As usual, my brother and his family, my sister and her family and my family all descended upon my mother’s house for Thanksgiving. She lives in Hot Springs Arkansas. My brother and sister live in Texas, so it is sort of a central meeting spot for all of us. We have been doing this since my mother moved there about 13 years ago. We ride mountain bikes, burn things in the back yard (she lives in the woods) and drink our share of beer (not the kids, although some of them are getting old enough). Basically, it is mayhem for 5 days. Kids running everywhere, we have built a little piece of singletrack in the woods by her house, we have built a whole bunch of freeride features there also. We all refer to it as our redneck Thanksgiving.
We rode ourselves silly for the week. Every day we did some riding at either the XC race course in town, or at 2 different trail networks. We also found a freeride area at Burns park in Little Rock and a dirt jump park. We only had XC bikes, but we made due.
All I had was my 69'er. Not the best jump park bike, bu we made due!
Hanna reaching for the back side. Her bike is better, but not really the right gear.
Ali putting it together with the right bike, and pretty much the right gear.
So, the week before we left for Arkansas, Scott and I met with Mark Junge from Vesrah and discussed our season for next year. Scott and I both need a year of focusing on local races after our adventure this past year. Mark is completely into that. Mark is still working out his overall deal for the Vesrah Suzuki endurance road racing team, so how we fit into that is up in the air a bit. But regardless, Scott and I will still be on Suzuki’s for next year and running our little offroad wing of Vesrah Suzuki.
There is a huge season available to us for next year. 12 or so D16 Harescrambles races, 12 or so races in the new Wisconsin XC series, there are 3-4 OMA races that are close to Wisconsin, 2 National Enduro’s that are in the Upper midwest, 1 National Harescrambles in the upper midwest, 6-8 D16 Enduro races and of course Crawfordsville GNCC. Before I even add mountain bike racees, I could cover my schedule with more than 20 motorcycle races next year.
I hope you like the new look of our website. There are a few more new things that will be coming in the next month or so as well. We have combined the 2 websites from last year into 1 site. For the time being, you can still get here from the old sites, but you should update your saved URL to http://www.vesrahsuzukioffroad.com. We wanted to have one site where all of our sponsors would be represented, our individual blogs could be found, our schedule and results can be found and profiles of our bikes. This year we will be campaigning a few different bikes. Scott is going to be running a 144 project bike, an RM 250 and hopefully and RMZ250. I will be running an RM250 dedicated to Harescrambles and and RM250 set up for Enduro racing. It is going to be a fun year.
We have a new sponsor for both Scott and I for next year. Moose clothing has stepped in to provide us with the best gear for our pursuits. I have always loved their stuff. I am pretty excited to be riding in the best gear for next year.
It is time for buckling down on a training program. Scott’s wife Mary, runs a business called Up and Over Fitness. She was a Olympic level mountain bike racer in a previous life, and knows more about fitness than most anyone. I have stacks of programs here from my prep last season that I need to organize into a program for this season. I don’t really look forward to all the time in the gym, but I know it pays off when hour 2 of a Harescrambles race comes along or that last timed section of an Enduro.
Joe
303 Off-road 
