Red Bull and FastHouse invited me to attend this years “Day in the Dirt” during March. It was held at the Dade City Race track in Dade City Florida. I was very excited to go but that meant I would have to load up my bike and drive for 35 hours to get there! It was a long and short trip but we all had a great time! The Day in the Dirt races are mostly just for fun for the athletes that are invited there. There are many different races and crazy kinds of races. I asked my dad to do a race with me so we did the parent/child race. You could be any age and any combination… dad/daughter, mother/son….etc. He was nervous but excited to join the race.
My family and some friends of ours all met up at Dade City on Thursday before the race. We didn’t arrive until late because a tire blew on my truck and they are odd sized tires so we had to find a place to get it fixed, ugh it took forever and when we were finally back on the road we had lost about 5 hours of travel time! We were all staying in the same hotel so we met up quickly to say hi and then had to get to bed to head to the track early on Friday.
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On Friday my dad and I headed to the track to finish checking in and get our bike set up. We also had a couple of practices before we headed back to the hotel to wash up and go hang with our friends and have dinner. They ran the track backwards so you really couldn’t jump they didn’t want anyone to get hurt since it was more about fun times then who won the races!
We woke up Saturday ready to race but the weather was not looking too promising! I had 2 races before I was going to race with my dad. Everyone had their regular gear on, but I wore a Hawaiian shirt to add to the fun, one guy had a blow up Alien strapped around his waist! Unfortunately all of my races were back to back, which I didn’t really realize haha…oh well! I was getting ready to start my second race (the women’s class) and it started to crazy rain! The track became a mess quickly and my dad had gone back to the truck to get me more gas because I had no time in-between races. My dad didn’t make it back in time and I had to start my second race. I knew I desperately needed gas, but I had no choice but to take off! The rain was coming down really hard and a couple of little girls fell way in the back of the track. I stopped to help them pick up their bikes, they were crying…. aww poor things. The next lap around my dad was there with the gas. I had to pull over and fuel up, what a mess haha… by the end of that race it was just a deluge and then the lighting came. They stopped the races so There was also tornado warnings so that was a little scary. They started the races back up again after about a 2 hour delay. They worked on the tack but it was still pretty muddy and slippery.
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I think my dad was a little nervous but it was all just for fun! In that race we shared my bike so every lap you had to come back into the pits and change out the rider. If you had your own bike you had to swap out a wrist band before taking off! We had so much fun we were both just laughing. That was the first time I got to ride with my dad in a race like that! That was my last race of the day so we went back and got cleaned up and went out to eat. I had to come back later when all the races were done for autographs.
Once we were back to the track we decided to watch SX on the big screens they had set up. It was really cold and I brought my Smudge pot from Smudge pots direct with me. So we set that up, it is amazing it uses Diesel fuel and has this metal stack, it takes a few minutes to heat up but when it does it is so nice and toasty! No smoke and it heats up a bigger area than a fire does so glad we had it in our trailer! We all set around there for awhile and talked and drank some beers then my dad and my friend, Brenden went up to watch the qualifiers on the big screens. They came back after a bit and everyone decided it was too cold away from the Smudge Pot so we went back to the hotel. When we got there the lobby was filled with motocrossers from the Day in the Dirt race so we just stayed there and hung out with everyone and watched the races!
I had a 2 hour Iron Man race with my friend on Sunday and we swapped out after every lap like I did with my dad but we each had our own bikes. Sunday was beautiful and it was another great day of racing!
The next day we all packed up and headed home it was a long drive but definitely worth it and so much fun! Red Bull will be doing another race in November and I am looking forward to it!
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