Here I am again and it has been another couple months since I posted a blog. But it has also been another few months of hectic schedules and crazy traveling for me also. Since I last wrote I have raced my first gncc, been to spain, portugal, france, bulgaria, germany, austria and of course almost every part of the UK, raced a GP, and flown in a fighter jet. Among a bunch of little things along the way. 

 So first things first. I did in fact enter a GNCC race in Florida. David made me go at it full serious also with hand guards and giant gas tank. I felt pretty funny being full on woods racer for a day but it turned out to be worth it. I managed to win the thing by about 5 minutes and got to race in whooped out sand for two and a half hours in the process. Suprisingly it was really enjoyable and I might just do it again next year. 

  After that I flew back to Europe and attended the first two rounds of the world enduro championship. It was really interesting to see what an enduro is actually like since I honestly had no clue what those races were all about. They seem like they would be fun to race because it involves so much different stuff and you really need to know how to ride your bike in everything. I don’t think I could ever learn how to do half the stuff those guys have to do on their bikes just to race an enduro. So I’m thinking I’ll just stick to the motocross thing.

 After that we headed to Bulgaria for the first GP. That is a country that really makes you miss being in America. Or anywhere that actually seems like your safe. We arrived on Friday and had to drive well over two hours to get to the track. Once there we made sure my bike that I was getting from the Utag Yamaha team was ready, as well as signing on and walking the track. On saturday we had two 30 minute practices. In the first practice the fastest times were between me, lancelot, and laier. I was able, on the very last lap, to put down the fastest lap, but that didn’t count for anything unfortunately. It was the second practice that was for qualifying position and it was down to us three again. But again I went out on the last lap and started putting down my fastest lap. I was close to 2 seconds quicker on the first half of the track but on the second half I got caught behind a slower rider and then a yellow flag was out and I missed pole by less then half a second. I ended up taking second position in qualifying. That is where all the good stuff ended for me though. We had our first moto at about six in the afternoon on saturday, due to the live TV broadcast on sunday. Around the first corner i was about 6th place but somehow i got hit from the side and it locked my front brake on and i came out well near the end of the pack. The first lap was chaos back there and it ended with me getting landed on off this big uphill jump. It was my fault entirely because I got cross rutted going off the jump. That was caused by the fact that I couldn’t see any of the ruts because the sun was blazing my eye balls. That pretty much ended that moto for me even though I did manage to work back up to 14th with a bent up bike and all. The next day was not good for me either. I could barely move at all and I just had to try my best. I was near the front off the start but I had no strength in my body to make any passes and settled for 6th. Still I had the third fastest lap time behind lancelot and laier. I’ll just have to wait until portugal to see how I can do actually racing against them. With a better start I hope.

  When we left Bulgaria we flew strait to Austria to visit the RedBull headquarters. The city they are located near is Salzburg and it is one of the coolest cities I have ever been to. Not to mention it seemed like RedBull owned the majority of the stuff there. The coolest thing we got to do was visit Hangar 7. This is a hangar at the airport that they have open to the public and is full of F1 cars, Indy cars, jets, helicopters, a ton of paintings and a load of other stuff I can’t even remember. When we were there we had the priviledge to go up in one of their fighter jets. That’s right I said one of them. They have about 4 amongst a bunch of other old military aircrafts. It was insane and one of the best things I have ever done. I felt like Goose up there looking out for german bogies. Top Gun style. 

 Now I am back in America and its nice to be home. While I am getting used to the Euro style of doing things and learning to eat what you can get, I really enjoy being back here. It won’t be for long though since I’m flying back across the pond on Saturday. I have to race Portugal and then spain the first couple weeks in may and then its strait to glen helen for round 1. wish me luck, hopefully good. TG

 Right now in FLorida it is 75 degrees, sunny and beautiful out. The perfect conditions for riding a dirtbike. Where am I? In the freezing and dreary United Kingdom. While 90% of the dirtbiking population wishes they were in Florida riding everyday right now I have chosen to go to one of the most miserable places to do anything outside. I’m just hoping that riding in bad weather with worse track conditions makes it easy when I get back to the USA. It’s good training either way you look at it but I am sad to be missing the only time Florida isn’t a hundred degrees and humid. So to everyone enjoying the beautiful weather back home, ENJOY! But I’m going to be the one smiling when the conditions aren’t perfect when the races come along. Until then. TG

I hope everyone had an enjoyable new year. The last month has seemed to be non stop for me. I spent the beginning of December in the isle of man training and trying to get faster on my dirtbike. If I wasn’t able to accomplish those things I was definitely able to get used to riding in frigid weather over there. After that David and I flew back to Puerto Rico to spend christmas with my family. It was funny how we went from one extreme temperature to the other. It was really nice to go back home and just sit around for a week though. While I did enjoy being down there, the day couldn’t come soon enough that I could ride my bike again. I only had a couple days after christmas to get a last bit of testing on my 09 before heading to Texas for the wma cup on new year’s day. 

  The WMA cup was held at Freestone county raceway and was a good race to see where I was after all the work I had been doing during the off season. Practice day went really well. I felt solid on the track and my bike was working awesome. I was consistently a couple seconds faster then Patterson all day which I was really pumped about. I felt really smooth on the track and everything was coming really easy even though the track was getting really rough. Things were a little different on race day however and I knew they would be. The track didn’t get rough at all because it was all little bikes and beginners racing on the day we raced. It ended up just being a race at terminal velocity. You could go as fast as your bike would take you and there was nothing to slow you down. The first moto I was trying to play catch up after a mediocre start but was only able to pull in Patterson to about 3 seconds. The second moto I got the hole shot with Patterson in second. I was getting frustrated that I wasn’t able to pull away as quickly as I knew I should. Towards the end of the race I started to break her and get a little lead but I made a dumb mistake and went down handing her the win. It was good to see where I stood after part of the off season and I know I’m on the right track. I have a lot more work ahead of me but I am more driven then ever and hopefully this will be the year I can put it all together. I’l keep you posted and until then, Have FUn! TG

well the Motocross of nations has come and gone. It was another awesome experience with many unforgettable moments. To start off with we had a seven person van for six people and seven big bags with no tie downs. Getting everyone fit in there and then figuring out how to drive on the opposite side of the road was chaotic. On thursday we drove two and a half hours to meet up with the U Tag Yamaha team to get some practice on the bikes we would be racing. It was because of them providing us with bikes and support that we were able to go and compete and this years MXON, so a huge thanks to all those guys over there.  Everything at donnington got started on Friday. We had to go there and get checked in and do some press stuff. On Saturday it was finally time to get on the track. The track was pretty easy to learn even though there were some big jumps. During qualifying I had a decent start and was doing well until i Jumped off the track. I still was able to get back back on the track and put in some alright laps. Then on the last lap I got cross rutted and went down hard. I was really fortunate to get back up and have nothing happen to me but it definitely made my moto the one to throw out. Luckily Gino put in a consistent finish and zach came out with a vengeance and was easily the fastest guy on the track. So we were able to qualify. Unfortunately, on Sunday during practice  Gino crashed and broke his collarbone.  So it was just me and Zach left to represent. The track was one of the gnarliest tracks I have ever ridden. Combining a really rough track, which they didn’t work on all weekend, and it being really slick made it extremely difficult to ride. I tried my best and thats all I could do. I am just really grateful for the opportunity to be able to represent the country I grew up and learned to ride dirtbikes in.  Until next time. TG

I might be the biggest procrastinator around. I have really dropped the ball on keeping you guys up to date on everything. So here is a brief recap of what has been going on in the last month. First off at southwick I had some more Gieger bad luck. In the first moto I ran into Tatum Six’s bike. I thought I avoided it pretty good but I guess I still clipped it. It ended up bending my back brake pedal under my frame. I essentially was riding with the back brake on until it completely locked the wheel up. Oh well, I guess those are things you have to deal with sometimes. The next race at steel city I really just wanted to have fun. I struggled a little in the first moto and slid out in a corner on the last lap. Fortunately, I was finally able to put it together in the final moto of the season and get a win. The only bummer was that I lost the overall for the day by two points and a final spot on the podium for the year by two. Its pretty incredible that even with the terrible season I had I was still in the hunt for an overall podium. Anyways since then I have been back to Puerto Rico to surf a little, avoided some major hurricanes and went to the RedBull MotoGP in Indy. Up next for me is the MXON in England. I have a good feeling its going to be a mud race. Thats motocross though and it will be fun either way. So stay tuned and I WILL keep you posted. No more procrastinating. TG

 I survived week one of SX testing. That in itself is a huge accomplishment for me. Before this week I had never ridden a SX track at all. Going into it I knew I had to take my time because I didn?t want to make a dumb mistake from rushing to get everything figured out right away. Instead I set goals for myself everyday and I was pretty good about accomplishing them before the sun set on that day. I am feeling more and more comfortable every lap I do but it is definitely a whole lot different then outdoors. The hardest part for me was judging the speed for jumps because the trajectory of them is so much different then motocross. In outdoors you get more distance the faster you go but in SX the faster you go the higher you go. I mean you do still go further but you have to also account for how much higher you go at the same time.  I still have the hardest thing in SX left to work on and that is the whoops. TP came out to the track to ride with me and tried to convince me how easy they were by going thru them with no feet on the pegs. He decided he wouldn?t ever do that again but he still made it thru them. Luckily I have a WMA race this weekend and I was able to use that as an excuse to postpone having to go thru them then. But it is still inevitable. I?m going to call next Tuesday my D day because that?s when I have to get it done in the whoops. So I hope you all can wish me luck that I will survive that day. Right now I am off to Washougal to hopefully get a win. Oh crap! I forgot my boxing gloves. Wish me luck TG

You may be wondering what any of these have to do with each other. As I mentioned I was going to Redbull Flugtag last weekend and these were just some of the teams there. 

  It was one of the craziest things I have ever personally seen. There were something like 30 teams of the most ridiculously crafted machines. There were pirate ships, fire trucks, giant rubber duckies, even a sandwich, all with the idea of flying of a runway built thirty feet above the water. Needless to say none of the ones I mentioned did anything other then drop strait in the water. The only one that actually flew went something like 91 feet which was awesome. I wasn’t just there to enjoy a good time while drinking redbull cola though, I was one of the judges. First thing I had to do was walk around and judge creativity of the teams’ crafts. I got a chance to see all the crafts up close and it was amazing to see the work that they put into to building them. There was a team of local firemen and they had built a fire truck. There was incredible detail to everything but I don’t know how they could ever think it was going to fly. I mean it was a giant red fire truck. Anyways after judging creativity we had to judge performance and showmanship. That basically involved what the teams did before they pushed their crafts off the edge. All the teams put together little routines that they would perform to some pretty creative music. Some of the routines involved sword fighting and even a mario cart race but most of them were just some ridiculous dance routine, which were memorable to say the least.  All in all it was good fun and quit the experience. Now I am out in California riding supercross and getting ready for x games. Free from the tropical storms and all the rain of Florida. I’ll give you guys an update about how that is going for me next time. So until then, have fun TG

So this is my blog space. I get to write pretty much whatever I
want and you guys can read it or not. Like I can tell you how I
spent two hours in Ikea today because every track in Florida is
flooded right now. I don’t know why they call it the sunshine state
when the day only consists of about four hours where it isn’t
raining. Its been a rough time for me being able to ride the last
couple weeks. Last week while I was out practicing I crashed pretty
good and got a concussion. That put me out for about five days
because I don’t like taking chances when it comes to head injuries.
Luckily the surf came up and I was able to surf all weekend, which
made it not so bad. Then I only got two days in this week before the
monsoons came. At least next week I will be out in California where
it definitely doesn’t rain. I’ll be heading out there to get some
supercross testing and practicing in before the X games. But before I
do that I am going to be a judge at the Redbull Flugtag event. If you
have never heard of it, it’s where people build these ridiculous
looking crafts, then they get on top of a 40 foot scaffolding and
jump off. The point is to fly further then anyone else before hitting
the water. The majority of them are failures and they just go strait
into the water and it’s pretty hilarious. You can check it out at
redbullflugtagusa.com So if any of you are going to be around Tampa
on Saturday you should check it out because I know you aren’t going
to be dirtbiking this weekend. Anyways I’ll keep you guys posted on
how it goes and I’ll try to get some pictures. Until next time, you
can be glad you don’t live in the rain state.

TG