I flew out to California the day before the event to break in the bike.  I've never ridden a Husqvarna TE250 two-stroke, so I wanted some time to get used to it.  I needed every minute of practice they gave us!  Supercross obstacles are one thing on a four-stroke; a whole other kind of feeling on the two-banger!  The bike is amazing, don't get me wrong.  But the range of power on a two-stroke is a lot smaller than the FC350 I ride in GNCC, and it took some getting used to.  I got the rhythms down in practice and felt good going into qualifying.

When I did Supercross full time, it was common for me to be top qualifier in practice.  After a five year layoff from it, I thought I might be a tick off the top guys at Straight Rhythm.  But I qualified first in both classes!  Pretty cool considering it was over Ryan Villopoto in the Two-Stroke class and guys like Alex Martin and Shane McElrath in the Lites class.  I was hitting a quad-quad rhythm section that a lot of guys weren't hitting and that helped me for sure.

In the night show, I got through the quarter finals pretty easily and into the next round.  In the Two-Stroke class semi finals, I was paired with Ronnie Mac.  The dude is no joke!  We split the first two races and went into the win-or-go-home third race tied.  I made a mistake on the quad-quad and that was all she wrote.  He moved on to the final and I moved into the third place round with Ryan Villopoto.  I won two races against him to finish third place in the Two-Stroke class.