While some of you may have been chasing your racing dream across the country for years, some of you may have barely left your home state. Sure, there’s nothing wrong with either, but I strongly urge you while fuel prices are still reasonable to get out there and explore our huge nation. I’ll admit, I’m completely jaded on travel. I’m on the road more than I’m at home these days. It’s airports, dinners alone, the alarm going off at 3am in the room above me in my life. However, there was a time in my life when I had barely been more than 4 hours from my home, and that’s what made this adventure so much better.

 

It’s 2008. There’s a 22 year old Tyler Porter trying to start a dirt track media empire to afford his racing habit while spending his days at a chemical plant drawing piping diagrams. I had already started my now defunct website fightfordirttrack.com but I knew about as much about pro racing and the behind the scenes lifestyle as my dog knows about getting enough exercise. Just a few months prior I had met Steve Murray, another 22 year old who had a completely different path in life and was living out his dream racing on the Grand National Championship circuit as national number 51. It was totally a chance meeting. I was going to Springfield, Illinois to do some amateur racing and my close friend Billy Gruwell was doing a lot of custom helmet painting at the time. My job was to deliver helmets, and Steve just so happened to be one of the customers. I had Steve’s phone number so I could meet him in the right spot, we had a quick chat, the helmet traded possession and I went on about my weekend. Little did I know Steve would not only take me on a life changing trip, but he would also become one of my best friends.

I was hard at work one morning, chatting on instant messenger (because kids, that’s what we did before texting) when Steve popped up and asked if I wanted to go on a two week road trip with him to California to pick up some bikes. This West Kentucky boy had never been further west than Springfield Missouri, so the only thing I had to figure out was how to ditch work for two weeks! Truly, my job wasn’t that important. There were at least 4 other people at the plant that could handle my duties, so my manager green-lighted it for me to be gone for both weeks of my earned vacation. That’s right, I was going to get paid while I was gone for two weeks!

Murray and I met up in St. Louis, Missouri where we had a mutual friend, Art Randal, who still owns a bar next to Busch Stadium. The place is called Kilroy’s and it’s the only baseball bar in the world with awesome motorcycles hanging in the ceiling. You HAVE to visit this place. Art agreed to keep my truck stored at his house while we were gone, so all of the pieces fit together perfectly! He also tossed us a few drinks and loaded our cooler with some orange energy drink called “180” that he was trying to get rid of, but that will come into play later. Our first stop was Jefferson City, Missouri. It wasn’t far to our first stop, but there was a race nearby that weekend and the race shop for Factory Suzuki was located there. Steve made a phone call and the team said we could crash there for the weekend. Here I got to see the inner workings of a factory race team, but also get to see the hospitality that is so unique to flattrack. While Travis Smith had his area where he was building JR Schnabel’s race weapons, Ronnie Brown had his own area where he was preparing Jake Johnson’s equipment. Also staying there was Johnny Lewis who at the time, was exclusively doing Super Moto racing, Ion Stear, a kid who I became close friends with that went from learning to ride a dirt bike to earning a national number in 3 years, and Mick Kirkness, a racer from Australia who had come over to try his hand at American Dirt Track. Chris Boone was also milling around. Chris was a local hero to me and was the first person to ever take me on a road trip to a national (that story may be a little rowdy for motofeed however…)

Though it was a strange mix of riders, the two factory Suzuki mechanics didn’t exactly get along, and I was a complete nobody, for that one night, we all had a great time. There were pit bike races outside the shop, then inside the shop, then into the garage door (that was a dramatic scene). There were girls stopping by to hang out with the “racers”, and then there was a tornado. You know, typical night in Missouri! I found myself sleeping in the factory Suzuki rig that night. None of this seemed real to me. Here I was meeting all these important people, hanging out in a REAL race shop, and they were just treating me like I was one of the gang. It was pretty surreal.

Due to the storm the night before, the race scheduled for the next day rained out. After a quick stop at a dealer autograph signing, we pointed the econoline a little further west to Oklahoma City where our mutual friend Nicalee Sowders was going to put us up for the night. Do you see a trend here? We were slumming it! This is the dirt track way! Anybody that would have us, we stopped by. Nicalee showed us the sights around OKC, including the very emotionally powerful bombing memorial. This was the part of the trip where I started to realize that this was more than just going to California to pick up bikes, this was an adventure, and we had sights to see.

With Oklahoma City behind us, we continued west on I-40. This was a pretty long stretch as you can imagine. Murray and I went back and forth with both driving and story telling. Of course, he had about 5 stories for every one of mine, but I was eager to listen. This guy had been everywhere I thought! It was at this point we figured out we liked the same movies and music. Though we were both unsure about being pretty much strangers trapped in a van together for two weeks, at this point we figured out that we were going to survive this trip without an assault charge on either one of our records. I think I’ve written enough here to bore most humans, so I’m going to split it up into AT LEAST two parts. Maybe 3. In part 2 we will cover break downs, western wear stores, In-N-Out burgers, the pacific coast, legendary mechanics and after race parties. Stay tuned…