Phoenix

The second round of the 2008 season went underway this weekend.  I knew from watching Anaheim that this race was going to be an interesting one just from seeing the field of riders and the level of riding that each of them are at.  Joe had planned on Phoenix being his first round to start off his new season, but it didn’t happen.

This week, the CrossX Yamaha team announced that they had signed Joe to ride the Supercross class and the Motocross class for 2008.  Joe is excited about this new adventure as it will give him time to get on the Yamaha and be able to set up the bike to his liking.  The team wasn’t quite ready to make the debut at Phoenix, so they opted to sit this round out.

That left the door open for Joe to do a prior commitment that he had over in Dortmund, Germany.  He found out Tuesday that he wouldn’t be racing Phoenix, so I called his agent in Germany and got him a flight for Wednesday morning to head off to Germany. 

With the wet weather that we received over the weekend, Joe decided to go riding with Travis Preston on Tuesday.  They met up in town and were able to get some good riding in, well, at least for about 30 minutes.  Joe ended up high siding in a corner and landed in a bush that didn’t really budge all that much.  Instantly his elbow swelled up and he spent the rest of the day icing it.  He was in a lot of pain come Wednesday morning before we left for the airport…so much that he almost didn’t go overseas.

After the almost 20 hour flight to Germany, Joe arrived the next day to more icing and elevating of his hurt wing.  He rode the weekend with some other Americans that had made the trip including Mike Brown, Travis Preston, Chris Whitcraft and Willy Browning.  His weekend didn’t end up as well as he had hoped with some bad crashes over the three days of racing.  I am just glad that he is able to walk away from it all.  It’s hard when he travels to race and I am not there to watch and “take care” of him or the things that need tending to.

Joe flies home tomorrow and will have his elbow checked out on Tuesday.  I hope that it isn’t as bad as we think, but hopefully the racing this weekend kept it pretty loose.  One of the hardest things about this sport is keeping healthy week in and week out.  With Anaheim 2 being so close to our house, I hope that he is able to get back on the bike with very minimal pain.

If all goes well, we will see you at the races this weekend!