Cycle News

VOL. 53 ISSUE 47 NOVEMBER 29, 2016 P101 one contending at the highest level of road racing. No, Nicky Hayden does not count; he hasn't been competitive, or even bothered to make it look like he's trying to be, in years. Given the current state of road racing and the lack of interest here in the USA, Hayden might be the last American MotoGP World Cham- pion for quite a while. Chad Reed served notice that he is still a force to be reckoned with by winning the 2016 Austra- lian Supercross Open in Sydney, sweeping both nights in front of his fellow countrymen. Reed looked lean and mean, riding with aggression and beating Cooper Webb, Justin Brayton and some guy named Ryan Villopoto. Rumor has it that this Villopoto guy used to be fast and was lured out of his recent retire- ment by a dangling $200,000 start money carrot, airfare not included. Here's hoping that Reed shows up at Anaheim 1 as healthy and hungry as he was in Sydney; that would be a sea- son to remember, with Roczen, Tomac, Anderson, Dungey, Musquin, Seely, Webb, Canard and Reed battling it out all the way to Vegas! While we are on the subject of old guys, I would be remiss if I did not mention how incredible it is that Greg Hancock won his fourth Speedway World Champi- onship in 2016, nearly 20 years after winning his first one back in 1997! The feeling and sense of pride he must have inside has to be tremendous. Well done, Grin! On a personal note, 1997 was a year I also will never forget. I was recently divorced and shared joint physical custody of our beautiful daughter, Gabriella. I met a woman and being mam- mals, we "did it like they do on the Discovery Channel" (I know, a cheesy attempt at humor to di- vert attention from how personal this really is). She got pregnant and as a single parent with two kids already, she chose to put the child, a boy, up for adoption through the LDS Church. I want- ed to raise the child, but rights were few and my protests were in vain, while she made what she felt was the best decision for our child. She wanted to see him raised within the LDS Church and believe me, the Mormons are set up for it, with their own adoption service. She interviewed dozens of prospective couples, and settled on a couple from somewhere in NorCal. My only option was whether or not I wanted to meet the people who would be raising our kid. I chose to meet them and they seemed nice. They had an adopted daughter already and were super grateful and appreciative. The dad even had motorcycles and promised me my son would have the opportu- nity to ride if he wanted to. They assured me that he would have access to my information on his 18th birthday, and I felt about as good as I could about it, given the circumstances. Flash forward to a month be- fore his 18th birthday. My daugh- ter has always wanted a sibling and was waiting as anxiously as I was to possibly hear from him. I contacted the folks in Fountain Valley and gave them my current contact info; they said "things had changed within the church," but they would pass my info to the right people. His birthday came and went—crickets. We were disappointed and I was especially sad for Gabriella, who is in her senior year of college back east. Three weeks ago I got a voice- mail from the child's mother. He had called her, and he wanted to know if he could contact me! We spoke a couple hours later and it was an indescribable experience. One of the first questions he had was about his sister, I gave him her number and they talked for two and a half hours the next day. She flew home from Boston, he flew down from NorCal and they both stayed at my house Wednesday and Thursday night. It was a fantastic Thanksgiving and the question that keeps pop- ping up in my brain is the obvious one: What kind of bike should I start my boy out on? He's 6'2" and skinny as a rail, so I'm think- ing a PW50 might be too small. Any ideas? CN

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