Jordan Booker Blog entry 2 – February 2nd 2012
Right, so I decided that the original plan of doing a weekly blog seemed like I would actually spend more time sat here typing about stuff, rather than actually getting out and doing it! It’s been a very hectic month since I last spoke to you all in January, so I’ll do my best to try and tell you about as much of it as I can actually remember…
The first major event that happened, was that we finally got to move into our rental home on the 5th. Having the basic amenities like your own kitchen, bedroom and garage out here makes life sooo much easier than moving from hotel to hotel from day to day. And, it’s always good to have a nice place to come back to and chill out after a long hard day of riding and training. The house is located in an area of California called Canyon Lakes, which is a private gated city surrounded by a huge lake. We were lucky enough to find one for rent with its own pool, hot tub and even our own private dock on the lake, complete with our own boat! We were pretty bummed to find that the boat only actually does about 6mph, but it’s still really cool to just go cruising around checking out the non existent chicks out here!
We’ve been extremely lucky with the weather out here this year, in the years past it’s rained for days upon days, and sometimes it can be almost as hard to find somewhere to ride out here as it is at home. But, we’ve been here for just about 6 weeks now, and I’d say there’s been probably about a total of 4 hours of rain, so lucky us! Haha. This has meant for a lot of hours on the bike, which has been great. Over the last few weeks I’ve been pairing up with Tommy Searle at the tracks quite a lot, and have been doing a bunch of motos with him which has really been helping my speed a lot. Hopefully by the time the season starts I would have learnt how to get out of 2nd gear!! On a serious note though, I feel a whole lot stronger, fitter, faster and just generally a lot more confident coming into this season compared to how I felt at this point last year. We’ve made a lot of improvements on the bike whilst we’ve been out here, too. I’ve logged probably a good 40 hours or so of riding on the Honda since I first rode it in October, and I am still learning more and more about the bike every time I ride.
Although I’m really loving life out here in the sunshine, and even though I’m dreading coming back to the miserable -10 degrees weather back home that everyone has been telling me about, I’m actually really excited to come home and start testing stuff on the race bike! When I come back, the team starts testing suspension and motor stuff almost straight away, so I can’t wait to see how fast the bikes are. Hopefully I’ll be able to hold on to her! There’s no better feeling than seeing your fully prepped race bike and taking her for a ride for the first time. And, I can assure you that the Buildbase Honda’s are going to be one of the best looking bikes out on the track in 2012!
The highlight of my trip out to California this year, had to be the little British gathering we had out in the famous freeride hills in Beaumont. I’ve watched tons of videos of guys riding out there hitting big doubles and hill transfers. At first I only thought that there was going to be a handful of us out there, but once we pulled up at our meeting point, (Adam Chatfields house) there was about 8 trucks parked up outside, all with about 2-3 bikes in the back. So, at least we wouldn’t look suspicious driving out into the hills with about 20 bikes.. nobody would suspect a thing right?? Even the famous Myles Richmond from X Games came out to play. Which, was lucky really, as he was the only person there who had any idea where we were going. We could have got there and rode around for hours without finding any jumps or anything, but he knew where all of the little hot spots were. Just to name a few of the riders, there was Mel Pocock, Tommy Searle, Adam Chatfield, James Dunn, Chris Povey and more. The star of the day though, fresh off of his first sx podium was Zach Osborne. He ended up hitting a couple of jumps that me and Tommy got a little scared to do. All in all, it turned out to be a pretty successful day. We found a few big jumps, and threw down some pretty good whips. Everything was going great… that was until I obviously got a load of wire wrapped around my front wheel whilst we were riding back to the trucks flat out. Thats always the way it seems to go, one minute everything just dandy, and the next thing you know you’re on your ass spread out across a trail in the middle of nowhere, trying to figure out what just happened. All was good though, just got a bit banged up and bruised, which was lucky.
I’m on my last few days here now, I’ve only got today and tomorrow on the bike, before we go to Anaheim 2 on Saturday, and then fly home on Sunday afternoon. It’s been a great start to the year so far, now I can’t wait to start the next phase and start racing, and see all of you at Hawkstone!
I’d also like to quickly take this chance to thank a couple of my new sponsors, Ryno Power and 100% goggles. I’ve known Ryan Hughes from Ryno Power sports supplements for a couple of years now, and it’s great that he’s helping me out with the nutritional side of things. I’m also really excited to be working with 100% goggles. They’re an old company from back in the 1980’s, but are new to goggles. It’s really cool to be one of the first people wearing a new product, and to wear something that both looks good and functions better than any goggles I’ve used before. And, obviously a big thanks once again to Dave Thorpe and everybody at Buildbase Honda, DC shoes and One Industries.
Peace out, speak to you all soon!
JB114
Keep a look out for Jordans new website in the next couple of weeks!
