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Training in Phoenix and Racing in Mesquite

After spending a good week with Jack Field, his girlfriend Rhianna, Justin and Chase Rastegar as well as Gecy Bowman and Chris Morrison, I headed towards the desert of Arizona.

My friend and teammate Bryan Roper lives there, and I helped him and the local riders build their new endurocross track.

Bryan and I sneaked out into some local mountains and found a very challenging path to the top of a ridge. That kind of riding is the best!!!

Quite surprisingly, I think it was the first time I ever saw cacti. They are big and no matter how much I tried to avoid even the smallest of cacti, i still got stung and the needles have hooks, so the can be quite hard to take out again!

After riding and staying with Bryans family in Phoenix for a week, we prepped the bikes and headed north to Mesquite where the NitroCircus Enduro Challenge awaited us.
I found it funny that Bryan is out of a family where the father is Engineer and Bryan uses his company as his second home to leave all his toys and work on them. Exactly the same as me!!! What would have become of guys like Bryan and I, if it hadn’t been for our engineering dads???

On my way to pick up Douglas in Las Vegas Airport, I passed the turist-trap Hoover Dam and got to play the turist for a little bit.

This was pretty cool. I was not expecting to see my name on print like that, and definitely not on top of the page :)

I may look like its warm and it may be a near perfect sky, but it was actually pretty chill.

I am by far the best rider in the world, but I have the best team in the world. How unique is that?! :)

IMG_20130223_112330 — A small part of the pits wasn’t filled up with riders, so a bunch of us, utilized the “free” space to quickly shape a couple of ruts and get some warm-up. I learned shortly after I pulled out, that Cody and the other riders were warned to stop or get DQ’ed by some upset official.

IMG_20130223_113815 — Playing on the rocks without being told to leave or get DQ’ed :)

Lining up for the 1st of our two 20 minute + 1 lap motos.

I got a decent start but I faded down to an 13. place in this moto. It was mainly a sandy motocross track, with a single offroad section (Erzberg Canyon) and then the Endurocross lanes. Brownie nailed the holeshot and what an impressive person. Ive known Mike Brown for well over a year know and he is probably the nicest most down-to-earth fierce racer I have ever met. So quite off the track, yet so brutal on it. We both share the same thoughts, when it comes to whats best about the races: the people.

In between Kurt Nicoll (#8) and Jacob Argubright on lap 1. I had a really bad arm-pump after 3 laps and really just wanted this race to be overwith. I didnt imagine it to be that motocrossy, so I was a little grumpy when I pulled off my helmet.

Heidi Pfluger took all these race pictures. So nice to have memories!!!

The double jump after the Endurocross section was a good place to get a little breathing room.

Two happy Team McPfluger sponsored riders!!!

After our first moto, we got a chance to jump the FMX ramp, that would be mandatory in the “Beyond Pro” show in the evening. Everybody had fun doing this and Kurt Nicoll said it was so easy, he saw his mom do it :) Kurt is involved in a bunch of different racing stuff as well as the NitroCircus crew. His wife Laurette Nicoll is the announcer at the Endurocross Races and they are both great people.

2nd moto is off and I didn’t get the best of starts. On the good side, my armpump was way less and I could ride a little harder the whole race and got 11th, which was good enough for 12th overall.

As you may notice, there’s a few Goldentyre logos on the bike and gear. They are supporting us as a Team and we ran the GT216 rear and GT219 front for this race. To be honest with you, Bryan and I initially told Goldentyre that we were only interested in their Extremely soft rear tyre (the GT216X), but they responded that we couldn’t ONLY get the reartires at a team discount. And we were told that the 219 had been newly redesigned and that it would probably be a lot better than the old model, and it really is. I have no concerns with recommending Goldentyre to anyone I meet. Especially the GT 216 that Bryan and I ran for this race. Crazy traction in the sand! I dont know how it works on grass and rocks, but for what we did, it was perfect.

Pipe jump!

This is one of the coolest things about the races. Being with friends who race!!!! We had a great dinner, afterparty and visit to a roulette :)

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