etnies

etnies Two Wheel Tour Presented by Rockstar & Boost Mobile - Part 1

Posted by: Cropley | Monday, November 5, 2007 | 2 comments

This trip was all about having a good time with friends on our way up North to do a FMX demo at the Chukchansi Gold Casino in Coarsegold, CA at the end of the trip. Marc Burnett from FreestyleMX.com brought his ramps out to the Casino to help us put on the demo/fund raiser for the families of Chris Ackerman, Jeremy Carter and Stephen Murray. We had a destination and purpose...now getting there would be the fun part!

Twitch chillin' at Jackpot

The Second Annual etnies Two Wheel Tour is now over and all had a great time! Here's how it all went down:

We started out going to Carson on Wednesday the 24th to pick up some Harley's from their media department. Everyone was supposed to be there at 10am so we could leave by 11. I lied and told everyone we were leaving at 10am so they would show up early, but that didn’t even work out so good! Potter decided showed up around 12:45, so we got a later start than we were planning on.

With 12 guys on Harley's, we left Carson, CA and headed up to Santa Maria and Jackpot Ranch. Jackpot Ranch is several hundred acres of big-ass dirt jumps that are built into the hills...it's bad ass! Deegan, Potter, Twitch, Nate Adams, Faisst, Kenny Bell, Kyle Loza, Derek Garland, Dan Pastor, Trigger Gumm, OX, Fitzpatrick and a couple other guys all came out to Jackpot for the first two days of the trip. Damion from Boost Mobile, Jordan from Rockstar and Twitch all brought out motor homes to Jackpot for a couple days. Twitch's motor home was in the shop so our buddy Marc Howser at Richardson's RV let him use one of his RV's for a couple days. A bunch of the guys started riding when we got there and were all jumping this big gap by the entrance of the ranch. Twitch and Nate Adams flipped the jump and Twitch had his film crew there for his upcoming video. We hung out there for a while after dark and then rode this bitchen windy road 20 miles. Good times.

That first night we went into Santa Maria to get a hotel because we had way too many people to stay in the motor homes. After pulling into the hotel around 9pm we all went to the bowling alley on the corner and ordered up some pizza and drinks before trying to bowl. We got done bowling around 11:30 and I snuck out of there to get some much needed sleep.

After barely getting my head to the pillow, I get a phone call from the front desk at 3:50am. The lady asked if I was with the crew that rode the Harley's into town and immediately my mind started racing. What did they do this time? My job as the team manager is often compared to a babysitter. When things break team managers often pay for it. If someone gets arrested we bail them out. Even after planning this trip for about 2 months you can still never be prepared for all the things that happen on the road. So, the guys at the desk said that a bunch of the Harley's are lying on their side out front of his office. At first I thought someone hit them with a car or something. When I got to the front, sure enough there were 6 bikes knocked over and resting on the bike next to them. Some asshole had pushed the bikes over! There was a palm mark on the first bikes gas tank that slid up the tank where he had pushed the first bike over. That took down the first 3 bikes with the 3rd bike coming to rest on Trigger's bike. I don’t think the asshole was happy with that so he went back and pushed over the bike next to Trigger's and that took down about another 3 bikes and they come to rest on my bike. All the bikes except one that was parked there on the very end took some damage. The hotel had a security camera and we could see the guy run away but you couldn’t make out a face. Bummed.

Harley helped us out with some new 08 bikes and the one that took the most damage was the Screaming Eagle with a custom paint job. I had the hotel call the police and Alexi from Fuse and I waited for about 30 minutes before we decided to go back to our rooms and wait for the cops. It only took the sheriff 4 and a half hours to get there to take a report. And he did not seem very concerned about it at all. We were all up around by that time anyway and started to get ready to head up to Monterey for the night. I have someone pull me aside and tell me that someone in the group punched the motor home driver in the eye the night before, so that started me out in a bad mood for the day.

We all ate some food at the hotel and took off for the 1. When we got out of Pismo Beach there was a bunch of fog and it got fairly cold for a while and none of the guys had gloves or anything very warm on them...it was all left in the truck. Loza had a problem with his clutch at this time, also, so we met up with the truck to fix his bike and get the guys some warm clothes and gloves. After a quick meal at Carl's Jr. we were back on our way up the coast. We got through the fog after about 30 miles and had a great ride up the coast to Monterey. The sunset was amazing and if you haven’t gone up North on the 1 before, a good portion of it is on a huge cliff overlooking the ocean.

When we got into Monterey it was dark and we were all super hungry so we got 4 cabs and headed downtown. We found a good restaurant called Lollapalooza in downtown Monterey and we were ready to eat. We got some drinks at the bar and had to get two tables because we had so many people. Damion had about 5 guys at his table and I had about 14 at our table. Before we even ordered Damion's table was paying the bill so OX and Potter started throwing lemons and ice at each other across the two tables. We were so hungry we had too try to keep them calm before we got kicked out with no dinner. The people there were so slow it took an hour and a half just to get our orders in. After a $1,400 dinner we went to a bar down the street for a couple drinks and we ended up back at the hotel around 12.

Check back soon for Part 2 of the etnies Two Wheel Tour coverage!