Through The Lens

By Brad Phillips

Once again, it’s time to wrap up filming for Carpe Diem 3. This time we found ourselves heading north to Minnesota, East to Wisconsin and then southeast into Pennsylvania. The trip started with a call to Rath Racing’s Pro TT racer, Cody Anderson. Cody had set a tee time for 2:00 on Tuesday in Minnesota. Tee time? I don’t golf! But I knew you could rent golf carts at golf courses so I agreed to the excursion. I left my hometown of Iowa City, IA for the five hour drive to Cody’s in Waconia, MN with a quick stop in Faribault, MN to pick up the new Premis intern, Brandon Boulay, at his house.

We arrived at the golf courses an hour late, around 3:00. Even though the course was essentially empty, we were quickly reprimanded for our tardiness by the club “pro”. Then we were charged an insane amount to golf, followed by another reprimand because I hadn’t brought my own clubs, I planned to use Cody’s, another apparent no-no. After we all learned some valuable lessons we finally hit the course. The first nine went pretty basic, but we started to get bored on the back nine. As you probably guessed, the day of golfing quickly became more of a bumper cart rally for a few holes. We cut the game short and headed out to get some dinner at a local restaurant on the lake. The rest of the night turned into a pretty crazy evening that I should probably just keep to myself, at least until the film comes out.

Wednesday we actually got to work and did some real filming. We met Cody and Dustin Buesgens at Hurricane Hills MX park in Mazeppa, MN. It’s a pretty sweet MX track that sweeps through the woods and has some cool obstacles. We spent the day riding and filming with Cody and Dustin. It was a pretty basic film outing — lots of screwing around and trying to clear some insane jumps. After about five hours of filming a storm started to roll in so we wrapped up and drove back to Cody’s in Waconia.

Thursday we loaded up the Premis trailer with Cody’s TT bikes and drove to the NASMOTO supermoto race in Shawano, WI. The track in Shawano was very impressive. The facilities were brand new and had everything you could ever need, although we were a little bummed about the turn out. Willet and Daryl Rath stole the show with Cody finishing a close third in his first supermoto race. In typical Premis fashion, we were always trying to find something interesting to do at night. Take it from me; if you want to have fun at night do NOT go to Shawano, there’s nothing to do there whatsoever. We did find a bowling alley that seemed pretty busy, but when we walked in it was pretty obvious we were not from around there. It was similar to when an American goes to Mexico, it’s as though you are famous. The second we walked in three psycho girls surrounded Cody and I like we were fresh meat and they hadn’t been fed in years. Cody quickly told them to leave and saved us. We got out of there fast.

After the races on Sunday Cody loaded up with Daryl Rath and headed back to Minnesota. Brandon and I headed Southeast through Chicago and onto Pennsylvania. We had plans to go to John Natalie’s house in Houtzdale, PA. But when we were at the Supermoto, Jen Rath informed us that John had broken his wrist at the GNC race that weekend. We quickly changed our plans and headed to Hetrick Racing in Oil City, PA. After filming with Joel Hetrick for Carpe Diem 2 we knew he was going to be the next big thing. So we wanted to document his progress in Carpe Diem 3. We also had the opportunity to meet up with Trent Kandel, a rookie in the pro class who has a lot of talent and potential but has been fighting some extreme bad luck this season. We arrived at Hetrick Racing Monday evening and basically just went to bed.

Tuesday we woke up and saw the race shop bustling with activity. The team was not only cleaning up from Budds Creek but also getting ready for a two week road trip for the next two nationals. On top of that they had all the normal business to attend to. For some reason Joel, Trent, and Daniel Epley decided to take the day off and go golfing. Trust me, we don’t golf much at all, this was only the second time I have seen a golf course that year. I have no idea what made them want to go. Yet again, we had a feeling we weren’t welcome there when we walked in with Hetrick Racing t-shirts on and a camera in hand, but they still let us golf…for awhile.

We weren’t even done with the first hole before we got scolded again, this time we honestly didn’t deserve it. The owner was mad because Joel made a few divots on the tee off (he’s only 13 years old and doesn’t golf much as it is!) He yelled at us like we were a bunch of 10 year olds, that didn’t make us very happy. So we mostly just stopped caring. We continued to golf, by the third hole we noticed we had a visitor. They sent someone to follow us, secretly, and spy on us. What a bunch of crap. Then at the 11th hole a group of younger golfers told us that everyone in the club house was talking about us. We honestly didn’t even do anything wrong, for once we were all actually being good. After being spied on for 15 holes we called it a day and went back to the shop.

Wednesday was a full day of riding and filming at Fox Raceway. We spent almost the entire day at the track filming Joel and Trent, but once again we got chased away by the rain near the end of the day. We were still happy with the content we got so we packed up and called it a day. That night Brandon, Trent, and I drove around Oil City looking for something to do. It was about as happening as Shawano, WI. We did stumble into a small restaurant/bar in town and started chatting with a couple girls that were around 23 years old or so. We quickly realized how big of a deal Joel was in this town of about 11,500 people. The two girls knew exactly who he was and I walked away with the impression they were waiting for him to be old enough to marry. He definitely has a promising future with both racing and the ladies!

Thursday, Brandon and I packed up and started driving towards Kerry Getz’s house in Glassboro, NJ. We stopped by John Natalie’s house on the way there to check in on him and see how his wrist was. When we arrived he was in his ‘dozer working on his private track. We chatted with him for an hour and then got back on the road to NJ.

We arrived at Kerry’s house around 8 o’clock, about the time I pulled up to his house he called me with some bad news. He just got a call from DVS and had to fly to Florida for a skateboarding film shoot, ending our plans for the weekend. Kerry is on salary with DVS for basically that reason, to be on call for film shoots. We fully understood and made our way back to Iowa City. As we were making our way through PA it seemed a blessing that Kerry had to cancel. We drove through some nasty storms that would end up being the beginning of the major flooding in New Jersey, which would have made it impossible to film anyway.

We are now almost done with Carpe Diem 3. All that’s left are the endless hours of editing. Between the riders we have worked with and our new editor, Brandon Boulay, this film will definitely be the best one yet.

In addition to Carpe Diem 3, we have been working on “Beating the Odds, The Life of a Privateer”. It’s the first-ever documentary film to be released to the ATV market. The film follows one current privateer pro, Chad Wienen, and three future pros, Cale Downen, Sage Baker and Cody Grant, as they compete in the new WPSA / ESPN ATV Tour. Beating the Odds covers the exhausting schedule these racers must endure in their quest to become a true pro. Check out the teaser video below to get a feel for what it’s going to be. The film will be released September 22, 2006, we are now taking pre-orders on our website premisind.com

We would also like to extend our congratulations to Joe Byrd for winning the 2006 GNC Pro Championship and Doug Gust for his Championship in the WPSA Pro class. And congrats to Premis Rider, Sage Baker for his WPSA Pro-Am Championship.

See ya on the road and at the races
— Brad Phillips

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