Watching Reed win at Freestone first hand was a huge highlight of our U.S. trip right as summer heats up.

They say time flies when you’re having fun, and that is certainly always the case when we head to the U.S. for a mix of work and pleasure to bring you guys the best content we can on MotoOnline.com.au.

Since Freestone it’s been full throttle with a quick trip to Utah’s Salt Lake City for the American round of the Superbike World Championship (see our partner site at CycleOnline.com.au for more on that!), before settling into the high-paced lifestyle that is standard in Southern California.

You would have seen yesterday the cool 10 Questions film with South Australian Brett Metcalfe, and the good news is that we also have more of these with Chad Reed and Tye Simmonds in the firing line.

I went out to see Metty race on Saturday at an REM event at Glen Helen, which he won easily of course, but you’d probably find it interesting that he opted to race on one of his rare weekends off from the national circuit. He’s as dedicated to the sport as it gets.

Today we pieced together an in-depth interview that we did with Tye Simmonds at the JDR/J-Star/KTM workshop in Temecula, and we’ll have another interview that we did with Brenden Harrison coming shortly.

Watching the JDR Motorsports guys at work over here, headed by Jay Rynenberg alongside Nate Ramsey, is a pleasure to see, the team solely focused on making its mark in the U.S. while of course continuing its spectacular form back home.

Plus, just in case you missed it last week, don’t forget to look through the archives and check out the interview we carried out with Michael Byrne after Freestone, plus the multiple image galleries that we’ve since uploaded.

We had the ‘Inside Chad Reed’s factory TwoTwo Motorsports Honda CRF450R’ feature that went absolutely viral around the world, and we also have that same type of deal sitting on the Canon 7D’s memory card for Simmonds, Byrne and PJ Larsen’s race bikes.

More than anything what we set out to achieve over here in America is following the Aussie contingent like no media outlet at home has ever attempted to before, tightening the relations between Australia and abroad in a bid to continue building on the identities of the sport.

If you can’t keep track of the Aussies on a dedicated Australian website, then where can you keep track of them!? Yeah, we see plenty of Reedy on the U.S. sites and a fair bit of Metty during the nationals since he’s the current number two plate holder, but it’s the likes of Byrner, Simmonds and co. that we can’t forget.

What it also achieves by coming over here is giving us a grasp on just how well the American media outlets work with the athletes, exposing them and their teams/sponsors and boosting the sport to a whole new level. That’s what we need to take control of and do at home if we want to follow the U.S. series’ footsteps and try to go more mainstream.

Anyhow, that’s enough from me for now, I have a Qantas jumbo waiting outside of the Tom Bradley Terminal at LAX waiting for me – see you in the morning Sydney!

AG23