Fashion victim

By TMX Archives on 17th Mar 03

Motocross

I TOOK a much-needed day off from training last week and flew to New York for the day. Usually I avoid any major city like the plague - unless it involves riding a motorcycle - but this was a unique opportunity. GQ magazine wanted to do a two-page spread of an alternative sports figure to model some $800 sweatpants and purple spandex shirts, along with a few other 'high fashion' items. I consider myself to be the epitome of unfashionable. The only time I don't clash is when the first shirt/hat/pant I see in my closet coincidentally match. The 'stylist' almost fainted when I took off my hat. She told me flat-out that my hair was an "unsalvageable victim of neglect". First she asked me what products I had in my hair at the moment. "Pert Plus," I replied. She shuddered and then rephrased the question to what type of gels and such I was using. The fact that I had never used any such product literally rendered her speechless for a good 10 minutes. About an hour later she finished with a huge smile on her face and asked me what I thought. Sometimes I should probably sugar coat things for the fragile-minded but I told her the truth. It looked like I just got out of bed. She then explained that it was the "natural messy" look. Thinking to myself that it was naturally messy an hour before she started messing with it, I forced myself to not respond. Upon exiting the dressing room it was inevitable that someone would ask me "who I was wearing". At first I had no idea what they were talking about. Then I felt like a complete moron every time, because the full names were never used and shouting out initials was a laughable offence. If 'RL', for example, happened to be written anywhere in a string of letters, like PKRLX, everyone assumed that I should know the item was Ralph Lauren. Never before had I wanted to take so many people to a supercross and hold a conversation in front of them in the common moto language of BRRRRRAAPP while throwing in words like 'endo', 'whoops' and 'RM250'. But after all's said and done, I avoided any contact with make-up and only slightly resembled Ben Stiller in Zoolander. And girls seemed to be magnetically attracted to the extremely goofy-looking clothing and naturally messy style. So what's the downside? Any one of my friends would surely knock me upside the head with a two-by-four if they ever saw me look like that in public. Training has been going really well and with a month to go before supercross, I'm already able to run strong for a solid 20 laps. Since my knee is still prone to swell from bicycling, I have found swimming to be surprisingly beneficial. A lot of people have doubts about how I will perform this year. To be perfectly honest, I have never felt more ready or confident that I will be more than just a title contender. I guess we will all know here in just a little while who put in the time during the off-season. I know I have. On the completely opposite side of the spectrum, it seems as though my house has become a true back-flip learning facility. In the past week, three guys have learned flips. Next week, skateboarder Danny Way is planning to come here in an attempt to open his upcoming skate video with him flipping a 250. There hasn't even been a sprained ankle as of yet but plenty of crash footage has been easily attained in the process (I've forced myself to not flip since the Gravity Games). Time isn't my friend at the moment but now that I have an editing system and a nice Sony DV camera, it wouldn't be hard to put a cool video together. Factor in my cousin Greg jumping out of truck doing 60mph over a 50-foot-tall bridge, my friend Andy trying to mountainboard down a tree-filled cliff, the back-flip follies and countless mechanical bull and skate park slams and I would barely have to edit the footage! Just a thought. See you at the races...

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