RACEGUY Re-organizes

Back On Track

Most racing rule books are similar in that they stipulate that if you end up off the race track, you must re-enter the track as close to the point of exit as possible. That’s what this little keyboard exercise is all about. After what seems to be 13 thousand different personal issues knocked me off track, I’m going to attempt to get out of the weeds and back on course without losing all my momentum. I’ve also discovered that when you are a one man band, it gets awfully quiet when you leave the room.

Thanks for hanging in everyone. I appreciate your support and I’m glad to have you reading this at this very moment. I hope you’ll stick by us and continue to check in daily, and I hope you’ll share this site with your racing-inclined friends. There are more updates and features and new ideas being brewed up here behind the scenes, but first, I have to get everything here up to date. Once I finish this column and get the Fast-Five up at the points page, I’ll deal with the clean-up and some unfinished business.

While I use a blog template served off a blogger based domain, I really didn’t plan on using this as a classic blog. Just to clarify things, blog comes from the term “web log”. The original blogs were very similar to keeping a diary and leaving it open for everyone to read. Blogs were published as day to day journals of cancer patients, world travelers, students, journalists, stay-at-home parents, and even prostitutes. Many blogs could only be considered self-centered, self-important, self-serving, and mostly narcissistic (look that one up). I did not want to go down that road.

While I wanted this to be more web-site than blog-site, for some reason this column keeps getting just a little too bloggie (new word – you read it here first) for my liking. I’m promising that from now until the end of the season, I’ll try to stay true to my original intent. Once we’re into the off-season and beyond the banquet, you can expect this space filled with everything from analysis of the AMA Supercross series, to articles on how to be a better racer, mechanic, or how to build a better team. There will be a whole wet white season to slip in an actual blog here and there. For now, I’ll try to stay with the topic at hand, which is the championship series we’re all taking part in and following.

Pull up a seat

Introducing…

It’s always nice to start with good news. That means I get to extend, from myself personally, and from every member of our moto family, a heartfelt congratulations to Heidi and Tyler on the birth of the next generation of unstoppable speed, their beautiful son Talon. The more I think about it, I’m pretty shy on details like time of birth, weight, all that tech inspection stuff. Little Talon wanted the holeshot so bad he left the gate even before the card had flipped to 5, but he apparently arrived in (correct me if I’m wrong) London Ontario happy and healthy and elbows up. I hate to be nosey and intrusive, so I wanted to give the kids a chance to breathe before I started poking around.

Personally, I can’t help but see the poetry in that particular baby coming early so he could be born on the Walton weekend AND spur his all new dad into a much deserved and hard earned win and second Canadian MX2 championship.

Again, congratulations to all, including the new grandparents, aunts and uncles, and to the docs in Ontario for making this project a success. With any luck, we just might see the new first family of moto at the final Riverglade round. Congrats, kids.

Legend Down

I’ll never forget Scottie Lockhart telling me he had ridden with a guy from the island who was “fast”. By that, he meant skills that were current and competitive. That was saying something significant, since at the time, Scott was one of Canada’s top Pros. At that time, it was a rare thing to develop those skills riding on PEI and very few “island” riders ventured to this side of the strait regularly for regional CMA events, let alone challenge for championships.

I am reasonably sure it was through a lot of encouragement from the aforementioned Lockhart, combined with the “nothing’s gonna stop me” attitude of the hyper-kinetic kid from PEI, that the wheels put in motion then would become the moto-man/machine we all came to love over the next 3 decades.

So it began, with a barrel full of natural talent, a roached-out ride, and washed-to-death riding gear, a certain “islander” hopped a ferry and became eternally entwined in the lives of we long-timers and logged in as a legend for the up-and-coming kids.

It would be easy to fill a small and very interesting book with stories about Joe Doucette. Many would border on the unbelievable and others would render the book restricted to readers 18 and over. There is so much that could be shared about his racing, his off-track exploits, his amazing personality, and his incredible generousity. That is a complete and most interesting part of the Joe Doucette story that will eventually become a blog all unto itself. We’ll save all of that for the appropriate place and time. I’ll even include an explanation of how the original nickname became “Caveman”.

In the meantime, I am not here to write some kind of ulogy or epitaph for “The Joe Show”. It’ll take a little more than a high speed soil sample to shut Joe Doucette down, but with a certain age comes a certain breakability, and Joes last soil-swim is certainly going to slow him down for a while.

When a rider is down and not visible to the tower, the only way we have to figure out who it might be is to watch the lap sheets. As riders crossed the line, each was met with a sigh of relief. First, it appeared we were missing Scott Josey. A thousand thoughts went through my head including Alex’s upcoming trip to Walton. Then, Scott appeared on the finish straight and the lap charts said it all. Joe Doucette was now the only missing number. I needed to know right away what Joey’s status was. Sharing the tower with the director of the EMS services and his radio meant I didn’t have to wait long.

No matter which option we took out of the medic’s initial patient assessment, it was far from just a flesh-wound. (Joe Doucette would have dragged himself across the finish line long before if that was the case.) Not that anybody would want to, but take your pick of the following…possible femur, possible hip, possible pelvis. The possibilities are not really important, though. Are they? After all, Joe didn’t get to choose.

Between a broken pelvis and internal bleeding, Joe has already visited the operating room four times (last word I heard). The hardware, (plates, pins, rods) holding his pelvis together, may or may not become permanent.

As much as I hate to say it, Joe is about to begin a long and often painful rehabilitation process that will last, at least, into 2013. His recovery time will include time in a wheel chair, then, on to crutches, later, a pair of canes. At home, steps will have to go, to be replaced with a ramp. The need for other adaptations will also be discovered. Medications will also be a long term need. When you’re like me, with no medical plan, that is a frightening thought in itself.

As a working grunt, Joey doesn’t have a gold-plated safety net to fall back in to. In fact, for the most part, there’s no net at all. I hope his moto family is there to help catch him.

I’m sure, over the next couple of regional rounds, at Strang’s and Riverglade, you can come up with ways we can give Joey a hand up financially. The involvement starts with you. Don’t wait for others to get the ball rolling. I found myself incredibly touched when Scott Josey posted this. I don’t know if there’s a way to thank Darren Ings and the rest of these folks enough.

Dear MX fans and friends of Joe Doucette,

Most everyone knows by now that our good friend Joe Doucette was seriously injured in a recent MX accident in Nova Scotia. Joe is everybody's friend and is a self-employed mechanic. His recovery will take many months and like all of us, I'm sure he has bills to pay.

To help out Joe financially, I am pleased to announce that tickets for a major lottery in aid of our friend are being printed by Kwik Kopy Printing. Here are the details regarding this major fundraising initiative:

Permission has been obtained by the Province of PEI for Lottery #10350. The lottery has two prizes. The grand prize is:

One week of RCI timeshare anywhere in the world (6,345 resorts) by Resort Condominiums International (subject to availability...please visit http://www.facebook.com/l/uAQCLnMMSAQAx0PUacinQPlD4nTzyzLOmIgOtDc2aNhTAlw/www.rci.com). This prize is valued at $1,900 and donated by Darren Ings.

2nd Prize is a new high end cell phone donated by Mr. Paul Murray.

Tickets will be available by August 31st here at my business address at Century 21 Colonial Realty, 111 St. Peters Road, Charlottetown. Tickets are priced at $10 each. The grand prize draw date is scheduled for October 28th, 2011 at the Charlottetown Police Station.

Paul and I would like to ask the MX community to help out buy either purchasing a ticket or by selling tickets...or both!

Please contact me at (902) 566-2121 for details and tickets.

Let's make our friend proud with a show of support! Purchasing and/or selling a ticket shows him that we as a MX community care - while providing funds to aid in his recovery. Let's see what the power from our great MX community can do!

Sincerely,

Darren

Put together your own fundraiser. Hijack the 50/50 draw. Find a way to give back to a guy who has given so much to this sport, especially to the sport as it exists on Prince Edward Island. If we went by dollar value for entertainment provided, some of us would be donating thousands.

Heal in a hurry, Joe. Keep a stiff upper lip Doucettes. We’ll try to keep everyone updated when we get additional info.



Kurt Taylor photo

Well…

I promised to get this done, and I’m sincerely trying, but things keep getting in the way. The job interview this afternoon was well worth putting this column on ice for. The 10 hour shift I’m getting ready for just seems to be cutting into my writing time unnecessarily. Just hold on for a few more. I have one more Riverglade related ramble I’d like to add to this page.

More RACEGUY ‘Rites right around the corner.

Stand by for the rest of this column and the Fast-Five is next.

RACEGUY Resurrected

Missing in Action

August 21, 2011

I feel guilty and completely responsible for all the missing updates and news I should have been posting here over the past couple of weeks. It’s not that I’ve given up, or lost interest, but, as hard as it is to admit, and as wussy as it may sound, I have had so many critical things going on in my tiny little personal life that this “child of my intellect” had to suffer from being relegated to secondary status for far longer than I would feel comfortable with.

I don’t want to ferment this into some kind of piteous whine, or take the cheesy route and lay out all the things that could have gone potentially wrong – and how they did. Let’s just say that the last three weeks have been one of those periods in one’s life where the further you ride into the lap, the more difficult the obstacles and challenges become, to the point where you are barely holding on, hardly breathing, and having a harder and harder time talking yourself out of just simply giving up.

Giving up is not part of who I am. That meant spending every minute that I could find rethinking and concentrating on different approaches and finding new lines. It meant keeping up the pace and even intensifying it, when frustration and fatigue were trying to beat me into submission and send me home with my tail between my legs. It meant turning the urge to break down and sob into a chilling cry of “banzai” and a head on charge into whatever comes next.

As I write this, I am momentarily catching my breath, getting this “project” we share rolling once again, then looking forward to one more new start and two more big obstacles waiting for me the second I open my eyes in the morning. I wanted to pass on this message because I don’t want anyone to lose faith in me. I just need you to know it has hurt me badly being forced to sidestep my responsibilities to you, while at the same time, I hope it will help you understand it was simply something that HAD to be done.

We have now been through the biggest weeks in Canadian Amateur MX culture, and I was not there to mine for the good information and pass it on to all of you. We just endured the one week layoff between Sand Del Lee and Walton that would see every Pro team making deals with the devil for something truly magic to happen just in time for the finale, and I should have had plenty of interesting tidbits there. There were also the stories of the ringers and rule-benders, and riders surrounded by hype that fail to fulfill the promise.

I can’t help but think I have let down the kids and families from this region who bucked up and took their TransCan dreams all the way to the gate and had an experience they will never forget and guaranteed stories I’m sure we’d all like to share.

We start tomorrow morning with a new National #1 (Colt is back), a PROVEN MX2 Champ as Tyler Medaglia repeats, and simultaneously teams with Heidi Cooke to launch an all new genetic strain in the form of a super-hybrid, who arrived during the final National weekend of the series. The little guy’s name – “Tallon” couldn’t come with deeper motocross ties. Congratulations to all the proud Cookes and Medaglias.

Congrats to all Walton participants, no matter where you came from. Congratulations to new champions and rankings.

Congratulations to everyone fully committed to the final rounds of the Atlantic series. Standings are really exciting and will make this is war until the very last bomb is dropped.

I’ll get back on things before we turn a wheel in anger this Saturday. I’ll try to keep you advised when I get things back in some kind of order. Bear with me. Suggestions are welcome too!

Thanks for your understanding, everybody. Thanks for reading – and spreading the word.