AMA Supercross Preparation

Thanks to the good tidings that Christmas with my beloved brought to me, we are eagerly planning an upcoming trip. We are looking forward to welcoming the 2011 Supercross series to the East Coast by attending the race at the Georgia Dome on February 25. This will be the third closed-course dirtbike race that we have traveled to and my first Supercross
experience! This will also be the first race event that we travel to as fans--not as working, refined, and professional journalists and/or photographers. I am thrilled to finally be able to participate in the excitement, adventure, perils, and indulgences esoteric to Supercross fans! Be still my eager heart!!

In our pre-RV-ownership lives, we attended the 2009 outdoor National race at Budds Creek, Maryland where rain transformed the dirt track into a dangerous, but gnarly mudslide. In 2010, we flew out to Denver, Colorado to see Team America sweep the Motocross Des Nations and take home the Stanley Cup. The crowd at both events featured groups of weekend warriors, hometown heroes, mx moms and dads, and motorsports fanatics in an atmosphere saturated with nationalism, pride, and fellowship shared by lovers of the sport. I am told that Supercross events host a crowd of a different nature and capacity altogether.

Over the last few years, mainstream media outlets have let their gazes linger a few heartbeats longer on the AMA-regulated sport, giving it a few mentions and occasionally dropping names throughout the sports highlights. Large Network partnerships--like the team of SPEEDtv and CBS Sports--have television prescence at the events, creating exposure opportunities to past and present celebrities of the sport. Companies beyond the motorsports and extreme sports clothing industry have cashed in and antied up with investments in Supercross--garnering sponsorships from companies like Monster Energy (who hosts the series) and creating partnerships between industry big names like Pro Circuit and Kawasaki. Mainstream exposure and mainstream support can--well--generate a mainstream crowd.

The best part about Supercross is--of course--its fans. Networks celebrate Supercross's love for its fans by featuring a wide range of attendees from the I-want-my-picture-taken-by-RacerX-"Who is Josh Grant, again?" troller to the GearHead on the lower-level guessing at bike settings. I am the type of fan that enjoys bench racing with the best of them, but there's a huge part of me that holds some angst toward my parents for not exposing me to the greatness of Supercross at an earlier age. As a result, there are some repressed behaviors that I am excited about going wild with! There's the little kid in me that waits until the riders are out of the first turn to exhale, meditating on just the sound of the bikes on the line. I cannot wait to shout at the top of my lungs when I witness Windham's traditional opening ceremony nose-wheelie. Even more juvenile is the part of me that wants to stand in line for autographs from the guys I have spent the last few years photographing for publication.

To get this trip rolling, we will need to pull the RV out of its Summer-use state. While the liquid tanks have been drained, we still have no heat and no hot water. The priority here is the heat since we plan on staying at least two winter nights off the road. The furnace has been pulled, uncovered, inspected, and cleaned, but we are still unable to light the pilot. We are planning on replacing the heater, but a new heating unit could run us between $400-$700! Because we would rather spend that $400-$700 on our trip, We are looking for indoor space heating units that run on LP Gas as alternatives.

The following space heaters came to mind:

This Mr. Heater unit sports up to 18,000 in BTUs and will definitely heat the RV from the rear sleeping area to the front cabin. It's $144.99 online and +/-$5.00 in the store, depending on which one you go to--yet they are usually limited in stock by this time of year.