike Brown and Jesse Groemm. Groemm was actually brought up at the last minute to fill in for Steward Baylor who was originally selected to the Junior Trophy Team but decided to give his wrist some more rest and stay home.

There are also some other names familiar to the GNCC Series from the other teams from across the world. Most notably would be the Australian team with Josh Strang, Glenn Kearney and Toby Price at the helm. Also on the Aussie team is Chris Hollis, who came over last year to race at Loretta’s but if you remember”†that round never happened. Jason Thomas is also racing and he’s doing so with Team Great Britain. Riding for Team Finland is 2005 and 2006 GNCC Champ, Juha Salminen and another name you’ll recognize from the early 2000’s on the Great Britain team is Paul Edmondson.

There’s no doubt that with this kind of competition all across the board, that it’s tough to go up against the best riders in the world. Of course, Team USA is holding their own. Currently, the World Trophy Team (think of it like XC1 but the team of riders scores combined together), sits 7^th place overall, and the Aussie team is currently 2^nd place overall. The French team currently leads as of day 4. The USA Junior Team (think of it as XC2) is holding down a solid third place and is only about 10 seconds out of the lead. Pretty exciting there!

There’s also the Women’s team! The USA Women’s Team consists of GNCC regulars Mandi Mastin and Rachel Gutish along with Sarah Whitmore who is no stranger to the GNCC either. Whitmore ended up breaking a knuckle on the first day but taped it up and kept going! Unfortunately, the lastest development from the Women’s team is that Sarah crashed on day 4 and appears to have a broken wrist. That’s a real bummer for her, as it looks like her first ISDE will come to a premature end. The Women’s team is putting in impressive results as well and is currently 6^th place in the Women’s Trophy class.

While a lot of you reading this are probably cheering for Team USA (and surely Australia as well), you really have to give it up to the French teams. Not only are the holding down the lead in the World Trophy class but also the Junior Trophy AND Women’s Trophy classes! That’s all 3 of the Trophy classes, which is pretty impressive. Wow, it’s only ½ way over and I’ve already talked that much about it! Like it said, the ISDE is kind of a big deal and it will definitely be interesting to see how things unfold the rest of the week.

In other racing last weekend, Chris Bach and Nick Fahringer had a pretty good race at the NCHSA event at Brushy Mountain Motorsports Park in Taylorsville, North Carolina. They took the white flag wheel-to-wheel but Bach stretched a lead out during the last lap and ended up taking the win over Fahringer. If you’re interested in checking out some action from that race, you can see it here: http://jaredbolton.com/2012/09/24/2012-brushy-mountain-nchsa-video/

Another local race that took place in North Carolina last weekend was the Hickory Airport Mid-East event. This venue actually hosted a couple of GNCC’s back in 1995 and 1996 and had been a popular local event before then, and still is today. Anyway, on the bike side Paul Whibley snagged the overall win ahead of Jesse Robinson and Matthew Nix. Takeshi Koikeda brought home a 4^th place finish while 5^th place overall went to Casey Leatherman, who you may remember snagging some solid overall morning race rides at a few GNCC’s earlier this year.

On the ATV side, Bryan Cook grabbed the overall win ahead of Eric Hoyland, Chris Barbee and Kevin Trantham. Barbee and Trantham were both racing the AA-Expert class (think of it like XC2), which makes those overall finishes even more impressive, especially when you consider Trantham was racing that class on a 4x4!

It’s hard to believe that there’s this much racing to talk about all at once when the summer seemed to drag on so long with very little info floating around. It’s cool to be back in the swing of things! Anyway, I’m going to stop here before I ramble on even more. So, until next time, Bolt-On out!

@HotRodney22:

The past week has been a roller coaster for me personally. I guess one might say it has been like that for a while. But this past week has been a rather exciting and at times enlightening one. I have always been a proud parent and this week I reached one of the proudest moments of my 5-year-old son’s life when he took his first ride on a PW50 Monday morning before school.

As worried and anxious as I was, I simply gave him the instructions: this is the throttle, this is the brake and that’s how you make it stop. Twist the throttle easy because it can go faster than you realize. Respect it son! And I got the “I know Dad! Just let me ride it.” I actually had the speech all ready to go but before I could even get anything more out, off he went. I thought he was going to have to learn the hard way, but much to my surprise, he looked like he had been riding for months already!

Last night was only his third day riding and he said to me, “Dad, something’s wrong. It’s not going fast enough.” He asked me take the throttle adjusting screw all the way out so it would run better. It made me realize that he needed more challenge than a flat open field. So after a trip over the hill and into a field with a creek and woods, my son made me even more proud by blazing his own trails in a spectacle of what I feel is future off-road greatness. He went through the trees, over the bank, into the creek bed and onto the other side with no effort and worst/best of all, no fear! And of course all in perfect form, standing and sitting when necessary. He was on the gas at the right times and on the brakes at the right time.

The question I have now for the GNCC Racin’ Nation parents is, how do I get him to get off the bike and stop riding? He gets on it as soon as he gets home from school and rides non-stop till dark. I am so proud of him but he is like a machine. “Must ride dirt bike, MUST RIDE DIRT BIKE!”Â

Now that I am finished bragging about my future champion, there is a lot going on as we wrap up the 2012 season and for many look ahead to 2013. Teams are forming and reorganizing and contingency and support programs are being announced. I spoke with Marc-Adre Kingsley from Elka Suspension HQ in Canada and he said that they were already accepting online resumes for next season. So one would have to think that most companies are on the same track and hopefully we can get a list of more to display here sometime in the coming weeks.

Speaking of Champions, Traci Cecco (Pickens) is on the verge of her 9^th GNCC Women’s Class championship. Traci has been training relentlessly and sits one race away from sealing the deal, according to sources. Basically it boils down to Angel Atwell having to win the final three rounds in order to clinch the title back. Traci doesn’t even have to be the one to beat her, and knowing the Women’s class it will be a cutthroat battle to the bitter end.

Other champion notes include newly crowned 4-time champion Chris Borich. He has not slowed down. Borich, according to records, sits only 10 race-wins away from tying the all-time win record for GNCC. Borich has said to be looking into to other opportunities for 2013. He has been seen riding a Yamaha on more than one occasion since last season and even some of the GNCC spy-eyes have reported him on a blue machine very recently.

Another twist to the story is that Honda has shown more interest in the off-road world recently both on the two and four wheel side and hopefully that interest will grow and expand into more in the future which will help elevate the competition level in our sport. And oh yeah, remember Chris has shown past success riding red before. This is something that makes us wonder if something may be brewing in that direction as well. Regardless, the silly season begins.

Speaking of Honda riders, Adam McGill is winding down his first season as a privateer with the machine and actually from the outside looking in, the program seems to be pretty good, all things considered. Adam has had some bad luck with the injury, but right now McGill is working to strengthen his program for 2013. There may be a couple of opportunities about to pop up for him as well as the drama builds even more in the ATV racing world.

While plans for next year begin to leak, one has to realize that there may be some pretty monumental changes on the horizon. I feel like I may even be going out on a limb saying this, but Walker Fowler may be the only rider that could have a familiar look from 2012 in 2013. But again, this is silly season, so who knows for sure.

Here is another silly season rumor that is beginning to gain some momentum. Bill Ballance on more than one occasion has hinted this past season about possibly remounting and coming out of retirement. Whether he does or not, and whether it’s meant for one race or a run at the championship, he has a lot of people excited.

I’ll stop here with those thoughts, which should be a lot to think about. Also a few other things to think about before we go this week:

There will be a lot going on in the local Crawfordsville area for the upcoming Ironman GNCC, but there are also some big things going on in the memory Glenn Pritchard. The GNCC family is banning together in support of Glenn’s wife Ellen and the family. There are a lot of expenses that were incurred and Amy McConnell from XCountry photos, along with several other friends, have put together a fund raiser that will continue at the ITP Powerline Park GNCC.

Come join the “Celebration of Life” to be held at GNCC Round 11 in St. Clairsville, Ohio. There will be several items for sale like stickers, tee shirts and more, with all proceeds benefiting Glenn’s family.”¨This round will also feature a special tribute to Glenn and if you were acquainted with Glenn or his family, you should certainly be there on Saturday morning for the opening ceremonies.

If you are bored and looking for something to listen to, Quad Radio has an interview with Jarrod McClure talking about the 2012 season and the big podium at Unadilla

That’ll do it for now. Till next time, God Bless Your Heart and All Your Vital Organs.