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 Craig Morgan’s Charity Ride 8-6-11Click here to see more photos on facebook After leaving X Games, we stopped into OK for a day, did laundry, washed bikes, and hit the road again to go pick up Brooks. Since we left the beach July 10th, we spent about 150 hours in our truck (that’s 6 days 24 hours a day), drove nearly 7,000 miles (double the distance from North Carolina to California) and used about 750 gallons of fuel (at $4 a gallon is $3,000 in fuel)….uuugggghhhh. But we got to pick up Brooks, so we were very excited to see our lil’ guy! Craig Morgan, Country music super star with hits like Redneck Yacht Club, International Harvester, and Bonfire; does a charity event every year for a foundation he started, called Billy’s Place. It’s a house for children who have been temporarily removed from their permanent home in the Dickson area. Pretty sure you can go to www.craigmorgan.com and find a link to it on there if you want to help donate anything!!! Saturday was the ride day portion of the event; which is opened up to the public, there is about a 4 mile trail ride loop that people bring out dirt bikes and quads to ride on. Several pro riders like Kevin Windham, Fred Andrews and Randy Hawkins also come out to support the cause and put on a little demo of how the pros ride. So we showed up about 9am to finish setting up the fmx ramp and get ready to ride the moto track at 10. Right after we got there it started pouring down rain, after hiding under different tents it finally let up a little bit. K Dub went out to see how muddy the track was, he came back saying it’s not too bad come on out. So I put my gear on, and only then Kevin said…it’s pretty slick be careful….he fully tricked me into putting my gear on. I still did about 10-15 laps only falling once, although I should have crashed hard twice, I cased the big SX style triple two times in a row, but somehow pulled it out! After the moto ride, I just hung out by the fmx set up and kept an eye on the weather. At one point the sun came out, started drying it up, so I finished unfolding the new landing (took all of about 30 seconds), but then as I was getting on my bike…here came more rain….uuurrrggghhhh. So we sat around some more. Kevin rode around a bit and said the take-off felt like it had traction. So after about 30 chicken runs at it, he hit the ramp IN THE RAIN. He was wheeling thru the mud, splashed thru a puddle of water and hit the metal take off ramp and greased the landing. I couldn’t believe he timed it just perfect. Kevin has so much talent on a dirt bike it’s retarded. I backed down and didn’t hit it. Instead I went over to a hill climb area where most of the people were trying different hill climbs. It was lots of fun; I love hill climbs and getting creative with your lines up the hill. After kart wheeling my bike down the hill several times I finally broke off my clutch lever, so I headed back to the truck to fix it. I noticed the sun coming out again, so I finally decided to hit the ramp. It was still a bit muddy, but not currently raining, lol. Robbie King is an fmx rider out of Nashville that happened to be at the event, so he hit the ramp with us as well. Actually Robbie hit it before I did as I was still putting my goggles on. I hit the ramp once or twice and then had one of the stupidest crashes I have ever had in my entire life on a dirt bike. I was riding the return back to the beginning to hit the ramp again. I was turned to the left side watching Robbie hit the ramp over my shoulder.  So I only had my right hand on the throttle, left hand was off the bike. I thought I was in neutral, so I pinned the throttle to make sure the bike was cleaned out before putting it back into gear. I’m sure you can guess by now, it wasn’t in neutral. It whiskey throttled out from under me, I tried to ride it out, hung on and then it somehow flung me off high side. It was only 1st gear, but it felt a lot faster than that, it hurt so stinking bad! I pretty much landed at Kevin’s feet and he was laughing at me asking what the heck I was doing, I replied “being an idiot”….I just had no words to describe it at that time. I shook it off and did a normal freestyle run, I was only about half way thru it and Craig kept saying are you going to flip??? I think I scare him and he doesn’t want me to do a full length show, so I did 2 back flips and called it a day, as it was spitting rain again.After I did my two back flips, I did something no one expected. I spotted Kimberly in the middle of the set up taking pics. I got some speed and tried to nose wheelie towards her (remember it’s now uneven and wet grass). After a very short nose wheelie; I endoed over the bars and stumbled down onto my knees right in front of her. She was laughing asking me the same thing Kevin did, “What the heck are you doing?” As she was asking me, I pulled of my gloves and peeled back a piece of masking tape I had on the back of my hand. After I pulled the tape off, she could see the engagement ring that had been with me during the show. Only then did she get the typical reaction, hands covering the mouth, “oh my gosh, oh my gosh”! But she did eventually catch her breath enough to say yes, so it is official we are engaged!!! That was a good finale for the ride day. I think some people kept riding a bit afterward, but the ride officially ended at 2pm. Everyone kind of did their own thing Sat evening, got some dinner and relaxed.  Sunday the Charity Event went for the hunting side of Craig Morgan. Nashville Shooting Club opened up their doors to the public to shoot skeet. Some of Craig’s sponsors donated differentitems ranging from hats up to a rifle. So things got very competitive very quickly. We all paired up into 6 man teams with one of the celebrities per team. Unfortunately for my team, they got stuck with me, lol. Actually it was Madi’s boyfriend Dexton, his friend Jake, Rock River Yamaha truck driver Kyle, a friend of mine Keith and then a new guy John, so none of them minded that I sucked really bad. We had a lot of fun shooting shells, I think I got a 36 out of a possible 100, Kyle was in the low 40’s. Jake and Keith were both up into the 60’s and 70’s, but needless to say our team didn’t win anything. Someone actually shot 97 out of 100. That is absolutely insane! After the shooting tournament, we all headed back to Dickson for a concert. Sarah Darling (new country artist), Bucky Covington (It’s a Different World and It’s Good to be Us), Pam Tillis (one of the biggest female names in country music) and Craig. They all took turns singing songs and talking quite a bit about the songs, the reasons behind the songs, and little stories here and there. It was great, a very small, intimate type concert with only about 500 people. Then they auctioned off some stuff for the Charity; a WR200 that had all kinds of motor work done by a drag race team, it even had an air shifter on it, never seen that before. That bike brought $12,000 for the charity!!! Then Craig was in need of a haircut, so they auctioned the chance for someone to shave his head on stage. His buddy Robb Nelson (former Dallas Cowboys NFL player) got the win at $1,100; and right there on stage they shaved….man Craig looks weird with a buzz cut, lol! After that they got back to some more great country music! Not sure how much money was raised for Billy’s Place over the weekend, but I think they are going to break ground between now and next year’s ride day, so that will be great to see!!! Thank you to everyone who helped out and made the event possible! From here, Kimberly, Brooks, and I are headed up to Plymouth, IN. I’m getting to test a midget on Wed and a Late Model on Thursday. Then on Friday I’m doing an FMX demo at the Plymouth Speedway. If I don’t put the Late Model in the wall on Thursday maybe I can even talk them into letting me do a few laps during the races on Friday! So wish me luck, I’ll let you know how it goes, and remember….”If you ain’t first, you’re last”!!! Cowboy Kenny #690 |
