Vurb Moto Blog – Entry 1 What’s Ryan Villopoto up to these days? Well, since I got hurt there really hasn’t been much going on. The good thing for me and the boring thing for everyone else is that I actually have a chance to take some time off and essentially do nothing. I don’t have to travel a whole lot or follow any sort of real schedule right now since I’m not riding and I’m not testing. I’m kind of just on my own time just trying to do rehab on my knee. I go to physical therapy three days a week, I just started to ride my bike again and I’ve been doing some stuff in the gym so other than working out and rehab, there isn’t much I’ve been doing. It’s allowed me to have some stuff planned like going to Hawaii and stuff like that, but really I’m just hanging out and working out. This all started when I tore my ACL on an 80 about six or seven years ago. I just let it go and it would pop out here and there but I was always able to go back and ride and do everything I needed without it really bothering me, except when it would pop out. This year, I popped it out again at Milestone and just did something different. It basically got caught up in the joint and felt like every time I was going to walk it was going to pop out so it finally had to get fixed. Hangtown was just a last ditch effort to see if I could ride and make it through. Even if I would have made it through with a 2-1 or a 1-2 or even a top five, there were still 10 races to go. I could see trying to work through three races towards the end of the season or something like that, but there was still almost a full season to go through even if it all went halfway decent. It was a tough call but an easy call too because I had 10 races and there was no way I could do 10 races with my knee the way it was. It’s tough to watch from home. I know that if I was out there I could be winning. I’m not going to go and say I’d win every race, but I know I’d be winning for sure. Ivan seems like he has picked it up and that’s pretty good. He’s coming into it, Chad is winning races. Some guys are coming around with Mike out and now it’s an open ballgame. Josh won at RedBud, Ivan took his first win at Colorado. We are going see quite a few winners I think. For me, it’s all about getting ready for 2010 now. I got my feet wet this year. Supercross and Motocross definitely looked like they were going to go better but it was still good. Supercross is harder to learn how to ride a 450 for me, so I’m going to go out and try to stay up there fighting and battling with James and Chad. That was my goal last year and I didn’t get a lot of it done, but my goal is still the same. If I’m racing with those guys, then it will be good for me. I know Loretta’s is right around the corner, but it is probably my least successful national. I got like six or seven seconds, but only won one championship. But I always go back and normally ride a bike. I won’t be riding a bike this year, but I typically ride the new model. Now I’ll go and hang out and check out the racing. It’s always fun going down there.