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Monroe, LA 1-14-12
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 Hope everyone is doing good and had a wonderful holiday season. I know we did, Thanksgiving was great celebrated with both Kimberly’s family and my side of the family. We went to Vegas the 1st weekend in December to watch the PRCA (Pro Rodeo Cowboy Association) National Finals Rodeo and have some dental work done. After nearly 20 years of not having bottom teeth; I’m finally getting them all fixed up. Dr. Leavitt and Dr. Willardsen are doing a great job, but it is a very lengthy process. Then we went back to Alabama for Christmas and the New Year….kids must have been on the “nice” list because it looked like Toys R Us threw up in the living room, lol. As for riding, I took about a month and a half off of FMX around the holidays, just relaxed and ate lots of junk food. I did ride an Arenacross race in Cullman, AL. Happened to be in town, Camden wanted to race, so we loaded up and raced! Camden got 3rd in his first ever 65cc race and I got 2nd in the Pro class, so we were both happy! After the 1st of the year I picked right back up into the old routine though, we went home Jan 1st and I rode FMX 2 or 3 times the 1st week. Went to Anaheim for the 1st Supercross to watch and hang out, then rode a couple more times the next week and I’m back to feeling like my old self already! I also signed myself up to do the RAAM (Race Across America) on a team with Travis this summer. I have to be able to average a certain mile per hour average for an hour in order to make the team, and I’m way off as of now, so I have bumped up the cycling training as well. Not real sure what I was thinking signing up for that race; but they say whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger….who are “they”???
 Anaheim was a great time. A very busy weekend I think we put over a 1,000 mile on a rental car in 3 days. We flew in Thursday, went to an audition for a commercial, then drove to Vegas I was in the dental chair for about 3 hours removing stitches and touching up the temporary bridge, then back to LA that night. Friday we had a breakfast meeting at 8am, another commercial audition, a lunch meeting, to the jeweler to get Kimberly’s ring tightened, to Anaheim Stadium to get our credentials, to San Diego for a dinner meeting, and then back to Corona to stay with BP for the night. Supercross Saturday, we showed up about noon like usual to watch Steve Hudson do his Chapel service, and then walked around the pits. Anaheim was set up quite differently this year, the pits were kind of confusing on the layout, but it was still great to see everyone. I haven’t heard anyone say good things about the track and it turned out to be kind of boring races (all the hype for the 2012 season was very anti-climactic). But it was still a good trip. Sunday we looked at a house early in the morning (looking at moving back to CA) and then caught a flight home.
The next week we got invited to Joplin, MO to shoot a music video for Kaleb McIntyre Band’s new song “Redneck in All of Us”. It is a pretty cool song with a cool theme to the video. I can’t say too much about it, other then it’s gonna be a cute video! It was fun and miserable shooting all at the same time, lol. It was about 25 degrees and breezy, I had on insulated blue jeans and like 5 layers on top and was still freezing cold. But the shooting itself was fun; I can’t wait to watch the video on CMT probably a couple months away!
That was Friday in Joplin, we left after that and pinned it to Monroe, LA to a Kicker Arenacross Series race for Saturday. I rode practice around 4pm like normal. It was a super tight set up. I ended up having to go into the tunnel and make an “S” turn thru the starting structure to hit the ramp. I felt awkward in practice, but by show time I felt great! The racing action was good as well, even some of the amateur classes had great racing. New announcer was a former rodeo clown, had some comedy skits during the intermissions, they were funny, but drug on a bit at times. Freestyle show went good, I rode by myself at this event, did all my tricks and felt really good. Stopped and did an interview and went back for some more, I really was having fun riding and didn’t want to stop, so as long as the crowd was into it I was going to keep going! But eventually I did get tired and I knew they had more races to run, so I stopped!
We drove to Alabama Sunday afterwards to spend the week down here. Madison’s doing a pageant on Friday and then I’m doing an FMX demo at a Corner MX Arenacross Race in Tuscumbia, AL on Saturday. Then we’re off to Sioux Falls, SD for a Monster truck FMX show the next weekend! So check back again for more updates from the road!
Cowboy Kenny #690
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 Party in the Pasture 11-12-11
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Sorry it’s been a crazy month and I haven’t written a blog. I think the last one I wrote was about the Bikes Blues and BBQ event in AR at the beginning of Oct. The next weekend Kimberly and I went to the NASCAR race in Kansas City, MO and hung out there. Always good to network and try to learn more about the industry. The 14-15th weekend we went up to Sacramento, CA for the NASCAR K&N Pro Series West Race at All American Speedway in Roseville, CA (whew that was a mouthful). We did a Steel Rodeo FMX show with Gabriel Villegas, Cody Elkins, Matt Buyten and I, plus I pulled double duty and got to drive a car. It was a very busy weekend, but a ton of fun. I finished 23rd, missed out on the top 20 spot by .033 seconds. But we still had a blast. The 23rd was Brooks’ Birthday, so we spent the weekend in Alabama with the family down there. Oct 29th was Travis Pastrana’s wedding in Southern, CA. Good times were had there, it really wasn’t as crazy as everyone anticipated, it was actually a real wedding, not a Nitro Circus crazy event with a wedding mixed in, lol. November 5th we took our 1st weekend off since the end of June and did absolutely nothing but stay home and get caught up here.
 Which leads up to Nov 12th weekend. Kevin Windham (Supercross Racer) does a charity event every year called the Party in the Pasture; and it is literally just that! We went to it last year, had a blast, so we came back again this year. We put on a Steel Rodeo demo with myself and Derek Cook. Last year we had a big issue with humidity and dew in the evening, so we did an afternoon show at 4pm and then another one at 7:30pm. The weather turned out great; it was about 20 degrees warmer than the year before, a tad windy, but not bad. There was a much better crowd turn out this year as well; I think there were 7-8,000 people this year. When I said it’s a Party in a Pasture, Kevin owns a bunch of land in Centreville, MS. They pile up there HUGE og piles to make a bonfire, people come with campers and spend 2-3 days in this pasture and I’m sure the alcohol companies see a spike in sales in that region. Several bands play on a huge stage most of the afternoon leading up to Craig Morgan headlining the music at the end of the night. Monster Energy helped sponsor the event this year, Chad Reed showed up to hang out, Racer X was there shooting photos and doing interviews, it really is a cool event! The 4pm show, Kevin Windham even geared up and hit the ramp with us. Not to sound gay, but the guy is darned amazing on a dirt bike. 1st hit of the day, he threw a good whip, 2nd whip was almost worthy of X Games Best Whip contest. He doesn’t do turn down style whips, but his classic whips are just insane! Derek and I rode both shows and the crowd seemed very into it and appreciative of us being there! If you get a chance check out www.partyinthepasture.com and maybe start planning your trip to Centreville for next year to support Kevin’s Charities!
 We’ll be headed to Alabama this coming weekend to celebrate Thanksgiving with Kimberly’s family and then coming back home to celebrate with my side of the family at our place on Thanksgiving day. Got some events in the works, but nothing set in stone on the schedule, so just keep checking back for updates!
Cowboy Kenny #690
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 El Paso, TX and Bikes Blues & BBQ
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The stock car testing in CA went great. It took me a few laps to feel comfortable in the Late Model, but by the end of the day I was turning lap times that the car owners were happy with. The K&N car I felt great the 1st day, but the 2nd day it took me a while to get the groove again. Not sure why, but just need more seat time, just like FMX……practice, practice, practice!!!
We flew back from CA and got things ready to head down to El Paso, TX. It was the 4th round of the Cycle City Promotions Kicker Arenacross series. We ended up driving down kind of late for us. We didn’t get into El Paso til around 3pm on Friday; practice is usually at 5, so we still had plenty of time. We stopped off and did a radio interview and then pinned it over to the Cohen stadium (which is a very nice baseball stadium). The Arenacross track and FMX set up was almost entirely on the infield dirt area…very little in their grass. Set up for practice and one of the other two guys Tod brought in to ride with us (Billy) went a little long on his first jump; whiskey throttled off a berm and hit the metal railing around the outside. He got up after a few minutes and was thinking about riding again, but the medics talked him into going to the hospital and it’s good they did, he had a fractured Clavicle (collarbone). But after that incident everything else went great. Stephen and I did a show at the very end of the night as kind of a finale. Both Friday and Saturday night they had a good crowd turn out, and a ton of riders racing, I’d say over 500 entries racing.
 Sunday, we headed back home, but Roswell, NM was only about an hour out of our way, so we ended up stopping off in the Alien city and checking things out. It’s pretty cool, because neither of us had ever been there. It really wasn’t as touristy as I thought it would be. There is a UFO museum, some of the light posts have Alien heads, but that was really about it; just lots of posters up in windows, but not really things to do or see. Even in the museum, there is no proof of anything, so there really isn’t much to see, just newspaper articles talking about the conspiracies and such. The McDonald’s that was one of the 12 themed park McDonald’s, was basically a big play area with a guy in a space suit, not even any aliens. Basically, if you have never seen it, and you are close by it’s worth stopping in, but I definitely wouldn’t drive there just for Roswell.
Tuesday and Wednesday, Gabriel Villegas and Jarryd McNeil showed up at our house and we did a couple of days of riding. Then Thursday we all headed over to Springdale, AR for the Bikes Blues & BBQ Arenacross race. BB&Q is actually the 3rd largest bike rally in the country behind Sturgis and Daytona, although I heard this year they were projecting over 500,000 people, which would put it 2nd behind Sturgis. I’m not exactly sure how, but it is a charity for several different children’s charities. This year they decided to mix dirt bikes and street bikes, by having an Arenacross race just a few miles from the main street bike festivities. Jarryd and Gabriel also found a skate park only a mile or so from our hotel, so we all went over there and took turns riding Jarryd’s new Specialized 20”. There was a couple of kids there, that were incredibly good on skate boards, and then they jumped on Jarryd’s bike as well and impressed the heck out of me. Not many people can ride both at that level!
 Friday we set up for practice in the afternoon, but was super super windy. It was a straight head wind, so we went ahead and rode practice, but very few tricks. Friday was only Pro racing and 50’s. So there were only about 10 races total with the heats, LCQ’s and mains. We jumped in between the 250 and 450 main events. Backed the trailer down about a 150ft long tunnel with only about 6 inches on each side…..I impressed myself with that one more then riding, lol. Then out onto the start straight. We got everything set up super quick, and did our show. Just like with the Game Day Bash, we had a show format with individual runs, whip contest, and trains. Everything went great; Jarryd of course stole the show with his insane turn down whips. The crowd wasn’t an ordinary motocross crowd, they were very enthusiastic over simple things like nose wheelies, so when we started doing tricks, they went absolutely crazy, stomping their feet on the aluminum grand stands and just making a ton of noise, which was great!
Saturday, Kimberly and I decided to check out the BB&Q activities. So we drove down to Dickson Street. Parked and walked for about a mile. We were both amazed at the number of bikes, just as far as the eye could see, was a sea of bikes. There are some very creative people, some very unusual people, and then some normal people. Traffic was absolutely insane, but we finagled the F350 thru it and made it back to the Parson’s stadium for the Arenacross race. Saturday was amateur only night of racing, there were 21 main events. We went at the very end of the night. There was some great racing by the way; the 50 classes were insane, coming down to the last corner on several occasions! But after all the racing, we again rolled our set up out onto the start straight, set up and got the show under way! Gabriel and I are both no slouch on whips, and I felt like I had one of the best whips of my life, but when you throw Jarryd into that mix, it still makes us look like novice riders learning to whip it. Gabriel has been working on seat grab flips, and will get a good one every now and then, but has to work up to it. This time, he threw one out that was fully extended right away, so props to him on that! We again ended our show with a few trains and then signed autographs for a bit! Packed up and headed home! Only being about 3 hours from home, we made it back about 2:30am.
This coming weekend, Oct 8-9th, I think Kimberly and I are going up to Kansas City to the NASCAR race to hang out….see if I can learn anything about going fast and turning left! And then we’re off to Sacramento, CA for the 14-15th weekend for a Steel Rodeo Tour FMX Demo at the Toyota/Napa Auto Parts 150. If you’re in the Sacramento area, you won’t want to miss it!
Cowboy Kenny #690 |
 Kicker Game Day Bash 9-8-11
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For the past 9 years Kicker has put on an event at the Specialty Equipment Manufacturers Association (SEMA) car show in Las Vegas, every year and called it the Big Air Bash. This year they decided to change things up a bit and bring the Bash to our hometown of Stillwater and do it at an OSU Football game. They actually closed down Hall of Fame St right in front of the stadium and set up the event. Kicker came to me and wanted to get our Steel Rodeo Tours involved, so naturally we jumped on board! I brought in, Cody Elkins (Weatherford, OK rider who has been sponsored by Kicker for several years); Gabriel Villegas (Chilean rider, that is solid with his tricks and rode on the SX FMX tour the end of 2009); and Jarryd McNeil (X Games Silver and Bronze medal winner for Best Whip). All 3 guys came in a couple days early to ride at our place, Jarryd used the foam pit a bunch, he has back flips dialed into the pit, just has a mental block on dirt. Stephen Sandlin that jumped in Clovis and Gallup, NM with me also came up. He struggled with the back flip into the pit. Unfortunately my pit bike got a flat rear tire, so he had to man up and try the 250F, which is tough to do.
Thursday was the actual event day. Kimberly and I showed up about 9am to start setting things up. We had just got in our new banners for the side of the ramp and hadn’t tried attaching them yet (it went way easier then I had anticipated). Dillon, a good friend of ours in Stillwater happened to have the day off and Monte Spears, a photographer from Ponca City; were both there and helped out a ton in setting things up. Practice started around noon and went good. It was a bit windy in practice, but everyone rode really good and the crowd started gathering as they heard the bikes going. At 1pm Ricky Fowler (PGA Golf Phenom) and I did a rehearsal down on the football field. We were basically making sure the bikes wouldn’t tear up the Astroturf and that it had enough traction for us to ride on. Supposedly Ricky is a pretty good motocross rider; but I have to tell a funny story. He got a bike from Stillwater Honda; they showed up with a brand new 250F. He gets on it and rides about 200ft on rough concrete, went to turn left, and the front end washed out. He stabbed his foot, stabbed his foot and finally saved it. I was thinking, “Oh man, has this kid ever been on a bike before?” But he did save it, he did NOT crash, so it was all good. I think he hit a slick spot, like a painted area on the street and it started it sliding. Just kind of funny, but at least he saved it and no harm was done; and he was wheelieing later on and showing that he DOES have some bike skills! I guess I shouldn’t give him too hard of a time. As we were riding down the tunnel, my bike bogged and shut off. I kicked and kicked and kicked for a good minute before I realized I had left my gas off….so we all have rookie moments. After our riding on the football field it was off to a radio station for an interview, then to grab some lunch. Back to the venue about 4pm and hung out talking to friends and family until the FMX portion started at 5:30. Tod Hammock showed up to announce for us and did a great job. We actually had a bit of a show format, with a couple of jam sessions, individual runs, whip contest (which Jarryd made us look like fools), back flip comp, and then ended it with 4 trains. It was about 30 minutes total, super high energy and the crowd was super pumped. Every time Jarryd would do his whip, people would jump back from the railing thinking he was going to crash into them. And at times the crowd was almost silent (someone else mentioned they were too much in awe, to even cheer). Right after our FMX show, Ricky Fowler and I got to ride out onto the 50 Yard line and deliver the game ball in front of a sold out stadium (I think it holds somewhere in the 50,000 people range). It was super cool and a very big honor. As far as I know, no one has ever brought a game ball out on a dirt bike before. This was the only televised football game in the country that night, so pretty sure ESPN picked up at least highlights of our show and us riding out with the game ball. After delivering the game ball, I changed into street clothes and ran up into a Suite with the other guys to watch the game. OSU was killing them 21-0 at the half time, so we decided to go down and break down the ramp. We broke down super quick, and were pulling out of the barricaded area right when the game ended and people were running out of the stadium, so we missed the rush of traffic by about 2 minutes…perfect timing!!! By the way OSU did win the game; I heard it was 37-14.
 It turned out to be a great event, everyone rode good, no one crashed, the crowd was awesome, so it is always a great time doing events like that!!! Blake Shipman was there and filmed the Game Day Bash; he has put together a video that is on our home page of both www.cowboykenny.com and www.steelrodeotour.com, so feel free to check those out!!!
Friday we tidied up some stuff around the house and then headed off to Omaha, NE for the Mid America Motorplex Flood Benefit at I-80 Speedway on Saturday. They had a bike rally, and a bunch of hard rock bands including Jackyl and then Steel Rodeo FMX show. It was just me jumping here, so not quite the same show format. It was still a fun event; I jumped 3 different times for about 10-15 minutes each in between bands while they were doing set changes. The biker crowd was way different then the football crowd of Thursday night, it was interesting to see the differences. But the bike people asked a ton of moto type questions. They wanted to know about my bike, what gear I was in, and questions that a rider would ask; where the football crowd was just entertained and happy to be there, they didn’t even really know what to ask. Kimberly and I broke down afterwards (Thank you Toby also) and headed home.
Next weekend we are headed for a stock car track to do some more testing with an asphalt late model and then a K&N West car. So trading in the boots for driving shoes this week; and then the 23-24th we’ll be back in El Paso, TX for a Cycle City Promotions Arenacross race! See ya there,
Cowboy Kenny #690 |
 Bristol, TN 8-27-11
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We left home Tuesday morning and headed for Alabama; dropped Brooks off and left Wed morning for Bristol. I have been to several NASCAR races, but never Bristol and Kimberly has been to Bristol a bunch, so it wasn’t completely new, but was pretty cool. We made it in Wed afternoon, got our credentials and headed down to pit road to check things out. The Modified practices were going on. We ran into Ricky Carmichael and chatted with him a bit before he went out for his Truck series qualifying. We spent a lot of time talking with Kurt and Jim from RSMG and got to meet several of their drivers. Josh Richards is their Truck guy. We ended up staying down on pit road most of the day and watching the Modified and Truck races from the ground. We got radio headsets so we could hear what was being said between the spotters, drivers, and crew chiefs. It was super cool, I had no idea they talked back and forth that much. Ricky crashed into a wall, so we got to watch his crew tear stuff off his truck and try to fix him enough to get him back in the race a few laps down. Got to see a full on take out move! Kyle Busch moved up the track to Elliot Saddler’s line. Saddler probably should have backed out, but he didn’t (Busch’s spotter should have told him to leave a lane open, but he didn’t). They came together and flatted Kyle’s right rear tire. Nobody really crashed though; Kyle obviously slowed way down and waited for Elliot to come back around the next lap. Kyle moved straight up the track and fully took Elliot out, which did cause a crash. After the race we saw some very unhappy looking NASCAR officials walking towards Busch’s trailer….can’t wait to see what kind of penalty they impose on him. It was definitely a good 1st day at the track. We stayed in Norton, VA which Orbitz.com said our hotel was 34 miles from the track (maybe 34 miles by the crow flight, lol, it was about 75 miles by road). So we didn’t get back til almost 2am.
 Thursday the track was dark, meaning nothing going on at all. So we stayed up near our hotel and did some sight-seeing. Which if you’re from Norton, you know there isn’t much to see, lol. We went to Flag Rock took some pics there. It’s super high up on a hill where you can overlook Virginia and Tennessee at the same time. Then we got super lost trying to find High Knob….still don’t really know what that is. So we drove around and eventually found our way down to the Natural Tunnel. It’s an 860ft long tunnel that a train runs thru which is completely natural. There was also Carter Cabin there which was built in the 1700’s. In between Carter Cabin and the Tunnel was Lover’s Leap, where supposedly two Indians fell in love, but couldn’t marry each other because they were from 2 different tribes, so in the middle of the night they climbed probably a 3-400ft cliff and at first light jumped to their death holding each other in their arms. We headed back towards Norton and started eating dinner and it began pouring down rain, so that pretty much ended our day.
Friday we went back to the track about 2 in the afternoon to watch the Nationwide practices & qualifying. Michael Annette is the RSMG driver for Nationwide, so we hung out with him quite a bit and got into the Pilot/Flying J suite. Justin Algaier is another driver that Irish Saunders connected us with and he turned out to be a super nice kid! He led the qualifying for a long time as well; I think he ended up qualifying 5th or 6th! The races were good, we watched from on the ground again, but without radios this time. We walked around and got quite a few different viewpoints of the races. There wasn’t nearly the amount of carnage that the truck races had, but I think there was more close racing action. Kyle Busch and Joey Lagano came down to the very end, literally. They ended up crossing the finish line side by side about a wheel length apart….it was awesome!!! We stuck around after the race and just bench raced with some industry people, including a very well respected crew chief who has been in the business for 25 + years. But it was super late so we began the long drive back to the hotel.
Saturday, we ate lunch with Kurt from RSMG. Then we had a couple hours to kill, so we stopped to take a pic with a mini statue of liberty, and the biggest guitar I have ever seen! If you check out our Facebook Fan page at cowboykenny690, there are pics of both as well as most of the NASCAR stuff! So we headed over to the track about 4-5pm and made our way up to the Pilot/Flying J Suite. We pretty much stayed there most of the night watching the Cup race from up top. We had radios again, and switched off what driver we would listen to. The spotters reminded me a lot of listening to a rally co-driver. Not only what they would say, but how they would say it made a difference in what the driver did on track. It was a good race as well, quite a bit of passing, not too many crashes, but good racing! After the races we fought traffic for a couple of hours and still didn’t make it to the hotel til almost 2am.
Sunday we headed back to Alabama! We’ll spend the week here with Kimberly’s family and then head home. The next event will be Kicker’s Game Day Bash on Sep 8th in Stillwater. They are closing down Hall of Fame St in Stillwater and we’re doing an FMX demo right before Kickoff of an OSU football game. So pretty excited about that! If you’re in the area come out & watch!!!
Cowboy Kenny #690
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