USA Insider No.134: Ridiculous

Welcome to our weekly web-exclusive column, Transmoto’s USA Insider presented by Ipone. Penned each week by our man on the ground, Transmoto’s US Correspondent, Jason Weigandt, the USA Insider presents the story-behind-the-stories of the AMA supercross and motocross scene.

Daytona is ridiculous. It’s bacon-wrapped ridiculous. It’s a steak wrapped in bacon and drizzled with chocolate sauce. And beer. And bacon. It’s debauchery and a celebration of everything that is American – and that said, I think you folks would really enjoy it.

It’s very hard for me to write this week’s column and here’s why: I was just in Daytona! And Bike Week will both pump you up and suck the life out of you. At least things have diversified a bit so you can take smaller bites of the ridiculousness. These days, Bike Week starts with the Daytona Supercross by Honda on Saturday night – a race that just keeps growing. The crowd this year had to be the biggest ever – it had to be near 60,000, and those fans were seriously pumped the whole night. The track isn’t as long or nasty as it used to be, but it’s still ridiculous. A lot of people will tell you, “It’s more like a motocross,” but no motocross track is this rough and also packs in real supercross stuff like jumps you have to time right, whoops you have to set your front wheel on, and even on-off table tops. This year’s track was mellowed out a bit because heaps of rain came in, but that just meant trading steeper lips and landings for mellower ones covered in ruts. I know fans are going to beg for the old days of longer, hotter, rougher Daytona, but I can’t image a single rider at the 20-minute mark was trying to land a rhythm section perfectly while dealing with kickers, ruts, chop and square edges while thinking, “Oh only two laps to go? This is easy!”

A few hours later (really a few hours, because in the US we set our clocks ahead one hour in the spring for some reason, and this scheduled “spring ahead” time takes place the Saturday of Daytona, coincidentally) the Ricky Carmichael Amateur Supercross kicks off. Most people are milling around at midnight on Saturday and then they’re back ready to race themselves around seven hours later, which is really six because of the time change. Then it’s racing from sun up to sun down both Sunday and Monday. Or, if you want something even gnarlier, you can head 30 minutes up the road and compete in the three-hour AMSOIL Grand National Cross Country (GNCC) season opener instead. Usually that’s a sand whoop fest but this year they traded sand for mud bogs.

By Tuesday the GNCC pack is heading north for Round 2 a few days later (and every amateur rider has blisters to deal with) while the Daytona people are clearing out the dirt bike stuff and switching over to road racing. There’ll be heaps of road racing around the Speedway and good-old-only-in-the-US flat-track racing on a dirt track from Thursday through Sunday. But you know what the craziest part is? There are 10 days of motorcycle racing activity inside Daytona International Speedway, but that’s not the biggest part of Bike Week. Oh no. The real main event of Bike Week takes place about 10 minutes away downtown, right on the beach. That’s where hundreds of thousands grizzled, bearded, veterans of the Harley-Davidson scene hang out, with their biker babes clad in leather and hanging on the back. Most probably couldn’t care less about supercross, GNCC, or even road racing. They’re just showing off custom choppers that cost as much as Ryan Villopoto’s KX450F and have zero practical use besides just sitting on the curb and looking cool.

Meanwhile, time for more beer. Yup, it’s ridiculous, and you’d love it.