Featuring Kendall Norman and Quinn Cody.

A  FILM  BY  :  W I L E Y   W A T S O N

Pre-order today and receive a free poster! All orders are scheduled to be shipped by the second week of April!

The San Felipe 250 is one of the nastiest and most brutal courses in the off-road world. The first 30 miles is full on Supercross size triple whoops with embedded rock in the bottom of every pit, and if your not careful they will bite. I lined up this shoot to go along with Kurt Caselli’s segment and his transition into a more high-speed desert style type of racing. The guy is the man when it comes to riding dirt bikes; he is competitive in every discipline and has the uncanny ability to adapt to any terrain in front of him. I wanted to make his segment unique, so in order to capture Baja and its beauty I needed to shoot from above and get aerial cinematography. I called up heli-pilot Jim McCoy who I have shot with before on “Moto 2 the movie,” and he was amped to do the shoot.

I hitched a ride from Santa Barbara with my film partner Tyler out to I5 and met up with my good friends the “Acheys.” After a few cups of coffee and a long pit stop we jetted across the border later that afternoon at around 5-6ish. We arrived at our friends’ Casita rental outside of San Felipe and hunkered up there for the night after a few beers and maybe one margarita. My buddy Jack and I slept on the roof, because it was so nice out. That only lasted for about 45 minutes as a huge windstorm arrived at the foot of my sleeping bag and we inhaled grains of sand all night long…. Was a sheer pleasure FEST!!! The next day I met up with the KTM squad and set up my new camp with Quinn Cody’s Trainer, Frazer. I ended up shooting the teams testing their race bikes and got some cool stuff of the mechanics swapping out equipment. I could tell the bike was fast, everyone who got off the machine came back with a Sh!T eating grin on their face.

That night after a few rounds of tequila with coach Frazer, I ended up getting artsy and captured some really bitchen time lapses of the moon going full.

Contingency day, the day before the race was/is always a zoo of random people starting to party at 10am in the morning. The “Malicon” (ocean front road) was jammed packed with trucks, buggy’s, ATV’s and Motorcycles. The KTM boys wanted to get out of there as soon as possible, get back to the Casita and do one final check of all the pre-running lines just to make sure they were dialed for race day. Jim called me up later that afternoon and confirmed we were all set for the heli-shoot, I was starting to get excited!!

Race day is a full on Chinese fire drill. Coach Frazer and I got up at 4:15AM, made a quick cup of tea and were ready to head out the door. Coach was going to join me in the heli and assist with a few photographs. At 5:15 we arrived at the airport (if you could call it that, a dust strip.) and Jim filled out some paper work then warmed up the bird to get her ready to fly. At 5:45 we got the ok to take lift off.  We all jumped into the R44 and just like that we were airborne! After a couple of shots establishing the town and the ocean we made our way to the starting line and set up our opening shots. 6AM and the first bike was off the line. The 2X machine of Mike Brown was on it out of the gate. The 2X machine was at least doing 110 plus MPH down the first 3 miles of the start straight!! I yelled to Jim through the radio, “does this bird go any faster?!” “Holy Sh$T he is hauling ass!!! 30 seconds later the 3X of Caselli was off the line locked and loaded. We followed Brown for the first 3-4 miles then pulled off him and faded back to Caselli who was already gaining on him with adjusted time. We followed/filmed KC right from his left side for the next 5 miles and got some insane shots! I was already freaking out at the footage and this race had just started! Caselli ended up passing Brown a few miles later and then began to put up a little gap as Brownie was starting to have vision problems with the 3X’s bike. Jim, Frazer and I hovered over the two riders for the next 25 miles; it was so incredible just watching these guys flying through the open desert, simply spectacular.

Caselli ended up having a big get off, but he got up and was ok. We all 3 screamed in the headset as he cartwheeled through the desert not knowing where he was going to land next.

2X & 3X came into the pit at mile 30 within 1 minute of each other and did their first rider change, Caselli swapped with Ivan Ramirez, while Brown swapped with Quinn Cody. We buzzed over Cody for the first 10 miles of his section and watched him peg the KTM 450 SX up the twisty sandy San Felipe washes with ease. He looked comfortable calm and collected, so we flew ahead and caught up with Ramirez who was simply on fire. As we hovered back and forth over the two for the next 20 miles we had just left Cody when the Score Helicopter Radioed us and said that 2X had crashed and was having trouble getting up.

Quinn ended up breaking his arm and limped the bike back to the pits. A major disappointment for him and brown, but the 3X machine was on rails and KTM ended up putting the 450 SXF on the top of the box! Caselli and Ramirez rode exceptional and made no major mistakes, which every other team had. The view from the heli all morning was simply surreal, and the footage that you will see here soon is nothing short of spectacular! I was stoked to add this dynamic of racing in Baja to Caselli’s movie segment and it’s just going to add to the stoke of the fire we have going with WHAT !S !!!!

Must Sleep Now.

Thanks,

w

I flew out of Santa Barbara Monday morning and landed in Atlanta around 6:00 PM east coast time. Picked up my rental vehicle and pinned it to Bobbitt’s parents’ place, where we met up and crashed for the night. The next morning we drove up to Bobbitt’s new pad outside of Jefferson Georgia, which is only about 15 minutes away from Athens, home of the University of Georgia. It took a few hours to get there, and we stopped by a mattress house where Russell picked up a new pad to sleep on (his new house is still being furnished). Along the way we also hooked up with Cory Buttrick, who’s been living on the road for the past few months training for the upcoming GNCC’s and National Enduros.

I was stoked to arrive at RB’s new pad, it was a sick log cabin on 15 acres of land with a nice little swimming pond that would cost my whole life savings out here on the West coast. The boys unloaded the bikes and I spun some e-brakers in the rental and followed them out to the GP grass track down the street, and watched them spin a few laps and warm up… I was excited to see bright green grass contrasted with red Georgia clay flying in the air, and spent the next 3 hours nailing down the track with the boys as they exploded corner after corner. I was content with what we captured and spent the evening exploring the bush and cooking some organic Chicken breast with a free range green salad; yum!

The next day we headed off to Wrens, Georgia to go ride sand at Dennis Johnson’s house. The boys wanted to prep for the upcoming National Enduro, which featured a lot of tight tree’s and sand. Over the night we acquired some Aussie dude by the name of Geoff Braico (the man who invented the circle rut). I had no idea who he was, but Russell said he could ride in the “tight bush”, and wasn’t here to “@#$% Spiders!” The two-hour drive through the dirty south was an eye opener and seemed like an eternity to me. We arrived at DJ’s mid morning and were greeted with the green light to do whatever we like. DJ even loaned me a nice quad to follow the boys around on. Stoked.

Bobber and Butter were on rails and made for some great action dipping and darting through the tight twisty terrain. The 300 two strokes sounded awesome and man do they let those things sing through the sandy Georgia soil. As the day came to a close we headed into the town of Wrens; not a lot going on with just a shady motel, a huddle house, and a subway. We ended up finding “Peggy’s” a county style home cook’n place. When I walked into the restaurant the echo of “fry that chicken!” was illuminating through the walls! We finished our “Feed” as the Aussie called it and headed to the shady hotel that smelt of burnt Indian food covered in hair. I shared a bed with Aussie Geoff and was still a bit jet lagged from the time change. I had a hard time falling asleep. At around 2 AM I heard a huge BANG! I almost jumped out of bed and awoke with such a jolt that I literally gave myself whiplash. There was a huge clap of thunder with a tsunami of rain pouring down, and I mean absolute raining cats and dogs type stuff. I have been in some serious rainstorms in Costa Rica and Nicaragua, but never had I seen rain come down this hard, it was insane!! I immediately thought tornado and painfully stared out the window for a good while as I thought Russell’s truck was going to float away in the flood that was sure to ensue.

We awoke to a slight drizzle of rain in the morning, and I figured the shoot was done and the trails were roached. Bobber thought the same, but the sun eked its head through the clouds so we figured we’d go have a look at the trails anyway. Well, they turned out to be and I quote how the Aussie says it, “Spot on!” Cory ended up taking the day off so our Aussie boy Geoff decided to come play with Bobbitt and they darted in and out of the wet trees all morning as we grabbed the prime shots with near perfect lighting.

DJ’s place ended up being a real diamond in the rough, and we were all super psyched to go out there and explore the sandy trails. Dennis was again super generous in letting us use all his toys and left his property at our disposal. We yodeled our goodbyes and headed back to Russell’s.

I was pumped on our footage and was stoked to spend the week with “the boys.” It’s always fun to see the differences in cultural. Even within our own country it is quite different from area to area!  As of now, we are on our final shoots with What !S and I can’t tell you enough that it will be extremely awesome and very impressive to those who watch..

Until next time….

w

Android Market

iTunes

Zune/Xbox