Supercross The Movie - Dirt Rider Magazine

It's a monthly affair, and I can get pretty moody about it. Deadline time for my column and I need to figure what it will be all about. It can be a soapbox of sorts, ranging from a day in the life to an opinion I have the luxury of pushing at you in the front pages of the magazine. Love it or hate it, you're into it now.Hate it and I get enough mail, e-mail, phone calls, ego-squashing responses and unsolicited letters to my boss complaining that I have to pick on an easy target like the AMA. Then the next month, to divert attention away from something as provocative as a "Squid Filter," I write about sound, fuel, twin cylinders and two-wheel-drive. Whew, dodged that bullet! Luckily, I haven't published my "Squid Trap" column yet. Running a start photo from a race is a good way to shift attention away from my goofy smile and bald head.Sometimes I fall back on some story that borders on being funny while still having some substance, maybe even succeeding at getting a point across. A lot of my stories revel in success, especially in riding motorcycles. Great race finishes and magically trouble-free rides are a wonderful experience, but they don't make for much more than boasting material in a magazine column. My horn-tooting self-gratification only mobilizes the "anti-Jimmy" troops to put me back in my place. Sometimes I'm sorry that every desert race bomb run didn't involve a 100-kick start, in a battle to the death with the guy who got the 99-kick start. I'd crash (literally) into Mr. 99-kick and the bikes would fly apart, riders catapulted hundred feet away and desert tortoise mating habits interrupted from the impact. Failing all this, I've never ended up playing cards with my quickly found new buddy (my former racing rival) while sitting next to our seized bikes. (You know the story, the bikes landed in the sand throttle wide-open and blew up before we could crawl back to them and shut them off.) And I didn't win millions in the ensuing poker game, marked in small sticks and various-sized rocks, therefore not really needing this job any longer. Thank you, Super Hunky, for that.Often I have to use the so-called packaged columns. I've been told by other moto-journalists there are six types, but I can't remember what they are. I do know it helps to have friends with catchy nicknames. I use the monikers Big Air Tod, Diamond Dave, San Felipe Bob, Crazy Nate and Mojave Bob at will, almost always without permission. Our friendship can endure any rocky times created by the light I portray them in. These guys actually exist; all the stories are at least based on truth. Sort of like the movies. (Remember Supercross: The Movie? OK, sorry for that!)So this month I've been mired in the Internet Bike story and, surprisingly, have ridden less in the last four weeks than at any time in the past decade, injuries aside. Getting sucked into the endless and time-consuming nature of message boards and their developing universes is anything but healthy for my riding addiction. I can see when you are a dirt bike junkie and you can't ride (literally or figuratively), you can take on a whole new expertise on the Internet. I'm only a novice there, but I try and come across as a pro. I've mistakenly used my real name in my handle, I'll be going by "Numb Nuts" soon. My dad started calling me that and now a lot more people seem to be able to get my attention that way.Please enjoy this issue from the 50,000 associate editors on the World Wide Web who contributed to our Internet Bike story. And if you guys buy a lot of this issue, we'll surely do more of this in the future, right after the copycatting begins.And in wrapping up this strange and loaded, delightfully soft and fluffy and possibly controversial column, I'll end with a catchy last line...don't we always?