Weekly Updates (Chelsea Taylor)

Another week has flown by, and we’re busier than ever getting ready for Loretta Lynn’s! It’s hard to believe that this time next week we’ll be on the Ranch. With only two weeks between the last GNCC and LLMX I’ve been trying to cram every bit of fun possible! Last weekend I went up to Pittsburgh and went skydiving. Anyone who knows me knows how high my level of competition and adventure is, so skydiving has been on my bucket list for a while now. It’s almost impossible to describe, but it was a blast and I cannot wait to go back and do it again! Throughout the week I’ve been hitting up the mountain bike trails and wakeboarding after work. This is pretty much the last free weekend of summer we have between LLMX, ATVMX and Pro Moto so I’m going to try my hand at downhill mountain biking and see how that goes!

While I’ve haven’t rode or been around racing the past few weeks I’ve noticed some of our GNCC racers haven’t slowed down since John Penton. Just this past weekend was the NE 24 Hour Challenge in New York. The Trail Pros (Billy Schlag, Zach Nolan, Craig Delong, Nick Davis) took home the big win! Also, Sarah Baldwin, Becca Sheets and Samantha Steiner topped the charts in the women’s premier division from the social media posts I’ve saw.

I’m not too familiar with this race and I couldn’t find the results online for the following, but Tiffany Chilzer competed in the Ironwoman division, and Nancy Sabater, Heidi Hawkins, Amanda Knapp, Samantha Kilgore, Marina Grubb and Valerie Horenskyt raced in the women division. 

Team Hard Chargers consisted of Ethan Greve, Hunter Hart and a few more friends as well. I apologize if I missed anyone, but looking at the results these were all the names of GNCC Racing Nation members I recognized. Speaking of Ethan Greve, I’ve been in contact with his mom in regards to the Aaron Plessinger Scholarship that he was awarded at the banquet last year. Ethan just got released from injury, so he hasn’t been able to race this season, but he’s registered at Mississippi State University and will begin school in the fall. We wish you the best of luck in your new life chapter, Ethan! 

That’s all for the updates this week, it’s that time of year where things are far and few between but I’ll be back next week with what’s been going around in the office!

Rappin’ With Rodney (Rodney Tomblin)

Editor’s note: Rodney didn’t supply a title this week, so I made one for him!

It’s Thursday again and even with the GNCC on summer break I really have not had a chance to slow down yet. Between the Wiseco ATV Motocross National Championship and catching up at home with broken water lines, falling ceilings, leaks in the roof, and a failing cooling and heating system. To say I have anything to really say this week may be a little, well, let’s actually just say a major stretch. I’m sorry but I have not thought about GNCC since I left the gates of the John Penton GNCC a little over a week ago. I really am not trying to be rude in saying that but I think everyone needs a little break at some time.

Like I mentioned, I have been quite busy and things have not really slowed down work wise until Tuesday for me. I did sneak away for a little kayaking with my son and nephew. It was a great experience and it gave me a chance to get away from all the hustle of the race season. As far as the work this past week I was fortunate enough to witness some great moments in ATVMX history at Unadilla MX as the point battle between 5-Time Champ Chad Wienen and his rival Joel Hetrick took a swing in the favor of the challenger. Hetrick won both motos and went from a one-point deficit to a five-point lead. Not unlike the battle for the GNCC bike title it is a battle for a new championship but ATVMX has only two rounds to go.

One cool thing about this title hunt is that both contenders for the title will immediately go from foe to teammate as they, along with Thomas Brown, will be competing for Team USA in the QXoN (Quad Cross of Nations) to be held in Italy this September. Known as the Quad Cross of European Nations until involvement of the United States, it is a race set up and formatted similar to the MXoN that the U.S. has been competing in for years. Like the dirt bikes it is a huge and major undertaking. It is also the first time this has been attempted for quad riders so this is really huge in the ATV racing world.

The following is some information from ATVMX Pro Referee, Harv Whipple, with details on the upcoming efforts. Check it out and follow Team USA in their first attempt at a world title.

This link is the PR that was released June 22nd announcing for the first time ever the USA will participate in the Quadcross of European Nations in Cingoli Italy. Now that the AMA federation is participating it is hopeful the event will turn into a World Championship race in years to come. Just as with the bikes for the MXON the responsibility of funding unfortunately falls on the riders, teams and all others directly involved. If we are fortunate enough to collect enough funds the remainder will be held in the Team USA ATVMX LLC until next years event currently scheduled for Denmark.

This http://www.fmiquad.it/index.php/sidecarcross-quadcross-of-european-nations-2017 is some info on the actual event in Italy.

If willing, below are a couple options available to assist Team USA, the first is my and Ken Hill’s favorite, but we are gun guys... 
This https://go.rallyup.com/usamx is a fundraiser we are doing for the team to be able to afford to go.
This https://www.gofundme.com/help-team-usa-at-race-of-nations is another. 

Also here is our Social Media accounts if you are willing to share those as well that would also be appreciated.  
https://www.facebook.com/teamUSAatvmx is our Facebook page.
https://www.instagram.com/teamusaatvmx/ is our Instagram account.

I hope you take the time to check it out and follow this historic undertaking. Especially if you are a quad rider, this is huge. The sport quad industry is struggling, as you know by going to your local shops so if this is shown support it may open some eyes to our end of the spectrum. Just a thought though.

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

Hot Fun in the Summer Time (Jared Bolton)

Those old song lyrics from Sly and the Family Stone can hold true as it looks like there’s a good number of folks enjoying their summer. I typically try to focus Quick Fill contributions on what other people have been up to, but I enjoyed last weekend so much that I wanted to share my experience, and yes, it’s still GNCC related. So bear with me as I brag about how much fun I had.

Deep down I still feel like a racer, just like many of you reading this. However, not only did my racing career never excel to begin with (I’ve never been fast, never will be) but the last several years its really fizzled with the exception of a couple decent Sportsman class finishes at local events, mainly due to a lack of participation. I’ve gotten back out there a few times over the past year or so and just enjoyed the ride but I’ve also really come to enjoy dual sport riding. 

To me, the cool thing about a dual sport is the possibilities are nearly endless. You can get a “big bike” like a KTM Adventure or Honda XR650 but there are also plenty of folks who essentially have a dirt bike with a license plate. For me personally, it started with a Suzuki DRZ250 that came out of a storage container here at the office, and I’ve now transitioned to a Sherco 300SEF-R as my personal bike to compliment the KTM 300XC-W I occasionally use at the GNCC events. Here’s what I think is really cool. If you’re an average rider such as myself, with this same bike, or something such as KTM’s 350EXC (or even the XCF-W if you can get it plated!) you can go dual sport riding on it one weekend, then take your mirrors and license plate off (if you choose to!) and go GNCC Racing on the exact same machine the following weekend. That’s another one of the things that is so unique and cool about GNCC Racing. Anyone on any reasonable machine can do it! Not only have I logged probably somewhere near 1000 dual sport miles so far this year on that machine but I’ve also raced two hare scrambles and one enduro on the exact same machine.

This brings me to last weekend’s adventure. I felt like I needed some time to enjoy riding my motorcycle so that’s exactly what I decided to do. I did some mapping, planning and came up with a cool weekend of riding. Saturday morning I left Morgantown and hit a bunch of back roads and a little bit of trail all the way to Elkins, WV. From there, I ended up at Snowshoe but kept going and made a big loop to check out some of the cool things in the area that I’ve never seen because, well, we’re always too busy! I headed over to Cass and checked out the Scenic Railroad Park, then made my way over to Green Bank.

Now, this is part of why only AT&T cellphones work at Snowshoe. Green Bank is home to the Green Bank Telescope, the world’s largest steerable radio telescope. In layman’s terms, it is used to listen to space. Due to this, it’s located within the National Radio Quiet Zone, which is a large area where transmissions are restricted to help make the telescope as functional as possible. This is also a big reason why you can occasionally see fighter jets flying in the area around Snowshoe as the limited radio transmissions make things easier for their training exercises.

From there, I hit a bunch of roads through the Monongahela National Forest before eventually working my way back to Snowshoe to spend the night. I ended up logging 233 miles on Saturday. Not bad! Sunday was going to be a big day. The route I had mapped, which contained a lot of dirt roads and roundabout ways to make things more fun originally said it would take six hours to complete. The plan was to ride up to Davis, WV and meet up with Ryan Echols plus a bunch of other folks just after lunchtime.

I ended up leaving out from Snowshoe just before 7am Sunday morning. I took some serious back “roads” down to Durbin, WV and jumped onto some cool forest roads. I rode dirt roads through the Monongahela National Forest to highway 33 for probably 35 miles! Then on the other side of 33 I rode another 15 miles of dirt roads to come up just a little south of Davis. Well, when I decided to leave so early I forgot that my map also included a good chunk of what we had planned on riding once I met up with the group, so I actually rolled into Davis before 11am… OH, and the group left later than planned!

So I ended up cruising around Davis. I rode down Camp 70 Road. The Blackwater 100 course ran on both sides of Camp 70 Road but these days it’s a wildlife refuge and very nice mountain bike trails. I got a couple of funky looks from people who may have thought I intended on poaching their bicycle trails on a dual sport, but I just wanted to ride to the end of the road and come back. I also snagged a pic of my bike sitting under the power line you see in the old Blackwater videos where one of the popular river crossings was.

I ended up riding over to Blackwater Falls before meeting up with the dual sport group which consisted of so many people that I don’t want to try to list them all because I don’t want to leave anyone out! We did a bit of riding, checked out some scenic views, had a good meal and started heading back. This is point where the group got a hair split up but essentially it would be Ryan, his former pit man John “Meltdown” Melton, and myself. We ended up hitting some cool back roads and trail, including a little bit of the old Hardrock GNCC course, on the way back to John’s house. 

Somewhere in the middle of that, I realized my headlight seemed really dim. It was just before 8:30 when we got to John’s house and figured out that only the small bulb in my headlight was burning. The main bulb was out. Now, it’s just under 30 minutes from John’s house back to mine so I risked it and pinned it home. I made it to my house right before 9pm and before it was too dark to see. Funny part was, I’d never actually paid attention to my headlight before because I’ve never rode near dark, therefore I convinced myself that the big bulb had never worked. So I went as far as asking the Sherco US Importer, Clay Stuckey, if there was something I was missing in regards to that light. Turns out, the bulb was blown. DUH! 

Sunday ended up being somewhere just over 250 miles, which put me just a little shy of a 500 mile weekend total. That’s a lot of riding and when you consider that I only rode in the eastern half of the state of West Virginia, then that’s pretty darn good! If you actually read through my entire story with somewhat of an interest, I’d like to thank you for listening to me brag about how much fun I had riding a dual sport and seeing some old GNCC venues. However, my intention in sharing the story was to encourage people to a few things. 

Over the years I’ve come to know many people who say they’re “burnt out”. Naturally we want everyone to come give GNCC Racing a try but at the same time, we’re avid motorcycle enthusiasts. If you ever feel “burnt out”, please don’t give up on riding all together. I think one of the most disappointing things I’ve seen from friends who became burnt out is the fact that they gave up riding all together. Simply take some time to recharge your batteries and try “just riding” because it’s a great way to remember why you started in the first place. Trust me.

I’ll leave you with a few more cool photos from the trip.

#ThrowbackThursday (Jared Bolton)

Once again, with the GNCC world being a bit quiet we'll jump into some throwback photos to say thanks for reading this week's Quick Fill!