My big brother Ross has been my hero since I was a little kid, and I’ve idolized him for as long as I can remember. He is the reason I started riding motocross bikes, he is the one who sparked my interest in photography, he taught me how to ride and race, and he is the person I bounce magazine ideas off of when I need a second opinion.

Yesterday, Rossi crashed and suffered paralyzing injuries. He broke/displaced three vertebrae in his lower back and underwent a seven-hour surgery to repair the damage. Only time will tell if he will ever be able to walk again. Ross is a bad ass, though, and I know that if anyone can bounce back from this, it’s him.

To say that I am devastated would be an understatement. I’ve always said that Ross is my guideline as to how long I will be able to be the Editor of TransWorld Motocross. At 54, he still hauls ass on a mx track and has been a source of inspiration for me. “If Rossi can still rip at 54, I want to, also,” I’d think. I don’t want to be the editor of this magazine any longer when I can’t get around the track at a decent clip, so that’s why I’ve always looked to Ross for a time estimate. Now…I don’t know.

Ross is a fighter, and I know that he will get through this. All we can do is stay positive, think good thoughts, and keep him in our prayers. Think a good thought about my big brother for me, will you?

Last week, Kawasaki introduced the 2010 Kawasaki KX450F to the press. My buddy Mark Tilley of Dirt Bike test riding fame and Dubach Racing media relations was on hand with the DB crew, so I decided to retry the patented TransWorld Motocross food coloring prank on him. As Tilley hob-nobbed with the Kawasaki brass, I headed over to his Funmover hauler to sabotage his helmet. I was a bit miffed when I learned that Dirt Bike’s Tom “Wolfman” Webb (Ahhwooooooooooooh!) was changing into his gear in the back of Tilley’s rig, but I decided to move forward anyway. I worked for Tom at Dirt Rider years ago and he knows that I love a good practical joke. He chuckled as I coated the inside of Tilley’s green HJC helmet liner with green food coloring. I completed the “inking” and got away undetected.

Imagine my disappointment when Tilley gonned a white and black helmet instead. At first, I wondered if the Wolfman had given me up, but when I saw that Tilley’s photo gear was white and black also, I decided otherwise. At the end of the day, I said my goodbyes and forgot all about it.

Two days later, I got a text message from Tilley while I was at my daughter’s soccer game. Mark was at REM and decided to wear his green helmet for practice. “You got me, you sucker,” he wrote , and then enclosed a couple great camera phone shots.

“It’s a good thing I have my Motocloths,” he said.

I rode with Tilley today at Perris, and I made sure to check the insides of my helmet and goggle foam!

Oh, I know this has nothing to do with this post, really, but check out the sweet Futbol Mulletino that I bagged at the soccer game, while Tilley was “going green!” Siiick!

Last week, our buddy Kevin Strikwerda from Pro Taper finally accepted our invitation to come riding with us. The Sharpie-on-the-goggle-foam trick is an oldie but goodie on the TransWorld Motocross staff, and we decided to welcome KS our with a little Tom Foolery…

Click on STRIKWERDA AND THE SHARPIE in the video player on the right

Ahhhh….it’s been a long time since I have even thought about blogging!

For me, as soon as Halloween gets here, it seems like Anaheim 1 is right around the corner. Think about it: right after Halloween comes Thanksgiving, and then BAM! it’s Christmas. Right after Christmas comes New Year’s Day and then Anaheim. I remember when I was a kid it seemed like times passed so slowly, but now that I am a genuine old man, the pages of the calendar seem to fly off the wall in front of my eyes.

Creating content for this web site certainly makes time fly. All of us put in a helluva effort into keeping as much cool stuff pumping through the front page of TWMX.com in December, and the result was a record month: over 24 million page views! In a nutshell, we smashed the company record (all of the TransWorld titles: Snowboarding, Skateboarding, Surf, BMX, etc., plus all of Bonnier’s other titles, like Popular Science and Field and Stream).

Creating stuff for the web site is a real pain in the ass, too, especially when you have a monthly magazine to put out! (Ha ha!) I know that I missed several deadlines last month because I was too busy shooting and editing videos, but as long as I do get the mag out the door, that’s alright, right? The week in between Christmas and New Year’s was hectic. I think I was up until 2 a.m. every night working on something for the site, and on New Year’s Day after shooting James Stewart in his new gear, I was up well past 3 a.m. getting all of the photos, videos and interviews done for the launch time of 12 noon on Friday. Needless to say, I think I burned the candle on both ends a little too much, and I woke up the morning of Anaheim 1 feeling like a turd on a stick. Sick as a dog, I slipped on about 74 layers of clothing and headed to the races anyway. And man, am I glad I did! The race was - as you all know - AMAZING.

Anyway, it’s a little past 10 p.m. and I have vowed to get more sleep so that I can get over this cold. I got to shoot Jason Lawrence’s bike in the studio today for the web site, and I must admit that when J-Law’s mechanic Toshi Chiba went to the restroom, I thought about loading the thing up in my Toyota and pinning it! haha.. Until next time - swap

Now, if you have read our magazine at all, you should already know that our new guy Kyle Cowling - better known here as ELMO - has a bit of a crush on WMA racer Tarah Gieger. Wait. Did I say “a bit of?” How about, a crush that borders on an obsession. In fact, when Elmo found out that Tarah had agreed to maintain a blog on the new TWMX.com, he floated on air around the TW offices for several days. In fact, I am sure that if he weren’t in a walking cast, he would have skipped around like a third grader in a new pair of wallabees.

A few months ago, I mentioned to Elmo that back in the day, we had procured some bikini photos of Miss Gieger from a freelance photographer. Though we never ran them in the magazine, I knew that they were somewhere in our office, stuffed inside one of our many filing cabinets. After that, Elmo conducted daily searches for said photos, much like a Young Indiana Jones. (Heck, I think on one of the days he even had on a leather hat and had a bullwhip tied to his belt as he rifled through thousands and thousands of old slides.)

As luck would have it, I just happened to peek inside a cabinet that I was sitting on, inside of Eggo’s office last Friday. And lo and behold, I hit the jackpot! Out of respect for our buddy and TWMX.com blogger Tarah, we will not post the bikini shots, but I will say that I haven’t seen young Elmo this happy since the day I offered him a position on our edit staff. In fact, he’s been drooling over the photos so long, that I am sure he is gonna need to have his back adjusted at Doc G’s from bending over the light table… Along with the slides, I also found several prints of TG68 and naturally, they have made their way onto Elmo’s WALL OF WORSHIP. (see photo)

The best thing? Elmo has never even MET Tarah. Last week, Elmo traded Skinny a pack of Bubble Yum and a six pack of King Cobra to swap the Washougal and Millville assignments, just so he could cover this weekend’s AMA/WMA National in the Pacific Northwest. After failing to introduce himself to Tarah at Freestone last month, Elmo hasn’t heard the end of it from the rest of us. How will it go? Stay tuned for a full report… (Hopefully on Gieger’s blog!)

BWAHAHAHAHA