My “experience” at Dealer Expo was a much different experience than “The Experience.”
My day at Dealer Expo was with the Vanimal (my son) and my slightly dazed friend Phil. Phil pops into several of “The Ride” blogs because of his common passion for danger on two wheels. That’s right: I said danger.
My day started out with a fantastic breakfast at Petit Chou in Broad Ripple where Van had Green Eggs and Ham and I had “Bruce’s Oatmeal.” Once we were finished with breakfast, Van and I dropped the wife off at home and soldiered on to Dealer Expo. We arrived at about 9:30 a.m. and waited for our friend Phil, who arrived at 10 a.m. While we were waiting for Phil, Van decided to highjack this moped to the right.
Once Ph
il arrived, we set off for Lucas Oil Stadium where Ride Royal Blue was set up. If you don’t remember, the “Man Trip” is just two weeks away, and the venue is rideroyalblue.com. While at Ride Royal Blue’s booth, we discussed our growing group of six to eight and if there were rental ATV’s and extra cabins still available. About two minutes into the conversation, Van nearly lunged off my shoulders toward the booth to the right. Van spotted the Kiddi Moto booth immediately to the right. Of course, just like everything else, Van had to get on one. Unlucky for Van, Kiddi Moto isn’t distributing to the U.S. until May. He’ll just have to wait. The common theme of the day was that Van had to ride every single vehicle at the show. Check out this list of Van’s excursions.
The low-riding vehicles are the easiest for Van to jump into. Funny thing about Van is that he only likes to sit properly in the seat and drive.
To the left, Van sweetens up to the Repsol girl. I think the fact that she was blonde (like mommy) and gave Van a small-scale Nicky Hayden motorcycle were the reasons that they got along so well.
Van had a good time on a Chinese-built ATV. They were selling this particular ATV straight off the floor for $290. I swear, the Chinese are going to take over the world.
Perhaps one of Van’s more spectacular moments. Please notice that this is the largest ATV alive. The handlebars are up to Phil’s shoulders(pictured right). Phil is not a small guy!
None of this seemed to bother Van.
Besides chasing Van around Lucas Oil Stadium and the Indianapolis Convention Center, we got see an awful lot of fun aftermarket pieces. The one item that stood out to Phil and I was the GoPro Motorsports Camera.
“Funny Story”… I thought for some reason that the exhibitors were able to sell items off the floor. Apparently I was wrong, and you had to be a dealer to purchase anything. Here is the exchange:
Phil: Do you want to get one?
Jarrod: I think so.
Jarrod to the camera rep: Can you give us a sweet deal on these cameras?
Camera rep: You’ll have to ask Marshall.
Jarrod: OK, let’s ask Marshall.
Camera Rep: Your rep, you’ll have to ask your Marshall rep. I am just here on behalf of Marshall.
Jarrod: I’m not a dealer. I’m with a venue. Can you still hook it up?
Camera Rep: Nope.
That was painful. Phil was so pumped up about the camera that he purchased one that night. Other than that, Dealer Expo was pretty typical. Girls, bikes and a lot of fun times with Van.
Jarrod
Well, after weeks of perfect weather, Hurricane Ike put a big twist on my wedding weekend and others’ MotoGP weekend.
Rain, sun, rain, sun … It was a constant game of “What should we do?”
To keep the wedding short, we had a great time. The band was excellent, and the party ended at 3 a.m. at the Terminal in downtown Terre Haute.
I guess technically you can say that we honeymooned in Indianapolis. After our wedding on Friday, we woke up, headed back home, hopped on the Scrambler and went to the track. By the time we got there, we missed most of the GP practices but were lucky enough to catch the Red Bull Rookies Cup. It was pretty amazing watching the kids tear it up out there and put everything on the line. I understand that it was the biggest race of all of their lives, and they showed it.
Megan and I were watching from the “Ducati Island” and saw several wipeouts, including a big high side coming out of Turn 4. Those kids were tough!
Once most of the track activity had wound down, Megan and I chilled out before our evening plans downtown. We laid low, went to the Capitol Grill at the Conrad and had our first dinner as a married couple. It was fun and low-key, which we followed up with an early night in. We were still exhausted from the night before. I was pretty impressed with the crowd downtown. There was an awful lot of buzz in the air, which made if feel like the Indy 500 weekend.
On Sunday, we woke up early and caught some of the morning practices before it started to rain. While the rain was coming down, I met with an IndyCar partner who is helping with a few new media initiatives that everyone should check out. Visit www.indycarmessenger.com to find out more.
Our meeting was at the Alpinestars hospitality area. I took Megan along. While we were there, Andrew Whitney, the gentlemen that we were meeting, introduced Megan and I to John Canton, the director of communications for Ducati. For a minute, we talked about the event and how great it was, as well as my past lust for the Hypermotard!
Before the race, Megan and I went down to the grid to check out the bikes up close. We took a few pictures on the grid. The coolest time of the day was the launch to start the race. It was just phenomenal to see them accelerate that fast in the wet! What was even more amazing was when the weather got really, really bad, the good guys didn’t appear to slow down. They were like missiles going down the front stretch. Amazing!
Moto GP was awesome, and I can’t wait until next year.
Jarrod
So I missed by blog last week. I really just didn’t have anything nice to say, so I kept my thoughts to myself.
Last weekend was a full weekend of riding. The weather was outstanding, and everyone had the weekend off after the Allstate 400 at the Brickyard and a bare weekend with the IndyCar Series taking their first weekend off in six weeks!
At the home front, it was busy – busy riding, that is. On Saturday morning, a group of us met downtown across from the new Dunkin Donuts. Our original plan was to meet on the Circle, but there was a Lotus Car show that had the area blocked off.
The group consisted of six total riders on two Triumphs, three Suzukis and a Ducati. Paul Riley and Phil Sparks were the other to IMS employees that made the trip, along with Paul’s son, friend and Matt, a buddy of Phil and I.
Everyone was roughly on time, and we left downtown at 9 a.m.
We typically take the same routes when we ride down to Brown County. For the first leg of our trip, take a look at this route:
This route took us down Highway 37 until old 37, which is an nice warm-up road. You really don’t get into anything crazy. The one thing that kind of sucked was the fact that the road was slightly damp in a lot of the areas. Old 37 then runs into Bloomington. You then hop on 45, shoot around the north side of the town and head northeast on 45, which is probably my favorite road in central Indiana.
Be sure to turn the volume down on your computer. The audio isn’t the best, but you can see me leading the pack:
That stretch took us about 1.5 hours, and we stopped in Nashville, Ind., for some BBQ. Once we filled up with food and gas, we hit the road for our second stretch. Here is the route. We ride south on 135 around Brown County Park through Story, Ind. From there, we continue on 135 to IN-58:
We took a break at the 446 intersection and lined up the bikes. I’m on the far left, and Paul is on the far right in his orange Hayabusa.
Once we took a quick break and chatted with an ‘ol timer on his Harley Sportster, we rode up 446 across Lake Monroe. Once we got to Bloomington, the group split up. Matt and I headed for 45 again on our way home and the others went straight to 37 and went home.
Here is the ride home Matt and I took:
The ride was excellent. We started around 9 a.m., and I was at home by 3:30 p.m. I had plenty of time to relax before my family got home. That night, Megan went out for a wedding shower, so it was just me and the boys. Van and dog Rex hung out and watched a movie and called it a early night.
The next morning, I had baby duty since Mommy was out all night with her friends. It was fun; Van is in a great stage right now. I bet he will be walking on his own on my next blog.
In the afternoon, Megan had another baby shower that required her to take Van; this one was with the mothers and grandparents. I took the opportunity to hop back on my bike and take it over to storage and get my Scrambler out. I met up with Ron Pitman, another IMS employee, and we took a Sunday cruise around west Indianapolis. Here is our route, which I think is a great on if you want to stay close to the city:
From here we pretty much back tracked our route back to a parking lot at Raceway and 56th Street, parked for a few minutes and talked MotoGP. Buy tickets, ride to the track – it’s going to be a blast!
See you next week.
Jarrod
It’s an off week for the IndyCar Series, and my family and I decided to utilize this time to take a trip to our ranch in Wyoming. Over the past eight years, I haven’t spent much time out here between school and the race season grinds. But since I have a family, it’s great to be able to come out to the middle of nowhere and play in the wilderness.
My Out of Office e-mail reply was supposed to read:
“Thank you for your correspondence. I will be out of the office and in the mountains until Tuesday June 17th. Internet connectivity and reliable cellular service is questionable, so please excuse my inability to respond quickly.”
Well, while I was gone my mailbox was overloaded, and my O of O won’t work. I guess it really hasn’t been a big deal since it’s an off week and a lot of people are taking a day here and there to spend time with their families.
Here are a couple of pictures of our trip. It was snowing here the first two days, and there is still enough to make a snowball or two!
Even while I have been away, we have been trying to figure out what type of dirt bikes we need to get out here. Like I said, with the family it’s really nice to be able to come out to Wyoming and spend time together with ZERO stress.
While we were picking up a Polaris Ranger, my brother Kyle and I test rode an ‘02 KTM 550 dirt bike. We though that it was a little tall for trail riding and was a little too expensive for our uses, so we passed. Kyle is determined to get a couple of bikes out here for the next couple of years.
Maybe next trip we will have a few pictures of the new rides. My mom and baby’s momma keep telling Kyle and I, “The dirt bikes won’t be that much fun out here….” What do they know? They aren’t going to be riding them!
Jarrod
On the road at last!
This past week was AWESOME! I picked up my bike on Tuesday and spent Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday on my bike. Just as I imagined, it was a blast, although the roads are like Swiss cheese in Indianapolis, and it definitely poses a few other obstacles. As if dodging dogs, cats, cars and other motorcyclists wasn’t enough!
Short blog this week because things are hectic at work. There are a lot of exciting things going on in the IndyCar world, and I am glad to be a part of it.
This year, be prepared for more interactivity and more ways to burn hours on the Web. Indycar.com is getting a facelift, and there will be more ways to enjoy traditional TV with the new IndyCar Race Control product. Like I said, it’s busy, but everyone is excited for the start of the season.
Jarrod
Check out the bike! It’s put back together with my new wheels, black on black on black. Now all I need is some dry weather and the city of Indianapolis to cover up all the pot holes, and I will be back on the bike!
Last weekend was a big weekend. Baby’s momma spent the weekend in Chicago working while myself and the Vanimal had man time all weekend.
On Saturday, I took the little guy to his first Supercross event, at the RCA Dome in Indianapolis. We got there promptly as the gates opened so that I could get as much time at the event. You see, with a 7 p.m. bed time for the Vanimal, it’s awfully difficult to watch the main event. So we decided to spend the day at the RCA Dome, watch practice and even take a walk around the track.
As I mentioned last week, I planned my wedding the same weekend as the Red Bull Indianapolis GP, or as I like to say it, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway planned the Inaugural GP on my wedding weekend …
Wedding Tip Number One: Check with your place of work before you set a wedding date.
My fiancée and I had been struggling with a date on which we were going to commit our lives to each other. There were a few factors that we needed to consider before we actually set the date.
Introduction:
Hi! Welcome to my blog. I really couldn’t come up with a more spectacular entrance to my redbullindianapolisgp.com blog.
My name is Jarrod Krisiloff, and I am extremely pumped for the inaugural Red Bull Indianapolis GP. I am an avid rider and a speed junkie who coincidently planned my wedding the same weekend as MotoGP. So throughout my “weekly” blog, I’ll be delivering updates on planning your wedding around a motorcycle race, places to check out around Indianapolis on your two-wheeler and just about any other topic that comes to mind.