With the New Year less than a month away, I thought I would take a minute to reflect on some of my lasting moments from 2008. I brought in the New Year (2008) with my friends from Topar Racing in the little town of Cuchara, Colorado. We gathered at a place they call the Dog Bar and it was Colroado cold with a ton of snow on the ground. As people lit up the karaoke I sat back and watched Robbie Maddison bust out that huge air in Vegas. Later that night I watched Hot Rod with Amanda and Nicole Paradisa in the back of the Benzo as Tammy and Tony drove us back to Trinidad, Colorado where I spent my official first day of 2008.

I don’t really recall what happened on the first day of 2008, but shortly after I was once again with the crew from Topar, including Larry “Game Face” Sandoval and PJ Marques From Valcom Motorsports as we headed out to round one of WORCS in Phoenix. This was somewhat the maiden voyage for my motorhome as I had not driven it in forever and I had finally stripped all the stickers off it and got a fresh coat of paint. A couple of hours and ½ of what had to be the sickest burrito on planet earth later, we were at the giant Giant station outside of Gallup, New Mexico when I had my first official run in with the law for 2008.

OK, I didn’t really do anything, but PJ Marques did. The heartless dude was blocked in so he decided throw my motorhome in reverse and carelessly backed into some wacked out lady’s beat and rusted pick up. She went loco and claimed that we smashed her entire rear end in and trust me the thing was toast a decade ago. It took forever for the cops to show and tell her that she’s out of her mind and send us on our way to the races with only a warning. The party erupted shortly after in the motorhome and to this day PJ and I talk about how bad our stomachs hurt from laughing to the tune of Game Face and his antics.

WORCS got underway and we were pumped as Bobby Bonds and Kyle Summers rounded out the podium behind Kurt Caselli. This was also the first time that Corey Dry had contested and he rocked a 2^nd overall in the Open B after falling shy of the 250F B win on the last lap due a swing arm bolt coming off. I always love to watch am national kids at WORCS races. On this weekend I got to see Eli Tomac once again punk almost every grown man on big bikes as he railed his 85 pinned through the Arizona desert. It’s going to be sad to see Tomac on big bikes for that reason alone.

We headed back to New Mexico and the brutal winter weather knowing that we would return to Arizona in a few more weeks for the National Hare and Hound at Globe. Mid February came around and there I was trackside shooting images and watching Ian Blythe, Destry Abbott, Gary Sutherlin and a ton of other riders bounce around the desert while Brent and Wes were at the Atlanta Supercross witnessing Trey Canard bringing it home in front of the packed Georgia Dome. I remember getting a ton of text messages from Ashley Fiolek that night while listening to the live audio broadcast. We were both so pumped on Trey and although I sat halfway across the country, for some reason I felt like I was right there that night.

Stallo ended up heading out to New Mexico the day after the Atlanta Supercross and the next few weeks were spent getting ready for Whitney. I will cover that journey in the next part of my blog, so stay tuned.

Campo