Vurbwes Chilidog
Yesterday’s edition of MX Sports Center left us all with a HUGE cliffhanger with these big probing questions that you’re likely dying to have answered. As a follow-up, I called Jason Weigandt to see if he wanted to take the next installment, however he also left me with a cliffhanger, also known as a No Response. VMZ did reach out to his people for comment, but the MX Sports answering machine didn’t provide many answers.
Luckily for you, I can forge the river and don’t need to wait on Weege to bring you in from the edge. I was there, I experienced it firsthand, and can tell you how the magic of the 2005 MX Sports Center video show came to fruition.
July 2005
After I had foolishly said yes to Kevin and the prospect of a same day video show from Loretta Lynn’s, the DMXS crew decided the week before it all went down that they’d take a group trip to The Ranch and test this brand new internet card thing Brian Johnson had acquired from Verizon. These details are hazy, but what I recall most is they got four hours into the drive and realized they’d forgotten a laptop cord. I assume laptops then were much like today and last for 4.5 minutes before the batteries go flat. The crew had to turn around, head back to Acworth, GA, and turn yet another 180 to head straight back to Hurricane Mills. If there’s one thing everyone knows about The Ranch it’s that there is zero cell service, even today. Can you imagine what it was like in 2005? Needless to say, I remember this fancy internet card being completely worthless, much like the 15 hours of driving they did that day.
I went to Ponca City the week before Loretta’s that year, which was tradition for most families at the time. Seems so long ago I’d bet most people reading this wouldn’t even know that was a thing. Andrew Campo and I road tripped in his motorhome from Oklahoma to Tennessee and I remember arriving to my trusty old box van broken down on the hillside above the announcer’s tower. And when I say broken down, it was; wouldn’t start, move, or budge. We were stuck on a steep ass hill without a way to remotely level our editing, working, and sleeping space for the week. Par for the course for us…
I’m not sure that my best friend and DMXS “intern” Matt Crutchfield and I even game planned how this show was even going to work. Editing videos at that point had become second nature, at least within an in-home environment, so I’d bet we just thought we’d speed up that process.
Back then, we used to shoot to Mini DV tape which meant, much unlike today, we had to capture the footage to the computer in real time. Meaning if we both shot an hour’s worth of footage, it would take two hours to get it on the computer to start editing. Current technology, this is about a five-minute process. This technology would end up being one of the few massive bottlenecks for a show like this in 2005, especially when you couple it with the fact our office was more unleveled than the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
Whoa, whoa, whoa. VMZ reports are coming in that Weege’s people have finally made contact. We’re going to let our people talk to his people, perhaps get Kevin Kelly on the phone as well, and let these guys take over the next few installments from their perspective.
In the meantime, do yourself a favor and watch the entire video above. There are class highlights from Schoolboy that will blow your mind, the first few motos of the A class featuring Ryan Villopoto and Jason Lawrence, and some 85 motos with the likes of Jason Anderson and Eli Tomac, and our great, longtime friend, Walker Brightwell. RIP my friend.
We’ll see you back here, same place, same time tomorrow.
