If you want to go back and watch any of those previous episodes, we’ve added a dedicated page to the website which you can view HERE. You’ll see all three of those previously mentioned GNCC shows there, and the new one from the 2014 Ironman will air as Episode 5. This is because we also did an episode from Loretta Lynn’s… No, it wasn’t a Loretta’s GNCC episode but rather an episode highlighting the first Open Pro Sport moto from the Amateur National Motocross Championship last year. This moto was absolutely incredible as the top two riders, Jalek Swoll and Jett Lawrence, crossed the finish line virtually tied. The final time showed them 0.006 second apart! You can catch that show HERE, and it’s worth watching!

With this project we’ve been working on gathering a bunch of old TV shows and footage. Dan Reinhart from RacerTV has been hard at work for weeks now ripping from old DVDs, converting tapes to digital and getting this stuff together. Regardless of whether these become a Behind the Bars show or not, we’re going to end up putting them on YouTube eventually. It’s a lengthy process, and it makes the most sense to work backwards from now, tracking down what we’re missing, so it will be a while before you see a lot of this but it’s coming and there will be some incredible stuff.

With that said if you have any old GNCC TV shows, MotoWorld coverage, or anything of the sort, drop me a line at [email protected] and let me know what you’ve got! Right now, any 2003 GNCC TV shows would be a big help, as Dan has not had any luck finding those. Oddly enough, 2012 shows would be helpful as well as those aren’t showing up either. That was only eight years ago, but for some reason we seem to be missing those.

If you look on the RacerTV YouTube account, the only shows from 2004 that exist are from Ironman, featuring both ATV and bike races. I seemed to remember reading something about this a long time ago, so I started doing some digging. Since there’s been roughly 700 editions of Quick Fill since it’s inception in 2006, not every single edition still exists on the GNCC website. This is mostly due in part to a website crash we suffered back in 2012 as it wasn’t possible to recover everything that was lost.

However, there’s a really cool thing on the Internet that many people still call “The Wayback Machine”. I remember stumbling across it years ago, but it acts as an Archive for websites. It crawls millions of pages per day and essentially saves past versions of websites. Looking at the GNCC site, you can go all the way back to 2000! So, I started with the first-ever edition of Quick Fill at the beginning of 2006 and started digging. It actually didn’t take terribly long to find the info on the TV shows, but once I did it was really interesting.

Back then, Jason Weigandt was at the reins of Quick Fill, and in Quick Fill #12 from March 30^th, 2006 Weege wrote a bit about how the GNCC TV shows work. I just copy and pasted from that old page, but edited down some it just a hair because Weege, just like anyone else who does a lot of writing, tends to get a little long-winded when he gets on a roll. Also, keep in mind that this is how it worked back in 2006...

For those of you not exactly sure how our TV shows work, here’s a brief guide: The shows are produced by Gear Media and Marketing. This is actually a sister company to Gear Racewear and MotoTees, so that’s why we do the shows in Grove City, PA (which is an hour north of Pittsburgh).

Anyway, the Gear people came to the rescue and built a TV production department to help save GNCC TV. In 2001, Fox Sports Net came on and put GNCC on TV. It was the first time the series had weekly TV coverage and the shows were just awesome – the production company who made them, I think it was called Global Digital or something like that, went all out. They had Larry Maiers and Mark Hyde as hosts, as well as two pit reporters, Bob Walker, who is now an agent for motocrossers and other athletes, and Jenn Hildreth, who, well, I sure wish she were still going to the races!

Anyway, the shows were great, but that big production cost waaaaaayy too much money to be profitable. So the first crew gave it up after one great season of TV on 2001. In came Seals Communications, who at that time (2002) was the most respected, most reputable company in the motorcycle TV business. Seals, led by owner, founder, visionary Lou Seals, basically made motorcycle and ATV racing on TV happen. He founded the MotoWorld show back in the early 1980s, and then they became the company that first put AMA Supercross and AMA Motocross on ESPN. They did other cool stuff too, like The Suzuki Great Outdoors, which was a hunting and fishing show that featured Suzuki ATVs and stuff in great sportsman settings. SealsCo was ahead of its time, and the company brought the sport to huge new levels of exposure.

Seals was back in 2003, but you could sense they were cutting the budget big-time. Every weekend the crew would tell me how they couldn’t do this anymore, or how they lost this and are struggling to do that. What we didn’t know at the time was that the Seals empire was crumbling behind the scenes, and there was some big debt and such that was beginning to effect the whole operation.

But Seals did have enough power and leverage to get the shows on Speed Channel in 2003, which was pretty cool. But the most obvious sign of their budget cuts actually came, well, how do I explain this? I knew they were in trouble when they asked me to come on and host the shows. At that point I had barely even started as a live announcer, and I had just about zero TV experience. The whole deal started when Seals producer Thomas Lanahan said he would cover the 2002 GNCC Bike Banquet for MotoWorld, but he needed someone to do the interviews. Basically, I wanted the coverage for the series, so I voluteered. Thomas thought it worked out well, so they offered me the TV gig for the races the next year. I was available and I was cheap, and the cheap part seemed like the number-one item on their plate. They offered me good money to do the shows but I never saw a dime of it and I doubt I ever will. It was pro bono work, but for me it was awesome experience. If Seals hadn’t been doing everything on the cheap, I probably wouldn’t have gotten a break, so I can’t complain. And it you watched the shows that year, they were much more exciting than in 2002. The Seals crew had learned a lot about the series and they were excited to make things even better for 2004.

So here they came, shooting Florida and Georgia and the Carolinas. We had a great season going with Rodney Smith and Jason Raines battling every week and Bill Ballance trying to “get r done” on his new factory Yamaha. But halfway through the season, the crew just stopped showing up! We couldn’t get answers from anyone as to where they went, when the shows will air, or what happened to all of our footage.

SealsCo had gone belly up, and GNCC TV went right with it.

Let it be known that the GNCCs didn’t have anything to do with Seals going under. The company had apparently been plugging financial holes for years, and we just came along for the beginning of the end. And end it did, because we never got on TV in 2004.

The Racer Productions staff wasn’t going to let that happen again. We had no control over the TV show in 2004 and we got burned bad. So that’s when we came up with the idea to work with Gear and do the shows ourselves. We know who and what to shoot, and by bringing in a few experienced TV people, we learned what else we needed to learn. At the Klotz Ironman GNCC in 2004, we brought in Bill Artzberger, a TV producer from Pittsburgh who made all of those classic Blackwater 100 tapes you’ve seen, to help us out. Artzberger was basically retired, so we dragged him out of it so he could teach us how to make GNCC TV. Exciting GNCC TV – like those old Blackwater tapes!

So, the reason there are only two GNCC TV shows from 2004 is because, well, those are the only two that exist! It’s a shame because 2004 had some really cool racing, including that epic Spartan ATV mud race where Kentucky native Jeff Stoess bested some of the top riders for the overall win! Since Weege wrote that back in 2006 there’s obviously been a lot of changes to the RacerTV program. John Ayers and the Gear Media crew continued producing those shows through the end of 2008. In 2009, the production of the shows was moved in-house with Jason Hooper as producer. Jason left at the end of 2015 to focus on his Full Gas Sprint Enduro Series, and we brought in Brad Jones to produce. Brad is an experienced TV guy, who worked on a lot of different projects. He took care of the shows for a couple of years before passing the reins to Adam Gordon, who does the producing today.

Looking for this information I read a lot of older editions of Quick Fill, and maybe it’s just me being overly critical of myself, but I feel like Weege really killed it on those old school Quick Fill entries. Maybe it’s just because it’s considered nostalgic at this point, but the blend of good info with random info and some humor peppered in really made those awesome. Weege’s Quick Fills would run on and on with relevant info about racing and then drop something like “Random thing Rita said in the office today; ‘Johnny Lee just came out of the back and he smells like gas’ Moving on…” and then he’d run right back into the good information.

Side note: Johnny Lee is one of the all-time most badass people from the old days of GNCC Racing. Johnny was from the Morgantown area and raced those early Blackwater 100 events before eventually helping out on the GNCC Track Crew for many years. However, before that, Johnny was a really fast motocrosser in those old Florida Winter Series', evening riding as a Factory Ossa rider and beating some pretty high profile riders at one point or another. Unfortunately, Johnny was older than a lot of those guys and never got a fair shot at becoming a professional motocrosser in those early days. 

Johnny is still around the area, and while he's definitely no young buck anymore, you still feel it when he shakes your hand because his grip is intense! So, for Weege to write a line saying Johnny smelled like gas in the office is pretty tame for a tough guy like Johnny.

It’s actually pretty rare I write a Quick Fill entry in the office. Usually I’m sitting at the track, in a camper, in a hotel room, or sitting somewhere else, so I don’t get the chance at too many zingers like that, but Weege has definitely inspired me to work on improving these editions of Quick Fill. The problem with my sense of humor is what I find to be funny isn’t always the same as what others find funny. The problem is that I believe my sense of humor is pretty on par with a 12 year old. But maybe that’s just a “guy thing” and more of you are the same way than I realize.

With Weege’s old piece mixed in, I’m well over 2000 words at this point and we’ve got a bit from Ken Hill again this week. So, I’ll end my Quick Fill entry here before it comes “Slow Fill”… Hey, that’s some of that Weege humor. He cracked that joke back in 2006. Until next week, enjoy your weekend and we’ll see you here again next week!

Ken Is Driving His Life Away (Ken Hill)

Another week down as I scratch a new hash marking my wall. They are all starting to add up and my mental state is starting to fade. The guards outside my cell seem to be keeping perfect rhythm with song on the radio. Did an Eddie Rabbit song just make it into this incredibly overblown opening to Quick Fill? Sure did! Ok so I am being way over the top but some levity during these times is probably what keeps most of us humans sane and moving forward besides it is a great song but I have no clue where scratching on the wall comes into all this except to maybe put in perspective the days that have passed since we all hit this shut down, slow down heck whatever you call it. There is nothing really to report as of this morning regarding us going back to racing nor any easing of the restrictions most of us are living under but that could change quickly as this country is waking up to the fact we possibly may have hit the last field section before bringing this round of shut down to the finish line.

I see the various organizations have developed a reaction force to help combat things regarding racing and the events we all hope to attend. Open communication is going to be needed as the various locations will have no doubt set up some sort of task force or department within each county to deal with such things well beyond our world of racing. County fairs, carnivals and a myriad of events revolving around a gazillion subjects take place all the time that we never slow down enough to realize unless it’s close to our own hometown. For the foreseeable future I can understand the concern and have no issue dealing with common sense solutions to try and keeps safe but at some point, we will all for the most part have to leave the bubble of safety deemed necessary and deal with things not as individuals but as a country.

Now trying to tell scared housewife with two kids she is going to be fine is one thing but how to do you convince the likes of the racing community that they need to kick back, relax and chill until the coast is clear? It is fear that sends most folks into a panic and our leaders follow suit and the next thing we know everyone is trying to hide under a rock. You people are hard to scare and many of you seem to get pretty excited about a rock garden. Just think about the injuries many of you all have faced and yet a round or two later you are mounted on your trusty steed and back on the line to give it another go. You just can’t keep that type of person down and for the majority, the results at the end of the race mean nothing more than a wooden plaque, bragging rights and stories that last forever. You do this thing for fun where most “normal” people would shutter at doing anything that turns hands into a blistered mess much less a broken collar bone or leg and yet here you are, standing tall telling the experts to worry about nothing. They just wouldn’t understand and probably would try to have us all committed if they tried to understand it all.

So why do we push so hard and seem to go against things? Well for one we are Americans and history shows us we are hard headed, short tempered, fight at the drop of a hat, diehard all in never quit royal pain in the ass group of a country. So why should we be any different when it comes to a pandemic? Well somewhere in all of this we have to have some middle ground because I for one don’t wish any of us to have to deal with a virus that decimates our great countries citizens much less the hits close to home when it comes to you guys and gals. Don’t believe me? Follow the micro races and watch a mom or dad that hasn’t run more than a few feet give chase to their kid for 30 minutes or pay attention in the pits when a rider comes in injured and the crew tells them to suck it up and get back after it because they are in 4th!

No sir, you aren’t going to keep these folks down for much longer and I think our leadership is starting to feel it. The backside to this is that our series leaders are at the mercy of someone who has no clue who we are or what we are about. My advice to the team responsible for dealing with these mandates is going to be say as little as possible and add in a bunch of yes sirs and I understands to every interactions because dealing with a new set of rules is going to be worse than dealing with the issues they are used to but you know what, I have all the confidence in the world they will get the job done.

That is all from me this week; it’s back to working here and keeping tabs on when we might get back to racing. As always please be safe in all you do and may the good Lord continue to bless us all!

#ThrowbackThursday 2006 Quick Fill Edition (Jared Bolton)

While I was digging through these old Quick Fill entries, I saved some random photos! This week's Throwback Thursday will be a "2006 Quick Fill Edition" highlighting those photos. Now, these photos aren't actually from the 2006 season, but rather they were used in the early 2006 editions of Quick Fill. These came from a variety of photographers back then, including David Scearce and Ray Gundy.

Ray hasn't been around the races for a long time, but David "Diamond Cutter" Scearce showed up to some  races several years ago. I asked Diamond Dave if he still had some of his older photos, but he lost nearly everything due to a hard drive crash several years ago. Thats a serious bummer because Scearce had some really cool shots. I personally haven't talked to Dave in a few years because, well, he hasn't been to the races! But, through some mutual buddies I've heard he's still shooting photos here and there, just not of the races anymore. However, he still really likes to ride Adventure Bikes! 

Since these were pulled from a 2006 version of the website, the quality of these won't be the best, but there's still some really neat shots that are worth checking out.