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Omaha, NE  8-28-10

The 1st ever American Legends DareDevil Stunt show was an awesome event!  It took place at I-80 Speedway this past weekend.  We (my cousin Dennis and I) drove up Friday morning.  Pretty much sat around all day Friday and watched them build the landing for the fmx jump and a big long distance jump for Trigger Gumm.  Our landing got done right before dark, but it was also super windy all day, so we just hung out and bench raced a bunch with everyone there.  It was great to see the Kosiski family again (if you remember I-80 is where I raced a bunch of Late Model stuff a couple years ago).  Ed’s son Kale actually won the overall Championship for his class in the go-kart racing Friday night, so big congrats to another Kosiski racking up Championships!!! 

Saturday, was much like Friday, sitting around all day waiting on wind to die down.  At times I would say the wind was gusting upwards of 40mph, so it wasn’t even a question, no one wanted to ride.  There was a car show called “In the Sticks” across the parking lot, so we went over and walked through the car show for a bit, drummed up some people to come to our show and then went back to the speedway.  About 5pm they had a bikini contest that all the dare devils and motocross guys got to judge.  I’ll just say NE, you are a very lucky state!!!  Directly after that it was kind of our last chance to practice and the wind had died down to about 20mph, so changing the mental focus big time we headed back to the infield and got in some practice.  Terri Russel and Willy Watts from United FMX were there as well as Mad Mike Jones.  We started the ramp off short about 50ft and worked it back, due to the wind and a couple of the guys had never hit my take off ramp.  But practice was all good minus the wind, so there wasn’t a lot of tricks going down, but at least we got comfortable on the jump.  We practiced right up until the show was about to start.

The show, started off with 4 sky divers dropping in and landing in the middle of the speedway.  Then they went on to introductions.   Man, there was a ton of stunt people here, lol.  Kristine Kneivel (Evel’s Grand Daughter) sang the National Anthem that was kind of cool.  The 1st stunt of the night was from Spanky Spangler doing a high fall from a crane into an air bag.  I think he dropped about 80-100 ft.  Next up was a car jumping about 60mph into a stack of cars piled 4 high.  That was pretty cool; the top car got launched about 80ft.  Immediately following that was the 1st round of FMX.  We did about a 5 minute session.  For some reason my wrist buckled on the 1st jump, so I rode, but didn’t really do many tricks after that, I was just struggling to make anything happen.  The next stunt was 2 roller derby girls that got lit on fire and had a foot race about 100ft long.  I can’t believe how long they were on fire for and didn’t get burned.  Then Trigger Gumm and Derek McClintock did a distance jump.  The gap was probably 120-140ft, but I think Trigger went close to 200; he went super super long and barely rode it out.  Derek made it super smooth about 160ft.  We were up again immediately after that.  Had a 10 minute session this time, and I think everyone felt more comfortable this time around, I know I did.  We jumped about 7 minutes or so, then I pumped the crowd up and did a back flip.  We went into some trains, and just before the 4th train, the lights on half the stadium got turned off.  There was still enough light for one person to jump, and on a flip you’re not looking at the dark black metal ramp anyways, so I gave the crowd one more flip!  The next stunt was they had several people get blown up in cars, where they would blow the car up and then people came running out of the fire.  Next the oldest stunt man alive at 83 years old, has been doing stunts for 64 years got an award for his contribution to the Dare Devil world, and then got on an early 80’s model PW50 and rode through a burning ring of fire, it was pretty funny…I just hope I can still get on a bike at 83 years old, lol!  Big Mike Cook (short person) rode an XR50 through 8 burning walls of fire!  Then there was a car pulling a trailer filled with burning hay.  He hit a jump on the front straight away and jumped over an RV and into a pile of other junk cars.  There was quite a bit of pyro technics that went off when he hit, it sounded like a major explosion, but it was pretty cool how the fire went everywhere as well.  And then the final stunt of the night, Spanky Spangler did a car drop from about 80ft into a pile of other cars.  After the show we all went to the Checkered Flag Concession Stand and hung out for a bit, signed autographs and ate some food!

All in all, it was a great show, the crowd really enjoyed it, there was less people than they had hoped for, but it wasn’t completely empty.  It was cool for us to be around soo many people in the stunt world, I’m not even going to try to mention names, because I will leave someone out or get it wrong, but there was probably 12-15 people that were involved in stuff somehow and most had major film stunt credits to their record.  So it was cool!  But I think that’s it, Dennis and I are headed home today.  Pretty sure I have next weekend off, I think the next thing I have confirmed is a rodeo in Perry, OK on the 17th-18th of Sep doing an FMX exhibition for them.  So hope to see you there!!!

Cowboy Kenny #690
 
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Sedalia, MO  8-22-10

Well, it’s been a couple of weeks, just thought I’d keep you guys updated!  The weekend after Craig’s Charity Event, I went out to Thousand Oaks, CA for a personal appearance at Borderline Bar & Grill Saturday night.  It was a pretty fun evening, a local cycle shop sponsored the event, so we got up on stage and threw out some items (hats T shirts, etc), I hung out signed autographs and just bench raced with a bunch of moto folk from that area!  Sunday, I went over to hang out with my buddy BP and his son…and yes, he kicked my butt again in racquetball.  I hadn’t played in a very long time, so even his son smoked me this time.  Anyone in the Stillwater area want to play racquetball hit me up, I need to practice so I can redeem myself next time, lol.  I flew home Monday afternoon, and immediately started unpacking, prepping my bike, and repacking to leave Tuesday morning.

Tuesday I headed out for Sedalia, MO.  The MO State fair is going on and Terri Russel was going to do a half time demo during the stock car races.  It rained all stinking night in OK, I left about 7am in more rain, and was down to driving about 50mph on the highway at times in the rain.  So, I called Terri & asked if it was raining there.  He said it was sunshine and dry, so come on over!  I drove through rain almost the entire way, about an hour from Sedalia, it finally stopped raining.  We got practice in about 4-5pm and everything was great!  We were supposed to jump during intermission so 8:30-9ish.  I got in the truck to take a nap and woke up to the sound of raindrops.  It was only about 6:30, but it rained for about 5 minutes.   Then stopped, so they put street cars out on the track to run it in, finally put Late Models back on the track under green flags, about 20 minutes later it started to rain again.  It repeated this process about 5 times before we finally called off the FMX demo.  I snuck out of the track about 11pm and they hadn’t even started the A Features yet, so I feel sorry for the people that stuck around all night and then had to be at work on Wednesday morning early.  Hard core racers and fans there in MO! 

Eric with 2A Management lives about an hour from the track in Kansas City, MO.  He & his wife just had a baby boy about a month ago, so I spent the night with them and then hung out a bit on Wednesday.  We ended up playing a round of golf.  Probably the worst I have played in a very long time, and I’m not a good golfer to begin with, lol.  I know we spent more time looking for balls in the water and the woods then we did on the fairways.  Jon even hit one into the putt putt area on accident, and I think one may have gone into a mechanical store room….we may never know.  But everyone had a good relaxing day and there was no blood shed!  After the golfing I had had all the entertainment I could take, so I headed back home!

I got a called Friday about midday  from Terri saying hey, this track that got rained out…they wanna do the fmx demo this Sunday.  So repacked the trailer and once again headed back to Sedalia, MO.  This time there was no inclement weather in the forecast!  Everything went very smoothly; the drive was good (except the air conditioner in my truck that has been working intermittently).  We did practice around 5pm again on the front straight, then got the ramps out of the way, so they could run hot laps and heat races.  Joe Kosiski a buddy from I-80 Speedway where I raced in Omaha had come down to race.  He won his heat and there was some good racing in almost all the classes!  Finally it was intermission time.  We rolled out the ramps, got set up fairly quickly (it’s always a crap shoot when you have people helping who don’t do it all the time), then Terri Russel, Willy Watts, and myself started off the show!  Unfortunately Willy only got in a few jumps before realizing the reason he kept casing the jump was due to a flat rear tire, so he had to pull off and watch from the side lines.  I’d say there were 2-3,000 people there.  Terri and I jumped for about 10-15 minutes before finishing up with a few trains at the end.  He hits the ramp really slow and was in front, so I got pretty close a few times, but nothing too crazy!  After the show we busted butt to get everything off the track and the B Features started up right away!  I actually got to sneak out of the track without having to help fold up the landing and hit the road by about 9pm and pinned it all the way back home!  Had a Red Bull and a Mountain Dew, heck even when I got home at 3:30am I still couldn’t sleep,  lol.

Had a pretty nice relaxing Monday, took my truck to Cushing and Doug at Coop’s Garage fixed my A/C (we think), thanks Doug!!!!  So this week I’ll be hanging out at home til Friday when I’ll head up to Omaha, NE.  Greenwood, NE at I-80 Speedway on Saturday will be a big stunt show (I assume they are racing cars as well), but Trigger Gumm is gonna try to jump 300ft, Big Mike is gonna ride a motorcycle through 15 walls of fire, Dr Danger will be there doing something crazy I’m sure, and then you’ll have freestyle motocross, so it could be a really crazy weekend for sure!  Hope to see you out there!

Cowboy Kenny #690
 
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Craig Morgan’s Charity Ride Day 8-7-10

Another super fun weekend in Nashville…I’m starting to like that place…may call it my second home, lol.  The weekend off was great.  I tinkered around my shop getting some projects I had been putting off done.  Then Saturday, I went up to Ponca and watched the Grand Nationals for a while.  It looks exactly like it did 10-15 years ago when I was racing there, except the kids keep getting faster and faster.  I remember when it was a big deal to jump down the over/under on big bikes.  Kids on 50cc’s are doing it now, fearless little guys!  Sunday, I went to the lake, rode an air chair and my jet ski for a couple hours during the heat of the day, so that was great! 

Now onto the ride day!  I had left my truck at Craig’s house in TN a few weeks ago and flew home.  I flew back in Friday before the event.  It seems like most of Friday was spent in the car or an airplane driving or traveling somewhere.  I left OK about 4:30am, and shuffled ramps around most of the day Friday picking up and dropping off both the landing ramp, and take off ramp.  It was my take off ramp, but we borrowed Robbie McQuery’s landing ramp.  Got to thank him for letting me borrow it!  There was a couple hours in there that was for a cocktail reception for the ride day, so that gave a little break.  Shouldn’t have to do this, but just in case any of you don’t know who Craig Morgan is…just Google him, lol.  He’s a top Country Music artist with I think 11 #1 songs or 11 top ten hits including “Redneck Yacht Club”, “Little Bit of Life”, “That’s What I Love about Sundays”, “International Harvester”, “Bonfire”, and his current single “This Ain’t Nothing” which is currently #13 on the charts and headed up!  Craig opened up the reception by describing what the charity is going towards; and it is called “Billy’s Place”.  It’s a home for temporarily displaced children.  Not quite a foster care place, but similar.  He explained it like this, “as a police officer if I pull over a woman (with 2 kids in the car) for speeding, run her name and she has an arrest warrant.  I have no choice but to arrest her.  The kids then get taken to Child Services where they sit and wait for hours and hours til they find a suitable place for them or find the father, etc etc.  He said sometimes these kids end up sleeping on couches at the office, sometimes they aren’t well fed or taken care of and it’s just not a pleasant thing for them.  So Billy’s Place will be that warm loving environment for the kids to be until their situation is permanently resolved.  If you want more information check out www.craigmorgan.com & look for the charity button.  At the reception he also welcomed all of the sponsors including the Presenting Sponsor of Fly Racing, who made some killer plaques for the other sponsors; and all the pro riders Andrew Short, Kevin Windham, Randy Hawkins, Fred Andrews, and myself.  It was a good time just getting everyone together to introduce local sponsors, media, and riders alike!

Saturday was the 1st official day.  We headed for the farm, where it was going to be held about 7am.  Got there around 8am and started setting up the ramps.  Thank you thank you thank you, to the guys & girls that helped set it up, that took a huge load off of my shoulders!  Craig opened the ride with a rider’s meeting where he also introduced Randy Kirk a former linebacker for the San Diego Chargers among a few other teams.  From there, the motocross track was opened up for a pro rider exhibition.  Andrews and Hawkins even got out on the track and made some of the jumps.  I think everyone rode for about 20 mins, not too long, but just enough for the crowd to be woo’d with the likes of Kevin and Andrew!  Craig got out and tried to ride with the pro’s…he went down pretty hard.  He swapped out over a quadruple step up thing.  He said it was the hardest he has ever hit the ground and not been knocked out.  Unfortunately no cameras caught it, but he did swap super hard. 

After the moto demo, we moved over to the freestyle ramp set up.  Fellow FMX rider Robbie King was there also (riding an ’02 450 Enduro bike, I might add).  Robbie actually man’d up and hit the ramp set up 1st, big props to him for that.  We rode for about 10 minutes, weather was beautiful, it’s been a while since I have ridden without any rain or wind in the mix.  My whips didn’t feel all that great though, I think the set up was just a little further then 75ft & it was messing with my head, but ulwell.  Just about the time, I went to start pumping up the crowd for me to do a back flip, I had trouble turning the corner before the ramp, looked down and I had a flat front tire.  I started to call the demo short, go change a tire & come back later on, but then I thought about it.  Your drive comes from the rear tire and if I’m not going sideways like a whip, the steering isn’t a big issue.  So I just went for it…a back flip with a flat front tire!  I don’t think the tire had anything to do with this, but I did come up WAY short, about 4 ft short actually, but was able to ride it out no problem.  Stopped to talk to the crowd and told them about the flat, they were pretty amazed.  Two guys that were there with Fred Andrews jumped in and started changing my tire, so a big thank you to them…I’d still be there on about my 20th pinched tube by now! 

There was also a trail ride loop that was a part of the ride day; it was a 4 mile loop.  I think there was close to 400 riders; about half were quads or utility vehicles.  I think in a 4 mile loop I was on the trail about 1 mile of it, as we were constantly passing people.  There was a group of about 6 or 8 people all similar speed riding together.  Craig was in that group, we also had GoPro cameras on, so I was riding even closer to people then normal because of that!  It was a great time, just passing each other, passing other people, and the trail was super fun! 

After the trail ride, Whitts BBQ was there for the feast, and then off for some hill climbing.  I always thought I was a pretty good hill climber, but man I got put to shame for sure.  Craig was doing decent, until a leaf got hot and literally put his KXF450 into flames.  They got it out with only minimal damage to some radiator hose connections.  His son Kyle was ripping up the hill.  I don’t remember seeing Fred Andrews or Randy Hawkins riding.  But Kevin Windham and a local rider (don’t remember his name, but he won the overall of the Mid South XCountry series, Dustin, Derek, something that starts with a D).  He pretty much schooled everyone riding an older 125.  The hill had a little jump at the bottom, a couple curves, some rocks, and some tree routes, and he made it up almost every option of the hill, I think I only made the easy option.  But I’m going to claim 2 excuses, one it was freestyle suspension and two my number of attempt were cut short when I had a flat rear tire this time, lol.  I know I know, there are no excuses in motocross, I just flat out got shown up.  That pretty well ended the ride for all the pro guys; we sat around and hung out with fans & riders for a couple of hours, while people were still out making trail ride laps.  A few of us got cleaned up afterwards and went for a 5 star restaurant in Dickson, TN called Lugo’s.  Yeah, that’s right there is a 5 star restaurant in Dickson, lol.  Great food, great people, great company, and great times!

Sunday, Craig had invited all his pro riders & some friends out to his house for some target shooting.  Craig is a huge hunter, as are most of the riders that were there, as well as being a former military Army Ranger I believe and serving sometime in law enforcement…he’s no stranger to weapons, lol.  For this he even brought in a buddy of his Rusty who I think served 12 tours with Delta Force….he’s pretty much a bad to the bone kinda guy.  Ricky Carmichael also showed up for Sunday’s festivities!  We all gathered at the house first for breakfast.  There was a huge 24”x36” birthday cake left over from the night before and then 2 different people bought 2 dozen donuts (that’s right 4 dozen donuts).  They were all placed in a separate room from the actual breakfast that Amy Andrews cooked for everyone…Windham named that one, the “evil room”, the entire table was covered in straight up sugar (I was in Heaven)!  Then we headed down to the shooting range on Craig’s property.  We started off with some smaller 22 AR’s.  Of course they were top of the line, super cool 22’s, probably some sort of military only issue.  All the other gun fanatics were commenting on them!  We shot clay pigeons that were stationary at 20 yards for quite a while, and then moved to some other targets that were I think 50 yards and then 100 yards.  Even some of the wives & girlfriends joined in.  Before we broke out the bows, we had a little contest.  50 yards, with a rifle, closest to the bull’s-eye, winner takes all.  I think Fred Andrews got the closest, but we excluded him from the contest as a “too much experience” guy.  Windham, Carmichael, Short, Randy Kirk, Randy Hawkins, and myself were left.  It was all for fun and games until Craig threw in the prize, of whoever won, got a brand new Hoyt Bow.  All the smack talking just got serious!  I can’t tell you who won the event, cause it was being filmed for Craig’s show, but I will tell you there was some very close competition, so close infact there was an appeal, some video play back, and then eventually a rematch.  After the shooting, it was time for some interviews for the TV show and then off to Craig’s concert!

Part of the charity ride day was also an acoustic concert with Craig Morgan and friends, the friends turned out to be Aaron Tippon and Montgomery Gentry, also two very well known Country music acts.  The concert was great, it was held in the Renaissance Center, which only holds about 500 people, so it was a very intimate setting, without a bad seat in the house.  There was a silent auction at the beginning with autographed apparel from several country artists, and then some outdoor hunting equipment in the auction.  Aaron Tippon opened up the show, he and Montgomery Gentry both had shows the night before and the night after this, they literally climbed off their bus did the show, and then left half way thru to get to the next town, lol.  Aaron came out in sweat pants, and flip flops, sat on a stool and played!  He brought his wife out as well, and she helped him sing a few songs.  He sounds just like he did 10 years ago when he first put out some of his hits, awesome!  Eddie Montgomery and Troy Gentry came out with Craig and they sort of took turns playing songs.  It was a cool setting, a lot of talking in between songs, made it feel very personal, more like a fun jam session then a stage performance.  Troy’s daughter came out and sat on a stool next to him while he played, it was just a cool setting.  Of course Eddie had his signature flat brim hat and microphone stand in hand, and wasn’t afraid to use them!  At one point, Craig had mentioned how hard singing is sometimes, and I guess some of us motocross riders were bagging on him, saying all he does is sit, play a guitar, and sing.  So he brought all the riders up on stage and made us sing Redneck Yacht Club.  It was absolutely hilarious, I’m surprised the audience didn’t leave, as 6 motocross riders with no singing ability had to have been painful to listen to, lol.  But it was all in fun!  Craig also had some sort of video contest and the winner, an 11 year old girl, got up on stage and sang “I’m Country”.  Which is one of Craig’s hits that is a very up tempo, kinda tongue twister song, she nailed it!  Absolutely awesome!  The concert was a very big success, and I think everyone had a blast, I know I did!

Monday, I swapped ramps around again, almost clipped a railroad over pass bridge with the landing.  I’ve seen pics before of semi trucks that have hit over passes.  Luckily I wasn’t going real fast, saw a sign 10’ 10”, and didn’t think much about it, but remembered Robbie telling me the legal limit is 13’6”, this ramp is 13’4”.  So I slowed up even more, and sure enough it wasn’t even going to fit.  So backed up and got routed around on some other back roads in TN.  Pulling a 14,000lbs landing ramp isn’t the easiest thing on some of those back roads, but we managed.  Dropped by Craig’s house to say good bye and finally hit the road home about 6pm Monday.  Sorry this is a couple days after the event now, but just didn’t have a chance to write it til now.

My Mom & Dad actually got to come to this event.  It was their 36th Anniversary this weekend & Dad is a huge country/bluegrass/Nashville fan, so they hopped a plane and got to come hang out for the weekend.  Congrats on 36 years and hope you had as much fun as you looked like you were having!!! 

This event was being filmed for Craig’s show called Craig Morgan’s All Access Outdoors; which airs on the Outdoor Channel.  I think it airs Tuesday afternoon and Saturday mornings.  Actually the hunt I did with Craig last October down in TX is supposed to be airing this Saturday Aug 14th, so be sure to check that out, set your TiVo’s for the season, as this Charity Ride will be the final episode of the 13 episode series.  I think all the pro riders as well as Craig were wearing at least 1 (I had 3) GoPro cameras during the ride, the shooting is on there, the concert everything, so make sure you check it out! 

I have quite a few pics from this weekend, thanks to Kimberly!  We will probably put them in their own folder under the pics page, so make sure you look there as well.  Also have a youtube clip of us on stage, will try to add that link somewhere here too.  So lots of good stuff from this weekend, sorry this turned out soo long, just too much good stuff to leave anything out!!!  Next weekend I’m off to Thousand Oaks, CA for a personal appearance at Borderline, if you live in the area come check it out!  Not 100% sure when the next riding event is, I have quite a few shows tentatively booked, so keep checking the schedule page here to see when something gets confirmed!

Cowboy Kenny #690

 
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Chicago, IL  7-24-10

After a very fun week in Nashville area, I went home for just over 48 hours, and then headed up to Chicago for a BMX Dew Tour event.  They have changed some of the Dew Tours from a full multi sport event, to only a single sport (such as BMX).  But they still incorporated an fmx demo at them.  Then they have 3 events that are full multi sport with Skate, BMX, and FMX contests.  So anyways, headed up to Chicago for a demo with Jimmie McGuire, JJ Romans and myself!

I flew in Thursday morning, as we were supposed to have practice Thursday evening for a local news crew.  But something happened and they moved our set up.  The spot they moved us to had some BMX viewing tower structures in our runway.  BMX Dirt Finals was supposed to happen Fri night, so we just cancelled practice all together & waited for the BMX Dirt stuff to get moved after their finals. 

Friday, we knew we were going to have the whole day off.  Basically just hung out & relaxed at the hotel in the morning.  Then Jimmie, his Dad Jim, and I all went to the Field Museum to go sight seeing for a while.  Some other friends met us there and we all walked around for several hours.  Jimmie & I had never seen a Dinosaur exhibit before, so it was pretty neat.  I’ll try to throw some pics up of some of the stuff.  They have Sue, a T-Rex that was found in South Dakota 90% complete and still intact!  They also have a baby mammoth, Lyuba, that fell into a lake & froze.  It preserved the mammoth so well for over 43 Million years, that scientists were able to see what the mammoth had to eat before it died….pretty crazy stuff! 

The Field museum was only a few blocks away from the parking lot of Soldier Field where the Dew Tour was being held.  So we walked back, hoping to get to see BMX Dirt Finals.  On the way it started sprinkling, so we walked thru the parking garage instead of outside….by the time we reached the other side of the garage, it looked like a monsoon outside.  People were running into the garage to take cover from the storm.  It was lightning, thundering, and rain coming down sideways (remember this is the “windy city”).  They even ran all the workers and volunteers out of the tents and trailers at the Dew Tour, and made everyone come into the parking garage.  So then you have a couple thousand people standing in a parking garage watching it rain and there are 20-40 BMX athletes who brought their bike with them.  Yep you better believe it turned into an impromptu BMX flat land contest in the parking garage!  Unfortunately security came and broke that up….I thought they may have a riot on their hands at that point, but everyone was pretty mellow about it.  After being held captive in the garage for an hour or so, they finally called off the event and sent everyone home.  So, that was pretty much it for Friday.

Saturday we were sort of on a holding pattern.  Because the dirt towers were in our run way and they postponed dirt until Saturday, we had to wait until their event was over.  Woke up to more rain, they had the bmx dirt course all tarped Fuzzy Hall and his crew did a fantastic job of drying out the course, but it didn’t stop raining til almost noon.  So they practiced, but again postponed dirt finals until 5pm (we were supposed to ride at 2 and 5pm).  Then 5pm, they ended up running the BMX Vert final, moving dirt back until 7pm.  At that point they finally just cancelled our stuff completely.  Knowing that even after the dirt event was over, it would take an hour or so to move stuff out of our runway.  So, basically I got to hang out all day at the BMX Dew Tour and watch the guys kill it!  Michael Spinner did a quadruple tail whip on a box jump.  That is spinning the back end of the bike FOUR times around, absolutely crazy, several 900’s and 1080’s, 720 tailwhips.  The BMX dirt course was insane, I don’t think I would jump through that on a pit bike, it was HUGE!  Front flip tail whip attempts on dirt, they had a cool jump on/jump off thing, I’ve never seen that for BMX.  Just a killer BMX event…makes me wanna break out my 20”!!!

That pretty much sums up the Chicago Dew Tour trip; it was a fun vacation for me at least!  I think I have next weekend off, the Ponca City Amateur Nationals are going on, so I may swing by up there and try to watch one day, a Randy Travis concert somewhere near OKC on Friday night, may hit that up.  But the next real event for me is Craig Morgan’s Charity Ride Aug 7-8th.  Til then……

Cowboy Kenny #690
 
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Macon, GA 7-17-10

Nashville was an absolute blast! Sunday I drove from Chattanooga to Dickson, TN to Craig Morgan’s house. It was raining, so we didn’t get to ride any there, but he did invite me to his concert in Marion, IL on Monday. Got to ride on his bus to Marion, watch the show and then ride back to his place that night. I’ve seen Craig 5 or 6 times now in concert, but always a very high energy show, that is just awesome!!! Rodney Atkins opened for Craig, he has a new song called “Friends with Tractors” that is hilarious!!! On the bus ride home, Craig also let us listen to a few new songs that are possibly going to be on his next album…it won’t be out til next year, but is gonna have some killer songs. If you liked his hit “Bonfire”, you’ll love the new album! “Chicken on the bone” is gonna be an absolutely huge slam hit of a song!!! Craig had to leave Tue afternoon to go to California to film “Are you smarter then a 5th grader”! That should be interesting!

I went from Craig’s house Tue afternoon over to Bucky Covington’s house and spent a couple of days there! We did a little bit of trail riding on Tuesday. He has some fun stuff to play on behind his house…man I wish my rib had been healthy! Fun trials type rocks and great hill climbs! I also invited Craig Mattox (keyboard player for Joe Diffee). Craig was riding a 125 and kept up on the hills incredibly well (especially for a piano player). I do have to give Bucky props for being the only one that didn’t crash all day…although he didn’t make it to the top of the hill either!!! After the riding, we had some great BBQ (Tennessee people do know how to cook)! Then Bucky had a little jam session set up in his garage. There was probably 20-30 people there from friends, neighbors, sound guys, band mates, his twin brother Rocky, and then me the dirt bike rider, lol. It was great times though. Ducky his lead guitar and back up vocalist for the band was there singing and playing. Rocky and Bucky’s drummer Mitch switched off on the drum set, Bucky even took over the drums for a bit. It was great, seeing people who know what they are doing with instruments making music and having fun in a laid back setting! Someone would call out a song, and everyone else would just sort of jump in. The music pretty much flowed non stop…however the lyrics were a different story, lol. But it was definitely a super fun night! Wednesday, we took Bucky’s boat out to a lake. Brian O’Rourke from Team Faith used to race jet skis, so he brought out a couple of Wave Blaster type watercrafts; and we just had a great day at the lake hanging out. I tried to stay off the Wave Blasters to be easy on my rib, but you know I couldn’t sit there all day, so yes I did ride a little bit, but I kept it pretty mellow and didn’t hurt myself…which is always a plus! Thursday we didn’t do too much, just hung out and relaxed, which was also very nice! Bucky left for a show Thur night. Friday morning I headed down to Macon, GA for the next event.

The Evolution Freeride tour started off in Canada and this was the 2nd US round. It was a stand alone fmx event with 4 riders and then 3 bmx guys. I don’t know how many people are in Macon, but it seemed like a pretty cool show for the smaller towns. We were inside the Macon Centerplex which was good, cause it came a down poor outside while we were riding. We actually pulled a double header. We rode a show at 1:30pm and then another at 7:30pm. The 4 fmx guys were the original 4 riders from the Jager SX tour in 2009, Dan Newth, Thomas Alves, myself, and Eric Farr. So that was really cool, it was like SX rides again, lol. This was also the 1st show I have ever done on slick concrete, we used Coca Cola to try & tack up the concrete which worked great on one side, but the other side it was applied too thick and it didn’t dry up until show time. So no one was real comfortable, but we all got the job done. Eric had a good crash in practice, but after that everyone kept it up on 2 wheels! I still wasn’t able to do most of my tricks because of the rib, but I did have a good time riding and think we all put on a good show. And in the SX fashion we ended each show with a 4 rider back flip train, definitely brought back memories, lol. After the event was over and we had signed autographs for all the fans, I headed back towards Nashville (drove til about 3am).

Sunday, Craig Morgan had invited me to the Mid South Cross Country awards banquet where his son Kyle was getting an award. So I went and hung out…that was by far the biggest and best awards show I have ever been to on a local level. I think only the AMA Supercross awards show was bigger. The event was held in the Wild Horse Saloon in Nashville, probably 500 people, HUGE trophies they were bigger then most of the riders that were getting them, tons of contingencies, great food, and just a very fancy awards banquet (I remember when they were held in someone’s barn and everyone brought pot luck bbq), lol. After the awards thing we went to the track where Craig’s charity ride day is going to be held to see if an fmx jump will be possible…and you bet it is! So I’ll be back here Aug 7-8th for the ride day. If you want more info on it, check out www.craigmorgan.com and look for the Charity Ride Day flyer! Headed home tomorrow for a few days and then off to Chicago Thursday for practice and then an fmx demo at the Dew Tour event there next weekend!

Cowboy Kenny #690
 
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